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๐ Norsk Data
Norsk Data was a (mini-)computer manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway. Existing from 1967 to 1992, it had its most active period in the years from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. At the company's peak in 1987 it was the second largest company in Norway and employed over 4,500 people.
Throughout its history Norsk Data produced a long string of extremely innovative systems, with a disproportionately large number of world firsts. Some examples of this are the NORD-1, the first minicomputer to have memory paging as a standard option, and the first machine to have floating-point instructions standard, the NORD-5, the world's first 32-bit minicomputer (beating the VAX, often claimed the first, by 6 years)
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- "Norsk Data" | 2020-05-06 | 301 Upvotes 91 Comments
๐ Rules of Play
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals is a book on game design by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, published by MIT Press.
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- "Rules of Play" | 2019-01-21 | 55 Upvotes 8 Comments
๐ Andreev Bay nuclear accident of 1982
The Andreev Bay nuclear accident took place at Soviet naval base 569 in February 1982. Andreev Bay is a radioactive waste repository, located 55ย km (34 mi) northwest of Murmansk and 60ย km (37 mi) from the Norwegian border on the western shore of the Zapadnaya Litsa (Kola Peninsula). The repository entered service in 1961. In February 1982, a nuclear accident occurred in which radioactive water was released from a pool in building #5. Cleanup of the accident took place from 1983 to 1989. About 700,000 tonnes (770,000 tons) of highly radioactive water leaked into the Barents Sea during that time period. About 1,000 people took part in the cleanup effort. Vladimir Konstantinovich Bulygin, who was in charge of the naval fleet's radiation accidents, received the Hero of the Soviet Union distinction for his work.
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- "Andreev Bay nuclear accident of 1982" | 2017-10-08 | 58 Upvotes 16 Comments
๐ Zhou Qunfei
Zhou Qunfei (Chinese: ๅจ็พค้ฃ; born 1970) is a Chinese entrepreneur who founded the major touchscreen maker Lens Technology. After the public listing of her company on the Shenzhen ChiNext market in March 2015, her net worth reached US$10 billion, making her the richest woman in China. In 2018, she was named the world's richest self-made woman, with a net worth of $9.8 billion.
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- "Zhou Qunfei" | 2016-08-24 | 124 Upvotes 10 Comments
๐ Peelian Principles
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- "Peelian Principles" | 2023-05-31 | 69 Upvotes 56 Comments
- "Peelian Principles" | 2014-01-19 | 83 Upvotes 47 Comments
๐ Debate between sheep and grain
The "Debate between sheep and grain" or "Myth of cattle and grain" is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets in the mid to late 3rd millennium BCE.
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- "Debate between sheep and grain" | 2018-04-06 | 47 Upvotes 18 Comments
๐ Li Wenliang
Li Wenliang (Chinese: ๆๆไบฎ; pinyin: Lว Wรฉnliร ng; 12 October 1986 โ 7 February 2020) was a Chinese ophthalmologist who worked as a physician at Wuhan Central Hospital. Li warned his colleagues in December 2019 about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), later acknowledged as COVID-19. He became a whistleblower when his warnings were later shared publicly. On 3 January 2020, Wuhan police summoned and admonished him for "making false comments on the Internet". Li returned to work, later contracted the virus from an infected patient (who had been originally treated for glaucoma) and died from the disease on 7 February 2020, at age 33. A subsequent Chinese official inquiry exonerated him and the Communist Party formally offered a "solemn apology" to his family and revoked its admonishment of him.
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- "Li Wenliang" | 2020-02-11 | 350 Upvotes 206 Comments
๐ The โLinen Book of Zagrebโ: 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.
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- "The โLinen Book of Zagrebโ: The Longest Etruscan Text" | 2019-05-19 | 89 Upvotes 21 Comments
๐ 6174
The number 6174 is known as Kaprekar's constant after the Indian mathematician D. R. Kaprekar. This number is renowned for the following rule:
- Take any four-digit number, using at least two different digits (leading zeros are allowed).
- Arrange the digits in descending and then in ascending order to get two four-digit numbers, adding leading zeros if necessary.
- Subtract the smaller number from the bigger number.
- Go back to step 2 and repeat.
The above process, known as Kaprekar's routine, will always reach its fixed point, 6174, in at most 7 iterations. Once 6174 is reached, the process will continue yielding 7641 โ 1467 = 6174. For example, choose 1459:
The only four-digit numbers for which Kaprekar's routine does not reach 6174 are repdigits such as 1111, which give the result 0000 after a single iteration. All other four-digit numbers eventually reach 6174 if leading zeros are used to keep the number of digits at 4. For numbers with three identical numbers and a fourth number that is one number higher or lower (such as 2111), it is essential to treat 3-digit numbers with a leading zero; for example: 2111 โ 1112 = 0999; 9990 โ 999 = 8991; 9981 โ 1899 = 8082; 8820 โ 288 = 8532; 8532 โ 2358 = 6174.
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- "6174" | 2024-01-16 | 511 Upvotes 102 Comments
๐ International Orange
International orange is a color used in the aerospace industry to set objects apart from their surroundings, similar to safety orange, but deeper and with a more reddish tone.
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- "International Orange" | 2023-04-02 | 136 Upvotes 55 Comments