Random Articles (Page 9)
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π Metrecal
Metrecal was a brand of diet foods introduced in the early 1960s. Though its products were criticized for their taste, which newer varieties of flavor tried to improve upon later, it attained a niche in the popular culture of the time. Created and marketed initially by C. Joseph Genster of Mead Johnson & Company, it was eventually replaced in the market by competitors such as SlimFast and lost popularity because it was linked to deaths.
Discussed on
- "Metrecal" | 2013-08-21 | 25 Upvotes 18 Comments
π Boltzmann machine
A Boltzmann machine (also called stochastic Hopfield network with hidden units) is a type of stochastic recurrent neural network. It is a Markov random field. It was translated from statistical physics for use in cognitive science. The Boltzmann machine is based on stochastic spin-glass model with an external field, i.e., a SherringtonβKirkpatrick model that is a stochastic Ising Model and applied to machine learning.
Boltzmann machines can be seen as the stochastic, generative counterpart of Hopfield networks. They were one of the first neural networks capable of learning internal representations, and are able to represent and (given sufficient time) solve combinatoric problems.
They are theoretically intriguing because of the locality and Hebbian nature of their training algorithm (being trained by Hebb's rule), and because of their parallelism and the resemblance of their dynamics to simple physical processes. Boltzmann machines with unconstrained connectivity have not proven useful for practical problems in machine learning or inference, but if the connectivity is properly constrained, the learning can be made efficient enough to be useful for practical problems.
They are named after the Boltzmann distribution in statistical mechanics, which is used in their sampling function. That's why they are called "energy based models" (EBM). They were invented in 1985 by Geoffrey Hinton, then a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and Terry Sejnowski, then a Professor at Johns Hopkins University.
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- "Boltzmann machine" | 2014-06-01 | 29 Upvotes 4 Comments
π CleanFlicks
CleanFlicks was a company founded in Utah in 2000 that rented and sold commercially-released DVDs and VHS tapes from which they had edited content which the company considered inappropriate for children or that viewers might otherwise find offensive. CleanFlicks removed sexual content, profanity, some references to deity, and some violence from movies, either by muting audio or clipping entire portions of the track.
A group of major film productions studios sued CleanFlicks in 2002, arguing that their service constituted copyright infringement. A 2006 court ruling closed the company. On March 13, 2007, CleanFlicks reopened its website with "Movies You Can Trust." While legally enjoined from offering edited movies, an email sent by the company on that date indicated that they had reviewed "tens of thousands" of movies and compiled over 1000 that meet their "family-friendly criteria" for sale and rent. In January 2013, the CleanFlicks.com website was no longer online.
Discussed on
- "CleanFlicks" | 2019-10-31 | 51 Upvotes 60 Comments
π Intel iAPX 432
The iAPX 432 (Intel Advanced Performance Architecture) is a discontinued computer architecture introduced in 1981. It was Intel's first 32-bit processor design. The main processor of the architecture, the general data processor, is implemented as a set of two separate integrated circuits, due to technical limitations at the time. Although some early 8086, 80186 and 80286-based systems and manuals also used the iAPX prefix for marketing reasons, the iAPX 432 and the 8086 processor lines are completely separate designs with completely different instruction sets.
The project started in 1975 as the 8800 (after the 8008 and the 8080) and was intended to be Intel's major design for the 1980s. Unlike the 8086, which was designed the following year as a successor to the 8080, the iAPX 432 was a radical departure from Intel's previous designs meant for a different market niche, and completely unrelated to the 8080 or x86 product lines.
The iAPX 432 project is considered a commercial failure for Intel, and was discontinued in 1986.
Discussed on
- "Intel iAPX 432" | 2022-08-10 | 52 Upvotes 34 Comments
π The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier is a work of nonfiction by Bruce Sterling first published in 1992.
The book discusses watershed events in the hacker subculture in the early 1990s. The most notable topic covered is Operation Sundevil and the events surrounding the 1987β1990 war on the Legion of Doom network: the raid on Steve Jackson Games, the trial of "Knight Lightning" (one of the original journalists of Phrack), and the subsequent formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The book also profiles the likes of "Emmanuel Goldstein" (publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly), the former assistant attorney general of Arizona Gail Thackeray, FLETC instructor Carlton Fitzpatrick, Mitch Kapor, and John Perry Barlow.
In 1994, Sterling released the book for the Internet with a new afterword.
Discussed on
- "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier" | 2017-02-06 | 36 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Tacit Programming
Tacit programming, also called point-free style, is a programming paradigm in which function definitions do not identify the arguments (or "points") on which they operate. Instead the definitions merely compose other functions, among which are combinators that manipulate the arguments. Tacit programming is of theoretical interest, because the strict use of composition results in programs that are well adapted for equational reasoning. It is also the natural style of certain programming languages, including APL and its derivatives, and concatenative languages such as Forth. The lack of argument naming gives point-free style a reputation of being unnecessarily obscure, hence the epithet "pointless style".
Unix scripting uses the paradigm with pipes.
Discussed on
- "Tacit Programming" | 2024-02-23 | 134 Upvotes 92 Comments
π Kosher Cell Phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, or hand phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture, and, therefore, mobile telephones are called cellular telephones or cell phones, in North America. In addition to telephony, 2000s-era mobile phones support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, MMS, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, video games, and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as feature phones; mobile phones which offer greatly advanced computing capabilities are referred to as smartphones.
The development of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) large-scale integration (LSI) technology, information theory and cellular networking led to the development of affordable mobile communications. The first handheld mobile phone was demonstrated by John F. Mitchell and Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing c. 2Β kilograms (4.4 lbs). In 1979, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) launched the world's first cellular network in Japan. In 1983, the DynaTAC 8000x was the first commercially available handheld mobile phone. From 1983 to 2014, worldwide mobile phone subscriptions grew to over seven billionβenough to provide one for every person on Earth. In the first quarter of 2016, the top smartphone developers worldwide were Samsung, Apple, and Huawei, and smartphone sales represented 78 percent of total mobile phone sales. For feature phones (slang: βdumbphonesβ) as of 2016, the largest were Samsung, Nokia, and Alcatel.
Discussed on
- "Kosher Cell Phone" | 2019-09-25 | 15 Upvotes 32 Comments
π Erlang Shen
Erlang Shen (δΊιη₯), or Erlang is a Chinese God with a third truth-seeing eye in the middle of his forehead.
Er-lang Shen may be a deified version of several semi-mythical folk heroes who help regulate China's torrential floods dating variously from the Qin, Sui, and Jin dynasties. A later Buddhist source identifies him as the second son of the Northern Heavenly King Vaishravana.
In the Ming semi-mythical novels Creation of the Gods and Journey to the West, Erlang Shen is the nephew of the Jade Emperor. In the former, he assists the Zhou army in defeating the Shang. In the latter, he is the second son of a mortal and Jade emperor's sister. In the legend, he is known as the greatest warrior god of heaven.
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- "Erlang Shen" | 2009-03-11 | 127 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Singing Sand
Singing sand, also called whistling sand, barking sand or singing dune, is sand that produces sound. The sound emission may be caused by wind passing over dunes or by walking on the sand.
Certain conditions have to come together to create singing sand:
- The sand grains have to be round and between 0.1 and 0.5Β mm in diameter.
- The sand has to contain silica.
- The sand needs to be at a certain humidity.
The most common frequency emitted seems to be close to 450 Hz.
There are various theories about the singing sand mechanism. It has been proposed that the sound frequency is controlled by the shear rate. Others have suggested that the frequency of vibration is related to the thickness of the dry surface layer of sand. The sound waves bounce back and forth between the surface of the dune and the surface of the moist layer, creating a resonance that increases the sound's volume. The noise may be generated by friction between the grains or by the compression of air between them.
Other sounds that can be emitted by sand have been described as "roaring" or "booming".
π The Darien Scheme
The Darien scheme was an unsuccessful attempt at establishing a Scottish colony on the Isthmus of Panama on the Gulf of DariΓ©n in the late 1690s. The aim was for the colony to have an overland route that connected the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. From its contemporary time to the present day, claims have been made that the undertaking was beset by poor planning and provisioning, divided leadership, a lack of demand for trade goods particularly caused by an English trade blockade, devastating epidemics of disease, collusion between the English East India Company and the English government to frustrate it, and a failure to anticipate the Spanish Empire's military response. It was finally abandoned in March 1700 after a siege by Spanish forces, which also blockaded the harbour.
As the Company of Scotland was backed by approximately 20% of all the money circulating in Scotland, its failure left the entire Lowlands in substantial financial ruin and was an important factor in weakening their resistance to the Act of Union (completed in 1707). The land where the Darien colony was built, in the modern province of Guna Yala, is virtually uninhabited today.
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- "The Darien Scheme" | 2019-04-03 | 38 Upvotes 6 Comments