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🔗 Mathematics 🔗 Game theory

Fair cake-cutting is a kind of fair division problem. The problem involves a heterogeneous resource, such as a cake with different toppings, that is assumed to be divisible – it is possible to cut arbitrarily small pieces of it without destroying their value. The resource has to be divided among several partners who have different preferences over different parts of the cake, i.e., some people prefer the chocolate toppings, some prefer the cherries, some just want as large a piece as possible. The division should be unanimously fair – each person should receive a piece believed to be a fair share.

The "cake" is only a metaphor; procedures for fair cake-cutting can be used to divide various kinds of resources, such as land estates, advertisement space or broadcast time.

The prototypical procedure for fair cake-cutting is divide and choose, which is mentioned in the book of Genesis. It solves the fair division problem for two people. The modern study of fair cake-cutting was initiated during World War II, when Hugo Steinhaus asked his students Stefan Banach and Bronisław Knaster to find a generalization of divide-and-choose to three or more people. They developed the last diminisher procedure. Today, fair cake-cutting is the subject of intense research in mathematics, computer science, economics and political science.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computer science

In functional programming, continuation-passing style (CPS) is a style of programming in which control is passed explicitly in the form of a continuation. This is contrasted with direct style, which is the usual style of programming. Gerald Jay Sussman and Guy L. Steele, Jr. coined the phrase in AI Memo 349 (1975), which sets out the first version of the Scheme programming language.John C. Reynolds gives a detailed account of the numerous discoveries of continuations.

A function written in continuation-passing style takes an extra argument: an explicit "continuation"; i.e., a function of one argument. When the CPS function has computed its result value, it "returns" it by calling the continuation function with this value as the argument. That means that when invoking a CPS function, the calling function is required to supply a procedure to be invoked with the subroutine's "return" value. Expressing code in this form makes a number of things explicit which are implicit in direct style. These include: procedure returns, which become apparent as calls to a continuation; intermediate values, which are all given names; order of argument evaluation, which is made explicit; and tail calls, which simply call a procedure with the same continuation, unmodified, that was passed to the caller.

Programs can be automatically transformed from direct style to CPS. Functional and logic compilers often use CPS as an intermediate representation where a compiler for an imperative or procedural programming language would use static single assignment form (SSA). SSA is formally equivalent to a subset of CPS (excluding non-local control flow, which does not occur when CPS is used as intermediate representation). Functional compilers can also use A-normal form (ANF) (but only for languages requiring eager evaluation), rather than with 'thunks' (described in the examples below) in CPS. CPS is used more frequently by compilers than by programmers as a local or global style.

🔗 Chemistry

Dry water , an unusual form of "powdered liquid", is a water–air emulsion in which tiny water droplets, each the size of a grain of sand, are surrounded by a sandy silica coating. Dry water actually consists of 95% liquid water, but the silica coating prevents the water droplets from combining and turning back into a bulk liquid. The result is a white powder that looks very similar to table salt. It is also more commonly known among researchers as empty water.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Biography/sports and games 🔗 Cycling

Thomas Stevens (24 December 1854 – 24 January 1935) was the first person to circle the globe by bicycle. He rode a large-wheeled Ordinary, also known as a penny-farthing, from April 1884 to December 1886. He later searched for Henry Morton Stanley in Africa, investigated the claims of Indian ascetics and became manager of the Garrick Theatre in London.

🔗 Economics 🔗 Business 🔗 Marketing & Advertising 🔗 Guild of Copy Editors

In marketing strategy, first-mover advantage (FMA) is the advantage gained by the initial ("first-moving") significant occupant of a market segment. First-mover advantage may be gained by technological leadership, or early purchase of resources.

A market participant has first-mover advantage if it is the first entrant and gains a competitive advantage through control of resources. With this advantage, first-movers can be rewarded with huge profit margins and a monopoly-like status.

Not all first-movers are rewarded. If the first-mover does not capitalize on its advantage, its "first-mover disadvantages" leave opportunity for new entrants to enter the market and compete more effectively and efficiently than the first-movers; such firms have "second-mover advantage".

🔗 Novels 🔗 Radio 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Novels/Short story

"The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story (12,300 words) by E. M. Forster. After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's The Eternal Moment and Other Stories in 1928. After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the populist anthology Modern Short Stories. In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the Internet.

🔗 Internet 🔗 University of Cambridge

The Trojan Room coffee pot was a coffee machine located in the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England. Created in 1991 by Quentin Stafford-Fraser and Paul Jardetzky, it was migrated from their laboratory network to the web in 1993 becoming the world's first webcam.

To save people working in the building the disappointment of finding the coffee machine empty after making the trip to the room, a camera was set up providing a live picture of the coffee pot to all desktop computers on the office network. After the camera was connected to the Internet a few years later, the coffee pot gained international renown as a feature of the fledgling World Wide Web, until being retired in 2001.

🔗 Law 🔗 Literature 🔗 Sexology and sexuality

The small penis rule is an informal strategy used by authors to evade libel lawsuits. It was described in a New York Times article in 1998:

"For a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two," said Mr. Friedman. Thus, he continued, libel lawyers have what is known as "the small penis rule". One way authors can protect themselves from libel suits is to say that a character has a small penis, Mr. Friedman said. "Now no male is going to come forward and say, 'That character with a very small penis, that's me!'"

The small penis rule was referenced in a 2006 dispute between Michael Crowley and Michael Crichton. Crowley alleged that after he wrote an unflattering review of Crichton's novel State of Fear, Crichton included a character named "Mick Crowley" in the novel Next. The character is a child rapist, described as being a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and Yale graduate with a small penis.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Crime 🔗 Politics 🔗 Guild of Copy Editors 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Politics/Fascism 🔗 Military history/European military history

From 1933 to the end of the Second World War, high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of Nazi Germany accepted vast bribes in the form of cash, estates, and tax exemptions in exchange for their loyalty to Nazism. Unlike bribery at lower ranks in the Wehrmacht, which was also widespread, these payments were regularized, technically legal and made with the full knowledge and consent of the leading Nazi figures.