AI Assistant Unfiltered

AI Assistant Unfiltered — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

ISLRN

The ISLRN or International Standard Language Resource Number is Persistent Unique Identifier for Language Resources. == Context == On November 18, 2013, 12 major organisations (see list below) from the fields Language Resources and Technologies, Computational Linguistics, and Digital Humanities held a cooperation meeting in Paris (France) and agreed to announce the establishment of the International Standard Language Resource Number (ISLRN), to be assigned to each Language Resource. Among the 12 organisations, 4 institutions constitute the ISLRN Steering Committee (ST) ADHO ACL Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing ST COCOSDA, International Committee for the Coordination & Standardisation of Speech Databases and Assessment Techniques ICCL (COLING) European Data Forum ELRA ST IAMT, International Association for Machine Translation Archived 2010-06-24 at the Wayback Machine ISCA LDC ST Oriental COCOSDA ST RMA, Language Resource Management Agency == Size and Content == The Joint Research Centre(JRC), the [European Commission]'s in-house science service, was the first organisation to adopt the ISLRN initiative and requested. 2500 resources and tools have already been allocated an ISLRN. These resources include written data (Annotated corpus, Annotated text, List of misspelled word, Terminological database, Treebank, Wordnet, etc.) and speech corpora (Synthesised Speech, Transcripts and Audiovisual Recordings, Conversational Speech, Folk Sayings, etc.) == Objectives == Providing Language Resources with unique names and identifiers using a standardized nomenclature ensures the identification of each Language Resources and streamlines the citation with proper references in activities within Human Language Technology as well as in documents and scientific publications. Such unique identifier also enhances the reproducibility, an essential feature of scientific work.
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Supercomputer operating system

A supercomputer operating system is an operating system intended for supercomputers. Since the end of the 20th century, supercomputer operating systems have undergone major transformations, as fundamental changes have occurred in supercomputer architecture. While early operating systems were custom tailored to each supercomputer to gain speed, the trend has been moving away from in-house operating systems and toward some form of Linux, with it running all the supercomputers on the TOP500 list in November 2017. In 2021, top 10 computers run for instance Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), or some variant of it or other Linux distribution e.g. Ubuntu. Given that modern massively parallel supercomputers typically separate computations from other services by using multiple types of nodes, they usually run different operating systems on different nodes, e.g., using a small and efficient lightweight kernel such as Compute Node Kernel (CNK) or Compute Node Linux (CNL) on compute nodes, but a larger system such as a Linux distribution on server and input/output (I/O) nodes. While in a traditional multi-user computer system job scheduling is in effect a tasking problem for processing and peripheral resources, in a massively parallel system, the job management system needs to manage the allocation of both computational and communication resources, as well as gracefully dealing with inevitable hardware failures when tens of thousands of processors are present. Although most modern supercomputers use the Linux operating system, each manufacturer has made its own specific changes to the Linux distribution they use, and no industry standard exists, partly because the differences in hardware architectures require changes to optimize the operating system to each hardware design. == Context and overview == In the early days of supercomputing, the basic architectural concepts were evolving rapidly, and system software had to follow hardware innovations that usually took rapid turns. In the early systems, operating systems were custom tailored to each supercomputer to gain speed, yet in the rush to develop them, serious software quality challenges surfaced and in many cases the cost and complexity of system software development became as much an issue as that of hardware. In the 1980s the cost for software development at Cray came to equal what they spent on hardware and that trend was partly responsible for a move away from the in-house operating systems to the adaptation of generic software. The first wave in operating system changes came in the mid-1980s, as vendor specific operating systems were abandoned in favor of Unix. Despite early skepticism, this transition proved successful. By the early 1990s, major changes were occurring in supercomputing system software. By this time, the growing use of Unix had begun to change the way system software was viewed. The use of a high level language (C) to implement the operating system, and the reliance on standardized interfaces was in contrast to the assembly language oriented approaches of the past. As hardware vendors adapted Unix to their systems, new and useful features were added to Unix, e.g., fast file systems and tunable process schedulers. However, all the companies that adapted Unix made unique changes to it, rather than collaborating on an industry standard to create "Unix for supercomputers". This was partly because differences in their architectures required these changes to optimize Unix to each architecture. As general purpose operating systems became stable, supercomputers began to borrow and adapt critical system code from them, and relied on the rich set of secondary functions that came with them. However, at the same time the size of the code for general purpose operating systems was growing rapidly. By the time Unix-based code had reached 500,000 lines long, its maintenance and use was a challenge. This resulted in the move to use microkernels which used a minimal set of the operating system functions. Systems such as Mach at Carnegie Mellon University and ChorusOS at INRIA were examples of early microkernels. The separation of the operating system into separate components became necessary as supercomputers developed different types of nodes, e.g., compute nodes versus I/O nodes. Thus modern supercomputers usually run different operating systems on different nodes, e.g., using a small and efficient lightweight kernel such as CNK or CNL on compute nodes, but a larger system such as a Linux-derivative on server and I/O nodes. == Early systems == The CDC 6600, generally considered the first supercomputer in the world, ran the Chippewa Operating System, which was then deployed on various other CDC 6000 series computers. The Chippewa was a rather simple job control oriented system derived from the earlier CDC 3000, but it influenced the later KRONOS and SCOPE systems. The first Cray-1 was delivered to the Los Alamos Lab with no operating system, or any other software. Los Alamos developed the application software for it, and the operating system. The main timesharing system for the Cray 1, the Cray Time Sharing System (CTSS), was then developed at the Livermore Labs as a direct descendant of the Livermore Time Sharing System (LTSS) for the CDC 6600 operating system from twenty years earlier. In developing supercomputers, rising software costs soon became dominant, as evidenced by the 1980s cost for software development at Cray growing to equal their cost for hardware. That trend was partly responsible for a move away from the in-house Cray Operating System to UNICOS system based on Unix. In 1985, the Cray-2 was the first system to ship with the UNICOS operating system. Around the same time, the EOS operating system was developed by ETA Systems for use in their ETA10 supercomputers. Written in Cybil, a Pascal-like language from Control Data Corporation, EOS highlighted the stability problems in developing stable operating systems for supercomputers and eventually a Unix-like system was offered on the same machine. The lessons learned from developing ETA system software included the high level of risk associated with developing a new supercomputer operating system, and the advantages of using Unix with its large extant base of system software libraries. By the middle 1990s, despite the extant investment in older operating systems, the trend was toward the use of Unix-based systems, which also facilitated the use of interactive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for scientific computing across multiple platforms. The move toward a commodity OS had opponents, who cited the fast pace and focus of Linux development as a major obstacle against adoption. As one author wrote "Linux will likely catch up, but we have large-scale systems now". Nevertheless, that trend continued to gain momentum and by 2005, virtually all supercomputers used some Unix-like OS. These variants of Unix included IBM AIX, the open source Linux system, and other adaptations such as UNICOS from Cray. By the end of the 20th century, Linux was estimated to command the highest share of the supercomputing pie. == Modern approaches == The IBM Blue Gene supercomputer uses the CNK operating system on the compute nodes, but uses a modified Linux-based kernel called I/O Node Kernel (INK) on the I/O nodes. CNK is a lightweight kernel that runs on each node and supports a single application running for a single user on that node. For the sake of efficient operation, the design of CNK was kept simple and minimal, with physical memory being statically mapped and the CNK neither needing nor providing scheduling or context switching. CNK does not even implement file I/O on the compute node, but delegates that to dedicated I/O nodes. However, given that on the Blue Gene multiple compute nodes share a single I/O node, the I/O node operating system does require multi-tasking, hence the selection of the Linux-based operating system. While in traditional multi-user computer systems and early supercomputers, job scheduling was in effect a task scheduling problem for processing and peripheral resources, in a massively parallel system, the job management system needs to manage the allocation of both computational and communication resources. It is essential to tune task scheduling, and the operating system, in different configurations of a supercomputer. A typical parallel job scheduler has a master scheduler which instructs some number of slave schedulers to launch, monitor, and control parallel jobs, and periodically receives reports from them about the status of job progress. Some, but not all supercomputer schedulers attempt to maintain locality of job execution. The PBS Pro scheduler used on the Cray XT3 and Cray XT4 systems does not attempt to optimize locality on its three-dimensional torus interconnect, but simply uses the first available processor. On the other hand, IBM's scheduler on the Blue Gene supercomputers aims to exploit locality a
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Military communications

Military communications or military signals involve all aspects of communications, or conveyance of information, by armed forces. Examples from Jane's Military Communications include text, audio, facsimile, tactical ground-based communications, naval signalling, terrestrial microwave, tropospheric scatter, satellite communications systems and equipment, surveillance and signal analysis, security, direction finding and jamming. The most urgent purposes are to communicate information to commanders and orders from them. Military communications span from pre-history to the present. The earliest military communications were delivered by runners. Later, communications progressed to visual signals. For example, Naval ships would use flag signaling to communicate from ship to ship. These flags are a uniform set of easily identifiable nautical codes that would convey visual messages and codes between ships and from ship to shore. Then militaries discovered methods to use audible signaling to communicate with each other. This way of communicating was possible because of telegraphs. They are an electronic device that is used by a sender and when the sender presses on the telegraph key, they interrupt the current creating an audible pulse that is heard at the receiving station. The receiver then decodes the pulses to decode the messages. Since then, military communication has evolved and advanced much further. Today, there are many perspectives used to examine how troops around the world communicate. Anthony King states how Military sociologists have attempted to explain how military institutions develop and maintain high levels of social cohesion. == History == In past centuries communicating a message usually required someone to go to the destination, bringing the message. Thus, the term communication often implied the ability to transport people and supplies. A place under siege was one that lost communication in both senses. The association between transport and messaging declined in recent centuries. The first military communications involved the use of runners or the sending and receiving of simple signals (sometimes encoded to be unrecognizable). The first distinctive uses of military communications were called semaphore. Modern units specializing in these tactics are usually designated as signal corps. The Roman system of military communication (cursus publicus or cursus vehicularis) is an early example of this. Later, the terms signals and signaller became words referring to a highly-distinct military occupation dealing with general communications methods (similar to those in civil use) rather than with weapons. Present-day military forces of an informational society conduct intense and complicated communicating activities on a daily basis, using modern telecommunications and computing methods. Only a small portion of these activities are directly related to combat actions. Modern concepts of network-centric warfare (NCW) rely on network-oriented methods of communications and control to make existing forces more effective. == Military communications equipment == Drums, horns, flags, and riders on horseback were some of the early methods the military used to send messages over distances. The advent of distinctive signals led to the formation of the signal corps, a group specialized in the tactics of military communications. The signal corps evolved into a distinctive occupation where the signaller became a highly technical job dealing with all available communications methods including civil ones. In the middle 20th century radio equipment came to dominate the field. Many modern pieces of military communications equipment are built to both encrypt and decode transmissions and survive rough treatment in hostile climates. They use different frequencies to send signals to other radio stations to communicate. Radios have played a major role in military communication. Since they are capable of sending radio waves to transmit voice signals over long distances. This can be helpful for communication on the battlefield since it is a good way to send messages undetected over long distances. Radios are also very reliable because even in harsh weather conditions they are still able to help communicate among the soldiers. Militaries still use radios and continue to improve the technology because of their durability and reliability for military communication. Spelling alphabets such as the NATO phonetic alphabet are used to aid radio communications by reducing ambiguity between letters. Military communications – or "comms" – are activities, equipment, techniques, and tactics used by the military in some of the most hostile areas of the earth and in challenging environments such as battlefields, on land (compare radio in a box), underwater and also in air. Military comms include command, control and communications and intelligence and were known as the C3I model before computers were fully integrated. The U.S. Army expanded the model to C4I when it recognized the vital role played by automated computer equipment to send and receive large, bulky amounts of data. In the modern world, most nations attempt to minimize the risk of war caused by miscommunication or inadequate communication. As a result, military communication is intense and complicated and often motivates the development of advanced technology for remote systems such as satellites. Satellites have been improving and are being used more and more for communication. They are being made to have higher transmission capacity to help with their communication abilities. The military is upgrading satellites to be immune to interference during combat operations. This advancement will establish stable, high-quality information highways for long distance communication. Aircraft are also beneficial for communication, both crewed and uncrewed, as well as computers. Computers and their varied applications have revolutionized military comms. Although military communication is designed for warfare, it also supports intelligence-gathering and communication between adversaries, and thus sometimes prevents war. The six categories of military comms are: alert measurement systems cryptography military radio systems command and control signal corps network-centric warfare The alert measurement systems are various states of alertness or readiness for the armed forces used around the world during a state of war, act of terrorism or a military attack against a state. They are known by different acronyms, such as DEFCON, or defense readiness condition, used by the U.S. Armed Forces. Cryptography is the study of methods of converting messages to a form unreadable except to one who knows how to decrypt them. This ancient military comms art gained new importance with the rise of radio systems whose signals traveled far and were easily intercepted. Cryptographic software is also widely used in civilian commerce. == Commercial refile == In United States military communications systems, commercial refile refers to sending a military message via a commercial communications network. The message may come from a military network, such as a tape relay network, a point-to-point telegraph network, a radio-telegraph network, or the Defense Switched Network. Commercial refiling of a message will usually require a reformatting of the message, particularly the heading.
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TheFWA

FWA (Favourite Website Awards) is an international award platform that honors and rewards web designers, developers and agencies around the world for excellence within the field of web design and development. The FWA was founded in May 2000 by Rob Ford. In November 2012, The FWA was the most visited website award program in the history of the internet, with over 170 millions site visits. == Jury == The FWA jury is composed of more than 500 web professionals (200 women + 200 men) from 35 countries. == Awards granted == FWA of the Day (FOTD) : Every day, the FWA jury selects the best project, FWA of the Month (FOTM): Every month, the FWA jury selects the best project, People's Choice Award (PCA) : Every year, a public vote selects the people's favourite project, FWA of the Year (FOTY) : Every year, the FWA jury selects the best project. == Hall Of Fame == The FWA Hall of Fame was established in May 2007 (to celebrate the seventh anniversary of the FWA), as a recognition of web's greatest individuals and companies.
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Vanish (computer science)

Vanish was a project to "give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web." It was led by Roxana Geambasu at the University of Washington. The project proposed to allow a user to enter information to send across the internet, thereby relinquishing control of it. However, the user can include an "expiration date," after which the information is no longer usable by anyone who may have a copy of it, even the creator. The Vanish approach was found to be vulnerable to a Sybil attack and thus insecure by a team called Unvanish from the University of Texas, University of Michigan, and Princeton. == Theory == Vanish acts by automating the encryption of information entered by the user with an encryption key that is unknown to the user. Along with the information the user enters, the user also enters metadata concerning how long the information should remain available. The system then encrypts the information but does not store either the encryption key or the original information. Instead, it breaks up the decryption key into smaller components that are disseminated across distributed hash tables, or DHTs, via the Internet. The DHTs refresh information within their nodes on a set schedule unless configured to make the information persistent. The time delay entered by the user in the metadata controls how long the DHTs should allow the information to persist, but once that time period is over, the DHTs will reuse those nodes, making the information about the decryption stored irretrievable. As long as the decryption key may be reassembled from the DHTs, the information is retrievable. However, once the period entered by the user has lapsed, the information is no longer recoverable, as the user never possessed the decryption key. == Implementation == Vanish currently exists as a Firefox plug-in which allows a user to enter text into either a standard Gmail email or Facebook message and choose to send the message via Vanish. The message is then encrypted and sent via the normal networking pathways through the cloud to the recipient. The recipient must have the same Firefox plug-in to decrypt the message. The plugin accesses BitTorrent DHTs, which have 8-hour lifespans. This means the user may select an expiration date for the message in increments of 8 hours. After the expiration of the user-defined time span, the information in the DHT is overwritten, thereby eliminating the key. While both the user and recipient may have copies of the original encrypted message, the key used to turn it back into plain text is now gone. Although this particular instance of the data has become inaccessible, it's important to note that the information can always be saved by other means before expiration (copied or even via screen shots) and published again.
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Web worker

A web worker, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), is a JavaScript script executed from an HTML page that runs in the background, independently of scripts that may also have been executed from the same HTML page. Web workers are often able to utilize multi-core CPUs more effectively. The W3C and WHATWG envision web workers as long-running scripts that are not interrupted by scripts that respond to clicks or other user interactions. Keeping such workers from being interrupted by user activities should allow Web pages to remain responsive at the same time as they are running long tasks in the background. The web worker specification is part of the HTML Living Standard. == Overview == As envisioned by WHATWG, web workers are relatively heavy-weight and are not intended to be used in large numbers. They are expected to be long-lived, with a high start-up performance cost, and a high per-instance memory cost. Web workers run outside the context of an HTML document's scripts. Consequently, while they do not have access to the DOM, they can facilitate concurrent execution of JavaScript programs. == Features == Web workers interact with the main document via message passing. The following code creates a Worker that will execute the JavaScript in the given file. To send a message to the worker, the postMessage method of the worker object is used as shown below. The onmessage property uses an event handler to retrieve information from a worker. Once a worker is terminated, it goes out of scope and the variable referencing it becomes undefined; at this point a new worker has to be created if needed. == Example == The simplest use of web workers is for performing a computationally expensive task without interrupting the user interface. In this example, the main document spawns a web worker to compute prime numbers, and progressively displays the most recently found prime number. The main page is as follows: The Worker() constructor call creates a web worker and returns a worker object representing that web worker, which is used to communicate with the web worker. That object's onmessage event handler allows the code to receive messages from the web worker. The Web Worker itself is as follows: To send a message back to the page, the postMessage() method is used to post a message when a prime is found. == Support == If the browser supports web workers, a Worker property will be available on the global window object. The Worker property will be undefined if the browser does not support it. The following example code checks for web worker support on a browser Web workers are currently supported by Chrome, Opera, Edge, Internet Explorer (version 10), Mozilla Firefox, and Safari. Mobile Safari for iOS has supported web workers since iOS 5. The Android browser first supported web workers in Android 2.1, but support was removed in Android versions 2.2–4.3 before being restored in Android 4.4.
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Web content development

Web content development is the process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing, and editing information for publication on websites. Website content may consist of prose, graphics, pictures, recordings, movies, or other digital assets that could be distributed by a hypertext transfer protocol server, and viewed by a web browser. == Web developers and content developers == When the World Wide Web began, web developers either developed online content themselves, or modified existing documents and coded them into hypertext markup language (HTML). In time, the field of website development came to encompass many technologies, so it became difficult for website developers to maintain so many different skills. Content developers are specialized website developers who have content generation skills such as graphic design, multimedia development, professional writing, and documentation. They can integrate content into new or existing websites without using information technology skills such as script language programming and database programming. Content developers or technical content developers can also be technical writers who produce technical documentation that helps people understand and use a product or service. This documentation includes online help, manuals, white papers, design specifications, developer guides, deployment guides, release notes, etc. == Search engine optimization == Content developers may also be search engine optimization specialists, or internet marketing professionals. High quality, unique content is what search engines are looking for. Content development specialists, therefore, have a very important role to play in the search engine optimization process. One issue currently plaguing the world of web content development is keyword-stuffed content which are prepared solely for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings. The effect is that content is written to appeal to search engine (algorithms) rather than human readers. Search engine optimization specialists commonly submit content to article directories to build their website's authority on any given topic. Most article directories allow visitors to republish submitted content with the agreement that all links are maintained. This has become a method of search engine optimization for many websites today. If written according to SEO copywriting rules, the submitted content will bring benefits to the publisher (free SEO-friendly content for a webpage) as well as to the author (a hyperlink pointing to his/her website, placed on an SEO-friendly webpage). == New content types == Web content is no longer restricted to text. Search engines now index audio/visual media, including video, images, PDFs, and other elements of a web page. Website owners sometimes use content protection networks to scan for plagiarized content.
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Military communications

Military communications or military signals involve all aspects of communications, or conveyance of information, by armed forces. Examples from Jane's Military Communications include text, audio, facsimile, tactical ground-based communications, naval signalling, terrestrial microwave, tropospheric scatter, satellite communications systems and equipment, surveillance and signal analysis, security, direction finding and jamming. The most urgent purposes are to communicate information to commanders and orders from them. Military communications span from pre-history to the present. The earliest military communications were delivered by runners. Later, communications progressed to visual signals. For example, Naval ships would use flag signaling to communicate from ship to ship. These flags are a uniform set of easily identifiable nautical codes that would convey visual messages and codes between ships and from ship to shore. Then militaries discovered methods to use audible signaling to communicate with each other. This way of communicating was possible because of telegraphs. They are an electronic device that is used by a sender and when the sender presses on the telegraph key, they interrupt the current creating an audible pulse that is heard at the receiving station. The receiver then decodes the pulses to decode the messages. Since then, military communication has evolved and advanced much further. Today, there are many perspectives used to examine how troops around the world communicate. Anthony King states how Military sociologists have attempted to explain how military institutions develop and maintain high levels of social cohesion. == History == In past centuries communicating a message usually required someone to go to the destination, bringing the message. Thus, the term communication often implied the ability to transport people and supplies. A place under siege was one that lost communication in both senses. The association between transport and messaging declined in recent centuries. The first military communications involved the use of runners or the sending and receiving of simple signals (sometimes encoded to be unrecognizable). The first distinctive uses of military communications were called semaphore. Modern units specializing in these tactics are usually designated as signal corps. The Roman system of military communication (cursus publicus or cursus vehicularis) is an early example of this. Later, the terms signals and signaller became words referring to a highly-distinct military occupation dealing with general communications methods (similar to those in civil use) rather than with weapons. Present-day military forces of an informational society conduct intense and complicated communicating activities on a daily basis, using modern telecommunications and computing methods. Only a small portion of these activities are directly related to combat actions. Modern concepts of network-centric warfare (NCW) rely on network-oriented methods of communications and control to make existing forces more effective. == Military communications equipment == Drums, horns, flags, and riders on horseback were some of the early methods the military used to send messages over distances. The advent of distinctive signals led to the formation of the signal corps, a group specialized in the tactics of military communications. The signal corps evolved into a distinctive occupation where the signaller became a highly technical job dealing with all available communications methods including civil ones. In the middle 20th century radio equipment came to dominate the field. Many modern pieces of military communications equipment are built to both encrypt and decode transmissions and survive rough treatment in hostile climates. They use different frequencies to send signals to other radio stations to communicate. Radios have played a major role in military communication. Since they are capable of sending radio waves to transmit voice signals over long distances. This can be helpful for communication on the battlefield since it is a good way to send messages undetected over long distances. Radios are also very reliable because even in harsh weather conditions they are still able to help communicate among the soldiers. Militaries still use radios and continue to improve the technology because of their durability and reliability for military communication. Spelling alphabets such as the NATO phonetic alphabet are used to aid radio communications by reducing ambiguity between letters. Military communications – or "comms" – are activities, equipment, techniques, and tactics used by the military in some of the most hostile areas of the earth and in challenging environments such as battlefields, on land (compare radio in a box), underwater and also in air. Military comms include command, control and communications and intelligence and were known as the C3I model before computers were fully integrated. The U.S. Army expanded the model to C4I when it recognized the vital role played by automated computer equipment to send and receive large, bulky amounts of data. In the modern world, most nations attempt to minimize the risk of war caused by miscommunication or inadequate communication. As a result, military communication is intense and complicated and often motivates the development of advanced technology for remote systems such as satellites. Satellites have been improving and are being used more and more for communication. They are being made to have higher transmission capacity to help with their communication abilities. The military is upgrading satellites to be immune to interference during combat operations. This advancement will establish stable, high-quality information highways for long distance communication. Aircraft are also beneficial for communication, both crewed and uncrewed, as well as computers. Computers and their varied applications have revolutionized military comms. Although military communication is designed for warfare, it also supports intelligence-gathering and communication between adversaries, and thus sometimes prevents war. The six categories of military comms are: alert measurement systems cryptography military radio systems command and control signal corps network-centric warfare The alert measurement systems are various states of alertness or readiness for the armed forces used around the world during a state of war, act of terrorism or a military attack against a state. They are known by different acronyms, such as DEFCON, or defense readiness condition, used by the U.S. Armed Forces. Cryptography is the study of methods of converting messages to a form unreadable except to one who knows how to decrypt them. This ancient military comms art gained new importance with the rise of radio systems whose signals traveled far and were easily intercepted. Cryptographic software is also widely used in civilian commerce. == Commercial refile == In United States military communications systems, commercial refile refers to sending a military message via a commercial communications network. The message may come from a military network, such as a tape relay network, a point-to-point telegraph network, a radio-telegraph network, or the Defense Switched Network. Commercial refiling of a message will usually require a reformatting of the message, particularly the heading.
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Elastix (image registration)

Elastix is an image registration toolbox built upon the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK). It is entirely open-source and provides a wide range of algorithms employed in image registration problems. Its components are designed to be modular to ease a fast and reliable creation of various registration pipelines tailored for case-specific applications. It was first developed by Stefan Klein and Marius Staring under the supervision of Josien P.W. Pluim at Image Sciences Institute (ISI). Its first version was command-line based, allowing the final user to employ scripts to automatically process big data-sets and deploy multiple registration pipelines with few lines of code. Nowadays, to further widen its audience, a version called SimpleElastix is also available, developed by Kasper Marstal, which allows the integration of elastix with high level languages, such as Python, Java, and R. == Image registration fundamentals == Image registration is a well-known technique in digital image processing that searches for the geometric transformation that, applied to a moving image, obtains a one-to-one map with a target image. Generally, the images acquired from different sensors (multimodal), time instants (multitemporal), and points of view (multiview) should be correctly aligned to proceed with further processing and feature extraction. Even though there are a plethora of different approaches to image registration, the majority is composed of the same macro building blocks, namely the transformation, the interpolator, the metric, and the optimizer. Registering two or more images can be framed as an optimization problem that requires multiple iterations to converge to the best solution. Starting from an initial transformation computed from the image moments the optimization process searches for the best transformation parameters based on the value of the selected similarity metric. The figure on the right shows the high-level representation of the registration of two images, where the reference remains constant during the entire process, while the moving one will be transformed according to the transformation parameters. In other words, the registration ends when the similarity metric, which is a mathematical function with a certain number of parameters to be optimized, reaches the optimal value which is highly dependent on the specific application. == Main building blocks == Following the structure of the image registration workflow, the elastix toolbox proposes a modular solution that implements for each of the building blocks different algorithms, highly employed in medical image registration, and helps the final users to build their specific pipeline by selecting the most suitable algorithm for each of the main building blocks. Each block is easily configurable both by selecting pre-defined initialization values or by trying multiple sets of parameters and then choosing the most performing one. The registration is performed on images, and the elastix toolbox supports all the data formats supported by ITK, ranging from JPEG and PNG to medical standard formats such as DICOM and NIFTI. It also stores physical pixel spacing, the origin and the relative position to an external world reference system, when provided in the metadata, to facilitate the registration process, especially in medical field applications. === Transformation === The transformation is an essential building block, since it defines the allowable transformations. In image registration, the main distinction can be done between parallel-to-parallel and parallel-to-non parallel (deformable) line mapping transformations. In the elastix toolbox, the final users can select one transformation or compose more transformations either through addition or via composition. Below are reported the different transformation models in order of increasing flexibility, along with the corresponding elastix class names between brackets. Translation (TranslationTransform) allows only translations Rigid (EulerTransform) expands the translation adding rotations and the object is seen as a rigid body Similarity (SimilarityTransform) expands the rigid transformation by introducing isotropic scaling Affine (AffineTransform) expands the rigid transformation allowing both scaling and shear B-splines (BSplineTransform) is a deformable transformation usually preceded by a rigid or affine one Thin-plate splines (SplineKernelTransform) is a deformable transformation belonging to the class of kernel-based transformations that is a composition of and affine and a non-rigid part === Metric === The similarity metric is the mathematical function whose parameters should be optimized to reach the desired registration, and, during the process, it is computed multiple times. Below are reported the available metrics computed employing the reference and the transformed images and the corresponding elastix class names between brackets. Mean squared difference (AdvancedMeanSquares) to be used for mono-modal applications Normalized correlation coefficient (AdvancedNormalizedCorrelation) to be used for images that have an intensity linear relationship Mutual information (AdvancedMattesMutualInformation) to be used for both mono- and multi-modal applications and optimized to reach better performance compared to the normalized version Normalized mutual information (NormalizedMutualInformation) for both mono- and multi-modal applications Kappa statistic (AdvancedKappaStatistic) to be used only for binary images === Sampler === For the computation of the similarity metrics, it is not always necessary to consider all the voxels and, sometimes, it can be useful to use only a fraction of the voxels of the images, i.e. to reduce the execution time for big input images. Below are reported the available criteria for selecting a fraction of the voxels for the similarity metric computation and the corresponding elastix class names between brackets. Full (Full) to employ all the voxels Grid (Grid) to employ a regular grid defined by the user to downsample the image Random (Random) to randomly select a percentage of voxels defined by the users (all voxels have equal probability to be selected) Random coordinate (RandomCoordinate) like the random criterion, but in this case also off-grid positions can be selected to simplify the optimization process === Interpolator === After the application of the transformation, it may occur that the voxels used for the similarity metric computation are at non-voxel positions, so intensity interpolation should be performed to ensure the correctness of the computed values. Below are reported the implemented interpolators and the corresponding elastix class names between brackets. Nearest neighbor (NearestNeighborInterpolator) exploits little resources, but gives low quality results Linear (LinearInterpolator) is sufficient in general applications N-th order B-spline (BSplineInterpolator) can be used to increase the order N, increasing quality and computation time. N=0 and N=1 indicate the nearest neighbor and linear cases respectively. === Optimizer === The optimizer defines the strategy employed for searching the best transformation parameter to reach the correct registration, and it is commonly an iterative strategy. Below are reported some of the implemented optimization strategies. Gradient descent Robbins-Monro, similar to the gradient descent, but employing an approximation of the cost function derivatives A wider range of optimizers is also available, such as Quasi-Newton or evolutionary strategies. === Other features === The elastix software also offers other features that can be employed to speed up the registration procedure and to provide more advanced algorithms to the end-users. Some examples are the introduction of blur and Gaussian pyramid to reduce data complexity, and multi-image and multi-metric framework to deal with more complex applications. == Applications == Elastix has applications mainly in the medical field, where image registration is fundamental to get comprehensive information regarding the analysed anatomical region. It is widely employed in image-guided surgery, tumour monitoring, and treatment assessment. For example, in radiotherapy planning, image registration allows to correctly deliver the treatment and evaluate the obtained results. Thanks to the wide range of implemented algorithms, the use of the elastix software allows physicians and researchers to test different registration pipelines from the simplest to more complex ones, and to save the best one as a configuration file. This file and the fact that the software is completely open-source makes it easy to reproduce the work, that can help supporting the open science paradigm, and allows fast reuse on different patients data. In image-guided surgery, registration time and accuracy are critical points, considering that, during the registration, the patient is on the operating table, and the imag
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Texas House Bill 20

An Act Relating to censorship of or certain other interference with digital expression, including expression on social media platforms or through electronic mail messages, also known as Texas House Bill 20 (HB20), is a Texas anti-deplatforming law enacted on September 9, 2021. It prohibits large social media platforms from removing, moderating, or labeling posts made by users in the state of Texas based on their "viewpoints", unless considered illegal under federal law or otherwise falling into exempted categories. It also requires them to make various public disclosures relating to their business practices (including the impact of algorithmic and moderation decisions on the content that is delivered to users). The bill is part of a wider array of Republican-backed legislation seeking to prohibit the censorship of political speech, based on allegations that the moderation policies of large social media platforms are not politically neutral. It has been challenged in NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, and is currently the subject of a circuit split between the Fifth Circuit, and a decision by the Eleventh Circuit that struck down a similar bill in the state of Florida. In September 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear NetChoice v. Paxton jointly with NetChoice v. Moody on questions of whether the Florida and Texas state laws are in compliance with the 1st Amendment. == Content == The law applies to "social media platforms" that serve users in the state of Texas, and have more than 50 million monthly active users in the United States. They are defined as any public internet website or application that allows users to "communicate with other users for the primary purpose of posting information, comments, messages, or images", excluding internet service providers, electronic mail, and services where communication features are "incidental to, directly related to, or dependent on" content that is pre-selected by the operator. In the bill, to "censor" is defined as to "block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against" expression. The law prohibits social media platforms from "censoring on the basis of user viewpoint, user expression, or the ability of a user to receive the expression of others", or on the basis of a user's geographic location in Texas. This includes removal or labeling posts with warnings and disclaimers. Social media platforms may only censor content if it is unlawful, they are "specifically authorized" to do so by federal law, based on requests from "an organization with the purpose of preventing the sexual exploitation of children or protecting survivors of sexual abuse from ongoing harassment", or "directly incites" criminal activity or contains threats of violence against persons based on protected categories. It is disputed over whether this provision is actually enforceable, as it may be preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which states that the operators of interactive computer services are not responsible for the actions of their users). Social media platforms must make public disclosures regarding the algorithmic techniques and moderation polices that are used to determine the content provided to users, must publish a compliant acceptable use policy (AUP), and must publish a biannual transparency report containing specific details on all actions made by the service regarding the moderation of users and content. The law also prohibits email providers from "intentionally imped[ing] the transmission of another person's electronic mail message based on the content." == Legislative history == Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill into law on September 9, 2021. Democrat-proposed amendments excluding Holocaust denial, terrorism content, and vaccine misinformation from the bill were rejected. Following a suit by the industry groups Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice, NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, the bill was blocked by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in December 2021, on First Amendment grounds. Texas appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Judges Edith Jones, Andrew Oldham, and Leslie H. Southwick, lifted the injunction on May 11, 2022, but the decision was appealed to the Supreme Court which suspended the bill pending a full review in the Fifth Circuit. On September 16, 2022, the Fifth Circuit reversed the injunction, allowing the bill to take effect; Judge Oldham stated that the bill "chills censorship" and "does not chill speech", and accused the plaintiffs of "attempt[ing] to extract a freewheeling censorship right from the Constitution's free speech guarantee. The Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech." Southwick dissented, stating that "we are in a new arena, a very extensive one, for speakers and for those who would moderate their speech. None of the precedents fit seamlessly." The CCIA and NetChoice requested a stay on the ruling and that the case be taken to the Supreme Court, arguing that the reversal conflicts with an Eleventh Circuit decision in NetChoice v. Moody which struck down a similar anti-moderation bill imposed by the state of Florida. On October 12, 2022, the Fifth Circuit granted the stay.
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End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only the sender and intended recipient can read the messages. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can access the cryptographic keys needed to read or send messages. End-to-end encryption prevents data from being read or secretly modified, except by the sender and intended recipients. In many applications, messages are relayed from a sender to some recipients by a service provider. In an E2EE-enabled service, messages are encrypted on the sender's device such that no third party, including the service provider, has the means to decrypt them. The recipients retrieve encrypted messages and decrypt them independently on their own devices. Since third parties cannot decrypt the data being communicated or stored, services with E2EE are better at protecting user data from data breaches and espionage. Computer security experts, digital freedom organizations, and human rights activists advocate for the use of E2EE due to its security and privacy benefits, including its ability to resist mass surveillance. Popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and Signal use end-to-end encryption for chat messages, with some also supporting E2EE of voice and video calls. As of May 2025, WhatsApp is the most widely used E2EE messaging service, with over 3 billion users. Meanwhile, Signal with an estimated 70 million users, is regarded as the current gold standard in secure messaging by cryptographers, protestors, and journalists. Since end-to-end encrypted services cannot offer decrypted messages in response to government requests, the proliferation of E2EE has been met with controversy. Around the world, governments, law enforcement agencies, and child protection groups have expressed concerns over its impact on criminal investigations. As of 2025, some governments have successfully passed legislation targeting E2EE, such as Australia's Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Act (2018) and the Online Safety Act (2023) in the UK. Other attempts at restricting E2EE include the EARN IT Act in the US and the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation in the EU.[1] Nevertheless, some government bodies such as the UK's Information Commissioner's Office and the US's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have argued for the use of E2EE, with Jeff Greene of the CISA advising that "encryption is your friend" following the discovery of the Salt Typhoon espionage campaign in 2024. == Definitions == End-to-end encryption is a means of ensuring the security of communications in applications like secure messaging. Under E2EE, messages are encrypted on the sender's device such that they can be decoded only by the final recipient's device. In many non-E2EE messaging systems, including email and many chat platforms, messages pass through intermediaries and are stored by a third party service provider, from which they are retrieved by the recipient. Even if messages are encrypted, they are only encrypted 'in transit', and are thus accessible by the service provider. Server-side disk encryption is also distinct from E2EE because it does not prevent the service provider from viewing the information, as they have the encryption keys and can simply decrypt it. The term "end-to-end encryption" originally only meant that the communication is never decrypted during its transport from the sender to the receiver. For example, around 2003, E2EE was proposed as an additional layer of encryption for GSM or TETRA, in addition to the existing radio encryption protecting the communication between the mobile device and the network infrastructure. This has been standardized by SFPG for TETRA. Note that in TETRA, the keys are generated by a Key Management Centre (KMC) or a Key Management Facility (KMF), not by the communicating users. Later, around 2014, the meaning of "end-to-end encryption" started to evolve when WhatsApp encrypted a portion of its network, requiring that not only the communication stays encrypted during transport, but also that the provider of the communication service is not able to decrypt the communications—maliciously or when requested by law enforcement agencies. Similarly, messages must be undecryptable in transit by attackers through man-in-the-middle attacks. This new meaning is now the widely accepted one. == Motivations == The lack of end-to-end encryption can allow service providers to easily provide search and other features, or to scan for illegal and unacceptable content. However, it also means that content can be read by anyone who has access to the data stored by the service provider, by design or via a backdoor. This can be a concern in many cases where privacy is important, such as in governmental and military communications, financial transactions, and when sensitive information such as health and biometric data are sent. If this content were shared without E2EE, a malicious actor or adversarial government could obtain it through unauthorized access or subpoenas targeted at the service provider. E2EE alone does not guarantee privacy or security. For example, the data may be held unencrypted on the user's own device or accessed through their own app if their credentials are compromised. == Modern implementations == === Messaging === In May 2026, Meta ended support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on Instagram, reversing a previous commitment to expand the technology across its messaging services. The company justified the move as a measure to mitigate fraudulent activity and facilitate the detection of harmful content. The decision highlighted a conflict between digital privacy and online safety; while child protection organizations supported the change to better identify predatory behavior, privacy advocates argued that removing E2EE compromises user security. As of 2025, messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp are designed to exclusively use end-to-end encryption. Both Signal and WhatsApp use the Signal Protocol. Other messaging apps and protocols that support end-to-end encryption include Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Telegram, Matrix, and Keybase. Although Telegram supports end-to-end encryption, it has been criticized for not enabling it by default, instead supporting E2EE through opt-in "secret chats". As of 2020, Telegram did not support E2EE for group chats and no E2EE on its desktop clients. In 2022, after controversy over the use of Facebook Messenger messages in an abortion lawsuit in Nebraska, Facebook added support for end-to-end encryption in the Messenger app. Writing for Wired, technologist Albert Fox Cahn criticized Messenger's approach to end-to-end encryption, which required the user to opt into E2EE for each conversation and split the message thread into two chats which were easy for users to confuse. In December 2023, Facebook announced plans to enable end-to-end encryption by default despite pressure from British law enforcement agencies. As of 2016, many server-based communications systems did not include end-to-end encryption. These systems can only guarantee the protection of communications between clients and servers, meaning that users have to trust the third parties who are running the servers with the sensitive content. End-to-end encryption is regarded as safer because it reduces the number of parties who might be able to interfere or break the encryption. In the case of instant messaging, users may use a third-party client or plugin to implement an end-to-end encryption scheme over an otherwise non-E2EE protocol. === Audio and video conferencing === Signal and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption for audio and video calls. Since 2020, Signal has also supported end-to-encrypted video calls. In 2024, Discord added end-to-end encryption for audio and video calls, voice channels, and certain live streams. However, they had no plans to implement E2EE for messages. In 2020, after acquiring Keybase, Zoom announced end-to-end encryption would be limited to paid accounts. Following criticism from human rights advocates, Zoom extended the feature to all users with accounts. In 2021, Zoom settled an $85M class action lawsuit over past misrepresentation about end-to-end encryption. The FTC confirmed Zoom previously retained access to meeting keys. === Other uses === Some encrypted backup and file sharing services provide client-side encryption. Nextcloud and MEGA, offer end-to-end encryption of shared files. The term "end-to-end encryption" is sometimes incorrectly used to describe client-side encryption. Some non-E2EE systems, such as Lavabit and Hushmail, have described themselves as offering "end-to-end" encryption when they did not. == Law enforcement and regulation == In 2022, Facebook Messenger came under scrutiny because the messages between a mother and daughter in Nebraska were used to seek criminal charges in an abortion-rel
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DBOS

DBOS (Formerly Database-Oriented Operating System, now just DBOS) is an open source durable workflow execution software library written for the Python, TypeScript, Java, and Go programming languages. DBOS arose from a joint open source project from MIT and Stanford, after a discussion between Michael Stonebraker and Matei Zaharia on how to scale and improve scheduling and performance of millions of Apache Spark tasks. Today it is a commercial company that offers an open source system to add durable computing to any software, built on concepts derived from the joint research project. == History == === 2020: Academic R&D Project === DBOS originated in 2020 as a joint open source project between MIT, Stanford, and Carnegie Mellon. The project explored the idea of operating system services built atop a distributed database - a database-oriented operating system meant to simplify and improve the scalability, security and resilience of large-scale distributed applications. The basic concept was to run a multi-node multi-core, transactional, highly-available distributed database, such as VoltDB, as the only application for a microkernel, and then to implement scheduling, messaging, file systems and other operating system services on top of the database. The architectural philosophy is described by this quote from the abstract of their initial preprint: All operating system state should be represented uniformly as database tables, and operations on this state should be made via queries from otherwise stateless tasks. This design makes it easy to scale and evolve the OS without whole-system refactoring, inspect and debug system state, upgrade components without downtime, manage decisions using machine learning, and implement sophisticated security features. A prototype was built with competitive performance to existing systems. ==
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Lessac Technologies

Lessac Technologies, Inc. (LTI) is an American firm which develops voice synthesis software, licenses technology and sells synthesized novels as MP3 files. The firm currently has seven patents granted and three more pending for its automated methods of converting digital text into human-sounding speech, more accurately recognizing human speech and outputting the text representing the words and phrases of said speech, along with recognizing the speaker's emotional state. The LTI technology is partly based on the work of the late Arthur Lessac, a Professor of Theater at the State University of New York and the creator of Lessac Kinesensic Training, and LTI has licensed exclusive rights to exploit Arthur Lessac's copyrighted works in the fields of speech synthesis and speech recognition. Based on the view that music is speech and speech is music, Lessac's work and books focused on body and speech energies and how they go together. Arthur Lessac's textual annotation system, which was originally developed to assist actors, singers, and orators in marking up scripts to prepare for performance, is adapted in LTI's speech synthesis system as the basic representation of the speech to be synthesized (Lessemes), in contrast to many other systems which use a phonetic representation. LTI's software has two major components: (1) a linguistic front-end that converts plain text to a sequence of prosodic and phonosensory graphic symbols (Lessemes) based on Arthur Lessac's annotation system, which specify the speech units to be synthesized; (2) a signal-processing back-end that takes the Lessemes as acoustic data and produces human-sounding synthesized speech as output, using unit selection and concatenation. LTI's text-to-speech system came in second in the world-wide Blizzard Challenge 2011 and 2012. The first-place team in 2011 also employed LTI's "front-end" technology, but with its own back-end. The Blizzard Challenge, conducted by the Language Technologies Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, was devised as a way to evaluate speech synthesis techniques by having different research groups build voices from the same voice-actor recordings, and comparing the results through listening tests. LTI was founded in 2000 by H. Donald Wilson (chairman), a lawyer, LexisNexis entrepreneur and business associate of Arthur Lessac; and Gary A. Marple (chief inventor), after Marple suggested that Arthur Lessac's kinesensic voice training might be applicable to computational linguistics. After Wilson's death in 2006, his nephew John Reichenbach became the firm's CEO.
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List of search appliance vendors

A search appliance is a type of computer which is attached to a corporate network for the purpose of indexing the content shared across that network in a way that is similar to a web search engine. It may be made accessible through a public web interface or restricted to users of that network. A search appliance is usually made up of: a gathering component, a standardizing component, a data storage area, a search component, a user interface component, and a management interface component. == Vendors of search appliances == Fabasoft Google InfoLibrarian Search Appliance™ Maxxcat Searchdaimon Thunderstone == Former/defunct vendors of search appliances == Black Tulip Systems Google Search Appliance Index Engines Munax Perfect Search Appliance
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Librem

Librem is a line of computers manufactured by Purism, SPC featuring free (libre) software. The laptop line is designed to protect privacy and freedom by omitting non-free (proprietary) software in their operating system and kernel, avoiding the Intel Active Management Technology, and gradually freeing and securing firmware. Librem laptops feature hardware kill switches for the microphone, webcam, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. == Models == === Laptops === ==== Librem 13, Librem 15 and Librem 14 ==== In 2014, Purism launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply to fund the creation and production of the Librem 15 laptop, conceived as a modern alternative to existing open-source hardware laptops, all of which used older hardware. The 15 in the name refers to its 15-inch screen size. The campaign succeeded after extending the original campaign, and the laptops were shipped to backers. In a second revision of the laptop, hardware kill switches for the camera, microphone, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth were added. After the successful launch of the Librem 15, Purism created another campaign on Crowd Supply for a 13-inch laptop named Librem 13, which also came with hardware kill switches similar to those on the Librem 15v2. The campaign was again successful and the laptops were shipped to customers. Purism announced in December 2016 that it would start shipping from inventory rather than building to order with the new batches of Librem 15 and 13. As of January 2023, Purism has one laptop model in production, the Librem 14. ==== Comparison of laptops ==== === Librem Mini === The Librem Mini is a small form factor desktop computer, which began shipping in June 2020. === Librem 5 === On August 24, 2017, Purism began a crowdfunding campaign for the Librem 5, a smartphone aimed to run 100% free software, which would "[focus] on security by design and privacy protection by default". Purism claimed that the phone would become "the world's first ever IP-native mobile handset, using end-to-end encrypted decentralized communication." Purism cooperated with KDE and GNOME in its development of Librem 5. Security features of the Librem 5 include separation of the CPU from the baseband processor, which, according to Linux Magazine, makes the Librem 5 unique in comparison to other mobile phones. The Librem 5 also features hardware kill switches for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication and the phone's camera, microphone, and baseband processor. The default operating system for the Librem 5 is Purism's PureOS, a Debian derivative. The operating system uses a new user interface named Phosh, based on Wayland, wlroots, GTK and GNOME middleware. It is planned that Phosh/Plasma Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, and postmarketOS can also be installed on the phone. The release of the Librem 5 has been postponed several times. In September 2018, Purism announced that the launch date of Librem 5 would be moved from January to April 2019, because of two hardware bugs and the holiday season in Europe and North America. The Librem 5's DevKits for software developers were shipped in December 2018. The launch date was later postponed to the third quarter because of the necessity of further CPU tests. On September 24, 2019, Purism announced that the first batch of Librem 5 phones had begun shipping. The finished version of the Librem 5, known as "Evergreen", was finally shipped on November 18, 2020. === Librem Server === The Librem server is a rack mounted server, released to the public in December 2019. === Librem Key === Announced on 20 September 2018, the Librem Key is a hardware USB security token with multiple features, including integration with a tamper-evident Heads BIOS, which ensures that the Librem laptop Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) was not maliciously altered since the last laptop launch. The Librem Key also features one-time password storage with 3x HMAC-based One-time Password algorithm (HOTP) (RFC 4226) and 15 x Time-based One-time Password algorithm (TOTP) (RFC 6238) and an integrated password manager (16 entries), 40 kbit/s true random number generator, and a tamper-resistant smart card. The key supports type A USB 2.0, has dimensions of 48 x 19 x 7 mm, and weighs 6 g. == Operating system == Initially planning to preload its Librem laptops with the Trisquel operating system, Purism eventually moved off the Trisquel platform to Debian for the 2.0 release of its PureOS Linux operating system. As an alternative to PureOS, Librem laptops are purchasable with Qubes OS preinstalled. In December 2017, the Free Software Foundation added PureOS to its list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions. == BIOS == In 2015, Purism began research to port the Librem 13 to coreboot but the effort was initially stalled. By the end of the year, a coreboot developer completed an initial port of the Librem 13 and submitted it for review. In December 2016, hardware enablement developer Youness Alaoui joined Purism and was tasked to complete the coreboot port for the original Librem 13 and prepare a port for the second revision of the device. Since summer 2017, new Librem laptops are shipped with coreboot as their standard BIOS, and updates are available for all older models. Purism calls a collection of these six components, involved in the boot process, as PureBoot: Neutralized and disabled Intel Management Engine coreboot A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip Heads, which has tamper-evident features to detect if the BIOS or important boot files have been modified Librem Key, Purism's USB security token Multi-factor authentication that unlocks disk encryption using the Librem Key PureBoot protects the users from various attacks like theft, BIOS malware and kernel rootkits, vulnerabilities and malicious code in the Intel Management Engine, and interdiction.
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