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🔗 Jane's Information Group
Jane's Information Group, now styled Janes, is a global open-source intelligence company specialising in military, national security, aerospace and transport topics, whose name derives from British author Fred T. Jane.
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- "Jane's Information Group" | 2022-01-02 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
🔗 Deep Crack
In cryptography, the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed "Deep Crack") is a machine built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1998, to perform a brute force search of the Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher's key space – that is, to decrypt an encrypted message by trying every possible key. The aim in doing this was to prove that the key size of DES was not sufficient to be secure.
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- "Deep Crack" | 2009-04-24 | 23 Upvotes 6 Comments
🔗 Eigengrau
Eigengrau (German: "intrinsic gray", lit. "own gray"; pronounced [ˈʔaɪ̯gn̩ˌgʁaʊ̯]), also called Eigenlicht (Dutch and German: "own light"), dark light, or brain gray, is the uniform dark gray background that many people report seeing in the absence of light. The term Eigenlicht dates back to the nineteenth century, but has rarely been used in recent scientific publications. Common scientific terms for the phenomenon include "visual noise" or "background adaptation". These terms arise due to the perception of an ever-changing field of tiny black and white dots seen in the phenomenon.
Eigengrau is perceived as lighter than a black object in normal lighting conditions, because contrast is more important to the visual system than absolute brightness. For example, the night sky looks darker than Eigengrau because of the contrast provided by the stars.
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- "Eigengrau" | 2021-07-11 | 73 Upvotes 23 Comments
- "Eigengrau" | 2013-06-23 | 217 Upvotes 68 Comments
🔗 Squarial
The Squarial (a portmanteau of the words square and aerial) was a satellite antenna used for reception of the now defunct British Satellite Broadcasting television service (BSB). The Squarial was a flat plate satellite antenna, built to be unobtrusive and unique. BSB were counting on the form factor of the antenna to clearly differentiate themselves from their competitors at the time. At the time of development, satellite installations usually required a 90 cm dish in order to receive a clear signal from the transmitting satellite. The smaller antenna was BSB's unique selling point and was heavily advertised in order to attract customers to their service.
🔗 You Will
"You Will" was an AT&T marketing campaign that launched in 1993, consisting of commercials directed by David Fincher. Each ad presented a futuristic scenario beginning with "Have you ever…" and ending with "…you will. And the company that will bring it to you: AT&T."
The ads were narrated by Tom Selleck.
The creative team that created the ad campaign at N.W. Ayer & Partners were Copy Supervisor Gordon Hasse, Art Supervisor Nick Scordato and Producer Gaston Braun.
One of the first web banner ads ever sold was part of an AT&T campaign that ran on HotWired starting October 27, 1994, asking "Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? You Will".
In 2016, technology writer Timothy B. Lee commented that "overall, the ads were remarkably accurate in predicting the cutting-edge technologies of the coming decades. But the ads were mostly wrong about one thing: the company that brought these technologies to the world was not AT&T. At least not on its own. AT&T does provide some of the infrastructure on which the world's communications flow. But the gadgets and software that brought these futuristic capabilities to consumers were created by a new generation of Silicon Valley companies that mostly didn't exist when these ads were made."
The ads won a few different awards at the time, notably the first annual David Ogilvy Award for the most effective campaign supported by research, the 1994 PCIA (Personal Communications Industry Award), and two ADDY Awards.
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- "You Will" | 2025-06-04 | 20 Upvotes 6 Comments
🔗 Millipede Memory
Millipede memory is a form of non-volatile computer memory. It promised a data density of more than 1 terabit per square inch (1 gigabit per square millimeter), which is about the limit of the perpendicular recording hard drives. Millipede storage technology was pursued as a potential replacement for magnetic recording in hard drives and a means of reducing the physical size of the technology to that of flash media.
IBM demonstrated a prototype millipede storage device at CeBIT 2005, and was trying to make the technology commercially available by the end of 2007. However, because of concurrent advances in competing storage technologies, no commercial product has been made available since then.
🔗 The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959
Between 1886 and 1959, the price of a 6.5-oz glass or bottle of Coca-Cola was set at five cents, or one nickel, and remained fixed with very little local fluctuation. The Coca-Cola Company was able to maintain this price for several reasons, including bottling contracts the company signed in 1899, advertising, vending machine technology, and a relatively low rate of inflation. The fact that the price of the drink was able to remain the same for over seventy years is especially significant considering the events that occurred during that period, including the founding of Pepsi, World War I, Prohibition, changing taxes, a caffeine and caramel shortage, World War II, and the company's desire to raise its prices. Much of the research on this subject comes from "The Real Thing": Nominal Price Rigidity of the Nickel Coke, 1886–1959, a 2004 paper by economists Daniel Levy and Andrew Young.
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- "The Fixed Price of Coca-Cola from 1886 to 1959" | 2015-11-22 | 103 Upvotes 38 Comments
🔗 “Wikipedia's independence” or “Wikimedia's pile of dosh”?
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- "“Wikipedia's independence” or “Wikimedia's pile of dosh”?" | 2022-06-28 | 21 Upvotes 13 Comments
🔗 Anti-Café
An anti-café (sometimes called a pay-per-minute café or a time club) is a venue that offers working space, food and drink, where customers pay only for the time they spend there. Anti-cafés became popular around 2011 in Russia and some CIS countries, with further independent anti-cafés opening across the world. Anti-cafés include the Ziferblat chain, founded by Russian writer Ivan Mitin in December 2010 in Moscow, the "Slow Time" café in Wiesbaden opened in 2013, and "Dialogues" in Bangalore.
Anti-cafés mostly target entrepreneurs, digital nomads, students, and creatives who need a cheap and convenient place to get their work done and meet other professionals. They can also be used by companies as a place give presentations and press conferences at low cost.
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- "Anti-Café" | 2021-10-14 | 60 Upvotes 70 Comments
🔗 Pyrrhonism
Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs. It was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE, and said to have been inspired by the teachings of Pyrrho and Timon of Phlius in the fourth century BCE. Pyrrhonism is best known today through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE. The publication of Sextus' works in the Renaissance ignited a revival of interest in Skepticism and played a major role in Reformation thought and the development of early modern philosophy.
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- "Pyrrhonism" | 2023-02-21 | 58 Upvotes 27 Comments