Random Articles (Page 58)
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π PainStation
Painstation is an art object and arcade game based on Pong developed by the artists' group "/////////fur//// art entertainment interfaces", with pain feedback.
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- "PainStation" | 2023-12-12 | 213 Upvotes 58 Comments
π Custom of the Sea
A custom of the sea is a custom said to be practiced by the officers and crew of ships and boats in the open sea, as distinguished from maritime law, which is a distinct and coherent body of law governing maritime questions and offenses.
Among these customs was the practice of cannibalism among shipwrecked survivors, by the drawing of lots to decide who would be killed and eaten so that the others might survive.
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- "Custom of the Sea" | 2024-04-20 | 15 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Band-e Kaisar β βCaesar's damβββ
The Band-e Kaisar (Persian: Ψ¨ΩΨ― ΩΫΨ΅Ψ±, "Caesar's dam"β), Pol-e Kaisar ("Caesar's bridge"), Bridge of Valerian or Shadirwan was an ancient arch bridge in Shushtar, Iran, and the first in the country to combine it with a dam. Built by the Sassanids, using Roman prisoners of war as workforce, in the 3rdΒ centuryΒ AD on Sassanid order, it was also the most eastern example of Roman bridge design and Roman dam, lying deep in Persian territory. Its dual-purpose design exerted a profound influence on Iranian civil engineering and was instrumental in developing Sassanid water management techniques.
The approximately 500Β m long overflow dam over the Karun, Iran's most effluent river, was the core structure of the Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System (Ψ³Ψ§Ψ²ΩβΩΨ§Ϋ Ψ’Ψ¨Ϋ Ψ΄ΩΨ΄ΨͺΨ±) from which the city derived its agricultural productivity, and which has been designated by the UNESCO as Iran's 10th World Heritage Site in 2009. The arched superstructure carried across the important road between Pasargadae and the Sassanid capital Ctesiphon. Many times repaired in the Islamic period, the dam bridge remained in use until the late 19thΒ century.
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- "Band-e Kaisar β βCaesar's damβββ" | 2016-01-03 | 16 Upvotes 2 Comments
π Yottabyte
The yottabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix yotta indicates multiplication by the eighth power of 1000 or 1024 in the International System of Units (SI), and therefore one yottabyte is one septillion (one long scale quadrillion) bytes. The unit symbol for the yottabyte is YB. The yottabyte, adopted in 1991, is the largest of the formally defined multiples of the byte.
- 1 YB = 10008bytes = 1024bytes = 1000000000000000000000000bytes = 1000zettabytes = 1trillionterabytes
A related unit, the yobibyte (YiB), using a binary prefix, is equal to 10248bytes (approximately 1.209 YB).
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- "Yottabyte" | 2013-06-10 | 53 Upvotes 40 Comments
π Long Hundred
The long hundred, also known as the great hundred or twelfty, is the number that was referred to as "hundred" in Germanic languages prior to the 15th century, which is now known as 120, one hundred and twenty, or six score. The number was simply described as hundred and translated into Latin in Germanic-speaking countries as centum (Roman numeral C), but the qualifier "long" is now added because present English uses the word "hundred" exclusively to refer to the number of five score (100) instead.
The long hundred was 120 but the long thousand was reckoned decimally as 10 long hundreds (1200).
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- "Long Hundred" | 2021-02-08 | 97 Upvotes 106 Comments
π Ostrich Algorithm
In computer science, the ostrich algorithm is a strategy of ignoring potential problems on the basis that they may be exceedingly rare. It is named for the ostrich effect which is defined as "to stick one's head in the sand and pretend there is no problem". It is used when it is more cost-effective to allow the problem to occur than to attempt its prevention.
π Lincolnshire Poacher (numbers station)
The Lincolnshire Poacher was a British powerful shortwave numbers station that transmitted from Cyprus from the mid-1970s to June 2008. The station gained its commonly known name as it uses bars from the English folk song "The Lincolnshire Poacher" as an interval signal. The radio station was believed to be operated by the British Secret Intelligence Service and emanated from the island of Cyprus. Amateur direction finding linked it with the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri, Cyprus, where several curtain antennas had been identified as being its transmitter. It consisted of an electronically synthesised English-accented female voice reading groups of five numbers: e.g. '0-2-5-8-8'. The final number in each group was spoken at a higher pitch. It is likely that the station was used to communicate to undercover agents operating in other countries, to be decoded using a one-time pad.
An Asian numbers station of identical format is believed to have been broadcast from Australia, and nicknamed "Cherry Ripe". It uses several bars from the English folk song of the same name as its interval signal. Cherry Ripe continued to be on-air until December 2009.
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- "Lincolnshire Poacher (numbers station)" | 2016-04-06 | 17 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Ha-ha wall
A ha-ha (French: hΓ’-hΓ’ or saut de loup) is a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier while preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape beyond.
The design includes a turfed incline that slopes downward to a sharply vertical face (typically a masonry retaining wall). Ha-has are used in landscape design to prevent access to a garden, for example by grazing livestock, without obstructing views. In security design, the element is used to deter vehicular access to a site while minimizing visual obstruction.
The name "ha-ha" is thought to have stemmed from the exclamations of surprise by those coming across them, as the walls were intentionally designed so as not to be visible on the plane of the landscape.
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- "Ha-ha wall" | 2019-08-24 | 592 Upvotes 110 Comments
π Wikipedia editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020
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- "Wikipedia editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020" | 2023-01-16 | 177 Upvotes 105 Comments
π Bob's Game
Bob's Game (stylized as "bob's game") was a role-playing video game being developed by independent video game developer Robert Pelloni since 2003/2004. The project is most notable for Pelloni developing the game using open source software development tools and Nintendo's refusal to license him the official SDK as well as Bob's response to that decision.
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- "Bob's Game" | 2021-06-29 | 166 Upvotes 83 Comments