New Articles (Page 16)
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π British Amateur Television Club
The British Amateur Television Club (BATC) is the world's largest television technology club; it has members in the UK and all around the world and is a non-profit making club run by an elected committee of volunteers for the benefit of its members. Membership is open to all who are interested in television, amateur or professional, indeed the club has many members who work for major broadcasting companies.
π Honeywell 316
The Honeywell 316 was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by Honeywell starting in 1969. It is part of the Series 16, which includes the Models 116 (1965, discrete:β4β), 316 (1969), 416 (1966), 516 (1966) and DDP-716 (1969). They were commonly used for data acquisition and control, remote message concentration, clinical laboratory systems, Remote Job Entry and time-sharing. The Series-16 computers are all based on the DDP-116 designed by Gardner Hendrie at Computer Control Company, Inc. (3C) in 1964.
The 516 and later the 316 were used as Interface Message Processors (IMP) for the American ARPANET and the British NPL Network.
Discussed on
- "Honeywell 316" | 2024-08-15 | 15 Upvotes 3 Comments
π My Trial as a War Criminal (By Leo Szilard, Inventor of Nuclear Chain Reaction)
"My Trial as a War Criminal" is a 1949 short story by atomic physicist Leo Szilard. Szilard had played a leading role in the Manhattan Project, and in the story he imagines the kind of show trial he might have had if he had been prosecuted in a manner similar to the Nuremberg Trials. Szilard earlier drafted the letter Albert Einstein signed, to Franklin Roosevelt, suggesting the US develop the military uses of nuclear power, and later the petition unsuccessfully advocating against the use of nuclear weapons.
Discussed on
- "My Trial as a War Criminal (By Leo Szilard, Inventor of Nuclear Chain Reaction)" | 2024-08-14 | 33 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Canadian Tire Money
Canadian Tire money, officially Canadian Tire 'money' or CTM, is a loyalty program operated by the Canadian retail chain Canadian Tire Corporation (CTC). It consists of both paper coupons introduced in 1958 and used in Canadian Tire stores as scrip, and since 2012 in a digital form introduced as Canadian Tire Money Advantage, rebranded in 2018 as Triangle Rewards. Both forms of the loyalty program remain current as of December 2022. Canadian Tire Money has been noted as the most successful loyalty program in Canadian retail history.
Canadian Tire Money is denominated in Canadian dollars. It is earned based on the pre-tax amount of a purchase, excluding labour and shop supplies costs. The initial rate earned was 5% of the eligible purchase price, but it was lowered to 3%, then to 1.4% and now is 0.4%.
When used to pay for merchandise, CTM is considered to be a cash equivalent and may be used to pay for any part of a purchase, including sales taxes. CTM cannot be exchanged for real Canadian currency.
Discussed on
- "Canadian Tire Money" | 2024-08-07 | 37 Upvotes 27 Comments
π Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
Since the 1970's, several deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department have formed gangs in which membership is exclusive to certain sheriff's deputies, often along ethnic lines, and requires certain acts, such as police violence (particularly against people of color), in order to be initiated into said gang. Members are often tattooed and are expected to maintain the blue wall of silence (i.e. not snitch or report misconduct on or about other officers), fabricate evidence, engage in police corruption, and engage in criminal activity such as vandalism and homicide, among other things. Historically, almost all instances of deputy gang violence has either been ignored by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office or the office has stood by the members of the deputy gangs, alongside the tolerance or assistance of the county sheriff. Although not unique to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, it suffers from the most prolific case of the existence of law enforcement gangs in the state.
Discussed on
- "Gangs in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department" | 2024-08-07 | 103 Upvotes 31 Comments
π Ettore Majorana
Ettore Majorana (, Italian: [ΛΙttore majoΛraΛna]; born on 5 August 1906 β likely dying in or after 1959) was an Italian theoretical physicist who worked on neutrino masses. On 25Β March 1938, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances after purchasing a ticket to travel by ship from Naples to Palermo.
The Majorana equation and Majorana fermions are named after him. In 2006, the Majorana Prize was established in his memory.
Discussed on
- "Ettore Majorana" | 2024-08-03 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Ken Leishman
Kenneth Leishman (June 20, 1931 β December 14, 1979), also known as the Flying Bandit or the Gentleman Bandit was a Canadian criminal responsible for multiple robberies between 1957 and 1966. Leishman was the mastermind behind the largest gold theft in Canadian history. This record stood for over 50 years, until it was surpassed by the Toronto Pearson airport heist in 2023. After being caught and arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Leishman managed to escape twice, before being caught and serving the remainder of his various sentences.
In December 1979, while flying a Mercy Flight to Thunder Bay, Leishman's aircraft crashed about 40 miles (64Β km) north of Thunder Bay.
π Eric Roberts (Spy)
Eric Arthur Roberts (18 June 1907 β 17 or 18 December 1972) was an MI5 agent during the Second World War under the alias Jack King. By posing as a Gestapo agent and infiltrating fascist groups in the UK, Roberts was able to prevent secret information finding its way to Germany. Roberts continued to work for the security services after the war, particularly in Vienna, but it was a time of great anxiety in the services because of the suspicions surrounding double agents such as the Cambridge spy ring.
Roberts never felt completely accepted by MI5 because of his social background and a desk role did not suit him as well as his wartime role had. He is the subject of the biography Agent Jack (2018) by Robert Hutton, and his adventures were the inspiration for the novel Our Friends In Berlin by Anthony Quinn and for a major character in the novel Transcription by Kate Atkinson.
Discussed on
- "Eric Roberts (Spy)" | 2024-07-31 | 36 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (ISBNΒ 0-06-103004-X) by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew, published in 1998 by PublicAffairs, is a non-fiction book about U.S. Navy submarine operations during the Cold War. Several operations are described in the book, such as the use of USSΒ Parche to tap Soviet undersea communications cables and USSΒ Halibut to do the same in Operation Ivy Bells.
The book also contains an extensive list of collisions between Western and Soviet submarines and U.S. submarine awards.
Discussed on
- "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage" | 2024-08-01 | 14 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Kentucky in Africa
Kentucky in Africa was a colony in present-day Montserrado County, Liberia, founded in 1828 and settled by American free people of color, many of them former slaves. A state affiliate of the American Colonization Society, the Kentucky State Colonization Society raised money to transport people of color from Kentuckyβfreeborn volunteers as well as enslaved individuals set free on the condition that they leave the United States for Liberia. The Kentucky society bought a 40-square-mile (100Β km2) site along the Saint Paul River (quite near the site of the present-day capital city of Monrovia) and named it Kentucky in Africa. Clay-Ashland. named after Henry Clay's Ashland Plantation, was the colony's primary settlement.
Notable residents of Kentucky in Africa include Alfred Francis Russell, the 10th President of Liberia, and William D. Coleman, the 13th President of Liberia, whose family settled in Clay-Ashland after emigrating from Fayette County, Kentucky.
Kentucky in Africa was annexed by Liberia in about 1847.