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π Sir Douglas Nicholls
Sir Douglas Ralph Nicholls, (9 December 1906 β 4 June 1988) was a prominent Aboriginal Australian from the Yorta Yorta people. He was a professional athlete, Churches of Christ pastor and church planter, ceremonial officer and a pioneering campaigner for reconciliation.
Nicholls was the first Aboriginal Australian to be knighted when he was appointed Knight Bachelor in 1972 (he was subsequently appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1977). He was also the first β and to date the only β Indigenous Australian to be appointed to vice-regal office, serving as Governor of South Australia from 1 December 1976 until his resignation on 30 April 1977 due to poor health.
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- "Sir Douglas Nicholls" | 2021-04-29 | 55 Upvotes 17 Comments
π Tragedy of the Anticommons
The tragedy of the anticommons is a type of coordination breakdown, in which a commons does not emerge, even when general access to resources or infrastructure would be a social good. It is a mirror-image of the older concept of tragedy of the commons, in which numerous rights holders' combined use exceeds the capacity of a resource and depletes or destroys it. The "tragedy of the anticommons" covers a range of coordination failures, including patent thickets and submarine patents. Overcoming these breakdowns can be difficult, but there are assorted means, including eminent domain, laches, patent pools, or other licensing organizations.
The term originally appeared in Michael Heller's 1998 article of the same name and is the thesis of his 2008 book. The model was formalized by James M. Buchanan and Yong Yoon. In a 1998 Science article, Heller and Rebecca S. Eisenberg, while not disputing the role of patents in general in motivating invention and disclosure, argue that biomedical research was one of several key areas where competing patent rights could actually prevent useful and affordable products from reaching the marketplace.
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- "Tragedy of the Anticommons" | 2023-07-11 | 25 Upvotes 2 Comments
π GNU Guix
GNU Guix () is a functional cross-platform package manager and a tool to instantiate and manage Unix-like operating systems, based on the Nix package manager. Configuration and package recipes are written in Guile Scheme. GNU Guix is the default package manager of the GNU Guix System distribution.
Differing from traditional package managers, Guix (like Nix) utilizes a purely functional deployment model where software is installed into unique directories generated through cryptographic hashes. All dependencies for each software are included within each hash. This solves the problem of dependency hell, allows multiple versions of the same software to coexist and makes packages portable and reproducible. Performing scientific computations in a Guix setup has been proposed as a promising response to the replication crisis.
The development of GNU Guix is intertwined with the GNU Guix System, an installable operating system distribution using the Linux-libre kernel and GNU Shepherd init system.
π IBM Simon
The IBM Simon Personal Communicator (simply known as IBM Simon) is a handheld, touchscreen PDA designed by International Business Machines (IBM), and manufactured by Mitsubishi Electric. BellSouth Cellular Corp. distributed the Simon Personal Communicator in the United States between August 1994 and February 1995, selling 50,000 units. The Simon Personal Communicator was the first personal digital assistant or PDA to include telephony features. The battery lasted only an hour, and flip phones became increasingly slim which led to its demise.
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- "IBM Simon" | 2022-02-03 | 47 Upvotes 17 Comments
- "IBM Simon" | 2014-08-12 | 43 Upvotes 4 Comments
π DjVu, an open PDF alternative
DjVu ( DAY-zhah-VOO, like French "dΓ©jΓ vu") is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, indexed color images, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy compression for bitonal (monochrome) images. This allows high-quality, readable images to be stored in a minimum of space, so that they can be made available on the web.
DjVu has been promoted as providing smaller files than PDF for most scanned documents. The DjVu developers report that color magazine pages compress to 40β70Β kB, black-and-white technical papers compress to 15β40Β kB, and ancient manuscripts compress to around 100Β kB; a satisfactory JPEG image typically requires 500Β kB. Like PDF, DjVu can contain an OCR text layer, making it easy to perform copy and paste and text search operations.
Free creators, manipulators, converters, browser plug-ins, and desktop viewers are available. DjVu is supported by a number of multi-format document viewers and e-book reader software on Linux (Okular, Evince), Windows (SumatraPDF), Android (EBookDroid, PocketBook).
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- "DjVu - PDF alternative" | 2024-04-10 | 17 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "DjVu, an open PDF alternative" | 2018-06-30 | 143 Upvotes 98 Comments
π Pankration
Pankration (; Greek: ΟΞ±Ξ³ΞΊΟΞ¬ΟΞΉΞΏΞ½) was a sporting event introduced into the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC and was an empty-hand submission sport with scarcely any rules. The athletes used boxing and wrestling techniques, but also others, such as kicking and holds, locks and chokes on the ground. The term comes from the Greek ΟΞ±Ξ³ΞΊΟΞ¬ΟΞΉΞΏΞ½ [paΕkrΓ‘tion], literally meaning "all of power" from ΟαΎΆΞ½ (pan) "all" and ΞΊΟΞ¬ΟΞΏΟ (kratos) "strength, might, power".
It was known in ancient times for its ferocity and allowance of such tactics as knees to the head and eye gouging. One ancient account tells of a situation in which the judges were trying to determine the winner of a match. The difficulty lay in that fact that both men had died in the arena from their injuries, making it hard to determine a victor. Eventually, the judges decided the winner was the one who didn't have his eyes gouged out. Over time, however, maneuvers like eye gouging were discouraged to prevent such unpleasant incidents.
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- "Pankration" | 2015-04-09 | 16 Upvotes 18 Comments
π 1989 Belgium MiG-23 crash
On 4 July 1989, a pilotless MiG-23 jet fighter of the Soviet Air Forces crashed into a house in Kortrijk, Belgium, killing one person. The pilot had ejected over an hour earlier near KoΕobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying for around 900Β km (600Β mi) before running out of fuel and descending into the ground.
π Shepard Tone
A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.
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- "Shepard Tone" | 2022-06-15 | 94 Upvotes 41 Comments
- "Shepard Tone" | 2019-08-11 | 99 Upvotes 34 Comments
- "Shepard tone" | 2012-10-21 | 99 Upvotes 34 Comments
π DataHand
The DataHand keyboard was introduced in 1995 by DataHand Systems, Inc. It was invented by Dale J. Retter and was produced by Industrial Innovations as early as 1992. The keyboard consists of two completely separate "keyboards", one for the left hand and one for the right, that are molded to rest the user's hands on. This allows the user to place each hand wherever it is most comfortable to them. Each finger activates five buttons, the four compass directions as well as down. The thumbs also have five buttons, one inside and two outside as well as up and down. The button modules in which the fingers rest are adjustable to best fit the user's handsβeach side can be independently moved up and down, towards the palm or farther away.
This ergonomic layout allows for all typing to occur without any wrist motion, as well as without any finger extension. The keyboard layout is initially similar to a QWERTY keyboard, but the middle two columns of keys (i.e. H,Y,G...) have been delegated to sideways finger movements, and all of the keys outside of the main three rows are accessed through two additional modes, including a mode for mousing. There are three primary modes all together: letters, number and symbols, and function / mouse mode. Some practice is required. However, eventual typing speedups are possible.
Also of note is the button designβinstead of being spring-loaded, the buttons are held in place with magnets and are activated using optical sensors. This was done in order to dramatically reduce the finger workload while optimizing tactile feedback.
This unconventional keyboard was seen in the Jodie Foster movie Contact (1997) as the pilot's controls for the futuristic spaceship; and the spy movie Stormbreaker (2006). The Industrial Innovations version was featured on the television series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. A black model is used by Agent Grasso while searching for Amanda Givens' Jeep in Shadow Conspiracy (1997), starring Charlie Sheen.
After the initial prototype was released in 1995, DataHand has released the Professional and Professional II with new bodies. The Professional II also has extended programming capabilities over the Professional, being able to record macros of keystrokes for convenient use.
DataHand Systems, Inc. announced in early 2008 that it was ceasing to market and sell its keyboards. The company web site states that due to supplier issues, the company will not sell the DataHand keyboard "until a new manufacturer can be identified". However, the company plans a final, limited production run to satisfy existing customers. In January 2009, the company's website started taking orders for a "limited number of new DataHand Pro II units".
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- "DataHand" | 2020-01-18 | 81 Upvotes 52 Comments
- "DataHand" | 2014-01-29 | 111 Upvotes 63 Comments
π Darvaza Gas Crater
The Darvaza gas crater (Turkmen: Garagum Γ½alkymy), also known as the Door to Hell or Gates of Hell, or, officially, the Shining of Karakum, is a burning natural gas field collapsed into a cavern near Darvaza, Turkmenistan. The floor and especially rim of the crater is illumined by hundreds of natural gas fires. The crater has been burning for an unknown amount of time, as how the crater formed and ignited remains unknown.
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- "Darvaza Gas Crater" | 2023-05-09 | 109 Upvotes 24 Comments