The Shape of Paris is a terrifically shot and edited short of Andy Anderson skating through the city. Directed by Brett Novak and found on Kottke.org.
Upper chamber accepts final draft of bill, which offers life peerages to some of those who would otherwise be removed
Hereditary peerages will be abolished before the next king’s speech after a deal was struck granting life peerages to some Conservatives and cross-benchers losing their seats.
On Tuesday evening the upper chamber accepted a final draft of the House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill, marking the end of its passage through parliament and clearing the way for it to be added to the statute book.
Continue reading...Court filing claims project leader took money days before collapse
Grand Slam Track filed for bankruptcy owing up to $50m
Michael Johnson has been accused of paying himself $500,000 (£372,000) eight days before his Grand Slam Track project collapsed before the final event in Los Angeles, leaving athletes and creditors owed millions. The claim is made by vendors in a legal filing in which they have also sought permission to sue individual leaders of GST, including Johnson and the main investor, Winners Alliance.
When GST was launched Johnson promised it would “bring fantasy to life” and transform athletics – with track’s biggest stars facing off regularly against each other for huge prize money. But the writing was on the wall after the first event in Jamaica last April was sparsely attended, and it collapsed shortly after its third event in Philadelphia on 1 June.
Continue reading...First tranche expected to include Cabinet Office report warning of ‘reputational risk’ over ex-minister’s links to Epstein
Hundreds of documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US are expected to be released by Downing Street on Wednesday.
The first tranche of files will include a two-page due diligence report by the Cabinet Office, which is likely to raise questions about Keir Starmer’s judgment, the Guardian understands.
Continue reading...Artificial intelligence is accelerating exponentially before it has brakes, seat-belts, speed limits or a working GPS
A self-driving vehicle ploughs into an oncoming car, combusting the occupants and leaving those who survive battered and bruised and staring into their devices wondering who is to blame.
That’s the jump off point to Bruce Holsinger’s tech-lit bestseller Culpability, an exploration of agency and responsibility in the era of AI through the eyes of a lawyer, an ethicist and their screen-dependent offspring.
Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company that undertook research for Labor in the last election and conducts quantitative research for Guardian Australia. He is the host of Per Capita’s Burning Platforms podcast
Continue reading...‘Eye strokes’ that reduce blood flow to optic nerve likely to be side-effect of active ingredient semaglutide, says author
Patients taking Wegovy have nearly five times the risk of sudden sight loss of those on Ozempic, a large-scale study has found.
Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) medicines such as semaglutide (sold as Wegovy, Ozempic and Rybelsus) and tirzepetide (sold as Mounjaro) help reduce blood sugar levels, slow digestion and reduce appetite, and have been linked to reduced risks of heart attack, fewer drug overdoses and other health benefits.
Continue reading...It was a night when the Tyneside passions pulsed; the nervous energy, too, because this was something unprecedented – a first Champions League knockout tie in Newcastle’s history. It was not just the gilded level of the opposition that fired the excitement, the imagination. Eddie Howe was in little doubt that it was the biggest game Newcastle had ever played.
Newcastle had to do more than subdue Barcelona, the top team in Spain last season and so far this time out. They had to manage the occasion because it was one that came to rest on the edge of a knife. As the minutes ticked down, the chances so scarce, they knew that one moment was always likely to be decisive. At either end.
Continue reading...Things can always get worse. Much, much worse. If there is a place below rock bottom, Tottenham seem determined to go there. The Champions League may not be a priority, Igor Tudor publicly declaring survival their only concern, but that didn’t make it any less painful, nor easier to forget. This, instead, will linger for a long time. It wasn’t even the 5-2 defeat that hurt, not really, and it certainly wasn’t their now inevitable exit from Europe: it was how it happened, the opening 20 minutes quite possibly the stupidest, most absurd, most astonishing minutes of football you have ever seen.
If, that is, you can really call it football all; this was a dramatic act of self-destruction that ‘Spursy’ doesn’t get anywhere near, both deeply comic and also desperately sad, the final ridiculous scene of a tragedy, the ultimate humiliation. Only, terrifyingly, that may still be to come, because if this the Metropolitano was a testing ground for the fight against relegation as the manager said, the conclusion can only be that the abyss is opening up. There could be no joy, certainly, in watching poor Antonin Kinsky heading down the tunnel, broken and withdrawn on just 17 minutes, inconsolable after glaring errors led to two of the goals that had already given Atlético a 3-0 lead.
Continue reading...
The 2026 season continues in China this weekend and our handy guide explains everything you need to know before placing your bets.
mattyp_ has added a photo to the pool:
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Meer dan honderd economen, hoogleraren en lectoren roepen het kabinet op af te zien van de voorgestelde miljardensubsidie aan Tata Steel Nederland. De oproep wordt gedaan in een gezamenlijke brief aan de Tweede Kamer en het kabinet. De brief, gepubliceerd in het weekblad Economisch Statistische Berichten (ESB), verschijnt enkele weken voor het Kamerdebat over de overeenkomst met de staalproducent.
In september 2025 sloot het toenmalige kabinet een intentieverklaring met Tata Steel Nederland over de verduurzaming van de locatie in IJmuiden. Daarbij werd toegezegd dat de overheid hieraan 2 miljard euro kan bijdragen. Volgens de economen kunnen deze publieke middelen echter veel effectiever worden ingezet voor investeringen die het concurrentievermogen van Nederland echt ondersteunen.
Het gaat daarbij niet alleen om de 2 miljard euro aan subsidie, maar ook om zaken als arbeidscapaciteit, fysieke ruimte, milieuruimte waaronder stikstof en de schaarse duurzame energie en netcapaciteit. Op dit alles legt Tata Steel IJmuiden een aanzienlijk beslag en wordt de ruimte voor verduurzaming en groei van andere economische activiteiten beperkt.
Europese staalindustrie
Het streven naar strategische autonomie, ofwel een Europese staalindustrie die is ingericht op de lange termijn, kan volgens de economen een legitiem argument zijn. Maar dat vereist Europese coördinatie via Europese aanbestedingen. Voor Nederland is strategische autonomie volgens hen echter een illusie. In een land zonder ijzererts dat alle grondstoffen importeert, maakt het voor autonomie weinig verschil of grondstoffen of staal wordt geïmporteerd, vooral als de productie van staal grotendeels voor de export is.
Ook blijft de staalproductie in Nederland structureel duurder dan elders in Europa door hogere energiekosten, waarschuwen de economen. Daarnaast ontbreekt in de voorlopige afspraken een harde, afdwingbare garantie van Tata Steel India om verliezen in IJmuiden op te vangen of aanvullende investeringen te financieren. In het geval van verdere verliezen, herstructurering of faillissement zijn de publieke middelen daardoor onvoldoende beschermd en dreigt Tata Steel bij iedere tegenvaller terug te komen voor aanvullende publieke steun.
De brief is ondertekend door economen van onder meer de universiteiten van Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Tilburg, Groningen en Maastricht. Onder de ondertekenaars bevinden zich Arnoud Boot (UvA), Roel Beetsma (UvA) en Rick van der Ploeg (Oxford).
sziring shares a report from Business Insider: Silicon Valley has long competed for talent with ever-richer pay packages built around salary, bonus, and equity. Now, a fourth line item is creeping into the mix: AI inference. As generative AI tools become embedded in software development, the cost of running the underlying models -- known as inference -- is emerging as a productivity driver and a budget line that finance chiefs can't ignore.
Software engineers and AI researchers inside tech companies have already been jousting for access to GPUs, with this AI compute capacity being carefully parceled out based on which projects are most important. Now, some tech job candidates have begun asking about what AI compute budget they will have access to if they decide to join.
"I am increasingly asked during candidate interviews how much dedicated inference compute they will have to build with Codex," Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead at OpenAI's Codex, the startup's AI coding service, wrote on X recently. He added that usage per user is growing much faster than overall user growth, a sign that AI compute is becoming even scarcer and more valuable. That scarcity is reshaping how engineers think about their work and pay. "The inference compute available to you is increasingly going to drive overall software productivity," said OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
The report cites a recent compensation submission from a software engineer that listed "Copilot subscription" as part of the pay and benefits. "OpenAI and Anthropic should create recruitment sites where their clients can advertise roles, listing the token budget for the job alongside the salary range," said Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena, a startup that measures the performance of models.
Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures predicts AI inference will be the fourth component of engineering compensation, alongside salary, bonus, and equity. "Will you be paid in tokens? In 2026, you likely will start to be," Tunguz said.
Software engineers and AI researchers inside tech companies have already been jousting for access to GPUs, with this AI compute capacity being carefully parceled out based on which projects are most important. Now, some tech job candidates have begun asking about what AI compute budget they will have access to if they decide to join.
"I am increasingly asked during candidate interviews how much dedicated inference compute they will have to build with Codex," Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead at OpenAI's Codex, the startup's AI coding service, wrote on X recently. He added that usage per user is growing much faster than overall user growth, a sign that AI compute is becoming even scarcer and more valuable. That scarcity is reshaping how engineers think about their work and pay. "The inference compute available to you is increasingly going to drive overall software productivity," said OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
The report cites a recent compensation submission from a software engineer that listed "Copilot subscription" as part of the pay and benefits. "OpenAI and Anthropic should create recruitment sites where their clients can advertise roles, listing the token budget for the job alongside the salary range," said Peter Gostev, AI capability lead at Arena, a startup that measures the performance of models.
Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures predicts AI inference will be the fourth component of engineering compensation, alongside salary, bonus, and equity. "Will you be paid in tokens? In 2026, you likely will start to be," Tunguz said.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Thomas Hawk posted a photo:
