Random Articles (Page 2)
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
π Stationary Bandit Theory
Theory of the Stationary Bandit β theory of the origin of the state, developed by American scholars Martin C. McGuire and Mansur Olson.
π Maj. Gen. Sir Nils Olav
Major General Sir Nils Olav III, Baron of the Bouvet Islands (Norwegian: [ΛnΙͺls ΛΓ΄ΛlΙv]) is a king penguin who resides in Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland. He is the mascot and colonel-in-chief of the Norwegian King's Guard. The name 'Nils Olav' and associated ranks have been passed down through three king penguins since 1972, the current holder being Nils Olav III.
Discussed on
- "Maj. Gen. Sir Nils Olav" | 2024-04-28 | 11 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Boreout
Boredom boreout syndrome is a psychological disorder that causes physical illness, mainly caused by mental underload at the workplace due to lack of either adequate quantitative or qualitative workload. One reason for bore-out could be that the initial job description does not match the actual work.
This theory was first expounded in 2007 in Diagnose Boreout, a book by Peter Werder and Philippe Rothlin, two Swiss business consultants.
Discussed on
- "Boreout" | 2010-02-20 | 39 Upvotes 13 Comments
π OpenDoc
OpenDoc is a multi-platform software componentry framework standard created by Apple for compound documents, intended as an alternative to Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). As part of the AIM alliance between Apple, IBM, and Motorola, OpenDoc is one of Apple's earliest experiments with open standards and collaborative development methods with other companiesβeffectively starting an industry consortium. Active development was discontinued in March 1997.
The core idea of OpenDoc is to create small, reusable components, responsible for a specific task, such as text editing, bitmap editing, or browsing an FTP server. OpenDoc provides a framework in which these components can run together, and a document format for storing the data created by each component. These documents can then be opened on other machines, where the OpenDoc frameworks substitute suitable components for each part, even if they are from different vendors. In this way users can "build up" their documents from parts. Since there is no main application and the only visible interface is the document itself, the system is known as document centered.
At its inception, it was envisioned that OpenDoc would allow smaller, third-party developers to enter the then-competitive office software market, able to build one good editor instead of having to provide a complete suite.
Discussed on
- "OpenDoc" | 2016-01-23 | 27 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Seven-Dimensional Cross Product
In mathematics, the seven-dimensional cross product is a bilinear operation on vectors in seven-dimensional Euclidean space. It assigns to any two vectors a, b in R7 a vector a Γ b also in R7. Like the cross product in three dimensions, the seven-dimensional product is anticommutative and a Γ b is orthogonal both to a and to b. Unlike in three dimensions, it does not satisfy the Jacobi identity, and while the three-dimensional cross product is unique up to a sign, there are many seven-dimensional cross products. The seven-dimensional cross product has the same relationship to the octonions as the three-dimensional product does to the quaternions.
The seven-dimensional cross product is one way of generalising the cross product to other than three dimensions, and it is the only other bilinear product of two vectors that is vector-valued, orthogonal, and has the same magnitude as in the 3D case. In other dimensions there are vector-valued products of three or more vectors that satisfy these conditions, and binary products with bivector results.
Discussed on
- "Seven-Dimensional Cross Product" | 2019-04-10 | 104 Upvotes 42 Comments
π Everything Bubble
The everything bubble refers to the correlated impact of monetary easing by the Federal Reserve (and followed by the ECB and the BOJ), on asset prices in most asset classes, namely equities, housing, bonds, many commodities, and even exotic assets such as cryptocurrencies and SPACs. The term is related to the Fed put, being the tools of direct and indirect quantative easing that the Fed used to execute the monetary easing, and to modern monetary theory, which advocates use of such tools, even in non-crisis periods, to create economic growth through asset price inflation. The term first came in use during the chair of Janet Yellen, but it is most associated with the subsequent chair of Jerome Powell, and the 2020β2021 period of the coronavirus pandemic.
The everything bubble was not only notable for the simultaneous extremes in valuations recorded in a wide range of asset classes and the high level of speculation in the market, but also that this was achieved in a period of recession, high unemployment, trade wars, and political turmoil β leading to a realization that it was uniquely a central bank creation, with concerns on the independence and integrity of market pricing, and on the Fed's impact on wealth inequality.
Bloomberg attributed Powell's maintenance of monetary stimulus into 2021 (the final year of his first term as Fed chair), in spite of warnings of unprecedented levels of market risk and speculation, to his fear of repeating the crash in Q4 2018 when he started quantitative tightening; thus extending the bubble.
High up on his [President Biden] list, and sooner rather than later, will be dealing with the consequences of the biggest financial bubble in U.S. history. Why the biggest? Because it encompasses not just stocks but pretty much every other financial asset too. And for that, you may thank the Federal Reserve.
Discussed on
- "Everything Bubble" | 2021-02-23 | 28 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Everything Bubble" | 2021-02-22 | 19 Upvotes 2 Comments
π ZMODEM
ZMODEM is a file transfer protocol developed by Chuck Forsberg in 1986, in a project funded by Telenet in order to improve file transfers on their X.25 network. In addition to dramatically improved performance compared to older protocols, ZMODEM also offered restartable transfers, auto-start by the sender, an expanded 32-bit CRC, and control character quoting supporting 8-bit clean transfers, allowing it to be used on networks that would not pass control characters.
In contrast to most transfer protocols developed for bulletin board systems (BBSs), ZMODEM was not directly based on, nor compatible with, the seminal XMODEM. Many variants of XMODEM had been developed in order to address one or more of its shortcomings, and most remained backward compatible and would successfully complete transfers with "classic" XMODEM implementations.
ZMODEM eschewed backward compatibility in favor of producing a radically improved protocol. It performed as well or better than any of the high-performance varieties of XMODEM, did so over links that previously didn't work at all, like X.25, or had poor performance, like Telebit modems, and included useful features found in few or no other protocols. ZMODEM became extremely popular on bulletin board systems (BBS) in the early 1990s, becoming a standard as widespread as XMODEM had been before it.
Discussed on
- "ZMODEM" | 2016-10-22 | 132 Upvotes 99 Comments
π Economy of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Despite common origins, the economy of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was significantly different from the economies of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist states, especially after the Yugoslav-Soviet break-up in 1948. The occupation and liberation struggle in World War II left Yugoslavia's infrastructure devastated. Even the most developed parts of the country were largely rural and the little industry of the country was largely damaged or destroyed.
Discussed on
- "Economy of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" | 2013-06-07 | 21 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Raven paradox
The raven paradox, also known as Hempel's paradox, Hempel's ravens, or rarely the paradox of indoor ornithology, is a paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black even though, intuitively, these observations are unrelated.
This problem was proposed by the logician Carl Gustav Hempel in the 1940s to illustrate a contradiction between inductive logic and intuition.
Discussed on
- "Raven paradox" | 2015-04-04 | 69 Upvotes 43 Comments
- "The Raven Paradox (logic)" | 2008-01-13 | 9 Upvotes 16 Comments
π Shunting-yard algorithm
In computer science, the shunting-yard algorithm is a method for parsing mathematical expressions specified in infix notation. It can produce either a postfix notation string, also known as Reverse Polish notation (RPN), or an abstract syntax tree (AST). The algorithm was invented by Edsger Dijkstra and named the "shunting yard" algorithm because its operation resembles that of a railroad shunting yard. Dijkstra first described the Shunting Yard Algorithm in the Mathematisch Centrum report MR 34/61.
Like the evaluation of RPN, the shunting yard algorithm is stack-based. Infix expressions are the form of mathematical notation most people are used to, for instance "3 + 4" or "3 + 4 Γ (2 β 1)". For the conversion there are two text variables (strings), the input and the output. There is also a stack that holds operators not yet added to the output queue. To convert, the program reads each symbol in order and does something based on that symbol. The result for the above examples would be (in Reverse Polish notation) "3 4 +" and "3 4 2 1 β Γ +", respectively.
The shunting-yard algorithm was later generalized into operator-precedence parsing.
Discussed on
- "Shunting-yard algorithm" | 2019-02-18 | 75 Upvotes 26 Comments