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🔗 The Californian Ideology
"The Californian Ideology" is a 1995 essay by English media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster. Barbrook describes it as a "critique of dotcom neoliberalism". In the essay, Barbrook and Cameron argue that the rise of networking technologies in Silicon Valley in the 1990s was linked to American neoliberalism and a paradoxical hybridization of beliefs from the political left and right in the form of hopeful technological determinism.
The original essay was published in Mute magazine in 1995 and later appeared on the nettime Internet mailing list for debate. A final version was published in Science as Culture in 1996. The critique has since been revised in several different versions and languages.
Andrew Leonard of Salon called Barbrook & Cameron's work "one of the most penetrating critiques of neo-conservative digital hypesterism yet published."
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- "The Californian Ideology" | 2021-09-01 | 11 Upvotes 3 Comments
🔗 Linux Router Project
The Linux Router Project (LRP) is a now defunct networking-centric micro Linux distribution. The released versions of LRP were small enough to fit on a single 1.44MB floppy disk, and made building and maintaining routers, access servers, thin servers, thin clients, network appliances, and typically embedded systems next to trivial.
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- "Linux Router Project" | 2024-02-25 | 24 Upvotes 1 Comments
🔗 Illusory Truth Effect
The illusory truth effect (also known as the validity effect, truth effect, or the reiteration effect) is the tendency to believe false information to be correct after repeated exposure. This phenomenon was first identified in a 1977 study at Villanova University and Temple University. When truth is assessed, people rely on whether the information is in line with their understanding or if it feels familiar. The first condition is logical, as people compare new information with what they already know to be true. Repetition makes statements easier to process relative to new, unrepeated statements, leading people to believe that the repeated conclusion is more truthful. The illusory truth effect has also been linked to "hindsight bias", in which the recollection of confidence is skewed after the truth has been received.
In a 2015 study, researchers discovered that familiarity can overpower rationality and that repetitively hearing that a certain fact is wrong can affect the hearer's beliefs. Researchers attributed the illusory truth effect's impact on participants who knew the correct answer to begin with, but were persuaded to believe otherwise through the repetition of a falsehood, to "processing fluency".
The illusory truth effect plays a significant role in such fields as election campaigns, advertising, news media, and political propaganda.
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- "Illusory Truth Effect" | 2019-11-28 | 110 Upvotes 55 Comments
🔗 The Man Behind AMD's Zen Microarchitecture: Jim Keller
Jim Keller (born 1958/1959) is a microprocessor engineer best known for his work at AMD and Apple. He was the lead architect of the AMD K8 microarchitecture (including the original Athlon 64) and was involved in designing the Athlon (K7) and Apple A4/A5 processors. He was also the coauthor of the specifications for the x86-64 instruction set and HyperTransport interconnect. From 2012 to 2015, he returned to AMD to work on the AMD K12 and Zen microarchitectures.
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- "The Man Behind AMD's Zen Microarchitecture: Jim Keller" | 2017-08-11 | 99 Upvotes 42 Comments
🔗 A baboon who acted as assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa
Jack (died 1890) was a chacma baboon, who attained some fame for acting as an assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa.
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- "A baboon who acted as assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa" | 2019-06-04 | 98 Upvotes 20 Comments
🔗 European Green Belt
The European Green Belt initiative is a grassroots movement for nature conservation and sustainable development along the corridor of the former Iron Curtain. The term refers to both an environmental initiative as well as the area it concerns. The initiative is carried out under the patronage of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Mikhail Gorbachev. It is the aim of the initiative to create the backbone of an ecological network that runs from the Barents to the Black and Adriatic Seas.
The European Green Belt as an area follows the route of the former Iron Curtain and connects National Parks, Nature Parks, Biosphere Reserves and transboundary protected areas as well as non-protected valuable habitats along or across the (former) borders.
🔗 IBM 5100
The IBM 5100 Portable Computer is a portable computer (one of the first) introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM Personal Computer. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable) that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. In January 1978, IBM announced the IBM 5110, its larger cousin, and in February 1980 IBM announced the IBM 5120. The 5100 was withdrawn in March 1982.
When the IBM PC was introduced in 1981, it was originally designated as the IBM 5150, putting it in the "5100" series, though its architecture was unrelated to the IBM 5100's.
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- "IBM 5100" | 2016-05-16 | 24 Upvotes 15 Comments
🔗 Storm Oil
Storm oil is the deliberate use of oil to calm an area of water. It has been claimed that it has been used to calm seas to facilitate rescues. Oil was usually carried in a bag which would be released onto the water or in a container which would slowly deploy the oil.
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- "Storm Oil" | 2020-01-14 | 25 Upvotes 3 Comments
🔗 Replay System (Pentium 4)
The replay system is a little-known subsystem within the Intel Pentium 4 processor. Its primary function is to catch operations that have been mistakenly sent for execution by the processor's scheduler. Operations caught by the replay system are then re-executed in a loop until the conditions necessary for their proper execution have been fulfilled.
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- "Replay System (Pentium 4)" | 2019-12-05 | 14 Upvotes 2 Comments
🔗 SN 1006
SN 1006 was a supernova that is likely the brightest observed stellar event in recorded history, reaching an estimated −7.5 visual magnitude, and exceeding roughly sixteen times the brightness of Venus. Appearing between April 30 and May 1, 1006 AD in the constellation of Lupus, this "guest star" was described by observers across the modern day countries of China, Japan, Iraq, Egypt, and the continent of Europe, and possibly recorded in North American petroglyphs. Some reports state it was clearly visible in the daytime. Modern astronomers now consider its distance from Earth to be about 7,200 light-years.
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- "Supernova in 1006" | 2023-10-05 | 123 Upvotes 58 Comments
- "SN 1006" | 2015-02-25 | 66 Upvotes 11 Comments