AI Art Queen

AI Art Queen — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

Mobile cloud computing

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is the combination of cloud computing and mobile computing to bring rich computational resources to mobile users, network operators, as well as cloud computing providers. The ultimate goal of MCC is to enable execution of rich mobile applications on a plethora of mobile devices, with a rich user experience. MCC provides business opportunities for mobile network operators as well as cloud providers. More comprehensively, MCC can be defined as "a rich mobile computing technology that leverages unified elastic resources of varied clouds and network technologies toward unrestricted functionality, storage, and mobility to serve a multitude of mobile devices anywhere, anytime through the channel of Ethernet or Internet regardless of heterogeneous environments and platforms based on the pay-as-you-use principle." == Architecture == MCC uses computational augmentation approaches (computations are executed remotely instead of on the device) by which resource-constraint mobile devices can utilize computational resources of varied cloud-based resources. In MCC, there are four types of cloud-based resources, namely distant immobile clouds, proximate immobile computing entities, proximate mobile computing entities, and hybrid (combination of the other three model). Giant clouds such as Amazon EC2 are in the distant immobile groups whereas cloudlet or surrogates are member of proximate immobile computing entities. Smartphones, tablets, handheld devices, and wearable computing devices are part of the third group of cloud-based resources which is proximate mobile computing entities. Vodafone, Orange and Verizon have started to offer cloud computing services for companies. == Challenges == In the MCC landscape, an amalgam of mobile computing, cloud computing, and communication networks (to augment smartphones) creates several complex challenges such as Mobile Computation Offloading, Seamless Connectivity, Long WAN Latency, Mobility Management, Context-Processing, Energy Constraint, Vendor/data Lock-in, Security and Privacy, Elasticity that hinder MCC success and adoption. === Open research issues === Although significant research and development in MCC is available in the literature, efforts in the following domains is still lacking: Architectural issues: A reference architecture for heterogeneous MCC environment is a crucial requirement for unleashing the power of mobile computing towards unrestricted ubiquitous computing. Energy-efficient transmission: MCC requires frequent transmissions between cloud platform and mobile devices, due to the stochastic nature of wireless networks, the transmission protocol should be carefully designed. Context-awareness issues: Context-aware and socially-aware computing are inseparable traits of contemporary handheld computers. To achieve the vision of mobile computing among heterogeneous converged networks and computing devices, designing resource-efficient environment-aware applications is an essential need. Live VM migration issues: Executing resource-intensive mobile application via Virtual Machine (VM) migration-based application offloading involves encapsulation of application in VM instance and migrating it to the cloud, which is a challenging task due to additional overhead of deploying and managing VM on mobile devices. Mobile communication congestion issues: Mobile data traffic is tremendously hiking by ever increasing mobile user demands for exploiting cloud resources which impact on mobile network operators and demand future efforts to enable smooth communication between mobile and cloud endpoints. Trust, security, and privacy issues: Trust is an essential factor for the success of the burgeoning MCC paradigm. It is because the data along with code/component/application/complete VM is offloaded to the cloud for execution. Moreover, just like software and mobile application piracy, the MCC application development models are also affected by the piracy issue. Pirax is known to be the first specialized framework for controlling application piracy in MCC requirements == MCC research groups and activities == Several academic and industrial research groups in MCC have been emerging since last few years. Some of the MCC research groups in academia with large number of researchers and publications include: MDC, Mobile and Distributed Computing research group is at Faculty of Computer and Information Science, King Saud University. MDC research group focuses on architectures, platforms, and protocols for mobile and distributed computing. The group has developed algorithms, tools, and technologies which offer energy efficient, fault tolerant, scalable, secure, and high performance computing on mobile devices. MobCC lab, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University Malaya. The lab was established in 2010 under the High Impact Research Grant, Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia. It has 17 researchers and has track of 22 published articles in international conference and peer-reviewed CS journals. ICCLAB, Zürich University of Applied Sciences has a segment working on MCC. The InIT Cloud Computing Lab is a research lab within the Institute of Applied Information Technology (InIT) of Zürich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). It covers topic areas across the entire cloud computing technology stack. Mobile & Cloud Lab, Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu. Mobile & Cloud Lab conducts research and teaching in the mobile computing and cloud computing domains. The research topics of the group include cloud computing, mobile application development, mobile cloud, mobile web services and migrating scientific computing and enterprise applications to the cloud. SmartLab, Data Management Systems Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus. SmartLab is a first-of-a-kind open cloud of smartphones that enables a new line of systems-oriented mobile computing research. Mobile Cloud Networking: Mobile Cloud Networking (MCN) was an EU FP7 Large-scale Integrating Project (IP, 15m Euro) funded by the European Commission. The MCN project was launched in November 2012 for the period of 36 month. The project was coordinated by SAP Research and the ICCLab at the Zurich University of Applied Science. In total 19 partners from industry and academia established the first vision of Mobile Cloud Computing. The project was primarily motivated by an ongoing transformation that drives the convergence between the Mobile Communications and Cloud Computing industry enabled by the Internet and is considered the first pioneer in the area of Network Function Virtualization.
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Bluelight (web forum)

Bluelight is a web-forum, research portal, online community, and non-profit organisation dedicated to harm reduction in drug use. Its userbase includes current and former substance users, academic researchers, drug policy activists, and mental health advocates. It is believed to be the largest online international drug discussion website in the world. As of November 2025, the website claims over 475,900 registered members, the Discord community claims over 11,900 members, and additional members utilise other platforms such as Telegram. Bluelight has been utilised by academic researchers as a primary source of data in numerous publications. Researchers also utilise the site to advertise research studies, recruit study participants, and better understand the world of substance use. Research groups and organisations that have partnered with Bluelight to recruit study participants include Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins University, Health Canada, Karlstad University, Curtin University, Macquarie University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Toronto Metropolitan University (then known as Ryerson University), and MAPS. Researchers have found that the most common reasons for substance users to visit Bluelight.org and similar online communities are to learn "how to use drugs safely" and "how to help others use drugs safely." Bluelight neither condemns or condones drug use, instead advocating for the principle of responsible drug use; educating and allowing individuals to make informed decisions regarding their drug use, providing information on local drug misuse services, and providing them with other drug harm reduction resources and public safety notices. == History == Bluelight.org was originally formed in 1997 as a message board on bluelight.net called the MDMA Clearinghouse. The board was created as a side project by the owner of West Palm Beach design company Bluelight Designs. 200–300 users joined the site between 1998 and 1999, but the site's servers were heavily limited and could only store a few threads at a time; this led to the creation of 'The New Bluelight' forum in May 1999 and the registration of the bluelight.nu domain in June 1999. The site began to explode in popularity in the early 2000s with the rise of MDMA in the club scene, amassing nearly 7,000 members by the year 2000 and 59,000 by the start of 2006. The site switched to the bluelight.ru domain in October 2005, and switched again to bluelight.org in January 2014. In early 2024, Bluelight was re-structured and the forum became a subsidiary of the newly formed Australian non-profit organisation & registered charity Bluelight Communities Ltd. == Partnerships == In the early 2000s, Bluelight worked with reagent test supplier EZ-Test to promote the sale of drug checking kits. In 2007, Bluelight partnered with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a non-profit organisation working to raise awareness and understanding of psychedelic drugs through education, clinical research, and advocacy. MAPS utilised Bluelight to recruit participants for its first MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trial for PTSD. In 2013, the official MAPS forums were migrated to Bluelight. Bluelight's other partners include Erowid, a non-profit organisation dedicated to education surrounding psychoactive drugs; TripSit, a harm reduction education website; Pill Reports, a web-based database for drug checking results that was initially formed as an offshoot of the site; and the Global Drug Survey, an independent research organisation focused on collecting data about substance use. == Notable users == Alan Woods – funded the site's maintenance costs from 1999 until his death in 2008 Hamilton Morris John McAfee – created an infamous series of troll posts about the stimulant MDPV
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Europa-Lehrmittel

The Verlag Europa-Lehrmittel Nourney, Vollmer GmbH & Co. KG (English: European educational media), based in Haan (district Gruiten) near Düsseldorf, Germany, develops educational media for vocational training and further education as used in vocational schools, universities, companies and further education institutions for industrial-technical, business, social, health as well as gastronomic professions. The contents are delivered in print as well as in digital formats, including offered as apps, simulations, software and through an exam preparation portal. The publisher has its own digital learning platform, the Europathek. General partner is Nourney, Vollmer & Co. GmbH, a school and specialist book publisher. == History == The publishing house was founded in Wuppertal in 1948, when the first books were published. In Eislingen/Fils a construction office was set up to create the technical drawings for the textbooks - today the drawing office of the publisher in Ostfildern. A little over 40 years later, in 1989, a new company building was built in Haan-Gruiten. In 1997, Europa-Lehrmittel acquired the Fachbuchverlag Pfanneberg with its program aimed at gastronomic professions. Further program expansions in vocational training were realized by adding titles of the publishing houses Lau, Gerber, Pluspunkt, parts of the Verlag Handwerk und Technik program and that of the Gildebuchverlag. In 2013, the scientific and technical university titles of Verlag Harri Deutsch were taken over, including the bestselling "Handbook of Mathematics" by Ilya Nikolaevich Bronstein and Konstantin Adolfovic Semendyayev. In addition, Europa-Lehrmittel's first exam apps appeared. In 2017, the publisher introduced its own digital learning platform named Europathek. The Prüfungsdoc (English: Examination Doc) platform, which enables targeted online preparation for exams, went online the same year. In 2018, the titles of the Düsseldorf publishing house SOL for self-organized learning were incorporated into Europa-Lehrmittel's program. == Program == The program meanwhile includes well over 2000 print and digital publications, including specialist titles on metal technology, automotive and electrical engineering (like "Tabellenbuch Metall" (English: Metal Book of Tables)), on business administration, as well as works for the gastronomic profession (e.g. "Der junge Koch" (English: The Young Cook)). Many titles also appear as licensed editions in over 20 different languages on all continents. All contents are presented in an annual catalog, on the website, in schools, in companies, and at trade fairs and congresses. The publisher is a member of the Deutscher Hauswirtschaftsrat. == Digital educational media == Europathek: In addition to digital books, Europathek also provides media packages, additional materials and e-learning contents. The online contents of the 'media shelf' can be used per web browser. There are also software versions and apps for offline use, with the help of which the obtained titles can be viewed after downloading. Prüfungsdoc (English: Examination Doc): Prüfungsdoc offers web-based learning, practice and repetition to prepare for the intermediate and final examinations. This includes simulations of the exams with direct evaluation of the results.
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Web performance

Web performance refers to the speed in which web pages are downloaded and displayed on the user's web browser. Web performance optimization (WPO), or website optimization is the field of knowledge about increasing web performance. Faster website download speeds have been shown to increase visitor retention and loyalty and user satisfaction, especially for users with slow internet connections and those on mobile devices. Web performance also leads to less data travelling across the web, which in turn lowers a website's power consumption and environmental impact. Some aspects which can affect the speed of page load include browser/server cache, image optimization, and encryption (for example SSL), which can affect the time it takes for pages to render. The performance of the web page can be improved through techniques such as multi-layered cache, light weight design of presentation layer components and asynchronous communication with server side components. == History == In the first decade or so of the web's existence, web performance improvement was focused mainly on optimizing website code and pushing hardware limitations. According to the 2002 book Web Performance Tuning by Patrick Killelea, some of the early techniques used were to use simple servlets or CGI, increase server memory, and look for packet loss and retransmission. Although these principles now comprise much of the optimized foundation of internet applications, they differ from current optimization theory in that there was much less of an attempt to improve the browser display speed. Steve Souders coined the term "web performance optimization" in 2004. At that time Souders made several predictions regarding the impact that WPO as an "emerging industry" would bring to the web, such as websites being fast by default, consolidation, web standards for performance, environmental impacts of optimization, and speed as a differentiator. One major point that Souders made in 2007 is that at least 80% of the time that it takes to download and view a website is controlled by the front-end structure. This lag time can be decreased through awareness of typical browser behavior, as well as of how HTTP works. == Optimization techniques == Web performance optimization improves user experience (UX) when visiting a website and therefore is highly desired by web designers and web developers. They employ several techniques that streamline web optimization tasks to decrease web page load times. This process is known as front end optimization (FEO) or content optimization. FEO concentrates on reducing file sizes and "minimizing the number of requests needed for a given page to load." In addition to the techniques listed below, the use of a content delivery network—a group of proxy servers spread across various locations around the globe—is an efficient delivery system that chooses a server for a specific user based on network proximity. Typically the server with the quickest response time is selected. The following techniques are commonly used web optimization tasks and are widely used by web developers: Web browsers open separate Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections for each Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request submitted when downloading a web page. These requests total the number of page elements required for download. However, a browser is limited to opening only a certain number of simultaneous connections to a single host. To prevent bottlenecks, the number of individual page elements are reduced using resource consolidation whereby smaller files (such as images) are bundled together into one file. This reduces HTTP requests and the number of "round trips" required to load a web page. Web pages are constructed from code files such JavaScript and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As web pages grow in complexity, so do their code files and subsequently their load times. File compression can reduce code files by about 40 percent, thereby improving site responsiveness. Web Caching Optimization reduces server load, bandwidth usage and latency. CDNs use dedicated web caching software to store copies of documents passing through their system. Many website platforms, such as SiteGround, IONOS, Wix, and Hostinger, rely on global CDNs and caching technologies to deliver faster page loads across different geographical regions. Subsequent requests from the cache may be fulfilled should certain conditions apply. Web caches are located on either the client side (forward position) or web-server side (reverse position) of a CDN. Web browsers are also able to store content for re-use through the HTTP cache or web cache. Requests web browsers make are typically routed to the HTTP cache to validate if a cached response may be used to fulfill a request. If such a match is made, the response is fulfilled from the cache. This can be helpful for reducing network latency and costs associated with data-transfer. The HTTP cache is configured using request and response headers. Code minification distinguishes discrepancies between codes written by web developers and how network elements interpret code. Minification removes comments and extra spaces as well as crunch variable names in order to minimize code, decreasing files sizes by as much as 60%. In addition to caching and compression, lossy compression techniques (similar to those used with audio files) remove non-essential header information and lower original image quality on many high resolution images. These changes, such as pixel complexity or color gradations, are transparent to the end-user and do not noticeably affect perception of the image. Another technique is the replacement of raster graphics with resolution-independent vector graphics. Vector substitution is best suited for simple geometric images. Lazy loading of images and video reduces initial page load time, initial page weight, and system resource usage, all of which have positive impacts on website performance. It is used to defer initialization of an object right until the point at which it is needed. The browser loads the images in a page or post when they are needed such as when the user scrolls down the page and not all images at once, which is the default behavior, and naturally, takes more time. == HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 == Since web browsers use multiple TCP connections for parallel user requests, congestion and browser monopolization of network resources may occur. Because HTTP/1 requests come with associated overhead, web performance is impacted by limited bandwidth and increased usage. Compared to HTTP/1, HTTP/2 is binary instead of textual is fully multiplexed instead of ordered and blocked can therefore use one connection for parallelism uses header compression to reduce overhead allows servers to "push" responses proactively into client caches Instead of a website's hosting server, CDNs are used in tandem with HTTP/2 in order to better serve the end-user with web resources such as images, JavaScript files and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files since a CDN's location is usually in closer proximity to the end-user. == Metrics == In recent years, several metrics have been introduced that help developers measure various aspects of the performance of their websites. In 2019, Google introduced metrics such as Time to First Byte (TTFB), First Contentful Paint (FCP), First Paint (FP), First Input Delay (FID), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) allow for website owner to gain insights into issues that might hurt the performance of their websites making it seem sluggish or slow to the user. Other metrics including Request Count (number of requests required to load a page), DOMContentLoaded (time when HTML document is completely loaded and parsed excluding CSS style sheets, images, etc.), Above The Fold Time (content that is visible without scrolling), Round Trip Time, number of Render Blocking Resources (such as scripts, stylesheets), Onload Time, Connection Time, Total Page Size help provide an accurate picture of latencies and slowdowns occurring at the networking level which might slow down a site. Modules to measure metrics such as TTFB, FCP, LCP, FP etc are provided with major frontend JavaScript libraries such as React, NuxtJS and Vue. Google publishes a library, the core-web-vitals library that allows for easy measurement of these metrics in frontend applications. In addition to this, Google also provides the Lighthouse, a Chrome dev-tools component and PageSpeed Insight a site that allows developers to measure and compare the performance of their website with Google's recommended minimums and maximums. In addition to this, tools such as the Network Monitor by Mozilla Firefox help provide insight into network-level slowdowns that might occur during transmission of data.
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European Cloud Partnership

The European Cloud Partnership (ECP) is an advisory group set up by the European Commission as part of the European Cloud Computing Strategy to provide guidance on the development of cloud computing in the European Union. The ECP is led by a steering board composed of representatives of the IT and telecom industry as well as European government policymakers. == History == After publishing a document, "Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe", the European Commission set up the European Cloud Partnership in 2012, with a steering board including both government and industry representatives. The ECP's first meeting was held on 19 November 2012; it was chaired by the President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves. In 2013 the ECP began drafting its charter. That year, as information about the PRISM scandal came to light, the ECP emphasized the need for Europe to develop its own cloud infrastructure, rather than depend on that of the United States. It completed a report titled "Trusted Cloud Europe" in February 2014 defining its policy, and outlining a process for effective public and private sector participation in cloud computing development in Europe. The report recommended that the commission identify technical, legal and operational best practices, and promote these through certifications and guidelines, and facilitate recognition across national boundaries. The report also recommended that the commission identify cloud computing stakeholders and help them work together through consultations and workshops. In March 2014, the European Commission invited external parties to submit opinions, take part in a discussion forum and complete an online survey in response to the report.
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Magnetoquasistatic field

A magnetoquasistatic field is a class of electromagnetic field in which a slowly oscillating magnetic field is dominant. A magnetoquasistatic field is typically generated by low-frequency induction from a magnetic dipole or a current loop. The magnetic near-field of such an emitter behaves differently from the more commonly used far-field electromagnetic radiation. At low frequencies the rate of change of the instantaneous field strength with each cycle is relatively slow, giving rise to the name "magneto-quasistatic". The near field or quasistatic region typically extends no more than a wavelength from the antenna, and within this region the electric and magnetic fields are approximately decoupled. Weakly conducting non-magnetic bodies, including the human body and many mineral rocks, are effectively transparent to magnetoquasistatic fields, allowing for the transmission and reception of signals through such obstacles. Also, long-wavelength (i.e. low-frequency) signals are better able to propagate round corners than shorter-wave signals. Communication therefore need not be line-of-sight. The communication range of such signals depends on both the wavelength and the electromagnetic properties of the intervening medium at the chosen frequency, and is typically limited to a few tens of meters. == Physical principles == The laws of primary interest are Ampère's circuital law (with the displacement current density neglected) and the magnetic flux continuity law. These laws have associated with them continuity conditions at interfaces. In the absence of magnetizable materials, these laws determine the magnetic field intensity H given its source, the current density J. H is not everywhere irrotational. However, it is solenoidal everywhere. == Equipment design == A typical antenna comprises a 50-turn coil around a polyoxymethylene tube with diameter 16.5 cm, driven by a class E oscillator circuit. Such a device is readily portable when powered by batteries. Similarly, a typical receiver consist of an active receiving loop with diameter of one meter, an ultra-low-noise amplifier, and a band-pass filter. In operation the oscillator drives current through the transmitting loop to create an oscillating magnetic field. This field induces a voltage in the receiving loop, which is then amplified. Because the quasistatic region is defined within one wavelength of the electromagnetic source, emitters are limited to a frequency range between about 1 kHz and 1 MHz. Reducing the oscillating frequency increases the wavelength and hence the range of the quasistatic region, but reduces the induced voltage in the receiving loops which worsens the signal-to-noise ratio. In experiments carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology, the maximum range reported by was 50 meters. == Applications == === Resonant inductive coupling === In resonant coupling, the source and receiver are tuned to resonate at the same frequency and are given similar impedances. This allows power as well as information to flow from the source to the receiver. Such coupling via the magnetoquasistatic field is called resonant inductive coupling and can be used for wireless energy transfer. Applications include induction cooking, induction charging of batteries and some kinds of RFID tag. === Communications === Conventional electromagnetic communication signals cannot pass through the ground. Most mineral rock is neither electrically conducting nor magnetic, allowing magnetic fields to penetrate. Magnetoquasistatic systems have been successfully used for underground wireless communication, both surface-to-underground and between underground parties. At extremely low frequencies, below about 1 kHz, the wavelength is long enough for long-distance communication, although at a slow data rate. Such systems have been installed in submarines, with the local antenna comprising a wire up to several kilometers in length and trailed behind the vessel when at or near the surface. === Position and orientation tracking === Wireless position tracking is being increasingly used in applications such as navigation, security, and asset tracking. Conventional position tracking devices use high frequencies or microwaves, including global positioning systems (GPS), ultra-wide band (UWB) systems, and radio frequency identification systems (RFID), but these systems can easily be blocked by obstacles in their path. Magnetoquasistatic positioning takes advantage of the fact that the fields are largely undisturbed when in the presence of human beings and physical structures, and can be used for both position and orientation tracking for ranges up to 50 meters. To accurately determine the orientation and position of a dipole/emitter, allowance must be made not only for the field pattern generated by the emitter, but also for the eddy-currents they induce in the earth, which create secondary fields detectable by the receivers. By using complex image theory to correct this field generation from earth, and by using frequencies on the order of a few hundred kilohertz to obtain the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), it is possible to analyze the position of the dipole through azimuthal orientation, θ {\displaystyle \theta } , and inclination orientation, ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } . A Disney research team has used this technology to effectively determine the position and orientation of an American football, something not traceable through conventional wave propagation techniques due to human body obstruction. They inserted an oscillator-driven coil, around the diameter of the center of the ball, to generate the magnetoquasistatic field. The signal was able to pass undisturbed through multiple players.
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Hardware trojan

A hardware trojan (HT) is a malicious modification of the circuitry of an integrated circuit. A hardware trojan is completely characterized by its physical representation and its behavior. The payload of an HT is the entire activity that the Trojan executes when it is triggered. In general, trojans try to bypass or disable the security fence of a system: for example, leaking confidential information by radio emission. HTs also could disable, damage or destroy the entire chip or components of it. Hardware trojans may be introduced as hidden front-doors that are inserted while designing a computer chip, by using a pre-made application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) semiconductor intellectual property core (IP core) that have been purchased from a non-reputable source, or inserted internally by a rogue employee, either acting on their own, or on behalf of rogue special interest groups, or state sponsored spying and espionage. One paper published by IEEE in 2015 explains how a hardware design containing a trojan could leak a cryptographic key leaked over an antenna or network connection, provided that the correct "easter egg" trigger is applied to activate the data leak. In high security governmental IT departments, hardware trojans are a well known problem when buying hardware such as: a KVM switch, keyboards, mice, network cards, or other network equipment. This is especially the case when purchasing such equipment from non-reputable sources that could have placed hardware trojans to leak keyboard passwords, or provide remote unauthorized entry. == Background == In a diverse global economy, outsourcing of production tasks is a common way to lower a product's cost. Embedded hardware devices are not always produced by the firms that design and/or sell them, nor in the same country where they will be used. Outsourced manufacturing can raise doubt about the evidence for the integrity of the manufactured product (i.e., one's certainty that the end-product has no design modifications compared to its original design). Anyone with access to the manufacturing process could, in theory, introduce some change to the final product. For complex products, small changes with large effects can be difficult to detect. The threat of a serious, malicious, design alteration can be especially relevant to government agencies. Resolving doubt about hardware integrity is one way to reduce technology vulnerabilities in the military, finance, energy and political sectors of an economy. Since fabrication of integrated circuits in untrustworthy factories is common, advanced detection techniques have emerged to discover when an adversary has hidden additional components in, or otherwise sabotaged, the circuit's function. == Characterization of hardware trojans == An HT can be characterized by several methods such as by its physical representation, activation phase and its action phase. Alternative methods characterize the HT by trigger, payload and stealth. === Physical characteristics === One of this physical trojan characteristics is the type. The type of a trojan can be either functional or parametric. A trojan is functional if the adversary adds or deletes any transistors or gates to the original chip design. The other kind of trojan, the parametric trojan, modifies the original circuitry, e.g. thinning of wires, weakening of flip-flops or transistors, subjecting the chip to radiation, or using focused ion-beams (FIB) to reduce the reliability of a chip. The size of a trojan is its physical extension or the number of components it is made of. Because a trojan can consist of many components, the designer can distribute the parts of a malicious logic on the chip. The additional logic can occupy the chip wherever it is needed to modify, add, or remove a function. Malicious components can be scattered, called loose distribution, or consist of only few components, called tight distribution, so the area is small where the malicious logic occupies the layout of the chip. In some cases, high-effort adversaries in may regenerate the layout so that the placement of the components of the IC is altered. In rare cases the chip dimension is altered. These changes are structural alterations. === Activation characteristics === The typical trojan is condition-based: It is triggered by sensors, internal logic states, a particular input pattern or an internal counter value. Condition-based trojans are detectable with power traces to some degree when inactive. That is due to the leakage currents generated by the trigger or counter circuit activating the trojan. Hardware trojans can be triggered in different ways. A trojan can be internally activated, which means it monitors one or more signals inside the IC. The malicious circuitry could wait for a count down logic an attacker added to the chip, so that the trojan awakes after a specific time-span. The opposite is externally activated. There can be malicious logic inside a chip, that uses an antenna or other sensors the adversary can reach from outside the chip. For example, a trojan could be inside the control system of a cruising missile. The owner of the missile does not know, that the enemy will be able to switch off the rockets by radio. A trojan which is always-on can be a reduced wire. A chip that is modified in this way produces errors or fails every time the wire is used intensely. Always-on circuits are hard to detect with power trace. In this context combinational trojans and sequential trojans are distinguished. A combinational trojan monitors internal signals until a specific condition happens. A sequential trojan is also an internally activated condition-based circuit, but it monitors the internal signals and searches for sequences not for a specific state or condition like the combinational trojans do. ==== Cryptographic key extraction ==== Extraction of secret keys by means of a hardware trojan without detecting the trojan requires that the trojan uses a random signal or some cryptographic implementation itself. To avoid storing a cryptographic key in the trojan itself and reduction, a physical unclonable function can be used. Physical unclonable functions are small in size and can have an identical layout while the cryptographic properties are different. === Action characteristics === A HT could modify the chip's function or could change the chip's parametric properties (e.g. provokes a process delay). Confidential information can also be transmitted to the adversary (transmission of key information). === Peripheral device hardware trojans === A relatively new threat vector to networks and network endpoints is a HT appearing as a physical peripheral device that is designed to interact with the network endpoint using the approved peripheral device's communication protocol. For example, a USB keyboard that hides all malicious processing cycles from the target network endpoint to which it is attached by communicating with the target network endpoint using unintended USB channels. Once sensitive data is ex-filtrated from the target network endpoint to the HT, the HT can process the data and decide what to do with the data: store the data to memory for later physical retrieval of the HT or possibly ex-filtrate the data to the internet using wireless or using the compromised network endpoint as a pivot. == Potential of threat == A common trojan is passive most of the time-span an altered device is in use. If a trojan is activated the device functionality can be changed, the device can be destroyed or disabled, the device can leak confidential information or the HT may tear down the security and safety of the device. Trojans are stealthy, to avoid detection of the trojan the precondition for activation is a very rare event. Traditional testing techniques are not sufficient. A manufacturing fault happens at a random position while malicious changes are well placed to avoid detection. == Detection == === Physical inspection === First, the molding coat is cut to reveal the circuitry. Then, the engineer repeatedly scans the surface while grinding the layers of the chip. There are several operations to scan the circuitry. Typical visual inspection methods are: scanning optical microscopy (SOM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), pico-second imaging circuit analysis (PICA), voltage contrast imaging (VCI), light induced voltage alteration (LIVA) or charge induced voltage alteration (CIVA). To compare the floor plan of the chip has to be compared with the image of the actual chip. This is still quite challenging to do. To detect Trojan hardware which include (crypto) keys which are different, an image diff can be taken to reveal the different structure on the chip. The only known hardware Trojan using unique crypto keys but having the same structure is. This property enhances the undetectability of the trojan. === Functional testing === This detection method stimulates the input ports of a chip and monitors the output
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Style sheet (web development)

A web style sheet is a form of separation of content and presentation for web design in which the markup (i.e., HTML or XHTML) of a webpage contains the page's semantic content and structure, but does not define its visual layout (style). Instead, the style is defined in an external style sheet file using a style sheet language such as CSS or XSLT. This design approach is identified as a "separation" because it largely supersedes the antecedent methodology in which a page's markup defined both style and structure. The philosophy underlying this methodology is a specific case of separation of concerns. == Benefits == Separation of style and content has advantages, but has only become practical after improvements in popular web browsers' CSS implementations. === Speed === Overall, users experience of a site utilising style sheets will generally be quicker than sites that do not use the technology. ‘Overall’ as the first page will probably load more slowly – because the style sheet AND the content will need to be transferred. Subsequent pages will load faster because no style information will need to be downloaded – the CSS file will already be in the browser’s cache. === Maintainability === Holding all the presentation styles in one file can reduce the maintenance time and reduces the chance of error, thereby improving presentation consistency. For example, the font color associated with a type of text element may be specified — and therefore easily modified — throughout an entire website simply by changing one short string of characters in a single file. The alternative approach, using styles embedded in each individual page, would require a cumbersome, time consuming, and error-prone edit of every file. === Accessibility === Sites that use CSS with either XHTML or HTML are easier to tweak so that they appear similar in different browsers (Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.). Sites using CSS "degrade gracefully" in browsers unable to display graphical content, such as Lynx, or those so very old that they cannot use CSS. Browsers ignore CSS that they do not understand, such as CSS 3 statements. This enables a wide variety of user agents to be able to access the content of a site even if they cannot render the style sheet or are not designed with graphical capability in mind. For example, a browser using a refreshable braille display for output could disregard layout information entirely, and the user would still have access to all page content. === Customization === If a page's layout information is stored externally, a user can decide to disable the layout information entirely, leaving the site's bare content still in a readable form. Site authors may also offer multiple style sheets, which can be used to completely change the appearance of the site without altering any of its content. Most modern web browsers also allow the user to define their own style sheet, which can include rules that override the author's layout rules. This allows users, for example, to bold every hyperlink on every page they visit. Browser extensions like Stylish and Stylus have been created to facilitate management of such user style sheets. === Consistency === Because the semantic file contains only the meanings an author intends to convey, the styling of the various elements of the document's content is very consistent. For example, headings, emphasized text, lists and mathematical expressions all receive consistently applied style properties from the external style sheet. Authors need not concern themselves with the style properties at the time of composition. These presentational details can be deferred until the moment of presentation. === Portability === The deferment of presentational details until the time of presentation means that a document can be easily re-purposed for an entirely different presentation medium with merely the application of a new style sheet already prepared for the new medium and consistent with elemental or structural vocabulary of the semantic document. A carefully authored document for a web page can easily be printed to a hard-bound volume complete with headers and footers, page numbers and a generated table of contents simply by applying a new style sheet.
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Teechart

TeeChart is a charting library for programmers, developed and managed by Steema Software of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It is available as commercial and non-commercial software. TeeChart has been included in most Delphi and C++Builder products since 1997, and TeeChart Standard currently is part of Embarcadero RAD Studio 13 Florence. TeeChart Pro version is a commercial product that offers shareware releases for all of its formats. The TeeChart Charting Library offers charts, maps and gauges in versions for Delphi VCL/FMX, ActiveX, C# for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Full source code has always been available for all versions except the ActiveX version. TeeChart's user interface is translated into 38 languages. == History == The first version of TeeChart was authored in 1995 by David Berneda, co-founder of Steema, using the Borland Delphi Visual Component Library programming environment and TeeChart was first released as a shareware version and made available via Compuserve in the same year. It was written in the first version of Delphi VCL, as a 16-bit Charting Library named TeeChart version 1. The next version of TeeChart was released as a 32-bit library (Delphi 2 supported 32-bit compilation) but was badged as TeeChart VCL v3 to coincide with Borland's naming convention for inclusion on the toolbox palette of Borland Delphi v3 in 1997 and with C++ Builder v3 in 1998. It has been on the Delphi/C++ Builder toolbox palette ever since. The current version is Embarcadero RAD Studio 13 Florence. TeeChart's first ActiveX version named "version 3" too, to match the VCL version's nomenclature, was released in 1998. The version was optimised to work with Microsoft's Visual Studio v97 and v6.0 developer suites that include Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual C++ programming languages. Support for new programming environments followed with TeeChart's first native C# version for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET released in 2002 and TeeChart.Lite for .NET, a free charting component, released for Visual Studio.NET in 2003 and supporting too, Mono (programming). Steema Software released the first native TeeChart Java (programming language) version in 2006 and TeeChart's first native PHP version was released in 2009 and published as open-source in June 2010. Mobile versions of TeeChart, for Android (operating system) devices and Windows Phone 7 devices were released during the first half of 2011. In 2012 TeeChart extended functionality to iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry OS devices and a new JavaScript version was released in the same year to support HTML5 Canvas. In 2013 Steema launched TeeChart for .NET Chart for Windows Store applications and included support for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 mobile platform. TeeChart for Xamarin.Forms written with 100% C# code and cross-platform support for .NET desktops, Windows Phone, iOS and Android was released in 2014. Also since 2014 Webforms charts now offers HTML5 interactivity. Steema launched TeeChart for Avalonia (software framework) in 2022 and in 2023 .NET_MAUI support was added to the TeeChart for .NET. == Usage == TeeChart is a general purpose charting component designed for use in differing ambits, offering a wide range of aesthetics to chart data. Generally TeeCharts published in the field, in areas where large amounts of data must be interpreted regularly, remain by designer choice in their simplest form to maximize the "data-ink ratio". Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS Web Services' use for charting "Scientific .. plotting of online data" at The Virtual Observatory Spectrum Services reflects that approach. The SDSS chart authors choose to represent data using TeeChart's standard 2D line display. Speed is also a factor when choosing how to most effectively plot data. Realtime data, at frequencies of up to tens or hundreds of data points or more per second, require the most processor economic approach to charting. Computer processing time dedicated to the plotting of data needs to be as lightweight as possible, freeing-up computer tasks "to achieve real-time data acquisition, display and analysis". A critical and stated aspect of many data visualisation applications is the ability to offer interactivity to the user; NASA's document, the Orbital Debris Engineering Model Model ORDEM 3.0 - User's Guide, 2014, states that "The user may manipulate the graphs to zoom, pan, and copy to the clipboard and export to various file types" and Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture II, Volume 1, Daoliang, Li; Chunjiang, Zhao (2009), also using TeeChart, states "the properties at any point in the chart can be viewed moving the mouse over it". Writing about control education, Juha Lindfors states "The desired charting functionality (such as zooming and scaling) is achieved..". Charting applications have become increasingly 'onlined', made available either to a wider public or to a territorially remote userbase via networked applications. The World Wide Web (the Web) has become "by far, the most popular Internet protocol" to disseminate online applications. Most major IDEs now offer environments for web application developede aimed at browser hosted applications. Charting components, TeeChart among them, have adapted to provide models that work within a browser environment, often using static images and scripted layering techniques such as Ajax (programming) to offer a level of interactivity, improve response times and hide apparent delay from the user. Options to enrich client, browser-side processing flexibility are exploited by TeeChart libraries via modules that offer 'micro-environments' within the browser, such as the long established ActiveX technology, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or Java Applets. Serverside environments offer too, a means to interact with browser based script to dynamically respond to charting requests. Joomla and CodeIgniter are host environments for TeeChart PHP and an example of an Embarcadero IntraWeb VCL designed application using TeeChart, is documented here. == Programmer reference == The Code Project includes a demo that uses TeeChart.Lite, called 'Self-Organizing Feature Maps (Kohonen maps)' written by Bashir Magomedovl and SourceForge includes a Database Stress and Monitor that also uses TeeChart.Lite. Books and information sources that include substantial sections about working with the Delphi version of TeeChart include "Mastering Delphi 6" by Marco Cantù, "C++ Builder 5 developer's guide", a video Delphi Tutorial on charting JPEG compression and support forums and reference pages at TeeChart Support Forums. Non-English language document sources include, in Czech "Myslíme v jazyku Delphi 7: knihovna zkušeného programátora" by Marco Cantù, and Chinese, Delphi 6, Delphi, and Delphi 5.
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Optical recording

The history of optical recording can be divided into a few number of distinct major contributions. The pioneers of optical recording worked mostly independently, and their solutions to the many technical challenges have very distinctive features, such as reflective disc (Compaan and Kramer) transparent disc (Gregg) floppy disc (Russell) rigid disc (Compaan and Kramer) focused laser beam for read-out through transparent substrate (Compaan and Kramer). == Gregg 1958 == Laserdisc technology, using a transparent disc, was invented by David Paul Gregg in 1958 (and patented in 1970 and 1990). By 1969 Philips had developed a videodisc in reflective mode, which has great advantages over the transparent mode. MCA and Philips decided to join their efforts. They first publicly demonstrated the videodisc in 1972. Laserdisc was first available on the market, in Atlanta, on December 15, 1978, two years after the VHS VCR and four years before the CD, which is based on Laserdisc technology. Philips produced the players and MCA produced the discs. The Philips/MCA cooperation was not successful, and discontinued after a few years. Several of the scientists responsible for the early research (John Winslow, Richard Wilkinson and Ray Dakin) founded Optical Disc Corporation (now ODC Nimbus). == Russell 1965 == While working at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, James Russell invented an optical storage system for digital audio and video, patenting the concept in 1970. The earliest patents by Russell, US 3,501,586, and 3,795,902 were filed in 1966, and 1969. respectively. He built prototypes, and the first was operating in 1973. Russell had found a way to record digital information onto a photosensitive plate in tiny dark spots, each spot one micrometre from centre to centre, with a laser that wrote the binary patterns. Russell's first optical disc was distinctly different from the eventual compact disc product: the disc in the player was not read by laser light. A key characteristic of Russell's invention is that a laser is not used for the reading the disc, instead the entire disc or oblong sheet to be read is illuminated by a large playback light source at the back of the transparent foil. As a result, the information density is relatively low. By 1985, Russell held over 25 patents to various technologies related to optical recording and playback. Russell's intellectual property was purchased by Optical Recording Corporation (ORC) in Toronto in 1985, and this firm notified a number of CD manufacturers that their CD technology was based on patents held by ORC. In 1987, ORC signed an agreement with Sony whereby Sony paid for licensing of the technology. Further licenses followed from Philips and others. Warner Communications did not sign, and was sued by ORC. In 1992, the large CD manufacturer, now called Time Warner, was ordered to pay ORC US$30 million in patent violations. In the 1970 patent, the spot diameter was around 10 micrometres. Thus, the areal information density was around a factor hundred less than that of the CD as later developed. Russell continued to refine the concept throughout the 1970s. Philips and Sony, however, were able to put far greater resources into the parallel development of the concept, arriving at a smaller and more sophisticated product in just a few years. Russell's various partners and ventures failed to produce a single consumer product. == Korpel 1968 == Adrianus Korpel worked for the Zenith Electronics Corporation, when he developed very early optical videodisc systems, including holographic storage. == Kramer and Compaan 1969 == The Philips development of the videodisc technology began in 1969 with efforts by Dutch physicists Klaas Compaan and Piet Kramer to record video images in holographic form on disc. Their prototype Laserdisc shown in 1972 used a laser beam in reflective mode to read a track of pits using an FM video signal. Together with MCA, Philips brought the optical videodisk to market in 1978. The cooperation between Philips and MCA did not last long, and discontinued after a few years. == Immink and Doi 1979 == The Compact Disc (CD), which is based on MCA/Philips Laserdisc technology, was developed by a taskforce of Sony and Philips in 1979–1980. Toshi Doi and Kees Schouhamer Immink created the digital technologies that turned the analog Laserdisc into a high-density low-cost digital audio disc. The CD, available on the market since October 1982, remains the standard physical medium for sale of commercial audio recordings Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm and can hold up to 80 minutes of audio (700 MB of data). The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 mm; they are sometimes used for CD singles or device drivers, storing up to 24 minutes of audio. The technology was later adapted and expanded to include data storage CD-ROM, write-once audio and data storage CD-R, rewritable media CD-RW, Super Audio CD (SACD), Video Compact Discs (VCD), Super Video Compact Discs (SVCD), PhotoCD, PictureCD, CD-i, and Enhanced CD. CD-ROMs and CD-Rs remain widely used technologies in the computer industry. The CD and its extensions have been extremely successful: in 2004, worldwide sales of CD audio, CD-ROM, and CD-R reached about 30 billion discs. By 2007, 200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide.
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Fear of missing out

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is the feeling of apprehension that one is either not in the know about or missing out on information, events, experiences, or life decisions that could make one's life better. FOMO is also associated with a fear of regret, which may lead to concerns that one might miss an opportunity for social interaction, a novel experience, a memorable event, profitable investment, or the comfort of loved ones. It is characterized by a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing, and can be described as the fear that deciding not to participate is the wrong choice. FOMO could result from not knowing about a conversation, missing a TV show, not attending a wedding or party, or hearing that others have discovered a new restaurant. In recent years, FOMO has been attributed to a number of negative psychological and behavioral symptoms. FOMO has increased in recent times due to advancements in technology. Social networking sites create many opportunities for FOMO. While it provides opportunities for social engagement, it offers a view into an endless stream of activities in which a person is not involved. Further, a common tendency is to post about positive experiences (such as a great restaurant) rather than negative ones (such as a bad first date). Psychological dependence on social media can lead to FOMO or even pathological Internet use. FOMO is also present in video games, investing, and business marketing. The increasing popularity of the phrase has led to related linguistic and cultural variants. FOMO is associated with worsening depression and anxiety, and a lowered quality of life. FOMO can also affect businesses. Hype and trends can lead business leaders to invest based on perceptions of what others are doing, rather than their own business strategy. This is also the idea of the bandwagon effect, where one individual may see another person or people do something and they begin to think it must be important because everyone is doing it. They might not even understand the meaning behind it, and they may not totally agree with it. Nevertheless, they are still going to participate because they don't want to be left out. == History == Patrick J. McGinnis coined the term FOMO and popularized it in a 2004 op-ed titled "Social Theory at HBS: McGinnis' Two FOs" in The Harbus, the magazine of Harvard Business School, where he was then a student. The article also referred to another related condition, Fear of a Better Option (FOBO), and the role of these two fears in the school's social life. Currently the term has been used as a hashtag on social media and has been mentioned in hundreds of news articles, from online sources like Salon.com to print papers like The New York Times. === Earlier forms === The phrase "fear of missing out" is a common English phrase, especially in the form "fear of missing out on (something)". The term "fear of missing out" (but not the term FOMO) was used earlier in the academic business literature by marketing strategist Dan Herman, who used it in presentations in the late 1990s, and included the phrase in a 2000 paper about "short-term brands", where a motivation for trying these brands is "ambition to exhaust all possibilities and the fear of missing out on something". Herman also believes the concept has evolved to become more wide spread through mobile phone usage, texting, and social media and has helped flesh out the concept of the fear of missing out to the masses. Before the Internet, a related phenomenon, "keeping up with the Joneses", was widely experienced. FOMO generalized and intensified this experience because so much more of people's lives became publicly documented and easily accessed. == Symptoms == === Psychological === Fear of missing out has been associated with a deficit in psychological needs. Self-determination theory contends that an individual's psychological satisfaction in their competence, autonomy, and relatedness consists of three basic psychological needs for human beings. Test subjects with lower levels of basic psychological satisfaction reported a higher level of FOMO. FOMO has also been linked to negative psychological effects in overall mood and general life satisfaction. A study performed on college campuses found that experiencing FOMO on a certain day led to a higher fatigue on that day specifically. Experiencing FOMO continuously throughout the semester also can lead to higher stress levels among students. An individual with an expectation to experience the fear of missing out can also develop a lower level of self-esteem. A study by JWTIntelligence suggests that FOMO can influence the formation of long-term goals and self-perceptions. In this study, around half of the respondents stated that they are overwhelmed by the amount of information needed to stay up-to-date, and that it is impossible to not miss out on something. The process of relative deprivation creates FOMO and dissatisfaction. It reduces psychological well-being. FOMO led to negative social and emotional experiences, such as boredom and loneliness. A 2013 study found that it negatively impacts mood and life satisfaction, reduces self-esteem, and affects mindfulness. Four in ten young people reported FOMO sometimes or often. FOMO was found to be negatively correlated with age, and men were more likely than women to report it. People who experience higher levels of FOMO tend to have a stronger desire for high social status, are more competitive with others of the same gender, and are more interested in short-term relationships. Studies have found that experiencing fear of missing out has been linked to anxiety or depression. === Behavioral === The fear of missing out stems from a feeling of missing social connections or information. This absent feeling is then followed by a need or drive to interact socially to boost connections. The fear of missing out not only leads to negative psychological effects but also has been shown to increase negative behavioral patterns. In aims of maintaining social connections, negative habits are formed or heightened. A 2019 University of Glasgow study surveyed 467 adolescents, and found that the respondents felt societal pressure to always be available. According to John M. Grohol, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Psych Central, FOMO may lead to a constant search for new connections with others, abandoning current connections to do so. The fear of missing out derived from digital connection has been positively correlated with bad technology habits especially in youth. These negative habits included increased screen time, checking social media during school, or texting while driving. Social media use in the presence of others can be referred to as phubbing, the habit of snubbing a physically present person in favour of a mobile phone. Multiple studies have also identified a negative correlation between the hours of sleep and the scale at which individuals experience fear of missing out. A lack of sleep in college students experiencing FOMO can be attributed to the number of social interactions that occur late at night on campuses. == Settings == === Social media === Fear of missing out has a positive correlation with higher levels of social media usage. Social media connects individuals and showcases the lives of others at their peak. This gives people the fear of missing out when they feel like others on social media are taking part in positive life experiences that they personally are not also experiencing. This fear of missing out related to social media has symptoms including anxiety, loneliness, and a feeling of inadequacy compared to others. Self-esteem plays a key role in the levels a person feels when experiencing the fear of missing out, as their self worth is influenced by people they observe on social media. There are two types of anxiety; one related to genetics that is permanent, and one that is temporary. The temporary state of anxiety is the one that is more relevant to the fear of missing out, and is directly related to the individual looking at social media sites for a short period of time. This anxiety is caused by a loss of feeling of belonging through the concept of social exclusion. FOMO-sufferers may increasingly seek access to others' social lives, and consume an escalating amount of real-time information. A survey in 2012 indicated that 83% of respondents said that there is information overload in regards that there is too much to watch and read. Constant information that is available to people through social media causes the fear of missing out as people feel worse about themselves for not staying up to date with relevant information. Social media shows just exactly what people are missing out on in real time including events like parties, opportunities, and other events leading for people to fear missing out on other related future events. Another survey indicates that almost 40% of people from ages 12 through 67 i
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Data plan

A data plan is a subscription plan from a cellular or other mobile service provider to provide internet data and connectivity. == Formatting == Data plans are usually created by a contract between the telecommunications carrier and the user of their service. This contract outlines a maximum amount of usable data, usually highlighted in either megabytes or gigabytes, allotted per month for the user. In most cases companies will allow a user to surpass the amount of data allowed in the contract, however, will have to pay a per-gigabyte fee, ranging anywhere from five to fifteen U.S. dollars. === Popularization of unlimited plans === Unlimited data plans have seen a large increase in usage by consumers since their initial introduction by U.S. network T-Mobile. These plans, instead of setting an overall maximum for the user, have an amount set-up that, when surpassed, will slow the speed of the network for that user. Unlimited plans typically cost significantly more than the traditional shared data plans, which is a major reason that carriers have set large boundaries and fees. The limits imposed on unlimited plans are designed to fight against attempts to misuse the network, such as a DDoS attack, but are more commonly reasoned as a method to increase the number of people that can use one tower simultaneously. === Data speed changes === When a network is near reaching peak capacity data speeds may be slowed down by carriers as part of most major telecom contracts. This, as stated previously, allows for more people to be utilizing one tower, reducing needed capital for the company. Since speed changes are allowed at the company's will, the user has no official guarantee of speed on most major networks. === Costs brought upon by additional data === In many cases both the user and carrier have to incur additional costs when a user utilizes more of a given data package, which has helped in the proliferation of data caps and other forms of shared data plans. Most of the charges that the carrier has to incur for additional data usage is partially or fully given to the user of the network. ==== Users ==== Users are required to pay flat-rate additional fees that occur when they go above the amount of data given to them in their contract, utility, or prepaid plan. The cost per gigabyte of this fee is usually higher than what the contract itself offers, which discourages users from over-utilizing data and incurring a charge for the carrier. Certain contracts, which do not offer paying additional fees for an increase in data, may result in a shutdown of service, or in extremely rare cases, termination of the service as a whole. ==== Carriers ==== Carriers incur costs for additional data usage, as it limits the number of customers, and associated contracts, that they can handle on one network. Creating more cell phone towers in a given area would be costly, and largely useless until particular spikes in traffic. When the peak usable amount of one tower is reached, it may cause negative public relations towards the reliability of the corporation as a whole.
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Ampere Computing

Ampere Computing LLC is an American fabless semiconductor company that designs ARM-based central processing units (CPUs) with high core counts for use in cloud computing and data center environments. Founded in 2017 by former Intel president Renée James, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and operates as an independent subsidiary of SoftBank Group since November 2025. == History == Ampere Computing was founded in fall 2017 by Renée James, ex-President of Intel, with funding from The Carlyle Group. James acquired a team from MACOM Technology Solutions (formerly AppliedMicro) in addition to several industry hires to start the company. Ampere Computing is an ARM architecture licensee and develops its own server microprocessors. Ampere fabricates its products at TSMC. In April 2019, Ampere announced its second major investment round, including investment from Arm Holdings and Oracle Corporation. In June 2019, Nvidia announced a partnership with Ampere to bring support for Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). In November 2019, Nvidia announced a reference design platform for graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated ARM-based servers including Ampere. In the first half of 2020, Ampere announced Ampere Altra, an 80-core processor, and Ampere Altra Max, a 128-core processor, without the use of simultaneous multithreading. In March 2020, the company announced a partnership with Oracle. In September 2020, Oracle said it would launch bare-metal and virtual machine instances in early 2021 based on Ampere Altra. In November 2020, Ampere was named one of the top 10 hottest semiconductor startups by CRN. In May 2021, the company announced a partnership with Microsoft. In April 2022, Ampere said that it had filed a confidential prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, signaling its intent to go public. In June 2022, HPE announced their Gen11 ProLiant system would use Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max Cloud Native Processors. In July 2022, Google announced T2A instances using Ampere Altra in the Google cloud and in August 2022 Microsoft announced their instances of Ampere running in Azure. On March 19, 2025, investment holding company SoftBank Group announced it will acquire Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion. The deal finalized in November 2025, with Ampere remaining as an independent subsidiary with its headquarters in Santa Clara, California. == Products == Ampere develops ARM-based computer processors and CPU cores under their Altra brands. These are used in databases, media encoding, web services, network acceleration, mobile gaming, AI inference processing, and other applications and programs that need to scale. On February 5, 2018, Ampere announced the eMAG 8180 featuring 32x Skylark cores fabricated on TSMC's 16FF+ process. It supports a turbo of up to 3.3 GHz with a TDP of 125 W, 8ch 64-bit DDR4, up to 1 TB DDR4 per socket, and 42x PCIe 3.0 Lanes. The Skylark cores were based on AppliedMicro's X-Gene 3. Packet offers servers with the eMAG 8180 and 128 GB DRAM, 480 GB SSD, and 2x 10 Gbit/s networking. On September 19, 2018, Ampere announced the availability of a version featuring 16x Skylark cores. === 2020 === On March 3, 2020, Ampere announced the Ampere Altra featuring 80 cores fabricated on TSMC's N7 process for hyperscale computing. It was the first server-grade processor to include 80 cores and the Q80-30 conserves power by running at 161 W in use. The cores are semi-custom Arm Neoverse N1 cores with Ampere modifications. It supports a frequency of up to 3.3 GHz with TDP of 250 W, 8ch 72-bit DDR4, up to 4 TB DDR4-3200 per socket, 128x PCIe 4.0 Lanes, 1 MB L2 per core and 32 MB SLC. Ampere also announced their roadmap with Ampere Altra Max (2021) in development and AmpereOne (2022) defined. === 2021 === The 128-core Altra Max was released in 2021 and targeted hyperscale cloud providers. It uses the same server socket and platforms as Ampere Altra, and both products have one thread per core. The Altra Max CPUs provide 128 Arm v8.2+ cores per chip and run up to 3.0 GHz. They also support eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory and 128 lanes of PCIe Gen4. Also in 2021, Oracle launched its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using Ampere Altra processors. === 2022 === In February 2022, Ampere and Rigetti Computing announced a strategic partnership to create hybrid quantum-classical computers. The companies will combine Ampere's Altra Max CPUs with Rigetti's Quantum Processing Units (QPU) in cloud-based High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments. In April, Microsoft previewed its Azure Virtual Machines running on the Ampere Altra. The VMs run scale-out workloads, web servers, application servers, open source databases, cloud native .NET applications, Java applications, gaming servers, media servers, and other processes. In May, Ampere announced the sampling of AmpereOne CPUs, 5 nanometer chips based on its in-house Ampere-developed core. AmpereOne will add support for DDR5 main memory and PCIe Gen5 peripherals. On June 28, 2022, HPE became first tier-one server provider to offer compute with optimized cloud-native silicon for service providers and enterprises embracing cloud-native development with new line of HPE ProLiant RL Gen11 servers, using Ampere® Altra® and Ampere® Altra® Max processors, delivering high performance and power efficiency. === 2023 === During April 2023, Ampere released the Altra developer's kit, an IoT Prototype Kit based on Ampere Altra, aimed at cloud developers, available in 32-core, 64-core, and 80-core formats. === 2024 === In May 2024, Ampere updated its AmpereOne roadmap to 256 cores and announced a joint effort with Qualcomm on CPUs and accelerators. == Customers == Ampere's customers include Microsoft Azure, Tencent Cloud, Oracle, ByteDance, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Cloudflare, Equinix, Kingsoft Cloud, Meituan, Scaleway, UCloud, Foxconn Industrial Internet, Gigabyte, Inspur, Cruise, Hetzner, Project Ronin, Wiwynn and Google Cloud Platform Cruise uses an Ampere Altra variant for its autonomous driving unit. The CPU was selected because of its throughput and low power consumption. In 2021, Oracle, Microsoft, Tencent, and ByteDance committed to using Ampere's customized chips, first announced in May. In April 2022, Microsoft previewed Ampere Altra processors in its new Azure D-and E- series virtual machines. The Dpsv5 series is built for Linux enterprise application types, and the Epsv5 series is for memory-intensive Linux workloads. They provide up to 64 vCPUs, include VM sizes with 2GiB, 4GiB, and 8GiB per vCPU memory configurations, up to 40 Gbit/s networking, and high-performance local SSD storage. In 2022, Microsoft's Ampere Altra-based Azure servers became the first cloud solution provider server to be Arm SystemReady SR certified. The Azure VMs, powered by Altra processors, were also the first to be SystemReady Virtual Environment standard certified. SystemReady defines a set of firmware and hardware standards as a baseline for system development for software developers, original equipment vendors, and chipmakers.
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Boba liberal

Boba liberal is a term mostly used within the Asian diaspora communities in the West, especially in the United States. It describes someone of East or Southeast Asian descent living in the West who has a shallow, surface-level liberal outlook. It is also occasionally used to describe conservatives who weaponize their East or Southeast Asian identity. The neologism emerged among the Asian American leftist community on Twitter who accused "boba liberals" of only holding their liberal beliefs to appear more white-adjacent by engaging in progressive social movements or viewpoints, while at the same time disregarding and trivializing issues concerning Asians. Mary Chao, writing for The North Jersey Record, said that "Asians call peers boba liberals when they aspire to liberal whiteness." An article in The Yale Herald described it as a term "used to describe the ethnocentric politics of Asian Americans, usually of East Asian descent, who exclusively advocate for issues that benefit themselves, without acknowledging problematic dimensions of their own history and working to support other people of color." The feminist magazine Fem said that "the faces of boba liberalism are Asian Americans that are part of the middle and upper economic class. As a result, boba liberals disregard the negative effects of capitalism because they profit from it. For instance, boba liberals tend to focus on advocating for Asian representation in white spaces, or discussing whether or not wearing chopsticks in one's hair is culture appropriation. These topics are popular within boba liberal circles, all while dialogue regarding inequality, globalization, and racial injustice are purposely neglected." UnHerd notes that conservative Asian Americans have used the term not to critique capitalism, but to "aim at a small but influential group of progressive Asian-American activists who are supposedly selling out other Asians, especially working-class Asians, in order to win brownie points from elite, generally white liberals." MRAsians have similarly used the term to attack Asian American feminists who supported the Black Lives Matter movement. The Asian identity of boba liberals has often been accused of being shallow and superficial. Boba liberals are accused of using surface-level stereotypical Asian traits such as liking boba tea to bolster their Asian credentials. Plan A Magazine, an Asian diaspora magazine, described the film Crazy Rich Asians and the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat as "boba liberal media", calling them the result of "a specific kind of atomized identity politics". Other media outlets have connected the Crazy Rich Asians film to boba liberalism. == Controversy == The term "boba liberal" was coined in 2019 by Vietnamese American Twitter user Redmond (@diaspora_is_red) to analyze a form of Asian American liberalism through a Marxist lens. Redmond has criticized the misappropriation of their neologism by stripping away the Marxist framework by failing to discuss "socialism, communism, the capitalist system, imperialism, and the diaspora bourgeoisie" and conflating "boba liberalism" with the flawed concept of "East Asian privilege". In 2024, Redmond criticized misuse of the term by conservatives and liberals, and said "The term boba liberalism can go away for all I care. It's corny and stale". === United States === One commentator described boba liberals as supporting policies that primarily benefit upper-income Asian-Americans, and not necessarily the Asian-American community as a whole. Therefore, while the word "liberal" is used in the term, it is not mutually exclusive to one specific ideology, as it may also extend to conservative-aligned Asians in some areas, as they would often take advantage of the "model minority" label by defending such measures.
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Mixvoip

Mixvoip S.A. is a Luxembourg-based telecommunications service provider founded in 2008. The company offers IP telephony, high-speed Internet connectivity, and IT solutions to businesses and individuals. == Company history == In November 2017, Mixvoip expanded its operations to Belgium and Germany. At the beginning of 2019, the company acquired the telecommunications provider Voipgate. In December 2019, Mixvoip was named Telecom Company of the Year at the Luxembourg ICT Awards 2019 organized by Farvest and IT One. A 2024 article in Duke described the company's transition during the 2010s from traditional telephony services to cloud-based communication platforms. In the end of 2024, the ILR published the statistics about electronic communications in Luxembourg, including Mixvoip in the fix telephony section. In July 2025, Mixvoip acquired Crossing Telecom. In 2026, Mixvoip acquired Nomado's portfolio.
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