Random Articles (Page 130)
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
๐ NOBUS (Nobody but Us)
NOBUS ("nobody but us") are security vulnerabilities which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) believes that only it can exploit. As such, NSA sometimes chooses to leave such vulnerabilities open if NSA finds them, in order to exploit them against NSA's targets. More broadly, it refers to the notion that some signals intelligence capabilities are so powerful or otherwise inaccessible that only the NSA will be able to deploy them, though recent analyses suggest that this advantage may be under stress.
Discussed on
- "NOBUS (Nobody but Us)" | 2020-01-15 | 184 Upvotes 55 Comments
๐ Project Cybersyn (1971)
Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971โ1973 during the presidency of Salvador Allende aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. The project consisted of four modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer.
Project Cybersyn was based on viable system model theory approach to organizational design, and featured innovative technology for its time: it included a network of telex machines (Cybernet) in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information with the government in Santiago. Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software (Cyberstride) that would monitor production indicators, such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism, in "almost" real time, alerting the workers in the first case and, in abnormal situations, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges by a very large degree, also the central government. The information would also be input into economic simulation software (CHECO, for CHilean ECOnomic simulator) that the government could use to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room (Opsroom) would provide a space where managers could see relevant economic data, formulate feasible responses to emergencies, and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations by using the telex network.
The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer, and the system embodied his notions of organisational cybernetics in industrial management. One of its main objectives was to devolve decision-making power within industrial enterprises to their workforce in order to develop self-regulation of factories.
Discussed on
- "Project Cybersyn" | 2026-01-19 | 20 Upvotes 10 Comments
- "Project Cybersyn" | 2025-11-28 | 17 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Project Cybersyn (1971)" | 2025-09-19 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Project Cybersyn" | 2020-10-13 | 212 Upvotes 114 Comments
- "Project Cybersyn (1971)" | 2014-03-14 | 70 Upvotes 36 Comments
- "Computer-controlled socialist economy gets destroyed on 9/11... 1973" | 2011-09-29 | 12 Upvotes 8 Comments
- "Project Cybersyn" | 2010-08-27 | 12 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Project Cybersyn: real-time computer control of a planned economy (1970-1973)" | 2010-03-14 | 56 Upvotes 33 Comments
๐ Culinary Diplomacy
Culinary diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy or food diplomacy is a type of cultural diplomacy, which itself is a subset of public diplomacy. Its basic premise is that "the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach". Official government-sponsored culinary diplomacy programs have been established in Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Peru, the United States, Cambodia, Japan, Scandinavia, Australia and Uzbekistan.
Discussed on
- "Culinary Diplomacy" | 2021-12-10 | 54 Upvotes 10 Comments
๐ Human Anti-Mouse Antibody
Human anti-mouse antibody or human anti-murine antibody (HAMA) is an antibody found in humans which reacts to immunoglobins found in mice.
๐ Liquid Breathing
Liquid breathing is a form of respiration in which a normally air-breathing organism breathes an oxygen-rich liquid (such as a perfluorocarbon), rather than breathing air.
This requires certain physical properties such as respiratory gas solubility, density, viscosity, vapor pressure, and lipid solubility which some, but not all, perfluorochemicals (perfluorocarbon) have. Thus, it is critical to choose the appropriate PFC for a specific biomedical application, such as liquid ventilation, drug delivery or blood substitutes. The physical properties of PFC liquids vary substantially; however, the one common property is their high solubility for respiratory gases. In fact, these liquids carry more oxygen and carbon dioxide than blood.
In theory, liquid breathing could assist in the treatment of patients with severe pulmonary or cardiac trauma, especially in pediatric cases. Liquid breathing has also been proposed for use in deep diving and space travel. Despite some recent advances in liquid ventilation, a standard mode of application has not yet been established.
Discussed on
- "Liquid Breathing" | 2021-04-08 | 19 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Liquid Breathing" | 2015-06-22 | 12 Upvotes 19 Comments
- "Liquid breathing" | 2010-12-20 | 37 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Liquid breathing" | 2009-09-28 | 18 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ The Myth of Mental Illness
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct is a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in which the author criticizes psychiatry and argues against the concept of mental illness. It received much publicity, and has become a classic, well known as an argument that "mentally ill" is a label which psychiatrists have used against people "disabled by living" rather than truly having a disease.
Discussed on
- "The Myth of Mental Illness" | 2021-10-28 | 14 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ List of pangrams
Discussed on
- "List of pangrams" | 2009-09-20 | 16 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Cyberpunk Derivatives
Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of derivatives of cyberpunk have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction.
Rather than necessarily sharing the digitally- and mechanically-focused setting of cyberpunk, these derivatives can display other futuristic, or even retrofuturistic, qualities that are drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk: a world built on one particular technology that is extrapolated to a highly sophisticated level (this may even be a fantastical or anachronistic technology, akin to retrofuturism), a gritty transreal urban style, or a particular approach to social themes.
Steampunk, one of the most well-known of these subgenres, has been defined as a "kind of technological fantasy;" others in this category sometimes also incorporate aspects of science fantasy and historical fantasy. Scholars have written of the stylistic place of these subgenres in postmodern literature, as well as their ambiguous interaction with the historical perspective of postcolonialism.
Discussed on
- "Cyberpunk Derivatives" | 2021-07-11 | 76 Upvotes 36 Comments
๐ Dialetheism
Dialetheism (from Greek ฮดฮน- di- 'twice' and แผฮปฮฎฮธฮตฮนฮฑ alแธtheia 'truth') is the view that there are statements that are both true and false. More precisely, it is the belief that there can be a true statement whose negation is also true. Such statements are called "true contradictions", dialetheia, or nondualisms.
Dialetheism is not a system of formal logic; instead, it is a thesis about truth that influences the construction of a formal logic, often based on pre-existing systems. Introducing dialetheism has various consequences, depending on the theory into which it is introduced. A common mistake resulting from this is to reject dialetheism on the basis that, in traditional systems of logic (e.g., classical logic and intuitionistic logic), every statement becomes a theorem if a contradiction is true, trivialising such systems when dialetheism is included as an axiom. Other logical systems, however, do not explode in this manner when contradictions are introduced; such contradiction-tolerant systems are known as paraconsistent logics. Dialetheists who do not want to allow that every statement is true are free to favour these over traditional, explosive logics.
Graham Priest defines dialetheism as the view that there are true contradictions. Jc Beall is another advocate; his position differs from Priest's in advocating constructive (methodological) deflationism regarding the truth predicate.
Discussed on
- "Dialetheism" | 2024-02-07 | 15 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ Northwestern Point of the Lake of the Woods
The northwesternmost point of the Lake of the Woods was a critical landmark for the boundary between U.S. territory and the British possessions to the north. This point was referred to in the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and in later treaties including the Treaty of 1818. This point lies at the corner of the Northwest Angle of Minnesota and is thus the northernmost point in the lower 48 United States. After Canadian Confederation, the point became the basis for the border between Manitoba and Ontario.
The "northwesternmost point" of the lake had not yet been identified when it was referenced in treaties defining the border between the US and Britain; it was simply an easily described abstraction based on a large landmark. The best maps at the time of the original negotiation depicted the lake as a simple oval. However, although the southern portion of the lake is easily mapped, to the north it becomes a complex tangle of bays, peninsulas, and islands, with many adjacent bodies of water separated or connected by narrow isthmuses or straits. An 1822 survey crew declared the referenced point impossible to determine. In 1824, British explorer David Thompson was hired to identify it. Thompson mapped the lake and found four possibilities, but did not conclusively declare one location.
In 1825, German astronomer in British service Dr. Johann Ludwig Tiarks surveyed the lake. Tiarks identified two possibilities for the northwesternmost point on the lake, based on Thompson's maps: the Angle Inlet and Rat Portage. To determine which point was the most northwestern, he drew a line from each point in the southwest-northeast direction. If the line intersected the lake at any point, it was not the most northwestern point, as shown in the example diagram here. Tiarks determined that the only such line that did not intersect the lake was at the edge of a pond on the Angle Inlet. (A 1940 academic study documents this point as being in the immediate vicinity of 49ยฐ23โฒ51.324โณN 95ยฐ9โฒ12.20783โณW (NAD83).)
Under the 1783 treaty, the international border would have run due west from this point to the Mississippi River. As this was determined to be geographically impossible (the Mississippi begins further south), under the 1818 treaty the international border instead ran from the point determined by Tiarks, to the 49th parallel. (It was not known at the time whether that was to the north or โ in fact โ the south.) From there it ran due west to the Rocky Mountains (and later, the Pacific coast).
Tiarks' point, however, created problems, because the 1818 treaty called for the border to run directly northโsouth from it. South of that point, the channel of the Northwest Angle Inlet meandered east and west, crossing the border five times, thereby creating two small enclaves of water areas totaling two and a half acres that belonged to the United States but were surrounded by Canadian waters. A 1925 treaty addressed this by adopting the southernmost of the points where the channel and the border intersected โ approximately 5,000ย ft (1,500ย m) south of Tiarks' point โ as the new "northwesternmost point". The new northwesternmost point thus became 49ยฐ23โฒ4.14โณN 95ยฐ9โฒ11.34โณW, based on the NAD27 datum, which is equivalent to 49ยฐ23โฒ4.12373โณN 95ยฐ9โฒ12.20783โณW under the modern NAD83 datum.
Discussed on
- "Northwestern Point of the Lake of the Woods" | 2020-09-05 | 119 Upvotes 23 Comments