Pattern recognition, Lee Wagstaff

Death is in the details, Stephen Mackey

The deep end, Katherine Bradford

Bij een recyclingbedrijf aan de Doklaan in Rotterdam-Charlois is vrijdagavond een grote brand uitgebroken. Daarbij komt een enorme zwarte rookwolk vrij die in de wijde omtrek te zien is. Er staat een berg afval in brand. De brandweer is druk bezig met blussen. Het bedrijf zit vlak naast attractiepark Spelen bij Beelen.

Excelsior trapte vrijdagavond in Leeuwarden het nieuwe voetbalseizoen af tegen Cambuur en deed dat direct met een fantastisch resultaat. De ploeg uit Kralingen wist met 4-0 te winnen in het Kooi Stadion. De doelpunten werden gemaakt door Irakli Yegoian, David Garden. Noah Naujoks wist tweemaal tot scoren te komen.

Fat Burns ☮ has added a photo to the pool:

Many thanks for your visits, faves and comments. Cheers.

Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
Scientific Name: Cacatua galerita
Description: The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo is a large white parrot. It has a dark grey-black bill, a distinctive sulphur-yellow crest and a yellow wash on the underside of the wings. Sexes are similar, although the female can be separated at close range by its red-brown eye (darker brown in the male). This is a noisy and conspicuous cockatoo, both at rest and in flight. Young Sulphur-crested Cockatoos resemble the adults.
Similar species: The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo is similar in appearance to the three species of corella found in Australia. Corellas are smaller, however, and lack the prominent yellow crest.
Distribution: The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo's range extends throughout the northern and eastern mainland, and Tasmania. A small population has become established around Perth, Western Australia. The species also occurs in New Guinea and the Aru Islands, and has been introduced into New Zealand and Indonesia.
Habitat: Sulphur-crested Cockatoos are found in a variety of timbered habitats and are common around human settlements. The birds stay in the same area all year round. One of Australia's most popular and iconic birds, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, has been known to live up to eighty years of age in captivity.
Feeding: The Sulphur-crested Cockatoo's normal diet consists of berries, seeds, nuts and roots. It also takes handouts from humans. Feeding normally takes place in small to large groups, with one or more members of the group watching for danger from a nearby perch. When not feeding, birds will bite off smaller branches and leaves from trees. These items are not eaten, however. The activity may help to keep the bill trimmed and from growing too large.
Breeding: The eggs are laid in a suitable tree hollow, which is prepared by both sexes. Both birds also incubate and care for the chicks. The chicks remain with the parents all year round and family groups will stay together indefinitely.
Calls: The most common call is a distinctive loud screech, ending with a slight upward inflection
Minimum Size: 45cm
Maximum Size: 50cm
Average size: 48cm
Average weight: 833g
Breeding season: August to January in the south; May to September in the north.
Clutch Size: One to three.
Incubation: 30 days
Nestling Period: 65 days
(Source: www.birdsinbackyards.net)


© Chris Burns 2026
__________________________________________

All rights reserved.

This image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying and recording without my written consent.

Beastie Boys

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn vrijdag hoger geëindigd. Beleggers reageerden op een tegenvallend banenrapport van de Amerikaanse overheid. Een grote winnaar op Wall Street was Airbnb. Het verhuurplatform voor vakantiehuisjes verhoogde de omzetverwachting voor de tweede keer dit jaar.

Uit het banenrapport bleek dat er in juli 23.000 banen verdwenen, terwijl er een groei van ongeveer 80.000 arbeidsplaatsen werd verwacht. Daardoor kan de Amerikaanse centrale bank voorzichtiger worden met het verhogen van de rente.

De Dow-Jonesindex sloot 0,3 procent in de plus op 54.036,93 punten. De brede S&P 500-index steeg 0,6 procent tot 7757,64 punten, een nieuw slotrecord. De technologiegraadmeter Nasdaq won 1,3 procent tot 26.690,61 punten.

Hey, it’s the inaugural post for the RSS Club on Snook.ca!

I was working away on my site, adding content that I thought might be relevant to some, like an AI statement and a privacy policy. Most people probably don’t care but for those that do, it’s there and it shows that I care about those things, too.

I never really had a name for these types of one-off pages but I came across slash pages and with this redesign, I’ve been considering what felt relevant to include or not include on my own site.

Why Now?

Some of the items like /now seem like they should be actual blog posts. Like this one. This is what I’m thinking about now. My next blog post will be about what I’m thinking about then, which will be now.

Want to know what I’m up to right now? I’m writing now. But when you read this, I’ll no longer be writing this. I’ll be doing something else. Maybe I’m sleeping, or making coffee, or out walking somewhere, or sitting on the toilet.

Why Not?

I realize I’m being silly. Sometimes it’s nice to catch up with what somebody is up to. It’s answering the question, “hey what’re you up to these days?” It’s surfacing information without requiring people to understand the entire lore about what led you to this moment in time.

For example, I subscribe to a couple newsletters that are like a /where page. They update people on their travels while also giving a life update around why they might be on a particular trip, or why they might be at home. Maybe my friends would like to hit up my /where page to see where I might be given all my travels. (I don’t have a /where page.)

Slash away

For now, I have my slash pages plus a couple undocumented ones like my old /speaking page that remains more like a historic artifact found just under the surface. Today, I added my privacy policy.

I think that’ll be it for now.

---

Have something to say? Tell me about it.

ByteDance is reportedly training an AI model with roughly 10 trillion parameters as it tries to close the gap with leading frontier systems such as Anthropic's Mythos. The model is still in early pre-training, and its eventual performance will depend on more than scale alone, but the project underscores how aggressively Chinese firms are pushing frontier AI despite limits on access to advanced chips. The Next Web reports: The size is itself the statement. At roughly 10 trillion parameters, the model would be more than three times as large as Moonshot's Kimi K3, which sits among the biggest Chinese models today at about 2.8 trillion. [...] Parameter count is not everything, of course. Bigger models are not automatically better, and the industry has learned that data quality, training technique and efficiency often matter as much as raw scale. Even so, committing the compute to train a model this size is a declaration in its own right, a signal that ByteDance wants to compete at the very top rather than ship a capable also-ran.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Suno says it will begin watermarking and fingerprinting AI-generated songs, tighten download policies to curb mass distribution, and explicitly prohibit deceptive audio and unauthorized voice or likeness cloning. The changes come as the company faces mounting copyright lawsuits, a recent adverse ruling in Germany, and scrutiny over a past data breach that revealed training-data sources. TechCrunch reports: In a blog post, co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman shared core principles and said that the platform wants to promote original creation while enabling more people to make music with its AI tools. One of the key points of contention involved users uploading AI-generated songs on other streaming platforms and gaming the system to earn revenue. Suno said that now it will use audio watermarking and fingerprinting to prevent misuse on other streaming platforms. It's not clear if Suno will use an existing system like Google's Synth ID or adopt a new one, and the company did not say when contacted by TechCrunch about this.

The startup also signed an agreement with lyrics provider Musixmatch to use its Sentinel system for copyright detection, the blog post said. [...] The company added that it plans to add a new download policy to bar mass distribution on streaming platforms, but declined to provide details on the record. Suno has also changed its community guidelines to explicitly prohibit "deceptive audio presented as real" and "using a real person's voice or likeness without permission" to prevent copycats.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

First Nations designers, models, artists and artisans from across Australia gathered on Larrakia Country in Darwin this week for the Country to Couture runway show and the National Indigenous Fashion awards. In between, Guardian Australia photographed several of the featured models and designers

• Delvene Cockatoo-Collins wins National Indigenous Fashion award for textiles harvested on Country

• First Nations fashion celebrates weaving, wattle and waterways at Country to Couture 2026 – in pictures

Models CJ Rankin, a Kiyak woman, and Nelson Baker Bardi, a Nyikina man, wear Nagula Jarndu Designs.

The art centre Nagula Jarndu (Saltwater Woman) began in Rubibi/Broome in 1987 as a place for Yawuru women to gather, preserve language, share knowledge and keep culture strong. Their hand-carved woodblock prints on cotton and silks, shown at Country to Couture, share stories of saltwater, plants, family and Country.

Continue reading...

It is not as well placed to take advantage of the technology as many people think.

With at least 12 US states’ water systems having been hacked - most likely by Iran - we have to get better at cyber defense, according to retired General and Ex-NSA chief Paul Nakasone, who was speaking to reporters at DEF CON. “We have to have higher standards,” Nakasone said. “These PLCs should not be connected to the internet.” In late July, the FBI said it was investigating attacks conducted by “malicious cyber actors” targeting operational technology devices, including programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Iran-linked crews have targeted these devices, which monitor sensor data like tank levels, and can turn pumps on and off, for years. Some private-sector security researchers say that they suspect Iranian intruders are behind the recent cyberattacks disrupting water and wastewater facilities. “I'd be shocked if it's not Iran,” Halcyon Ransomware Research Center SVP Cynthia Kaiser told The Register at DEF CON on Friday. “It's almost certain it's Iran.” Neither the FBI nor anyone in the Trump administration, however, has officially blamed Iran. Nakasone said he believes that the feds are “taking a measured approach” to attribution. “But I see an actor here that has certainly shown a history of being able to do this,” he added, referring to earlier Iranian cyberattacks targeting water facilities’ PLCs. “They certainly have the capability,” Nakasone said. “There's an intent … we're in conflict with Iran.” US water systems present a massive attack surface across disparate facilities that are historically underfunded and have limited IT staff, and sometimes no dedicated cybersecurity employees. “We have to think differently about how we defend it,” Nakasone said. “Let's talk about the attack surface that we're looking at right now. We’ve got 50,000 different water municipalities in the United States, 90 percent of our water comes from these 50,000.” Defending these water systems requires partnerships, he added, pointing to DEF CON Franklin, a project launched two years ago at the annual event with hackers volunteering their time and talent to help secure water facilities. Nakasone also serves as founding director of Vanderbilt University’s Institute of National Security, and its Wicked Problems Lab. He's also working on Project Chimera, a cybersecurity platform being developed by academics and cybersecurity practitioners, and built on open-source technologies to boost critical infrastructure resilience. “How do you defend better? You defend with a series of partners, in a much more involved approach than we have right now,” Nakasone said.®