All posts tagged: thrives

In Odesa, Ukraine, pastel palaces in jeopardy, but black humor thrives

In Odesa, Ukraine, pastel palaces in jeopardy, but black humor thrives

Published by skeptic

ODESA, Ukraine —  On a cool spring morning, as water-washed light bathed pastel palaces in the old imperial city of Odesa, the thunder of yet another Russian missile strike filled the air. That March 6 blast came within a few hundred yards of a convoy carrying Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was touring the country’s principal shipyard with the visiting Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotaki. It was a close call, but Ukrainian officials said that in all likelihood the two leaders were not the target. Like so many other strikes during what Ukrainians call the “big war” — ignited by Russia’s all-out invasion in February 2022 — the attack was aimed at Odesa’s port, a strategic prize of centuries’ standing. The Black Sea harbor and its docklands — Ukraine’s commercial lifeline and a prime military asset — have been the object of intensifying Russian drone and missile attacks in recent weeks, as Ukraine’s dwindling air defenses leave critical infrastructure vulnerable across the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, center left, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, center …

Phil Foden thrives using trusty old Pep Guardiola skill-gnome template | Manchester City

Phil Foden thrives using trusty old Pep Guardiola skill-gnome template | Manchester City

Published by skeptic

At times during the opening hour of this game it might have seemed to a casual observer that Phil Foden had walked on to the pitch with a handler in tow; perhaps some tolerant elderly relative, there to stand close but not really that close, to chase dutifully, prepared to let him show off his twinkly footwork, like some weary Sunday morning dad scrolling his phone in the park. In the event this turned out to be Victor Lindelöf, Manchester United’s stand-in left-back, who did his best to track and chase and non-specifically hinder Manchester City’s outstanding attacker in what was, ultimately, a neck-crickingly one-sided 3-1 victory. This was a thankless security detail. Even with United’s deep-set midfield filling the spaces, Lindelöf simply didn’t have the physical capacity to stop this full-bore, mid-season version of Foden, who is just a different style of human, his feet moving too quickly, the tendons set to a different level of twang. Perhaps Erik ten Hag might have acted earlier, done more to cover an outmatched duel. But Lindelöf was still …

The Guardian view on London: diversity thrives while Tories pander to prejudice | Editorial

The Guardian view on London: diversity thrives while Tories pander to prejudice | Editorial

Published by skeptic

Just why do the Conservatives so dislike London? The former deputy chair of the Tory party Lee Anderson recently described the capital’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, as controlled by “Islamists” – a sentiment others in his party rather belatedly accept as “wrong”, even if they won’t say why. Paul Scully, a former minister for London, chipped in with his belief that parts of the city, and of Birmingham, are now “no-go areas”. The previous prime minister Liz Truss lambasted an “anti-growth coalition” incessantly cabbing from their “north London townhouses to the BBC studios”. Rishi Sunak marked his first ever prime minister’s questions by attacking Labour’s Keir Starmer as a leader who “rarely leaves north London”. Put these statements together and it appears that, in the collective mind of the post-Brexit Tory party, London has become synonymous with all that ails modern Britain. It is either bursting with woke liberal darlings – Guardian-reading tofu eaters, to coin a phrase – backslapping each other over their latest panel show, or it is chockful of mullahs who detest British …

Israel-Hamas fake news thrives on poorly regulated online platforms | Israel-Hamas war

Published by Sam

Disinformation has flourished across a range of online platforms in the month since Hamas launched its bloody attack on Israel, fuelled by weak content regulation on X, formerly Twitter, and Telegram and at times propelled by state actors. Widely shared faked news and false claims include efforts to downplay the horror of Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October through to distasteful allegations that Palestinians, already under heavy bombardment, are faking scenes of violence. Jackson Hinkle, 22, an American far-right social media influencer with 2 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, who has styled himself as a “Maga communist”, claimed, without evidence, at the end of October that Hamas fighters shot fewer than 100 people, mostly armed settlers. The death toll is estimated at more than 1,200 people, and they were killed inside Israel’s borders so could not have been settlers. But this was only one of Hinkle’s untruths: in the same 28 October posting he said that half of the Israelis killed during the Hamas assault were soldiers, many of whom died “during tank shelling”. …

Smartphone shipments continue to decline as secondhand and premium markets thrives

Smartphone shipments continue to decline as secondhand and premium markets thrives

Published by skeptic

The smartphone market has been in decline for the last few quarters, and that’s not surprising given global economic condition. A pair of reports from analytics firms Counterpoint and Canalys suggests that the trend is continuing, even though there are signs of recovery in the future. The reports note that buyers are still looking for cheaper options, either through the refurbished market or companies offering discounts for their older models to clear stocks. The smartphone market has registered a decline for the eighth straight quarter with an 8% year-on-year dip, according to a report by analytics firm Counterpoint. Canalys’ report suggests that the dip for Q2 2023 was 11% with a streak of six quarters of negative growth. Samsung led the pack because of strong sales of its mid-range Galaxy A series. While Apple held the second spot, the iPhone maker had the biggest Q2 market share ever, according to Counterpoint. China-based incumbents Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo took third, fourth, and fifth spots. Both Canalys and Counterpoint reports noted almost similar market shares for these …

Guardiola vindicated as Stones thrives in ‘Barnsley Beckenbauer’ role | Champions League

Published by Sam

Not all tactical tweaks are the result of overthinking. Pep Guardiola did not simply pick the obvious starting XI. He did not pick the starting lineup that had propelled City through the Premier League run-in. He is criticised readily enough when he makes changes and City don’t win; this was an occasion when the change paid off. Guardiola made the necessary adjustment, and was rewarded with his third Champions League. Until mid-February City, by their own remarkable standards, had not had a particularly great season. There were questions – entirely reasonable questions for all the subsequent sneering – about what Erling Haaland did to the balance of the side. When a player doesn’t involve himself in the play, when he has only 20-30 touches in a game as standard, how can he contribute to the maintenance of possession that is so necessary to providing the control that Guardiola prioritises? Yet Haaland, obviously, is a magnificent goalscorer and offers a major threat on the counter. To accommodate him Guardiola had to locate another midfielder. He found …

Honeycomb scores M investment as observability platform thrives

Honeycomb scores $50M investment as observability platform thrives

Published by skeptic

Honeycomb was founded in 2016 by two former Facebook engineers to create a new way of looking at application monitoring based on the internal tooling they had seen at Facebook. At the time, they foresaw a changing IT landscape that was being transformed by microservices and containerization and they believed (correctly as it turned out) that the modern IT stack required a different approach to monitoring. Today the company announced a $50 million investment, a large sum in today’s tightening VC landscape. The new money brings the total raised to nearly $150 million, per the company. What is attracting such intense investor interest at a time when rounds have tended to be much smaller? Christine Yen, co-founder and CEO at Honeycomb, says she and her co-founder Charity Majors saw this change coming and built a tool specifically for where the puck was going. “What we saw in 2015 and 2016 is the world moving in a direction where that complexity was unavoidable whether in a heightened interest in being able to do things like breakdown …