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🔗 Italy 🔗 Music/Music genres 🔗 Roots music 🔗 A Cappella 🔗 Regional and national music

The cantu a tenòre (Sardinian: su tenòre, su cuncòrdu, su cuntràttu, su cussèrtu, s'agorropamèntu, su cantu a pròa; Italian: canto a tenore) is a style of polyphonic folk singing characteristic of the island of Sardinia (Italy's second largest island), particularly the region of Barbagia, though some other Sardinian sub-regions bear examples of such tradition.

In 2005, UNESCO proclaimed the cantu a tenore to be an example of intangible cultural heritage.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction 🔗 Science Fiction 🔗 Solar System/Mars 🔗 Solar System

The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.

The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.

Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarities with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 (2012); for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Software

Whitespace is an esoteric programming language developed by Edwin Brady and Chris Morris at the University of Durham (also developers of the Kaya and Idris programming languages). It was released on 1 April 2003 (April Fool's Day). Its name is a reference to whitespace characters. Unlike most programming languages, which ignore or assign little meaning to most whitespace characters, the Whitespace interpreter ignores any non-whitespace characters. Only spaces, tabs and linefeeds have meaning. A consequence of this property is that a Whitespace program can easily be contained within the whitespace characters of a program written in another language, except possibly in languages which depend on spaces for syntax validity such as Python, making the text a polyglot.

The language itself is an imperative stack-based language. The virtual machine on which the programs run has a stack and a heap. The programmer is free to push arbitrary-width integers onto the stack (currently there is no implementation of floating point numbers) and can also access the heap as a permanent store for variables and data structures.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Microsoft Windows 🔗 Microsoft Windows/Computing

The AARD code was a segment of code in a beta release of Microsoft Windows 3.1 that would determine whether Windows was running on MS-DOS or PC DOS, rather than a competing workalike such as DR-DOS, and would result in a cryptic error message in the latter case. This XOR-encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated machine code used a variety of undocumented DOS structures and functions to perform its work, and appeared in the installer, WIN.COM, and several other executables in the OS.

The AARD code was originally discovered by Geoff Chappell on 17 April 1992 and then further analyzed and documented in a joint effort with Andrew Schulman. The name was derived from Microsoft programmer Aaron R. Reynolds (1955–2008), who used "AARD" to sign his work; "AARD" was found in the machine code of the installer. Microsoft disabled the AARD code for the final release of Windows 3.1, but did not remove it, so that it could have become reactivated later by the change of a single byte in an installed system, thereby constituting a "smoking gun".

DR-DOS publisher Digital Research released a patch named "business update" in 1992 to enable the AARD tests to pass on its operating system.

The rationale for the AARD code came to light when internal memos were released during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust case in 1999. Internal memos released by Microsoft revealed that the specific focus of these tests was DR-DOS. At one point, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sent a memo to a number of employees, reading "You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MS-DOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?" Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg later sent another memo, stating: "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS."

Following the purchase of DR-DOS by Novell and its renaming to "Novell DOS", Microsoft Co-President Jim Allchin stated in a memo, "If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."

What had been DR-DOS changed hands again. The new owner, Caldera, Inc., began a lawsuit against Microsoft over the AARD code, Caldera v. Microsoft, which was later settled. It was believed that the settlement ran in the order of $150 million, but was revealed in November 2009 with the release of the Settlement Agreement to be $280 million.

🔗 Finance & Investment 🔗 Economics 🔗 Business 🔗 Politics 🔗 Crime and Criminal Biography 🔗 Corruption

State capture is a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state's decision-making processes to their own advantage.

The term was first used by the World Bank in 2000 to describe certain Central Asian countries making the transition from Soviet communism, where small corrupt groups used their influence over government officials to appropriate government decision-making in order to strengthen their own economic positions.

Allegations of state capture have led to protests against the government in Bulgaria in 2013–2014 and in 2020–2021 and Romania in 2017, and have caused an ongoing controversy in South Africa beginning in 2016. Turkey is considered as a post-2002 example of state capture. The term has also been used against Elon Musk by critics of U.S. President Donald Trump.

🔗 Software 🔗 Software/Computing 🔗 Norway

Razor 1911 (RZR) is a warez and demogroup founded in Norway, 1986. It was the first ever such group to be initially founded exclusively as a demogroup, before moving into warez in 1987. According to the US Justice Department, Razor 1911 is the oldest software cracking group that is still active on the internet. Razor 1911 ran the diskmag 'Propaganda' until 1995.

🔗 British Museum 🔗 Visual arts

Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut executed by German painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer in 1515. The image is based on a written description and brief sketch by an unknown artist of an Indian rhinoceros that had arrived in Lisbon in 1515. Dürer never saw the actual rhinoceros, which was the first living example seen in Europe since Roman times. In late 1515, the King of Portugal, Manuel I, sent the animal as a gift for Pope Leo X, but it died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516. A live rhinoceros was not seen again in Europe until a second specimen, named Abada, arrived from India at the court of Sebastian of Portugal in 1577, being later inherited by Philip II of Spain around 1580.

Dürer's woodcut is not an entirely accurate representation of a rhinoceros. He depicts an animal with hard plates that cover its body like sheets of armour, with a gorget at the throat, a solid-looking breastplate, and what appear to be rivets along the seams. He places a small twisted horn on its back and gives it scaly legs and saw-like rear quarters. None of these features is present in a real rhinoceros, although the Indian rhinoceros does have deep folds in its skin that can look like armor from a distance. Despite its anatomical inaccuracies, Dürer's woodcut became very popular in Europe and was copied many times in the following three centuries. It was regarded by Westerners as a true representation of a rhinoceros into the late 18th century. Eventually, it was supplanted by more realistic drawings and paintings, particularly those of Clara the rhinoceros, who toured Europe in the 1740s and 1750s. It has been said of Dürer's woodcut: "probably no animal picture has exerted such a profound influence on the arts".

🔗 Economics 🔗 Numismatics

In economics, Gresham's law is a monetary principle stating that "bad money drives out good". For example, if there are two forms of commodity money in circulation, which are accepted by law as having similar face value, the more valuable commodity will gradually disappear from circulation.

The law was named in 1860 by Henry Dunning Macleod, after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–1579), who was an English financier during the Tudor dynasty. However, the concept itself had been previously expressed by others, including by Aristophanes in his play The Frogs, which dates from around the end of the 5th century BC, in the 14th century by Nicole Oresme c. 1350, in his treatise On the Origin, Nature, Law, and Alterations of Money, and by jurist and historian Al-Maqrizi (1364–1442) in the Mamluk Empire; and in 1519 by Nicolaus Copernicus in a treatise called Monetae cudendae ratio For this reason, it is occasionally known as the Gresham–Copernicus' law.

🔗 History 🔗 Europe 🔗 Ukraine 🔗 Archaeology 🔗 Romania 🔗 Moldova

In the archaeology of Neolithic Europe, the burned house horizon is the geographical extent of the phenomenon of presumably intentionally burned settlements.

This was a widespread and long-lasting tradition in what is now Southeastern and Eastern Europe, lasting from as early as 6500 BCE (the beginning of the Neolithic) to as late as 2000 BCE (the end of the Chalcolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age). A notable representative of this tradition is the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, which was centered on the burned-house horizon both geographically and temporally.

There is still a discussion in the study of Neolithic and Eneolithic Europe whether the majority of burned houses were intentionally set alight or not.

Although there is still debate about the why house burning was practiced, the evidence seems to indicate that it was highly unlikely to have been accidental. There is also debate about why this would have been done deliberately and regularly, since these burnings could destroy the entire settlement. However, in recent years, the consensus has begun to gel around the "domicide" theory supported by Tringham, Stevanovic and others.

Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements were completely burned every 75–80 years, leaving behind successive layers consisting mostly of large amounts of rubble from the collapsed wattle-and-daub walls. This rubble was mostly ceramic material that had been created as the raw clay used in the daub of the walls became vitrified from the intense heat that would have turned it a bright orange color during the conflagration that destroyed the buildings, much the same way that raw clay objects are turned into ceramic products during the firing process in a kiln. Moreover, the sheer amount of fired-clay rubble found within every house of a settlement indicates that a fire of enormous intensity would have raged through the entire community to have created the volume of material found.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Russia/demographics and ethnography of Russia 🔗 Lithuania 🔗 Ukraine 🔗 Food and drink/Beverages 🔗 Beer

Kvass is a fermented cereal-based non-alcoholic or low alcoholic (0.5–1.0% or 1–2 proof) beverage with a slightly cloudy appearance, light-dark brown colour and sweet-sour taste. It may be flavoured with berries, fruits, herbs, honey