Random Articles
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
π Company town
A company town is a place where practically all stores and housing are owned by the one company that is also the main employer. Company towns are often planned with a suite of amenities such as stores, houses of worship, schools, markets and recreation facilities. They are usually bigger than a model village ("model" in the sense of an ideal to be emulated).
Some company towns have had high ideals, but many have been regarded as controlling and/or exploitative. Others developed more or less in unplanned fashion, such as Summit Hill, Pennsylvania, United States, one of the oldest, which began as an LC&N Co. mining camp and mine site nine miles (14.5 km) from the nearest outside road.
Discussed on
- "Company town" | 2016-07-27 | 69 Upvotes 70 Comments
π Germanwings Flight 9525
Germanwings Flight 9525 was a scheduled international passenger flight from BarcelonaβEl Prat Airport in Spain to DΓΌsseldorf Airport in Germany. The flight was operated by Germanwings, a low-cost carrier owned by the German airline Lufthansa. On 24 March 2015, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-211, crashed 100Β km (62Β mi; 54Β nmi) north-west of Nice in the French Alps. All 144 passengers and six crew members were killed.
The crash was deliberately caused by the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared unfit to work by his doctor. Lubitz kept this information from his employer and instead reported for duty. Shortly after reaching cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, Lubitz locked the cockpit door and initiated a controlled descent that continued until the aircraft hit a mountainside.
Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times but, by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.
The Lubitz family held a press conference in March 2017 during which Lubitz's father said that they did not accept the official investigative findings that his son deliberately caused the crash. By 2017, Lufthansa had paid β¬75,000 to the family of every victim, as well as β¬10,000 in pain and suffering compensation to every close relative of a victim.
Discussed on
- "Germanwings Flight 9525" | 2024-04-13 | 8 Upvotes 15 Comments
π Unix philosophy
The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix developers were important in bringing the concepts of modularity and reusability into software engineering practice, spawning a "software tools" movement. Over time, the leading developers of Unix (and programs that ran on it) established a set of cultural norms for developing software; these norms became as important and influential as the technology of Unix itself; this has been termed the "Unix philosophy."
The Unix philosophy emphasizes building simple, short, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developers other than its creators. The Unix philosophy favors composability as opposed to monolithic design.
Discussed on
- "Unix philosophy" | 2017-02-24 | 20 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Fifth-Generation Warfare
Fifth-generation warfare (5GW) is warfare that is conducted primarily through non-kinetic military action, such as social engineering, misinformation, cyberattacks, along with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and fully autonomous systems. Fifth generation warfare has been described by Daniel Abbot as a war of "information and perception". There is no widely agreed upon definition of fifth-generation warfare, and it has been rejected by some scholars, including William S. Lind, who was one of the original theorists of fourth-generation warfare.
Discussed on
- "Fifth-Generation Warfare" | 2023-11-08 | 26 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
Eazel was an American software company operating from 1999 to 2001 in Palo Alto and then Mountain View, California. The company's flagship product is the Nautilus file manager for the GNOME desktop environment on Linux, which was immediately adopted and maintained by the free software movement. As the core of Eazel's business model, it is an early example of cloud storage services in the form of personal file storage, transparently and portably stored on the Internet. Renamed to Files, this application continues to be a centerpiece of some free Linux-based desktop environments.
Discussed on
- "Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup" | 2024-08-27 | 147 Upvotes 65 Comments
π Bohm Dialogue
Bohm Dialogue (also known as Bohmian Dialogue or "Dialogue in the Spirit of David Bohm") is a freely flowing group conversation in which participants attempt to reach a common understanding, experiencing everyone's point of view fully, equally and nonjudgementally. This can lead to new and deeper understanding. The purpose is to solve the communication crises that face society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness. It utilizes a theoretical understanding of the way thoughts relate to universal reality. It is named after physicist David Bohm who originally proposed this form of dialogue.
Discussed on
- "Bohm Dialogue" | 2019-10-02 | 46 Upvotes 14 Comments
π Rolling Highway
In rail transportation, a rolling highway or rolling road is a form of combined transport involving the conveying of road trucks by rail, referred to as Ro-La trains. The concept is a form of piggyback transportation.
The technical challenges to implement rolling highways vary from region to region. In North America, the loading gauge is often high enough to accommodate double stack containers, so the height of a semi-trailer on a flatcar is no issue. However, in Europe, except for purpose built lines such as the Channel Tunnel or the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the loading gauge height is much smaller, and it is necessary to transport the trailers with the tires about 30Β cm (11.81Β in) above the rails, so the trailers cannot be simply parked on the surface of a flat car above the wagon wheels or bogies. Making the wagon wheels smaller limits the maximum speed, so many designs allow the trailer to be transported with its wheels lower than the rail wagon wheels. An early approach in France was the Kangourou wagon with modified trailers. This technology did not survive, due to the market resistance to modified trailers. Today, three designs for these special wagons are in commercial service, "Modalohr", "CargoBeamer" and "Niederflurwagen" .
During a rolling-highway journey, if the drivers accompany the trailer, they are accommodated in a passenger car or a sleeping car. At both ends of the rail link there are purpose-built terminals that allow the train to be easily loaded and unloaded.
Discussed on
- "Rolling Highway" | 2025-05-13 | 55 Upvotes 40 Comments
π The βLinen Book of Zagrebβ: The Longest Etruscan Text
The Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis (Latin for "Linen Book of Zagreb", also rarely known as Liber Agramensis, "Book of Agram") is the longest Etruscan text and the only extant linen book, dated to the 3rd century BCE. It remains mostly untranslated because of the lack of knowledge about the Etruscan language, though the few words which can be understood indicate that the text is most likely a ritual calendar.
The fabric of the book was preserved when it was used for mummy wrappings in Ptolemaic Egypt. The mummy was bought in Alexandria in 1848 and since 1867 both the mummy and the manuscript have been kept in Zagreb, Croatia, now in a refrigerated room at the Archaeological Museum.
Discussed on
- "The βLinen Book of Zagrebβ: The Longest Etruscan Text" | 2019-05-19 | 89 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Arecibo message
The Arecibo message is a 1974 interstellar radio message carrying basic information about humanity and Earth sent to globular star cluster M13. It was meant as a demonstration of human technological achievement, rather than a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials.
The message was broadcast into space a single time via frequency modulated radio waves at a ceremony to mark the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico on 16 November 1974. The message was aimed at the current location of M13 some 25,000 light years away because M13 was a large and close collection of stars that was available in the sky at the time and place of the ceremony. The message forms the image shown here when translated into graphics, characters, and spaces.
Discussed on
- "Arecibo message" | 2018-05-09 | 73 Upvotes 46 Comments
π 1K ZX Chess
1K ZX Chess is a 1982 chess program for the unexpanded Sinclair ZX81.
Discussed on
- "1K ZX Chess" | 2021-04-26 | 14 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "1K ZX Chess" | 2018-09-04 | 43 Upvotes 22 Comments