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He said Chelmsford "deserves to have another festival"

Emmanuel Macron has faced humiliation today as his government lost a confidence vote, plunging France into political chaos.

A COUNCILLOR believes a celebrity duo will bring a “bold and brilliant” night to a venue in Essex.

A COUNCILLOR believes a celebrity duo will bring a “bold and brilliant” night to a venue in Essex.

Chops was a developer for Initrode. Early on a Monday, they were summoned to their manager Gary's office before the caffeine had even hit their brain.

Gary glowered up from his office chair as Chops entered. This wasn't looking good. "We need to talk about the latest commit for Taskmaster."

Taskmaster was a large application that'd been around for decades, far longer than Chops had been an employee. Thousands of internal and external customers relied upon it. Refinements over time had led to remarkable stability, its typical uptime now measured in years. However, just last week, their local installation had unexpectedly suffered a significant crash. Chops had been assigned to troubleshooting and repair.

"What's wrong?" Chops asked.

"Your latest commit decreased the number of unit tests!" Gary replied as if Chops had slashed the tires on his BMW.

Within Taskmaster, some objects that were periodically generated were given a unique ID from a pool. The pool was of limited size and required scanning to find a spare ID. Each time a value was needed, a search began where the last search ended. IDs returned to the pool as objects were destroyed would only be reused when the search wrapped back around to the start.

Chops had discovered a bug in the wrap-around logic that would inevitably produce a crash if Taskmaster ran long enough. They also found that if the number of objects created exceeded the size of the pool, this would trigger an infinite loop.

Rather than attempt to patch any of this, Chops had nuked the whole thing and replaced it with code that assigned each object a universally unique identifier (UUID) from a trusted library UUID generator within its constructor. Gone was the bad code, along with its associated unit tests.

Knowing they would probably only get in a handful of words, Chops wonderered how on earth to explain all this in a way that would appease their manager. "Well—"

"That number must NEVER go down!" Gary snapped.

"But—"

"This is non-negotiable! Roll it back and come up with something better!"

And so Chops had no choice but to remove their solution, put all the janky code back in place, and patch over it with kludge. Every comment left to future engineers contained a tone of apology.

Taskmaster became less stable. Time and expensive developer hours were wasted. Risk to internal and external customers increased. But Gary could rest assured, knowing that his favored metric never faltered on his watch.

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Polestar has revealed its new Grand Tourer flagship EV - the 5. It delivers up to an insane 884hp and can manage over 460 miles of range. But it costs around £100k, so it's an EV for the select few.

With around 97% guest occupancy throughout the year, Center Parcs employs around 9,000 workers - and some have revealed what goes on behind-the-scenes.

Fitness influencer Caroline Idiens, from Berkshire, England, has revealed how she's feeling more confident in her body at 53 than ever before in a new interview with Women's Health UK.

It comes days after making her surprise pregnancy announcement at the London premiere of Downton Abbey.

When Johnnie, the 8th Earl Spencer, died, serious questions were raised as to the legacies he left behind - both in his £200m will, and in other bequests.

Before Harry's four-day 'pseudo royal' tour this week, his friends were briefing the media that he hopes to reconcile with the House of Windsor. Yet one person is acting as a major stumbling block...

Gordon Ramsay has revealed the simple way to cook a perfect burger every time - as well as the very common ingredient he would never pair with his patty.

Labour was on the brink of 'civil war' last night as MPs scrambled to replace Angela Rayner as its deputy leader.

Pensions savers have until 10 November to take advantage of the new Sipp offer, which is open to investors who transfer their Sipp from another provider.

TSB customers are in with a chance to win one of five £10,000 prizes as the bank has launched a new 'dream fund' prize draw.

If you took out an Isa in April your three-month bonus will be long gone - so it's a good idea to check your rate and switch if you can. Compare providers and find out more about transferring.

A reporting party told authorities that the actor had blasted their daughter with a garden hose in front of his home in the Silverlake area of the City of Angels.

Prepare to take tests in stuff you already know how to do, just to keep you sharp

Using AI may cause some of your skills atrophy, and your employer therefore needs to take steps to keep you sharp.…

Jaydan Russell, 26, appeared before Chelmsford Crown Court on Friday for sentencing after he was charged with nine sexual offences.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: For decades, scientists believed Prochlorococcus, the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton on Earth, would thrive in a warmer world. But new research suggests the microscopic bacterium, which forms the foundation of the marine food web and helps regulate the planet's climate, will decline sharply as seas heat up. A study published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology found Prochlorococcus populations could shrink by as much as half in tropical oceans over the next 75 years if surface waters exceed about 82 degrees Fahrenheit (27.8 Celsius). Many tropical and subtropical sea surface temperatures are already trending above average and are projected to regularly surpass 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) over that same period. "These are keystone species -- very important ones," said Francois Ribalet, a research associate professor at the University of Washington's School of Oceanography and the study's lead author. "And when a keystone species decreases in abundance, it always has consequences on ecology and biodiversity. The food web is going to change." Prochlorococcus inhabit up to 75% of Earth's sunlit surface waters and produce about one-fifth of the planet's oxygen through photosynthesis. More crucially, Ribalet said, they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food at the base of the marine ecosystem. "In the tropical ocean, nearly half of the food is produced by Prochlorococcus," he said. "Hundreds of species rely on these guys." Though other forms of phytoplankton may move in and help compensate for the loss of oxygen and food, Ribalet cautioned they are not perfect substitutes. "Evolution has made this very specific interaction," he said. "Obviously, this is going to have an impact on this very unique system that has been established." The findings challenge decades of assumptions that Prochlorococcus would thrive as waters warmed. Those predictions, however, were based on limited data from lab cultures. For this study, Ribalet and his team tested water samples while traversing the Pacific over the course of a decade.

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