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Rebecca Hendin on Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta court settlement – cartoon

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Spurs still paying price for a punishing World Cup and pre-season trip to Australia

Too many players are off the pace and although Tottenham brushed aside Charlton, Newcastle will be a tougher challenge

Jan Paul van Hecke was among those given an unwanted name-check by Roberto De Zerbi after Tottenham’s 3-0 defeat at Brentford on Saturday. Not at the right level physically, was the gist of the manager’s comments. De Zerbi also mentioned Marcos Senesi and Sandro Tonali, two of the club’s other new signings. Their condition had to come as no surprise. It certainly did not to De Zerbi.

Take the case of Van Hecke, for whom the summer months have been a whirlwind. A few bullet-points from his timeline are worth noting. 18 June: joins Spurs from Brighton for £52m; 30 June: knocked out of World Cup with the Netherlands after last-32 penalty shootout defeat to Morocco; 23 July: boards team flight with Spurs for pre-season tour to New Zealand and Australia. “It was a really short break, to be honest,” Van Hecke says. “But I didn’t want to miss anything in the pre-season. My first days [as a Spurs player] were in New Zealand and Australia.”

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Officials urge calm after malaria outbreak kills two staff at Frankfurt airport

Mosquito traps are set up at Germany’s biggest airport and doctors are asked to look out for symptoms of disease

German health officials are seeking to reassure the public after two workers at the country’s biggest airport died of malaria.

Mosquito traps have been set up at Frankfurt airport and a mosquito monitoring process is under way. A detailed investigation is being conducted to clarify how the workers contracted the disease.

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USS Abraham Lincoln to visit port in Thailand after more than 250 days at sea

Thai navy says ‘routine’ visit’ will allow personnel to rest and recuperate amid reports of poor conditions onboard

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is set to make a temporary stop in Thailand next week as it heads back to the United States, Thai navy officials said, after spending more than 250 consecutive days at sea supporting US operations against Iran amid recent reports of poor living conditions and low morale onboard the vessel.

The Lincoln left the Middle East several days ago after being relieved by the USS George Washington, and is now heading home to San Diego. A Thai navy official told Reuters this week that the carrier was expected to make a brief port visit in Thailand next week for the crew to rest and recuperate before continuing their journey home.

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I don’t get along with my sister-in-law. Should I try to address the dynamic?

There are two things to consider, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Are you hurt by the way she treats you or the way she sees you?

I’m struggling with a dynamic with my sister-in-law. We’re not a natural fit personality-wise, and I’ve tried to be mindful of that. At times I wonder whether she might be jealous of the life I have with her brother and our children. I often encourage my husband to spend time with her without me, because she doesn’t seem to particularly enjoy me being there. As a result, we now mostly see each other at family gatherings, which happen about once a month.

There’s a recurring pattern where she corrects me quite sharply, with an impatience that often feels disproportionate or plain mean. She might snap while I am talking to her parents (with whom I have a good relationship), laugh at how I pronounce a placename, or dismiss a question as though it’s too stupid to answer. These interactions are quick and barely noticeable to anyone else, although my daughter and husband have both observed and agreed it was pretty mean.

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‘We’re going to have to groove!’ The cello, horn and sax prodigies jazzing up the Proms

The finalists from the BBC young musician of 2016 have teamed up with a Mercury-nominated composer to craft a Proms premiere that’s uplifting, lyrical and goes out with an almighty bang

A cellist, a horn player and a soprano saxophonist walk into the Royal Albert Hall … it could be the setup for an exceptionally nerdy joke, but instead it’s a new triple concerto, with three soloists rather than the usual one, to be premiered on the final weekend of the Proms. The concerto – by Gwilym Simcock, the Mercury-shortlisted composer, jazz pianist and horn player who in 2006 was the BBC’s first New Generation jazz artist – reunites the three finalists from the 2016 BBC young musician of the year competition, hence the unusual lineup. “This is a unique combination of instruments,” says the saxophonist Jess Gillam. “I’m fascinated by the colours that we’re going to find. I hope we’ll be able to make a sound where people will think: what instrument is that?”

BBC young musician has launched many careers, but 2016 was exceptional: all three finalists have become major names. “It’s not like you win the competition and all these things fall from the sky, but it does give you a bit of public exposure,” says the horn player Ben Goldscheider, the 2016 brass section winner. “Then it’s up to you and the people around you what you make of that.”

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It’s time for all of us to get a grip and stop flaking on friends for no good reason

It has become normal to cancel on one another because we are so desperate to avoid even the most minor discomfort. It must cease immediately

It’s a Thursday night. You are sitting on the couch (the TV is on or you could be reading a book but most likely you are doom-scrolling). You know full well that you have plans to meet a dear friend who you’ve been “meaning to catch up with for ages!” at the pub down the road in exactly 45 minutes.

Maybe this friend has been going through a rough time? Maybe they’ve got some exciting news about a perfect Hinge date (rare and shocking)? Maybe you’ve simply been “ships in the night” sailing through the capitalist rat race and miss each other’s company.

Johanna Cosgrove is an award-winning actor/writer/comedian

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Food allergies when flying are no joke. That's why nuts should be banned on planes | Lucy Pasha-Robinson

People with allergies must be able to travel without fear, and a compassionate society should respect that

What are you most scared of? Perhaps snakes send a chill down your spine. Or heights leave your knees weak. Peanuts may sound like an odd source of phobia, but they have taken on an absurd bogeyman quality for me since my daughter was taken to hospital by ambulance after eating peanut butter when she was six months old. Just the sight of a bowl on a pub bar, or their shells discarded on the pavement, can raise my heart rate – even when I’m not with her.

Nowhere is the sight of peanuts more confronting than at 30,000ft, especially now when millions are jetting back from their holidays. Travelling with a severely allergic child can be a nightmare for all sorts of reasons, but the idea you could be sat next to a passenger consuming the very thing that has hospitalised them is its own kind of hell.

Lucy Pasha-Robinson is a Guardian assistant Opinion editor

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Momijidani park bridge

k4ischrader has added a photo to the pool:

Momijidani park bridge

Miyajima, Japan 2024

404 Media

404 Media is an independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox.

Cocomelon's Studio Tells Its Artists to Start Experimenting With AI

Cocomelon's Studio Tells Its Artists to Start Experimenting With AI

Moonbug Entertainment, the children’s entertainment studio that makes the hugely popular shows Cocomelon, Little Baby Bum, Blippi, and Mia’s Magic Playground has asked its animators to start using artificial intelligence while making its shows, 404 Media has learned.

Moonbug’s Generative AI policy and its “Studio AI Bible,” a guide to using AI to help generate content, seen by 404 Media, explain in detail how its AI use will work. The policies indicate that the company is in the initial stages of experimenting with AI in the creation of its shows, but that for the moment it has put several guardrails in place in part over legal and copyright concerns associated with using AI in a more substantial way. 

“Keep a human in the loop when using AI. AI is used to assist the artist, not be the artist,” the guidelines say. “Always remember that we can only own (copyright) what a human has created and so we need to ensure the final execution involves substantial human creative input. Our core IP (e.g. key characters/signature worlds and important backgrounds) must reflect substantial human creative input and intentionality.” 

The documents show in detail how a major studio, which runs an empire of content that is wildly popular with infants, toddlers, and their families, is using AI. Moonbug’s shows have hundreds of millions of subscribers on YouTube, and many of its shows have spinoff series and movies that air across several major streaming services. Cocomelon spinoffs air on Netflix, the studio is working on a Cocomelon movie for Universal, and the series is set to move to Disney+ next year. YouTube has been flooded with AI-generated content for infants and toddlers, but these documents indicate that even the biggest companies in the industry are using AI, albeit with far more thought and care than slop purveyors. Its properties also have various popular children and baby toys.

“Like many media companies, we're exploring how AI tools can support our creative and production teams. Today, generative AI is not used in episodes of our content,” a Moonbug spokesperson told 404 Media. “Our core principle is that AI should assist the artist, not be the artist. Our guidelines prohibit AI from originating key creative elements such as new characters, core storylines and song lyrics, and require substantial human creative input. Everything we produce — whether they incorporate AI-assisted elements or not — goes through our human-led creative and quality-control process, including frame-by-frame human eyeball review, and rounds of iterations and notes from our creative and production teams.”

The guidelines say that AI can be used for ideation, scripting, storyboarding, design, and animation, but has put guardrails on how AI can be used in each step of the process. 

For example, the company says animators can use AI for “utility tasks/standard production enhancers,” but cannot use it to “alter a VO/actor’s performance without checking with Legal.” It says AI can be used “to refine a human-authored draft,” but “no ghost-writing. Do not generate key creative elements (character arcs, core plot twists, song lyrics) from scratch by AI. The narrative ‘soul’ and key dialogue beats must remain human-authored.” The company says AI can be used to “generate visual research, vibe boards, brainstorm ideas and concepts and exploring texture/colour/lighting references,” but that there is “no ‘prompt to product.’ […] do not move a 100% AI-generated design directly into the production pipeline. It must be translated into a studio-drawn concept to ensure it meets our technical standards and style.”  

At times, the guide gets very granular. It says workers are allowed to use AI to create “generic” designs and textures, such as trees in a background or furniture, for character outfit changes, or for “creating 3D turnarounds from existing human-created 2D characters,” but usually cannot use it to create wholly new characters. “The [AI] assets must be processed by an artist (eg over-painted, tweaked) to ensure human in loop. All new characters should be human created (unless have had approval for specific IPs). Props — if we are creating something unique and to be heavily featured in the series e.g. the Clubhouse — it must be human created. All franchise specific worlds should be human created (unless intended to be generic).”

The company is requiring employees to “first test all tools with non Moonbug IP and/or test assets before proceeding with legal approval.” After being approved by legal, employees are allowed to use AI to help create assets for Moonbug shows, but all AI use, including the prompts used to generate assets, must be cataloged and saved. The company spokesperson told 404 Media that “non Moonbug IP” refers to generic assets that the company has made: “We created generic test characters and environments so teams can freely explore new tools without using Moonbug IP or anyone else's IP. If a tool proves useful, further testing with Moonbug IP requires appropriate approvals.”

“Making content for young children comes with a particular responsibility, regardless of the tools involved,” the spokesperson added. “Our GenAI guidelines add another layer of guardrails: no ‘prompt-to-product,’ human authorship of core creative elements, approved tools and legal review, protections around performers and third-party IP, and human review of finished work. Ultimately, people make the creative decisions about what is appropriate and worthy of our audience.”

All AI tools that the company uses must have individual legal approval, and all AI-generated assets must be kept in separate file folders than human-created ones using a system it is calling “provenance and isolation,” according to the guidelines. The “goal” of this file management system is “to ensure we always have a path back to human-authored works to maintain copyright ownership over what matters.” 

“Every project must have a dedicated folder for AI generated assets. No file from this folder should be moved into main production folders without being processed by human artist [sic] first. All 100% human created assets must also be stored and labeled properly,” the guidelines say. Workers must log all of their AI prompts, then also write an explanation of how a human transformed the asset if it is ultimately used in production. 

A section of the document called “prompt guidance” says that workers should begin the AI production process by “upload[ing] a human-drawn sketch/Moonbug owned IP as a structural reference, use AI as a refiner eg to add texture/lighting.” It says “No text-to-image prompting (unless for brainstorming/research,” and “no style mimicking or soundalikes — do not use prompts like ‘in the style of Pixar/Ghibli’ etc. Use descriptive artistic terms instead — eg ‘hand-painted water colour aesthetic’ or ‘vibrant street-art aesthetic, chromatic aberration.’”

In May, workers with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees working on a live action Cocomelon spinoff show went on strike, alleging that they were not being provided fair wages and benefits.

“We see AI as a tool that can expand what talented creative people are able to do, not a substitute for the people who create our stories,” the Moonbug spokesperson said. “We're exploring whether these tools can reduce repetitive work, enhance the creative process and potentially allow our teams to create more stories and experiences for families.”


Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Van de Vliet pakt in lichte skiff brons op WK in eigen land

AMSTELVEEN (ANP) - Femke van de Vliet heeft op de WK roeien op de Amsterdamse Bosbaan de eerste medaille voor Nederland veroverd. In de lichte skiff, een niet-olympisch nummer, pakte de 27-jarige skiffeuse het brons.

Van de Vliet moest de onder neutrale vlag uitkomende Russische Mariia Zhovner en de nieuwe wereldkampioene Kenia Lechuga uit Mexico voor zich dulden.

"Ik weet niet wat ik moet denken", zei een emotionele Van de Vliet na afloop in een flashinterview. "Ik weet niet of ik blij ben met brons, maar dat moet ik wel zijn, denk ik."

Eerder op de middag grepen Fedrik Ploeg en Erik van Eijck van Heslinga in de eveneens niet-olympische lichte dubbeltwee nog naast de medailles. Ze finishten op ruime afstand van de winnaars uit Oezbekistan als vijfde.


Deze 10 tweedehands auto's zijn bijna niet meer te krijgen — en deze 10 wil bijna niemand meer

Deze 10 tweedehands auto's zijn bijna niet meer te krijgen — en deze 10 wil bijna niemand meer

De Nederlandse occasionmarkt is dit jaar keiharder dan ooit. Aan de ene kant zijn er modellen die na 40 dagen alweer weg zijn en waarvoor je de hoofdprijs betaalt. Aan de andere kant staan complete rijen auto's te verkommeren op dealerpleinen, waarvan de eigenaar allang weet dat hij ze nooit meer zonder verlies verkoopt. De scheidslijn: klein, zuinig, Japans of stekker versus groot, dorstig en uitgezwaaid.

De schaarse tien: hier vecht Nederland om

Kleine, zuinige auto's met een sterke reputatie zijn nauwelijks nog te vinden voor een normale prijs. Bovenaan staan de klassiekers die al jaren de zoekopdrachten domineren, aangevuld met een nieuwe groep: gebruikte stekkerauto's, die sinds de hogere brandstofprijzen dit voorjaar razendsnel van de hand gaan.

  1. Volkswagen Golf — voor het eerst weer de meest gezochte occasion, met de Polo naar plek vijf verdrongen
  2. BMW 3 Serie — vaste waarde in de premium middenklasse
  3. Mercedes-Benz C-Klasse — nog altijd bijna niet aan te slepen
  4. Volkswagen Tiguan — populairste gezins-SUV op de tweedehandsmarkt
  5. Suzuki Ignis — hoogste restwaarde van Nederland: na vijf jaar nog 84% waard
  6. Toyota Yaris — Occasion van het Jaar 2026, hybride-versies vliegen weg
  7. Kia Picanto — na vijf jaar nog 78% waard, extreem lage maandlasten
  8. Ford Kuga — nieuwe koploper bij hybride occasions, voorbij de Volvo XC60
  9. Tesla Model 3 — favoriet onder elektrische occasions, statijd bij dealers gehalveerd
  10. Hyundai Kona Electric — populairste tweedehands EV in totaal, ook vraag naar Ioniq 5 en Kia EV6 groeit

"Auto's zijn nauwelijks aanwezig voordat ze weg zijn."

Bij gebruikte elektrische auto's is de gekte het grootst. De gemiddelde statijd bij Nederlandse dealers is dit voorjaar gedaald van tachtig naar veertig dagen, terwijl de vraagprijzen met ruim zeven procent stegen. Wie op zoek is naar een tweedehands EV van rond de 20.000 euro, heeft dit jaar duidelijk minder keuze dan een jaar geleden.

De onverkoopbare tien: wie wil ze nog?

Aan de andere kant van het spectrum staat een groep die niemand er nog uit rijdt. Grote sedans, dorstige SUV's, uitgezwaaide modellen en een handvol elektrische wagens waarvan de vraag als een baksteen is gezakt. De prijsdalingen liggen bij een aantal merken deze zomer boven de drie procent per maand — een tempo waarin een verlengd stilstaan pijnlijk duur wordt.

  1. Maserati Quattroporte diesel — na drie jaar nog maar een vijfde van de nieuwprijs waard
  2. Land Rover Discovery — een elf jaar oud model, niemand loopt er nog warm voor
  3. Chrysler Grand Voyager — onzuinig, duur in gebruik, houdt zijn waarde slecht vast
  4. Peugeot 607 — de goedkoopste exemplaren staan online voor drie- tot vijfhonderd euro
  5. SsangYong-modellen — als merk deze zomer de grootste prijsdaler, ruim vijf procent per maand
  6. Saab (alle modellen) — bijna vier procent per maand goedkoper, gemiddeld nog krap zesduizend euro
  7. Renault Zoe (vroege bouwjaren) — hoogste afschrijving bij elektrisch, actieradius voor velen te krap
  8. Nissan Leaf — internationaal aangewezen als grootste EV-afschrijver, ruim zestig procent na vijf jaar weg
  9. Audi e-tron (oudere jaargangen) — restwaarde na vijf jaar zakte naar 35%, mede door snelle modelopvolging
  10. Volvo EX40 — bij elektrische occasions dit halfjaar zeven plekken gezakt naar plaats acht

Wat betekent dit als u nu koopt of verkoopt?

Voor kopers is de rekenles simpel: bij een gewild model is er weinig ruimte om te onderhandelen, en de kans is groot dat u snel moet beslissen. Bij een impopulaire occasion mag u juist rustig de tijd nemen — en fors bieden onder de vraagprijs. Voor verkopers geldt het omgekeerde: een schaarse hybride of compacte Japanner brengt dit najaar nog altijd de hoofdprijs op, terwijl een oudere grote diesel elke maand die u wacht in waarde daalt.

Meer weten?

  • Bovag over de occasionmarkt in februari 2026
  • Autoblog over de tien populairste occasions van 2026
  • Vroemie over restwaarde en afschrijving in Nederland

Twee mensen gedood op een school nabij Berlijn

GOSEN-NEU ZITTAU (ANP) - Op een middelbare school in de Duitse plaats Gosen-Neu Zittau, vlakbij Berlijn, zijn twee mensen vermoord, meldt de lokale krant Märkische Allgemeine. Er is een verdachte opgepakt.

Volgens de krant is een van de slachtoffers een 18-jarige leerlinge van de school. Het andere slachtoffer zou een man van 30 jaar zijn. Hij zou zijn gedood toen hij probeerde de dader tegen te houden.

De politie schrijft op X dat er een verdachte is opgepakt voor een geweldsincident op een school. Volgens de krant gaat het om een 19-jarige man die de ex-vriend is van het 18-jarige slachtoffer. Het is niet duidelijk of hij ook een leerling op de school was, aldus de krant.


Advocaat Mladić: verzoek om vrijlating kort voor dood afgewezen

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Advocaten van de Bosnisch-Servische voormalig legerleider Ratko Mladić dienden in de dagen voor zijn dood een dringend verzoek in bij een VN-oorlogstribunaal voor humanitaire vrijlating, zodat hij in Servië palliatieve zorg kon ontvangen. Dat zegt zijn advocaat Dragan Ivetić. Het tribunaal wees het verzoek af.

Volgens Ivetić was het plan dat Mladić in Servië naar een medische instelling zou gaan die passende zorg kon bieden in zijn moedertaal en waar zijn familie aanwezig kon zijn. Medische deskundigen waren het er volgens de advocaat over eens dat dit, "volgens de geldende humanitaire principes, passender en beter zou zijn dan sterven in de gevangenis".

Ivetić zegt te betreuren dat niet aan het verzoek is voldaan. "Dit was geen verzoek om het vonnis of de straf te herzien, maar een humanitair verzoek om een ​​bejaarde, ernstig zieke man toe te staan ​​zijn laatste dagen onder medisch toezicht door te brengen, omringd door zijn naaste familie", aldus de advocaat.


The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

ATF responds to 'major' cybersecurity incident after ransomware gang's claims

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said it’s responding to a “major” cybersecurity incident shortly after the Qilin ransomware gang posted the US federal law enforcement agency on its leak site. According to ATF's statement, the intrusion affected a standalone system that operated separately from its enterprise network. “There is no indication that the incident has affected the ATF enterprise network, the ATF eForms system, or any other ATF system,” the statement said. ATF, which is housed under the US Department of Justice, said it’s “coordinating closely” with the DOJ to investigate the breach, and “immediately” blocked connections to the affected IT environment upon discovering the incident. The statement said the security breach had not affected ATF’s operations and noted that senior Justice Department officials designated the compromise as a “major incident” under federal guidelines. Shortly before ATF posted its security-incident notice on its website, Russia-linked Qilin ransomware criminals listed the firearms agency on its leak site. The post, seen by The Register and shared on social media, did not say what data Qilin claimed to have stolen, how much, or provide samples to substantiate the claim. ATF did not immediately respond to our questions, and we will update this story when we receive a response. Qilin, the notorious crew behind the 2024 attack on pathology provider Synnovis that disrupted NHS services in the UK, was one of the most prolific ransomware gangs in July, according to Comparitech. The firm, which reviews cybersecurity products and provides data analysis, counted 799 ransomware incidents last month, up from 668 in June. Qilin claimed 125 of those.®

Schrödinger's backup: not actually recovered until you try to restore IT

Schrödinger's Cat, the famous 1935 thought experiment, imagines a cat that, for reasons rooted in quantum physics we need not dwell on here, is simultaneously alive and dead. In a landscape of relentless cyberattacks and mounting infrastructural complexity, a routine backup task can appear finished, with every box ticked and every check made. The job is not actually done, however, until it has been verified as fully ready for recovery in the event of cyber disaster. A task that looks sorted can turn out, under scrutiny, to be anything but. A backup can be logged as 'complete' once data has been copied to storage, but a recoverable workload is another matter entirely. It means that when a business goes down, its workloads can be restored to their state at the point of attack with nothing lost. By the time you realize you are on the wrong side of that ambiguity, it may be too late: your data is in the hands of the bad guys, or destroyed, and this time the cat really is dead. This is not a problem to which IT bosses and managed service provider (MSP) management are entirely oblivious. Most organizations recognize to some degree that their backup may not be 100 percent watertight. Cybersecurity management specialist Kaseya recently partnered with 1105 Media to survey 200 IT professionals about the realities shaping cyber resilience planning. Some 53 percent were no more than 'somewhat confident' in their organization's ability to fully recover from a ransomware attack, and admitted their backups were supported by no better than 'limited testing'. A significant proportion had even less faith in their recovery capabilities, while only 15 percent were 'very confident' they could get back on track with no loss. Verify and survive Understanding what a verified backup means, and what role verification plays in the recovery challenge weighing on so many IT leaders, is where any sensible resilience plan begins. Backups are vital but they do not guarantee recovery on their own. What matters is confirming that a backup job will hold up in a disaster. Verification is the process of proving that backed-up data is complete, uncorrupted, and fully restorable in an emergency, offering evidence that recovery is possible during a critical outage, hardware failure or ransomware attack. It is essential whether you run an IT department or an MSP responsible for client protection: unless you can prove clients are protected, there is every chance they are not. "Backup isn't done and entrustable until you've gone in and made sure that the application actually works and can be brought back to the recovery environment," explains Brent Torre, GM of cyber resilience at Kaseya. "Historically, it's just taken too much time and resource for a lot of people to even attempt that. And where they have been verifying, they haven't been doing it regularly enough to ensure real protection." Not all approaches to verification are of equal value. IT departments still relying on intermittent manual verification are operating on blind trust: warnings thrown up by the process can be misread, failures overlooked, and the result is a dangerous mix of false negatives that waste time and false positives that expose the organization to real risk. Manual screenshot verification is a proven way to squander a security budget , tying up highly qualified staff on needless work and pulling their expertise away from where it is genuinely needed. Nobody wants seasoned engineers spending hours reviewing screenshots, second-guessing outputs and trying to determine whether a backup worked. Where static verification methods once had a place, today's complex IT ecosystems have made them redundant. Across an estate spanning in-house systems, SaaS and cloud endpoints, basic verification cannot cope, picking up only surface-level signals and lacking the design to operate at scale. At scale, the inefficiencies of manual verification multiply and response times slow to a crawl. A minor inefficiency can quietly become a serious bottleneck without anyone noticing, and legacy methods can create the illusion that everything is working perfectly while catastrophe waits around the corner. As Torre points out, light-touch checking is unlikely to satisfy the ever-increasing regulatory burden around recovery and resilience. "Some compliance frameworks explicitly state that you must test recovery on a frequent basis," he says. "It's becoming more important than ever that organisations are able to do that." Let AI handle the heat The emerging gold standard is AI-powered screenshot verification, which replaces the best-efforts manual checking of overstretched human teams. It works by automatically booting up virtualized backups, capturing a screenshot and analyzing the image to confirm the backup ran correctly. Where rigid, rule-based checks fall short, context-aware visual AI combined with OCR accurately identifies login screens, dashboards and maintenance states, and evaluates every element with precision. The result is 99.9 percent verification accuracy and sharply reduced false positives, alongside far greater confidence in every backup. This is welcome news for IT managers facing budget shortfalls and a drought of experienced talent, and it is what MSPs need as they try to make the economics of recovery stack up. Remove the manual effort and the constant checking of false alarms, and the gains mount quickly. Human teams are free for higher-value work, SLA confidence rises, customer trust improves, and environments can scale without ballooning overheads. AI-powered verification is no longer a maybe for today's MSPs; it is the only route forward that makes sense on the P&L. The good news is that AI-powered screenshot verification does not require major up-front investment or deep internal expertise. Datto, the cybersecurity and data protection outfit owned by Kaseya, has built the latest verification technology directly into its business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) platform, so that deployment stays simple and disruption to existing workflows is minimal. This kind of AI-powered screenshot verification is designed to strip uncertainty out of the process and give IT teams confidence that backed-up data is complete and recoverable. The ideal solution does so at scale, and without adding complexity, by working within the workflows already in place. With Datto there is the further option of integrating remote monitoring and management (RMM) with the BCDR product, which enables proactive remediation through automated deployments, the merging of backup health with endpoint alerts, and virtual restores launched directly from a single management console. "It's key to have context and visibility into the backup estate through your RMM so you know that you are up to date on patching, on antivirus definitions and backups," says Torre. "With all of that integrated within the RMM solution, you have the ability to understand your risk profile across the fleet in terms of protection. You know in the event that something needs to be recovered. And you can start a backup-initiated recovery directly from the RMM platform." The gold standard to aim for, he concludes, is continuous validation and automated remediation, not the ability to look in now and again to see what is going on. The perfect verification solution , he adds, should be 'impossibly easy to use', requiring humans to exert zero cognitive effort on backup beyond deploying a new client and initiating a recovery. By giving yourself the means to distinguish between a completed backup job and a recoverable workload, you have set yourself apart from the kind of IT manager or MSP who only spots a problem after something has gone wrong. By deploying AI-powered verification, you stop treating backup as a probability and start treating it as a proof. You know what you have. Then when something goes wrong, and it will, that certainty is the only thing standing between a fast recovery and a very long night. MSPs looking to unify backup and security into a single resilience practice can start with the When Backup Meets Security in the MSP Stack whitepaper. Sponsored by Datto.

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Sad. TV-recensent NRC weigert naam Victor Vlam te noemen

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Een televisierecensent van NRC wiens naam wij niet noemen, omdat we hem alweer vergeten zijn, weigert de naam van Victor Vlam te nomen. Dat schrijft deze recensent zelf op in een stuk waarin hij een uitspraak van Victor Vlam aanhaalt, maar dan dus zonder deze aan Victor Vlam toe te schrijven (sowieso, citaten in NRC, altijd veertien keer checken). In plaats daarvan schrijft de recensent, van wie we de naam ook niet gaan opzoeken, dat de uitspraak is gedaan door "Een andere opinie(ver)maker, aan wiens naamsbekendheid ik niet wil bijdragen" en even later wordt Victor Vlam, want om hem gaat het, Victor Vlam, met de V van Victor en de V van Vlam, "Hij Die Niet Genoemd Mag Worden" genoemd. Nou dat mag dus wel. Hij heet Victor Vlam, alias de Vlaminator. Dit is kennelijk Het Verzet anno 2026 mensen. Samen met alle andere slimme media piepeltjes lekker Victor Vlam bashen. Die zit. Victor Vlam. Onthoud die naam. We hebben een V. We hebben een Vlam. We hebben een Victor Vlam.

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