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The Agile Manifesto 20 years on: agility in software delivery is still a work in progress | ZDNet

We've had two decades to absorb the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. What have we learned, and what are we still learning? 'We are closer and more aware, but we are turning a tanker and it is slow and incremental.'
Source: zdnet.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

London police face backlash after dragging mourners from vigil for murdered woman

London police faced a backlash from the public on Sunday and an official inquiry into their actions after using heavy-handed tactics to break up an outdoor vigil for a woman whose suspected killer is a police officer.
Source: reuters.com

Gloves that give people with tremor a helping hand | Reuters Video

One of the word's largest electronics manufacturers has invested in a UK start-up making gloves with built-in spinning gyroscopes that help people overcome the sometimes debilitating tremors that can stop them doing some simple tasks.
Source: reut.rs

Why Active Learning Works - Training Industry

Experiential learning takes many forms, but one form has proven particularly potent: Active learning is more effective than explaining content.
Source: trainingindustry.com

How to poison the data that Big Tech uses to surveil you

Algorithms are meaningless without good data. The public can exploit that to demand change.
Source: technologyreview.com

Mars rover Perseverance takes first spin on surface of red planet

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab's picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday.
Source: reuters.com

Data-driven humanitarianism

An article from MIT Technology Review showing how the World Food Programme uses geospatial data that is developed and made 'open' to all by people within the areas being served. "It’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth, but its people are among the most vulnerable. Afghanistan’s snowy...
Source: technologyreview.com

First it was Agile software development, now Agile management is remaking the workplace | ZDNet

"The most effective managers have used the past 12 months to support new remote-working practices with Agile leadership styles. This is what two digital leaders have learnt from the experience - and here's how you can benefit."
Source: zdnet.com

How private equity squeezes cash from the dying U.S. coal industry

Private equity firms are proving there’s still plenty of profit in the U.S. coal industry despite a decade of falling demand for the fossil fuel. They are spending billions of dollars buying coal-fired plants on the cheap - and getting paid even when they are not providing...
Source: reuters.com

Human origins: 'Little Foot' fossil's big journey out of Africa

"How the priceless skull of an ancient ancestor was brought to the UK from South Africa for study."
Source: bbc.com

The Namib Desert bears a scar from a meteorite impact.

"In the vastness of one of the world’s oldest deserts lies a relatively recent geologic feature: the Roter Kamm crater (“red comb” or “red crest/ridge” in German). An astronaut onboard the International Space Station photographed the crater while orbiting over the Namib Desert. It is approximately...
Source: nasa.gov

'How many dead bodies?' asked Myanmar protester killed on bloodiest day

Shocking news from Myanmar reported by Reuters. "The day before he was killed, internet network engineer Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing had posted on Facebook about the increasingly violent military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Myanmar." "“#How_Many_Dead_Bodies_UN_Need_To_Take_Action,” he wrote,...
Source: reuters.com

Covid: Bedfordshire counselling service sees rise in caseload

Demand for help from a youth counselling service will "continue to rise" during the pandemic.
Source: bbc.com

Cornish couple feel 'discriminated against' over wedding language

"Steph Norman and Aaron Willoughby cannot have their ceremony entirely in Cornish." Apparently they could conduct it English obviously but also in Welsh (which is close to Cornish) but it highlights the lack of legal formality to the Cornish language.
Source: bbc.com

Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii

When in Rome ... or Pompeii. "Eat like a first-century Roman, using recent archaeological discoveries as your guide." "In consideration of some of this evidence, if we were to hypothesize that what we’ve read in the Latin literary record about “boiled meat,” “broth and chunks of meat,” and...
Source: atlasobscura.com

Eeek! or E484K mutation and the coronavirus pandemic

Rupert Beale · Eeek! · LRB 19 February 2021: "Uncontrolled spread – as we knew it would – led to an even greater wave of infections, hospitalisations and deaths than last spring. Children were sent to school for one day before the necessary ‘lockdown’ was reimposed. The impulse to keep schools...
Source: lrb.co.uk

Dreadful user experience can be expensive.

"Citibank just got a $500 million lesson in the importance of UI design: Citibank was trying to make $7.8M in interest payments. It sent $900M instead." The screenshot is from court records where the judge ruled against Citibank who had wanted to get their money back. The lesson is to always include...
Source: arstechnica.com

A Convolutional Neural Network architecture for the recognition of cutaneous manifestations of COVID-19

To our best knowledge, this is the first machine learning-based study for automated detection of COVID-19 based on skin images and may provide a useful decision support tool for physicians to optimize contact-free COVID-19 triage, differential diagnosis of skin lesions and patient care. Mathur J, Chouhan...
Source: nih.gov

Preventing critical failure

Can routinely collected data be repurposed to predict avoidable patient harm? A quantitative descriptive study Objectives To determine whether sharing of routinely collected health service performance data could have predicted a critical safety failure at an Australian maternity service. Design Observational...
Source: bmj.com