Random Articles (Page 239)
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
π Five Eyes Surveillance Targets
The Five Eyes (FVEY) is an anglophone intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. These countries are parties to the multilateral UKUSA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.
The origins of the FVEY can be traced back to the postβWorld War II period, when the Atlantic Charter was issued by the Allies to lay out their goals for a post-war world. During the course of the Cold War, the ECHELON surveillance system was initially developed by the FVEY to monitor the communications of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, although it is now used to monitor billions of private communications worldwide.
In the late 1990s, the existence of ECHELON was disclosed to the public, triggering a major debate in the European Parliament and, to a lesser extent, the United States Congress. As part of efforts in the ongoing War on Terror since 2001, the FVEY further expanded their surveillance capabilities, with much emphasis placed on monitoring the World Wide Web. The former NSA contractor Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organisation that does not answer to the known laws of its own countries". Documents leaked by Snowden in 2013 revealed that the FVEY has been spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on surveillance of citizens.
In spite of continued controversy over its methods, the Five Eyes relationship remains one of the most comprehensive known espionage alliances in history.
Since processed intelligence is gathered from multiple sources, the intelligence shared is not restricted to signals intelligence (SIGINT) and often involves defence intelligence as well as human intelligence (HUMINT) and geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). The following table provides an overview of most of the FVEY agencies involved in such forms of data sharing.
Discussed on
- "Five Eyes Surveillance Targets" | 2014-07-12 | 20 Upvotes 1 Comments
π 142,857
142857, the six repeating digits of 1/7, 0.142857, is the best-known cyclic number in base 10. If it is multiplied by 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6, the answer will be a cyclic permutation of itself, and will correspond to the repeating digits of 2/7, 3/7, 4/7, 5/7, or 6/7 respectively.
142,857 is a Kaprekar number and a Harshad number (in base 10).
Discussed on
- "142857" | 2015-08-05 | 100 Upvotes 22 Comments
π USS Pueblo
USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is a Banner-class environmental research ship, attached to Navy intelligence as a spy ship, which was attacked and captured by North Korean forces on 23 January 1968, in what is known today as the "Pueblo incident" or alternatively, as the "Pueblo crisis".
The seizure of the U.S. Navy ship and her 83 crew members, one of whom was killed in the attack, came less than a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union address to the United States Congress, a week before the start of the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War and three days after 31 men of North Korea's KPA Unit 124 had crossed the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and killed 26 South Koreans in an attempt to attack the South Korean Blue House (executive mansion) in the capital Seoul. The taking of Pueblo and the abuse and torture of her crew during the subsequent 11-month prisoner drama became a major Cold War incident, raising tensions between western and eastern powers.
North Korea stated that Pueblo deliberately entered their territorial waters 7.6 nautical miles (14Β km) away from Ryo Island, and that the logbook shows that they intruded several times. However, the United States maintains that the vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident and that any purported evidence supplied by North Korea to support its statements was fabricated. Pueblo, still held by North Korea today, officially remains a commissioned vessel of the United States Navy. Since early 2013, the ship has been moored along the Pothong River in Pyongyang and used there as a museum ship at the Victorious War Museum. Pueblo is the only ship of the U.S. Navy still on the commissioned roster currently being held captive.
Discussed on
- "USS Pueblo" | 2023-04-22 | 16 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "USS Pueblo" | 2019-11-19 | 108 Upvotes 109 Comments
π Homey Airport
Area 51 is the common name of a highly classified United States Air Force (USAF) facility within the Nevada Test and Training Range. A remote detachment administered by Edwards Air Force Base, the facility is officially called Homey Airport (ICAO: KXTA, FAA LID: XTA) or Groom Lake (after the salt flat next to its airfield). Details of its operations are not made public, but the USAF says that it is an open training range, and it is commonly thought to support the development and testing of experimental aircraft and weapons systems. The USAF and CIA acquired the site in 1955, primarily for flight testing the Lockheed U-2 aircraft.
The intense secrecy surrounding the base has made it the frequent subject of conspiracy theories and a central component of unidentified flying object (UFO) folklore. It has never been declared a secret base, but all research and occurrences in Area 51 are Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). The CIA publicly acknowledged the base's existence on 25 June 2013, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in 2005 and declassified documents detailing its history and purpose.
Area 51 is located in the southern portion of Nevada, 83 miles (134Β km) north-northwest of Las Vegas. The surrounding area is a popular tourist destination, including the small town of Rachel on the "Extraterrestrial Highway".
Discussed on
- "Homey Airport" | 2023-07-27 | 10 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Node.js wikipedia entry marked for deletion for not being notable
Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside of a web browser. Node.js lets developers use JavaScript to write command line tools and for server-side scriptingβrunning scripts server-side to produce dynamic web page content before the page is sent to the user's web browser. Consequently, Node.js represents a "JavaScript everywhere" paradigm, unifying web-application development around a single programming language, rather than different languages for server- and client-side scripts.
Though .js is the standard filename extension for JavaScript code, the name "Node.js" doesn't refer to a particular file in this context and is merely the name of the product. Node.js has an event-driven architecture capable of asynchronous I/O. These design choices aim to optimize throughput and scalability in web applications with many input/output operations, as well as for real-time Web applications (e.g., real-time communication programs and browser games).
The Node.js distributed development project was previously governed by the Node.js Foundation, and has now merged with the JS Foundation to form the OpenJS Foundation, which is facilitated by the Linux Foundation's Collaborative Projects program.
Corporate users of Node.js software include GoDaddy, Groupon, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, PayPal, Rakuten, SAP, Voxer, Walmart, and Yahoo!.
Discussed on
- "Node.js wikipedia entry marked for deletion for not being notable" | 2011-04-12 | 67 Upvotes 27 Comments
π N. W. Ayer and Son
N. W. Ayer & Son was a Philadelphia advertising agency founded in 1869. It called itself the oldest advertising agency in the United States. Named after Francis Ayer's father N. W. Ayer, it ventured into advertising in 1884. It created a number of memorable slogans for firms such as De Beers, AT&T and the U.S. Army. The company started to decline in the 1960s and, after a series of mergers, was closed in 2002 with its assets sold to the Publicis Groupe.
Discussed on
- "N. W. Ayer and Son" | 2015-10-11 | 14 Upvotes 1 Comments
π BrouwerβHilbert controversy
In a foundational controversy in twentieth-century mathematics, L. E. J. Brouwer, a supporter of intuitionism, opposed David Hilbert, the founder of formalism.
Discussed on
- "BrouwerβHilbert controversy" | 2018-11-08 | 95 Upvotes 32 Comments
π GNU Guix System
GNU Guix System or Guix System (previously GuixSD) is a rolling release, free and open source Linux distribution built around the GNU Guix package manager. It enables a declarative operating system configuration and allows reliable system upgrades that can easily be rolled back. It uses the GNU Shepherd init system and the Linux-libre kernel, with support for the GNU Hurd kernel under development. On February 3, 2015, the distribution was added to the Free Software Foundation's list of free Linux distributions. The Guix package manager and the Guix System drew inspiration from the Nix package manager and NixOS respectively.
Discussed on
- "GNU Guix System" | 2022-05-27 | 68 Upvotes 56 Comments
π Richat Structure
The Richat Structure, also called Guelb er RichΓ’t (Arabic: ΩΩΨ¨ Ψ§ΩΨ±ΩΨ΄Ψ§Ψͺ, romanized:Β Qalb ar-RΔ«Ε‘Δt), is a prominent circular geological feature in the Sahara's Adrar Plateau, near Ouadane, westβcentral Mauritania, Northwest Africa. In the local dialect, Richat means feather and it also is known locally in Arabic as tagense. Tagense refers to the circular opening of the leather pouch used to draw water from local wells.
It is an eroded geological dome, 40 kilometres (25Β mi) in diameter, exposing sedimentary rock in layers which appear as concentric rings. Igneous rock is exposed inside and there are spectacular rhyolites and gabbros which have undergone hydrothermal alteration, and a central megabreccia. The structure is also the location of exceptional accumulations of Acheulean archaeological artifacts.
Discussed on
- "Richat Structure" | 2026-09-12 | 21 Upvotes 8 Comments
- "Richat Structure" | 2022-08-19 | 49 Upvotes 21 Comments