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π The eastern coyote, a wild N. American canine with coyote-wolf and dog parentage
The eastern coyote (Canis latrans var.) is a wild North American canine of both coyote and wolf parentage. The hybridization likely first occurred in the Great Lakes region, as western coyotes moved east. It was first noticed during the early 1930s to the late 1940s, and likely originated in the aftermath of the extirpation of the gray wolf in southeastern Ontario, Labrador and Quebec, thus allowing coyotes to colonize the former wolf ranges and mix with the remnant wolf populations. This hybrid is smaller than the eastern wolf and holds smaller territories, but is larger and holds more extensive home ranges than the typical western coyote.
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- "The eastern coyote, a wild N. American canine with coyote-wolf and dog parentage" | 2018-02-25 | 47 Upvotes 11 Comments
π List Of Adhesive Tapes
The following is a list of adhesive tapes with pressure-sensitive adhesives:
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- "List Of Adhesive Tapes" | 2022-04-15 | 162 Upvotes 135 Comments
π Format wars this past century
A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the same market, typically for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political and financial influence on content publishers by the developers of the technologies. Developing companies may be characterized as engaging in a format war if they actively oppose or avoid interoperable open-industry technical standards in favor of their own.
A format war emergence can be explained because each vendor is trying to exploit cross-side network effects in a two-sided market. There is also a social force to stop a format war: when one of them wins as de facto standard, it solves a coordination problem for the format users.
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- "Format wars this past century" | 2009-03-21 | 14 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Turtles All the Way Down
"Turtles all the way down" is an expression of the problem of infinite regress. The saying alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that supports the earth on its back. It suggests that this turtle rests on the back of an even larger turtle, which itself is part of a column of increasingly large world turtles that continues indefinitely (i.e., "turtles all the way down").
The exact origin of the phrase is uncertain. In the form "rocks all the way down", the saying appears as early as 1838. References to the saying's mythological antecedents, the World Turtle and its counterpart the World Elephant, were made by a number of authors in the 17th and 18th centuries. This mythology is frequently assumed to have originated in ancient India and other Hinduist beliefs.
The expression has been used to illustrate problems such as the regress argument in epistemology.
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- "Turtles All the Way Down" | 2016-09-03 | 57 Upvotes 10 Comments
π Jonathan James
Jonathan Joseph James (December 12, 1983 β May 18, 2008) was an American hacker who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States. The South Florida native was 15 years old at the time of the first offense and 16 years old on the date of his sentencing. He died at his Pinecrest, Florida home on May 18, 2008, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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- "Jonathan James" | 2013-01-13 | 366 Upvotes 118 Comments
π The Indian state of Kerala has a communist government and India's highest HDI
Communism in Kerala refers to the strong presence of communist ideas in the Indian state of Kerala. In addition to Kerala, the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura have had multiple democratically elected Marxist governments, and change takes place in the government by regular multiparty electoral processes. Communism of Kerala has provided Indian communist stalwarts such as M. N. Govindan Nair, C. Achutha Menon, K. Damodaran, T. V. Thomas, N. E. Balaram, E. M. S. Namboodiripad, A. K. Gopalan, K. R. Gouri Amma, P. K. Vasudevan Nair and C. K. Chandrappan
Today the two largest communist parties in Kerala politics are the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India. The Left Democratic Front is a coalition of left-wing political parties in the state of Kerala and is one of the two major political coalitions in Kerala, each of which have been in power alternatively for the last two decades. The coalition led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) consists of the Communist Party of India, the Janata Dal (Secular), the Nationalist Congress Party, the Indian National League, the Kerala Congress (Anti-merger Group), and the Indian National Congress (Socialist).
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- "The Indian state of Kerala has a communist government and India's highest HDI" | 2021-12-22 | 15 Upvotes 5 Comments
π The Last Question
"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). While he also considered it one of his best works, βThe Last Questionβ was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which were first formulated in 1940, outline the criteria for robotic existence in relation to humans. Humanity's relationship to Multivac is questioned on the subject of entropy. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy. Β
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- "The Last Question" | 2022-06-08 | 314 Upvotes 164 Comments
π Toss Bombing
Toss bombing (sometimes known as loft bombing, and by the U.S. Air Force as the Low Altitude Bombing System, LABS) is a method of bombing where the attacking aircraft pulls upward when releasing its bomb load, giving the bomb additional time of flight by starting its ballistic path with an upward vector.
The purpose of toss bombing is to compensate for the gravity drop of the bomb in flight, and allow an aircraft to bomb a target without flying directly over it. This is in order to avoid overflying a heavily defended target, or in order to distance the attacking aircraft from the blast effects of a nuclear (or conventional) bomb.
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- "Toss Bombing" | 2019-09-15 | 50 Upvotes 6 Comments
π This page crashes my chrome tab
The Indian rupee sign (sign: βΉ; code: INR) is the currency symbol for the Indian rupee, the official currency of India. Designed by Udaya Kumar, it was presented to the public by the Government of India on 15 July 2010, following its selection through an "open" competition among Indian residents. Before its adoption, the most commonly used symbols for the rupee were Rs, Re or, in texts in Indian languages, an appropriate abbreviation in the language used.
The design is based on the Devanagari letter "ΰ€°" (ra) with a double horizontal line at the top. It also resembles the Latin capital letter "R", especially R rotunda (κ).
The Unicode character for the Indian rupee sign is U+20B9 βΉ INDIAN RUPEE SIGN. Other countries that use a rupee, such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Nepal, still use the generic U+20A8 β¨ RUPEE SIGN character.
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- "This page crashes my chrome tab" | 2015-03-08 | 23 Upvotes 16 Comments
π Gambling on Papal Conclaves
Gambling on papal elections has at least a 500-year history. Betting on 16th-century papal conclaves are among the first documented examples of gambling on election outcomes. During the same period, gambling was also common on the outcomes of secular Italian elections, such as that of the Doge of Venice. Leighton Vaughan Williams and David Paton employ a unique dataset to investigate betting on the 2013 papal election, set within the context of the history of betting on papal conclaves.
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- "Gambling on Papal Conclaves" | 2025-02-23 | 50 Upvotes 40 Comments