The family with no fingerprints – BBC News

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The rare condition likely afflicting the Sarker family is called Adermatoglyphia. It first became widely known in 2007 when Peter Itin, a Swiss dermatologist, was contacted by a woman in the country in her late twenties who was having trouble entering the US. Her face matched the photograph on her passport, but customs officers were not able to record any fingerprints. Because she didn’t have any.
Upon examination, Professor Itin found the woman and eight members of her family had the same strange condition – flat finger pads and a reduced number of sweat glands in the hands. Working with another dermatologist, Eli Sprecher, and graduate student Janna Nousbeck, Professor Itin looked at the DNA of 16 members of the family – seven with fingerprints and nine without.
“Isolated cases are very rare, and no more than a few families are documented,” Prof Itin told the BBC.
In 2011, the team homed in on one gene, SMARCAD1, which was mutated in the nine printless family members, identifying it as the cause of the rare disease. Virtually nothing was known about the gene at the time. The mutation appeared to cause no other ill-health effects apart from the effects on the hands.

From The family with no fingerprints – BBC News:

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Credit card payments system outage hits US businesses

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Fiserv, one of the leading payments providers in the US, told Insider, “A widespread internet service provider outage has impacted multiple businesses today.” Ann Cave, a company spokesperson, added in an email: “Some Fiserv services that rely on internet connectivity were interrupted. The majority have been restored and we are fully focused on restoring the remainder.” Fiserv declined to name its internet service provider.

Customers on Twitter reported outages at Ikea, Forever 21, McDonald’s, and Popeyes, as well as at local places like a car wash and the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. Representatives from the businesses weren’t immediately available for comment on Friday.

Chick-fil-A’s payment machines weren’t working earlier in the day, leading it to give out free meals. Miami International Airport put out a statement telling customers about a countywide outage with credit-card machines inside taxis.

From Credit card payments system outage hits US businesses:

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UK cash payments could be nearly eliminated by 2026 | E&T Magazine

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‘The Bank of England will issue e-pounds within two years as cash dies out’
John Howells, boss of Link, Britain’s cash network, thinks central banks will launch a rival to Bitcoin

From ‘The Bank of England will issue e-pounds within two years as cash dies out’:

Now, this isn’t just some

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While making up just over 50 per cent of payments in the year 2000, this has declined by around 10 per cent every five years to a low of just 12.4 per cent in 2020. If the trend continues, the study estimates that just 0.5 per cent of payments will be made with cash in 2026.

From UK cash payments could be nearly eliminated by 2026 | E&T Magazine:

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According to the research, cash payments for in-store purchases are forecast to slump from 8.3 per cent in 2020 to just 2.1 per cent in 2024, making Australia the fourth most cash averse country behind Sweden (0.4 per cent), Denmark (0.8 per cent) and Hong Kong (1.6 per cent).

From Australia on track to be almost cashless by 2024 as digital payments soar – Tech Guide:

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Some of the most deprived areas, where people are more likely to depend on cash, have seen a significant shift from free-to-use dispensers to machines that generally charge up to £2 per withdrawal in recent years, Which? found.

From Free-to-use ATMs vanishing at alarming rate, says Which?:

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The response should not be, as I wrote in Forbes last year, to continue to use cash despite the expense, inefficiency and inconvenience, but to find effective digital alternatives for those trapped in a cash economy.

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The idea that much of today’s cash use will shift to digital tokens is neither faddish nor outlandish, as long as you don’t start equating the future of money with Bitcoin.

From Bitcoin’s Future May Be Dwarfed by Interoperable Central Bank Digital Currencies – Bloomberg.

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Are You Doing the SWOT Analysis Backwards?

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Then, once you complete your inventory, you can actually use the factors to conduct a true analysis that can result in strategic recommendations for planning. Specifically, here’s how we recommend proceeding.

First, gather an inventory of relevant environmental conditions — the threats and opportunities. At this stage, don’t worry about whether these are positive or negative. Remember, we don’t want to take shortcuts. There are existing tools designed for organizing an environmental scan, such as the PEST, PESTEL, and STEEP, but don’t feel limited to these tools. If you have other preferred tools to help you organize the external factors, you can use them.

Next, explore internal strengths and weaknesses. Here, too, ignore whether they are potentially positive or negative. Your first job is to inventory the attributes. The relative positivity or negativity of a factor included in the inventory may again be a function of the external environment. At this early stage of the analysis, it is more important that the factors are included than how they’re categorized beyond simply being external or internal. Don’t settle for one- or two-word descriptors like “price” or “technology.” Explicitly spell out the situation with a detailed phrase or a sentence.

Generate recommendations with a simple sentence. With your external and internal inventories in hand, generating recommendations is now much easier. Simply consider each external factor’s relationship to each internal factor. To help, you might want to complete this sentence:

Given the condition of [external factor], our ability to [internal factor] leads to our recommendation that we [recommendation].

You may find that some external factors will not readily apply to certain internal factors, which means they might not lead to a recommendation. Yet, given enough time or with a creative group working on this analysis, you might develop options that you would not expect to reach, based on combinations of external factors and internal factors.

From Are You Doing the SWOT Analysis Backwards?:

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‘The Bank of England will issue e-pounds within two years as cash dies out’

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‘The Bank of England will issue e-pounds within two years as cash dies out’
John Howells, boss of Link, Britain’s cash network, thinks central banks will launch a rival to Bitcoin

From ‘The Bank of England will issue e-pounds within two years as cash dies out’:

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How Digital Trust Varies Around the World

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We found that a secure digital environment and highly trusting attitudes were associated with digital evolution and stability, as exemplified by countries such as Denmark, Germany, Austria, and Sweden.
On the other hand, economies with high digital momentum tended to have less-secure digital environments, and their users often had greater privacy concerns. This means that as economies ramp up their digital momentum, it is especially important for government and business leaders to take steps to address privacy and security issues that may impact users.

From How Digital Trust Varies Around the World:

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Antifragile

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It’s an admittedly awkward word, but that’s because it is easiest to understand first what it does not describe. It refers to something that is unbreakable, yes, but not because it is impervious to assault. Something that is antifragile, Taleb explains, actually grows and flourishes because it is stressed and then allowed to order itself in response. Antifragility allows an entity not merely to withstand all the black swans coming its way but to absorb their forceful volatility and emerge only stronger.

From Nassim Taleb’s Cure for Fragility:

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