Amazon Web Services has debuted an agent that it says will evaluate your cloudy environment “as an experienced cloud architect would” and recommend useful changes. The cloud colossus named its bot the “AWS Well-Architected Agent,” a nod to the Well-Architected Framework that outlines best practices for using the Amazonian cloud. Amazon’s announcement says the agentic incarnation of the Framework analyzes AWS environments “against Well-Architected best practices across 65+ AWS services” and then delivers “targeted, contextual recommendations for improving your applications’ cost, security, performance, and resilience.” “It generates recommendations aligned to your declared business goals, delivers implementation packages with every finding, and surfaces cross-pillar trade-offs making it simpler to remediate the findings,” we’re told. The agent also delivers “ready-to-implement fixes” and “provides individual resource findings with specific dollar impact (where applicable) and step-by-step remediation, consolidated findings across multiple resources scoped to your application, and broad architectural patterns and designs with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) code changes needed to align with Well-Architected best practices.” AWS offers myriad services — some of them with overlapping features and functions. Customers often find themselves using more services than they intended, or using services that aren’t quite right for their intended use. AWS is generally happy if customers change to more appropriate services, even when that sees them spend less, and offers assistance from its own staff or channel partners to make it happen. This agent may make some of that human assistance less necessary. AWS is far from alone in suggesting agents should take on some of the chores that human IT professionals perform today - an approach that’s come to be known as AIOps. When your correspondent chats to IT pros about AIOps, they express distrust on grounds that they cannot be sure agents make valid suggestions and feel following bad advice offered by a machine would indefensible if things go pear-shaped. Vendors I’ve spoken to believe IT pros will first cautiously verify recommendations from AIOps systems, and if they see good results allow agents to take more actions without human oversight - but always with the ability to quickly roll back changes. AWS seems to recognize that users won’t go all-in immediately and therefore offers several manual means to apply recommendations the agent suggests, including the command line interface. For now, the agent is available in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon) regions, but can handle workloads from any AWS commercial Region. It’s only available for users with an AWS support plan. ®

DE BILT (ANP) - In de provincies Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Overijssel en Utrecht hangt vrijdagochtend vroeg dichte mist. Het verkeer kan last hebben van slecht zicht. Het KNMI waarschuwt daarvoor met code geel. De waarschuwing geldt van 06.00 uur tot 09.00 uur.

De ANWB meldt dat er mistbanken kunnen voorkomen "in het hele land, met uitzondering van het zuiden".

Volgens Weeronline kunnen mensen in het Drentse Eelde 99 meter ver kijken, de laagste zogeheten zichtwaarde. De dienst verwacht dat de mist oplost na zonsopkomst.

KYIV (ANP/RTR) - Russische luchtaanvallen hebben opnieuw de Zuidelijke Brug in de Oekraïense hoofdstad Kyiv getroffen, meldde burgemeester Vitali Klitsjko vrijdag op Telegram. Donderdag werd de brug, die over de rivier de Dnipro loopt, ook al geraakt.

Het verkeer over de brug is in beide richtingen gestremd, meldden de autoriteiten in Kyiv. Zij leiden het vervoer om via alternatieve routes. De brug is een van de weinige verbindingen tussen het westen en het oosten van de Oekraïense hoofdstad.

In Kyiv brak in de nacht van donderdag op vrijdag ook brand uit op de bovenste verdiepingen van een flatgebouw. De autoriteiten van de stad melden later dat bij de aanvallen één persoon om het leven is gekomen en twee mensen gewond zijn geraakt nadat een flatgebouw werd getroffen. Het is niet duidelijk of het om hetzelfde gebouw gaat.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - De inflatie in Nederland is in september gestegen naar 3,4 procent. Dat meldt het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS) in een snelle raming. De stijging komt vooral door de hoge brandstofprijzen. In augustus was de inflatie nog 3,3 procent in vergelijking met een jaar eerder.

Ease into outerwear season with a light extra layer that’s perfect for cool, dry autumnal days

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‘Day-to-day’ symptom of harmful emissions, which in turn can disrupt sleep, can be overlooked, say researchers

New research has found that increased air pollution is associated with more night-time coughing, leading to disturbed sleep.

Most air pollution research looks at symptoms that are severe enough for people to seek medical help, but day-to-day symptoms can be overlooked. Prof Cecilia Mascolo, who led the study from the University of Cambridge, said: “I come from an area in Italy with very high pollution and I am very aware of its not-talked-about effects.”

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Boys learn by watching how the men they respect treat their partners, female colleagues, women on the street. Now is the time for those men to step up

There were seven men in all, and it lasted almost seven hours.

What followed, according to the woman at the heart of the Cornell University case that has gripped student campuses around the world, was less a sexual encounter than a grim pack-bonding exercise fuelled by booze and ketamine, in which she was passed around like a blow-up doll.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

In the UK, the Rape Crisis national freephone helpline is on 0808 802 9999 (12-2.30pm and 7-9.30pm every day of the year). Rape Crisis also operate a live chat helpline, open Monday: 2pm-4.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Tuesday: 2-4.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Wednesday: 12pm-2.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Thursday: 12pm-2.30pm, 6pm-9pm; Friday: 9am-11.30am, 2pm-4.30pm. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting mind.org.uk. The 24-hour freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, is on 0808 2000 247. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

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With a deep, caramel richness and a bitter undertone, this cake is an excellent addition to your home baking roster

There’s enough dark chocolate in this gluten-free cake to put it firmly in chocolate cake territory, but the hero flavour comes from the sweet, creamy nuttiness of walnuts, so it’s important to use very fresh ones, because stale walnuts can quickly turn bitter. The dates bring a deep, caramel richness, while the espresso pulls everything back from being overly sweet. Despite all that richness, the cake is wonderfully light in texture. Serve with creme fraiche and perhaps some poached pears, if you want to turn it into a full-blown dessert.

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Most of the betting industry is urging the chancellor not to double slot machine duty to raise up to £460m more a year

Gambling industry kingpins are fuming about reports that the chancellor, John Healey, is considering increasing taxes on high-street slot machines in his first budget.

The influential Social Market Foundation thinktank, the most vocal advocate for a rise in machine games duty (MGD), from 20% to 40%, thinks the measure could raise between £275m and £460m annually, on top of the roughly £610m collected last year.

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Ik heb geprobeerd om de toekomst voor me te zien die de grote AI-bedrijven ons beloven. Een wereld zonder frictie, waarin je met een druk op de knop altijd meteen krijgt wat je nodig hebt. Hoe is dat?

Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

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Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:

A series of illustrations for FP Analytics, Foreign Policy's independent research division, in collaboration with the Mozilla Foundation, exploring the future of AI and the creative economy. The project combines a research report and interactive simulation examining how AI is reshaping creative work and the relationship between technology and human creativity.

Lyft has to pay out $272 million for the fraud they perpetrated on their employees from 2016 through 2020!

But then in 2020, they spent $200 million to make that fraud legal, so now they won't have to pay that again in the future!

According to methane-breathing money-ghouls who run our world, this was a great investment: they could have just spent an additional $50M/year on salaries, but now they legalized an across-the-board salary reduction that pays itself back in only 4 years. Half that, actually, because they went halfsies on it with Uber! Someone's getting a raise.

This goes way beyond "a fine is a price".

Lyft is set to pay a historic $272.5 million settlement to resolve allegations around misclassifying its drivers as independent contractors instead of employees:

("allegations")

San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said it was "the largest wage-and-hour settlement in California history." [...]

That's a time before voters approved Proposition 22, an Uber- and Lyft-funded ballot measure that classified ride-hail drivers as independent contractors, meaning they would not receive the benefits and wage protections afforded to other workers. The gig companies spent more than $200 million on the measure.

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In een woning in Hellevoetsluis heeft de politie donderdagavond zwaar vuurwerk aangetroffen. Een paar honderd kilo aan vuurwerk is in beslag genomen en het huis is volledig doorzocht door de politie.

In een woning in Hellevoetsluis heeft de politie donderdagavond zwaar vuurwerk aangetroffen. Een paar honderd kilo aan vuurwerk is in beslag genomen en het huis is volledig doorzocht door de politie.

In een woning in Hellevoetsluis heeft de politie donderdagavond zwaar vuurwerk aangetroffen. Een paar honderd kilo aan vuurwerk is in beslag genomen en het huis is volledig doorzocht door de politie.