Random Articles (Page 3)
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
๐ Esquivalience
The New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) is a single-volume dictionary of American English compiled by American editors at the Oxford University Press.
NOAD is based upon the New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE), published in the United Kingdom in 1998, although with substantial editing, additional entries, and the inclusion of illustrations. It is based on a corpus linguistics analysis of Oxford's 200 million word database of contemporary American English.
NOAD includes a diacritical respelling scheme to convey pronunciations, as opposed to the Gimson phonemic IPA system that is used in NODE.
Discussed on
- "Esquivalience" | 2013-04-15 | 96 Upvotes 25 Comments
๐ Cantor function, a.k.a. devil's staircase: increasing function with 0 derivative
In mathematics, the Cantor function is an example of a function that is continuous, but not absolutely continuous. It is a notorious counterexample in analysis, because it challenges naive intuitions about continuity, derivative, and measure. Though it is continuous everywhere and has zero derivative almost everywhere, its value still goes from 0 to 1 as its argument reaches from 0 to 1. Thus, in one sense the function seems very much like a constant one which cannot grow, and in another, it does indeed monotonically grow, by construction.
It is also referred to as the Cantor ternary function, the Lebesgue function, Lebesgue's singular function, the CantorโVitali function, the Devil's staircase, the Cantor staircase function, and the CantorโLebesgue function. Georg Cantorย (1884) introduced the Cantor function and mentioned that Scheeffer pointed out that it was a counterexample to an extension of the fundamental theorem of calculus claimed by Harnack. The Cantor function was discussed and popularized by Scheeffer (1884), Lebesgue (1904) and Vitali (1905).
Discussed on
- "Cantor function, a.k.a. devil's staircase: increasing function with 0 derivative" | 2020-06-11 | 96 Upvotes 52 Comments
๐ Fletcher's Checksum
The Fletcher checksum is an algorithm for computing a position-dependent checksum devised by John G. Fletcher (1934โ2012) at Lawrence Livermore Labs in the late 1970s. The objective of the Fletcher checksum was to provide error-detection properties approaching those of a cyclic redundancy check but with the lower computational effort associated with summation techniques.
Discussed on
- "Fletcher's Checksum" | 2018-10-02 | 87 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ KarTrak, a bar code system designed to automatically identify rail cars
KarTrak, sometimes KarTrak ACI (for Automatic Car Identification) is a colored bar code system designed to automatically identify rail cars and other rolling stock. KarTrak was made a requirement in North America, but technical problems led to abandonment of the system in the late 1970s.
Discussed on
- "KarTrak, a bar code system designed to automatically identify rail cars" | 2014-08-31 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
๐ Alternate Instruction Set
The Alternate Instruction Set (AIS) is a second 32-bit instruction set architecture found in some x86 CPUs made by VIA Technologies. On these VIA C3 processors, the second hidden processor mode is accessed by executing the x86 instruction ALTINST (0F 3F). If AIS mode has been enabled, the processor will perform a JMP EAX and begin executing AIS instructions at the address of the EAX register. Using AIS allows native access to the Centaur Technology-designed RISC core inside the processor.
Discussed on
- "Alternate Instruction Set" | 2021-05-30 | 76 Upvotes 23 Comments
๐ Hundredth monkey effect
The hundredth monkey effect is a hypothetical phenomenon in which a new behaviour or idea is said to spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behaviour or acknowledge the new idea.
One of the primary factors in the promulgation of the story is that many authors quote secondary, tertiary or post-tertiary sources which have themselves misrepresented the original observations.
Discussed on
- "Hundredth monkey effect" | 2012-12-24 | 11 Upvotes 6 Comments
๐ Homotopy Type Theory
In mathematical logic and computer science, homotopy type theory (HoTT ) refers to various lines of development of intuitionistic type theory, based on the interpretation of types as objects to which the intuition of (abstract) homotopy theory applies.
This includes, among other lines of work, the construction of homotopical and higher-categorical models for such type theories; the use of type theory as a logic (or internal language) for abstract homotopy theory and higher category theory; the development of mathematics within a type-theoretic foundation (including both previously existing mathematics and new mathematics that homotopical types make possible); and the formalization of each of these in computer proof assistants.
There is a large overlap between the work referred to as homotopy type theory, and as the univalent foundations project. Although neither is precisely delineated, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, the choice of usage also sometimes corresponds to differences in viewpoint and emphasis. As such, this article may not represent the views of all researchers in the fields equally. This kind of variability is unavoidable when a field is in rapid flux.
Discussed on
- "Homotopy Type Theory" | 2021-06-22 | 64 Upvotes 22 Comments
๐ 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.
Discussed on
- "Polytope Model" | 2019-12-02 | 157 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ Mass amateurization
Mass amateurization refers to the capabilities that new forms of media have given to non-professionals and the ways in which those non-professionals have applied those capabilities to solve problems (e.g. create and distribute content) that compete with the solutions offered by larger, professional institutions. Mass amateurization is most often associated with Web 2.0 technologies. These technologies include the rise of blogs and citizen journalism, photo and video-sharing services such as Flickr and YouTube, user-generated wikis like Wikipedia, and distributed accommodation services such as Airbnb. While the social web is not the only technology responsible for the rise of mass amateurization, Clay Shirky claims Web 2.0 has allowed amateurs to undertake increasingly complex tasks resulting in accomplishments that would seem daunting within the traditional institutional model.
In addition to whole websites and applications, Web 2.0 has also birthed a variety of digital tools that facilitate organization and problem solving on a large scale. These tools include tags, trackbacks, and hashtags. These new forms of media became widely available during the first decade of the 21st century due in part to the fall of transactional costs of creating and distributing media. Mass amateurization is a social, cumulative and collaborative activity, wherein ideas will flow back up the pipeline from consumers and they will share them among themselves.
There is no institutional hierarchy in mass amateurization. There is only an informal group of collaborators working to solve a problem. Due to mass amateurization, amateurs are able to collaborate without the interference from the inherent obstacles associated with institutions. These obstacles include the costs that an institution incurs while educating, training, directing, coaching, advising, and organizing its members.
Discussed on
- "Mass amateurization" | 2020-03-16 | 169 Upvotes 47 Comments
๐ World on a Wire
World on a Wire (German: Welt am Draht) is a 1973 West German science fiction television serial, starring Klaus Lรถwitsch and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Shot in 16 mm, it was made for West German television and originally aired in 1973 in ARD as a two-part miniseries. It was based on the 1964 novel Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye. An adaptation of the Fassbinder version was presented as the play World of Wires, directed by Jay Scheib, in 2012.
Its focus is not on action, but on sophistic and philosophic aspects of the human mind, simulation, and the role of scientific research. A movie based on the same novel titled The Thirteenth Floor starring Craig Bierko was released in 1999.
Discussed on
- "World on a Wire" | 2024-11-30 | 14 Upvotes 6 Comments