Random Articles (Page 165)
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π Flow-Matic
FLOW-MATIC, originally known as B-0 (Business Language version 0), was the first English-like data processing language. It was developed for the UNIVAC I at Remington Rand under Grace Hopper from 1955 to 1959, and helped shape the development of COBOL.
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- "Flow-Matic" | 2024-06-03 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
π List of people and companies named in the Paradise Papers
This is a list of people and organisations named in the Paradise Papers as connected to offshore companies. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists stated in their politicians database, as a disclaimer, "There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any people, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly."
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- "List of people and companies named in the Paradise Papers" | 2017-11-06 | 36 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Gutter Oil
Gutter oil (Chinese: ε°ζ²ζ²Ή; pinyin: dΓ¬gΕu yΓ³u, or ι€Ώζ°΄ζ²Ή; sΕushuΗ yΓ³u) is oil which has been recycled from waste oil collected from sources such as restaurant fryers, grease traps, slaughterhouse waste and fatbergs.
Reprocessing of used cooking oil is often very rudimentary; techniques include filtration, boiling, refining, and the removal of some adulterants. It is then packaged and resold as a cheaper alternative to normal cooking oil. Another version of gutter oil uses discarded animal parts, animal fat and skins, internal organs, and expired or otherwise low-quality meat, which is then cooked in large vats in order to extract the oil. Used kitchen oil can be purchased for between $859 and $937 per ton, while the cleaned and refined product can sell for $1,560 per ton. Thus there is great economic incentive to produce and sell gutter oil.
It was estimated in 2011 that up to one in every ten lower-market restaurant meals consumed in China is prepared with recycled oil. As Feng Ping of the China Meat Research Center has said: "The illegal oil shows no difference in appearance and indicators after refining and purification because the law breakers are skillful at coping with the established standards."
Some street vendors and restaurants in China and Taiwan have illegally used recycled oil unfit for human consumption for the purposes of cooking food, leading to a crackdown against such establishments by the Chinese and Taiwanese governments.
Gutter oil is an acceptable raw ingredient for products that are not for human consumption, such as soap, rubber, bio-fuel, and cosmetics.
Discussed on
- "Gutter Oil" | 2019-05-01 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Yuan Longping has died
Yuan Longping (Chinese: θ’ιεΉ³; September 7, 1930Β β May 22, 2021) was a Chinese agronomist, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, known for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s.
Hybrid rice has since been grown in dozens of countries in Africa, America, and Asiaβproviding a robust food source in areas with a high risk of famine. For his contributions, Yuan is always called the "Father of Hybrid Rice" by the Chinese media. On May 22, 2021, Yuan Longping died of multiple organ failure at the age of 90.
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- "Yuan Longping has died" | 2021-05-23 | 164 Upvotes 60 Comments
π Self-referencing doomsday argument rebuttal
The self-referencing doomsday argument rebuttal is an attempt to refute the doomsday argument (that there is a credible link between the brevity of the human race's existence and its expected extinction) by applying the same reasoning to the lifetime of the doomsday argument itself.
The first researchers to write about this were P. T. Landsberg and J. N. Dewynne in 1997; they applied belief in the doomsday argument to itself, and claimed that a paradox results.
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- "Self-referencing doomsday argument rebuttal" | 2021-04-01 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π "The Siege of Caffa" β The earliest known use of Biological Warfare
The Siege of Caffa was a 14th-century military encounter when Jani Beg of the Golden Horde sieged the city of Caffa, (today Feodosia) between two periods in the 1340s. The city of Caffa, a Genoese colony, was a vital trading hub located in Crimea. The city was then part of Gazaria, a group of seven ports located in Crimea and belonging to the maritime empire of the Republic of Genoa. The event is historically significant primarily because it is believed to be one of the earliest instances of biological warfare.
The siege of Caffa was characterized by intense military tactics from both sides. After several years of siege, the armies of the Horde were forced to withdraw. The siege is famous for a story recounted by Italian notary Gabriel de Mussis, which attributed the subsequent spread of the Black Death to plague-infested corpses having been launched over the walls at the end of the siege.
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- ""The Siege of Caffa" β The earliest known use of Biological Warfare" | 2024-10-09 | 16 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Dark fibre
A dark fibre or unlit fibre is an unused optical fibre, available for use in fibre-optic communication. Dark fibre may be leased from a network service provider.
Dark fibre originally referred to the potential network capacity of telecommunication infrastructure. Because the marginal cost of installing additional fibre optic cables is very low once a trench has been dug or conduit laid, a great excess of fibre was installed in the US during the telecom boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This excess capacity was later referred to as dark fibre following the dot-com crash of the early 2000s that briefly reduced demand for high-speed data transmission.
These unused fibre optic cables later created a new market for unique private services that could not be accommodated on lit fibre cables (i.e., cables used in traditional long-distance communication).
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- "Dark fibre" | 2024-06-14 | 19 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Lawsuits Against God
Lawsuits against God have occurred in real life and in fiction. Issues debated in the actions include the problem of evil and harmful "acts of God".
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- "Lawsuits Against God" | 2021-09-30 | 20 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Lego - the Largest Tyre Manufacturer in the World
A Lego tire is a rubber tire manufactured by the toy building block company The Lego Group for use on vehicles within their Lego building sets. The tires are available in a range of sizes depending on the application. Lego first began manufacturing tires in 1962 and included them in what would become their most popular set at the time. Previously, the only tire options for Lego users were either purchasing complete car kits from Lego, or building their own tires out of existing Lego blocks. Lego produced 318 million tires in 2011, making them the world's largest tire manufacturer by number of units produced.
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- "Lego - the Largest Tyre Manufacturer in the World" | 2012-05-20 | 67 Upvotes 31 Comments