or: why should CHICAGO POPE have all the fun

[404 Media] [archive] One of the instructors in the app said pins and needles in your hands can happen and should go away quickly. But mine would last for hours, and my feet multiple days. Then my limbs would feel numb and I would be incredibly cold, so much I would start sneezing. [Katalyst's CEO Brendan] Kennedy told me getting pins and needles for this long was "extremely abnormal." [...] "This suit looks like the biggest scam I've ever seen," Johnston wrote. She pointed to the Relaxacisor, a device from 1949 that blasted your abs with electrical pulses. "This thing is no different, and equally scammy," Johnston said.

"More water is better," Katalyst's CEO Brendan Kennedy told me. You then clip the vest and shorts together, creating a single, dripping suit. After wrapping those around your body and zipping up, you put on the arm straps and connect them to the main suit with a pair of delicate cables. You slip a battery pack into a pocket near your thigh, snap its magnetic plugs to the vests and shorts, and you're ready to work out, soaking wet and maybe cold if you took too long to assemble the contraption. What the fuck am I even doing? I eventually thought to myself, dripping water all over my apartment floor.

Scientists have detected a sugar in interstellar space, suggesting the galaxy may be liberally sprinkled with some of life's chemical ingredients. A new study shows that a sugar molecule containing four carbon atoms, called erythrulose, has been found near the center of the Milky Way, the first confirmed detection of a monosaccharide in the interstellar medium. Living organisms use sugars as energy sources, structural components, and constituents of genetic material. While scientists have previously found ribose and glucose in meteorite and asteroid samples, indicating they also exist in space, monosaccharide forms of sugar in deep space had remained elusive – if we're not counting glycolaldehyde, which is often loosely described as the simplest sugar, or a sugar precursor. Astrobiology researcher Izaskun Jiménez-Serra and her colleagues found the sugar in large clouds of gas and dust near the center of our galaxy using ultrasensitive spectral surveys performed by Spain's Yebes 40-meter and IRAM 30-meter radio telescopes. The researchers identified the sugar compound by matching 12 sets of signals in the survey data with erythrulose's laboratory-measured spectral signature. "Erythrulose appears to be at least eight times more abundant than analogous three-carbon sugars, which remain undetected in our ultrasensitive observations," says the paper, published in Nature Astronomy this week. Quantum chemical and astrochemical models indicate that erythrulose forms efficiently on interstellar dust grains from simpler two-carbon molecules, the study found. The researchers say the findings suggest that erythrulose can be made from simpler molecules on dust grains in space, eventually becoming part of more complex chemical systems. "The discovery of interstellar erythrulose suggests that the interstellar medium could be a viable source of sugar feedstock for the prebiotic synthesis of the first nucleic acids, not only on the primitive Earth but also elsewhere in the Universe," the paper states. While the discovery of sugars in deep space may be tantalizing for any budding explorers of the galaxy, there's no need to travel that far to find erythrulose. It occurs naturally on Earth, including in raspberries. ®

Philips is replacing Hue Bridge Pro devices after a software update left several units bricked with no way for users to restore them. Rumblings began in forums in June after a seemingly innocuous update left users, quite literally, in the dark. After a few weeks attempting to resolve the issues, Philips has thrown in the towel and said it will replace affected devices. A spokesperson told The Register, "We have identified a firmware issue affecting a limited number of Philips Hue Bridge Pro devices under a very specific software update scenario. Our data shows that fewer than 100 devices have been impacted." As for the problem itself, "The issue can occur when a Bridge Pro with automatic software updates disabled has remained on an older software version for an extended period, and a software update is then manually installed under a specific set of conditions. "In affected cases, the Bridge Pro can become inoperable and display a red LED, resulting in a loss of connectivity with the Philips Hue app and connected devices." The spokesperson told us that affected users should contact the company's customer support: "All Bridge Pro devices confirmed to have been impacted by this specific issue will be replaced free of charge, regardless of warranty status." Which is great, except that if you have to set up a network of lights and devices again from scratch, that's a substantial amount of work. Backing up a configuration isn't an option at the moment. The Hue Bridge Pro is a hub for the Philips Hue lighting system. It can support more than 150 lights and over 50 accessories. According to Philips, "Equipped with a new chip capable of running complex algorithms and AI-powered features, it's faster and stronger than ever." Except, it appears, when Philips emits an update that bricks some of them. The incident highlights the risks associated with smart homes and their devices. Support could be abruptly pulled, the device's origin might not be what you expect, or, as in the case of the Philips Hue Bridge Pro, a firmware update could leave a device hopelessly bricked. Philips should be commended for its replacement plan, particularly when a device is out of warranty, although questions remain about its validation and qualification procedures. As for the device itself, Philips released an update on Monday to address the issue (where devices haven't been bricked) and urged users to enable automatic updates to receive the firmware update as it rolls out. ®

The UK and EU are demanding urgent action from critical infrastructure organizations after formally attributing the December 2025 cyberattack on Poland's power grid to Russia's Federal Security Service. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) described the attack, carried out by the FSB's Centre 16 division, as "another example of the Russian state's irresponsible attempts to sow chaos across Europe." Milosz Motyka, Poland's energy minister, confirmed the attack on the country's power grid in January. He said experts suspected that whoever was behind it attempted to disrupt communication between renewable hardware and power distribution operators. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful, but suspicion quickly fell on Russia. Attackers tried to deploy the destructive DynoWiper malware, a move typically associated with Russian state-backed operations. Mandiant previously tied the 2023 blackouts in Ukraine to Sandworm's deployment of CaddyWiper malware, while the NCSC and its allies fingered the same military intelligence unit for the 2022 WhisperGate wiper attacks at the start of Russia's invasion. As The Register reported at the time, the FCDO said the attack in Poland could have left half a million Poles without power in midwinter – a cyberattack with potentially lethal consequences. We asked the NCSC to provide more information about what evidence allowed it to attribute the Poland energy attack to Russia's FSB, but it declined to comment on operational matters. Time to act The UK NCSC co-authored a technical advisory, published Monday, which highlights the latest developments in Russia's tradecraft, urging those most at risk to apply the recommended mitigations. It said organizations in the following sectors are most at risk from Centre 16 cyberattacks: communications, defense industrial base, energy, financial services, government services and facilities (especially organizations at the state and local level), and healthcare and public health. The headline mitigation recommended by the intelligence agencies is to disable SNMPv1 and SNMPv2, opting instead for SNMPv3 with authPriv, which comes with strong authentication and data encryption, and to disable Cisco Smart Install on all devices. Centre 16's common tactics involve scanning for devices that respond with SNMPv1/2. These support default or easily guessed community strings, which are commonly abused to gain access to network devices such as routers – a technique the NCSC and others issued separate warnings about in April. Attackers can abuse SNMP access to obtain device configuration data and transfer it to a server under their control, which can later facilitate persistent access. Although SNMP scanning is the principal tactic described, the advisory also covers the exploitation of Cisco devices, including those with Smart Install enabled. Defenders examining the document will notice overlapping tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) between Centre 16 and other Russia-aligned threat groups, the intelligence partners wrote. Jonathon Ellison, director of national resilience at the NCSC, said: "The NCSC, alongside our international partners, have repeatedly exposed the advanced tools and coordinated campaigns of Russian cyber actors who persistently seek to exploit any vulnerability they encounter. "Today's joint advisory provides decisive, actionable directions from the global security community that network defenders should implement to protect against Russian Intelligence operations and secure the UK's critical infrastructure. "I'd strongly encourage all organisations, especially those entrusted with UK critical networks, to adopt these recommended measures immediately, thereby reducing the risk of compromise." Fresh sanctions The UK and EU have each added an array of Russian individuals and entities to their sanctions lists, including GRU officials, cybercriminals, and hacktivists. Members of pro-Kremlin outlet Rybar also makes an appearance, owing to its false narratives about Ukraine and alleged interference with European elections. The most high-profile designations concern Vyacheslav Stafeyev, Ivan Senin, and Ivan Kasyanenko – three GRU leaders accused of orchestrating cyber and hybrid operations. They also allegedly worked with cybercriminals and a company called IMPULS with a view to recruit cybersecurity specialists from universities and academies across Russia. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: "These sanctions strike at the core of the cybercriminal networks propping up the Russian state's aggression, and the UK and EU are sending a clear message that Russia cannot hide behind its use of these proxy groups.  "From directing criminals to targeting businesses, and striking Poland's energy grid in the depths of winter, the Russian state is sinking to new lows in its attempts to undermine European security. "Together with our partners, Britain will continue to call out this behaviour, bolster our resilience and respond to the hybrid threat posed by the Russian state. This will not deter us from supporting Ukraine." Sanctions were also imposed against three individuals accused of being operators of Lumma Stealer, one of the major infostealer malware strains that play a significant role in the cybercrime economy. National Crime Agency data suggests that in the UK alone, at least 2,100 victims were identified as infected over six months. The UK confirmed that the Russian state has used Lumma Stealer to gather stolen credentials and launch cyberespionage operations against global targets. The 24 sanctions unveiled on Monday add to the 3,400-plus individuals and entities that have been designated for their roles in supporting Russia's war efforts. Don't forget those cameras The coordinated international warnings and sanctions come days after Dutch authorities issued their own alert about Russian espionage units targeting internet-connected cameras to gather intelligence about military logistics routes. Its separate advisory warned that at least one Russian intelligence unit carries out operations targeting the Netherlands and other NATO members, using IP camera footage to track military logistics routes and the transport of materiel, and to map infrastructure such as bridges and roads. Dutch intelligence services added that Russia uses image recognition software to detect military vehicles, transport routes, shipments to Ukraine, and locations of Ukrainian soldiers. The advisory went on to say that Dutch intelligence suggests Russia's use of compromised IP cameras and their imagery has systematically increased recently and become a normal part of its tradecraft. It said abusing default passwords was the most common way in which Russian spies were gaining access to the cameras, although the most recent security updates were rarely applied, opening up vulnerabilities to exploit when using guessable passwords doesn't work. ®

Trusting an AI agent to summarize user complaints about downtime is one thing; trusting it to fix the problem unattended is something else entirely. A survey of 696 experts The Register ran with NeuBird AI in April 2026 found that 73 percent are not using AIOps at all, another 19 percent are in pilot, and only eight percent have it in production. Asked what's stopping them, 60 percent of respondents cited a lack of trust, by far the biggest issue, with concerns about ROI, security and data quality each registering at around 12 to 13 percent. NeuBird AI's Production Ops Agent is designed to close that trust deficit. Rather than summarizing the alert queue, it continuously correlates metrics, logs, traces, infrastructure telemetry, deployment activity and dependency relationships, then runs investigations across that combined picture to suggest probable root causes and next actions. It also works a step upstream. Rather than bolting a faster responder onto a noisy alert queue, NeuBird AI fixes observability at its source: through agentic instrumentation it generates the right signals, so the alert is high-signal by design. As Martel puts it, the point is to fix observability at the source, not patch the output. Field CTO Francois Martel sat down with The Register to talk through what the survey found, and why the next phase of AIOps will look nothing like the dashboards engineers have stared at for a decade. He also has views on what must change before SRE teams will let agents near their production systems. Lots of interest, very little deployment The data confirmed what Martel was already hearing in the field. "There's a lot of interest, but not a lot of action," he says. The pattern is familiar across agentic workloads: the categories that have taken off are the ones that come with an obvious human in the loop and an obvious verification path, such as coding agents and content generation. Operations is harder, because the work happens inside the running environment, on data the engineer hasn't seen yet, with consequences that show up in customer-facing systems. He saw the same gap inside enterprises long before he joined NeuBird: a backlog of 300 candidate AI fixes and a flurry of early enthusiasm, followed by a year of slog before the first one shipped. Part of that delay comes down to the speed of market development, since waiting six months for the tools to catch up with your expectations is sometimes the right call. Another part of it is the wrong choice of tool category, because general-purpose agents do not fit SRE problems. "There are specialized agents that can do a much better job," Martel says, "and address some of the concerns" of safety, security, guardrails and hallucinations. The tool also has to fit into the team's existing workflows. Trust is built, not declared Martel doesn't try to argue with the trust-heavy concerns the survey surfaced. "Working with AI is a trust-building exercise, and AI has to learn in order to gain trust," he says. "I would say that's kind of the killer feature for AI agents. If you can show that you're learning and getting better, then you can gain trust." That's why explainability sits at the center of NeuBird AI's design rather than being grafted on for the security review. The platform records the reasoning behind every decision so an engineer can interrogate it the way they'd interrogate a colleague's incident report. "Whenever you have an agent, you want to be able to audit the decisions that were made, and understand the reasoning behind the decision," Martel says. Internally, NeuBird AI captures every reasoning step via Langfuse. Explainability is only half of it. The platform is also SOC 2 Type II certified, read-only, and stores nothing, so trust is built into the architecture, not just the reasoning. Externally, the harder problem is presentation: early versions of the system surfaced so much detail that users described it as a wall of text. The fix was to make the reasoning interrogable rather than dumped, so engineers can chat with the system's memory the way they'd query a more senior teammate. Context is what makes the answer credible The same survey found that 59 percent of respondents require near-perfect accuracy before they'll adopt, while another three in every ten will tolerate around 80 percent accuracy. That bar is unforgiving, and Martel argues it can only be cleared with better context engineering, not bigger models. "The key to accuracy is this sweet spot between just enough context so that you're not missing things, and then discoverability of context," he says. "Certainly not too much context." Creating a solution that achieves that balance is beyond the reach of anybody with just a coding agent on their desktop, he argues. NeuBird AI's argument rests on the fact that most outages cannot be reasoned about inside a single dashboard or service. Any enterprise large enough to need an SRE team has silos throughout the tech stack, from storage and networking through to operating platforms and applications, especially after microservices fragmented the estate. An investigation has to traverse boundaries that no single human has full visibility into , and NeuBird handles this by doing the dependency mapping before the incident starts, so that when an investigation kicks off the system already knows where to look and how the pieces relate. Co-pilot now, autonomy later, maybe The clearest signal from the research, and the one Martel finds least surprising, is the preference for co-pilot models, with 62 percent wanting AI to assist rather than replace. He recognizes this stage from his own work with coding agents, though he also acknowledges an evolutionary arc. A year ago he wouldn't walk away from a coding agent for a minute, and now he's tempted to flip it into dangerous mode and let it run. He still checks in and architects everything, though. "I'm not going to completely surrender my responsibilities," he says. The pragmatic path he describes for operations looks similar. NeuBirdAI is starting to wire up automation through Ansible's Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, with certain playbooks marked as safe to automate in production and the rest gated behind human approval. Adding memory to a pod up to a known ceiling is something an agent can handle; anything riskier waits for a person. How much an engineer delegates, Martel says, depends on their appetite for risk and the experience they have built up working alongside the tool. The five-minute clock and the death of the war room Response time dominates the AIOps brief: just over half of survey respondents expect operational answers in under five minutes, and 75 percent want them inside ten, putting immense pressure on workflows that were never built for the cadence. Getting six specialists up to speed and pulling them onto a war-room conference bridge takes time the SLA cannot absorb. Martel's argument is that the on-call experience has to change before the clock can. "You want to get to the situation where you're not on a call with 20 other teams. Instead you're in front of a document that's outlining the explanation of what's happening and either giving me a solution or telling me who should get involved," he says. The agent does the legwork before the engineer logs in, so by the time the engineer arrives, the early triage questions have already been answered and only the interesting decisions remain. What IT means for the observability bill The most provocative finding, for incumbent observability vendors at least, is that 52 percent of respondents would consider switching telemetry tools if AI-driven insights worked across any back-end. Asked where this goes, Martel doesn't hedge. "In the future observability will be dominated by open source, cost effective storage indexing technology like Grafana, Elasticsearch, or OpenSearch." In that scenario the strategic asset shifts from whoever hoards the most telemetry to whoever can investigate it most intelligently, which means a context engine sitting above whatever storage layer is cheapest. This is a useful lens for buyers about to renew an observability contract, because the dashboards they have paid a fortune for are the human-readable layer of a system that increasingly has machine readers too. What next? The survey describes a market that badly wants AI in operations but has learned to be suspicious of vendors promising results without evidence. Martel's pitch is that the platforms surviving the next two years will be the ones that show their work and fit into the existing change-management apparatus rather than demanding a rewrite of it. The winners will treat operational context as a first-class engineering problem rather than a prompt-stuffing exercise. Martel has a blunt answer for SRE leads still wondering whether their team is behind the curve. "There are advantages you'll gain in terms of keeping up with a growing production estate with flat operational budgets," he says. "If you don't adopt it, what are you going to do? You're going to struggle." Sponsored by NeuBird AI.

Trump wil minder Amerikaanse inbreng in de NAVO op een moment dat de zorgen over agressie van de Russische president Poetin alleen maar toenemen. Op die dubbele dreiging is maar een antwoord mogelijk: meer Europa.

Asielzoekers die door de grote drukte niet meer worden toegelaten tot het azc in Ter Apel, hoeven niet meer buiten te wachten. De overheid verklaart de directe omgeving van het azc tot ‘veiligheidsrisicogebied’, waar preventief gefouilleerd kan worden.

Nog op zoek naar een inspiratie voor je stedentrip? NRC vroeg tips aan locals voor bestemmingen die binnen een dag met de trein te bereiken zijn.

Volgens de Italiaanse oppositie wil premier Giorgia Meloni het kiesstelsel aanpassen omdat ze bang is anders de volgende verkiezingen te verliezen. De premier zelf zegt dat het haar louter te doen is om stabiel bestuur.

Nederland en andere Europese landen beschuldigen Rusland ervan dat het met cyberaanvallen overheidsnetwerken en kritieke infrastructuur heeft binnengedrongen en gesaboteerd. Eerder maandag ontboden ook Frankrijk, Duitsland en het Verenigd Koninkrijk hun Russische ambassadeurs om de kwestie.

Terwijl de zon zichzelf de afgelopen weken met het enthousiasme van een Bart Chabot door de hemel slingerde, bezocht ik de ene na de andere uitvaart.

Sinds zondag woedt een omvangrijke natuurbrand in het bos bij Fontainebleau, op veertig minuten met de trein van Parijs. Dit ecologisch belangrijke woud, vernoemd naar een koninklijke jachthond, heeft ook in de Franse cultuur een ereplaats.

Techreus Apple sleept OpenAI voor de rechter. Dit bedrijf zou via oud-medewerkers bedrijfsgeheimen hebben gestolen om AI-gadgets te ontwikkelen.

Landen in oorlog moeten niet alleen zelf het humanitair oorlogsrecht naleven, maar ook zorgen dat andere landen dit doen. De vraag is of Nederland genoeg gedaan heeft om misstanden in Afghanistan op te sporen en uit te zoeken. Twee experts oorlogsrecht vinden van niet. „Iedereen heeft het recht om niet vermist te zijn.”

Jeetjemineetje, u raadt nooit waar het een totale bende is. Juist, bij het COA-aanmeldcentrum in Ter Apel, waar alles wat VLUCHT VOOR OORLOG EN GEWELD ons land binnenstroomt. Dat wisten we natuurlijk al lang en dat wist bijvoorbeeld ook het Rode Kruis, voor wie de agressieve sfeer (afkomstig van: 'een groepje mannen') zo akelig werd dat ze de benen namen. Zelfs de poeslieve reporters van de NOS werd het aardig heet onder de voeten dus dan kun je spreken van een aanzienlijk probleem. Het land aanmeldcentrum is druk voller dan vol en alles wat niet naar binnen kan zorgt buiten voor totale mayhem, dus neemt het kabinet nu een extra maatregel in de vorm van een veiligheidsrisicogebied. Asielzoekers worden voor het aanmeldcentrum preventief gefouilleerd en vervolgens worden ze teruggestuurd naar een ander pand gebracht om hun aanmelding af te wachten. Als ze binnen eenmaal overlast veroorzaken moeten ze permanent buiten blijven. Poeh poeh. Probleem opgelost verplaatst!

Social

Afdeling sociale demografie van GeenStijl feliciteert Rens Kroes - zus van Doutzen, zelf nadenkend wetenschapper bekend van de theorie dat je kanker kan genezen door door het bos te wandelen. Rens Kroes heeft in de bajes gevreeën met haar eigenaar man Sid Soumahoro, die een celstraf van 4,5 jaar uitzit wegens verkrachting. Het Hof destijds over die verkrachting: "Hij heeft haar door fysieke en verbale bedreigingen in doodsangst gebracht en haar urenlang (met tussenliggende pauzes) verkracht, zodanig dat het haar naar eigen zeggen ‘ontzettend pijn deed’. Zijn reactie daarop was: 'I hurt you because I love you'." Tijdens de verkrachting zei Siddick ook: "Je gaat nu op de bank zitten en respect voor me tonen. Je gaat nu relaxen. Ik breek je nek als je je beweegt. Ik vermoord je serieus." Enfin, leuke kerel, leuk genoeg om een liefdesbaby mee te maken! Rens Kroes op Instagram: "Ik volgde de rivier en luisterde naar de hartslag van Moeder Aarde. Ze leidde me door diepe wateren, op weg naar de oceaan. Ik heb stormen doorstaan, mijn kracht gevonden en geleerd mijn hart te vertrouwen. Nu geef ik me over aan het getij." Was het vrijwillig, meid?

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

date stamped on slide August 1973

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

From the Three Patriarchs of Zion Canyon to the swamps of Louisiana to the immense cascade of Niagara Falls, John Buck’s dreamlike landscapes evoke the juxtapositions and proportions of dreams. His solo exhibition, Mont Blanc on Wood at Zolla / Lieberman Gallery, draws us to the fuzzy boundary between the familiar and the uncanny.

The Bozeman-based artist is known for his eccentric, often life-size wooden sculptures that draw on folklore, personal memory, and daily observations. Figures are sometimes hybridized with other objects, and idiosyncratic drawings on wood panel reveal expansive landscapes populated by anthropomorphized plants and dramatic rock pinnacles.

The works in Mont Blanc on Wood span a range of places and references, emphasizing landscapes where things feel perhaps a little “off.” The desert stares back in “Cactus Grove (No. 13),” and in “Lighthouse (No. 18),” a light station in the middle of a desert lake shines mostly onto arid, rocky landforms.

“Buck reflects on social and political realities, environmental concerns, and the eccentricities of human behavior, all while maintaining a sense of humor and a deep engagement with craft,” the gallery says. “His art balances storytelling with formal clarity, inviting viewers into a world where the familiar becomes speculative and symbolic.”

Mont Blanc on Wood continues through August 8 in Chicago.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Uncanny Landscapes in Pen and Ink Span Wooden Panels by John Buck appeared first on Colossal.