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🔗 Technology 🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Business 🔗 Computing/Software

In big organizations, shadow IT refers to information technology (IT) systems deployed by departments other than the central IT department, to work around the shortcomings of the central information systems.

Shadow IT systems are an important source of innovation, and shadow systems may become prototypes for future central IT solutions.

🔗 Typography

Tiresias is a family of TrueType sans-serif typefaces that were designed with the aim of legibility by people with impaired vision at the Scientific Research Unit of Royal National Institute of Blind People in London. The font was originally designed for the RNIB by Chris Sharville of Laker Sharville Design Associates who was working with John Gill at the time.

The family includes

• Tiresias Infofont – for information labels, optimized for maximum legibility at a distance of 30–100 cm.
• Tiresias Keyfont – for labeling the tops of keys of keyboards, PIN pads, appliances, remote controls (features exaggerated punctuation marks, no descender on the J)
• Tiresias LPfont – for large-print publications. A wedge-serif design.
• Tiresias PCfont – for raster displays
• Tiresias Screenfont – for television subtitling and on-screen user interfaces
• Tiresias Signfont – a more open spacing for use on signs

In late 2007, all Tiresias fonts except Tiresias Screenfont were released under the GNU General Public License version 3 or any later version.

The Tiresias Screenfont was sold by Bitstream Inc., who in 2012 were acquired by Monotype Corporation. The acquiring company continues to market Tiresias on its websites.

🔗 United States 🔗 Biography 🔗 Canada 🔗 Business

Herbert Henry Dow (February 26, 1866 – October 15, 1930) was a Canadian-born American chemical industrialist, best known as the founder of the American multinational conglomerate Dow Chemical. He was a graduate of Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, and was a successful businessman.

🔗 Video games

Sokoban (倉庫番, Sōko-ban, lit. 'warehouse keeper') is a puzzle video game in which the player pushes boxes around in a warehouse, trying to get them to storage locations. The game was designed in 1981 by Hiroyuki Imabayashi, and first released in December 1982 for the PC-80, PC-88, and FM-7 computers.

🔗 Color

Pantone 448 C, also referred to as "the ugliest colour in the world", is a colour in the Pantone colour system. Described as a "drab dark brown", it was selected in 2016 as the colour for plain tobacco and cigarette packaging in Australia, after market researchers determined that it was the least attractive colour. The Australian Department of Health initially referred to the colour as "olive green", but the name was changed after concerns were expressed by the Australian Olive Association.

Since 2016, the same colour has also been used for plain cigarette packaging in France, the United Kingdom, Israel, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

The colour has also been widely but erroneously reported as being known as "opaque couché"; in fact this is simply French for "layered opaque", in reference to being used on coated paper. The confusion appears to have arisen because "PANTONE opaque couché" is the French name of a swatch library (palette) used in Adobe Illustrator containing this colour and intended for printing in solid ink colours on coated paper; in English this library is known as "PANTONE solid coated".

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software

SIMH is a free and open source, multi-platform multi-system emulator. It is maintained by Bob Supnik, a former DEC engineer and DEC vice president, and has been in development in one form or another since the 1960s.

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This is a list of common misconceptions. Each entry is formatted as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. These entries are meant to be concise, but more detail can be found in the main subject articles.

🔗 Books

"Uncleftish Beholding" (1989) is a short text by Poul Anderson designed to illustrate what English might look like without its large number of loanwords from languages such as French, Greek, and Latin. Written in a form of "Anglish," the work explains atomic theory using Germanic words almost exclusively and coining new words when necessary; many of these new words have cognates in modern German, an important scientific language in its own right. The title phrase uncleftish beholding calques "atomic theory."

To illustrate, the text begins:

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

It goes on to define firststuffs (chemical elements), such as waterstuff (hydrogen), sourstuff (oxygen), and ymirstuff (uranium), as well as bulkbits (molecules), bindings (compounds), and several other terms important to uncleftish worldken (atomic science). Wasserstoff and Sauerstoff are the modern German words for hydrogen and oxygen, and in Dutch the modern equivalents are waterstof and zuurstof. Sunstuff refers to helium, which derives from ἥλιος, the Ancient Greek word for "sun." Ymirstuff references Ymir, a giant in Norse mythology similar to Uranus in Greek mythology.

The vocabulary used in Uncleftish Beholding does not completely derive from Anglo-Saxon. Around, from Old French reond (Modern French rond), completely displaced Old English ymbe (cognate to German um) and left no "native" English word for this concept. The text also contains the French-derived words rest, ordinary and sort.

The text gained increased exposure and popularity after being circulated around the Internet, and has served as inspiration for some inventors of Germanic English conlangs. Douglas Hofstadter, in discussing the piece in his book Le Ton beau de Marot, jocularly refers to the use of only Germanic roots for scientific pieces as "Ander-Saxon."

🔗 Economics 🔗 Business 🔗 Sociology 🔗 Occupations

This is a category of jobs that have been rendered obsolete due to advances in technology and/or social conditions.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software

86-DOS is a discontinued operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system in 1980.

86-DOS had a command structure and application programming interface that imitated that of Digital Research's CP/M operating system, which made it easy to port programs from the latter. The system was licensed and then purchased by Microsoft and developed further as MS-DOS and PC DOS.