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π Core War
Core War is a 1984 programming game created by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney in which two or more battle programs (called "warriors") compete for control of a virtual computer. These battle programs are written in an abstract assembly language called Redcode.
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- "Core War, a very old game about programming" | 2023-08-14 | 66 Upvotes 14 Comments
- "Core War" | 2022-02-11 | 236 Upvotes 50 Comments
π B. Traven
B. Traven (German: [ΛbeΛ ΛtΚaΛvnΜ©]; Bruno Traven in some accounts) was the pen name of a presumably German novelist, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. One of the few certainties about Traven's life is that he lived for years in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also setβincluding The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927). The film adaptation of the same name won three Academy Awards in 1948.
Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. The person most commonly identified as Traven is Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924 and who had edited an anarchist newspaper in Germany called Der Ziegelbrenner (The Brick Burner). Marut is thought to have operated under the "B. Traven" pseudonym, although no details are known about Marut's life before 1912, and many hold that "Ret Marut" was in fact also a pseudonym.
Some researchers further argue that Marut/Traven's original name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern-day Εwiebodzin in Poland. This theory is not universally accepted. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with the names of Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.
B. Traven is the author of twelve novels, one book of reportage and several short stories, in which the sensational and adventure subjects combine with a critical attitude towards capitalism. B. Traven's best known works include the novels The Death Ship from 1926, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre from 1927 (filmed in 1948 by John Huston), and the so-called "Jungle Novels", also known as the Caoba cyclus (from the Spanish word caoba, meaning mahogany). The Jungle Novels are a group of six novels (including The Carreta and Government), published in the years 1930β1939 and set among Mexican Indians just before and during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. B. Traven's novels and short stories became very popular as early as the interwar period and retained this popularity after the Second World War; they were also translated into many languages. Most of B. Traven's books were published in German first, with their English editions appearing later; nevertheless, the author always claimed that the English versions were the original ones and that the German versions were only their translations. This claim is mostly treated by Traven scholars as a diversion or a joke, although there are those who accept it.
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- "B. Traven" | 2021-04-17 | 107 Upvotes 36 Comments
π Erik Naggum
Erik Naggum (June 13, 1965 β June 17, 2009) was a Norwegian computer programmer recognized for his work in the fields of SGML, Emacs and Lisp. Since the early 1990s he was also a provocative participant on various Usenet discussion groups.
Naggum made significant contributions to RFC 1123, which defines and discusses the requirements for Internet host software, and RFC 2049, which defines electronic information transfer of various binary formats through e-mail.
In a 1999 newspaper article in Dagbladet, he was interviewed about his aggressive, confrontational participation in Usenet discussion groups. Erik later stated his motto to be: "Some people are little more than herd animals, flocking together whenever the world becomes uncomfortable β¦ I am not one of those people. If I had a motto, it would probably be Herd thither, me hither."
His death on June 17, 2009 (aged 44), was caused by a massive bleeding ulcer, related to ulcerative colitis, which he was diagnosed with about 15 years before his death.
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- "Erik Naggum" | 2022-10-02 | 12 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Shadow IT
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.
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- "Shadow IT" | 2021-11-11 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Hurrian songs
The Hurrian songs are a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the ancient Amorite-Canaanite city of Ugarit, a headland in northern Syria, which date to approximately 1400 BCE. One of these tablets, which is nearly complete, contains the Hurrian hymn to Nikkal (also known as the Hurrian cult hymn or A Zaluzi to the Gods, or simply h.6), making it the oldest surviving substantially complete work of notated music in the world. While the composers' names of some of the fragmentary pieces are known, h.6 is an anonymous work.
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- "Hurrian songs" | 2015-09-01 | 54 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Zero-Rupee Note
A zero-rupee note is a banknote imitation issued in India as a means of helping to fight systemic political corruption. The notes are "paid" in protest by angry citizens to government functionaries who solicit bribes in return for services which are supposed to be free. Zero-rupee notes, which are made to resemble the old 50-rupee banknote of India, are the creation of a non-governmental organization known as 5th Pillar which has, since their inception in 2007, distributed over 2.5 million notes as of August 2014. The notes remain in current use and thousands of notes are distributed every month.
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- "Zero-Rupee Note" | 2024-02-25 | 160 Upvotes 76 Comments
π Lockheed Bribery Scandals
The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft.
The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. In the U.S., the scandal nearly led to Lockheed's downfall, as it was already struggling due to the commercial failure of the L-1011 TriStar airliner.
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- "Lockheed Bribery Scandals" | 2020-02-01 | 43 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Help wanted: Seasoned wikipedia editors to write a proper article about Fravia
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- "Help wanted: Seasoned wikipedia editors to write a proper article about Fravia" | 2009-05-08 | 43 Upvotes 15 Comments
π Rubber duck debugging
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- "Rubber duck debugging" | 2014-06-13 | 11 Upvotes 8 Comments
- "Rubber duck debugging" | 2013-02-19 | 36 Upvotes 17 Comments
π Wikipedia.org Returns a 503 Error
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- "Wikipedia.org Returns a 503 Error" | 2022-05-23 | 11 Upvotes 8 Comments