A first Ferrari podium for Hamilton, but Mercedes’ strong start to the season has seen his chances dip.

Judged by both fans and an expert panel, the Crypto.com Overtake of the Month Award celebrates the drivers that dare to perform the most challenging and courageous overtake manoeuvres during a race.

F1 ACADEMY Champion Doriane Pin is Tom Clarkson’s guest on this week’s Beyond The Grid podcast.

These days, we’re all living in a constant state of crisis, foisted upon us by a world where those who are meant to keep things stable are the least stable factors in our lives. The chaos and stress of that reality makes it difficult to make any plans, let alone to make decisions if you have responsibilities for a team or organization that you’re meant to be leading. It’s easy to imagine there’s nothing we can do, or to feel hopeless. But a resource that just arrived served as a timely reminder for me that a crisis doesn’t have to be paralyzing, and we don’t have to feel overwhelmed when trying to plan how we’ll respond as leaders.

The topic of crisis has been on my mind again as I’ve been looking at the work of some friends who are the most fluent experts on the topic of crisis that I know, prompted by the release of Marina Nitze, Mikey Dickerson and Matthew Weaver's new book, Crisis Engineering.

There’s nothing more valuable than people who can step in during a moment of crisis and provide clarity, not just on how to make it through that moment, but how to seize that opportunity to actually make better things possible. A few years ago, at some of the most stressful and harrowing moments I’ve had as a leader in my business career, I got to connect with a remarkable team who ran towards the crisis that our organization was in, and helped our team get through that moment and not just persevere, but to thrive. I thought a bit about the famous Mr. Rogers line about “look for the helpers”, and Matthew, Marina, and Mikey's team at their company Layer Aleph really were the equivalent of the helpers when it comes to the place where where technology meets the real world.

I’d first heard legend of their way of working in the days and weeks after the notoriously rough launch of Healthcare.gov (This was back when the federal government aspired to competency, inability to deliver was considered a scandal, and media would accurately describe something that didn’t function as a failure.) A small, scrappy, multifunctional team had been able to transform the culture of this hidebound segment of the federal government, and deliver a set of services that are saving American lives to this day. That story is detailed well in the book, but at the time, the conventional wisdom was that this was a catastrophe so impossibly complex, in a bureaucracy so hopelessly broken, that nobody could possibly fix it. And then they did. (With the help of a lot of brilliant and motivated colleagues.)

As it turns out, this was just one of many such efforts that the team would be a part of, and helped define the overall approach that they, and their collaborators, would take in addressing these highly public crises. There are so many situations where a combination of cultural and technical challenges conspire to cause extremely visible failures or disruptions that seem intractable. But over time, a set of practices and principles emerged from their work that took the response out of the realm of superstition and guesswork and into something that was almost a science. These techniques work when systems are crashing, when machines get hacked, when data are leaked, when business models are crumbling, when leadership is in disarray, when customers are angry, when users are leaving, when competitors are attacking, when funders are fleeing. In short, when the crisis is at your door.

Putting it into practice

It was years after their evolution from those early post-Healthcare.gov days into a mature practice that I reconnected with the Layer Aleph team. By then, I was running a company, and a team, that was under an extreme amount of stress, and in a situation that could easily have amounted to an existential crisis. They were able to engage with conviction and compassion, but importantly, they weren’t making it up as they went along. I think this is an idea that’s important to understand in the current moment, too — there is such a thing as expertise. We do not have to settle for incompetence and cronyism. Good people of good character with real credentials and relevant experience can bring it to bear on even the most challenging situations, and when they do, even the most intractable problems are solvable.

And now, that expertise is something they’ve captured and shared.

I don’t often unabashedly endorse books about business and technology; too often I find them to be based on thin premises, padded out with cliches. But what the team here have done with their new book Crisis Engineering is something special — they documented their own experiences of turning real crises into a chance to design new, resilient systems.

Even better, they talk about how other organizations can do the same thing. The reason that I can testify that it works is because I have seen it, and I’ve seen my own team benefit from their work. In fact, I think it was during the conversations after the dust had settled from some of that work that the very phrase “crisis engineering” first emerged as a description of this way of thinking about complex problems. I’m thrilled that it’s become a useful shorthand for naming and discussing this powerful and unique way of tackling some of the most intimidating situations that companies or organizations might take on. It’s built confidence for myself, and my whole leadership team from that era, that we’ll be ready when the next challenge arrives. With apologies to Rihanna, I do want people to text me in a crisis.

The more confidence we can build in our teams that a crisis is an ordinary event that we can plan for, the more ready they will be for that moment when it arrives. That’s why I can’t recommend the book highly enough. Set aside some time to read it, and to make notes on how you might put it into practice when crisis inevitably comes to visit. You’ll be lucky to have had this resource before you need it.

You can read more about the book on their site. (And, as always, nothing I post on my site is sponsored content — I’m enthusiastically endorsing this book because I believe in what these folks have written and genuinely believe it’s worth your time to read if you lead an organization or team.)

Valve has released a native Steam Link beta for Apple Vision Pro, letting users stream their existing Steam games onto a large virtual screen in visionOS. It supports up to 4K resolution and will let you dynamically adjust the curve of the display. The Mac Observer reports: Steam Link does not support VR titles in this beta, and Valve clearly states that the app is limited to 2D game streaming, but this still opens up a large library of games that users can play on a massive virtual screen inside Vision Pro.

At the same time, Vision Pro already handles 2D media very well, and this update builds on that strength by turning the headset into a portable gaming display that connects directly to your existing setup without needing extra hardware.

You can join the Steam Link beta through TestFlight right now, and this early release shows how Apple Vision Pro continues to expand beyond media into more practical and everyday use cases like gaming.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple earned the lowest grades in a report on laptop and smartphone repairability released today by the consumer advocacy group Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. The report, which looks at how easy devices are to disassemble and how easy it is to find repairability information, gave Apple a C-minus in laptop repairability and a D-minus in cell phone repairability. For its "Failing the Fix (2026): Grading laptop and cell phone companies on the fixability of their products" report, PIRG analyzed the 10 newest laptops and phones that were available via manufacturers' French website in January. [...] Apple leads the list of laptop repairability losers, largely due to it having low disassembly scores. Apple, along with Dell and Samsung, also lost a full point for being members of TechNet and the CTA. Lenovo had the second-worst grade with a C-minus. Like Apple, Lenovo had low disassembly scores.

It also lost 0.5 points for failing to properly post PDFs explaining the French repair scores for some of its newest laptops sold in the region, as required in France. This is especially noteworthy because Lenovo got an F in last year's report for missing this information on at least 12 laptops. At the time, Lenovo director of communications David Hamilton provided a statement to Ars saying that the missing information was "due to a backend web compatibility issue that temporarily prevented the display of repairability scores on our Lenovo France website" that was "widely resolved." However, it appears that over a year later, Lenovo still isn't providing sufficient information to meet France's requirements

"While Lenovo has improved somewhat with their compliance with French consumer law by providing more repair score PDFs on their website, we urge the company to resolve this multi-year issue," this year's report says. PIRG's report concluded that "laptops are pretty stagnant in terms of repairability" across many of the eight most popular laptop brands in the US. However, Proctor noted to Ars that consumers' access to parts, tools, and information that vendors have has improved, but improvements around ease of disassembly "take longer to realize." He also praised vendors' efforts to release more repairable designs, such as Apple's MacBook Neo. For its repairability index, PIRG weighed physical ease of disassembly most heavily, while also considering the availability of repair documentation, spare parts, spare-parts affordability, and other product-specific criteria. It then adjusted company grades by deducting points for membership in trade groups that oppose right-to-repair laws and adding small bonuses for manufacturers that supported right-to-repair legislation.

Acer stood out as the only laptop vendor that avoided the 0.5-point trade-group penalty, since it was not listed as a member of TechNet or the Consumer Technology Association.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Drogisterijketens Kruidvat en Trekpleister willen consumenten meer inzicht geven in de milieu-impact van hun producten. Duizend huismerkartikelen krijgen daarvoor een score op basis van tientallen indicatoren. Dat leidt soms tot opmerkelijke resultaten.

Iran wil tol heffen in cryptovaluta op schepen die tijdens het staakt-het-vuren door de Straat van Hormuz willen varen.

Diederik Samsom is woensdag voorgedragen als informateur in Rotterdam. In die rol moet de voormalig partijleider van de PvdA onderhandelingen begeleiden tussen GroenLinks-PvdA, D66, VVD en Denk. Die partijen moeten proberen om samen de nieuwe Rotterdamse coalitie te vormen.

Op de N209 in Bergschenhoek zijn twee auto's woensdagmiddag op elkaar gebotst. Vooral de achterste auto liep daarbij flink wat schade op. Er hoefde niemand naar het ziekenhuis.

Het was een populaire plek om in Spijkenisse af te spreken. Zeker op zonnige dagen was een afspraak bij Kerels aan de Maas altijd een feest, want na de gezelligheid kon je ook nog een wandeling langs de Oude Maas maken. Die tijden zijn voorbij: de horecagelegenheid is failliet.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Fabio Bruna posted a photo:

Perfecte spot voor een goed boek. Houlgate, Calvados, Frankrijk.

Fabio Bruna posted a photo:

Wonen aan de kust. Houlgate, Calvados, Frankrijk.

Sample testing found incorrect payments and delays after college system adopted new HR platform

A Workday-based HR platform rollout at Minnesota State universities and colleges likely left more than a thousand faculty and staff with payroll errors.…

MATHBAC program wants better machine-to-machine chatter for scientific discovery

To supercharge agents' ability to make scientific discoveries, DARPA is looking to improve cross-bot collaboration by developing a "science of AI communication" that will help the models work together to come up with better ideas. …

EINDHOVEN (ANP) - Ondanks het vuurwerkverbod dat gold rond de huldiging van PSV in Eindhoven hebben dinsdag 93 mensen brandwonden opgelopen door fakkels die werden afgestoken. Dit meldt de gemeente woensdag. Volgens de gemeente gaat het om (lichte) eerstegraads brandwonden. Niemand hoefde naar het ziekenhuis.

ZAANDAM (ANP) - De top van Ahold Delhaize heeft vanaf dit jaar zicht op hogere beloningen. Een grote meerderheid van de aandeelhouders van het moederbedrijf van Albert Heijn, Etos, Gall & Gall en bol stemde woensdag tijdens de jaarlijkse aandeelhoudersvergadering in met het voorgestelde nieuwe beloningsbeleid voor topbestuurders.

Bijna 91 procent van de aandeelhouders stemde in met het nieuwe beloningsbeleid. De aanpassingen zijn volgens Ahold Delhaize nodig vanwege internationalisering en om topmanagers uit de sector en daarbuiten aan te trekken en te behouden nu de arbeidsmarkt volgens het bedrijf steeds competitiever wordt. Zo wordt de jaarlijkse kortetermijnbonus voor de bestuursvoorzitter verhoogd naar 1,5 keer het basissalaris in contanten als de gestelde doelen worden gehaald. De bonus kan worden verdubbeld als de prestaties die doelen ver overtreffen.

De veranderingen gelden met terugwerkende kracht vanaf 1 januari 2026.

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