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Comment Not new, Google Timeline saved a life in 2016 (Score 1) 63

In 2016, in France, Google's geolocation history saved a biker's life:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.numerama.com%2Ftech%2F...

The biker had an accident, but the police was unable to find him (the geolocation provided by the phone company was too imprecise).

His family checked his Google Timeline ( https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fmaps%2Fti... ) and was able to get the correct position of the biker.

The moral of this story is that Google knows very precisely where you are when you use the phone's GPS.

Comment Hatha Yoga (Score 1) 172

What is called "Yoga" in the US is in fact "Hatha Yoga", as mentioned onto the wikipedia page:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Hatha Yoga's goal is to increase longevity and improve health, so it's no surprise that it works for back pain.

Personally, I practice yoga, but not hatha yoga, so it always bothers me when these two are mixed up.

Comment It's probably due to their methodology (Score 1) 162

Don't forget that Motorola use the Six Sigma approach:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

which is in opposition of the current trend of agility, where the focus is on delivering, while Six Sigma's focus is the process itself.

Unless they don't use Six Sigma on their phones...

Comment Re:Nine years of pair programming? (Score 4, Interesting) 186

This is nothing new.

The effort of every individual in a group of people has been measured by Ringelmann in 1914, for army's purposes.
Here is the original article: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/121...

And the results are (number of people => measured effort)
1 => 100%
2 => 93%
3 => 85%
4 => 77%
5 => 70%
6 => 63%
7 => 56%
8 => 49%

This is called "Ringelmann effect" or more recently "social loafing".
As you can see, 8 people produce the same amount of effort than 4 individuals.

Comment Re:Can anyone keep up all these bullshits? (Score 1) 166

I maintain that this 2 weeks is completely arbitrary, and leads to unregular velocity during the session.
You'll get most work at the beginning, and the effort disappears at the end of the session.

The worst thing is that some of the nice features get cut in so many parts that we can only implement the least costly ones.
This leaves the whole features unfinished and creates a lack of satisfaction.
Perhaps it works well for new teams, but for experienced teams, this is a serious problem.

Also, an experienced manager will know when to negotiate (which is what agile encourages) and when to stop negotiating (which is what agile discourages).

Comment Re:Can anyone keep up all these bullshits? (Score 1) 166

What agile does for the developer is codifies "I have 2 weeks to code this specific thing, go away and let me do it".

I wanted to agree with you, but you are clearly too much obsessed by Scrum !
Frankly, this "2 weeks-sprint" is probably one of the least agile techniques.

It's like saying: we are in the Titanic, we need 10 miles to turn right. Hey, there is an iceberg in front. No, we need 10 miles, so we'll take 10 miles !

Agile is here to force managers focus on their work, and let the developers focus on their work.
Forget daily scrums, forget sprints, just do it in the agile way: as it comes.
How can I balance between planning/cutting tasks and coding/testing, when software changes during its development ?
I can assure you that 2 weeks sessions will not solve your problem !

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