COVID-19: Vaccine News

SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological T cell memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron - 

Highlights

•T cells of vaccinees recognize SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron

•RBD memory B cells’ recognition of Omicron is reduced

•A median of 11 CD4 and 10 CD8 spike epitopes are recognized in vaccinees

•Average preservation > 80% for Omicron at the epitope level

Please see here:

 SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induces immunological T cell memory able to cross-recognize variants from Alpha to Omicron: Cell

Robot Painting

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/mind-blowing-ai-da-becomes-first-robot-to-paint-like-an-artist

‘Mind-blowing’: Ai-Da becomes first robot to paint like an artist | Robots | The Guardian AI algorithms prompt robot to interrogate, select, and decision-make to create a painting Devised in Oxford by Aidan Meller, Ai-Da was created over two years by a team of programmers, roboticists ... www.theguardian.com

News of Charging Stations Hacking

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-61006816

Isle of Wight: Council's electric vehicle chargers hacked to show porn site - BBC News Isle of Wight Council said staff were visiting the charge points to cover up the "inappropriate" website showing on the screen Electric vehicle charging points in a council's car parks have been ... www.bbc.co.uk

Double Eagle - Burnt City, Iran

 

Processing Sketchbook & Language

Please take a look at Welcome to Processing! / Processing.org - a flexible software sketchbook and an object-oriented language (with support for inheritance) for learning how to code within the context of the visual arts.

A useful book with step-by-step tutorials from elementary operations to genetic algorithms and neural nets is this: The Nature of Code

The significance of this environment is that it is for artists - it is geared towards the development of visual images. It is not a general purpose environment for solving generic dry and constipating problems.

News of AI - Robot Dogs

From Grauniad of the UK

It will be even better when we have robot policemen riding robot police horses patrolling the streets of our cities. Now, that's going to make things so much better. 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/16/robot-dogs-us-mexico-border-surveillance-technology

Dystopian robot dogs are the latest in a long history of US-Mexico border surveillance | US-Mexico border | The Guardian The border has long been a testing ground for a range of emerging surveillance and policing technologies, which activists have argued make the space even more dangerous to migrants, all in the ... www.theguardian.com

News of Omicron & Vaccination - the Science

From the Cell Magazine, February 3, 2022

Omicron’s message on vaccines: Boosting begets breadth: Cell

Details here: mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine boosters induce neutralizing immunity against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant: Cell

News of Flying Car

 Flying car is now approaved:

This Flying Car Is Now Officially Approved to Take to the Skies (msn.com)

GIZMAG: Sweat-analyzing Smartwatch

"I get other people to sweat on my behalf: members of staff, that kind of thing... So, you could say I delegate the sweating to those who are good at it. Some people are, somehow, born with an ability to sweat for it." 

I must say, it wouldn't be good for The Duke of York, A.K.A. Randy Andy. The Duke would probably counter that he would have strictly no use for the smartwatch in question, since he does not sweat - and has never sweated. 

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/sweat-cortisol-smartwatch-stress/

Sweat-analyzing smartwatch could warn wearers of elevated stress It's important for people with conditions such as depression and anxiety to know when they're becoming stressed, so they can initiate coping strategies. An experimental new smartwatch could ... newatlas.com

News of AI - Disappearing Jobs

From the City AM (UK)

https://www.cityam.com/exclusive-the-jobs-sectors-and-countries-most-at-risk-of-automation-and-robotics/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Midday+newsletter+Nov+2020

Mamba: A Package Manager for Python

If you use conda to manage your packages, you might be interested in switching to mamba (Welcome to Mamba’s documentation! — documentation). It can be installed by running: conda install mamba -y

I noticed that the times that take to create an environment are reduced a lot just by changing to mamba. Also helped me reducing my TFS pipeline Docker build to go from over 20 minutes to approximately 4 minutes.

More discussion here:

Conda or Mamba for production? | EPI2ME Labs Blog

News of Alexa: Attempted Murder

 

Alexa tells 10-year-old girl to touch live plug with penny - BBC News

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it "challenged" a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug. The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a ...

Humor: Anti-vaxxers and Anti-maskers

 

How Probable Is?

 

News of the Flying Car

A prototype flying car has completed a 35-minute flight between international airports in Nitra and Bratislava, Slovakia. The hybrid car-aircraft, AirCar, is equipped with a BMW engine and runs on regular petrol-pump fuel.

 

Its creator, Prof Stefan Klein, said it could fly about 1,000km (600 miles), at a height of 8,200ft (2,500m), and had clocked up 40 hours in the air so far. It takes two minutes and 15 seconds to transform from car into aircraft.

AI Meets Art

 Rembrandt's Huge 'Night Watch' Gets Bigger Thanks To AI : NPR

AI in the News

 AI in the News:

7 weird and wonderful applications of artificial intelligence - CityAM : CityAM

Free eBook: Category Theory for Programmers

 https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf

French AI Spy

From the Guardian, U.K.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/26/missing-from-desk-ai-webcam-raises-remote-surveillance-concerns  

On Requirements Elicitation

1. Be not an order-taker - either as Business Analyst or as Product Owner; taking that Wish-list of features to the Dev Team; your role is to Elicit Requirements and not writing them down.
2. Engage the end-users in a polite – and at times firm -conversation about where they are going, where they expect to be, and if those goals and desires are reachable or desirable.  Custom software-development is very very expensive and not for the faint of heart.
3. We develop software to Automate human tasks or to help human beings make decisions.  Start by asking the following questions:
1. “What data elements are needed to accomplish the goal of this system?”
2. “What other data elements could be added to delight and please the end-users?”
3. “What data is needed to reduce the cognitive load on the end-users when using this system”?
4. “Where can I find the data for this system?”
4. As Product Owner, you own the product (even if you are working for IT) – meditate on a thousand and one ways that you could expand and develop the system – all the time.
5. BAs, Product Owners, End-users are on a joint voyage of discovery – to create something new that had not existed before – give it the respect that such an undertaking deserves.
6. In every meeting with the end-users, present a very specific and narrow agenda.  This should be in the body of the Meeting Request.  Supply a subject matter as well for the meeting.
7. Often, the customers (end-users) are looking to us in IT to suggest technological solutions – they do not know what is available.  We should have the ability to give them options and let them chose.  For example, sometimes, a COTS package – that is already licensed and deployed – may satisfy the needs of the end-users in contradistinction to a ton of custom-code with the latest IT buzzwords, languages, and frameworks..
8. Like the space program – always have at least two members of the Dev team present in the requirements sessions, lest something be lost.
9. After each and every requirements session, meet with the Dev Team to go over what has been discussed and revise the Product Road Map, the Software Specifications, and the Software Architecture and BoM - if needed.

I think when meeting with the end-users, we are defining and fleshing out Business Use Cases (Business User Stories).  I think it would be a good idea to meet separately with the Dev Team and flesh out the Technical User Stories.

The Product Owner, as end-users community’s proxy, owns the business requirements. 

Since we do not have the role of a Requirements Engineer within development teams, it follows that the entire team owns the technical requirements. 

Which means, in practice, that Dev Team members ought to actively participate – when warranted – in the discussions with the end-users as well as with the product owner. 

The Dev Team owns three things: Software Architecture and changes thereto, Software Specifications (Technical User Stories), and the BoM – in my opinion.