Huge ancient city found in the Amazon
The city was built 2,500 years ago but may have been abandoned after a volcanic eruption.
Source: bbc.com
The first results from the world’s biggest basic income experiment
Money always helps, but for the very poor, one lump sum can last a long time.
Source: vox.com
20mph cuts air and noise pollution to prevent blighted lives
We quite simply campaign for 20mph to become the default speed limit on residential and urban streets.
Source: 20splenty.org
Rogers network resuming after major outage hits millions of Canadians
Rogers Telecommunications said its network was beginning to recover late on Friday after a 19-hourservice outage at one of Canada's biggest telecom operators shut banking, transport and government access for millions, drawing outrage from customers and adding to criticism over its industry dominance.
Source: reuters.com
Meet the dazzling flying machines of the future
When you hear the word "drone," you probably think of something either very useful or very scary. But could they have aesthetic value? Autonomous systems expert Raffaello D'Andrea develops flying machines, and his latest projects are pushing the boundaries of autonomous flight -- from a flying wing that...
Source: ted.com
Internet user classification
Grampound it seems is classified as 'e-Rational Utilitarian' ... but who is shouting out for more local facilities and better internet infrastructure? Checks notes ... methodological individualist and political liberals with social stratification (i.e. class, status distinctions) playing a relatively...
Source: cdrc.ac.uk
U.S. accuses couple of laundering $4.5 bln in bitcoin tied to 2016 hack
The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it has unraveled its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft, seizing a record-shattering $3.6 billion in bitcoin tied to the 2016 hack of digital currency exchange Bitfinex and arresting a husband-and-wife team on money laundering charges.
Source: reuters.com
Omicron-variant border bans ignore the evidence, say scientists Mallapaty, Smriti. Nature 2021.
Researchers say travel restrictions in response to the newly detected coronavirus variant come too late and could even slow studies of Omicron. Researchers say travel restrictions in response to the newly detected coronavirus variant come too late and could even slow studies of Omicron.
Source: nature.com
The Impact of Mask Distribution and Promotion on Mask Uptake and COVID-19 in Bangladesh
A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that face masks can protect against COVID-19. There is, however, limited rigorous evidence on the extent to which mask-wearing is effective in reducing COVID-19 in a real-life situation with imperfect and inconsistent mask use. In Bangladesh, researchers...
Source: poverty-action.org
New Delta strain believed to have emerged among 53,000 revellers at Boardmasters festival
Almost 5,000 infections have been linked to the Boardmasters festival in Cornwall, and with half a million music lovers at even larger events over the Bank Holiday, officials fear revellers are being hit by a new strain of the Delta variant
Source: inews.co.uk
This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban – MIT Technology Review
Source: technologyreview.com
Turkey's plastics ban: Where does the UK send its waste now?
Turkey is due to ban most plastic waste sent from the UK, so tonnes of packaging will need a new home.
Source: bbc.com
How Beijing humbled Britain's mighty HSBC
The bank got in trouble over a high-stakes U.S.-China legal clash. In the past two years, Chinese state-owned firms have ended or cut back business with HSBC.
Source: reuters.com
Facebook faces prospect of 'devastating' data transfer ban after Irish ruling
Ireland's data regulator can resume a probe that may trigger a ban on Facebook's transatlantic data transfers, the High Court ruled on Friday, raising the prospect of a stoppage that the company warns would have a devastating impact on its business.
Source: reuters.com
Bank of England predicts rebound in the economy
"The Bank of England said Britain's economy would grow by the most since World War Two this year and slowed the pace of its trillion dollar bond-purchasing programme, but stressed it was not reversing its stimulus." Strong indications finally of a bounce back in the economy highlight the devastating...
Source: reuters.com
APOD: 2021 April 18 - Rainbow Airglow over the Azores
"A spectacular sky is visible through this banded airglow, with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy running up the image center, and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, visible near the top left."
Source: nasa.gov
Using GPT-2 to generate Tweets
Last summer I blogged about using a Deep Neural Network to generate tweets but only used 3200 of my tweets. Since then I've used Twitter's archive mechanism to retrieve ALL my tweets (just over 30,000) to train a network. Not any old network - the GPT-2 model from OpenAI. This 'finetuning' of an existing...
Tiny Town, Big Decision: What Are We Willing to Pay to Fight the Rising Sea?
On the Outer Banks, homeowners in Avon are confronting a tax increase of almost 50 percent to protect their homes, the only road into town, and perhaps the community’s very existence.
Source: nytimes.com
Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete & ending the new nuclear arms race
"COVID-19 has provided a vivid reminder of the power of biological threats. But the threat doesn’t come from natural sources alone. Weaponized contagious diseases — which were abandoned by the United States, but developed in large numbers by the Soviet Union, right up until its collapse — have...
Source: 80000hours.org
The bankers are bluffing, don’t scrap the bonus cap
There's no shortage of people wanting to be senior bankers. Luke Hildyard writes for Left Foot Forward
Source: highpaycentre.org
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