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πŸ”— Pirate Game

πŸ”— Game theory

The pirate game is a simple mathematical game. It is a multi-player version of the ultimatum game.

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πŸ”— LOVEINT

πŸ”— United States πŸ”— Espionage πŸ”— Law Enforcement

LOVEINT is the practice of intelligence service employees making use of their extensive monitoring capabilities to spy on their love interest or spouse. The term was coined in resemblance to intelligence terminology such as SIGINT, COMINT or HUMINT.

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πŸ”— Behavioral Immune System

πŸ”— Psychology

The behavioral immune system is a phrase coined by the psychological scientist Mark Schaller to refer to a suite of psychological mechanisms that allow individual organisms to detect the potential presence of disease-causing parasites in their immediate environment, and to engage in behaviors that prevent contact with those objects and individuals.

These mechanisms include sensory processes through which cues connoting the presence of parasitic infections are perceived (e.g., the smell of a foul odor, the sight of pox or pustules), as well as stimulus–response systems through which these sensory cues trigger a cascade of aversive affective, cognitive, and behavioral reactions (e.g., arousal of disgust, automatic activation of cognitions that connote the threat of disease, behavioral avoidance).

The existence of a behavioral immune system has been documented across many animal species, including humans. It is theorized that the mechanisms that comprise the behavioral immune system evolved as a crude first line of defense against disease-causing pathogens.

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πŸ”— An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms – 723 CE

πŸ”— Korea πŸ”— Buddhism

Wang ocheonchukguk jeon (Korean pronunciation:Β [waːŋotΙ•Κ°ΚŒntΙ•Κ°ukk͈uktΙ•ΝˆΚŒn]; pinyin: wǎng wΗ” tiānzhΓΊ guΓ³ zhuΓ n; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.

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πŸ”— Fundamental theorem of software engineering

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computing/Software πŸ”— Computing/Computer science

The fundamental theorem of software engineering (FTSE) is a term originated by Andrew Koenig to describe a remark by Butler Lampson attributed to the late David J. Wheeler:

"We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection."

The theorem does not describe an actual theorem that can be proven; rather, it is a general principle for managing complexity through abstraction.

The theorem is often expanded by the humorous clause "…except for the problem of too many levels of indirection," referring to the fact that too many abstractions may create intrinsic complexity issues of their own. For example, the use of protocol layering in computer networks, which today is ubiquitous, has been criticized in ways that are typical of more general disadvantages of abstraction. Here, the adding of extra levels of indirection may cause higher layers to duplicate the functionality of lower layers, leading to inefficiency, and functionality at one layer may need data present only at another layer, which fundamentally violates the goal of separation into different layers.

πŸ”— Dvdisaster

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Computing/Software

dvdisaster is a computer program aimed to enhance data survivability on optical discs by creating error detection and correction data, which is used for data recovery. dvdisaster works exclusively at the image level. This program can be used either to generate Error-Correcting Code (ECC) data from an existing media or to augment an ISO image with ECC data prior to being written onto a medium. dvdisaster is free software available under the GNU General Public License.

πŸ”— Mississippi River Basin Model

The Mississippi River Basin Model Waterways Experiment Station, located near Clinton, Mississippi, was a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire Mississippi River basin, covering an area of 200 acres. The model was built from 1943 to 1966 and in operation from 1949 until 1973. By comparison, the better known San Francisco Bay Model covers 1.5 acres and the Chesapeake Bay Model covers 8 acres. The model is now derelict, but open to the public within Buddy Butts Park, Jackson.

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πŸ”— Ant mill

πŸ”— Insects πŸ”— Insects/Ant

An ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants are separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle, commonly known as a "death spiral" because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion. It has been reproduced in laboratories and has been produced in ant colony simulations. The phenomenon is a side effect of the self-organizing structure of ant colonies. Each ant follows the ant in front of it, which works until a slight deviation begins to occur, typically by an environmental trigger, and an ant mill forms. An ant mill was first described in 1921 by William Beebe, who observed a mill 1200Β ft (~370 m) in circumference. It took each ant 2.5 hours to make one revolution. Similar phenomena have been noted in processionary caterpillars and fish.

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πŸ”— Gay Bomb

πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Military history/Military science, technology, and theory πŸ”— Military history/Weaponry πŸ”— LGBT studies

The "gay bomb" and "halitosis bomb" are formal names for two non-lethal psychochemical weapons that a United States Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing. The theories involve discharging female sex pheromones over enemy forces in order to make them sexually attracted to each other.

In 1994 the Wright Laboratory in Ohio, a predecessor to today's United States Air Force Research Laboratory, produced a three-page proposal on a variety of possible nonlethal chemical weapons, which was later obtained by the Sunshine Project through a Freedom of Information Act request.

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πŸ”— CipherSaber - A 'political' encryption cipher

πŸ”— Computing πŸ”— Cryptography πŸ”— Cryptography/Computer science

CipherSaber is a simple symmetric encryption protocol based on the RC4 stream cipher. Its goals are both technical and political: it gives reasonably strong protection of message confidentiality, yet it's designed to be simple enough that even novice programmers can memorize the algorithm and implement it from scratch. According to the designer, a CipherSaber version in the QBASIC programming language takes just sixteen lines of code. Its political aspect is that because it's so simple, it can be reimplemented anywhere at any time, and so it provides a way for users to communicate privately even if government or other controls make distribution of normal cryptographic software completely impossible.

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