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π 1989 Belgium MiG-23 crash
On 4 July 1989, a pilotless MiG-23 jet fighter of the Soviet Air Forces crashed into a house in Kortrijk, Belgium, killing one person. The pilot had ejected over an hour earlier near KoΕobrzeg, Poland, after experiencing technical problems, but the aircraft continued flying for around 900Β km (600Β mi) before running out of fuel and descending into the ground.
π Java Card
Java Card is a software technology that allows Java-based applications (applets) to be run securely on smart cards and more generally on similar secure small memory footprint deviceswhich are called βsecure elementsβ (SE). Today, a Secure Element is not limited to its smart cards and other removable cryptographic tokens form factors; embedded SEs soldered onto a device board and new security designs embedded into general purpose chips are also widely used. Java Card addresses this hardware fragmentation and specificities while retaining code portability brought forward by Java.
Java Card is the tiniest of Java platforms targeted for embedded devices. Java Card gives the user the ability to program the devices and make them application specific. It is widely used in different markets: wireless telecommunications within SIM cards and embedded SIM, payment within banking cards and NFC mobile payment and for identity cards, healthcare cards, and passports. Several IoT products like gateways are also using Java Card based products to secure communications with a cloud service for instance.
The first Java Card was introduced in 1996 by Schlumberger's card division which later merged with Gemplus to form Gemalto. Java Card products are based on the specifications by Sun Microsystems (later a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation). Many Java card products also rely on the GlobalPlatform specifications for the secure management of applications on the card (download, installation, personalization, deletion).
The main design goals of the Java Card technology are portability, security and backward compatibility.
π Object-relational impedance mismatch
The object-relational impedance mismatch is a set of conceptual and technical difficulties that are often encountered when a relational database management system (RDBMS) is being served by an application program (or multiple application programs) written in an object-oriented programming language or style, particularly because objects or class definitions must be mapped to database tables defined by a relational schema.
The term object-relational impedance mismatch is derived from the electrical engineering term impedance matching.
Discussed on
- "Object-relational impedance mismatch" | 2017-07-16 | 17 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Oil Pipeline Pigs
In pipeline transportation, pigging is the practice of using devices known as pigs or scrapers to perform various maintenance operations. This is done without stopping the flow of the product in the pipeline. These devices are known as pigs because they scrape or clean just like a normal pig.
These operations include but are not limited to cleaning and inspecting the pipeline. This is accomplished by inserting the pig into a "pig launcher" (or "launching station")Β β an oversized section in the pipeline, reducing to the normal diameter. The launching station is then closed and the pressure-driven flow of the product in the pipeline is used to push the pig along down the pipe until it reaches the receiving trapΒ β the "pig catcher" (or "receiving station").
Discussed on
- "Pigging" | 2023-10-21 | 222 Upvotes 80 Comments
- "Oil Pipeline Pigs" | 2014-07-28 | 12 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Mind benders: List of paradoxes
This is a list of paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate, as paradoxes may fit into more than one category. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their own article. Although considered paradoxes, some of these are simply based on fallacious reasoning (falsidical), or an unintuitive solution (veridical). Informally, the term paradox is often used to describe a counter-intuitive result.
However, some of these paradoxes qualify to fit into the mainstream perception of a paradox, which is a self-contradictory result gained even while properly applying accepted ways of reasoning. These paradoxes, often called antinomy, point out genuine problems in our understanding of the ideas of truth and description.
Discussed on
- "Mind benders: List of paradoxes" | 2009-07-07 | 15 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Sea Peoples
The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200β900 BCE). Following the creation of the concept in the nineteenth century, it became one of the most famous chapters of Egyptian history, given its connection with, in the words of Wilhelm Max MΓΌller: "the most important questions of ethnography and the primitive history of classic nations". Their origins undocumented, the various Sea Peoples have been proposed to have originated from places that include western Asia Minor, the Aegean, the Mediterranean islands and Southern Europe. Although the archaeological inscriptions do not include reference to a migration, the Sea Peoples are conjectured to have sailed around the eastern Mediterranean and invaded Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Canaan, Cyprus and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age.
French Egyptologist Emmanuel de RougΓ© first used the term peuples de la mer (literally "peoples of the sea") in 1855 in a description of reliefs on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu documenting Year 8 of Ramesses III. Gaston Maspero, de RougΓ©'s successor at the CollΓ¨ge de France, subsequently popularized the term "Sea Peoples" β and an associated migration-theory β in the late 19th century. Since the early 1990s, his migration theory has been brought into question by a number of scholars.
The Sea Peoples remain unidentified in the eyes of most modern scholars and hypotheses regarding the origin of the various groups are the source of much speculation. Existing theories variously propose equating them with several Aegean tribes, raiders from Central Europe, scattered soldiers who turned to piracy or who had become refugees, and links with natural disasters such as earthquakes or climatic shifts.
Discussed on
- "Sea Peoples" | 2023-08-08 | 33 Upvotes 3 Comments
- "Sea Peoples" | 2017-07-10 | 69 Upvotes 23 Comments
π Revenge Bedtime Procrastination
Bedtime procrastination or revenge bedtime procrastination is a psychological phenomenon in which people stay up later than they desire in an attempt to have control over the night because they perceive themselves (perhaps subconsciously) to lack influence over events during the day.
Discussed on
- "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination" | 2021-09-18 | 57 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Vatican Best Films List
In 1995, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of cinema, the Vatican compiled a list of 45 "great films". The 45 movies are divided into three categories: religion, values, and art.
Discussed on
- "Vatican Best Films List" | 2021-07-19 | 63 Upvotes 46 Comments
π K-anonymity
k-anonymity is a property possessed by certain anonymized data. The concept of k-anonymity was first introduced by Latanya Sweeney and Pierangela Samarati in a paper published in 1998 as an attempt to solve the problem: "Given person-specific field-structured data, produce a release of the data with scientific guarantees that the individuals who are the subjects of the data cannot be re-identified while the data remain practically useful." A release of data is said to have the k-anonymity property if the information for each person contained in the release cannot be distinguished from at least individuals whose information also appear in the release.
K-anonymity received widespread media coverage in 2018 when British computer scientist Junade Ali used the property alongside cryptographic hashing to create a communication protocol to anonymously verify if a password was leaked without disclosing the searched password. This protocol was implemented as a public API in Troy Hunt's Have I Been Pwned? service and is consumed by multiple services including password managers and browser extensions. This approach was later replicated by Google's Password Checkup feature.
Discussed on
- "K-Anonymity" | 2021-04-06 | 32 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "K-anonymity" | 2018-08-10 | 136 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Terraforming of Mars
Terraforming of Mars is a procedure that would comprise of planetary engineering project or concurrent projects, with the goal of transforming the planet from one hostile to terrestrial life to one that can sustainably host humans and other lifeforms free of protection or mediation. The process would presumably involve the rehabilitation of the planet's extant climate, atmosphere, and surface through a variety of resource-intensive initiatives, and the installation of a novel ecological system or systems.
Justifications for choosing Mars over other potential terraforming targets include the presence of water and a geological history that suggests it once harbored a dense atmosphere similar to Earthβs. Hazards and difficulties include low gravity, low light levels relative to Earthβs, and the lack of a magnetic field.
Objections to the project include questions about its feasibility, general ethical concerns about terraforming, and the considerable cost that such an undertaking would involve. Reasons for terraforming the planet include allaying concerns about resource use and depletion on Earth and arguments that the altering and subsequent or concurrent settlement of other planets decreases the odds of humanity's extinction.
Disagreement exists about whether current technology could render the planet habitable.
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- "Terraforming of Mars" | 2012-07-07 | 21 Upvotes 14 Comments