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π Program slicing
In computer programming, program slicing is the computation of the set of program statements, the program slice, that may affect the values at some point of interest, referred to as a slicing criterion. Program slicing can be used in debugging to locate source of errors more easily. Other applications of slicing include software maintenance, optimization, program analysis, and information flow control.
Slicing techniques have been seeing a rapid development since the original definition by Mark Weiser. At first, slicing was only static, i.e., applied on the source code with no other information than the source code. Bogdan Korel and Janusz Laski introduced dynamic slicing, which works on a specific execution of the program (for a given execution trace). Other forms of slicing exist, for instance path slicing.
Discussed on
- "Program slicing" | 2017-12-25 | 59 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Mail art
Mail art (also known as postal art and correspondence art) is a populist artistic movement centered on sending small scale works through the postal service. It initially developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School in the 1950s and the Fluxus movement in the 1960s, though it has since developed into a global movement that continues to the present.
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- "Mail art" | 2018-03-15 | 110 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Culinary Diplomacy
Culinary diplomacy, gastrodiplomacy or food diplomacy is a type of cultural diplomacy, which itself is a subset of public diplomacy. Its basic premise is that "the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach". Official government-sponsored culinary diplomacy programs have been established in Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, Peru, the United States, Cambodia, Japan, Scandinavia, Australia and Uzbekistan.
Discussed on
- "Culinary Diplomacy" | 2021-12-10 | 54 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Windows 3.1 beta crashed on 3rd-party DOS
The AARD code was a segment of code in a beta release of Microsoft Windows 3.1 that would determine whether Windows was running on MS-DOS or PCΒ DOS, rather than a competing workalike such as DR-DOS, and would result in a cryptic error message in the latter case. This XOR-encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated machine code used a variety of undocumented DOS structures and functions to perform its work, and appeared in the installer, WIN.COM, and several other executables in the OS.
The AARD code was originally discovered by Geoff Chappell on 17 April 1992 and then further analyzed and documented in a joint effort with Andrew Schulman. The name was derived from Microsoft programmer Aaron R. Reynolds (1955β2008), who used "AARD" to sign his work; "AARD" was found in the machine code of the installer. Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1, but did not remove it, so that it could have become reactivated later by the change of a single byte in an installed system, thereby constituting a "smoking gun".
DR-DOS publisher Digital Research released a patch named "business update" in 1992 to enable the AARD tests to pass on its operating system.
The rationale for the AARD code came to light when internal memos were released during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust case in 1999. Internal memos released by Microsoft revealed that the specific focus of these tests was DR-DOS. At one point, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sent a memo to a number of employees, reading "You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MS-DOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?" Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg later sent another memo, stating: "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS."
Following the purchase of DR-DOS by Novell and its renaming to "Novell DOS", Microsoft Co-President Jim Allchin stated in a memo, "If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
What had been DR-DOS changed hands again. The new owner, Caldera, Inc., began a lawsuit against Microsoft over the AARD code, Caldera v. Microsoft, which was later settled. It was believed that the settlement ran in the order of $150 million, but was revealed in November 2009 with the release of the Settlement Agreement to be $280 million.
Discussed on
- "AARD Code" | 2020-09-27 | 13 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Windows 3.1 beta crashed on 3rd-party DOS" | 2015-09-17 | 11 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Tang Ping
Tang ping (Chinese: θΊΊεΉ³; pinyin: tΗng pΓng; lit. 'lying flat') is a lifestyle choice and social protest movement in China by some young people who reject societal pressures on hard work or even overwork (such as the 996 working hour system, which is generally regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns), and instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings" via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life. Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a resistance movement, and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture. It has also been compared to the Great Resignation that began in America (and the western world) around the same time.
Unlike the hikikomori in Japan (who are socially withdrawn), these young Chinese people who subscribe to "lying flat" are not socially isolated, but merely choose to lower their professional and economic ambitions and simplify their goals, still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over economic materialism.
Discussed on
- "Tang ping, social protest movement to βlie down flat and get over the beatingsβ" | 2022-01-10 | 35 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Tang Ping" | 2021-11-20 | 17 Upvotes 4 Comments
π Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to non-Wikimedia projects
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- "Dude,Where's My Donations? Wikimedia gives another $1M to non-Wikimedia projects" | 2023-08-18 | 128 Upvotes 117 Comments
π Wardenclyffe Tower a.k.a. the Tesla Tower
Wardenclyffe Tower (1901β1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental wireless transmission station designed and built by Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, New York in 1901β1902. Tesla intended to transmit messages, telephony and even facsimile images across the Atlantic to England and to ships at sea based on his theories of using the Earth to conduct the signals. His decision to scale up the facility and add his ideas of wireless power transmission to better compete with Guglielmo Marconi's radio based telegraph system was met with refusal to fund the changes by the project's primary backer, financier J. P. Morgan. Additional investment could not be found, and the project was abandoned in 1906, never to become operational.
In an attempt to satisfy Tesla's debts, the tower was demolished for scrap in 1917 and the property taken in foreclosure in 1922. For 50 years, Wardenclyffe was a processing facility producing photography supplies. Many buildings were added to the site and the land it occupies has been trimmed down to 16 acres (6.5Β ha) but the original, 94 by 94Β ft (29 by 29Β m), brick building designed by Stanford White remains standing to this day.
In the 1980s and 2000s, hazardous waste from the photographic era was cleaned up, and the site was sold and cleared for new development. A grassroots campaign to save the site succeeded in purchasing the property in 2013, with plans to build a future museum dedicated to Nikola Tesla. In 2018 the property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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- "Wardenclyffe Tower a.k.a. the Tesla Tower" | 2011-01-28 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Higher-order abstract syntax
In computer science, higher-order abstract syntax (abbreviated HOAS) is a technique for the representation of abstract syntax trees for languages with variable binders.
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- "Higher-order abstract syntax" | 2016-08-16 | 76 Upvotes 19 Comments
π Scriptio continua
Scriptio continua (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as scriptura continua or scripta continua, is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacritics, or distinguished letter case. In the West, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions used word dividers to separate words in sentences; however, Classical Greek and late Classical Latin both employed scriptio continua as the norm.
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- "Scriptio continua" | 2022-12-26 | 38 Upvotes 13 Comments