Random Articles (Page 3)
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π A Roman road built in 312 BC, is still in use today
The Appian Way (Latin and Italian: Via Appia) is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, recorded by Statius, of Appia longarum... regina viarum ("the Appian Way, the queen of the long roads").
The road is named after Appius Claudius Caecus, the Roman censor who began and completed the first section as a military road to the south in 312 BC during the Samnite Wars.
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- "A Roman road built in 312 BC, is still in use today" | 2022-10-16 | 31 Upvotes 6 Comments
π The repetitive and boring gameplay in WoW is probably intentional.
In video games, grinding is performing repetitive tasks, usually for a gameplay advantage or loot but in some cases for purely aesthetic or cosmetic benefits. Many video games use different tactics to implement, or reduce, the amount of grinding in the gameplay. The general use of grinding is for "experience points", or to improve a character's level. In addition, the behavior is sometimes referred to as pushing the bar (leveling up), farming (acquiring loot repeatedly from one source), or catassing.
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- "The repetitive and boring gameplay in WoW is probably intentional." | 2010-01-16 | 34 Upvotes 37 Comments
π Amoeba (operating system)
Amoeba is a distributed operating system developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and others at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The aim of the Amoeba project was to build a timesharing system that makes an entire network of computers appear to the user as a single machine. Development at the Vrije Universiteit was stopped: the source code of the latest version (5.3) was last modified on 30 July 1996.
The Python programming language was originally developed for this platform.
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- "Amoeba (operating system)" | 2013-03-08 | 37 Upvotes 19 Comments
π Patentleft
Patentleft (also patent left, copyleft-style patent license or open patent) is the practice of licensing patents (especially biological patents) for royalty-free use, on the condition that adopters license related improvements they develop under the same terms. Copyleft-style licensors seek "continuous growth of a universally accessible technology commons" from which they, and others, will benefit.
Patentleft is analogous to copyleft, a license which allows distribution of a copyrighted work and derived works, but only under the same or equivalent terms.
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- "Patentleft" | 2021-07-30 | 13 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Wang tile
Wang tiles (or Wang dominoes), first proposed by mathematician, logician, and philosopher Hao Wang in 1961, are a class of formal systems. They are modelled visually by square tiles with a color on each side. A set of such tiles is selected, and copies of the tiles are arranged side by side with matching colors, without rotating or reflecting them.
The basic question about a set of Wang tiles is whether it can tile the plane or not, i.e., whether an entire infinite plane can be filled this way. The next question is whether this can be done in a periodic pattern.
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- "Wang tile" | 2018-01-05 | 145 Upvotes 24 Comments
π Pareto Front
In multi-objective optimization, the Pareto front (also called Pareto frontier or Pareto curve) is the set of all Pareto efficient solutions. The concept is widely used in engineering.:β111β148β It allows the designer to restrict attention to the set of efficient choices, and to make tradeoffs within this set, rather than considering the full range of every parameter.:β63β65β:β399β412β
π Stan Lippman has died (2022)
Stanley Irving Lippmann is a disbarred lawyer, anti-vaccination activist and a perennial candidate from the U.S. state of Washington.
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- "Stan Lippman has died (2022)" | 2023-08-13 | 101 Upvotes 17 Comments
π HachikΕ
HachikΕ (γγε ¬, November 10, 1923 β March 8, 1935) was a Japanese Akita dog remembered for his remarkable loyalty to his owner, HidesaburΕ Ueno, for whom he continued to wait for over nine years following Ueno's death.
HachikΕ was born on November 10, 1923, at a farm near the city of Εdate, Akita Prefecture. In 1924, HidesaburΕ Ueno, a professor at the Tokyo Imperial University, brought him to live in Shibuya, Tokyo, as his pet. HachikΕ would meet Ueno at Shibuya Station every day after his commute home. This continued until May 21, 1925, when Ueno died of a cerebral hemorrhage while at work. From then until his death on March 8, 1935, HachikΕ would return to Shibuya Station every day to await Ueno's return.
During his lifetime, the dog was held up in Japanese culture as an example of loyalty and fidelity. Well after his death, he continues to be remembered in worldwide popular culture, with statues, movies, books, and appearances in various media. HachikΕ is known in Japanese as chΕ«ken HachikΕ (εΏ η¬γγε ¬) "faithful dog HachikΕ", hachi meaning "eight" and the suffix -kΕ indicating affection.
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- "HachikΕ" | 2020-01-28 | 172 Upvotes 41 Comments
π Tired Mountain Syndrome
Tired mountain syndrome is a condition in which underground nuclear testing fractures and weakens rock, increasing permeability and the risk of release of radionuclides and radioactive contamination of the environment. Locations said to have undergone the syndrome include the French Polynesian island of Moruroa, Rainier Mesa in the United States, the Dnepr 1 nuclear test site on the Kola Peninsula in Russia, possibly Mount Lazarev in the Novaya Zemlya Test Site in Russia, and Mount Mantap in North Korea.
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- "Tired Mountain Syndrome" | 2020-04-03 | 47 Upvotes 23 Comments
π Wikipedia deletes entry on PBWiki, the biggest hosted competitor with 550,000 wikis
PBworks (formerly PBwiki) is a commercial real-time collaborative editing (RTCE) system created by David Weekly, with Ramit Sethi and Nathan Schmidt, who joined shortly thereafter as co-founders. Based in San Mateo, California, United States, the company operates on a freemium basis, offering basic features free of charge and more advanced features for a fee.
PBworks' investors include Mohr Davidow Ventures and the Seraph Group, as well as angel investors Ron Conway and Chris Yeh.
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- "Wikipedia deletes entry on PBWiki, the biggest hosted competitor with 550,000 wikis" | 2008-09-18 | 15 Upvotes 16 Comments