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🔗 Computing 🔗 Perl

The WikiWikiWeb is the first-ever wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by its inventor, programmer Ward Cunningham, to accompany the Portland Pattern Repository website discussing software design patterns. The name WikiWikiWeb originally also applied to the wiki software that operated the website, written in the Perl programming language and later renamed to "WikiBase". The site is frequently referred to by its users as simply "Wiki", and a convention established among users of the early network of wiki sites that followed was that using the word with a capitalized W referred exclusively to the original site.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Amiga

The Smart File System (SFS) is a journaling filesystem used on Amiga computers and AmigaOS-derived operating systems (though some support also exists for IBM PC compatibles). It is designed for performance, scalability and integrity, offering improvements over standard Amiga filesystems as well as some special or unique features.

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

Maxima () is a computer algebra system (CAS) based on a 1982 version of Macsyma. It is written in Common Lisp and runs on all POSIX platforms such as macOS, Unix, BSD, and Linux, as well as under Microsoft Windows and Android. It is free software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

🔗 London 🔗 British Museum 🔗 Classical Greece and Rome 🔗 History of Science 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Visual arts 🔗 Glass

The Lycurgus Cup is a 4th-century Roman glass cage cup made of a dichroic glass, which shows a different colour depending on whether or not light is passing through it: red when lit from behind and green when lit from in front. It is the only complete Roman glass object made from this type of glass, and the one exhibiting the most impressive change in colour; it has been described as "the most spectacular glass of the period, fittingly decorated, which we know to have existed".

The cup is also a very rare example of a complete Roman cage-cup, or diatretum, where the glass has been painstakingly cut and ground back to leave only a decorative "cage" at the original surface-level. Many parts of the cage have been completely undercut. Most cage-cups have a cage with a geometric abstract design, but here there is a composition with figures, showing the mythical King Lycurgus, who (depending on the version) tried to kill Ambrosia, a follower of the god Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans). She was transformed into a vine that twined around the enraged king and restrained him, eventually killing him. Dionysus and two followers are shown taunting the king. The cup is the "only well-preserved figural example" of a cage cup.

The dichroic effect is achieved by making the glass with tiny proportions of nanoparticles of gold and silver dispersed in colloidal form throughout the glass material. The process used remains unclear, and it is likely that it was not well understood or controlled by the makers, and was probably discovered by accidental "contamination" with minutely ground gold and silver dust. The glass-makers may not even have known that gold was involved, as the quantities involved are so tiny; they may have come from a small proportion of gold in any silver added (most Roman silver contains small proportions of gold), or from traces of gold or gold leaf left by accident in the workshop, as residue on tools, or from other work. The very few other surviving fragments of Roman dichroic glass vary considerably in their two colours.

🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Festivals

Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (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 π. 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 π, 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).

🔗 Computing

Netpbm is an open-source package of graphics programs and a programming library. It is used mainly in the Unix world, where one can find it included in all major open-source operating system distributions, but also works on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and other operating systems.

🔗 Novels

The 480 is a political fiction novel by Eugene Burdick (1964).

The plot evolves around the political turmoil after John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963. In the novel, a fictitious charismatic character, John Thatch, an engineer, is seeking nomination for the Republican Party candidate at 1964 presidential elections. He is described as being contaminated with the "political virus". A handful of political professionals are promoting his nomination, in confrontation with the Party establishment. There exist apparent parallels between Thatch and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a write-in hero at New Hampshire primary.

The novel criticizes the socio-political effects on society at large from the use of computers to run massive simulations, which predict the public reaction to certain (proposed) political moves before implementing them. Such simulations make it easy to manipulate the public consciousness.

The "480" in the title denotes the number of groups (by party affiliation, socioeconomic status, location, origin, etc.) that the computer simulation uses to classify the American electorate. The full list of these is reproduced in the Appendix, claimed by the author to be the true list used by the Simulmatics Corporation (real name) in Senator John F. Kennedy's Presidential campaign in 1960. The cover features an IBM 5081 punched card.

The Simulmatics Corporation was created by MIT Professor Ithiel de Sola Pool, who provided a non-fiction backup to "The 480" in "Candidates, Issues, and Strategies: A Computer Simulation of the 1960 Presidential Election," MIT Press, 1964 (with co-authors Robert P. Abelson and Samuel L. Popkin). They built their model from 130,000 archived interviews in Gallup and Roper polls over a ten-year period. Based on its output, they advised Kennedy that he would benefit from a strong civil rights stand and that he had nothing to lose, and much to gain, by attacking religious bigotry and dealing frankly with his Catholicism.

The 480 has been cited as prefiguring the effect of modern social media and data gathering on politics.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Germany/Hamburg 🔗 Germany/German transportation

Old Elbe Tunnel or St. Pauli Elbe Tunnel (German: Alter Elbtunnel colloquially or St. Pauli Elbtunnel officially) which opened in 1911, is a pedestrian and vehicle tunnel in Hamburg. The 426 m (1,398 ft) long tunnel was a technical sensation; 24 m (80 ft) beneath the surface, two 6 m (20 ft) diameter tubes connect central Hamburg with the docks and shipyards on the south side of the river Elbe. This was a big improvement for tens of thousands of workers in one of the busiest harbors in the world.

Six large lifts on either side of the tunnel carry pedestrians and vehicles to the bottom. The two tunnels are both still in operation, though due to their limited capacity by today's standards, other bridges and tunnels have been built and taken over most of the traffic.

In 2008 approximately 300,000 cars, 63,000 bicycles, and 700,000 pedestrians used the tunnel. The tunnel is opened 24 hours for pedestrians and bicycles. For motorized vehicles, opening times are currently Monday to Friday from 5:20 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and on Saturdays from 5:20 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Early Modern warfare 🔗 Military history/American Revolutionary War 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Ships 🔗 Connecticut

Turtle (also called American Turtle) was the world's first submersible vessel with a documented record of use in combat. It was built in 1775 by American David Bushnell as a means of attaching explosive charges to ships in a harbor, for use against Royal Navy vessels occupying North American harbors during the American Revolutionary War. Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull recommended the invention to George Washington, who provided funds and support for the development and testing of the machine.

Several attempts were made using Turtle to affix explosives to the undersides of British warships in New York Harbor in 1776. All failed, and her transport ship was sunk later that year by the British with the submarine aboard. Bushnell claimed eventually to have recovered the machine, but its final fate is unknown. Modern replicas of Turtle have been constructed and are on display in the Connecticut River Museum, the U.S. Navy's Submarine Force Library and Museum, the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, and the Oceanographic Museum (Monaco).

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Computing/Software

Compute Express Link (CXL) is an open standard for high-speed central processing unit (CPU)-to-device and CPU-to-memory connections, designed for high performance data center computers. CXL is built on the PCI Express (PCIe) physical and electrical interface and includes PCIe-based block input/output protocol (CXL.io) and new cache-coherent protocols for accessing system memory (CXL.cache) and device memory (CXL.mem).