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🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Free and open-source software

Expect is an extension to the TCL scripting language written by Don Libes. The program automates interactions with programs that expose a text terminal interface. Expect, originally written in 1990 for the Unix platform, has since become available for Microsoft Windows and other systems.

🔗 Travel and Tourism 🔗 Backpacking

A Swedish torch (also Swedish candle, Finn candle, Swedish fire, Siberian tree torch or Russian tree torch; German: Schwedenfeuer) is a source of heat and light from a vertically set tree trunk, incised and burning in the middle. It became known in Europe during the 1600s and is now used by forest workers, and for leisure activities (especially in southern Germany). Due to its flat surface and good embers, it can also be used for cooking. Compared to a campfire, it is more compact, and therefore several small heat sources can be distributed over an area.

Oral tradition attributes the development of the torch to the Swedish military during the Thirty Years' War; using a saw or hacksaw or an axe, the Swedes are said to have made burning and glowing logs to warm their soldiers. This method of providing heat meant that their troops did not have to carry their own firewood with them but were able to get supplies on site, as the freshly cut, green wood can burn due to the chimney effect.

🔗 Internet culture

Warnock's dilemma, named for its originator Bryan Warnock, is the problem of interpreting a lack of response to a posting in a virtual community. The term originally referred to mailing list discussions, but has been applied to Usenet posts, blogs, web forums, and online content in general. The dilemma arises because a lack of response does not necessarily imply that no one is interested in the topic, but could also mean for example that readers find the content to be exceptionally good (leaving nothing for commenters to add).

On many Internet forums, only around one percent of users create new posts, while nine percent reply and 90 percent are lurkers that do not contribute to the discussion. When no users reply, the original poster has no way of knowing what lurkers think of their contribution.

Warnock's dilemma leads to online writers and publishers adopting more provocative writing strategies in order to ensure that they will get a response. However, this can also lead publishers to avoid producing the kind of content that might fail to generate comments due to its high quality. This problem arises particularly with sites that focus on viral content, such as BuzzFeed and Huffington Post.

🔗 Java

Java Card is a software technology that allows Java-based applications (applets) to be run securely on smart cards and more generally on similar secure small memory footprint deviceswhich are called “secure elements” (SE). Today, a Secure Element is not limited to its smart cards and other removable cryptographic tokens form factors; embedded SEs soldered onto a device board and new security designs embedded into general purpose chips are also widely used. Java Card addresses this hardware fragmentation and specificities while retaining code portability brought forward by Java.

Java Card is the tiniest of Java platforms targeted for embedded devices. Java Card gives the user the ability to program the devices and make them application specific. It is widely used in different markets: wireless telecommunications within SIM cards and embedded SIM, payment within banking cards and NFC mobile payment and for identity cards, healthcare cards, and passports. Several IoT products like gateways are also using Java Card based products to secure communications with a cloud service for instance.

The first Java Card was introduced in 1996 by Schlumberger's card division which later merged with Gemplus to form Gemalto. Java Card products are based on the specifications by Sun Microsystems (later a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation). Many Java card products also rely on the GlobalPlatform specifications for the secure management of applications on the card (download, installation, personalization, deletion).

The main design goals of the Java Card technology are portability, security and backward compatibility.

🔗 Electronics

The Williams tube, or the Williams–Kilburn tube after inventors Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn, is an early form of computer memory. It was the first random-access digital storage device, and was used successfully in several early computers.

The Williams tube works by displaying a grid of dots on a cathode ray tube (CRT). Due to the way CRTs work, this creates a small charge of static electricity over each dot. The charge at the location of each of the dots is read by a thin metal sheet just in front of the display. Since the display faded over time, it was periodically refreshed. It cycles faster than earlier acoustic delay line memory, at the speed of the electrons inside the vacuum tube, rather than at the speed of sound. However, the system was adversely affected by any nearby electrical fields, and required constant alignment to keep operational. Williams–Kilburn tubes were used primarily on high-speed computer designs.

Williams and Kilburn applied for British patents on 11 December 1946, and 2 October 1947, followed by United States patent applications on 10 December 1947, and 16 May 1949.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware

Model M designates a group of computer keyboards designed and manufactured by IBM starting in 1984, and later by Lexmark International, Maxi Switch, and Unicomp. The keyboard's many variations have their own distinct characteristics, with the vast majority having a buckling-spring key design and swappable keycaps. Model M keyboards have been praised by computer enthusiasts and frequent typists due to their durability and consistency, and the tactile and auditory feedback they provide.

The Model M is also regarded as a timeless and durable piece of hardware. Although the computers and computer peripherals produced concurrently with the Model M are considered obsolete, many Model M keyboards are still in use due to their physical durability and the continued validity of their ANSI 101-key and ISO 102-key layouts, through the use of a PS/2 female to USB male adapter with a built-in level converter. Since their original popularity, new generations of writers and computer technicians have rediscovered their unique functionality and aesthetics. The Kentucky-based company Unicomp continues to manufacture and sell Model M keyboards.

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 Education 🔗 Higher Education

Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits. Anti-intellectuals may present themselves and be perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people.

Totalitarian governments have, in the past, manipulated and applied anti-intellectualism to repress political dissent. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the following dictatorship (1939–1975) of General Francisco Franco, the reactionary repression of the White Terror (1936–1945) was notably anti-intellectual, with most of the 200,000 civilians killed being the Spanish intelligentsia, the politically active teachers and academics, artists and writers of the deposed Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). During the Cambodian genocide (1975–1979), the totalitarian regime of Cambodia led by Pol Pot nearly destroyed its entire educated population.

🔗 Internet 🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Websites 🔗 Websites/Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer Security 🔗 Computing/Websites

Evercookie is a JavaScript-based application created by Samy Kamkar that produces zombie cookies in a web browser that are intentionally difficult to delete. In 2013, a top-secret NSA document was leaked by Edward Snowden, citing Evercookie as a method of tracking Tor users.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Statistics

The Gompertz curve or Gompertz function is a type of mathematical model for a time series, named after Benjamin Gompertz (1779–1865). It is a sigmoid function which describes growth as being slowest at the start and end of a given time period. The right-side or future value asymptote of the function is approached much more gradually by the curve than the left-side or lower valued asymptote. This is in contrast to the simple logistic function in which both asymptotes are approached by the curve symmetrically. It is a special case of the generalised logistic function. The function was originally designed to describe human mortality, but since has been modified to be applied in biology, with regard to detailing populations.

🔗 Technology 🔗 Lists 🔗 Futures studies 🔗 Invention

Emerging technologies are those technical innovations that represent progressive innovations within a field for competitive advantage.