Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Cryptography 🔗 Cryptography/Computer science 🔗 Citizendium Porting

Kerckhoffs's principle (also called Kerckhoffs's desideratum, assumption, axiom, doctrine or law) of cryptography was stated by Netherlands born cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs in the 19th century: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge.

Kerckhoffs's principle was reformulated (or possibly independently formulated) by American mathematician Claude Shannon as "the enemy knows the system", i.e., "one ought to design systems under the assumption that the enemy will immediately gain full familiarity with them". In that form, it is called Shannon's maxim. This concept is widely embraced by cryptographers, in contrast to "security through obscurity", which is not.

🔗 Architecture 🔗 New Jersey 🔗 National Register of Historic Places

The Bell Labs Holmdel Complex, in Holmdel Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, functioned for 44 years as a research and development facility, initially for the Bell System and later Bell Labs. The centerpiece of the campus is an Eero Saarinen–designed structure that served as the home to over 6,000 engineers and researchers. This modernist building, dubbed "The Biggest Mirror Ever" by Architectural Forum due to its mirror box exterior, was the site of a Nobel Prize discovery, the laser cooling work of Steven Chu.

Restructuring of the company's research efforts reduced the use of the Holmdel Complex, and in 2006 the building was put up for sale. The building has undergone renovations into a multi-purpose living and working space, dubbed Bell Works by its redevelopers. Since 2013 it has been operated by Somerset Development, who redeveloped the building into a mixed-use office for high-tech startup companies. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. A number of movies, television programs, and commercials have been filmed at Bell Works, including Severance, The Crowded Room, and Law & Order: Organized Crime.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophical literature 🔗 Books

Simulacra and Simulation (French: Simulacres et Simulation) is a 1981 philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society, in particular the significations and symbolism of culture and media involved in constructing an understanding of shared existence.

Simulacra are copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original. Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time.

🔗 Lists 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Measurement

Many people have made use of, or invented, units of measurement intended primarily for their humor value. This is a list of such units invented by sources that are notable for reasons other than having made the unit itself, and that are widely known in the anglophone world for their humor value.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Russia/technology and engineering in Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Gemology and Jewelry 🔗 Russia/visual arts in Russia 🔗 Gemology and Jewelry/Jewelry

A Fabergé egg (Russian: яйцо Фаберже́, romanized: yaytso Faberzhe) is a jewelled egg created by the jewellery firm House of Fabergé, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. As many as 69 were created, of which 57 survive today. Virtually all were manufactured under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé between 1885 and 1917. The most famous are his 52 "Imperial" eggs, 46 of which survive, made for the Russian Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II as Easter gifts for their wives and mothers. Fabergé eggs are worth millions of dollars and have become symbols of opulence.

🔗 Computing 🔗 New Zealand

The Aamber Pegasus is a home computer first produced in New Zealand in 1981 by Technosys Research Labs.

The hardware was designed by Stewart J Holmes. The software was designed by Paul Gillingwater, Nigel Keam and Paul Carter.

It is thought that Apple Computers introduction of the Apple II computer into the New Zealand market, and its subsequent heavy educational discounting was the final nail in the coffin for Technosys and the Aamber Pegasus computer. Total production numbers are unknown, but it is thought "around one hundred" were sold.

🔗 Architecture 🔗 Politics 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom

Hostile architecture is an intentional design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to guide or restrict behaviour in urban space as a form of crime prevention or order maintenance. It often targets people who use or rely on public space more than others, like people who are homeless and youth, by restricting the behaviours they engage in. Also known as defensive architecture, hostile design, unpleasant design, exclusionary design, or defensive urban design, hostile architecture is most typically associated with "anti-homeless spikes" – studs embedded in flat surfaces to make sleeping rough, uncomfortable, and impractical. Other measures include sloped window sills to stop people sitting, benches with armrests positioned to stop people lying on them, and water sprinklers that "intermittently come on but aren't really watering anything." Hostile architecture also seeks to deter skateboarding, littering, loitering, and public urination. Critics argue that such measures reinforce social divisions and create problems for all members of the public, especially seniors, people with disabilities, and children.

🔗 Law 🔗 Royalty and Nobility

Lèse-majesté ( or ;), a French term meaning "to do wrong to majesty", is an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.

This behaviour was first classified as a criminal offence against the dignity of the Roman Republic of ancient Rome. In the Dominate, or Late Empire period, the emperors eliminated the Republican trappings of their predecessors and began to identify the state with their person. Although legally the princeps civitatis (his official title, meaning, roughly, 'first citizen') could never become a sovereign because the republic was never officially abolished, emperors were deified as divus, first posthumously but by the Dominate period while reigning. Deified emperors enjoyed the same legal protection that was accorded to the divinities of the state cult; by the time it was replaced by Christianity, what was in all but name a monarchical tradition had already become well-established.

Narrower conceptions of offences against Majesty as offences against the crown predominated in the European kingdoms that emerged in the early medieval period. In feudal Europe, some crimes were classified as lèse-majesté even if they were not intentionally directed against the crown. An example is counterfeiting, so classified because coins bore the monarch's effigy and/or coat of arms.

With the disappearance of absolute monarchy in Europe (with exception of Vatican City), lèse-majesté came to be viewed as less of a crime. However, certain malicious acts that would have once been classified as the crime of lèse-majesté could still be prosecuted as treason. Future republics that emerged as great powers generally still classified as a crime any offence against the highest representatives of the state. These laws are still applied as well in monarchies outside of Europe, such as modern Thailand and Cambodia.

🔗 Sports

Extreme ironing (also called EI) is an extreme sport in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing. According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt."

Part of the attraction and interest the media has shown towards extreme ironing seems to center on the issue of whether it is really a sport or not. It is widely considered to be tongue-in-cheek.

Some other locations where such performances have taken place include a mountainside of a difficult climb; a forest; in a canoe; while skiing or snowboarding; on top of large bronze statues; in the middle of a street; underwater; in the middle of the M1 motorway; race; whilst parachuting; and under the ice sheet of a frozen lake. The performances have been conducted solo or by groups.

🔗 Computing

Refal ("[of] Recursive functions' algorithmic language") "is functional programming language oriented toward symbolic computations", including "string processing, language translation, [and] artificial intelligence". It is one of the oldest members of this family, first conceived of in 1966 as a theoretical tool, with the first implementation appearing in 1968. Refal was intended to combine mathematical simplicity with practicality for writing large and sophisticated programs.

One of the first functional programming languages to do so, and unlike Lisp of its time, Refal is based on pattern matching. Its pattern matching works in conjunction with term rewriting.

The basic data structure of Lisp and Prolog is a linear list built by cons operation in a sequential manner, thus with O(n) access to list's nth element. Refal's lists are built and scanned from both ends, with pattern matching working for nested lists as well as the top-level one. In effect, the basic data structure of Refal is a tree rather than a list. This gives freedom and convenience in creating data structures while using only mathematically simple control mechanisms of pattern matching and substitution.

Refal also includes a feature called the freezer to support efficient partial evaluation.

Refal can be applied to the processing and transformation of tree structures, similarly to XSLT.