To stay up to date you can also follow on Mastodon.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Early computers

Mailüfterl is a nickname for the Austrian Binär dezimaler Volltransistor-Rechenautomat (binary-decimal fully transistorized computing automaton), an early transistorized computer. Other early transistorized computers included TRADIC, Harwell CADET and TX-0.

Mailüfterl was built from May 1956 to May 1958 at the Vienna University of Technology by Heinz Zemanek.

Heinz Zemanek had come to an agreement with Konrad Zuse, whose company Zuse KG would finance the work of Rudolf Bodo, who helped build the Mailüfterl, also that all circuit diagrams of the Z22 were supplied to Bodo and Zemanek, and that after the Mailüfterl project Bodo should work for the Zuse KG to help build the transistorized Z23.

The first program, computation of the prime 5,073,548,261, was executed in May 1958. Completion of the software continued until 1961. The nickname was coined by Zemanek: "Even if it cannot match the rapid calculation speed of American models called 'Whirlwind' or 'Typhoon', it will be enough for a 'Wiener Mailüfterl'" (Viennese May breeze).

The computer has 3,000 transistors, 5,000 diodes, 1,000 assembly platelets, 100,000 solder joints, 15,000 resistors, 5,000 capacitors and about 20,000 metres (66,000 ft) of wire. It is 4 meters (13 ft) wide, 2.5 meters (8.2 ft) high, and 50 centimeters (20 in) deep. The machine was comparable in calculating power to what were then considered small vacuum-tube computers. Calculations and representation of values worked using the BCD system.

Zemanek later said about his project that it was a "semi-illegal" undertaking of an assistant professor, which he and a group of students realized without official authorization, and hence without financial support, from the university. In 1954 he traveled to Philips in the Netherlands, where he asked for a donation in kind. Transistors, invented seven years before and just beginning to be available commercially, were very difficult to obtain in quantity at any price, but Zemanek received a commitment for 1,000 rather slow hearing-aid transistors, and Philips finally shipped a total of 4,000 high-quality transistors to the Austrians.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Military history/Military science, technology, and theory 🔗 Military history/Weaponry 🔗 Physics 🔗 Chemistry

FOGBANK is a code name given to a material used in nuclear weapons such as the W76, W78 and W80.

FOGBANK's precise nature is classified; in the words of former Oak Ridge general manager Dennis Ruddy, "The material is classified. Its composition is classified. Its use in the weapon is classified, and the process itself is classified." Department of Energy Nuclear Explosive Safety documents simply describe it as a material "used in nuclear weapons and nuclear explosives" along with lithium hydride (LiH) and lithium deuteride (LiD), beryllium (Be), uranium hydride (UH₃), and plutonium hydride.

However National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Tom D'Agostino disclosed the role of FOGBANK in the weapon: "There's another material in the—it's called interstage material, also known as fog bank", and arms experts believe that FOGBANK is an aerogel material which acts as an interstage material in a nuclear warhead; i.e., a material designed to become a superheated plasma following the detonation of the weapon's fission stage, the plasma then triggering the fusion-stage detonation.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Occupational Safety and Health 🔗 Brazil 🔗 Brazil/History of Brazil 🔗 Science Policy

The Goiânia accident [ɡojˈjɐniɐ] was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, after a forgotten radiotherapy source was taken from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 of them were found to have been contaminated.

In the cleanup operation, topsoil had to be removed from several sites, and several hundred houses were demolished. All the objects from within those houses, including personal possessions, were seized and incinerated. Time magazine has identified the accident as one of the world's "worst nuclear disasters" and the International Atomic Energy Agency called it "one of the world's worst radiological incidents".

🔗 History 🔗 Germany 🔗 Greece 🔗 Austria 🔗 Netherlands 🔗 Christianity 🔗 European history 🔗 Greece/Byzantine world 🔗 Christianity/Catholicism 🔗 Former countries 🔗 Czech Republic 🔗 Frisia 🔗 Former countries/Holy Roman Empire 🔗 Silesia 🔗 Christianity/Lutheranism 🔗 Christianity/Reformed Christianity

The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806, when the last Holy Roman Emperor, Francis II of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, abdicated his title and released all Imperial states and officials from their oaths and obligations to the empire. Since the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire had been recognized by Western Europeans as the legitimate continuation of the ancient Roman Empire due to its emperors having been proclaimed as Roman emperors by the papacy. Through this Roman legacy, the Holy Roman Emperors claimed to be universal monarchs whose jurisdiction extended beyond their empire's formal borders to all of Christian Europe and beyond. The decline of the Holy Roman Empire was a long and drawn-out process lasting centuries. The formation of the first modern sovereign territorial states in the 16th and 17th centuries, which brought with it the idea that jurisdiction corresponded to actual territory governed, threatened the ostensibly universal nature of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire by the time of the 18th century was widely regarded by contemporaries, both inside and outside the empire, as a highly "irregular" monarchy and "sick," having an "unusual" form of government. The empire lacked both a central standing army and a central treasury and its monarchs, formally elective rather than hereditary, could not exercise effective central control. Even then, most contemporaries believed that the empire could be revived and modernized. For example, the Reichstag passed the Imperial Recess as late as 1803.

The Holy Roman Empire finally began its true terminal decline during and after its involvement in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Although the empire defended itself quite well initially, war with France and Napoleon proved catastrophic. In 1804, Napoleon proclaimed himself as the Emperor of the French, which Francis II responded to by proclaiming himself the Emperor of Austria, in addition to already being the Holy Roman Emperor, an attempt at maintaining parity between France and Austria while also illustrating that the Holy Roman title outranked them both. Austria's defeat at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805 and the secession of a large number of Francis II's German vassals in July 1806 to form the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite state, effectively meant the end of the Holy Roman Empire. The abdication in August 1806, combined with a dissolution of the entire Imperial hierarchy and its institutions, was seen as necessary to prevent the possibility of Napoleon proclaiming himself Holy Roman Emperor, something which would have reduced Francis II to Napoleon's vassal.

Reactions to the empire's dissolution ranged from indifference to despair. The populace of Vienna, capital of the Habsburg monarchy, were horrified at the loss of the empire. Many of Francis II's former subjects questioned the legality of his actions; though his abdication was agreed to be perfectly legal, the dissolution of the empire and the release of all its vassals were seen as beyond the emperor's authority. As such, many of the empire's princes and subjects refused to accept that the empire was gone, with some commoners going so far as to believe that news of its dissolution was a plot by their local authorities. In Germany, the dissolution was widely compared to the ancient and legendary Fall of Troy and some associated the end of the Holy Roman Empire with the end times and the apocalypse.

🔗 Africa 🔗 Spain 🔗 Africa/Western Sahara 🔗 Morocco 🔗 Limited recognition

Western Sahara is a United Nations–designated non-self-governing territory in north-western Africa. It has a surface area of 272,000 square kilometres (105,000 sq mi). Western Sahara is the last African colonial state yet to achieve independence and has been dubbed "Africa's last colony". With an estimated 600,000 inhabitants, it is the most sparsely populated territory in Africa and the second most sparsely populated territory in the world after Greenland, consisting mainly of desert flatlands.

Francoist Spain previously colonized the territory as the Spanish Sahara until 1975–1976. Spain attempted to transfer its administration to Morocco and Mauritania despite an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice that those countries had no sovereignty over Western Sahara; a war erupted and the pro-independence Polisario Front proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Mauritania withdrew its claims in 1979, and Morocco secured de facto control of most of the territory, including all major cities and most natural resources. The SADR established a government-in-exile in Tindouf, Algeria. A UN-sponsored ceasefire agreement was reached in 1991, though a planned referendum monitored by the UN's MINURSO mission has since stalled.

Approximately 30% of the Western Sahara is controlled by the Polisario Front and the remaining 70% is occupied by Morocco. Morocco maintains the Berm, a 2,700 km-long (1,700 mi) wall lined with land mines that splits the territory. The Polisario Front is recognized by the UN as the legitimate representative of the people of Western Sahara and is primarily supported by Algeria. The SADR has received partial international recognition and membership in the African Union. Morocco is supported by France and the United States; several states and the United Nations Security Council began expressing support for its autonomy proposal in the 2020s.

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Psychology 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Paranormal

Nobel disease or Nobelitis is the embracing of strange or scientifically unsound ideas by some Nobel Prize winners, usually later in life. It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise, although it is unknown whether Nobel Prize winners are more prone to this tendency than other individuals. Paul Nurse, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, warned later laureates against "believing you are expert in almost everything, and being prepared to express opinions about most issues with great confidence, sheltering behind the authority that the Nobel Prize can give you". Nobel disease has been described as a "tongue in cheek" term.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Logic 🔗 Philosophy/Contemporary philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Ancient philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophy of mind 🔗 Philosophy/Modern philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Metaphysics 🔗 Philosophy/Analytic philosophy 🔗 Folklore

In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The concept is one of the oldest in Western philosophy, having been discussed by the likes of Heraclitus and Plato by ca. 500-400 BC.

🔗 Ancient Near East 🔗 Syria 🔗 Archaeology

Tell Abu Hureyra (Arabic: تل أبو هريرة) is a prehistoric archaeological site in the Upper Euphrates valley in Syria. The tell was inhabited between 13,300 and 7,800 cal. BP in two main phases: Abu Hureyra 1, dated to the Epipalaeolithic, was a village of sedentary hunter-gatherers; Abu Hureyra 2, dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, was home to some of the world's first farmers. This almost continuous sequence of occupation through the Neolithic Revolution has made Abu Hureyra one of the most important sites in the study of the origins of agriculture.

The site is significant because the inhabitants of Abu Hureyra started out as hunter-gatherers but gradually moved to farming, making them the earliest known farmers. Cultivation started at the beginning of the Younger Dryas period at Abu Hureyra. Evidence uncovered at Abu Hureyra suggests that rye was the first cereal crop to be systematically cultivated. In light of this, it is now believed that the first systematic cultivation of cereal crops was around 13,000 years ago.

During the Late Glacial Interstadial, Abu Hureyra site experienced climatic change. Due to lake level changes and aridity, the vegetation expanded into lower areas of the fields. Abu Hureyra accumulated vegetation that consisted of grasses, oaks, and Pistacia atlantica trees. The climate changed from warm and dry months to abruptly cold and dry months.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Crime 🔗 Computer Security 🔗 Computer Security/Computing 🔗 Business 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Crime and Criminal Biography

A scandal erupted in 2005 regarding Sony BMG's implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.

Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program's files visible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed, collected an email address from the user and introduced further security vulnerabilities.

Following public outcry, government investigations and class-action lawsuits in 2005 and 2006, Sony BMG partially addressed the scandal with consumer settlements, a recall of about 10% of the affected CDs and the suspension of CD copy-protection efforts in early 2007.

🔗 California 🔗 Business 🔗 Politics 🔗 Trains 🔗 Politics/American politics 🔗 Trains/Rapid transit 🔗 Buses 🔗 Trains/Streetcars

The notion of a General Motors streetcar conspiracy emerged after General Motors (GM) and other companies were convicted of monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries. In the same case, the defendants were accused of conspiring to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust act. The suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.

Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities. Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.

The story as an urban legend has been written about by Martha Bianco, Scott Bottles, Sy Adler, Jonathan Richmond, and Robert Post. It has been explored several times in print, film, and other media, notably in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Taken for a Ride, Internal Combustion, and The End of Suburbia.

Only a handful of U.S. cities, including San Francisco, New Orleans, Newark, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Boston, have surviving legacy rail urban transport systems based on streetcars, although their systems are significantly smaller than they once were. Other cities are re-introducing streetcars. In some cases, the streetcars do not actually ride on the street. Boston had all of its downtown lines elevated or buried by the mid-1920s, and most of the surviving lines at grade operate on their own right of way. However, San Francisco's and Philadelphia's lines do have large portions of the route that ride on the street as well as using tunnels.