Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from TechCrunch: In an email blast to customers titled "Protecting your finances in the Al World," Bank of America urged customers to never share their username and password with another person or an outside service, "including an Al-enabled tool or agent that offers to act on your behalf." [...] A spokesperson for Bank of America confirmed the authenticity of the bank's email that was posted to social media. But heed the bank's warning, for if things go wrong, it's on you. Account agreements at most banks hold customers responsible for anyone they give their log-in to. "If you do share your credentials," its email reads, "keep in mind that you're responsible for activity resulting from that access."

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Some EU leaders courted the authoritarian Vučić regime – they must offer this reborn democracy a future within the union

As polling stations closed across Serbia on Sunday evening, riot police were deploying around the presidency in Belgrade. Many of us feared the worst: massive electoral fraud, a refusal to recognise defeat or outright violence. After nearly 15 years of Aleksandar Vučić’s increasingly authoritarian rule, a peaceful transfer of power seemed implausible.

I had good reason to feel afraid. I am co-founder of an annual conference on the security and foreign policy challenges shaping the western Balkans, and sit on the international advisory committee of a civil society thinktank, the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. Such work would be uncontroversial in most countries seeking European Union membership. Under Vučić’s regime, it was anything but.

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Chancellor’s ‘new course’ includes a £100 one-off payment, low-carbon upgrade loans and an end to standing charges

John Healey has unveiled a package of support for households being buffeted by “global economic storms”.

“I’m setting a new course to get energy costs down in line with Europe,” the chancellor said in his maiden budget. In the long term, he hopes that changes in how Britain covers the cost of renewables and grid upgrades will “drive down all aspects of energy bills”.

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The star plays a sadistic murderer still pulling the strings from behind bars. With his high-pitched giggles and fatal whispers, it is a perfectly terrifying show for Halloween

It has taken a while, but I think the torch may finally have passed from Anthony Hopkins as the screen’s most profoundly unsettling and instantly-absorbed-by-the-cultural-imagination serial killer. From Hannibal’s hitherto unfailing hands it has been thrown to Stephen Graham, who plays multiple murderer Jurek Walter in the new 10-part psychological thriller Nocturne.

Walter, who draws out the deaths of his victims in order to torture their families as much as the individuals themselves, is incarcerated for life in the bowels of Riverside psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He passes the time by doing push-ups, stashing contraband behind his toilet bowl for as-yet-unspecified purposes, and driving fellow inmates to suicide by whispering to them through the pipes. Graham – muscle-bound, preternaturally still and occasionally emitting a high-pitched giggle – is mesmerising and utterly terrifying.

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Belittled for his speech and looks, and so short of cash he had to sell his dog, Stallone managed to write and star in one of the greatest boxing movies ever. How does Anthony Ippolito feel about playing his hero?

Fifty years ago this December, cinema’s greatest underdog story hit the screen, a tale about a Philadelphia ham-and-egger who takes the world heavyweight boxing champ all the way to the final bell, losing the fight on a judge’s decision but winning the hearts of a nation. That film, of course, was Rocky. Its creation, famously, was no less remarkable an underdog story – one about an out-of-work character actor with the curious name of Sylvester Stallone who wrote his own boxing movie then managed to convince a studio not only to finance it, but also to cast him in the title role. He then went one further than the character he was playing by earning the top prize: a best picture Oscar.

If you thought, half a century on, Rocky’s punching power – its unerring ability to make heroes out of zeroes – has faded, think again. This, after all, is a movie franchise whose stirring qualities are enough to make thousands of people hurtle up all 72 of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s steps every year in homage to its plucky pugilist.

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When Basir Arian was summoned to the Taliban headquarters, he knew he had to go. To defy them meant death. The torture left him devastated and sure he had to leave the country

‘I knew that sooner or later, they would come for me,” says Basir Arian. After the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021, he had set up an online English study programme for girls when they were banned from attending school. In May 2022, he was eating lunch in the western city of Herat, when he got a call from an unfamiliar local number. A Talib official told Arian to come to the intelligence directorate within 20 minutes and to bring his phone.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” he says. “If you disobey this order, they will kill you. You have to try not to make them angry.” He told a friend where he was going, and they hurriedly discussed what to do if he didn’t return.

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Once coveted for its clean lines and timeless design, the functional furniture is no longer seen as cool. Anyone for cottagecore and chrome?

“I definitely don’t think it is cringe,” says Laura Budds, a vintage furniture dealer based in Norfolk. “But I do think we have reached the peak, and we’re on the descent.” Budds is talking about mid-century modern furniture, which has recently come under fire from younger generations for being – like so many things, including trainer socks and high-waisted jeans – a deeply millennial aesthetic. As the Wall Street Journal declared: “Midcentury modern design has met the fate of pumpkin spice lattes, cocktails in mason jars, no-show socks, leggings and other aspects of millennial culture: it has become cringey.”

Budds, 44, is resigned to the fact that she is a “mid-century millennial”. She’s even made a career out of it: she sells furniture and vintage clothes at Williams & Parfitt, a modern antiques centre in Wymondham, Norfolk. But she says she has had to diversify in recent years to cater to changing tastes among younger customers, who are moving away from the “wall-to-wall mid-century” look beloved by the generation above them. She says of gen Z: “I don’t think they are so bound by the eras or designers – they just buy what they like. They aren’t afraid of older antiques and will have a bit of whimsy or taxidermy.”

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Campaigners say costly new funds will lead to higher bills, which company denies

A group of creditors to troubled Thames Water are poised to vote on whether to grant an emergency £2.4bn loan to keep the company afloat, as campaigners raise concerns it could add £40 to each household’s bills in interest alone.

A consortium of creditors, called London & Valley Water, will vote on Thursday on whether to increase a funding facility for the debt-laden utility company to £5.4bn to keep it operating to autumn 2027.

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Writers are being bombarded daily with invitations from fake book groups and offers to publicise their work. For the scamming industry, aspiring authors can be a soft touch

• This piece first appeared in the Dial

‘Hello Professor Snigdha Poonam,” the email began. I read that again. Nobody has ever called me “professor” for the obvious reason that I am not a professor. Bracing myself, I read on. The email was from Timothy Firth, organiser of a Seattle-based life-drawing community with 1,943 members that regularly has “thoughtful discussions inspired by creative works”. A recent inspiration was my first book, Dreamers: How Young Indians Are Changing Their World. The group wanted to discuss it, the email said, at one of its upcoming meetups. Attendees would be encouraged to post reviews on Goodreads and Amazon after.

I looked up CAM Life Drawing and found an events page and an Instagram account. The latter had some photos of Timothy Firth – white, male – as well as testimonials from members who said he worked “day and night to create more community space”. Something told me this wasn’t the man who had reached out to me.

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The 29th season has begun to slightly spin its wheels, but this poo-splattered episode suggests an imminent story arc: the release of Grand Theft Auto VI

Are record beef shortages simply not that rich a topic for South Park to riff off? The show’s 29th season had its first outright middling episode this week with a zigzaggy outing that gestured vaguely toward the performative eating of particular foods, nodded slightly at a father-son story development, and wound it all up by repeating and amplifying a funny season-long running gag that increasingly seems like it will actually serve as a makeshift story arc.

But let’s jump back to the beginning, perhaps the most laugh-out-loud moment of the episode: Cartman in a fugue of delight over the impending meal of sloppy joes at the school cafeteria, to which he forms a tribute in the form of a sloppy-joe-themed version of Gary Glitter’s Rock and Roll Part Two – a music clearance reaffirming that Trey Parker and Matt Stone don’t care if a song choice might make people tut-tut (because the singer is a serial sex offender) or just annoyed (because that song sucks). Cartman’s infectious glee is short-lived, however, when he’s informed that the lunch special for the day isn’t a sloppy joe after all, or anything beef-related, but cuy – Guinea Pig on a stick.

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Bereaved families have urged the publisher of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 to remove a clip from the game that shows a figure performing CPR and bodies lying in the street

Bereaved families in South Korea have demanded that the makers of Call of Duty remove harrowing footage of the deadly 2022 Seoul crowd crush from the latest instalment of the video game.

The clips, which are seconds-long, appear in the opening moments of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, and are used to represent a scenario of civilian casualties during a fictional North Korean invasion.

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El Niño, het weerfenomeen dat het wereldwijde klimaat ontregelt, is dit jaar sterker dan ooit. Dat gaat leiden tot droogte én zware regenval. Waar zijn de grootste extremen te verwachten?

Het karakter van natuurbranden is de laatste decennia veranderd. De Catalaanse brandweerman Marc Castellnou bestudeert de rook hoog in de atmosfeer. En hij waarschuwt Nederland.

Van premier Rob Jetten, tot de New Yorkse burgemeester Zoran Mamdani. De optimistische boodschap uit het boek ‘Abundance', geschreven door journalisten Derek Thompson en Ezra…

Een hogedrukgebied bepaalt het weer de komende dagen en dat betekent in onze regio rustig en droog weer met soms ook ruimte voor de zon.

De stemmen in Israël worden geteld, en met een nek-aan-nekrace lijkt het land net een democratie. Maar een nieuwe regering bepaalt straks óók het lot van miljoenen Palestijnen – binnen en buiten Israël – van wie de meesten niet mochten stemmen. ‘Een democratie kan niet naast bezetting bestaan.’

Parker Posey is interviewed by Mo Rocca on CBS Sunday Morning. They've known each other since 1985 when they both attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

FFS we zitten al een uur in het vliegtuig, stationair aan de grond. Laatste mededeling 50 minuten geleden dat er een 'technisch probleem ' is.
Egyptair sucks big time