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π Soyuz 11
Soyuz 11 (Russian: Π‘ΠΎΡΠ· 11, Union 11) was the only crewed mission to board the world's first space station, Salyut 1 (Soyuz 10 had soft-docked but had not been able to enter due to latching problems). The crew, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, arrived at the space station on 7 June 1971 and departed on 29 June. The mission ended in disaster when the crew capsule depressurized during preparations for reentry, killing the three-man crew. The three crew members of Soyuz 11 are the only humans known to have died in space.
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- "Soyuz 11" | 2013-10-13 | 48 Upvotes 28 Comments
π Illegal prime
An illegal prime is a prime number that represents information whose possession or distribution is forbidden in some legal jurisdictions. One of the first illegal primes was found in 2001. When interpreted in a particular way, it describes a computer program that bypasses the digital rights management scheme used on DVDs. Distribution of such a program in the United States is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An illegal prime is a kind of illegal number.
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- "Illegal Prime Numbers" | 2021-04-12 | 218 Upvotes 107 Comments
- "Illegal prime" | 2018-04-27 | 267 Upvotes 192 Comments
- "Illegal prime" | 2016-11-22 | 39 Upvotes 26 Comments
- "Illegal prime number" | 2014-07-30 | 59 Upvotes 30 Comments
- "Illegal Prime Numbers" | 2013-10-17 | 178 Upvotes 58 Comments
- "Illegal prime" | 2010-01-11 | 152 Upvotes 76 Comments
π Red Sea Dam
The Red Sea dam is a speculative macro-engineering proposal put forward in 2007 by a group of scientists and engineers. Although the authors' intentions are to explore "the ethical and environmental dilemmas and some of the political implications of macro-engineering", the proposal has attracted both criticism and ridicule.
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- "Red Sea Dam" | 2023-04-09 | 37 Upvotes 19 Comments
π Corecursion
In computer science, corecursion is a type of operation that is dual to recursion. Whereas recursion works analytically, starting on data further from a base case and breaking it down into smaller data and repeating until one reaches a base case, corecursion works synthetically, starting from a base case and building it up, iteratively producing data further removed from a base case. Put simply, corecursive algorithms use the data that they themselves produce, bit by bit, as they become available, and needed, to produce further bits of data. A similar but distinct concept is generative recursion which may lack a definite "direction" inherent in corecursion and recursion.
Where recursion allows programs to operate on arbitrarily complex data, so long as they can be reduced to simple data (base cases), corecursion allows programs to produce arbitrarily complex and potentially infinite data structures, such as streams, so long as it can be produced from simple data (base cases) in a sequence of finite steps. Where recursion may not terminate, never reaching a base state, corecursion starts from a base state, and thus produces subsequent steps deterministically, though it may proceed indefinitely (and thus not terminate under strict evaluation), or it may consume more than it produces and thus become non-productive. Many functions that are traditionally analyzed as recursive can alternatively, and arguably more naturally, be interpreted as corecursive functions that are terminated at a given stage, for example recurrence relations such as the factorial.
Corecursion can produce both finite and infinite data structures as results, and may employ self-referential data structures. Corecursion is often used in conjunction with lazy evaluation, to produce only a finite subset of a potentially infinite structure (rather than trying to produce an entire infinite structure at once). Corecursion is a particularly important concept in functional programming, where corecursion and codata allow total languages to work with infinite data structures.
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- "Corecursion" | 2014-05-08 | 167 Upvotes 62 Comments
π List of probability distributions
Many probability distributions that are important in theory or applications have been given specific names.
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- "List of probability distributions" | 2013-05-25 | 47 Upvotes 36 Comments
π Whataboutism
Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. It is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda. When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the Soviet response would often be "What about..." followed by an event in the Western world. As Garry Kasparov noted, it is a word that was coined to describe the frequent use of a rhetorical diversion by Soviet apologists and dictators, who would counter charges of their oppression, "massacres, gulags, and forced deportations" by invoking American slavery, racism, lynchings, etc. It has been adopted by other politicians and countries.
π Unionization in the Tech Sector
A tech union is a trade union for tech workers typically employed in high tech or information and communications technology sectors. Due to the evolving nature of technology and work, different government agencies have conflicting definitions for who is a tech worker. Most definitions include computer scientists, people working in IT, telecommunications, media and video gaming. Broader definitions include all workers required for a tech company to operate, including on-site service staff, contractors, and platform economy workers.
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- "Unionization in the Tech Sector" | 2024-03-03 | 13 Upvotes 2 Comments
π VRML β Virtual Reality Markup Language
VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language, pronounced vermal or by its initials, originallyβbefore 1995βknown as the Virtual Reality Markup Language) is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional (3D) interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind. It has been superseded by X3D.
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- "VRML" | 2022-04-15 | 150 Upvotes 144 Comments
- "VRML β Virtual Reality Markup Language" | 2021-10-30 | 15 Upvotes 3 Comments
π USS Liberty Incident (1967) β 34 killed, 171 injured, gag order on survivors
The USS Liberty incident was an attack on a United States Navy technical research ship (spy ship), USSΒ Liberty, by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats, on 8 June 1967, during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 crew members (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian NSA employee), wounded 171 crew members, and severely damaged the ship. At the time, the ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nautical miles (47.2Β km; 29.3Β mi) northwest from the Egyptian city of Arish.
Israel apologized for the attack, saying that the USS Liberty had been attacked in error after being mistaken for an Egyptian ship. Both the Israeli and U.S. governments conducted inquiries and issued reports that concluded the attack was a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity. Others, including survivors of the attack, have rejected these conclusions and maintain that the attack was deliberate.
In May 1968, the Israeli government paid US$3.32Β million (equivalent to US$29.1Β million in 2023) to the U.S. government in compensation for the families of the 34 men killed in the attack. In March 1969, Israel paid a further $3.57Β million ($29.6Β million in 2023) to the men who had been wounded. In December 1980, it agreed to pay $6Β million ($22.2Β million in 2023) as the final settlement for material damage to the ship plus 13 years of interest.
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- "USS Liberty Incident (1967) β 34 killed, 171 injured, gag order on survivors" | 2024-05-31 | 18 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Polytope Model
The polyhedral model (also called the polytope method) is a mathematical framework for programs that perform large numbers of operations -- too large to be explicitly enumerated -- thereby requiring a compact representation. Nested loop programs are the typical, but not the only example, and the most common use of the model is for loop nest optimization in program optimization. The polyhedral method treats each loop iteration within nested loops as lattice points inside mathematical objects called polyhedra, performs affine transformations or more general non-affine transformations such as tiling on the polytopes, and then converts the transformed polytopes into equivalent, but optimized (depending on targeted optimization goal), loop nests through polyhedra scanning.
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- "Polytope Model" | 2019-12-02 | 157 Upvotes 11 Comments