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🔗 Help break my "proof" of p = np... i can't find the error
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- "Help break my "proof" of p = np... i can't find the error" | 2011-12-23 | 12 Upvotes 1 Comments
🔗 Maximum Sum Subarray Problem
In computer science, the maximum sum subarray problem, also known as the maximum segment sum problem, is the task of finding a contiguous subarray with the largest sum, within a given one-dimensional array A[1...n] of numbers. Formally, the task is to find indices and with , such that the sum
is as large as possible. (Some formulations of the problem also allow the empty subarray to be considered; by convention, the sum of all values of the empty subarray is zero.) Each number in the input array A could be positive, negative, or zero.
For example, for the array of values [−2, 1, −3, 4, −1, 2, 1, −5, 4], the contiguous subarray with the largest sum is [4, −1, 2, 1], with sum 6.
Some properties of this problem are:
- If the array contains all non-negative numbers, then the problem is trivial; a maximum subarray is the entire array.
- If the array contains all non-positive numbers, then a solution is any subarray of size 1 containing the maximal value of the array (or the empty subarray, if it is permitted).
- Several different sub-arrays may have the same maximum sum.
This problem can be solved using several different algorithmic techniques, including brute force, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, and reduction to shortest paths.
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- "Maximum Sum Subarray Problem" | 2023-01-24 | 12 Upvotes 2 Comments
🔗 Ragnarök
In Norse mythology, Ragnarök ( (listen); Old Norse: Ragnarǫk) is a series of events, including a great battle, foretelling the death of numerous great figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), natural disasters, and the submersion of the world in water. After these events, the world will rise again, cleansed and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Ragnarök is an important event in Norse mythology and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory in the history of Germanic studies.
The event is attested primarily in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In the Prose Edda and in a single poem in the Poetic Edda, the event is referred to as Ragnarøkkr (Old Norse for 'Twilight of the Gods'), a usage popularised by 19th-century composer Richard Wagner with the title of the last of his Der Ring des Nibelungen operas, Götterdämmerung (1876), which is "Twilight of the Gods" in German.
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- "Ragnarök" | 2022-10-04 | 23 Upvotes 7 Comments
🔗 The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (abbreviated CatB) is an essay, and later a book, by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design. The essay was first presented by the author at the Linux Kongress on May 27, 1997 in Würzburg (Germany) and was published as part of the book in 1999.
The illustration on the cover of the book is a 1913 painting by Liubov Popova titled Composition with Figures and belongs to the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery. The book was released under the Open Publication License v2.0 around 1999.
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- "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" | 2023-04-29 | 24 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" | 2015-05-15 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
🔗 Ariel School UFO Incident
On September 16, 1994, there was a UFO sighting outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe. 62 students at the Ariel School aged between six and twelve claimed that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school. One or more creatures dressed all in black then approached the children and telepathically communicated to them a message with an environmental theme.
The Fortean writer Jerome Clark has called the incident the “most remarkable close encounter of the third kind of the 1990s”. Skeptics have described the incident as one of mass hysteria. Not all the children at the school that day claimed that they saw something. Several of those that did maintain that their account of the incident is true.
🔗 Go Away Green
Go Away Green refers to a range of paint colors used in Disney Parks to divert attention away from infrastructure. It has been compared to military camouflage like Olive Drab.
Imagineer John Hench wrote about developing such colors, "We chose a neutral gray-brown for the railing, a 'go away' color that did not call attention to itself, even though it was entirely unrelated to the Colonial color scheme."
Large attraction buildings visible either inside or outside a park such as Soarin’ at California Adventure or Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland are often painted a muted green. Necessary in-park infrastructure like speakers, lamp posts, fences, trash cans, and the former entrance to Club 33 are also painted various shades of green.
This concept also extends to grays, browns, and blues for spaces with less greenery or buildings that extend above the tree line, such as Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
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- "Go Away Green" | 2025-02-09 | 93 Upvotes 31 Comments
🔗 Transparent Aluminum
Aluminium oxynitride (marketed under the name ALON by Surmet Corporation) is a transparent ceramic composed of aluminium, oxygen and nitrogen. ALON is optically transparent (≥ 80%) in the near-ultraviolet, visible, and midwave-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is four times as hard as fused silica glass, 85% as hard as sapphire, and nearly 115% as hard as magnesium aluminate spinel. Since it has a cubic spinel structure, it can be fabricated to transparent windows, plates, domes, rods, tubes, and other forms using conventional ceramic powder processing techniques.
ALON is the hardest polycrystalline transparent ceramic available commercially. Because of its relatively low weight, distinctive optical and mechanical properties, and resistance to oxidation or radiation, it shows promise for applications such as bulletproof, blast-resistant, and optoelectronic windows. ALON-based armor has been shown to stop multiple armor-piercing projectiles of up to .50 BMG.
ALON is commercially available in sizes as large as 18-by-35-inch (460 mm × 890 mm; 46 cm × 89 cm) monolithic windows.
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- "Aluminium Oxynitride" | 2024-08-07 | 17 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Transparent Aluminum" | 2023-02-12 | 76 Upvotes 25 Comments
🔗 A supernova star that erupted continuously for about 1,000 days
iPTF14hls is an unusual supernova star that erupted continuously for about 1,000 days beginning in September 2014 before becoming a remnant nebula. It had previously erupted in 1954. None of the theories nor proposed hypotheses fully explain all the aspects of the object.
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- "A supernova star that erupted continuously for about 1,000 days" | 2022-10-08 | 73 Upvotes 10 Comments
🔗 Hallucinogenic Fish
Several species of fish are claimed to produce hallucinogenic effects when consumed. For example, Sarpa salpa, a species of sea bream, is commonly claimed to be hallucinogenic. These widely distributed coastal fish are normally found in the Mediterranean and around Spain, and along the west and south coasts of Africa. Occasionally they are found in British waters. They may induce hallucinogenic effects that are purportedly LSD-like if eaten. In 2006, two men who apparently ate the fish experienced hallucinations lasting for several days. The likelihood of hallucinations depends on the season. Sarpa salpa is known as "the fish that makes dreams" in Arabic.
Other species claimed to be capable of producing hallucinations include several species of sea chub from the genus Kyphosus. It is unclear whether the toxins are produced by the fish themselves or by marine algae in their diet. Other hallucinogenic fish are Siganus spinus, called "the fish that inebriates" in Reunion Island, and Mulloidichthys flavolineatus (formerly Mulloidichthys samoensis), called "the chief of ghosts" in Hawaii.
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- "Hallucinogenic Fish" | 2020-02-12 | 148 Upvotes 55 Comments
🔗 Initial Stress-Derived Noun
Initial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English that moves stress to the first syllable of verbs when they are used as nouns or adjectives. (This is an example of a suprafix.) This process can be found in the case of several dozen verb-noun and verb-adjective pairs and is gradually becoming more standardized in some English dialects, but it is not present in all. The list of affected words differs from area to area, and often depends on whether a word is used metaphorically or not. At least 170 verb-noun or verb-adjective pairs exist. Some examples are:
- record.
- as a verb, "Remember to recórd the show!".
- as a noun, "I'll keep a récord of that request."
- permit.
- as a verb, "I won't permít that."
- as a noun, "We already have a pérmit."
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- "Initial Stress-Derived Noun" | 2021-05-22 | 215 Upvotes 160 Comments