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π Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now
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- "Wikipedia escapes Category 1 designation under the UK Online Safety Act for now" | 2026-07-13 | 115 Upvotes 96 Comments
π Tacit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge is knowledge that is difficult to extract or articulateβas opposed to conceptualized, formalized, codified, or explicit knowledgeβand is therefore more difficult to convey to others through verbalization or writing. Examples of this include individual wisdom, experience, insight, motor skill, and intuition. An example of "explicit" information that can be recorded, conveyed, and understood by the recipient is the knowledge that London is in the United Kingdom. Speaking a language, riding a bicycle, kneading dough, playing an instrument, or designing and operating sophisticated machinery, on the other hand, all require a variety of knowledge that is difficult or impossible to transfer to other people and is not always known "explicitly", even by skilled practitioners.
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- "Tacit Knowledge" | 2026-07-13 | 22 Upvotes 5 Comments
π The Matthew Effect
The Matthew effect of accumulated advantage, Matthew principle, or Matthew effect for short, is sometimes summarized by the adage "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer". The concept is applicable to matters of fame or status, but may also be applied literally to cumulative advantage of economic capital. In the beginning, Matthew effects were primarily focused on the inequality in the way scientists were recognized for their work. However, Norman Storer, of Columbia University, led a new wave of research. He believed he discovered that the inequality that existed in the social sciences also existed in other institutions.
The term was coined by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1968 and takes its name from the Parable of the talents or minas in the biblical Gospel of Matthew. Merton credited his collaborator and wife, sociologist Harriet Zuckerman, as co-author of the concept of the Matthew effect.
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- "The Matthew Effect" | 2019-09-02 | 15 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Braessβs paradox
Braess' paradox is the observation that adding one or more roads to a road network can slow down overall traffic flow through it. The paradox was postulated in 1968 by German mathematician Dietrich Braess, who noticed that adding a road to a particular congested road traffic network would increase overall journey time.
The paradox may have analogies in electrical power grids and biological systems. It has been suggested that in theory, the improvement of a malfunctioning network could be accomplished by removing certain parts of it. The paradox has been used to explain instances of improved traffic flow when existing major roads are closed.
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- "Braess's paradox: Adding roads to a road network can slow overall traffic flow" | 2026-07-12 | 12 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Braess's Paradox" | 2021-05-16 | 64 Upvotes 30 Comments
- "Braessβs paradox" | 2018-09-22 | 134 Upvotes 37 Comments
- "Braessβ paradox" | 2017-01-08 | 136 Upvotes 91 Comments
- "Braess' paradox: adding a new road to a city can slow down traffic" | 2015-10-16 | 98 Upvotes 61 Comments
π All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace is a BBC television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. In the series, Curtis argues that computers have failed to liberate humanity, and instead have "distorted and simplified our view of the world around us." The title is taken from a 1967 poem of the same name by Richard Brautigan. The first episode was originally broadcast at 9Β pm on 23 May 2011.
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- "All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011)" | 2026-07-12 | 18 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Sears Modern Homes
Sears Modern Homes were houses sold primarily through mail order catalog by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer.
From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America. Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada. No complete record of their locations was left by Sears when they closed the Modern Homes program but current-day researchers are compiling a database of those that have been found so far and the list continues to grow.
Sears Modern Homes offered more than 370 designs in a wide range of architectural styles and sizes over the line's 34-year history. Most included the latest comforts and conveniences available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity.
Primarily shipped via railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house. Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families. Other homeowners relied on local carpenters or contractors to assemble the houses. In some cases, Sears provided construction services to assemble the homes. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. Although most shipments came by rail, newspaper advertisements in the late 1920s and early 1930s showed Sears offering truck delivery to buyers living within a 35-mile (56Β km) radius of their Newark, New Jersey, plant and their Norwood, Ohio, Sash & Door company.
Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940 with sales through local sales offices continuing into 1942. Years later, the sales records related to home sales were destroyed during a corporate house cleaning. As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. Because the various kit home companies often copied plan elements or designs from each other, there are a number of catalog and kit models from different manufacturers that look similar or identical to models offered by Sears. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home.
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- "Sears Modern Homes" | 2026-07-12 | 14 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Andon (manufacturing)
In manufacturing, andon (Japanese: γ’γ³γγ³ or γγγ©γ or θ‘η―) is a system which notifies managerial, maintenance, and other workers of a quality or process problem. The alert can be activated manually by a worker using a pullcord or button or may be activated automatically by the production equipment itself. The system may include a means to pause production so the issue can be corrected. Some modern alert systems incorporate audio alarms, text, or other displays; stack lights are among the most commonly used.
βAndonβ is a loanword from Japanese, originally meaning paper lantern; Japanese manufacturers began its quality-control usage.
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- "Andon (manufacturing)" | 2026-07-11 | 73 Upvotes 31 Comments
π BLISS
BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C became popular and common, and BLISS faded into obscurity.
BLISS is a typeless block-structured programming language based on expressions rather than statements, and includes constructs for exception handling, coroutines, and macros. It does not include a goto statement.
The name is variously said to be short for Basic Language for Implementation of System Software or System Software Implementation Language, Backwards. However, in his 2015 oral history for the Babbage Institute's Computer Security History Project, Wulf claimed that the acronym was originally based on the name "Bill's Language for Implementing System Software."
The original Carnegie Mellon compiler was notable for its extensive use of optimizations, and formed the basis of the classic book The Design of an Optimizing Compiler.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) developed and maintained BLISS compilers for the PDP-10, PDP-11, VAX, DEC PRISM, MIPS, DEC Alpha, and Intel IA-32, The language did not become popular among customers and few had the compiler, but DEC used it heavily in-house into the 1980s; most of the utility programs for the OpenVMS operating system were written in BLISS-32. The DEC BLISS compiler has been ported to the IA-64 and x86-64 architectures as part of the ports of OpenVMS to these platforms. The x86-64 BLISS compiler uses LLVM as its backend code generator, replacing the proprietary GEM backend used for Alpha and IA-64.
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- "BLISS" | 2026-07-11 | 51 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Earendel (Astronomical Object)
Earendel, designated WHL0137-LS, is a star cluster or a star located in the constellation of Cetus. Discovered in 2022 with the Hubble Space Telescope, it has a comoving distance of 28 billion light-years (8.6 billion parsecs), making it the most distant known star if it is a single object. The previous farthest known star, MACS J1149 Lensed Star 1, also known as Icarus, at a comoving distance of 14.4Β billion light-years (4.4Β billion parsecs), was discovered by Hubble in 2018. However, further observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in the 2020s revealed that Earendel is more likely a star cluster. Objects like Earendel can be observed at cosmological distances thanks to the large magnification factors afforded by gravitational lensing, which can exceed 1,000. Other candidates stars have been observed through this technique, such as Godzilla, although controversies remain about their true nature.
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- "Earendel (Astronomical Object)" | 2026-07-11 | 35 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Deir El-Medina Strikes
The Deir el-Medina strikes were a series of strikes by the artisans who worked on the tombs in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, the most notable of which occurred in the 29th year of the reign of Ramesses III (circa 1158 BC). The primary cause of the strike was Ramesses' inability to provide supplies, including wheat rations, to the workers and their families, and workers were forced to buy their own wheat. The workers pleaded with the site officials, who ignored their complaints. The workers then went on strike and marched en masse to the office of the vizier, who authorised the release of grain from the funerary temples, and the workers returned to work temporarily.
The initial Deir el-Medina strike is considered the earliest recorded collective labour action. Labour problems continued in the 20th Dynasty due to price increases for grain.
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- "Deir El-Medina Strikes" | 2026-07-07 | 85 Upvotes 19 Comments