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πŸ”— Carl Fisher

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Automobiles πŸ”— Miami πŸ”— Indiana Historical Society πŸ”— Biography/sports and games πŸ”— United States/Indiana

Carl Graham Fisher (January 12, 1874 – July 15, 1939) was an American entrepreneur. Despite severe astigmatism, he became actively involved in auto racing. He was a seemingly tireless pioneer and promoter of the automotive industry and highway construction, and of real estate development in Florida. He is widely regarded as a promotional genius.

Despite family financial strains and a disability, in the late 19th century he became a bicycle enthusiast and opened a modest bicycle shop with a brother. He became involved in bicycle racing, as well as many activities related to the emerging American auto industry. In 1904, Carl Fisher and his friend James A. Allison bought an interest in the U.S. patent to manufacture acetylene headlights, a precursor to electric models which became common about ten years later. Soon Fisher's firm supplied nearly every headlamp used on automobiles in the United States as manufacturing plants were built all over the country to supply the demand. The headlight patent made him rich as an automotive parts supplier when he and Allison sold their company, Prest-O-Lite, to Union Carbide in 1913 for $9 million (equivalent of approximately $230 million in 2019).

Fisher operated in Indianapolis what is believed to be the first automobile dealership in the United States, and also worked at developing an automobile racetrack locally. After being injured in stunts himself, and following a safety debacle at the new Indianapolis Motor Speedway, of which he was a principal, he helped develop paved racetracks and public roadways. Improvements he implemented at the speedway led to its nickname, "The Brickyard."

In 1912, Fisher conceived and helped develop the Lincoln Highway, the first road for the automobile across the entire United States of America. A convoy trip a few years later by the U.S. Army along Fisher's Lincoln Highway was a major influence upon then Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower years later in championing the Interstate Highway System during his presidency in the 1950s.

Carl Fisher followed the east-west Lincoln Highway in 1914 with the conception of the north-south Dixie Highway, which led from Michigan to Miami. Under his leadership, the initial portion was completed within a single year, and he led an automobile caravan to Florida from Indiana.

At the south end of the Dixie Highway in Miami, Florida, Fisher, with the assistance of his partners John Graham McKay and Thomas Walkling, became involved in the successful real estate development of the new resort city of Miami Beach, built on a largely unpopulated barrier island and reached by the new Collins Bridge across Biscayne Bay directly at the terminus of the Dixie Highway. Fisher was one of the best known and active promoters of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. By 1926, he was worth an estimated $100Β million, and redirected his promotional efforts when the Florida real estate market bubble burst after 1925. His final major project, cut short by the Great Depression, was a "Miami Beach of the north" at Montauk, located at the eastern tip of Long Island, New York.

His fortune was lost in the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression in the United States which followed shortly thereafter. He found himself living in a small cottage in Miami Beach, doing minor work for old friends. Nevertheless, years after his fortune had been lost, at the end of his career, he took on one more project, albeit more modest than many of his past ventures, and built the famous Caribbean Club on Key Largo, intended as a "poor man's retreat."

Although he had lost his fortune and late in life considered himself a failure, Fisher is widely regarded as a decidedly successful man in the long view of his life. He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1971. In a 1998 study judged by a panel of 56 historians, writers, and others, Carl G. Fisher was named one of the Fifty Most Influential People in the history of the State of Florida by The Ledger newspaper. PBS labeled him "Mr. Miami Beach." Just south of Miami Beach, Fisher Island (which he once owned, and is named for him), became one of the wealthiest and most exclusive residential areas in the United States.

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πŸ”— Parkinson's Law of Triviality

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Systems πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Engineering πŸ”— Systems/Systems engineering

Parkinson's law of triviality is C. Northcote Parkinson's 1957 argument that members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Parkinson provides the example of a fictional committee whose job was to approve the plans for a nuclear power plant spending the majority of its time on discussions about relatively minor but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bike shed, while neglecting the proposed design of the plant itself, which is far more important and a far more difficult and complex task.

The law has been applied to software development and other activities. The terms bicycle-shed effect, bike-shed effect, and bike-shedding were coined as metaphors to illuminate the law of triviality; it was popularised in the Berkeley Software Distribution community by the Danish software developer Poul-Henning Kamp in 1999 and has spread from there to the whole software industry.

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πŸ”— Bus Factor

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Computing/Software

The bus factor is a measurement of the risk resulting from information and capabilities not being shared among team members, derived from the phrase "in case they get hit by a bus." It is also known as the bread truck scenario, lottery factor, truck factor, bus/truck number, or lorry factor.

The concept is similar to the much older idea of key person risk, but considers the consequences of losing key technical experts, versus financial or managerial executives (who are theoretically replaceable at an insurable cost). Personnel must be both key and irreplaceable to contribute to the bus factor; losing a replaceable or non-key person would not result in a bus-factor effect.

The term was first applied to software development, where a team member might create critical components by crafting code that performs well, but which also is unavailable to other team members, such as work that was undocumented, never shared, encrypted, obfuscated, unpublished, or otherwise incomprehensible to others. Thus a key component would be effectively lost as a direct consequence of the absence of that team member, making the member key. If this component was key to the project's advancement, the project would stall.

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πŸ”— Hindenburg Omen (Occurred Twice this Month)

πŸ”— Finance & Investment πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Business

The Hindenburg Omen was a proposed technical analysis pattern, named after the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937. It was created by Jim Miekka, who believed that it portended a stock market crash.

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πŸ”— Breaking a Monopoly

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Canada πŸ”— Business

Herbert Henry Dow (February 26, 1866 – October 15, 1930) was a Canadian-born American chemical industrialist, best known as the founder of the American multinational conglomerate Dow Chemical. He was a graduate of Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, and was a successful businessman.

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πŸ”— Obsolete Occupations

πŸ”— Economics πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Sociology πŸ”— Occupations

This is a category of jobs that have been rendered obsolete due to advances in technology and/or social conditions.

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πŸ”— Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Crime πŸ”— Computer Security πŸ”— Computer Security/Computing πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Computing/Software πŸ”— Crime and Criminal Biography

A scandal erupted in 2005 regarding Sony BMG's implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.

Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program's files visible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed, collected an email address from the user and introduced further security vulnerabilities.

Following public outcry, government investigations and class-action lawsuits in 2005 and 2006, Sony BMG partially addressed the scandal with consumer settlements, a recall of about 10% of the affected CDs and the suspension of CD copy-protection efforts in early 2007.

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πŸ”— Simultaneous recruiting of new graduates

πŸ”— Korea πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Japan πŸ”— Japan/Business and economy

Simultaneous recruiting of new graduates or periodic recruiting of new graduates (ζ–°ε’δΈ€ζ‹¬ζŽ‘η”¨, Shinsotsu-ikkatsu-saiyō) is the custom that companies hire new graduates all at once and employ them. This custom was unique to Japan and South Korea. A 2010 age discrimination law enforced in South Korea bans employers from discriminating against job-seekers who have not recently graduated from high school or university. Japan is now the only country practising this custom; however, in 2018, the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) announced that its 1,600 member companies, which represent a large portion of Japan's big business companies, would no longer be required to follow the custom from 2020 onwards.

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πŸ”— Artificial Intelligence Act (EU Law)

πŸ”— International relations πŸ”— Technology πŸ”— Internet πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computer science πŸ”— Law πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Robotics πŸ”— International relations/International law πŸ”— Futures studies πŸ”— European Union πŸ”— Science Policy πŸ”— Artificial Intelligence

The Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) is a European Union regulation concerning artificial intelligence (AI).

It establishes a common regulatory and legal framework for AI in the European Union (EU). Proposed by the European Commission on 21 April 2021, and then passed in the European Parliament on 13 March 2024, it was unanimously approved by the Council of the European Union on 21 May 2024. The Act creates a European Artificial Intelligence Board to promote national cooperation and ensure compliance with the regulation. Like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, the Act can apply extraterritorially to providers from outside the EU, if they have users within the EU.

It covers all types of AI in a broad range of sectors; exceptions include AI systems used solely for military, national security, research and non-professional purposes. As a piece of product regulation, it would not confer rights on individuals, but would regulate the providers of AI systems and entities using AI in a professional context. The draft Act was revised following the rise in popularity of generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT, whose general-purpose capabilities did not fit the main framework. More restrictive regulations are planned for powerful generative AI systems with systemic impact.

The Act classifies AI applications by their risk of causing harm. There are four levels – unacceptable, high, limited, minimal – plus an additional category for general-purpose AI. Applications with unacceptable risks are banned. High-risk applications must comply with security, transparency and quality obligations and undergo conformity assessments. Limited-risk applications only have transparency obligations and those representing minimal risks are not regulated. For general-purpose AI, transparency requirements are imposed, with additional evaluations when there are high risks.

La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) stated that the adopted version of the AI Act would be ineffective, arguing that the role of self-regulation and exemptions in the act rendered it "largely incapable of standing in the way of the social, political and environmental damage linked to the proliferation of AI".

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πŸ”— Lockheed Bribery Scandals

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Aviation πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military aviation πŸ”— Military history/North American military history πŸ”— Military history/United States military history πŸ”— Crime πŸ”— Business πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Military history/German military history πŸ”— Military history/Dutch military history πŸ”— Japan πŸ”— Japan/Japanese military history πŸ”— Military history/Asian military history πŸ”— Military history/Japanese military history πŸ”— Military history/Italian military history πŸ”— Japan/Politics πŸ”— Military history/European military history

The Lockheed bribery scandals encompassed a series of bribes and contributions made by officials of U.S. aerospace company Lockheed from the late 1950s to the 1970s in the process of negotiating the sale of aircraft.

The scandal caused considerable political controversy in West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan. In the U.S., the scandal nearly led to Lockheed's downfall, as it was already struggling due to the commercial failure of the L-1011 TriStar airliner.

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