New Articles (Page 61)

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

๐Ÿ”— One Laptop per Child

๐Ÿ”— Computing ๐Ÿ”— Computing/Computer hardware ๐Ÿ”— Environment ๐Ÿ”— International development

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) was a non-profit initiative established with the goal of transforming education for children around the world; this goal was to be achieved by creating and distributing educational devices for the developing world, and by creating software and content for those devices.

The goal was to transform education, by enabling children in low-income countries to have access to content, media and computer-programming environments. When the program launched, the typical retail price for a laptop was considerably in excess of $1,000 (US), so achieving this objective required bringing a low-cost machine to production. This became the OLPC XO Laptop, a low-cost and low-power laptop computer designed by Yves Bรฉhar. The project was originally funded by member organizations such as AMD, eBay, Google, Marvell Technology Group, News Corporation, Nortel. Chi Mei Corporation, Red Hat, and Quanta provided in-kind support.

The OLPC project was the subject of much discussion. It was praised for pioneering low-cost, low-power laptops and inspiring later variants such as Eee PCs and Chromebooks; for assuring consensus at ministerial level in many countries that computer literacy is a mainstream part of education; for creating interfaces that worked without literacy in any language, and particularly without literacy in English. It was criticized from many sides regarding its US-centric focus ignoring bigger problems, high total costs, low focus on maintainability and training and its limited success. In 2014, after disappointing sales, the Foundation shut down.

The OLPC project is critically reviewed in a 2019 MIT Press book titled The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop per Child.

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— Four Stages of Competence

๐Ÿ”— Psychology

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the "conscious competence" learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill. People may have several skills, some unrelated to each other, and each skill will typically be at one of the stages at a given time. Many skills require practice to remain at a high level of competence.

The four stages suggest that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know, or unconscious of their incompetence. As they recognize their incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill, then consciously use it. Eventually, the skill can be utilized without it being consciously thought through: the individual is said to have then acquired unconscious competence.

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— Open Source Cola

๐Ÿ”— Food and drink ๐Ÿ”— Open ๐Ÿ”— Food and drink/Beverages

Open-source cola is any cola soft drink produced according to a published and shareable recipe. Unlike the secretive Coca-Cola formula, the recipes are openly published and their re-use is encouraged. The texts of OpenCola and Cube-Cola recipes are published under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— Endling

๐Ÿ”— Extinction

An endling is the last known individual of a species or subspecies. Once the endling dies, the species becomes extinct. The word was coined in correspondence in the scientific journal Nature. Alternative names put forth for the last individual of its kind include ender and terminarch.

The word relict may also be used, but usually refers to a population, rather than an individual, that is the last of a species.

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— Bum Farto

๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— Biography ๐Ÿ”— Florida ๐Ÿ”— Crime and Criminal Biography ๐Ÿ”— Firefighting

Joseph "Bum" Farto (July 3, 1919 โ€“ February 16, 1976) was a fire chief and convicted drug dealer in Key West, Florida who disappeared in 1976.

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— DRAKON โ€“ An algorithmic visual programming language

๐Ÿ”— Computing ๐Ÿ”— Spaceflight ๐Ÿ”— Computing/Software

DRAKON is an algorithmic visual programming and modeling language developed within the Buran space project following ergonomic design principles. The language provides a uniform way to represent flowcharts of any complexity that are easy to read and understand.

The DRAKON Editor, which was released in September 2011, is an implementation of the language available in the public domain. It can be used for creating documentation, or for creating visual programs that can be converted to source code in other languages.

Unlike UML's philosophy, DRAKON's language philosophy is based on being augmented if needed, by using a hybrid language, which can be illustrated as "incrustating code snippets from text language used into shape DRAKON requires". This way, DRAKON always remains a simple visual language that can be used as an augmentation for a programmer who is interested in making their own project code easier to support or other long-term needs for example improving the ergonomics of the coding process or to making code easier to review and understand.

The name DRAKON is the Russian acronym for "ะ”ั€ัƒะถะตะปัŽะฑะฝั‹ะน ะ ัƒััะบะธะน ะะปะณะพั€ะธั‚ะผะธั‡ะตัะบะธะน [ัะทั‹ะบ], ะšะพั‚ะพั€ั‹ะน ะžะฑะตัะฟะตั‡ะธะฒะฐะตั‚ ะะฐะณะปัะดะฝะพัั‚ัŒ", which translates to "Friendly Russian algorithmic [language] that illustrates (or provides clarity)". The word "ะฝะฐะณะปัะดะฝะพัั‚ัŒ" (pronounced approximately as "naa-glya-dno-st-th") refers to a concept or idea being easy to imagine and understand, and may be translated as "clarity".

The DRAKON language can be used both as a modelling/"markup" language (which is considered a standalone "pure DRAKON" program) and as a programming language (as part of a hybrid language).

Integration of a stricter, "academic", variant of a markup language into programming, such as provided by DRAKON, adds syntactic sugar allowing users of different programming languages to comprehend each other's contributions to the overall project and even provide commentary if needed.

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— Kkrieger โ€“ A 96KB first person shooter

๐Ÿ”— Video games

.kkrieger (from Krieger, German for warrior) is a first-person shooter video game created by German demogroup .theprodukkt (a former subdivision of Farbrausch), which won first place in the 96k game competition at Breakpoint in April 2004. The game remains a beta version as of 2019.

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— Venix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system

๐Ÿ”— Software ๐Ÿ”— Software/Computing

Venix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for low-end computers, developed by VenturCom, a "company that specialises in the skinniest implementations of Unix".

Discussed on

๐Ÿ”— British Amateur Television Club

๐Ÿ”— Amateur radio

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.