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🔗 Computing 🔗 Mathematics

Wireworld is a cellular automaton first proposed by Brian Silverman in 1987, as part of his program Phantom Fish Tank. It subsequently became more widely known as a result of an article in the "Computer Recreations" column of Scientific American. Wireworld is particularly suited to simulating transistors, and Wireworld is Turing-complete.

🔗 Mathematics

In mathematics, Young's lattice is a partially ordered set and a lattice that is formed by all integer partitions. It is named after Alfred Young, who, in a series of papers On quantitative substitutional analysis, developed representation theory of the symmetric group. In Young's theory, the objects now called Young diagrams and the partial order on them played a key, even decisive, role. Young's lattice prominently figures in algebraic combinatorics, forming the simplest example of a differential poset in the sense of Stanley (1988). It is also closely connected with the crystal bases for affine Lie algebras.

🔗 Apple Inc./Macintosh 🔗 Apple Inc.

Miller columns (also known as cascading lists) are a browsing/visualization technique that can be applied to tree structures. The columns allow multiple levels of the hierarchy to be open at once, and provide a visual representation of the current location. It is closely related to techniques used earlier in the Smalltalk browser, but was independently invented by Mark S. Miller in 1980 at Yale University. The technique was then used at Project Xanadu, Datapoint, and NeXT.

While at Datapoint, Miller generalized the technique to browse directed graphs with labeled nodes and arcs. In all cases, the technique is appropriate for structures with high degree (large fanout). For low-degree structures, outline editors or graph viewers are more effective.

🔗 Skepticism 🔗 Japan 🔗 Paranormal

Utsuro-bune (虚舟, 'hollow ship'), also Utsuro-fune, and Urobune, was an unknown object that allegedly washed ashore in 1803 in Hitachi province on the eastern coast of Japan. When defining Utsuro-bune, the bune part means "boat" while Utsuro means empty, or hollow. Accounts of the tale appear in three texts: Toen shōsetsu (1825), Hyōryū kishū (1835) and Ume-no-chiri (1844).

According to legend, an attractive young woman aged 18-20 years old, arrived on a local beach aboard the "hollow ship" on February 22, 1803. Fishermen brought her inland to investigate further, but the woman was unable to communicate in Japanese. She was very different from anyone else there. The fishermen then returned her and her vessel to the sea, where it drifted away.

Historians, ethnologists and physicists such as Kazuo Tanaka and Yanagita Kunio have evaluated the "legend of the hollow boat" as part of a long-standing tradition within Japanese folklore. Alternatively, certain ufologists have claimed that the story represents evidence for a close encounter with extraterrestrial life.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Lists 🔗 Java

This article provides non-exhaustive lists of Java SE Java virtual machines (JVMs). It does not include a large number of Java ME vendors. Note that Java EE runs on the standard Java SE JVM but that some vendors specialize in providing a modified JVM optimized for Java EE applications. A large amount of Java development work takes place on Windows, Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD, primarily with the Oracle JVMs. Note the further complication of different 32-bit/64-bit varieties.

The primary reference Java VM implementation is HotSpot, produced by Oracle Corporation.

🔗 Philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Philosophical literature 🔗 Politics 🔗 Philosophy/Ancient philosophy 🔗 Philosophy/Ethics

The Nicomachean Ethics (; Ancient Greek: Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, Ēthika Nikomacheia) is the name normally given to Aristotle's best-known work on ethics. The work, which plays a pre-eminent role in defining Aristotelian ethics, consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum. The title is often assumed to refer to his son Nicomachus, to whom the work was dedicated or who may have edited it (although his young age makes this less likely). Alternatively, the work may have been dedicated to his father, who was also called Nicomachus.

The theme of the work is a Socratic question previously explored in the works of Plato, Aristotle's friend and teacher, of how men should best live. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle described how Socrates, the friend and teacher of Plato, had turned philosophy to human questions, whereas pre-Socratic philosophy had only been theoretical. Ethics, as now separated out for discussion by Aristotle, is practical rather than theoretical, in the original Aristotelian senses of these terms. In other words, it is not only a contemplation about good living, because it also aims to create good living. It is therefore connected to Aristotle's other practical work, the Politics, which similarly aims at people becoming good. Ethics is about how individuals should best live, while the study of politics is from the perspective of a law-giver, looking at the good of a whole community.

The Nicomachean Ethics is widely considered one of the most important historical philosophical works, and had an important impact upon the European Middle Ages, becoming one of the core works of medieval philosophy. It therefore indirectly became critical in the development of all modern philosophy as well as European law and theology. Many parts of the Nicomachean Ethics are well known in their own right, within different fields. In the Middle Ages, a synthesis between Aristotelian ethics and Christian theology became widespread, in Europe as introduced by Albertus Magnus. While various philosophers had influenced Christendom since its earliest times, in Western Europe Aristotle became "the Philosopher". The most important version of this synthesis was that of Thomas Aquinas. Other more "Averroist" Aristotelians such as Marsilius of Padua were controversial but also influential. (Marsilius is for example sometimes said to have influenced the controversial English political reformer Thomas Cromwell.)

A critical period in the history of this work's influence is at the end of the Middle Ages, and beginning of modernity, when several authors such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, argued forcefully and largely successfully that the medieval Aristotelian tradition in practical thinking had become a great impediment to philosophy in their time. However, in more recent generations, Aristotle's original works (if not those of his medieval followers) have once again become an important source. More recent authors influenced by this work include Alasdair MacIntyre, G. E. M. Anscombe, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martha Nussbaum and Avital Ronell.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Systems 🔗 Computing/Software 🔗 Computing/Computer science 🔗 Systems/Systems engineering

Conway's law is an adage stating that organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structure. It is named after computer programmer Melvin Conway, who introduced the idea in 1967. His original wording was:

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

The law is based on the reasoning that in order for a software module to function, multiple authors must communicate frequently with each other. Therefore, the software interface structure of a system will reflect the social boundaries of the organization(s) that produced it, across which communication is more difficult. Conway's law was intended as a valid sociological observation, although sometimes it's used in a humorous context. It was dubbed Conway's law by participants at the 1968 National Symposium on Modular Programming.

In colloquial terms, it means software or automated systems end up "shaped like" the organizational structure they are designed in or designed for. Some interpretations of the law say this organizational pattern mirroring is a helpful feature of such systems, while other interpretations say it's merely a result of human nature or organizational bias.

🔗 Linguistics 🔗 New York (state) 🔗 New York (state)/Western New York

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in American English, often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.

The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:

• as a proper noun to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, the city of Buffalo, New York, being the most notable;
• as a verb (uncommon in regular usage) to buffalo, meaning "to bully, harass, or intimidate" or "to baffle"; and
• as a noun to refer to the animal, bison (often called buffalo in North America). The plural is also buffalo.

An expanded form of the sentence which preserves the original word order is: "Buffalo bison, that other Buffalo bison bully, also bully Buffalo bison."

A hydraulic telegraph (Greek: υδραυλικός τηλέγραφος) is either of two different hydraulic-telegraph telecommunication systems. The earliest one was developed in 4th-century BC Greece, while the other was developed in 19th-century AD Britain. The Greek system was deployed in combination with semaphoric fires, while the latter British system was operated purely by hydraulic fluid pressure.

Although both systems employed water in their sending and receiver devices, their transmission media were completely different. The ancient Greek system transmitted its semaphoric information to the receiver visually, which limited its use to line-of-sight distances in good visibility weather conditions only. The 19th-century British system used water-filled pipes to effect changes to the water level in the receiver unit (similar to a transparent water-filled flexible tube used as a level indicator), thus limiting its range to the hydraulic pressure that could be generated at the transmitter's device.

While the Greek device was extremely limited in the codes (and hence the information) it could convey, the British device was never deployed in operation other than for very short-distance demonstrations. Although the British device could be used in any visibility within its range of operation, it could not work in sub-zero temperatures without additional infrastructure to heat the pipes. This contributed to its impracticality.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Politics 🔗 Biography/politics and government 🔗 Politics of the United Kingdom

Count Binface is a satirical perennial candidate created by the British comedian Jonathan David Harvey in 2018. He was a candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2019 United Kingdom general election against the then prime minister, Boris Johnson. He also stood in the London Mayoral elections in 2021 and 2024.

In earlier elections, Harvey stood as Lord Buckethead, but was forced to change the character due to a copyright dispute with the American filmmaker Todd Durham, who created Lord Buckethead for his 1984 science fiction film Hyperspace. Since then Harvey has used the forced name change to his advantage by using the platform of Binface to promote electoral participation, with the slogan, "Make your vote COUNT".

In 2019, another individual contested the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat as Buckethead, representing the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, to which Binface said he "look[s] forward to both the hustings and to challenging [him] to take part in a receptacle-to-receptacle debate".

When Johnson resigned as an MP in 2023, Binface again stood as a candidate in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, finishing eighth of 17. Originally standing as an independent, since 2023 his affiliation has been given as Count Binface Party on ballot papers. Count Binface plans to contest the seat of current UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in Richmond and Northallerton, in the 2024 general election on 4 July.