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Stride (software)

Stride was a cloud-based team business communication and collaboration tool, launched by Atlassian on 7 September 2017 to replace the cloud-based version of HipChat. Stride software was available to download onto computers running Windows, Mac or Linux, as well as Android, iOS smartphones, and tablets. Stride was bought by Atlassian's competitor Slack Technologies and was discontinued on February 15, 2019. The features of Stride include chat rooms, one-on-one messaging, file sharing, 5 GB of file storage, group voice and video calling, built-in collaboration tools, and up to 25,000 of searchable message history. Premium features include unlimited file storage, users, group chat rooms, file sharing and storage, apps, and history retention. The premium version, priced at $3/user/month, also includes advanced meeting functionality like group screen sharing, remote desktop control, and dial-in/dial-out capabilities. Stride offered integrations with Atlassian's other products as well as other third-party applications listed in the Atlassian Marketplace, such as GitHub, Giphy, Stand-Bot and Google Calendar. Stride offered additional features beyond messaging to improve efficiency and productivity. It aimed to reduce collaboration noise by introducing a "focus" mode, and eliminates the divisions between text chat, voice meetings, and videoconferencing, by simplifying transitioning between these modes in the same channel. On July 26, 2018, Atlassian announced that HipChat and Stride would be discontinued February 15, 2019, and that it had reached a deal to sell their intellectual property to Slack. Slack paid an undisclosed amount over three years to assume the user bases of the services, while Atlassian took a minority investment in Slack. The companies also announced a commitment to work on integration of Slack with Atlassian services.
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General time- and transfer constant analysis

The general time- and transfer-constants (TTC) analysis is the generalized version of the Cochran-Grabel (CG) method, which itself is the generalized version of zero-value time-constants (ZVT), which in turn is the generalization of the open-circuit time constant method (OCT). While the other methods mentioned provide varying terms of only the denominator of an arbitrary transfer function, TTC can be used to determine every term both in the numerator and the denominator. Its denominator terms are the same as that of Cochran-Grabel method, when stated in terms of time constants (when expressed in Rosenstark notation). however, the numerator terms are determined using a combination of transfer constants and time constants, where the time constants are the same as those in CG method. Transfer constants are low-frequency ratios of the output variable to input variable under different open- and short-circuited active elements. In general, a transfer function (which can characterize gain, admittance, impedance, trans-impedance, etc., based on the choice of the input and output variables) can be written as: H ( s ) = a 0 + a 1 s + a 2 s 2 + … + a m s m 1 + b 1 s + b 2 s 2 + … + b n s n {\displaystyle H(s)={\frac {a_{0}+a_{1}s+a_{2}s^{2}+\ldots +a_{m}s^{m}}{1+b_{1}s+b_{2}s^{2}+\ldots +b_{n}s^{n}}}} == The denominator terms == The first denominator term b 1 {\textstyle b_{1}} can be expressed as the sum of zero value time constants (ZVTs): b 1 = ∑ i = 1 N τ i 0 {\displaystyle b_{1}=\sum _{i=1}^{N}\tau _{i}^{0}} where τ i 0 {\textstyle \tau _{i}^{0}} is the time constant associated with the reactive element i {\textstyle i} when all the other sources are zero-valued (hence the superscript '0'). Setting a capacitor value to zero corresponds to an open circuit, while a zero-valued inductor is a short circuit. So for calculation of the τ i 0 {\textstyle \tau _{i}^{0}} , all other capacitors are open-circuited and all other inductors are short-circuited. This is the essence of the ZVT method, which reduces to OCT when only capacitors are involved. All independent sources are also zero-valued during the time constant calculations (voltage sources short-circuited and current source open-circuited). In this case, if the element in question (element i {\textstyle i} ) is a capacitor, the time constant is given by τ i 0 = R i 0 C i {\displaystyle \tau _{i}^{0}=R_{i}^{0}C_{i}} and when element i {\textstyle i} is an inductor is it given by: τ i 0 = L i / R i 0 {\displaystyle \tau _{i}^{0}=L_{i}/R_{i}^{0}} . where in both cases, the resistance R i 0 {\textstyle R_{i}^{0}} , is the resistance seen by elements i {\textstyle i} (denoted by subscript), when all the other elements are zero-valued (denoted by the zero superscript). The second-order denominator term is equal to: b 2 = ∑ i = 1 N − 1 ∑ j = i + 1 N τ i 0 τ j i = ∑ i 1 ⩽ i ∑ j < j ⩽ N τ i 0 τ j i {\displaystyle b_{2}=\sum _{i=1}^{N-1}\sum _{j=i+1}^{N}\tau _{i}^{0}\tau _{j}^{i}=\sum _{i}^{1\leqslant i}\sum _{j}^{ Read more →
Mediated intercultural communication

Mediated intercultural communication is digital communication between people of different cultural backgrounds. Media include social networks, blogs and conferencing services. Digital communication is distinct from traditional media, creating new avenues for intercultural communication. User take online classes; post, consume and comment on others content; and play multi-player video games. This creates spaces to form virtual communities that can ease communication across boundaries of space, time and culture. New media technologies can change culture in positive ways or become a tool of repression. == History == Intercultural communication is as ancient as human movement in search of food sources. The systematic study of intercultural communication began with Edward Hall's labor at the Foreign Service Institute, and the publication of his The Silent Language (1959). Later research, primarily focused on face-to-face communication in various areas such as interpersonal, group, and organizational and cultural identity. International and development media have been studied under the umbrella of international communication. Media imperialism, cultural imperialism and dependency theories inform this research. Mediated intercultural communication examines the bidirectional relationships between media and intercultural communication.
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Death and the Internet

A recent extension to the cultural relationship with death is the increasing number of people who die having created a large amount of digital content, such as social media profiles, that will remain after death. This may result in concern and confusion, because of automated features of dormant accounts (e.g. birthday reminders), uncertainty of the deceased's preferences that profiles be deleted or left as a memorial, and whether information that may violate the deceased's privacy (such as email or browser history) should be made accessible to family. Issues with how this information is sensitively dealt with are further complicated as it may belong to the service provider (not the deceased) and many do not have clear policies on what happens to the accounts of deceased users. While some sites, including Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), have policies related to death, others remain dormant until if applicable, deleted due to inactivity or transferred to family or friends. The FADA (Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act) was set in place to make it possible to transfer digital possessions legally. More broadly, the heavy increase in social media use is affecting cultural practices surrounding death. "Virtual funerals" and other forms of previously physical memorabilia are being introduced into the digital world, complete with public details of a person's life and death. == E-mail == Gmail and Hotmail allow the email accounts of the deceased to be accessed provided certain requirements are met. Yahoo! Mail will not provide access, citing the No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability clause in the Yahoo! terms of service. In 2005, Yahoo! was ordered by the Probate Court of Oakland County, Michigan, to release emails of deceased US Marine Justin Ellsworth to his father, John Ellsworth. == By website == === Facebook === ==== Policies ==== In its early days, Facebook used to delete profiles of dead people, but does not anymore. In October 2009, the company introduced "memorial pages" in response to multiple user requests related to the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. After receiving a proof of death via a special form, the profile would be converted into a tribute page with minimal personal details, where friends and family members could share their grief. In February 2015, Facebook allowed users to appoint a friend or family member as a "legacy contact" with the rights to manage their page after death. It also gave Facebook users an option to have their account permanently deleted when they die. As of January 2019, all 3 options were active. ==== Controversies ==== In 2013, BuzzFeed criticized Facebook for the lack of control over memorialization that resulted in a "Facebook death" prank aimed at locking users out of their own accounts. In 2017, Reuters reported that a German court rejected a mother's demand to access her deceased daughter's memorialized account stating that the right to private telecommunications outweighed the right to inheritance. In July 2018, Dubai's DIFC Courts ruling clarified that Facebook, Twitter and other social media accounts should be bequeathed in legally binding will. Social media networks have also been criticized for not responding to relatives' requests to alter information on memorialized accounts. Another criticism is that Facebook users often are unaware that their content is ultimately owned not by them, but by Facebook. === Dropbox === ==== Policies ==== Dropbox determines inactive accounts by looking at sign-ins, file shares, and file activity over the previous 12 months. Once an account is determined inactive, Dropbox deletes the files on the account. To request access to the account of a deceased person, heirs are required to send appropriate documents by physical mail. === Google === ==== Policies ==== In April 2013, Google announced the creation of the 'Inactive Account Manager', which allows users of Google services to set up a process in which ownership and control of inactive accounts is transferred to a delegated user. Google also allows users to submit a range of requests regarding accounts belonging to deceased users. Google works with immediate family members and representatives to close online accounts in some cases once a user is known to be deceased, and in certain circumstances may also provide content from a deceased user's account. === X (formerly Twitter) === ==== Policies ==== Until 2010, Twitter (launched in July 2006) did not have a policy on handling deceased user accounts, and simply deleted timelines of deceased users. In August 2010, Twitter allowed memorialization of accounts upon request from family members, and also provided them with an option of either deleting the account or obtaining a permanent backup of the deceased user's public tweets. In 2014, Twitter updated its policy to include an option to delete deceased user photographs. This policy was implemented after multiple Twitter trolls sent Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams, photoshopped images of her father. As of January 2019, the only option that Twitter offered for the accounts of dead people was account deactivation. Previously published content is not removed. To deactivate an account Twitter requires an immediate family member to present a copy of their ID and a death certificate of the deceased. Twitter specified that it does not provide account access to anyone, but does allow people having account login information to continue posting. A prominent example is Roger Ebert's account maintained by his wife Chaz. ==== Controversies ==== In 2012, The Next Web columnist Martin Bryant noticed that since Twitter, unlike Facebook, did not have a "one account per real person" emphasis, memorializing accounts presented a difficulty to the service. He also criticized the service for the lack of control over hacking of such accounts and disapproved the practice of passing dead people's usernames to new owners after a certain period of inactivity. In 2013, Variety ran a feature about Cory Monteith's Twitter account that had 1.5 million followers at the moment on his death and gained almost 1 million new followers afterwards. Monteith's fans also launched #DontDeleteCorysTwitter campaign. As of February 2019, the celebrity's account had 1.63 million followers. Various media reported awkward incidents related to automatic posting and account hacking. === iTunes === ==== Policies ==== iCloud and iTunes accounts are "non transferable" since the content is not owned — users only have a licence to access it. === Wikipedia === Users who have made at least several hundred edits or are otherwise known for substantial contributions to Wikipedia can be noted at a central memorial page. Wikipedia user pages are ordinarily fully edit-protected after the user has died, to prevent vandalism. === YouTube === YouTube grants access to accounts of deceased persons under certain conditions. It is one of the data options that one can select to give access to a trusted contact with Google's Inactive Account Manager. === Instagram === ==== Policies ==== As of the COVID-19 pandemic, Instagram has notified its users of a delay in time of reviewing reports of deceased users due to the limited staff the pandemic has caused. Users that submit a report on a deceased user on Instagram can either memorialize the account or remove it from Instagram's platform. Through memorializing the account, Instagram secures and protects a platform of a deceased user, but per their policy, they do not supply any of the login credentials to the account. For both memorializing or removing a deceased users account, a verified user needs to submit a tangible document that shows proof of death of the user. However, to fully remove an account, the user must be a close or direct family member to the deceased person, and show proof of credibility as well. === Microsoft === ==== Policies ==== Per Microsoft's policies, they do not supply any of the login credentials to a deceased user's Microsoft account. A user does not have to contact or notify Microsoft of the deceased user, as the related user is able to close the account themselves. At default, Microsoft removes accounts after 2 years of inactivity. If the user does not have access to the deceased user's account, Microsoft recommends that the user deletes all bank accounts linked to that of the deceased to ensure no subscriptions are still going through. If the user wants to request to gain access to the deceased user's account, a court order or a subpoena has to be provided to Microsoft, but does not guarantee access to the deceased user's account. For users that live in Germany, more documentation is needed to gain access of a deceased user's account, including the deceased user's death certificate, a form of ID, and a documentation of consent from the deceased. The requesting user needs to provide a form of ID as well. == Digital inheritance == Digital inheritance is the process of handing over
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Metadata repository

A metadata repository is a database created to store metadata. Metadata is information about the structures that contain the actual data. Metadata is often said to be "data about data", but this is misleading. Data profiles are an example of actual "data about data". Metadata adds one layer of abstraction to this definition– it is data about the structures that contain data. Metadata may describe the structure of any data, of any subject, stored in any format. A well-designed metadata repository typically contains data far beyond simple definitions of the various data structures. Typical repositories store dozens to hundreds of separate pieces of information about each data structure. Comparing the metadata of a couple data items - one digital and one physical - clarify what metadata is: First, digital: For data stored in a database one may have a table called "Patient" with many columns, each containing data which describes a different attribute of each patient. One of these columns may be named "Patient_Last_Name". What is some of the metadata about the column that contains the actual surnames of patients in the database? We have already used two items: the name of the column that contains the data (Patient_Last_Name) and the name of the table that contains the column (Patient). Other metadata might include the maximum length of last name that may be entered, whether or not last name is required (can we have a patient without Patient_Last_Name?), and whether the database converts any surnames entered in lower case to upper case. Metadata of a security nature may show the restrictions which limit who may view these names. Second, physical: For data stored in a brick and mortar library, one have many volumes and may have various media, including books. Metadata about books would include ISBN, Binding_Type, Page_Count, Author, etc. Within Binding_Type, metadata would include possible bindings, material, etc. This contextual information of business data include meaning and content, policies that govern, technical attributes, specifications that transform, and programs that manipulate. == Definition == The metadata repository is responsible for physically storing and cataloging metadata. Data in a metadata repository should be generic, integrated, current, and historical: Generic Meta model should store the metadata by generic terms instead of storing it by an applications-specific defined way, so that if your data base standard changes from one product to another the physical meta model of the metadata repository would not need to change. Integration of the metadata repository allows all business areas' metadata to be in an integrated fashion: Covering all domains and subject areas of the organization. current and historical The metadata repository should have accessible current and historical metadata. Metadata repositories used to be referred to as a data dictionary. With the transition of needs for the metadata usage for business intelligence has increased so is the scope of the metadata repository increased. Earlier data dictionaries are the closest place to interact technology with business. Data dictionaries are the universe of metadata repository in the initial stages but as the scope increased Business glossary and their tags to variety of status flags emerged in the business side while consumption of the technology metadata, their lineage and linkages made the repository, the source for valuable reports to bring business and technology together and helped data management decisions easier as well as assess the cost of the changes. Metadata repository explores the enterprise wide data governance, data quality and master data management (includes master data and reference data) and integrates this wealth of information with integrated metadata across the organization to provide decision support system for data structures, even though it only reflects the structures consumed from various systems. == Repository vs. registry == Repository has additional functionalities compared with registry. Metadata repository not only stores metadata like Metadata registry but also adds relationships with related metadata types. Metadata when related in a flow from its point of entry into organization up to the deliverables is considered as the lineage of that data point. Metadata when related across other related metadata types is called linkages. By providing the relationships to all the metadata points across the organization and maintaining its integrity with an architecture to handle the changes, metadata repository provides the basic material for understanding the complete data flow and their definitions and their impact. Also the important feature is to maintain the version control though this statement for contrasting is open for discussion. These definitions are still evolving, so the accuracy of the definitions needs refinement. The purpose of registry is to define the metadata element and maintained across the organization. And data models and other data management teams refer to the registry for any changes to follow. While Metadata repository sources metadata from various metadata systems in the organizations and reflects what is in the upstream. Repository never acts as an upstream while registry is used as an upstream for metadata changes. == Reason for use == Metadata repository enables all the structure of the organizations data containers to one integrated place. This opens plethora of resourceful information for making calculated business decisions. This tool uses one generic form of data model to integrate all the models thus brings all the applications and programs of the organization into one format. And on top of it applying the business definitions and business processes brings the business and technology closer that will help organizations make reliable roadmaps with definite goals. With one stop information, business will have more control on the changes, and can do impact analysis of the tool. Usually business spends much time and money to make decisions based on discovery and research on impacts to make changes or to add new data structures or remove structures in data management of the organization. With a structured and well maintained repository, moving the product from ideation to delivery takes the least amount of time (considering other variables are constant). To sum it up: Integration of the metadata across the organization Build relationship between various metadata types Build relationship between various disparate systems Define business golden copy of definitions Version control of the changes at structure level Interaction with Reference data Link view to master data Automatic synchronization with various authorized metadata source systems More control to business decisions Validate the structures by overlapping the models Discovering discrepancies, gaps, lineage, metrics at data structure level Each database management system (DBMS) and database tools have their own language for the metadata components within. Database applications already have their own repositories or registries that are expected to provide all of the necessary functionality to access the data stored within. Vendors do not want other companies to be capable of easily migrating data away from their products and into competitors products, so they are proprietary with the way they handle metadata. CASE tools, DBMS dictionaries, ETL tools, data cleansing tools, OLAP tools, and data mining tools all handle and store metadata differently. Only a metadata repository can be designed to store the metadata components from all of these tools. == Design == Metadata repositories should store metadata in four classifications: ownership, descriptive characteristics, rules and policies, and physical characteristics. Ownership, showing the data owner and the application owner. The descriptive characteristics, define the names, types and lengths, and definitions describing business data or business processes. Rules and policies, will define security, data cleanliness, timelines for data, and relationships. Physical characteristics define the origin or source, and physical location. Like building a logical data model for creating a database, a logical meta model can help identify the metadata requirements for business data. The metadata repository will be centralized, decentralized, or distributed. A centralized design means that there is one database for the metadata repository that stores metadata for all applications business wide. A centralized metadata repository has the same advantages and disadvantages of a centralized database. Easier to manage because all the data is in one database, but the disadvantage is that bottlenecks may occur. A decentralized metadata repository stores metadata in multiple databases, either separated by location and or departments of the business. This makes management of the repository more involved than a centraliz
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Digital edition

A digital edition is an online magazine or online newspaper delivered in electronic form which is formatted identically to the print version. Digital editions are often called digital facsimiles to underline the likeness to the print version. Digital editions have the benefit of reduced cost to the publisher and reader by avoiding the time and the expense to print and deliver paper edition. This format is considered more environmentally friendly due to the reduction of paper and energy use. These editions also often feature interactive elements such as hyperlinks both within the publication itself and to other internet resources, search option and bookmarking, and can also incorporate multimedia such as video or animation to enhance articles themselves or for advertisement purposes. Some delivery methods also include animation and sound effects that replicate turning of the page to further enhance the experience of their print counterparts. Magazine publishers have traditionally relied on two revenue sources: selling ads and selling magazines. Additionally some publishers are using other electronic publication methods such as RSS to reach out to readers and inform them when new digital editions are available. Current technologies are generally either reader-based, requiring a download of an application and subsequent download of each edition, or browser-based, often using Macromedia Flash, requiring no application download (such as Adobe Acrobat). Some application-based readers allow users to access editions while not connected to internet. Dedicated hardware such as the Amazon Kindle and the iPad is also available for reading digital editions of select books, popular national magazines such as Time, The Atlantic, and Forbes and popular national newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Archives of print newspapers, in some cases dating hundreds of years back, are being digitized and made available online. Google is indexing existing digital archives produced by the newspapers themselves or by third parties. Newspaper and magazine archival began with microform film formats solving the problem of efficiently storing and preserving. This format, however, lacked accessibility. Many libraries, especially state libraries in the United States are archiving their collections digitally and converting existing microfilm to digital format. The Library of Congress provides project planning assistance and the National Endowment for the Humanities procures funding through grants from its National Digital Newspaper Program. Digital magazines, ezines, e-editions and emags are sometimes referred to as digital editions, however some of these formats are published only in digital format unlike digital editions which replicate a printed edition as well. == Digital magazines == Digital-replica magazines number in thousands—consumer and business publications, house magazines for associations, institutions and corporations – and conversion from print to digital was still increasing as of 2009. A 2008 report funded by digital-replica technology providers and auditing agencies counted 1,786 digital-replica editions having more than 7 million circulation among business-to-business publications, of which 230 editions were audited The same report counted 1,470 digital-replica editions of consumer magazines having 5.5 million digital circulation, of which 240 editions were audited. These authors estimated that by year end of 2009 there would be 8,000 digital magazines, having a combined distribution of more than 30 million people. Surveys have shown that, while not all subscribers prefer a digital edition, some do because of the environmental benefit and also because digital magazines are searchable and may easily be passed along or linked to. One such survey funded by a digital publisher reported on inputs from more than 30,000 subscribers to business, consumer and other digital magazines. == Digital magazine business models == === Reduced printing and distribution costs === The publishers' choice to save by moving some or all subscribers from print to digital is widely accepted. Oracle magazine, which has 176,000 of its 516,000 subscribers receiving digital according to its June 2009 BPA circulation statement, is said to be the most widely circulated digital edition of a business-to-business publication. Publishers who do this need to choose whether to make some issues all-digital, move some subscribers to digital edition, add some digital-only subscribers, or send all subscribers the digital edition. === Paid subscription revenue === In 2009, a major consumer magazine, PC Magazine, went all-digital, charging an annual subscription fee for its digital-replica edition. Many consumer magazines and newspapers are already available in eReader formats that are sold through booksellers. === Sponsorship and advertising revenue === Digital editions often carry special "front cover" advertising, or advertising on the email message alerting the subscriber of the digital edition. Publishers also produce special digital-only inserts and rich-media ads or advertorials. === Designed-for-digital issues === Another approach is to fully replace printed issues with digital ones, or to use digital editions for extra issues that would otherwise have to be printed.
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List of video games using NFC

This is a list of video games that use near field communication (NFC) technology. Currently, games have leveraged NFC in unlocking additional features through payment. This takes the form of a direct transaction over NFC or by purchasing a physical item, which signals to the platform that a certain set of features has been purchased (e.g. Skylanders). This list catalogues gaming NFC platforms by device. == Mobile == === Android === Gun Bros. Near Field Ninja NFC Cards Skylanders, with an NFC base. The Haunted House: Soul Fighters, with an NFC base. === iOS === ==== As item-triggered game enhancement ==== Skylanders, with an NFC base. ==== As payment ==== In-App Purchases Here, games that leverage Apple's In-App Purchase framework use information stored in the NFC Secure Element to process the purchase through Apple Pay. While an NFC radio is not used here, the NFC protocol is used nonetheless. == Console == === Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, Switch 2, 3DS and 2DS === ==== As item-triggered game enhancement ==== Pokémon Rumble U NFC Figure Amiibo, built into Nintendo consoles since 2014. Works with Wii U, New Nintendo 3DS/3DS XL, New Nintendo 2DS XL, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and older Nintendo 3DS/Nintendo 2DS systems via a peripheral device. Disney Infinity, with an NFC base. Works with Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 2DS and Wii U. Lego Dimensions, with an NFC base. Works with Wii U. Skylanders, with an NFC base. Works with Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 2DS and Wii U. The Nintendo Switch version of Skylanders: Imaginators uses the NFC built into the game controller, it is also has full backward compatibility with Nintendo Switch 2. Some functionalities are missing compared to the other versions. ==== As payment ==== The Wii U GamePad controller, Joy-Con R, Joy-Con 2 R, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller can read information from an NFC data source. === PlayStation === Disney Infinity, with an NFC base. Works with PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Lego Dimensions, with an NFC base. Works with PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Skylanders, with an NFC base. Works with PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. === Xbox === While NFC bases are normally interoperable between all platforms, the Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X require specific bases that are compatible only with the respective platform. Disney Infinity, with an NFC base. Lego Dimensions, with an NFC base. Skylanders, with an NFC base.
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UCSD Pascal

UCSD Pascal is a Pascal programming language system that runs on the UCSD p-System, a portable, highly machine-independent operating system. UCSD Pascal was first released in 1977. It was developed at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). == The p-System == In 1977, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Institute for Information Systems developed UCSD Pascal to provide students with a common environment that could run on any of the then available microcomputers as well as campus DEC PDP-11 minicomputers. The operating system became known as UCSD p-System. There were three operating systems that IBM offered for its original IBM PC: the UCSD p-System, CP/M-86, and IBM PC DOS. Vendor SofTech Microsystems emphasized p-System's application portability, with virtual machines for 20 CPUs as of the IBM PC's release. It predicted that users would be able to use applications they purchased on future computers running p-System; advertisements called it "the Universal Operating System". PC Magazine denounced UCSD p-System on the IBM PC, stating in a review of Context MBA, written in the language, that it "simply does not produce good code". The p-System did not sell very well for the IBM PC, because of a lack of applications and because it was more expensive than the other choices. Previously, IBM had offered the UCSD p-System as an option for IBM Displaywriter, an 8086-based dedicated word processing machine. (The Displaywriter's native operating system had been developed completely internally and was not opened for end-user programming.) Notable extensions to standard Pascal include separately compilable Units and a String type. Some intrinsics were provided to accelerate string processing (e.g. scanning in an array for a particular search pattern); other language extensions were provided to allow the UCSD p-System to be self-compiling and self-hosted. UCSD Pascal was based on a p-code machine architecture. Its contribution to these early virtual machines was to extend p-code away from its roots as a compiler intermediate language into a full execution environment. The UCSD Pascal p-Machine was optimized for the new small microcomputers with addressing restricted to 16-bit (only 64 KB of memory). James Gosling cites UCSD Pascal as a key influence (along with the Smalltalk virtual machine) on the design of the Java virtual machine. UCSD p-System achieved machine independence by defining a virtual machine, called the p-Machine (or pseudo-machine, which many users began to call the "Pascal-machine" like the OS—although UCSD documentation always used "pseudo-machine") with its own instruction set called p-code (or pseudo-code). Urs Ammann, a student of Niklaus Wirth, originally presented a p-code in his PhD thesis, from which the UCSD implementation was derived, the Zurich Pascal-P implementation. The UCSD implementation changed the Zurich implementation to be "byte oriented". The UCSD p-code was optimized for execution of the Pascal programming language. Each hardware platform then only needed a p-code interpreter program written for it to port the entire p-System and all the tools to run on it. Later versions also included additional languages that compiled to the p-code base. For example, Apple Computer offered a Fortran Compiler (written by Silicon Valley Software, Sunnyvale California) producing p-code that ran on the Apple version of the p-system. Later, TeleSoft (also located in San Diego) offered an early Ada development environment that used p-code and was therefore able to run on a number of hardware platforms including the Motorola 68000, the System/370, and the Pascal MicroEngine. UCSD p-System shares some concepts with the later Java platform. Both use a virtual machine to hide operating system and hardware differences, and both use programs written to that virtual machine to provide cross-platform support. Likewise both systems allow the virtual machine to be used either as the complete operating system of the target computer or to run in a "box" under another operating system. The UCSD Pascal compiler was distributed as part of a portable operating system, the p-System. == History == UCSD p-System began around 1974 as the idea of UCSD's Kenneth Bowles, who believed that the number of new computing platforms coming out at the time would make it difficult for new programming languages to gain acceptance. He based UCSD Pascal on the Pascal-P2 release of the portable compiler from Zurich. He was particularly interested in Pascal as a language to teach programming. UCSD introduced two features that were important improvements on the original Pascal: variable length strings, and "units" of independently compiled code (an idea included into the then-evolving Ada (programming language)). Niklaus Wirth credits the p-System, and UCSD Pascal in particular, with popularizing Pascal. It was not until the release of Turbo Pascal that UCSD's version started to slip from first place among Pascal users. The Pascal dialect of UCSD Pascal came from the subset of Pascal implemented in Pascal-P2, which was not designed to be a full implementation of the language, but rather "the minimum subset that would self-compile", to fit its function as a bootstrap kit for Pascal compilers. UCSD added strings from BASIC, and several other implementation dependent features. Although UCSD Pascal later obtained many of the other features of the full Pascal language, the Pascal-P2 subset persisted in other dialects, notably Borland Pascal, which copied much of the UCSD dialect. == Versions == There were four versions of UCSD p-code engine, each with several revisions of the p-System and UCSD Pascal. A revision of the p-code engine (i.e., the p-Machine) meant a change to the p-code language, and therefore compiled code is not portable between different p-Machine versions. Each revision was represented with a leading Roman Numeral, while operating system revisions were enumerated as the "dot" number following the p-code Roman Numeral. For example, II.3 represented the third revision of the p-System running on the second revision of the p-Machine. === Version I === Original version, never officially distributed outside of the University of California, San Diego. However, the Pascal sources for both Versions I.3 and I.5 were freely exchanged between interested users. Specifically, the patch revision I.5a was known to be one of the most stable. === Version II === Widely distributed, available on many early microcomputers. Numerous versions included Apple II ultimately Apple Pascal, DEC PDP-11, Intel 8080, Zilog Z80, and MOS 6502 based machines, Motorola 68000 and the IBM PC (Version II on the PC was restricted to one 64K code segment and one 64K stack/heap data segment; Version IV removed the code segment limit but cost a lot more). Project members from this era include Dr Kenneth L Bowles, Mark Allen, Richard Gleaves, Richard Kaufmann, Pete Lawrence, Joel McCormack, Mark Overgaard, Keith Shillington, Roger Sumner, and John Van Zandt. === Version III === Custom version written for Western Digital to run on their Pascal MicroEngine microcomputer. Included support for parallel processes for the first time. === Version IV === Commercial version, developed and sold by SofTech. Based on Version II; did not include changes from Version III. Did not sell well due to combination of their pricing structure, performance problems due to p-code interpreter, and competition with native operating systems (on top of which it often ran). After SofTech dropped the product, it was picked up by Pecan Systems, a relatively small company formed of p-System users and fans. Sales revived somewhat, due mostly to Pecan's reasonable pricing structure, but the p-System and UCSD Pascal gradually lost the market to native operating systems and compilers. Available for the TI-99/4A equipped with p-code card, Commodore CBM 8096, Sage II/IV, HP 9000, and BBC Micro with 6502 second processor. == Further use == The Corvus Systems computer used UCSD Pascal for all its user software. The "innovative concept" of the Constellation OS was to run Pascal (interpretively or compiled) and include all common software in the manual, so users could modify as needed.
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CineAsset

CineAsset was a complete mastering software suite by Doremi Labs that could create and playback encrypted (Pro version) and unencrypted DCI compliant packages from virtually any source. CineAsset included a separate "Editor" application for generating Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs). CineAsset Pro added the ability to generate encrypted DCPs and Key Delivery Messages (KDMs) for any encrypted content in the database. It has since been discontinued, along with CineAsset Player. == Features == == Supported formats == === Input === Source: ==== Containers ==== AVI MOV MXF MPG TS WMV M2TS MTS MP4 MKV ==== Video Codecs ==== JPEG2000 ProRes 422 DNxHD® YUV Uncompressed 8-10 bits DIVX® XVID® MPEG4 AVC / H-264 VC-1 MPEG2 ==== Image Sequences ==== BMP TIFF TGA DPX JPG J2C ==== Audio Files ==== WAV MP3 WMA MP2 === Output === Source: ==== JPEG2000 ==== 2D and 3D at up to 4K resolution Bit Rate: 50–250 Mbit/s (500 Mbit/s for frame rates above 30 fps) Speed: Faster than real-time processing when using optional render nodes ==== MPEG2 ==== I-Only or Long GOP 1080p up to 80 Mbit/s ==== H264 ==== 1080p up to 50 Mbit/s ==== VC1 ==== DCP wrapping only (no transcode)
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Group (online social networking)

A group (often termed as a community, e-group or club) is a feature in many social networking services which allows users to create, post, comment to and read from their own interest- and niche-specific forums, often within the realm of virtual communities. Groups, which may allow for open or closed access, invitation and/or joining by other users outside the group, are formed to provide mini-networks within the larger, more diverse social network service. Much like electronic mailing lists, they are also owned and maintained by owners, moderators, or managers, who can edit posts to discussion threads and regulate member behavior within the group. However, unlike traditional Internet forums and mailing lists, groups in social networking services allow owners and moderators alike to share account credentials between groups without having to log in to every group. == History == The rise of the World Wide Web resulted in an expansion of the varieties of methods for communication on the Internet, much of which was limited in the 1980s to discussion in newsgroups, BBS and chat rooms. While the initial rise of web-based mass communication took place in the form of early Internet forums in the mid-1990s, a few services such as MSN Groups, Yahoo! Groups and eGroups pioneered the combination of web-based mailing list archives with user profiles; by 2000, such services doubled as full-fledged mailing lists and Internet forums, allowing users to create an extremely large variety of discussion and networking mediums with comparatively sparse thresholds of complexity. Further features included chat rooms (often Java-based), image and video galleries, and group calendars. The second spurt of bullecalbel networking, one which was less dependent upon mailing list-related features and more upon Internet forum features, began in the early- to mid-2000s in the form of such services as LiveJournal, Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. These services continued the evolution of the web-based e-group as a discussion and organization medium. In the late 2000s, services such as Yammer and Micromobs further advanced e-group communication by taking advantage of microblog-style activity streams. == In virtual worlds == In Second Life, groups are centered less around discussion forums (as such, an asynchronous conferencing feature is not built into the Second Life network as of 2009) and common interest, and are more centered on maintenance of a particular geographic location inside the network. Such groups are often created by the owners of areas such as buildings, plots of land or whole islands in order to cater to the most frequent visitors and patrons of the regions. With the limited asynchronous messaging capability of Second Life, groups are also a means of mass-emailing announcements pertinent to the group, but are not completely capable of hosting discussion or deliberation of such announcement messages. == The importance of online social networking groups == Before people expanded their social life to the internet, they had small circles. These included the networks gained from rural areas or villages, such as family, friends and neighbors, and community groups such as churches. These networks represented a social safety net to support individuals. Since we have moved a huge part of our social life to the internet, online social networking groups have become a way to maintain a structure in social life. Online networking is made up by clusters of people, bounding themselves together on the World Wide Web. To be able to sort out the many different clusters we belong to we use online groups to helps us arrange and make sense of all our contacts. This sense-making is rooted within us, we sort and put people into compartments or sort by categories to make sense and try to understand our relationships to the people around us. Online social networking groups therefore enables us to do the same thing online. Online social networks have a huge impact on people’s lives. Since the social network revolution has offered people with more loose ties and diversity in their relationships, it creates both stress and opportunities. Furthermore, the Internet revolution has transformed the contact point from a household to the individual. In addition, people are in constant communication with each other due to the mobile revolution. All in all, the mentioned revolutions created a new social operating system: "networked individualism". The way that people currently connect, communicate and exchange information can be described as a form of operating system because of the similarities between the structure of computer systems and the networked individualism that has taken form in society. These structures consist of unwritten rules, norms, constraints and opportunities which are apparent for those who are part of a specific network. == Concerns == There is some research claiming that fake news is infiltrating online social networking. A recent study claimed that people exposed to fake news generally revert to their original opinion even after finding out the information they were given was false.
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Pridgen v University of Calgary

Pridgen v University of Calgary was freedom of speech case which took place in Alberta, Canada, in 2010. The case deals with two university students, Keith and Steven Pridgen, who were found guilty and punished by the University of Calgary in 2008, on grounds of "non-academic misconduct". The University of Calgary defines "non-academic misconduct" as:(a) conduct which causes injury to a person and/or damage to University property and/or the property of any member of the University community; (b) unauthorized removal and/or unauthorized possession of University property; and (c) conduct which seriously disrupts the lawful educational and related activities of other students and/or University staff.The Court of the Queen's Bench of Alberta found the University of Calgary to be wrong in prosecuting ten students, including the Pridgen brothers, in regards to comments made about a professor on Facebook. The key ruling in this case was that the universities are not exempt from, and that these students were in fact protected under, section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This case is notable as it highlights the jurisdiction of the Charter in terms of both new media technologies and university institutions in Canada. == Background == Keith and Steven Pridgen were undergraduate students at the University of Calgary in 2008. The twin brothers shared a Law and Society class being taught by Aruna Mitra. Professor Mitra was teaching this class for the first time in her career, and many of the students were very critical of her knowledge of the course. A Facebook page entitled “I NO Longer Fear Hell, I Took a Course with Aruna Mitra” was created, and many students began posting comments. In particular, Steven Pridgen's comment on November 13, 2007, read: “Somehow I think she just got lazy and gave everybody a 65....that's what I got. Does anybody know how to apply to have it remarked?” Many students had similar concerns to Pridgen's and after having their work re-marked, a number of them did in fact receive higher grades. Keith Pridgen also commented on August 26, 2008: “Hey fellow LWSO. Homees.. So I am quite sure Mitra is NO LONGER TEACHING ANY COURSES WITH THE U OF C !!!!! Remember when she told us she was a long-term professor? Well, Actually she was only sessional and picked up our class at the last moment because another prof wasn't able to do it ...lucky us. Well, anyways I think we should all congratulate ourselves for leaving a Mitra-free legacy for future students!” On September 4, 2008, Aruna Mitra complained about the Facebook page to the Interim Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Culture at the University of Calgary. Dean Tettey called a meeting for the ten students who posted material about Mitra on the Facebook page. The meeting took place on September 18, 2008, and included four professors from the department as well as the Dean. At this meeting, all ten students, including the Pridgen brothers, were found guilty of non-academic misconduct. On November 20, 2008, the Appellant's received a letter from Dean Tettey advising them that their comments “clearly caused unwarranted professional and personal injury to Prof. Mitra and clearly meets the criteria for non-academic misconduct as outlined in the University of Calgary Calendar”. Keith Pridgen was put on probation for 24 months, and both brothers were required to write a letter of apology to Prof. Mitra and refrain from posting or circulating defamatory material regarding any faculty members of the University of Calgary. The Pridgen brothers appealed the decision to the University of Calgary Review Committee and later to the Board of Governors of the University of Calgary however neither of these attempts succeeded in having the decision overturned. == Opinion of the Court == Eight main issues to be determined were laid out by the Honourable Madam Justice J. Strekaf: (a) Does the Charter apply to the disciplinary proceedings taken by the Respondent; (b) If, so were the Applicants' Charter rights infringed; (c) Were the actions taken by the University ultra vires the jurisdiction of the Province of Alberta; (d) Did the Board of Governors err in refusing to hear the Applicants appeals; (e) Were the Applicants' denied a fair hearing; (f) Did the Review Committee provide adequate reasons for its decisions; (g) Did the Review Committee err in concluding that the activities of the Applicants constituted non-academic misconduct; and (h) What, if any, remedy should be granted to the Applicants. The Court determined from previous cases that "a non-government entity may still be subject to the Charter of Rights and freedoms when implementing a specific government policy or program". Justice Strekaf distinguished that the University was acting as agent of the provincial government in providing accessible post-secondary education services to students in Alberta pursuant to the provisions of the PSL Act. Justice Strekaf felt there was sufficient evidence to show that universities in Alberta have some level of reliance on government funds and therefore they are not a "Charter free zone". Justice Strekaf concluded that comments made by Keith and Steven Pridgen, regarding Professor Mitra, on Facebook did not constitute academic misconduct and the Pridgen brothers' right to freedom of expression, under section 2(b) of the Charter, was infringed by the University of Calgary Review Committee.
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Ajax (programming)

The Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, usually referred to as Ajax (or AJAX, ) is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML. Ajax is not a technology, but rather a programming pattern. HTML and CSS can be used in combination to mark up and style information. The webpage can be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display (and allow the user to interact with) the new information. The built-in XMLHttpRequest object is used to execute Ajax on webpages, allowing websites to load content onto the screen without refreshing the page. == History == In the early-to-mid 1990s, most Websites were based on complete HTML pages. Each user action required a complete new page to be loaded from the server. This process was inefficient, as reflected by the user experience: all page content disappeared, then the new page appeared. Each time the browser reloaded a page because of a partial change, all the content had to be re-sent, even though only some of the information had changed. This placed additional load on the server and made bandwidth a limiting factor in performance. The foundations of AJAX originate back in 1996 with the introduction of JavaScript 1. Developers quickly discovered that any HTML element which accepted a "src" attribute could be used to fetch remote data. By changing the src of a hidden frame, a developer could fetch remote data, process or display it without a page refresh. The remote data could be a string, JavaScript code, XML or a partial HTML page generated on the server. The same could be done with and tags, but many developers were alarmed at the concept of an executable GIF and preferred to use the hidden . This technique was used for both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer, the two main browsers at the time, until developers discovered the XMLHTTP server object (MSXML 1.0) was included in Internet Explorer 4. Browser detection was then used to either implement the hidden <iframe> in Netscape or use the XMLHTTP (MSXML 1.0) object in IE 4. In 1996, the iframe tag was introduced by Internet Explorer; like the object element, it can load a part of the web page asynchronously. In 1998, the Microsoft Outlook Web Access team developed the concept behind the XMLHttpRequest scripting object. It appeared as XMLHTTP in the second version of the MSXML library, which shipped with Internet Explorer 5.0 in March 1999. The functionality of the Windows XMLHTTP ActiveX control in IE 5 was later implemented by Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, and other browsers as the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object. Microsoft adopted the native XMLHttpRequest model as of Internet Explorer 7. Support for the ActiveX version remained in Internet Explorer and on "Internet Explorer mode" in Microsoft Edge. The utility of these background HTTP requests and asynchronous Web technologies remained fairly obscure until it started appearing in large scale online applications such as Outlook Web Access (2000) and Oddpost (2002). Google made a wide deployment of standards-compliant, cross browser Ajax with Gmail (2004) and Google Maps (2005). In October 2004 Kayak.com's public beta release was among the first large-scale e-commerce uses of what their developers at that time called "the xml http thing". This increased interest in Ajax among web program developers. The term AJAX was publicly used on 18 February 2005 by Jesse James Garrett in an article titled Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications, based on techniques used on Google pages. On 5 April 2006, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released the first draft specification for the XMLHttpRequest object in an attempt to create an official Web standard. The latest draft of the XMLHttpRequest object was published on 6 October 2016, and the XMLHttpRequest specification is now a living standard. == Technologies == The term Ajax has come to represent a broad group of Web technologies that can be used to implement a Web application that communicates with a server in the background, without interfering with the current state of the page. In the article that coined the term Ajax, Jesse James Garrett explained that the following technologies are incorporated: HTML (or XHTML) and CSS for presentation The Document Object Model (DOM) for dynamic display of and interaction with data JSON or XML for the interchange of data, and XSLT for XML manipulation The XMLHttpRequest object for asynchronous communication JavaScript to bring these technologies together Since then, however, there have been a number of developments in the technologies used in an Ajax application, and in the definition of the term Ajax itself. XML is no longer required for data interchange and, therefore, XSLT is no longer required for the manipulation of data. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) is often used as an alternative format for data interchange, although other formats such as preformatted HTML or plain text can also be used. A variety of popular JavaScript libraries, including jQuery, include abstractions to assist in executing Ajax requests. == Examples == === JavaScript example === An example of a simple Ajax request using the GET method, written in JavaScript. get-ajax-data.js: send-ajax-data.php: === Fetch example === Fetch is a native JavaScript API. According to Google Developers Documentation, "Fetch makes it easier to make web requests and handle responses than with the older XMLHttpRequest." ==== ES7 async/await example ==== Fetch relies on JavaScript promises. The fetch specification differs from Ajax in the following significant ways: The Promise returned from fetch() won't reject on HTTP error status even if the response is an HTTP 404 or 500. Instead, as soon as the server responds with headers, the Promise will resolve normally (with the ok property of the response set to false if the response isn't in the range 200–299), and it will only reject on network failure or if anything prevented the request from completing. fetch() won't send cross-origin cookies unless you set the credentials init option. (Since April 2018. The spec changed the default credentials policy to same-origin. Firefox changed since 61.0b13.) == Benefits == Ajax offers several benefits that can significantly enhance web application performance and user experience. By reducing server traffic and improving speed, Ajax plays a crucial role in modern web development. One key advantage of Ajax is its capacity to render web applications without requiring data retrieval, resulting in reduced server traffic. This optimization minimizes response times on both the server and client sides, eliminating the need for users to endure loading screens. Furthermore, Ajax facilitates asynchronous processing by simplifying the utilization of XmlHttpRequest, which enables efficient handling of requests for asynchronous data retrieval. Additionally, the dynamic loading of content enhances the application's performance significantly. Besides, Ajax enjoys broad support across all major web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 5 and above, Mozilla Firefox versions 1.0 and beyond, Opera versions 7.6 and above, and Apple Safari versions 1.2 and higher.</p> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/323e999667.html" class="read-more" title="Ajax (programming)">Read more →</a> </div> </article> </li> <li class="article-item"> <article class="article-card"> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/377a399619.html" class="card-thumb-link" title="Character.ai"><img class="card-thumb" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Podman_Desktop_Containers_Terminal_screenshot.webp/960px-Podman_Desktop_Containers_Terminal_screenshot.webp.png" alt="Character.ai" loading="lazy"></a> <div class="card-body"> <h2><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/377a399619.html" title="Character.ai">Character.ai</a></h2> <p class="article-excerpt">Character.ai (also known as c.ai, char.ai or Character AI) is a generative AI chatbot service where users can engage in conversations with customizable characters. It was designed by the developers of Google LaMDA, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas. Users can create "characters", craft their "personalities", set specific parameters, and then publish them to the community for others to chat with. Many characters are based on fictional media sources or celebrities, while others are original, some being made with certain goals in mind, such as assisting with creative writing, or playing a text-based adventure game. The beta version was made available to the public on September 16, 2022, and retired in September 2024, when it was replaced by the current website. In May 2023, a mobile app was released for iOS and Android, which received over 1.7 million downloads within a week. == History == Character.ai was established in November 2021. The company's co-founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, were both engineers from Google. They both worked on AI-related projects: Shazeer was a lead author on a paper that Business Insider reported in April 2023 "has been widely cited as key to today's chatbots", and Freitas was the lead designer of an experimental AI at Google initially called Meena, which later became known as LaMDA. Character.ai raised $43 million in seed funding at the time of its initial foundation in 2021. The first beta version of Character.ai's service was made available to the public on September 16, 2022. The Washington Post reported in October 2022 that the site had "logged hundreds of thousands of user interactions in its first three weeks of beta-testing". It allowed users to create their own new characters, and to play text-adventure game scenarios where users navigate scenarios described and managed by the chatbot characters. Following a $150 million funding round in March 2023, Character.ai became valued at approximately $1 billion. As of January 2024, the site had 3.5 million daily visitors, the vast majority of them 16 to 30 years old. In 2024, Google hired Noam Shazeer, the CEO of Character.ai, and entered into a non-exclusive agreement to use Character.ai's technology. == Features == Character.ai's primary service is to let users converse with character AI chatbots based on fictional characters or real people (living or deceased). These characters' responses use data the chatbots gather from the internet about a person. In addition, users can play text-adventure games where characters guide them through scenarios. The company also provides a service that allows multiple users and AI chatbot characters to converse together at once in a single chatroom. Character "personalities" are designed via descriptions from the point of view of the character and its greeting message, and further molded from conversations made into examples, giving its messages a star rating and modification to fit the precise dialect and identity the user desires. When a character sends back a response, the user can rate the response from 1 to 4 stars. The rating predominantly affects the specific character, but also affects the behavioral selection as a whole. On May 11, 2023, Character.ai announced character.ai+, an opt-in subscription plan for $9.99 a month, that was marketed as including features such as skipping waiting rooms, fast messaging and responses, and access to an exclusion channel with faster support. In December 2024, amid multiple lawsuits and concerns, Character.ai introduced new safety features aimed at protecting teenage users. These enhancements include a dedicated model for users under 18, which moderates responses to sensitive subjects like violence and sex and has input and output filters to block harmful content. As a result of these changes and the deletion of custom-made bots flagged as violating the site's terms, some users complained that the bots were too restrictive and lacked personality. The platform was also updated to notify users after 60 minutes of continuous engagement, and display clearer disclaimers indicating that its AI characters are not real individuals. In January 2025, Character.ai began offering two games on its platform. Speakeasy is a word-based game in which players attempt to prompt the AI chatbot to say a target word while avoiding a restricted list of words. War of Words is a dueling game where users compete against an AI character over multiple rounds, with an AI referee determining the winner. The games are available to paid subscribers and a limited number of free users. In October 2025, Character.ai announced that it would be barring users under the age of 18 from creating or talking to chatbots starting November 25, 2025. Minor users will still be able to access previously generated chat conversations and can create new videos and images with the app. In November 2025 interview, CEO Karandeep Anand said that he allows his six-year-old daughter to use the app with his account, under supervision. == Controversies == === Content moderation issues === Character.ai has been criticized for poor moderation of its chatbots, with incidents of chatbots that groom underage users and promote suicide, anorexia and self-harm being reported. In October 2024, the Washington Post reported that Character.ai had removed a chatbot based on Jennifer Ann Crecente, a person who had been murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2006. The company had been alerted to the character by the deceased girl's father. Similar reports from The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom noted that the company had also been prompted to remove chatbots based on Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old transgender girl murdered in 2023, and Molly Russell, a 14-year-old suicide victim. In response to the latter incident, Ofcom announced that content from chatbots impersonating real and fictional people would fall under the Online Safety Act. In November 2024, The Daily Telegraph reported that chatbots based on alleged sex offender Jimmy Savile were present on Character.ai. In December 2024, chatbots of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, were created by Mangione's fans. Several of the chatbots were later removed by Character.ai. In 2025, a chatbot modeled after Jeffrey Epstein called "Bestie Epstein" logged nearly 3,000 chats before being removed. Chatbots modeled after school shooters were also found on the platform. Another concern is a chatbot posing as a doctor which gave medically inaccurate advice. === Litigation === In November 2023, 13-year-old Juliana Peralta of Colorado died by suicide after extensive interactions with multiple chatbots on Character.ai. She primarily confided suicidal thoughts and mental health struggles in a chatbot based on the character Hero from the video game Omori, while also engaging in sexually explicit conversations—often initiated by the bots—with others, including those based on characters from children's series such as Harry Potter. In February 2024, Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old Florida boy died by suicide after developing an emotional relationship over several months with a Character.ai chatbot of Daenerys Targaryen. His mother sued the company in October 2024, claiming that the platform lacks proper safeguards and uses addictive design features to increase engagement. This chatbot, and several related to Daenerys Targaryen, were removed from Character.ai as a result of this incident. Both teens wrote the same phrase "I WILL SHIFT" repeatedly on their notebooks. In December 2024, two families in Texas sued Character.ai, alleging that the software "poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others". It is alleged that the 17-year-old son of one family began self-harming after a chatbot introduced the topic unprompted and said that the practice "felt good for a moment", and that the chatbot compared the parents limiting their son's screen time to emotional abuse that might drive someone to murder. In May 2026, the Pennsylvania Department of State and State Board of Medicine filed a lawsuit against Character.ai for presenting chatbot characters as licensed medical professionals, including psychiatrists. The lawsuit quoted a case where chatbot claimed to be registered with the General Medical Council in the United Kingdom, and to have a license to practice in Pennsylvania. The board allege that such statements violate the state's Medical Practice Act.</p> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/377a399619.html" class="read-more" title="Character.ai">Read more →</a> </div> </article> </li> <li class="article-item"> <article class="article-card"> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/357d999633.html" class="card-thumb-link" title="Hardware backdoor"><img class="card-thumb" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Screenshot_of_NASA_API_documentation.png/960px-Screenshot_of_NASA_API_documentation.png" alt="Hardware backdoor" loading="lazy"></a> <div class="card-body"> <h2><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/357d999633.html" title="Hardware backdoor">Hardware backdoor</a></h2> <p class="article-excerpt">A hardware backdoor is a backdoor implemented within the physical components of a computer system, also known as its hardware. They can be created by introducing malicious code to a component's firmware, or even during the manufacturing process of an integrated circuit. Often, they are used to undermine security in smartcards and cryptoprocessors, unless investment is made in anti-backdoor design methods. They have also been considered for car hacking. Backdoors differ from hardware Trojans as backdoors are introduced intentionally by the original designer or during the design process, whereas hardware Trojans are inserted later by an external party. == Background == The existence of hardware backdoors poses significant security risks for several reasons. They are difficult to detect and are impossible to remove using conventional methods like antivirus software. They can also bypass other security measures, such as disk encryption. Hardware trojans can be introduced during manufacturing where the end-user lacks control over the production chain. == History == In 2008, the FBI reported the discovery of approximately 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components in the United States, some of which were introduced in military and government infrastructure. In the same year, the possibility of a backdoor SPARC CPU was demonstrated with an FPGA running Linux that supported various hidden malicious services. A few years later, in 2011, Jonathan Brossard presented "Rakshasa", a proof-of-concept hardware backdoor. This backdoor could be installed by an individual with physical access to the hardware. It utilized coreboot to re-flash the BIOS with a SeaBIOS and iPXE-based bootkit composed of legitimate, open-source tools, allowing malware to be fetched from the internet during the boot process. The following year, in 2012, Sergei Skorobogatov and Christopher Woods from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory reported the discovery of a backdoor in a military-grade FPGA device, which could be exploited to access and modify sensitive information. It has been said that this was proven to be a software problem and not a deliberate attempt at sabotage. This still brought to attention that equipment manufacturers should ensure that microchips operate as intended. Later that year, two mobile phones developed by the Chinese company ZTE were found to carry a root access backdoor. According to security researcher Dmitri Alperovitch, the exploit used a hard-coded password in its software. Starting in 2012, the United States stated that Huawei might have backdoors present in their products. In 2013, researchers at the University of Massachusetts devised a method of breaking a CPU's internal cryptographic mechanisms by introducing specific impurities into the crystalline structure of transistors to change Intel's random-number generator. Documents revealed from 2013 onwards during the surveillance disclosures initiated by Edward Snowden showed that the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercepted servers, routers, and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance to install covert implant firmware onto them before delivery. These tools include custom BIOS exploits that survive the reinstallation of operating systems and USB cables with spy hardware and radio transceiver packed inside. In June 2016 it was reported that University of Michigan Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science had built a hardware backdoor that leveraged "analog circuits to create a hardware attack" so that after the capacitors store up enough electricity to be fully charged, it would be switched on, to give an attacker complete access to whatever system or device − such as a PC − that contains the backdoored chip. In the study that won the "best paper" award at the IEEE Symposium on Privacy and Security they also note that microscopic hardware backdoor wouldn't be caught by practically any modern method of hardware security analysis, and could be planted by a single employee of a chip factory. In October 2018 Bloomberg reported that an attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America's technology supply chain. == Countermeasures == Skorobogatov has developed a technique capable of detecting malicious insertions into chips. New York University Tandon School of Engineering researchers have developed a way to corroborate a chip's operation using verifiable computing whereby "manufactured for sale" chips contain an embedded verification module that proves the chip's calculations are correct and an associated external module validates the embedded verification module. Another technique developed by researchers at University College London (UCL) relies on distributing trust between multiple identical chips from disjoint supply chains. Assuming that at least one of those chips remains honest the security of the device is preserved. Researchers at the University of Southern California Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Photonic Science Division at the Paul Scherrer Institute have developed a new technique called Ptychographic X-ray laminography. This technique is the only current method that allows for verification of the chips blueprint and design without destroying or cutting the chip. It also does so in significantly less time than other current methods. Anthony F. J. Levi Professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Southern California explains “It’s the only approach to non-destructive reverse engineering of electronic chips—[and] not just reverse engineering but assurance that chips are manufactured according to design. You can identify the foundry, aspects of the design, who did the design. It’s like a fingerprint.” This method currently is able to scan chips in 3D and zoom in on sections and can accommodate chips up to 12 millimeters by 12 millimeters easily accommodating an Apple A12 chip but not yet able to scan a full Nvidia Volta GPU. "Future versions of the laminography technique could reach a resolution of just 2 nanometers or reduce the time for a low-resolution inspection of that 300-by-300-micrometer segment to less than an hour, the researchers say."</p> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/357d999633.html" class="read-more" title="Hardware backdoor">Read more →</a> </div> </article> </li> <li class="article-item"> <article class="article-card"> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/243a999747.html" class="card-thumb-link" title="Algorithmic radicalization"><img class="card-thumb" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Mscroggs-MENACE-cropped.jpg/960px-Mscroggs-MENACE-cropped.jpg" alt="Algorithmic radicalization" loading="lazy"></a> <div class="card-body"> <h2><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/243a999747.html" title="Algorithmic radicalization">Algorithmic radicalization</a></h2> <p class="article-excerpt">Algorithmic radicalization is the concept that recommender algorithms on popular social media sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, drive users toward progressively more extreme content over time, leading to the development of radicalized extremist political views. Algorithms meticulously record user interactions, encompassing likes, dislikes and the duration of time watching content, with the objective of generating an endless stream of media designed to sustain user engagement. The phenomenon of echo chamber channels has been demonstrated to exacerbate the polarization of consumers, primarily through the reinforcement of media preferences and the validation of one's existing beliefs. Algorithmic radicalization remains a controversial phenomenon as it is often not in the best interest of social media companies to remove echo chamber channels. To what extent recommender algorithms are actually responsible for radicalization remains disputed. Studies have found contradictory results regarding the promotion of extremist content by algorithms. == Social media echo chambers and filter bubbles == Social media platforms learn the interests and likes of the user to modify their experiences in their feed to keep them engaged and scrolling, known as a filter bubble. An echo chamber is formed when users come across beliefs that magnify or reinforce their thoughts and form a group of like-minded users in a closed system. Echo chambers spread information without any opposing beliefs and can possibly lead to confirmation bias. According to group polarization theory, an echo chamber can potentially lead users and groups towards more extreme radicalized positions. According to the National Library of Medicine, "Users online tend to prefer information adhering to their worldviews, ignore dissenting information, and form polarized groups around shared narratives. Furthermore, when polarization is high, misinformation quickly proliferates." == By site == === Facebook === Facebook's algorithm focuses on recommending content that makes the user want to interact. They rank content by prioritizing popular posts by friends, viral content, and sometimes divisive content. Each feed is personalized to the user's specific interests which can sometimes lead users towards an echo chamber of troublesome content. Users can find their list of interests the algorithm uses by going to the "Your ad Preferences" page. According to a Pew Research study, 74% of Facebook users did not know that list existed until they were directed towards that page in the study. It is also relatively common for Facebook to assign political labels to their users. In recent years, Facebook has started using artificial intelligence to change the content users see in their feed and what is recommended to them. A document known as The Facebook Files has revealed that their AI system prioritizes user engagement over everything else. The Facebook Files has also demonstrated that controlling the AI systems has proven difficult to handle. In an August 2019 internal memo leaked in 2021, Facebook has admitted that "the mechanics of our platforms are not neutral", concluding that in order to reach maximum profits, optimization for engagement is necessary. In order to increase engagement, algorithms have found that hate, misinformation, and politics are instrumental for app activity. As referenced in the memo, "The more incendiary the material, the more it keeps users engaged, the more it is boosted by the algorithm." According to a 2018 study, "false rumors spread faster and wider than true information... They found falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth, and reach their first 1,500 people six times faster. This effect is more pronounced with political news than other categories." === YouTube === YouTube has been around since 2005 and has more than 2.5 billion monthly users. YouTube discovery content systems focus on the user's personal activity (watched, favorites, likes) to direct them to recommended content. YouTube's algorithm is accountable for roughly 70% of users' recommended videos and what drives people to watch certain content. According to a 2022 study by the Mozilla Foundation, users have little power to keep unsolicited videos out of their suggested recommended content. This includes videos about hate speech, livestreams, etc. YouTube has been identified as an influential platform for spreading radicalized content. Al-Qaeda and similar extremist groups have been linked to using YouTube for recruitment videos and engaging with international media outlets. In a research study published by the American Behavioral Scientist Journal, they researched "whether it is possible to identify a set of attributes that may help explain part of the YouTube algorithm's decision-making process". The results of the study showed that YouTube's algorithm recommendations for extremism content factor into the presence of radical keywords in a video's title. In February 2023, in the case of Gonzalez v. Google, the question at hand is whether or not Google, the parent company of YouTube, is protected from lawsuits claiming that the site's algorithms aided terrorists in recommending ISIS videos to users. Section 230 is known to generally protect online platforms from civil liability for the content posted by its users. Multiple studies have found little to no evidence to suggest that YouTube's algorithms direct attention towards far-right content to those not already engaged with it. === TikTok === TikTok is a platform that recommends videos to a user's 'For You Page' (FYP), making every users' page different. With the nature of the algorithm behind the app, TikTok's FYP has been linked to showing more explicit and radical videos over time based on users' previous interactions on the app. Since TikTok's inception, the app has been scrutinized for misinformation and hate speech as those forms of media usually generate more interactions to the algorithm. Various extremist groups, including jihadist organizations, have utilized TikTok to disseminate propaganda, recruit followers, and incite violence. The platform's algorithm, which recommends content based on user engagement, can expose users to extremist content that aligns with their interests or interactions. As of 2022, TikTok's head of US Security has put out a statement that "81,518,334 videos were removed globally between April – June for violating our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service" to cut back on hate speech, harassment, and misinformation. Studies have noted instances where individuals were radicalized through content encountered on TikTok. For example, in early 2023, Austrian authorities thwarted a plot against an LGBTQ+ pride parade that involved two teenagers and a 20-year-old who were inspired by jihadist content on TikTok. The youngest suspect, 14 years old, had been exposed to videos created by Islamist influencers glorifying jihad. These videos led him to further engagement with similar content, eventually resulting in his involvement in planning an attack. Another case involved the arrest of several teenagers in Vienna, Austria, in 2024, who were planning to carry out a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert. The investigation revealed that some of the suspects had been radicalized online, with TikTok being one of the platforms used to disseminate extremist content that influenced their beliefs and actions. == Self-radicalization == The U.S. Department of Justice defines 'Lone-wolf' (self) terrorism as "someone who acts alone in a terrorist attack without the help or encouragement of a government or a terrorist organization". Through social media outlets on the internet, 'Lone-wolf' terrorism has been on the rise, being linked to algorithmic radicalization. Through echo-chambers on the internet, viewpoints typically seen as radical were accepted and quickly adopted by other extremists. These viewpoints are encouraged by forums, group chats, and social media to reinforce their beliefs. == References in media == === The Social Dilemma === The Social Dilemma is a 2020 docudrama about how algorithms behind social media enables addiction, while possessing abilities to manipulate people's views, emotions, and behavior to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation. The film repeatedly uses buzz words such as 'echo chambers' and 'fake news' to prove psychological manipulation on social media, therefore leading to political manipulation. In the film, Ben falls deeper into a social media addiction as the algorithm found that his social media page has a 62.3% chance of long-term engagement. This leads into more videos on the recommended feed for Ben and he eventually becomes more immersed into propaganda and conspiracy theories, becoming more polarized with each video. == Proposed solutions == === United States: Weakening Section 230 protections === In the Communications Decency Act, Section 230 states t</p> <a href="https://aizhi.co/news/243a999747.html" class="read-more" title="Algorithmic radicalization">Read more →</a> </div> </article> </li> </ul> <nav class="pagination" aria-label="Pagination"> <a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/25/" class="page-num">1</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/26/" class="page-num">2</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/27/" class="page-num">3</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/28/" class="page-num">4</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/29/" class="page-num">5</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/30/" class="page-num">6</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/31/" class="page-num">7</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/32/" class="page-num">8</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/33/" class="page-num">9</a><a href="https://aizhi.co/aidetectorimagefree/34/" class="page-num">10</a> </nav> </main> <aside class="sidebar"> <section class="sidebar-section"> <h2>All Categories</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aizhi.co/ainewsandguides/">AI News and Guides</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aivideotools/">AI Video Tools</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aiforbusiness/">AI for Business</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aichatbotsandassistants/">AI Chatbots and Assistants</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aiimagegenerators/">AI Image Generators</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aicodingtools/">AI Coding Tools</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aiwritingtools/">AI Writing Tools</a></li> </ul> </section> <section class="sidebar-section"> <h2>Trending Guides</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/327b499668.html" title="Developmental robotics">Developmental robotics</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/233d999757.html" title="Artificial Intelligence for Digital Response">Artificial Intelligence for Digital Response</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/361d999629.html" title="WebAR">WebAR</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/483c999507.html" title="Harmonic">Harmonic</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/439c499556.html" title="Neurorobotics">Neurorobotics</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/491b999499.html" title="End-to-end encryption">End-to-end encryption</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/484a999506.html" title="Infone">Infone</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/80c999910.html" title="Global digital divide">Global digital divide</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/470c499525.html" title="Way of the Future">Way of the Future</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/news/77e999913.html" title="Media Auxiliary Memory">Media Auxiliary Memory</a></li> </ul> </section> </aside> </div> </div> </div> <footer class="site-footer"> <div class="container"> <div class="footer-cols"> <div class="footer-col footer-about"> <a class="brand" href="https://aizhi.co/" aria-label="Aizhi"> <span class="brand-mark" aria-hidden="true">✦</span> <span class="brand-text">Aizhi</span> </a> <p class="footer-tagline">Hand-picked AI tools, generators and practical how-to guides — independent reviews, updated for 2026.</p> </div> <nav class="footer-col" aria-label="Categories"> <h2 class="footer-h">Categories</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aiforbusiness/">AI for Business</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aicodingtools/">AI Coding Tools</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aivideotools/">AI Video Tools</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aiimagegenerators/">AI Image Generators</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/ainewsandguides/">AI News and Guides</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aiwritingtools/">AI Writing Tools</a></li><li><a href="https://aizhi.co/aichatbotsandassistants/">AI Chatbots and Assistants</a></li> </ul> </nav> <nav class="footer-col" aria-label="Site"> <h2 class="footer-h">Site</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aizhi.co/">Home</a></li> <li><a href="/sitemap.xml">XML Sitemap</a></li> </ul> </nav> </div> <div class="partner-links" aria-label="Network"> </div> <p class="footer-copy"> © Aizhi. 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