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π TSV β Alternative to CSV
Tab-separated values (TSV) is a simple, text-based file format for storing tabular data. Records are separated by newlines, and values within a record are separated by tab characters. The TSV format is thus a delimiter-separated values format, similar to comma-separated values.
TSV is a simple file format that is widely supported, so it is often used in data exchange to move tabular data between different computer programs that support the format. For example, a TSV file might be used to transfer information from a database to a spreadsheet.
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- "TSV β Alternative to CSV" | 2024-06-09 | 22 Upvotes 34 Comments
π Lloyd's Coffee House
Lloyd's Coffee House was a significant meeting place in London in the 17th and 18th centuries.
It was opened by Edward Lloyd (c.β1648β15 February 1713) on Tower Street in 1686. The establishment was a popular place for sailors, merchants and shipowners, and Lloyd catered to them by providing reliable shipping news. The shipping industry community frequented the place to discuss maritime insurance, shipbroking and foreign trade. The dealings that took place led to the establishment of the insurance market Lloyd's of London, Lloyd's Register and several related shipping and insurance businesses.
The coffee shop relocated to Lombard Street in December 1691. Lloyd had a pulpit installed in the new premises, from which maritime auction prices and shipping news were announced. Candle auctions were held in the establishment, with lots frequently involving ships and shipping. From 1696β1697 Lloyd also experimented with publishing a newspaper, Lloyd's News, reporting on shipping schedules and insurance agreements reached in the coffee house. In 1713, the year of Edward Lloyd's death, he modified his will to assign the lease of the coffee house to his head waiter, William Newton, who then married one of Lloyd's daughters, Handy. Newton died the following year and Handy subsequently married Samuel Sheppard. She died in 1720 and Sheppard died in 1727, leaving the coffee house to his sister Elizabeth and her husband, Thomas Jemson. Jemson founded the Lloyd's List newspaper in 1734, similar to the previous Lloyd's News. Merchants continued to discuss insurance matters here until 1774, when the participating members of the insurance arrangement formed a committee and moved to the Royal Exchange on Cornhill as the Society of Lloyd's.
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- "Lloyd's Coffee House" | 2020-10-25 | 114 Upvotes 78 Comments
π First They Came
"First they came ..." is the poetic form of a post-war confessional prose by the German Lutheran pastor Martin NiemΓΆller (1892β1984). It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals and certain clergyβincluding, by his own admission, NiemΓΆller himselfβfollowing the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets, group after group. Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in the English language. It deals with themes of persecution, guilt, repentance, and personal responsibility.
π Cummingtonite
Cummingtonite ( KUM-ing-tΙ-nyte) is a metamorphic amphibole with the chemical composition (Mg,Fe2+
)
2(Mg,Fe2+
)
5Si
8O
22(OH)
2, magnesium iron silicate hydroxide.
Monoclinic cummingtonite is compositionally similar and polymorphic with orthorhombic anthophyllite, which is a much more common form of magnesium-rich amphibole, the latter being metastable.
Cummingtonite shares few compositional similarities with alkali amphiboles such as arfvedsonite, glaucophane-riebeckite. There is little solubility between these minerals due to different crystal habit and inability of substitution between alkali elements and ferro-magnesian elements within the amphibole structure.
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- "Cummingtonite" | 2023-02-21 | 23 Upvotes 5 Comments
π NOBUS (Nobody but Us)
NOBUS ("nobody but us") are security vulnerabilities which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) believes that only it can exploit. As such, NSA sometimes chooses to leave such vulnerabilities open if NSA finds them, in order to exploit them against NSA's targets. More broadly, it refers to the notion that some signals intelligence capabilities are so powerful or otherwise inaccessible that only the NSA will be able to deploy them, though recent analyses suggest that this advantage may be under stress.
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- "NOBUS (Nobody but Us)" | 2020-01-15 | 184 Upvotes 55 Comments
π Demon Core
The demon core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14Β lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimetres (3.5Β in) in diameter, that was involved in two criticality accidents, on August 21, 1945 and May 21, 1946. The core was intended for use in a third nuclear weapon, but remained in use for testing after Japan's surrender. It was designed with a small safety margin to ensure a successful explosion of the bomb. The device briefly went supercritical when it was accidentally placed in supercritical configurations during two separate experiments intended to guarantee the core was indeed close to the critical point. The incidents happened at the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1945 and 1946, both resulting in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent deaths of scientists: Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. After these incidents the spherical plutonium core was referred to as the "demon core".
Discussed on
- "Demon Core" | 2019-06-17 | 153 Upvotes 55 Comments
- "The Demon Core" | 2012-10-07 | 20 Upvotes 1 Comments
π OK Soda
OK Soda was a soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1993 that courted the American Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics, including neo-noir design, chain letters and deliberately negative publicity. After the soda did not sell well in select test markets, it was officially declared out of production in 1995 before reaching nationwide distribution. The drink's slogan was "Things are going to be OK."
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- "OK Soda" | 2020-04-07 | 254 Upvotes 128 Comments
π Venetian Arsenal
The Venetian Arsenal (Italian: Arsenale di Venezia) is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice in northern Italy. Owned by the state, the Arsenal was responsible for the bulk of the Venetian republic's naval power from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period. It was "one of the earliest large-scale industrial enterprises in history".
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- "Venetian Arsenal" | 2023-05-28 | 27 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Crypto AG
Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security. It was secretly jointly owned by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1970 until about 1993, with the CIA continuing as sole owner until about 2018. With headquarters in Steinhausen, the company was a long-established manufacturer of encryption machines and a wide variety of cipher devices.
The company had about 230 employees, had offices in Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Buenos Aires, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Selsdon and Steinhausen, and did business throughout the world. The owners of Crypto AG were unknown, supposedly even to the managers of the firm, and they held their ownership through bearer shares.
The company has been criticised for selling backdoored products to benefit the American, British and German national signals intelligence agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and the BND, respectively. On 11 February 2020, The Washington Post, ZDF and SRF revealed that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence, and the spy agencies could easily break the codes used to send encrypted messages. The operation was known first by the code name "Thesaurus" and later "Rubicon".
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- "Crypto AG" | 2020-02-12 | 101 Upvotes 68 Comments
π Toxorhynchites β Mosquito Eater
Toxorhynchites, also called elephant mosquito or mosquito eater, is a genus of diurnal and often relatively colorful mosquitoes, found worldwide between about 35Β° north and 35Β° south. It includes the largest known species of mosquito, at up to 18Β mm (0.71Β in) in length and 24Β mm (0.94Β in) in wingspan. It is among the many kinds of mosquito that do not consume blood. The adults subsist on carbohydrate-rich materials, such as honeydew, or saps and juices from damaged plants, refuse, fruit, and nectar.
Their larvae prey on the larvae of other mosquitoes and similar nektonic prey, making Toxorhynchites beneficial to humans. In this respect, they contrast with blood-sucking species of mosquitoes. Toxorhynchites larvae live on a protein- and fat-rich diet of aquatic animals such as mosquito larvae. They have no need to risk their lives sucking blood in adulthood, having already accumulated the necessary materials for oogenesis and vitellogenesis.
Most species occur in forests. The larvae of one jungle variety, Toxorhynchites splendens, consume larvae of other mosquito species occurring in tree crevices, particularly Aedes aegypti.
Unlike Toxorhynchites mosquitoes, detritus feeder mosquito female larvae rely on blood meals to produce eggs more plentifully than a diet of nectar would permit. And even though blood sucking is a risky strategy that entails more casualties, and they could in principle subsist on nectar and the like as their males generally do, the risk is outweighed on average by the increase in the number and size of yolk-rich eggs that such protein-rich food permit.
Environmental scientists have suggested that Toxorhynchites mosquitoes be introduced to areas outside their natural range in order to fight dengue fever. This has been practiced historically, but errors have been made. For example, when intending to introduce T. splendens to new areas, scientists actually introduced T. amboinensis. An extinct species is known from Miocene aged Mexican Amber
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- "Toxorhynchites β Mosquito Eater" | 2019-07-25 | 73 Upvotes 41 Comments