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π HAKMEM
HAKMEM, alternatively known as AI Memo 239, is a February 1972 "memo" (technical report) of the MIT AI Lab containing a wide variety of hacks, including useful and clever algorithms for mathematical computation, some number theory and schematic diagrams for hardware β in Guy L. Steele's words, "a bizarre and eclectic potpourri of technical trivia". Contributors included about two dozen members and associates of the AI Lab. The title of the report is short for "hacks memo", abbreviated to six upper case characters that would fit in a single PDP-10 machine word (using a six-bit character set).
Discussed on
- "HAKMEM" | 2010-09-25 | 53 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Fabrice Bellard
Fabrice Bellard (French pronunciation:Β β[fa.bΚis bΙ.laΚ]) is a computer programmer who created the FFmpeg and QEMU software projects. He has also developed a number of other programs, including the Tiny C Compiler.
Discussed on
- "Fabrice Bellard" | 2010-09-12 | 73 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Duffs Device
In the C programming language, Duff's device is a way of manually implementing loop unrolling by interleaving two syntactic constructs of C: the do-while loop and a switch statement. Its discovery is credited to Tom Duff in November 1983, when Duff was working for Lucasfilm and used it to speed up a real-time animation program.
Loop unrolling attempts to reduce the overhead of conditional branching needed to check whether a loop is done, by executing a batch of loop bodies per iteration. To handle cases where the number of iterations is not divisible by the unrolled-loop increments, a common technique among assembly language programmers is to jump directly into the middle of the unrolled loop body to handle the remainder. Duff implemented this technique in C by using C's case label fall-through feature to jump into the unrolled body.
Discussed on
- "Duff's Device" | 2020-05-25 | 145 Upvotes 59 Comments
- "Duffs Device" | 2016-10-21 | 19 Upvotes 4 Comments
- "Duff's device: do + switch fall-through = loop unrolling" | 2009-08-13 | 16 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Bitmessage: a decentralized, encrypted, trustless communications protocol
Bitmessage is a decentralized, encrypted, peer-to-peer, trustless communications protocol that can be used by one person to send encrypted messages to another person, or to multiple subscribers.
In June 2013, the software experienced a surge of new adoptions after news reports of email surveillance by the US National Security Agency.
Bitmessage was conceived by software developer Jonathan Warren, who based its design on the decentralized digital currency, bitcoin. The software was released in November 2012 under the MIT license.
Bitmessage gained a reputation for being out of reach of warrantless wiretapping conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA), due to the decentralized nature of the protocol, and its encryption being difficult to crack. As a result, downloads of the Bitmessage program increased fivefold during June 2013, after news broke of classified email surveillance activities conducted by the NSA.
Bitmessage has also been mentioned as an experimental alternative to email by Popular Science and CNET.
Some ransomware programs instruct affected users to use Bitmessage to communicate with the attackers.
Discussed on
- "Bitmessage: a decentralized, encrypted, trustless communications protocol" | 2016-10-15 | 70 Upvotes 26 Comments
π LΓ¨se-majestΓ©
Lèse-majesté ( or ;), a French term meaning "to do wrong to majesty", is an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.
This behaviour was first classified as a criminal offence against the dignity of the Roman Republic of ancient Rome. In the Dominate, or Late Empire period, the emperors eliminated the Republican trappings of their predecessors and began to identify the state with their person. Although legally the princeps civitatis (his official title, meaning, roughly, 'first citizen') could never become a sovereign because the republic was never officially abolished, emperors were deified as divus, first posthumously but by the Dominate period while reigning. Deified emperors enjoyed the same legal protection that was accorded to the divinities of the state cult; by the time it was replaced by Christianity, what was in all but name a monarchical tradition had already become well-established.
Narrower conceptions of offences against Majesty as offences against the crown predominated in the European kingdoms that emerged in the early medieval period. In feudal Europe, some crimes were classified as lèse-majesté even if they were not intentionally directed against the crown. An example is counterfeiting, so classified because coins bore the monarch's effigy and/or coat of arms.
With the disappearance of absolute monarchy in Europe (with exception of Vatican City), lèse-majesté came to be viewed as less of a crime. However, certain malicious acts that would have once been classified as the crime of lèse-majesté could still be prosecuted as treason. Future republics that emerged as great powers generally still classified as a crime any offence against the highest representatives of the state. These laws are still applied as well in monarchies outside of Europe, such as modern Thailand and Cambodia.
Discussed on
- "Lèse-majesté" | 2016-10-13 | 16 Upvotes 4 Comments
π List of countries by tax rates
A comparison of tax rates by countries is difficult and somewhat subjective, as tax laws in most countries are extremely complex and the tax burden falls differently on different groups in each country and sub-national unit. The list focuses on the main indicative types of taxes: corporate tax, individual income tax, and sales tax, including VAT and GST, but does not list capital gains tax.
Some other taxes (for instance property tax, substantial in many countries, such as the United States) and payroll tax are not shown here. The table is not exhaustive in representing the true tax burden to either the corporation or the individual in the listed country. The tax rates displayed are marginal and do not account for deductions, exemptions or rebates. The effective rate is usually lower than the marginal rate. The tax rates given for federations (such as the United States and Canada) are averages and vary depending on the state or province. Territories that have different rates to their respective nation are in italics.
Discussed on
- "List of countries by tax rates" | 2016-10-10 | 25 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Wikipedia lets you create books
- This Help page is about Wikipedia books created on Wikipedia.
Discussed on
- "Wikipedia lets you create books" | 2010-09-06 | 106 Upvotes 22 Comments
π Zooko's Triangle
Zooko's triangle is a trilemma of three properties that are generally considered desirable for names of participants in a network protocol:
- Human-meaningful: Meaningful and memorable (low-entropy) names are provided to the users.
- Secure: The amount of damage a malicious entity can inflict on the system should be as low as possible.
- Decentralized: Names correctly resolve to their respective entities without the use of a central authority or service.
Discussed on
- "Zooko's Triangle" | 2022-08-17 | 79 Upvotes 40 Comments
- "Zooko's Triangle" | 2021-02-17 | 153 Upvotes 54 Comments
- "Zooko's Triangle" | 2010-08-22 | 23 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Hindenburg Omen (Occurred Twice this Month)
The Hindenburg Omen was a proposed technical analysis pattern, named after the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937. It was created by Jim Miekka, who believed that it portended a stock market crash.
Discussed on
- "Hindenburg Omen (Occurred Twice this Month)" | 2010-08-17 | 40 Upvotes 19 Comments
π "Some German bombers landed at UK bases, believing they were back in Germany."
The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation for night bombing in the United Kingdom. British scientific intelligence at the Air Ministry fought back with a variety of their own increasingly effective means, involving jamming and distortion of the radio waves. The period ended when the Wehrmacht moved their forces to the East in May 1941, in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union.
Discussed on
- ""Some German bombers landed at UK bases, believing they were back in Germany."" | 2010-08-16 | 99 Upvotes 17 Comments