Fed chair Kevin Warsh said politics played no role in pause of interest rate hikes, despite inflation remaining above 3%
The US Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday during its last board meeting before the midterm elections, keeping rates at one of the highest pre-election levels seen in over 20 years.
Two out of 12 board members voted against the pause, preferring to raise rates by a quarter point this meeting, the Fed board said in a statement.
Continue reading...Chancellor’s predecessor Rachel Reeves had planned to reduce allowance from £20,000 to £12,000 a year from April
John Healey is to use his first budget to ditch plans to slash the annual cash Isa allowance, the Guardian understands, preferring a carrot rather than a stick to encourage people to invest more in shares.
City experts welcomed news that the chancellor will overturn a decision by his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, to cut the allowance from £20,000 to £12,000 a year from April to get more money flowing into UK company stocks.
Continue reading...Mexican police had said they found Shayna Feinman in Tijuana, raising the hopes of missing Arizonan’s family
Arizona authorities say their Mexican counterparts were resoundingly mistaken when they publicly claimed recently that they found alive a woman who was feared slain after disappearing in 2024 – a turn of events that her sister has called “turmoil” and “heartbreaking”.
The case in question centers on Shayna Feinman, who was reported missing in rural Yavapai county, Arizona, in March 2024 at age 38.
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The midterms are racing to their conclusion, but the presidential contest is right around the corner. As the next primaries begin to take shape, how Democratic hopefuls intend to address childcare is already shaping up to be a major question.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is weighing a run for president, is one of the potential contenders with hands-on experience around this issue. Facing Republican opposition in the state legislature, he recently redirected federal funds to launch a pre-K pilot program, standing up 3,000 new seats since May. And he believes national Democrats should be making a push to expand access to preschool as well.
We wanted to better understand not only how Beshear is thinking about early childhood initiatives, but also his approach to spending on new federal programs more broadly, and what he’s learned from past efforts to expand access to families that failed. On Tuesday, we spoke with Beshear remotely about his work in the state — and his message to Democrats outside of it. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Since 1991, Kentucky has supported voluntary preschool, yet today still only about a quarter of 4-year-olds can attend the state-funded program. Why has it been so hard to make preschool available to every family who wants it?
Well, it shouldn’t be hard. You know, pre-K is an opportunity for every child to get off to a good start. And right now in Kentucky, because of the history you just mentioned, over half of our Kentucky children show up not ready for kindergarten. So before they’ve ever walked into a public school they are already behind.
So why has it been hard to make that happen?
Well, so at least in my tenure, somehow pre-K has become political. You know, 4-year-olds aren’t registered to vote. They’re not Democrats or Republicans. But I’ve pushed every year to get this in the budget. We can easily fund it given that I’ve produced a surplus every year I’ve been governor, yet our Republican leadership simply will not let it happen.
So, as you mentioned, there have been attempts at expanding this before. What have you learned from those earlier attempts, and what are you doing differently now?
So it’s interesting you bring that up. The same leadership that will not pass pre-K funding in our current budget cycle voted for it under the last Republican governor, but won’t vote for it under me. The last Republican governor vetoed the expansion, and they expressed their displeasure. So the only thing that’s changed here is the party of the person in charge. And what I hear is our Republican leadership saying they don’t want to give me a win, but they’re willing to hand a loss to all of these 4-year olds.
But for me as governor, I don’t get to accept excuses. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken flexible workforce training funds called WIOA funds, which you can use for a lot of different things. They’re used in a number of states for pre-K. And we have launched five pilot programs in different parts of the Commonwealth that are already a stunning success.
The smallest county in Kentucky is called Robertson County and has zero childcare. You have to drive 40 minutes one way or an hour another way just for any form of child care. It’s one of the places we started this and just to see the parents and the impact that it has on them — most of those parents don’t share my political party — but this is a great opportunity for them that they’re embracing.
It sounds like it’s gotten pretty polarized in your state. When you talk with Republican lawmakers privately, what do they tell you about why they won’t support expanded preschool?
Well, many rank-and-file Republicans in our state legislature want pre-K, and a number of them helped us to push for it this time. But leadership that’s been here for far too long and gotten far too partisan is simply blocking it at this point. What we need is for it to get to a vote, because this is the top polling education issue among Republicans. Again, because it’s not political.
If we had ballot measures and we put this on there, it would pass 80-plus percent because everyone wants that opportunity for their children. My hope is now that we have started these pilot programs, including one in Franklin County, which is where the seat of government is, that they can go and see how good this program is and not allow the next set of 4-year-olds or the next set of 4-year-olds or the next set of 4-year-olds to miss out on it. But I’m gonna do everything I can with the funding that I can find to provide as much of this opportunity as possible.
So there’s a lot of speculation about whether you might run for president. Without asking you to make any announcements here, I wanted to ask how you’re thinking about these issues nationally. You recently called yourself a more “practical” candidate when explaining your concerns about Medicare-for-all. When you look at something like childcare or pre-K from a federal perspective, what does being practical mean?
I think it means that there is a role for the federal government, and I’m supporting a number of congressional candidates right now and talking to all of them about pre-K. When people talk about the different sides of the Democratic Party — which I think is an overblown story, but still — like when Elizabeth Warren and I get together, we try to find some different things that we both agree on that we could work together on, and pre-K is one of those areas, so is housing.
“I do believe that Congress should take action to make sure that every state provides pre-K for 4-year-olds.”
I do believe that Congress should take action to make sure that every state provides pre-K for 4-year-olds. That’d be something that would be good for the United States that could actually bring Democrats and Republicans together and lift up people in all 50 states. And wouldn’t that be nice? To do something that is the right thing, that is the smart thing, and to do it in a nonpartisan way.
I know you mentioned pre-K for 4-year-olds. What do you think parents should be able to count on from the government before their kids turn four?
I believe that there is a role for government in childcare, and we’re working on it right now in Kentucky. We launched our first childcare center for state employees, and we’re learning a lot from it. Now I admit that the child care challenge is complex. You know, we have private childcare, we have public childcare, we have nonprofit childcare, and making sure we can get in and understand the real cost drivers of that.
What we would do as a state, or what the federal government could do, is develop an effective understanding of all those different parts and pieces. But just pre-K could put 70,000 more people into our workforce in Kentucky, so think about what better childcare could do to the workforce in our country. And it’s something that we could afford because we would see more dollars coming back in terms of tax revenue from that many more people in the workforce than we would ever pay out in child care.
Representative Ro Khanna recently proposed a federal program that would cover childcare costs for nearly all families with kids under age six, including care by relatives and neighbors, and offer a thousand dollar a month to parents who stay home with children under three. Would you support that kind of program?
Yeah, I haven’t seen the details of it. I think that that would present some real challenges with our current system as it is. What I would see is getting into the complexities of each of the forms of child care and how we can augment it, how we can build out on the system that we have right now, but also to address those child care deserts that I’m not sure this plan would fix. I mean, we’ve got counties that have no options — public, private or nonprofit.
And so I agree that it’s a challenge. I think it’s going to take us being both surgical on the micro and adopting policies on the macro. And I believe it probably won’t all happen at once, even though that sounds great. It’s how do we make improvement after improvement after improvement and expand and expand more as we understand the underlying mechanics better.
When I talk to people about why childcare and universal pre-K fell out of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, some say that Democrats tried to do too much and that they needed to narrow their agenda and prioritize specific issues more. Others, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, say that Democrats didn’t fight hard enough for child care, for universal pre-K.
What lessons do you take from the last federal child care push?
The federal government has to act with more urgency. We get in a lot of these debates about whether a plan is perfect or if a plan’s only 80 percent perfect. Listen, take the 80 percent and start working it. Provide the American people with some help which they need.
Now, the Biden administration could have had an imperfect plan. But if they’d implemented that imperfect plan, there would be more childcare options right now. And I admit as a governor, I’m practical. You know, getting stuff done is incredibly important. I want to provide relief to all families, but if I can provide relief to a lot of families, let’s start there and then let’s get bigger.
Just to clarify that, what would you have done differently? What would it look like if you had been part of the conversation?
“If it were me, I would push for universal pre-K for 4-year-olds immediately. That is the immediate relief that takes 25 percent of that burden off of working parents.”
If it were me, I would push for universal pre-K for 4-year-olds immediately. That is the immediate relief that takes 25 percent of that burden off of working parents and then I’d work on a bill that addresses childcare, that makes sure that we have all the stakeholders at the table.
Something that I hear in DC while reporting on childcare is that Democrats in Congress are working to make big new plans for 2027 and 2028. But we know they’d also face real pressure to restore things like the billions cut in Medicaid funding.
As you think about the future, where does childcare or universal pre-K fall on your list of priorities?
It’s high on the list of priorities because my priorities are the American people, their well-being, and the ability to chase that American dream. Right? That American dream is about having a job where you can support your family, being able to see a doctor when you’re sick, driving safe roads and bridges, getting your kids the best education possible, and feeling safe in your community. And so pre-K and childcare falls right there. I believe that.
When Democrats retake Congress or when they retake the presidency, we have got to be laser focused on people’s lives and how hard they are right now, but also do it in a smart way that increases the size of our workforce when there are people that want to go back to work, but simply can’t afford to because of the cost of childcare or a lack of those education options.
You recently praised Bill Clinton for running a budget surplus. Do you think that bringing down the deficit should be a priority for the next Democratic president?
Yes, and and I believe that you can and should run a surplus in that job. Now I think what you do is you grow the economy and that helps you pay for those services, but you’ve got to be careful about new spending. That doesn’t mean that you don’t engage in it because there are some things that you could spend on, I believe, like childcare and pre-K that would result in more federal revenue coming in that would allow you to run that surplus. But over time, we’ve got to start addressing the national debt.
Did the Biden administration’s experience with inflation change your thinking about how much the federal government should spend?
Well, I believe the Biden administration was attempting to get us out of the recession that was Covid. Now you saw a huge recession in Covid, and they put these policies in place that shot us out of that recession faster than anyone ever thought was possible, but it probably overshot that target. I think we should have been communicating to the American people about how we had gotten our economy back on track in record time, but it had gone a little too far, and that we were going to make it through. That could have even been a patriotic call because I believe it was a patriotic time. You know, defeating a pandemic that came to kill as many of us as possible.
You’ve talked in this conversation and elsewhere about being pragmatic, acting with urgency, not being overly ideological. A lot of Democrats today make the case now that the pragmatic thing to do is to go big on new programs, push for universal childcare, push for universal health care, abandon these half measures and incremental steps.
I’d love to hear you talk about that. Is that your instinct?
Well, I’d have to see a program that would actually work. You know, it’s great to talk about a massive program, but then you’ve got to get down in the details, and will it deliver on day one? Or will it crash a system that is imperfect but is delivering to a degree and could deliver more? I’m not against the big idea, but what I’m against is throwing something out there that in the practical real world can’t work.
What role do you see for employers in building out our childcare and early education systems?
I think that employers have a big role to play. And I see families where an employer has childcare, excited to go to work, knowing their kid is in the building or or close by, the convenience that that provides. They can go down and have lunch with their kids, which is something that I’ve missed out on in my work life. so I think it is critical.
What we’ve seen in Kentucky is our large employers, we can work with them on it and we can get it done, but it’s midsized employers that we have to rise to that challenge. You know, places that only have a couple hundred employees, or maybe even 12 or 15, how we can band together for those businesses to be able to provide it. And I believe the federal government should be working directly with those companies, because we’ve got to make the economics work. The federal government, in coordination with those employers, could get this right, create a lot more slots, and help people get back to work.
Pedro Sánchez says the government will act with urgency to ‘clarify what has happened, why this tragedy occurred’
At least 30 people are believed to have died after two high-speed trains collided in the province of Toledo in Spain, with concerns the death toll could be much higher.
The number of people affected is expected to rise (10:46), local authorities said, with growing concerns about a “major tragedy” (11:03).
The affected trains are understood to be Iryo 7076 with 146 passengers plus one baby on board, and AVE 2080 with 397 passengers on board, making it 544 people in total on board of both train (11:00).
The incident comes less than a year after a similar crash in Adamuz, the province of Córdoba, which killed 46 and injured 152 in January this year (11:00).
Spain’s high-speed railway network ranks as the largest in Europe and the second biggest in the world after China, carrying 25 million passengers in 2024.
Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez said he was “shocked” by the accident (11:05), with transport minister Óscar Puente working at the emergency control centre to “obtain all possible information about what happened” (11:16).
Updated at 10:50am UK to reflect the new death toll
“In the [emergency] control center since 9:40 trying to obtain all possible information about what happened.”
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У рекламной кампании может быть отличный результат: например, после её старта снизилась стоимость лида, выросла конверсия и выполнен план по заявкам. Но это показатели, которые мало что говорят финансовому директору, когда он согласовывает бюджет на маркетинг: ему нужно знать, сколько денег принёс бизнесу конкретный канал.
Чтобы доказать успешность рекламной кампании, иногда недостаточно показать одни метрики — нужно построить для каждой площадки P&L и сопоставить выручку от клиентов со стоимостью их привлечения. В статье разберёмся в метриках CPA, ROMI и LTV и в том, как на их основе создать P&L — понятный для финансового отдела документ, который показывает бизнесу ценность рекламной кампании.
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А вы тоже натыкались на публикации из разряда - "Мы все умрем, началось восстание ИИ"? Мне такие публикации стали попадаться все чаще и все чаще это притянутый за уши инфоповод, который в некоторых случаях даже с ИИ соотнести очень сложно, но "инсайдеры" продолжают кошмарить свою аудиторию. Я решил разобрать последние несколько инцидентов, которые уже даже просочились в соцсеть для фоточек и кошмарит пользователей там. Так ли все серьезно или как обычно много шума из ничего.
Читать как еще ИИ угрожает человечеству.High-speed service travelling from Madrid to Seville ran into back of another, knocking two carriages off track
The Spanish prime minister has declared three days of mourning after at least 68 people were killed and dozens more injured in a collision between two high-speed trains in central Spain.
The trains were travelling in the same direction on the line that stretches from the Spanish capital, Madrid, to Seville on Wednesday when one of the trains ran into the tail of the other that had stopped, knocking several carriages off the track.
Continue reading...Pedro Sánchez says the government will act with urgency to ‘clarify what has happened, why this tragedy occurred’
At least 30 people are believed to have died after two high-speed trains collided in the province of Toledo in Spain, with concerns the death toll could be much higher.
The number of people affected is expected to rise (10:46), local authorities said, with growing concerns about a “major tragedy” (11:03).
The affected trains are understood to be Iryo 7076 with 146 passengers plus one baby on board, and AVE 2080 with 397 passengers on board, making it 544 people in total on board of both train (11:00).
The incident comes less than a year after a similar crash in Adamuz, the province of Córdoba, which killed 46 and injured 152 in January this year (11:00).
Spain’s high-speed railway network ranks as the largest in Europe and the second biggest in the world after China, carrying 25 million passengers in 2024.
Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez said he was “shocked” by the accident (11:05), with transport minister Óscar Puente working at the emergency control centre to “obtain all possible information about what happened” (11:16).
Updated at 10:50am UK to reflect the new death toll
“In the [emergency] control center since 9:40 trying to obtain all possible information about what happened.”
Continue reading...Jean Kaseya, of the Africa CDC, warns of the illness spreading like Covid unless more funding is secured to increase preparedness and possible treatment
The “unprecedented” spread of the Ebola outbreak means it could reach the UK and other countries, according to one of Africa’s top health officials.
As the current outbreak reached 10,000 cases, with almost 5,000 deaths, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared the outbreak to the Covid pandemic, which first took hold in China before spreading to countries across the world, claiming millions of lives, and ravaging health systems and economies.
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В прошлой статье я рассказывал, как устроен мой тренажёр инцидентов изнутри. Сегодня покажу один кейс, седьмой, про 502 Bad Gateway. Он небольшой, но на нём хорошо видно, почему рестарт nginx почти никогда не помогает.
Вводная такая: ночью выкатили релиз, утром магазин отдаёт 502. При этом systemctl status nginx показывает active (running).
502 значит, что nginx запрос принял, передал дальше и нормального ответа не получил. То есть nginx тут свидетель, и начинать надо с его лога:
Читать далееBrian Jones wrote to Charlie Watts in 1962 asking him to leave his R&B group and join his ‘far better’ band instead
A handwritten letter from Brian Jones to Charlie Watts in which he attempts to recruit the drummer to join the band that would soon become the Rolling Stones is being auctioned later this year.
The 1962 letter, which comes directly from Watts’s sister and has remained in the family for more than six decades, will be revealed to the public for the first time.
Continue reading...High-speed service travelling from Madrid to Seville ran into back of another, knocking two carriages off track
The Spanish prime minister has declared three days of mourning after at least 68 people were killed and dozens more injured in a collision between two high-speed trains that officials suggested was caused by an “inexplicable” error at the central command centre.
The trains, one from Spain’s state-owned Renfe and the other from the private rail company Iryo, were travelling on Wednesday morning in the same direction on the line that stretches from the Spanish capital, Madrid, to the southern region of Andalusia. After the Iryo train came to a halt, the other slammed into its rear, knocking several carriages off the track near the town of Urda.
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Подписки на ИИ-ассистентов для кода дорожают, лимиты режут, а код при этом уезжает на чужие серверы. Я решил проверить, можно ли вайбкодить полностью локально на обычном игровом ноутбуке. Проверять буду на Meibenben X18A: Ryzen 9, RTX 5070 с 8 ГБ видеопамяти и 24 ГБ оперативной памяти на борту. Задача простая - запустить Qwen3 Coder, подключить к нему агента для программирования и посмотреть, что из этого выйдет.
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Подопытный — мини-ПК Ninkear L20 на Intel Core Ultra 5 226V с 16 ГБ памяти. Ниже — установка и настройка OpenVINO, запуск Qwen3-8B на NPU, замеры скорости и мощности по счётчикам самого процессора и сравнение с дорогой видеокартой RTX 5070 Ti. Плюс практическая часть: обработка фотографий, 3D-рельеф из фото, озвучка книг, Blender и печатная плата. Всё работает локально, без утечек данных в интернет и без оплаты подписок.
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В статье разберу, как устроены экраны E Ink Carta Plus и Kaleido 3, чем они удобнее AMOLED и IPS для чтения, что такое «подметание» экрана и откуда берутся артефакты, как работает подсветка с регулировкой температуры. Рассматривать всё это буду на двух устройствах, которыми пользуюсь каждый день: бюджетном 6-дюймовом ридере и крупноформатном цветном планшете 10.3" со стилусом. Это две крайности рынка, и на них хорошо видны сильные и слабые стороны современных E Ink-экранов.
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French soccer captain and Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappé has apologized to China for calling Mao Zedong a “dictator,” a comment that prompted fierce criticism and institutional reprisals.
“My comment was ill-judged,” Mbappé said in a statement in three languages. “I apologize to everyone my words have upset.”
In a video clip from the French talk show “The Bridge” posted on Monday, Mbappé had referred to Mao as “some guy—I think he’s a Chinese dictator” as he described a meme in which his face was photoshopped onto a picture of the late founder and chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. The clip was behind-the-scenes footage from a podcast filmed in March, the podcast said. It has since been removed from the show’s social media accounts. “The Bridge” also apologized to Chinese fans, as well as to Mbappé.
The meme is part of an internet trend where soccer fans have superimposed Mbappé’s face onto pictures of military and political leaders as a play on Mbappé’s nickname “the dictator,” referring to the Real Madrid player’s perceived authority and influence over football clubs and the media. Even Mbappé’s French teammate Ousmane Dembélé made a joke about the moniker during the 2026 World Cup, referring to Mbappé as Mobut after Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who ruled the Democratic Republic of Congo for three decades.
Mbappé told French magazine L’Equipe last month that he found some of the memes funny, but that others demonstrated “a lack of political and human awareness.”
“To be compared to people who murder others, or who have made millions and millions of people miserable … I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that in my life,” he said.
In the clip shared by The Bridge, Mbappé was asked which meme he finds funniest, and he pointed to the one featuring Mao.
Mbappé’s “dictator” label, however, triggered sharp rebuke in China. Several Chinese broadcasters suspended coverage related to Mbappé and Spanish soccer league LaLiga, while some brands pulled ads that featured the sports star. A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, before Mbappé’s apology, that “words and deeds that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people will naturally be met with opposition from all sectors of Chinese society.”
Parody of Chinese leaders is politically sensitive in China, not least mockery of Mao, who founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and ruled the country till his death in 1976.
Many international scholars have described Mao as an authoritarian leader, pointing to his centralized rule, political purges, and aggressive state campaigns, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Historians estimate that tens of millions of people died during Mao’s rule as a result of famine and violence. But within China, many view him as a revolutionary figure who unified the country and transformed a largely agrarian society into an independent nation. While official accounts have condemned the Cultural Revolution as a “grave blunder,” those same accounts argue that Mao’s lifetime contributions to the Chinese revolution outweighed his mistakes. The Chinese Constitution describes the state as the “people’s democratic dictatorship,” defined as a proletarian dictatorship.
“During a recent interview, I reacted to an image of myself,” Mbappé said in his apology. “I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world. … This was absolutely not my intention. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry.”
Parodies of political figures have incurred anger and sanctions before. In April 2015, CCTV suspended TV presenter Bi Fujian after a private dinner video that showed him mocking Mao while singing a revolutionary opera was leaked online. In July 2017, Chinese social media platforms also restricted references to Winnie-the-Pooh after internet users compared the character to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In August, artist Gao Zhen was sentenced to three years in prison for “infringing upon the reputation of heroes” because he had made satirical sculptures of Mao, including a 2009 statue called Mao’s Guilt that depicts the late leader kneeling in repentance. Gao, who was based in the U.S., was arrested in August 2024 while visiting family in China.
International sports brands and associations have also come under fire in China over remarks deemed politically offensive.
In October 2019, China paused sponsorship deals with the National Basketball Association after Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey posted online in support of protests in Hong Kong, which Beijing characterizes as separatist and seditious. CCTV suspended broadcasts of NBA games for a year.
Mbappé’s comments may already have cost him.
China’s largest dairy producer, Mengniu, said it would cease its partnerships with Mbappé, as did cheesemaker Shanghai Milkground Food Tech and beverage giant Eastroc Beverage, also known as Dongpeng. The companies said they had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards words or behavior that offend the feelings of the Chinese public.
According to French newspaper Le Monde, Mbappé’s Dongpeng and Mengniu contracts were worth approximately 50 million yuan (€6.7 million) combined. Dongpeng had run adverts featuring AI-generated images of Mbappé drinking its sports drink during the 2026 World Cup and sold bottles of its Bushuila electrolyte drink with Mbappé on its packaging. After Mbappé’s comments and prior to their statements, the two consumer brands saw their stock fall.
Global brands including Dior, Rimowa, Nike, Hublot, and On Running also removed promotional content featuring Mbappé from their accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo, Chinese media reported.
China’s state television CCTV suspended broadcasts of all matches and events involving Mbappé and LaLiga, and pulled advertisements featuring Mbappé, Chinese media reported on Tuesday. The state broadcaster said in a statement after Mbappé’s apology that it hoped he “will genuinely learn a lesson from this” and “thoroughly correct” his mistake.
LaLiga President Javier Tebas said on Tuesday that he met with the Chinese Ambassador in Spain to “seek solutions that allow us to overcome this episode.”
“Our commitment is to keep working together so that an individual episode does not harm the important advances achieved nor affect the millions of Chinese fans who follow our competitions,” Tebas said in a post on X. “A relationship built over so many years cannot be damaged by a single incident,” he added in another post.
Mbappé, once a fan favorite in China where he is affectionately nicknamed “Guigui” after a perceived resemblance to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, now faces a firestorm online.
Calls for brands to terminate partnerships with Mbappé and boycott the player were among the top trending topics on Weibo. Some users accused Mbappé of profiting off the lucrative Chinese sports markets and his millions of fans in the country while disrespecting their national sentiments.
Weibo and Rednote, also known as Xiaohongshu, also appeared to have restricted Mbappé on their platforms, with notices that said his accounts were “banned” or “muted” for violating community guidelines.
In an article titled “Mbappé scores an own goal in China,” state media outlet China Daily reported that the backlash from Chinese fans has “threatened his lucrative commercial relationships and offered a sharp reminder of the limits of celebrity influence.”
Several Chinese news outlets condemned Mbappé’s remarks without restating them. Soccer news outlet Dongqiudi said in a statement, “Kylian Mbappé made inappropriate remarks about China in an interview. As these remarks are likely to hurt China and its people, we cannot translate them.”
“What did he say? Many Chinese would rather not repeat it,” state-linked Global Times said in a video commentary. “The message from Chinese consumers is clear: Respect is not optional; one doesn't get to profit from China while disrespecting it. Not a chance.”
Another article from state-linked newspaper Guangming Daily read, “Insulting China’s late great leader is unacceptable! Eating Chinese food and then smashing the Chinese pot? Mbappe is not worthy!”
“However good your football skills are, you cannot trample on fundamental limits,” it said.
Outside of China, some have pushed back against the backlash.
French social media users criticized Mbappé for retreating on his comments. Marc Julienne, director of the Asia Centre at French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told Le Parisien that describing Mao as a “dictator” reflects a consensus among Western historians, though it is a characterization that remains taboo in China—which, Julienne added, Mbappé may not have realized.
The U.S. House Select Committee on China posted on Tuesday that Mbappé “should not apologize for calling Mao Zedong a dictator. Mao was a dictator, and by orders of magnitude, he did more harm to the Chinese people than a comment from a soccer player ever could.”
“The real disgrace,” the committee said, “is the companies rushing to apologize so they can continue to do business in China.”
Очень давно я наткнулся на сайт в рекламе, где обещали бесплатный смартфон со связью в обмен на просмотр рекламы. Первая мысль была — очередной лохотрон. Но денег с меня никто не просил, так что я зарегистрировался, поглазел на обещания и благополучно о нём забыл. В октябре 2026 пришло приглашение: «Успейте оформить доставку смартфона для доступа к цифровой платформе Binrobi».
Когда пришло уведомление, я, честно говоря, обрадовался: наконец‑то можно потрогать эту шайтан‑машину вживую. Паспорт, селфи с паспортом и подписание договора — всё прямо в приложении. Оформил доставку и вскоре забрал в СДЭК коробку с оранжевым логотипом. Внутри смартфон, и связь — eSIM от Билайна с пакетом на 15 ГБ интернета, 300 минут и 100 SMS в месяц. Платить ничего не нужно. Условие одно: пользоваться телефоном не меньше двух часов в день или 14 часов в неделю и смотреть рекламу, которая встроена прямо в интерфейс.
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Привет, Хабр! Я Женя Горбач, продуктовый дизайнер в Альфа-Метрике, аналитическом продукте Альфа банка. Найти рефы для авторизации, оформления заказа или перевода — задача вполне понятная. Но что делать, если проектируешь сценарий, который редко встречается в других продуктах, а решения прямых конкурентов тебе не подходят?
Недавно я столкнулся именно с такой задачей во время редизайна одного из разделов нашего сервиса — каталога событий. 70% пользователей бросали загрузку событий, и нам предстояло выяснить, почему, и помочь им. Спойлер: более удобное решение получилось благодаря тому, что мы выпилили часть интерфейса. В этой статье расскажу, как с помощью ChatGPT, Deep Research и Mobbin через MCP я не только ускорил, но и качественно улучшил процесс поиска решения.
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Когда инфраструктура начинает тормозить или что-то ломается после очередного деплоя, важно быстро найти причину и понимать, как её устранить. Для этого нужны знания, которые выходят за рамки привычного стека инструментов. Собрали 14 бесплатных уроков для инфраструктурных инженеров — от диагностики сетевых проблем и восстановления LVM до Kubernetes, CI/CD и DevSecOps, с разбором конкретных задач и практических подходов к их решению.
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Сетевые папки, облачные диски и электронная почта остаются привычными инструментами организации проектной документации. Для небольшого коллектива и относительно простого проекта этого зачастую достаточно. Проблемы становятся заметны с ростом числа участников, документов и изменений.
Для ГИПа это оборачивается вполне практическими сложностями: один документ существует в нескольких редакциях с именами «Финал», «Финал_2», «Исправленный», актуальный файл приходится искать среди папок и писем. Замечания заказчика находятся в переписке и на скриншотах, а после очередной выдачи не всегда удается быстро установить, какая именно редакция была передана. Появляются отдельные папки «На согласование», «Выдано», «Старое», которые фактически начинают выполнять роль статусов документа.
К этому моменту проблема заключается уже не в месте хранения файлов. Проекту требуется управление их состоянием: версиями, замечаниями, согласованиями, доступом и передачей документации. Эту задачу решает переход к среде общих данных (СОД)...
Узнать, что делать дальшеThe rapper lends the NFL a veneer of credibility but is unlikely to push back on the establishment figures who run the league
On Monday the NFL named Jay-Z as the headliner for this season’s Super Bowl half-time show. His company, Roc Nation, produces the show under a 2019 deal reportedly worth $5m a year, and the agreement was extended for another five years in 2024. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said his one request when the partnership began was that Jay-Z “take the stage himself one day“.
Goodell’s wish makes total sense: Jay-Z is the perfect choice for the half-time show, and that’s not a compliment. The NFL wants a shill who can still pass for a rebel, and nobody in American music plays that part better than Jay-Z.
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На выставках промышленные роботы обычно показывают типовые операции, как они умеют перекладывать коробки, сортировать предметы или варить металл. В этот раз мы дали роботу фломастер и поставили задачу создать арт-объект. Подробно рассказываем,что из этого вышло, сколько человек над этим работали и как учили робота держать фломастер.
Меня зовут Александр Кормишин, я руководитель маркетинга в РОБОПРО. Это компания-разработчик коллаборативных промышленных роботов DOKA РОБОТС — тех, что могут избавить человека от рутинных задач, работая бок-о-бок с ним на производстве.
На выставке FestTech наш серийный робот RC10 выступал подмастерьем у художника Глеба Солнцева. Для нас смысл идеи был в том, чтобы перенастроить именно серийного робота под неожиданную задачу — он нарисовал основной контур, а художник доработал детали.
Вместе с технической командой проекта мы подготовили описание всех процессов: как разрабатывалась пружина и держатель, как писали код, и что сломалось на тестах. А заодно подробно рассказали, в чем заключается переналадка такого устройства.
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Я изучаю посттренировочное квантование семейства RWKV-7 (от 0.1B до 13.3B параметров) двумя пресетами: REDUCTION (сжатие около 2.1x, почти без потерь) и COMPRESSION (около 3.1x, 4 бита на проекции). Исходный вопрос работы: почему 4-битный пресет на модели 2.9B деградирует сильнее, чем на 1.5B (+4.04% против +2.85% по перплексии), хотя ожидается обратное.
Оказалось, что до 86% вклада всей группы o_proj на 2.9B приходится на одну матрицу: выходную проекцию нулевого блока. Её вход несёт «массивный канал» (98% энергии входа в восьми каналах из 2560). Хранение этой одной матрицы в bf16 (0.5% файла) снижает KL к эталону на 39% и возвращает 2.9B в монотонную линейку; перевод эмбеддинга с 5 на 6 бит добавляет ещё −22% KL за 1.1% файла. Три естественные локальные метрики ошибки не предсказывают вред от квантования матрицы; предсказывает ошибка, внесённая в остаточный поток и умноженная на усиление ниже по глубине. На этом основании я строю автоподбор битности по правилу «снятый вред на байт» (−16…−39% KL при приросте файла не более 0.5%) и переношу GPTQ на ту же сетку (−29…−43% KL при тех же байтах).
Вместе методы дают потерю по перплексии от +2.76% (0.1B) до +0.70% (13.3B) на файле размером 31.6–35.2% от bf16, монотонно убывающую с размером модели. Пресет REDUCTION с GPTQ даёт +0.46…+0.07% при 46–50% от bf16. При равном размере файла KL моего 6-битного файла с GPTQ в 2.0–3.3 раза ниже, чем у GGUF Q6_K с imatrix, и в 3.5–7.4 раза ниже, чем у MLX int6; 4-битный файл в 2.1 раза точнее Q4_K_M на 1.5B, а Q4_K_M на 2.9B ломается. Отдельно описываю утечку калибровочного корпуса в мой первый оценочный набор и измеренный масштаб её влияния, а также разброс GPTQ между численно эквивалентными реализациями (около ±1.5% KL).
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В геймдеве идеи стоят дешево. Дорого стоит возможность их пощупать. Классический цикл прототипирования, к которому мы привыкли, выглядит примерно так: тратишь несколько дней на монументальный диздок, расписываешь каждую кнопку, каждое нажатие и относишь это всё программистам. Они уходят кодить на неделю-две. А потом, когда возвращаются, вы запускаете черновой билд и понимаете, что играть в это вообще не прикольно: механики не затягивают, интерфейс непонятный, и вообще идея была мёртвой с самого начала. Но время и силы уже потрачены, и их не вернуть.
«Как же хорошо, что человечество уже придумало нейросети», — подумали мы в Magnus Tech и полностью отказались от ручного написания текстовых ТЗ для проверки гипотез. Потому что зачем описывать механику буквами, если ее можно быстро навайбкодить? Теперь для тестирования новых фичей мы не пишем таски на десятки страниц, мы собираем черновой прототип на примитивах за пару часов и сразу его тестируем. В результате время от задумки до первого теста сократилось с недель до нескольких часов.
Но чтобы такая схема работала, обычного чат-бота в соседней вкладке браузера недостаточно. Нейросеть должна сама шерстить папки с проектом, ковыряться в скриптах и понимать структуру движка. Чтобы показать, как это устроено на практике, мы поговорили с Иваном Дворяновым, продюсером игрового направления в Magnus Tech. В этой статье делимся его опытом и рассказываем, как мы пустили Claude напрямую в Unity через MCP, почему вайб-кодинг всё равно требует жесткого планирования и в каких задачах лучше не доверяться ИИ, а по старинке работать руками.
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21 октября вышли патчи против PHP2Shell — двух критических уязвимостей в PHP с удаленным выполнением кода без авторизации. Как обновиться, уже написали многие. Мы разбираем, что сделать после обновления, чтобы утечка через уязвимость не обошлась компании в штраф до 15 млн рублей: какие доказательства сохранить, когда звать юриста и почему отсчет 24 часов на уведомление Роскомнадзора может начаться раньше, чем вы думаете.
Читать далееThe actor waxes lyrical on directors, dildos and why she hates being referred to as though she’s a dusty old relic
In the late 1950s, Judi Dench was invited to meet a major Hollywood producer about a possible career in the film business. The producer looked at her for a long time and said: “Very nice to meet you but you’ll never make a movie because you have every single thing wrong with your face.” As she left his office, Dench – who was 23 and about to make her professional debut as Ophelia in Hamlet at the Old Vic – breathed a sigh of relief and resolved to concentrate on theatre. Though she dabbled in film and TV, it wasn’t until the 1990s that she became a bona fide movie star, playing M in the Bond films and winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Yet, she notes: “Being onstage is where I feel safest. Yes, I’ve appeared in films, but I’d never consider myself a film actor.”
Dench’s reflections on her working life form the backbone of Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, a memoir built around her conversations with the actor and theatre director Brendan O’Hea, Dench’s friend with whom she also collaborated on 2023’s Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. This book confirms much of what is already known about Dench: that she is impishly funny, swears like a sailor, and that, despite that film producer’s unkind comments, she has “no hang-ups about what I look like on camera … Acting for me is not about looking glamorous. It’s whatever’s needed for the story.” We also learn that Dench, who is 91, can’t resist a prank: while playing Brecht’s Mother Courage at the Barbican in London, she replaced the drinks her character serves to two soldiers with cider vinegar – “It was a joy watching them knock it back, made even more glorious by the fact they had to ask for a top-up.”
Continue reading...Immersive portrait of mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson as they seek to become the first people to ski down Everest’s north face
With some of its showings in the huge Imax format, this National Geographic-backed documentary feels like a callback to the early, glory days of large-format cinema when it was all about spectacle and scale, turning footage of natural-world wonders into an immersive experience. Those with a fear of heights or prone to vertigo may find this all a bit too immersive, in fact. That’s even more the case considering the point of the movie appears to be to provoke anxiety in the viewer for nearly the entire running time as we watch the subjects scale the steeper, far less travelled north face of Mount Everest and then, for reasons never quite adequately explained, ski back down it again.
Such was the mission of experienced mountaineer Jim Morrison, an amiable-seeming fellow who, like all of those who pursue extreme sports, seems to feel a compulsion to put himself in the kind of grave danger that, should things go wrong, would put other people in danger rescuing him. His partner Hilaree Nelson shares his passion, and the two of them set off to be the first people to ski down Everest’s north face, and the first third of the film tracks them as they plan and eventually do practice runs to achieve this goal. Neither seems able to adequately explain why they’ve chosen to take such a risk, although Nelson tries a bit to articulate her mountaineering life almost as if it’s a career choice that her two teenage sons should simply accept as her choice to make, and maybe even thank her for – even if that means that should she be injured or lost they and Morrison (who is not the boys’ biological father) would also have to deal with the aftermath.
Continue reading...Hit London plays 2:22, Paranormal Activity and A Ghost in Your Ear are now spooking audiences on and off Broadway amid high demand for communal experiences
As we escaped the restrictions of the pandemic, with many also trying to escape the smartphone addiction that was exacerbated by it, there was widespread desire for the in-person communal experience. It was a slow crawl back with casualties along the way but as the Hollywood and Broadway box office return to pre-pandemic levels this year, our craving for IRL thrills appears to be stronger than ever.
It’s why Imax and 4DX formats are breaking records, concert attendance is at a new high according to a mid-year report and the most recently tracked season of New York theatre grossed more than the previous. It also helps to explain why the hottest tickets of the fall are for plays in the most communal genre of all: horror.
Continue reading...This audacious portrait of the French author through the eyes of his women is Shafak’s love letter to literature in dark times
In Frantumaglia, her collection of essays on writing and reading, Elena Ferrante writes that she has sometimes dismissed Gustave Flaubert as a “misogynist”, angered by his invention of as callous a mother as Emma Bovary. In other moods, however, she has wondered whether Flaubert allows his female characters to say what “women truly think and say and live but do not dare write”.
Ferrante’s ambivalence is, I think, the most fitting feminist response to Flaubert’s novel. It’s tempting to castigate him as a male writer who kills his female character because he can’t imagine any other end for a transgressive woman; to reproach him for not giving Emma Bovary the profundity of emotion with which Tolstoy imbues Anna Karenina. But this isn’t the whole story, because Flaubert was so complex a figure: restlessly self-doubting even as he more than held his own in an age of cocksure egos; ecstatically happy in his solitary states of aesthetic creation precisely because they could throw him outwards into other people’s stories and minds.
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Student voters studying outside their hometown have a right to choose where they register to vote. Advocates say a Montana legal fight is a reminder of a misunderstanding of those students' rights.
(Image credit: Ryan M. Kelly)
In Ohio, many people are displeased with the state's rapid buildout of data centers. It's a hot issue in the midterms, as political candidates from both parties try to ease voter concerns.
(Image credit: Andrea Hsu)
Congressional Democrats are working with good governance groups to create an action plan for any potential claims of election fraud.
(Image credit: RYAN MURPHY)
The number of state and local officers working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement has doubled in size in the last eight months, according to a new report from the immigration reform advocacy group FWD.us.
(Image credit: Charly Triballeau)
Transplant teams can talk to families about organ donation before they've decided whether to continue life-sustaining medical care for loved ones. Until now, that has been forbidden.
In several competitive U.S. Senate contests, candidates have built healthy campaign accounts with out-of-state donations. But the messages to those donors is very different from the one back at home.
(Image credit: Elijah Nouvelage)
NEA President Princess Moss wants to move her organization, the nation's largest labor union, toward issue-based advocacy — and away from party politics.
(Image credit: The National Education Association)
В офертах сервисов, которые продаются бизнесу – CRM, рассылки, HR-платформы, трекеры задач, сервисы расшифровки созвонов, – раздел про персональные данные есть почти всегда. Поручения на обработку в нем почти никогда нет, хотя авторы оферт обычно уверены в обратном.
Разбираю, что требует часть 3 статьи 6 152-ФЗ дословно, почему четыре самые частые формулировки поручением не являются и какая часть требований выполняется не текстом договора, а продуктом: доказательство акцепта редакции, порядок смены редакции, уведомление об инциденте в срок меньше суток и блокирование данных по конкретному субъекту.
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Под конец 2025 года мой iPhone 11 стал всеми силами показывать, как ему тяжело в современных реалиях, когда приложения повышают свои системные требования, а сама обновлённая iOS на старых девайсах выглядит хуже, чем на тех, что поновее, — всё же 4 гигабайта ОЗУ играют свою роль. До iPhone 11 у меня была «лопата» Xiaomi Mi Max (не самый плохой смартфон, кстати!) и другие бюджетники, так что «андроиды» для меня были не в новинку. Но, глядя на цены на новые айфоны и конкурентов в лице Samsung, возник вопрос: а что, собственно, я потеряю, вернувшись сейчас на Android в лице Galaxy S25 Plus? Ох, с чего бы начать…
Сразу же дисклеймер: я уважаю обе операционные системы и вижу плюсы у обеих. Ваш опыт использования этих ОС может отличаться — и это нормально.
Читать далееOBR says that living standards are forecast to rise by just 1% over the whole post-Covid decade
Martin Lewis said that, when he met John Healey this morning, the chancellor said that, having removed standing charges from gas bills, he would also like to get rid of them from electricity bills. Lewis said:
The chancellor said he will be talking to Ofgem about how they get rid of the charge on electricity as well, but that is ‘trickier’ apparently and will take longer.
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