Random Articles

Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

πŸ”— The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Books πŸ”— Military history/Middle Eastern military history πŸ”— Military history/Military historiography

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (French: La Guerre du Golfe n'a pas eu lieu) is a collection of three short essays by Jean Baudrillard published in the French newspaper LibΓ©ration and British paper The Guardian between January and March 1991.

While the author acknowledges that the events and violence of what has been called the Gulf War took place, he asks if the events that took place were really as they were presented, and could they be called a war? The title is a reference to the play The Trojan War Will Not Take Place by Jean Giraudoux (in which characters attempt to prevent what the audience knows is inevitable).

Discussed on

πŸ”— Pi Day

πŸ”— Mathematics πŸ”— Festivals

Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant Ο€ (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in the month/day format) since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of Ο€. In 2009, the United States House of Representatives supported the designation of Pi Day. UNESCO's 40th General Conference decided Pi Day as the International Day of Mathematics in November 2019.

Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22 (22/7 in the day/month format), since the fraction ​22⁄7 is a common approximation of Ο€, which is accurate to two decimal places and dates from Archimedes.

Two Pi Day, also known as Tau Day for the mathematical constant Tau, is observed on June 28 (6/28 in the month/day format).

Discussed on

πŸ”— Yahoo Pipes

πŸ”— Internet πŸ”— Software πŸ”— Software/Computing πŸ”— Maps

Yahoo! Pipes was a web application from Yahoo! that provided a graphical user interface for building data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. The application worked by enabling users to "pipe" information from different sources and then set up rules for how that content should be modified (for example, filtering). Other than the pipe editing page, the website had a documentation page and a discussion page. The documentation page contained information about pipes including guides for the pipe editor and troubleshooting. The discussion page enabled users to discuss the pipes with other users.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Anti-pattern

πŸ”— Computer science

An anti-pattern is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by Andrew Koenig, was inspired by a book, Design Patterns, which highlights a number of design patterns in software development that its authors considered to be highly reliable and effective.

The term was popularized three years later by the book AntiPatterns, which extended its use beyond the field of software design to refer informally to any commonly reinvented but bad solution to a problem. Examples include analysis paralysis, cargo cult programming, death march, groupthink and vendor lock-in.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Hawala

πŸ”— Finance & Investment πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— India πŸ”— Arab world

Hawala or hewala (Arabic: Ψ­ΩΩˆΨ§Ω„Ψ©β€Ž αΈ₯awāla, meaning transfer or sometimes trust), also known as havaleh in Persian, and xawala or xawilaad in Somali, is a popular and informal value transfer system based not on the movement of cash, or on telegraph or computer network wire transfers between banks, but instead on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers (known as hawaladars). While hawaladars are spread throughout the world, they are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, operating outside of, or parallel to, traditional banking, financial channels, and remittance systems. Hawala follows Islamic traditions but its use is not limited to Muslims.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Capacitor plague – Wikipedia

πŸ”— Electronics πŸ”— Guild of Copy Editors

The capacitor plague was a problem related to a higher-than-expected failure rate of non-solid aluminum electrolytic capacitors, between 1999 and 2007, especially those from some Taiwanese manufacturers, due to faulty electrolyte composition that caused corrosion accompanied by gas generation, often rupturing the case of the capacitor from the build-up of pressure.

High failure rates occurred in many well-known brands of electronics, and were particularly evident in motherboards, video cards, and power supplies of personal computers.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Whistled language

πŸ”— Constructed languages

Whistled languages use whistling to emulate speech and facilitate communication. A whistled language is a system of whistled communication which allows fluent whistlers to transmit and comprehend a potentially unlimited number of messages over long distances. Whistled languages are different in this respect from the restricted codes sometimes used by herders or animal trainers to transmit simple messages or instructions. Generally, whistled languages emulate the tones or vowel formants of a natural spoken language, as well as aspects of its intonation and prosody, so that trained listeners who speak that language can understand the encoded message.

Whistled language is rare compared to spoken language, but it is found in cultures around the world. It is especially common in tone languages where the whistled tones transmit the tones of the syllables (tone melodies of the words). This might be because in tone languages the tone melody carries more of the functional load of communication while non-tonal phonology carries proportionally less. The genesis of a whistled language has never been recorded in either case and has not yet received much productive study.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Sorcerer's Apprentice Syndrome

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computing/Networking

Sorcerer's Apprentice Syndrome (SAS) is a network protocol flaw in the original versions of TFTP. It was named after Goethe's poem "Der Zauberlehrling" (popularized by the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of the animated film Fantasia), because the details of its operation closely resemble the disaster that befalls the sorcerer's apprentice: the problem resulted in an ever-growing replication of every packet in the transfer.

The problem occurred because of a known failure mode of the internetwork which, through a mistake on the part of the TFTP protocol designers, was not taken into account when the protocol was designed; the failure mode interacted with several details of the mechanisms of TFTP to produce SAS.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Iron Ring

πŸ”— Organizations πŸ”— Engineering

The Iron Ring is a ring worn by many Canadian-trained engineers, as a symbol and reminder of the obligations and ethics associated with their profession. The ring is presented to engineering graduates in a private ceremony known as the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. The concept of the ritual and its Iron Rings originated from H. E. T. Haultain in 1922, with assistance from Rudyard Kipling, who crafted the ritual at Haultain's request.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Lowest temperature recorded on Earth

πŸ”— Physics πŸ”— Antarctica

The lowest natural temperature ever directly recorded at ground level on Earth is βˆ’89.2Β Β°C (βˆ’128.6Β Β°F; 184.0Β K) at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983 by ground measurements.

On 10 August 2010, satellite observations showed a surface temperature of βˆ’93.2Β Β°C (βˆ’135.8Β Β°F; 180.0Β K) at 81.8Β°S 59.3Β°Eο»Ώ / -81.8; 59.3, along a ridge between Dome Argus and Dome Fuji, at 3,900Β m (12,800Β ft) elevation. The result was reported at the 46th annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December 2013; it is a provisional figure, and may be subject to revision. The value is not listed as the record lowest temperature as it was measured by remote sensing from satellite and not by ground-based thermometers, unlike the 1983 record. The temperature announced reflects that of the ice surface, while the Vostok readings measured the air above the ice, and so the two are not directly comparable. More recent work shows many locations in the high Antarctic where surface temperatures drop to approximately βˆ’98Β Β°C (βˆ’144Β Β°F; 175Β K). Due to the very strong temperature gradient near the surface, these imply near-surface air temperature minima of approximately βˆ’94Β Β°C (βˆ’137Β Β°F; 179Β K).

Discussed on