AI Grammar Solver

AI Grammar Solver — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Shopify

    Shopify

    Shopify Inc., stylized as shopify, is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario that operates a platform for retail point-of-sale systems. The company has over 5 million customers and processed US$292.3 billion in transactions in 2024, of which 57% was in the United States. Major customers include Tesla, LVMH, Nestlé, PepsiCo, AB InBev, Kraft Heinz, Lindt, Whole Foods Market, Red Bull, and Hyatt. The company's software has been praised for its ease of use and reasonable fee structure. It has been described as the "go-to e-commerce platform for startups". However, the company has faced criticism for allegedly inflating their sales data and for associating with controversial sellers. == History == === 2006: Founding === Shopify was founded in 2006 by friends Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake after launching Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment, in 2004. Dissatisfied with the existing e-commerce products on the market, Lütke, a computer programmer by trade, instead built his own. Lütke used the open source web application framework Ruby on Rails to build Snowdevil's online store and launched it after two months of development. The Snowdevil founders launched the platform as Shopify in June 2006. Shopify created an open-source template language called Liquid, which is written in Ruby and has been used since 2006. In June 2009, Shopify launched an application programming interface (API) platform and App Store. The API allows developers to create applications for Shopify online stores and then sell them on the Shopify App Store. === 2010s === In January 2010, Shopify started its Build-A-Business competition, in which participants create a business using its commerce platform. The winners of the competition received cash prizes and mentorship from entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, Eric Ries and others. In April of that year, Shopify launched a free mobile app on the Apple App Store. The app allows Shopify store owners to view and manage their stores from iOS mobile devices. In December 2010, Shopify raised $7 million from a series A round from Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, and Felicis Ventures at a $20 million pre-money valuation. At that time, the company had annualized transaction value of $132 million. In October 2011, it raised $15 million in a Series B round. In August 2013, Shopify launched Shopify Payments in partnership with Stripe. Shopify Payments allows merchants to accept payments without requiring a third-party payment gateway. The company also announced the launch of a point of sale system to enable in-person sales in addition to online. The company received $100 million in Series C funding in December 2013. Shopify earned $105 million in revenue in 2014, twice as much as it raised the previous year. In February 2014, Shopify released "Shopify Plus" for large e-commerce businesses seeking access to additional features and support. Shopify went public via an initial public offering on May 21, 2015 raising more than $131 million. In September 2015, Amazon.com closed its Amazon Webstore service for merchants and selected Shopify as the preferred migration provider; In April 2016, Shopify announced Shopify Capital, a cash advance product. Shopify Capital was initially piloted to merchants within the US and allowed merchants to receive an advance on future earnings processed through its payment gateway. Since its launch in 2016, Shopify Capital has provided more than $5.1 billion in funding to Shopify merchants, with a maximum advance of $2 million. On June 7, 2016, Shopify launched its Shopify Plus Partners Program, to help agencies connect with evolving businesses in ecommerce space. On October 3, 2016, Shopify acquired Boltmade. In November 2016, Shopify partnered with Paystack which allowed Nigerian online retailers to accept payments from customers around the world. On November 22, 2016, Shopify launched Frenzy, a mobile app that improves flash sales. In January 2017, Shopify announced integration with Amazon that would allow merchants to sell on Amazon from their Shopify stores. In April 2017, Shopify introduced its Chip & Swipe Reader, a Bluetooth enabled debit and credit card reader for brick and mortar retail purchases. The company has since released additional technology for brick and mortar retailers, including a point-of-sale system with a Dock and Retail Stand similar to that offered by Square, and a tappable chip card reader. Shopify announced a one-click accelerated checkout feature called Shopify Pay in April 2017 as an exclusive feature for merchants using Shopify Payments as their payment processor. Customers can save their shipping and payment information for future purchases from all participating Shopify stores. In November 2017 Shopify announced Arrive, a mobile application to help customers track packages from both Shopify merchants and other e-commerce websites. In September 2018, Shopify announced plans to expand its office space in Toronto's King West neighborhood in 2022 as part of "The Well" complex, jointly owned by Allied Properties REIT and RioCan REIT. In October 2018, Shopify opened its first flagship, a physical space for business owners in Los Angeles. The space offered educational classes, coworking space, a "genius bar" for companies that use Shopify software, and workshops. Online cannabis sales in Ontario, Canada, used Shopify's software when the drug was legalized in October 2018. Shopify's software is also used for in-person cannabis sales in Ontario since becoming legal in 2019. In January 2019, Shopify announced the launch of Shopify Studios, a full-service television and film content and production house. On March 22, 2019, Shopify and email marketing platform Mailchimp ended an integration agreement over disputes involving customer privacy and data collection. In April 2019, Shopify announced an integration with Snapchat to allow Shopify merchants to buy and manage Snapchat Story ads directly on the Shopify platform. The company had previously secured similar integration partnerships with Facebook and Google. On August 14, 2019, Shopify launched Shopify Chat, a new native chat function that allows merchants to have real-time conversations with customers visiting Shopify stores online. === 2020s === In January 2020, the company announced plans to hire in Vancouver, Canada. Additionally, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to lifting stock prices. On February 21, 2020, Shopify announced plans to join the Diem Association, known as Libra Association at the time. Also that month, Shopify Pay was rebranded as Shop Pay. In April, Arrive was rebranded as Shop, combining both customer-facing features under a single brand. In May, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Shopify announced it would shift most of its global workforce to permanent remote work. It was reported that Shopify's valuation would likely rise on the back of options it had in the company Affirm that was expecting to go public shortly. In November 2020, Shopify announced a partnership with Alipay to support merchants with cross-border payments. Shopify also provided the opportunity for users to connect Alibaba and AliExpress to Shopify through a Alibaba Dropshipping app that could be purchased through the Shopify App Store. Multiple applications launched between 2021 and 2024 allowed customers to connect their Shopify store to their Alibaba account and then import and publish your products. The integration automatically syncs inventory and orders between both platforms so that Alibaba vendors can ship directly to dropshipping customers.As a result of Affirm's January 13, 2021 IPO, Shopify's 8% stake in Affirm was worth $2 billion. About half of Shopify's C-level executives left the company in early 2021. On June 29, 2021, Shopify removed the 20% revenue share for app developers that make less than US$1 million per year. On January 18, 2022, Shopify announced a partnership with JD.com to let U.S. merchants expand their operations in China, listing their products on JD's cross-border e-commerce platform JD Worldwide. On March 22, 2022, Shopify introduced Linkpop, a product to create a branded, social marketplace through which merchants can advertise and market their products via links to be added on social media channels. The following month, Shopify, Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms, McKinsey & Company, and Stripe, Inc. announced a $925 million advance market commitment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from companies that are developing CDR technology over the next 9 years. In June 2022, Shopify partnered with Twitter. As a part of the deal, Twitter announced that it would launch a sales channel app for all of Shopify's U.S. merchants through its app store. Shopify also partnered with PayPal to offer Shopify Payments to merchants in France. On July 26, 2022, Lütke announced immediate layoffs totalling roughly 10 percent of its workforce. In

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  • IRows

    IRows

    iRows was a web-based spreadsheet in beta with a GUI similar to the traditional desktop-based spreadsheet applications, such as Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice.org. It was shut down on December 31, 2006, after it was announced that its two founders had been hired by Google. iRows used Ajax and XML. It was described as an example of a Web 2.0 system. iRows supported conventional spreadsheet features functions, value formatting and charts and added web oriented spreadsheet capabilities like collaboration (multiple people using a shared spreadsheet, sending a spreadsheet as a link instead of an attachment and ability to publish spreadsheets on other web pages (e.g. blogs).

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  • MySocialCloud

    MySocialCloud

    MySocialCloud is a cloud-based bookmark vault and password website that allows users to log into all of their online accounts from a single, secure website. The company's investors include Sir Richard Branson, Insight Venture Partners’ Jerry Murdock, and PhotoBucket founder Alex Welch. The company and its founders have been featured in TechCrunch and The Huffington Post. == History == MySocialCloud was co-founded by Scott Ferreira, Stacey Ferreira, and Shiv Prakash in 2011. The idea for a one-stop password storage and login tool came when a computer crash left Scott without documents he used to store access information to his online data. In 2013, the siblings sold MySocialCloud to Reputation.com. == Services == MySocialCloud is cloud-based, and the platform lets users securely store passwords and automatically log into several social media websites simultaneously. The website auto-populates password fields, letting the user log into all of the sites at the push of a button. The service also provides users with security updates for the websites they have included in their profile, and informs users if a website has been hacked. Security played a major role during development of the platform. Passwords stored on the service are salted and hashed with a two-way encryption method known as AES.

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  • Telligent Community

    Telligent Community

    Telligent Community is a community and collaboration software platform developed by Telligent Systems and was first released in 2004. Telligent Community is built on the Telligent Evolution platform, with a variety of core applications running on top of it such as blogs, forums, media galleries, and wikis. Additional applications from third parties using the API's and REST stack can be installed or integrated with the platform. Telligent Community is built with ASP.NET, C#, and Microsoft SQL Server. It is available as downloadable software that can be installed on a web server or via hosting providers. The current version is Verint Community 12.0 which was released February 2012. The product used to be named Community Server before being rebranded as part of the 5.0 release. == History == Telligent Systems was founded by Rob Howard in 2004, who was previously part of Microsoft's ASP.NET team. Telligent introduced its first product, Community Server, in the fall of 2004. Community Server was one of the first integrated community platforms that brought together blogs, photo galleries, wikis, forums, user profiles and more. Community Server was based on the merger of three then-widely used open source ASP.NET projects: the ASP.NET Forums, nGallery photo gallery, and .Text blog engine. The people behind those projects (Scott Watermasysk, Jason Alexander, and Rob Howard) joined together as Telligent Systems and along with several other software developers created Community Server 1.0. Between 2004 and 2009 Community Server steadily grew in scope, features, and capabilities. In 2008 Telligent Systems released a second version of Community Server that targeted as an Enterprise Social Software platform used to create and manage internal employee communities and intranets. Originally branded as Community Server Evolution this was later renamed Telligent Enterprise. Telligent also announced a new Enterprise Reporting platform at its first Community Server Developers Conference in 2008, which was later renamed Harvest. It was one of the first analytics suites for enterprise collaboration software, and provides social analytics including sentiment analysis, social fingerprints, and buzz analysis on social networking sites such as Twitter. Telligent rebranded all of its products on June 23, 2009 at the Enterprise 2.0 conference when it launched its new Evolution platform product suite. Community Server became known as Telligent Community, Community Server Evolution became known as Telligent Enterprise and the underlying platform that both run on is now referred to as Telligent Evolution. The Social Analytics suite was renamed Telligent Analytics.

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  • Uniform convergence in probability

    Uniform convergence in probability

    Uniform convergence in probability is a form of convergence in probability in statistical asymptotic theory and probability theory. It means that, under certain conditions, the empirical frequencies of all events in a certain event-family uniformly converge to their theoretical probabilities. Uniform convergence in probability has applications to statistics as well as machine learning as part of statistical learning theory. Specifically, the Glivenko-Cantelli theorem and the homonymous classes of functions are fundamentally related to uniform convergence. The law of large numbers says that, for each single event A {\displaystyle A} , its empirical frequency in a sequence of independent trials converges (with high probability) to its theoretical probability. In many application however, the need arises to judge simultaneously the probabilities of events of an entire class S {\displaystyle S} from one and the same sample. Moreover, it, is required that the relative frequency of the events converge to the probability uniformly over the entire class of events S {\displaystyle S} . The Uniform Convergence Theorem gives a sufficient condition for this convergence to hold. Roughly, if the event-family is sufficiently simple (its VC dimension is sufficiently small) then uniform convergence holds. == Definitions == For a class of predicates H {\displaystyle H} defined on a set X {\displaystyle X} and a set of samples x = ( x 1 , x 2 , … , x m ) {\displaystyle x=(x_{1},x_{2},\dots ,x_{m})} , where x i ∈ X {\displaystyle x_{i}\in X} , the empirical frequency of h ∈ H {\displaystyle h\in H} on x {\displaystyle x} is Q ^ x ( h ) = 1 m | { i : 1 ≤ i ≤ m , h ( x i ) = 1 } | . {\displaystyle {\widehat {Q}}_{x}(h)={\frac {1}{m}}|\{i:1\leq i\leq m,h(x_{i})=1\}|.} The theoretical probability of h ∈ H {\displaystyle h\in H} is defined as Q P ( h ) = P { y ∈ X : h ( y ) = 1 } . {\displaystyle Q_{P}(h)=P\{y\in X:h(y)=1\}.} The Uniform Convergence Theorem states, roughly, that if H {\displaystyle H} is "simple" and we draw samples independently (with replacement) from X {\displaystyle X} according to any distribution P {\displaystyle P} , then with high probability, the empirical frequency will be close to its expected value, which is the theoretical probability. Here "simple" means that the Vapnik–Chervonenkis dimension of the class H {\displaystyle H} is small relative to the size of the sample. In other words, a sufficiently simple collection of functions behaves roughly the same on a small random sample as it does on the distribution as a whole. The Uniform Convergence Theorem was first proved by Vapnik and Chervonenkis using the concept of growth function. == Uniform Convergence Theorem == The statement of the Uniform Convergence Theorem is as follows: If H {\displaystyle H} is a set of { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle \{0,1\}} -valued functions defined on a set X {\displaystyle X} and P {\displaystyle P} is a probability distribution on X {\displaystyle X} then for ε > 0 {\displaystyle \varepsilon >0} and m {\displaystyle m} a positive integer, we have: P m { | Q P ( h ) − Q x ^ ( h ) | ≥ ε for some h ∈ H } ≤ 4 Π H ( 2 m ) e − ε 2 m / 8 . {\displaystyle P^{m}\{|Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q_{x}}}(h)|\geq \varepsilon {\text{ for some }}h\in H\}\leq 4\Pi _{H}(2m)e^{-\varepsilon ^{2}m/8}.} In the above, for any x ∈ X m , {\displaystyle x\in X^{m},} Q P ( h ) = P { ( y ∈ X : h ( y ) = 1 } , {\displaystyle Q_{P}(h)=P\{(y\in X:h(y)=1\},} Q ^ x ( h ) = 1 m | { i : 1 ≤ i ≤ m , h ( x i ) = 1 } | {\displaystyle {\widehat {Q}}_{x}(h)={\frac {1}{m}}|\{i:1\leq i\leq m,h(x_{i})=1\}|} and | x | = m . {\displaystyle |x|=m.} P m {\displaystyle P^{m}} indicates that the probability is taken over x {\displaystyle x} consisting of m {\displaystyle m} i.i.d. draws from the distribution P . {\displaystyle P.} Finally, the growth function Π H {\displaystyle \Pi _{H}} is defined in the following way, for any { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle \{0,1\}} -valued functions H {\displaystyle H} over X {\displaystyle X} and for any natural number m {\displaystyle m} : Π H ( m ) = max | { h ∩ D : D ⊆ X , | D | = m , h ∈ H } | . {\displaystyle \Pi _{H}(m)=\max |\{h\cap D:D\subseteq X,|D|=m,h\in H\}|.} From the point of view of Learning Theory one can consider H {\displaystyle H} to be the Concept/Hypothesis class defined over the instance set X {\displaystyle X} . Crucially, the Sauer–Shelah lemma implies that Π H ( m ) ≤ m d {\displaystyle \Pi _{H}(m)\leq m^{d}} , where d {\displaystyle d} is the VC dimension of H {\displaystyle H} . == Proof of the Uniform Convergence Theorem == and are the sources of the proof below. Before we get into the details of the proof of the Uniform Convergence Theorem we will present a high level overview of the proof. Symmetrization: We transform the problem of analyzing | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ x ( h ) | ≥ ε {\displaystyle |Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{x}(h)|\geq \varepsilon } into the problem of analyzing | Q ^ r ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≥ ε / 2 {\displaystyle |{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\geq \varepsilon /2} , where r {\displaystyle r} and s {\displaystyle s} are i.i.d samples of size m {\displaystyle m} drawn according to the distribution P {\displaystyle P} . One can view r {\displaystyle r} as the original randomly drawn sample of length m {\displaystyle m} , while s {\displaystyle s} may be thought as the testing sample which is used to estimate Q P ( h ) {\displaystyle Q_{P}(h)} . Permutation: Since r {\displaystyle r} and s {\displaystyle s} are picked identically and independently, so swapping elements between them will not change the probability distribution on r {\displaystyle r} and s {\displaystyle s} . So, we will try to bound the probability of | Q ^ r ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≥ ε / 2 {\displaystyle |{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\geq \varepsilon /2} for some h ∈ H {\displaystyle h\in H} by considering the effect of a specific collection of permutations of the joint sample x = r | | s {\displaystyle x=r||s} . Specifically, we consider permutations σ ( x ) {\displaystyle \sigma (x)} which swap x i {\displaystyle x_{i}} and x m + i {\displaystyle x_{m+i}} in some subset of 1 , 2 , . . . , m {\displaystyle {1,2,...,m}} . The symbol r | | s {\displaystyle r||s} means the concatenation of r {\displaystyle r} and s {\displaystyle s} . Reduction to a finite class: We can now restrict the function class H {\displaystyle H} to a fixed joint sample and hence, if H {\displaystyle H} has finite VC Dimension, it reduces to the problem to one involving a finite function class. We present the technical details of the proof. It should be stressed that this proof glosses over details like the measurability of the events V {\displaystyle V} and R {\displaystyle R} ; measurability is granted in the case of H {\displaystyle H} being finite or countable, but this is not normally the case in standard applications of the theorem (e.g. for statistical learning theory or to prove the Glivenko-Cantelli theorem). To get measurability, one needs to use a notion of separability of the underlying space, possibly related to H {\displaystyle H} . === Symmetrization === Lemma: Let V = { x ∈ X m : | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ x ( h ) | ≥ ε for some h ∈ H } {\displaystyle V=\{x\in X^{m}:|Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{x}(h)|\geq \varepsilon {\text{ for some }}h\in H\}} and R = { ( r , s ) ∈ X m × X m : | Q r ^ ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≥ ε / 2 for some h ∈ H } . {\displaystyle R=\{(r,s)\in X^{m}\times X^{m}:|{\widehat {Q_{r}}}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\geq \varepsilon /2{\text{ for some }}h\in H\}.} Then for m ≥ 2 ε 2 {\displaystyle m\geq {\frac {2}{\varepsilon ^{2}}}} , P m ( V ) ≤ 2 P 2 m ( R ) {\displaystyle P^{m}(V)\leq 2P^{2m}(R)} . Proof: By the triangle inequality, if | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ r ( h ) | ≥ ε {\displaystyle |Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)|\geq \varepsilon } and | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≤ ε / 2 {\displaystyle |Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\leq \varepsilon /2} then | Q ^ r ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≥ ε / 2 {\displaystyle |{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\geq \varepsilon /2} . Therefore, P 2 m ( R ) ≥ P 2 m { ∃ h ∈ H , | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ r ( h ) | ≥ ε and | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≤ ε / 2 } = ∫ V P m { s : ∃ h ∈ H , | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ r ( h ) | ≥ ε and | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ s ( h ) | ≤ ε / 2 } d P m ( r ) = A {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}&P^{2m}(R)\\[5pt]\geq {}&P^{2m}\{\exists h\in H,|Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)|\geq \varepsilon {\text{ and }}|Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\leq \varepsilon /2\}\\[5pt]={}&\int _{V}P^{m}\{s:\exists h\in H,|Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)|\geq \varepsilon {\text{ and }}|Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{s}(h)|\leq \varepsilon /2\}\,dP^{m}(r)\\[5pt]={}&A\end{aligned}}} since r {\displaystyle r} and s {\displaystyle s} are independent. Now for r ∈ V {\displaystyle r\in V} fix an h ∈ H {\displaystyle h\in H} such that | Q P ( h ) − Q ^ r ( h ) | ≥ ε {\displaystyle |Q_{P}(h)-{\widehat {Q}}_{r}(h)|\geq \varepsilon } . For this h {\displaystyle h} , we shall

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  • Easyrec

    Easyrec

    easyrec is an open-source program that provides personalized recommendations using RESTful Web services to be integrated into Web enabled applications. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License by the Studio Smart Agent Technologies and hosted at SourceForge. It is written in Java, uses a MySQL database and comes with an administration tool. == History == The development of easyrec, an implementation of the Adaptive Personalization approach, started in the course of several research and development projects conducted by the Studio Smart Agent Technologies in close cooperation with international companies. During the year of 2008 the core functionality of easyrec was developed forming the basis of research prototypes focusing on the music domain (e.g. MusicExplorer). In June 2009 a beta version of easyrec, containing basic administration features, was integrated into a movie streaming portal for evaluation purposes. Furthermore, in September 2009 easyrec was awarded a special recognition in the category “Award for Innovations – IT Innovations for an economic upswing” by the jury of the Austrian state prize for multimedia and e-business. After a comprehensive refactoring phase and the integration of the evaluation results easyrec was published on SourceForge on 18 February 2010. In course of the CeBIT tradeshow 2011 in Hanover easyrec has been awarded the German “INNOVATIONSPREIS-IT 2011”. == Principles == The following five primary goals guided the development of easyrec. It should be a ready-to-use application, not another algorithmic framework It should be easy to use, concerning installation, integration and administration It should be robust and scalable for serving real world applications It should be free of charge, so that anyone can profit from personalization features It should rely on a community-driven development == Uses == Although easyrec is a domain-agnostic, general purpose personalization system, the current Web service API is customized for providing online shops with item recommendations. Especially for small and medium enterprises, easyrec provides a low barrier entrance to personalization. == Features == A major feature of easyrec is a set of usage statistics and other business relevant information presented via an administration and management interface. Furthermore, the easyrec administrator is supported by a variety of administration and configuration functions including the manual import or adaptation of business rules. Integrators or developers benefit from the lightweight Web service APIs (REST and SOAP) as well as from the guided installation wizard. Concerning personalization functionality easyrec is providing the following services unpersonalized recommendations of the form "other users also bought/viewed/...", etc. personalized recommendation depending on individual preferences rankings such as "most bought items", "most viewed...", etc. Additionally, as an integration showcase, a MediaWiki extension was developed and is bundled with the application. Currently additional features like further recommender algorithms and a plugin-system are evaluated and prepared for integration into the easyrec system. == Architecture == The underlying architecture of easyrec is designed to be robust and scalable—separating time-consuming computations from the task of online assembling of recommendations. easyrec is designed as a multi-layer system consisting of a database layer as storage of user actions and pre-calculated business rules an application layer for hosting online and offline recommendation services and an API layer for various Web service interfaces. Moreover, the generator server contains different item association generators which create business rules that define a relation between two items.

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  • Distributed Common Ground System

    Distributed Common Ground System

    The Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) is a system which produces military intelligence for multiple branches of the American military. == DCGS Programs == DCGS-N - DCGS for the United States Navy DCGS-A - DCGS for the United States Army AF DCGS - DCGS for the United States Air Force DCGS-MC - DCGS for the United States Marine Corps DCGS-SOF - DCGS for the United States Special Operations Forces IS&A Support Center - DCGS-A Help Desk for the United States Army - https://dcgsahelp.max.gov/ - Max.gov sunset 15 December 2023 == Description == While in U.S. Air Force use, the system produces intelligence collected by the U-2 Dragonlady, RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1 Predator. The previous system of similar use was the Deployable Ground Station (DGS), which was first deployed in July 1994. Subsequent version of DGS were developed from 1995 through 2009. Although officially designated a "weapons system", it consists of computer hardware and software connected together in a computer network, devoted to processing and dissemination of information such as images. The 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing of the Air Combat Command operates and maintains the USAF system. A plan envisioned in 1998 was to develop interoperable systems for the Army and Navy, in addition to the Air Force. By 2006, version 10.6 was deployed by the Air Force, and a version known as DCGS-A was developed for the Army. After a 2010 report by General Michael T. Flynn, the program was intended to use cloud computing and be as easy to use as an iPad, which soldiers over a few years were commonly using. By April 2011, project manager Colonel Charles Wells announced version 3 of the Army system (code named "Griffin") was being deployed in the US war in Afghanistan. In January 2012, the United States Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center hosted a meeting based on the DCGS-A early experience. It brought together technology providers in the hope of developing more integrated systems using cloud computing with open architectures, compared to previously specialized custom-built systems. A major contractor was Lockheed Martin, with computers supplied by Silicon Graphics International out of its Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin office. Software known as the Analyst's Notebook, originally developed by i2 Limited, was included in DCGS-A. IBM acquired i2 in 2011. Some US Army personnel reported using a Palantir Technologies product to improve their ability to predict locations of improvised explosive devices. An April 2012 report recommending further study after initial success. Palantir software was rated easy to use, but did not have the flexibility and wide number of data sources of DCGS-A. In July 2012, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter (from California, the state where Palantir is based) complained of US DoD obstacles to its wider use. Although a limited test in August 2011 by the Test and Evaluation Command had recommended deployment, operation problems of DCGS-A included the baseline system was "not operationally effective" with reboots on average about every 8 hours. A set of improvements was identified in November 2012. The press reported some of the shortcomings uncovered by General Genaro Dellarocco in the tests. The ambitious goal of integrating 473 data sources for 75 million reports proved to be challenging, after spending an estimated $2.3 billion on the Army system alone. In May 2013 Politico reported that Palantir lobbyists and some anonymous returning veterans continued to advocate the use of its software, despite its interoperability limits. In particular, members of special forces and US Marines were not required to use the official Army system. Similar stories appeared in other publications, with Army representatives (such as Major General Mary A. Legere) citing the limitations of various systems. Congressman Hunter was a member of the House Armed Services Committee which required a review of the program, after two other members of congress sent an open letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee included testimony from Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno. The 130th Engineer Brigade (United States) has found the system to be "unstable, slow, not friendly and a major hindrance to operations". The equivalent system for the United States Navy was planned for initial deployment by 2015, and within a shipboard network called Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) by 2016. Some early testing was announced in 2009 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman. A portion of the software, a distributed data framework for the DCGS integration backbone (DIB) version 4, was submitted to an open-source software repository of the Codice Foundation on GitHub. The framework was new for DIB version 4, replacing the legacy DIB portal with an Ozone Widget Framework interface. It was written in the Java programming language. == DCGS-A == Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) is the United States Army's primary system to post data, process information, and disseminate Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) information about the threat, weather, and terrain to echelons. DCGS-A provides commanders the ability to task battle-space sensors and receive intelligence information from multiple sources. === Promotion === An August 17, 2011, UPI article quoted i2 Chief Executive Officer Robert Griffin who commented on DCGS-A's best-of-breed approach to development. The article detailed the Army contracting with i2 for Analyst's Notebook software. "With its open architecture, Analyst's Notebook supports the Army's strategy to employ and integrate best-of-breed solutions from across the industry to meet the dynamic needs users face in the field on a daily basis." A February 1, 2012, article in the Army web page quoted Mark Kitz, DCGS-A technical director. DCGS-A "uses the latest in cloud technology to rapidly gather, collaborate and share intelligence data from multiple sources to deliver a common operating picture. DCGS-A is able to rapidly adapt to changing operational environments by leveraging an iterative development model and open architecture allowing for collaboration with multiple government, industry and academic partners." A July 2012 article in SIGNAL Magazine, monthly publication of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, promoted DCGS-A as taking advantage of technological environments with which young soldiers are familiar. The article quoted the DCGS-A program manager, Col. Charles Wells on the systems benefits. The article also included Lockheed Martin's DCGS-A program manager. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an article May 4, 2012, about Wisconsin-located companies helping DCGS-A with cloud computing technology. The article promoted the speed when cloud computing processes intelligence and cost savings by analyzing data in the field. === The U.S. Army's 2011 Posture Statement === The U.S. Army released its 2011 Army Posture Statement March 2. It included a statement on DCGS-A: “The Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) is the Army's premier intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) enterprise for the tasking of sensors, analysis and processing of data, exploitation of data, and dissemination of intelligence (TPED) across all echelons. It is the Army component of the larger Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise (DI2E) and interoperable with other Service DCGS programs. Under the DI2E framework, USD (I) hopes to provide COCOM Joint Intelligence Operations Centers (JIOCs) capabilities interoperable with DCGS-A through a Cloud/widget approach. DCGS-A connects tactical, operational, and theater-level commanders to hundreds of intelligence and intelligence-related data sources at all classification levels and allows them to focus efforts of the entire ISR community on their information requirements. === Comparisons === Some Ground Commanders who describe DCGS-A as "unwieldy and unreliable, hard to learn and difficult to use," supporting alternative software from Palantir Technologies. Palantir software supports small unit situational awareness, but is not sufficiently funded to support the broader role that DCGS-A fulfills. == Operators == 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing 9th Intelligence Squadron 13th Intelligence Squadron 548th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group 548 Operational Support Squadron 48th Intelligence Squadron 101st Intelligence Squadron 113th Air Support Operations Squadron 127th Command and Control Squadron 161st Intelligence Squadron

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  • Springpad

    Springpad

    Springpad was a free online application and web service that allowed its registered users to save, organize and share collected ideas and information. As users added content to their Springpad accounts, the application automatically identified and categorized it, then generated additional snippets based on the types of objects added—for example, listing price comparisons for products and showtimes for movies. Springpad was also available as apps on the iPad, iPhone and Android that synchronized with the Web interface. Springpad was bundled on new Toshiba notebook computers through a Web application subscription service. On May 23, 2014, Springpad announced that it would cease operations on June 25, 2014. The company then allowed users to export their data (as JSON and read-only HTML formats), or to automatically migrate it to Evernote accounts before the expiration date. == Features == Springpad users could use the main site interface which uses HTML5 from most browsers or use the smartphone app to capture notes, tasks, or lists which were then added to the user's "My Stuff", the user's personal database or collection. Additionally Springpad let users look up items of interest which were then automatically categorized based on type or manually categorized by the user. Category types included recipes, movies, products, restaurants and wine. Events could also be added to Springpad, and if the user used Google Calendar, they could opt to sync the event to it. In addition to the smartphone app and site, Springpad could be used via browser extension for Google Chrome, or the Springpad Clipper, a bookmarklet to analyze webpages and clip relevant information from them—for example, the ingredients needed for a recipe—or to add the site as a normal bookmark. Another way users could add content to their Springpad "My Stuff" was by emailing entries to an email address specified on Springpad registration. Springpad's smartphone apps could be used to scan barcodes to identify products, save them to the user's "My Stuff", and automatically generate additional product information and links. The mobile app could also save images taken with the phone's camera, and locate nearby businesses. With most of the content added to a user's "My Stuff", relevant news, useful links and other helpful information could be viewed. Users could also attach additional notes and images to content they had already saved, and could add reminders and alerts which could be emailed to the user or texted to their phone. Springpad also added alerts to its own Alerts section for relevant news, deals or coupons for specific products users added. For additional organization, anything added to Springpad could also be tagged. Users could also add entries to "Notebooks" to separate content by projects, or any other way they wished. Each Notebook included a section called a "Board", which acted as a pin board where users could "pin" content they'd added to the Notebook, allowing them to visually lay out items. If the user added a map to the Board and had entries that included an address, Springpad could automatically point out entries on the map. By default, everything added to Springpad was private. However users could change the privacy settings for each of the types of items added, decide to make specific items public and shareable on Facebook and Twitter, add them to their public page, or keep them private but links to them with specific people.

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  • The Drivers Cooperative

    The Drivers Cooperative

    The Drivers Cooperative or Co-Op Ride is an American ridesharing company and mobile app that is a workers cooperative, owned collectively by the drivers. The cooperative launched in May 2021 in New York City, with the first 2,500 drivers issued their ownership certificates in a media event. The cooperative was co-founded by Grenadan immigrant and for hire vehicle driver Ken Lewis, labor organizer Erik Forman, and former Uber executive Alissa Orlando. Mohammad Hossen is the first member of the drivers' advisory board, which they plan to expand democratically as more drivers are onboarded. Other staff include software and industry veterans and in addition to co-founder Lewis, there are other drivers in management roles such as ex-driver and organizer David Alexis. The Co-Op Ride app is on the iOS and Android platforms and is built on Google Maps, Stripe, and Waze. By July, the app had been downloaded by 30,000 users and the number of drivers increased to 3,400, and by August there were 40,000 users. The cooperative is owned by the drivers themselves, and takes 15% from each ride for business overhead costs, as opposed to the 25% to 40% ride hail apps like Uber or Lyft take per ride. While being ultimately owned by the driver members, not by investors, the cooperative began with seed money from the Minnesota-based Community Development Financial Institution Shared Capital Cooperative, the local Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union, and welcomed individual donations via crowdfunding in the form of revenue sharing debt on Wefunder. Each driver is a member of the cooperative and owns one share of the company and one vote in business and leadership decisions. In addition to a larger percentage of the fees per ride driven, each driver as a part-owner will also receive a share of the company's profits after loans and other expenses are paid, in the form of weighted dividends. The drivers use their own cars. The cooperative vets its owner-members further than what is already performed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), and gives a fixed price when a car is ordered and does not engage in surge pricing. The TLC imposed a minimum payrate for mobile app ridesharing companies operating in New York city in 2018. In 2021 that is $1.26 per mile which Uber and Lyft do not pay above; the cooperative pays a minimum mileage of $1.64. The cooperative intends to be able to set aside 10% of profits to community foundations and other non-profits and community organizations. The cooperative has engaged in advocacy around a policy agenda voted on by its members. Legislation to achieve this policy goal was introduced by State Senator Julia Salazar and Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, with the support of a coalition led by The Drivers Cooperative, United Auto Workers Region 9 and 9A, Sunrise Movement, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and New York Communities for Change.

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  • Web application

    Web application

    A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, in contrast to static web pages. Web applications are commonly distributed via a web server. There are several different tier systems that web applications use to communicate between the web browsers, the client interface, and server data. Each system has its own uses as they function in different ways. However, there are many security risks that developers must be aware of during development; proper measures to protect user data are vital. Web applications are often constructed with the use of a web application framework. Single-page applications (SPAs) and progressive web apps (PWAs) are two architectural approaches to creating web applications that provide a user experience similar to native apps, including features such as smooth navigation, offline support, and faster interactions. Web applications are often fully hosted on remote cloud services, can require a constant connection to them, and can replace conventional desktop applications for operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, thus facilitating the operation of software as a service as it grants the developer the power to tightly control billing based on use of the remote services as well as vendor lock-in by hosting data remotely. Modern browsers such as Chrome offer sandboxing for every browser tab which improves security and restricts access to local resources. No software installation is required as the app runs within the browser which reduces the need for managing software installations. With the use of remote cloud services, customers do not need to manage servers as that can be left to the developer and the cloud service and can use the software with a relatively low power, low-resource PC such as a thin client. The source code of the application can stay the same across operating systems and devices of users with the use of responsive web design, since it only needs to be compatible with web browsers which adhere to web standards, making the code highly portable and saving on development time. Numerous JavaScript frameworks and CSS frameworks facilitate development. == History == The concept of a "web application" was first introduced in the Java language in the Servlet Specification version 2.2, which was released in 1999. At that time, both JavaScript and XML had already been developed, but the XMLHttpRequest object had only been recently introduced on Internet Explorer 5 as an ActiveX object. Beginning around the early 2000s, applications such as "Myspace (2003), Gmail (2004), Digg (2004), [and] Google Maps (2005)," started to make their client sides more and more interactive. A web page script is able to contact the server for storing/retrieving data without downloading an entire web page. The practice became known as Ajax in 2005. Eventually this was replaced by web APIs using JSON, accessed via JavaScript asynchronously on the client side. In earlier computing models like client-server, the processing load for the application was shared between code on the server and code installed on each client locally. In other words, an application had its own pre-compiled client program which served as its user interface and had to be separately installed on each user's personal computer. An upgrade to the server-side code of the application would typically also require an upgrade to the client-side code installed on each user workstation, adding to the support cost and decreasing productivity. Additionally, both the client and server components of the application were bound tightly to a particular computer architecture and operating system, which made porting them to other systems prohibitively expensive for all but the largest applications. Later, in 1995, Netscape introduced the client-side scripting language called JavaScript, which allowed programmers to add dynamic elements to the user interface that ran on the client side. Essentially, instead of sending data to the server in order to generate an entire web page, the embedded scripts of the downloaded page can perform various tasks such as input validation or showing/hiding parts of the page. "Progressive web apps", the term coined by designer Frances Berriman and Google Chrome engineer Alex Russell in 2015, refers to apps taking advantage of new features supported by modern browsers, which initially run inside a web browser tab but later can run completely offline and can be launched without entering the app URL in the browser. == Structure == Traditional PC applications are typically single-tiered, residing solely on the client machine. In contrast, web applications inherently facilitate a multi-tiered architecture. Though many variations are possible, the most common structure is the three-tiered application. In its most common form, the three tiers are called presentation, application and storage. The first tier, presentation, refers to a web browser itself. The second tier refers to any engine using dynamic web content technology (such as ASP, CGI, ColdFusion, Dart, JSP/Java, Node.js, PHP, Python or Ruby on Rails). The third tier refers to a database that stores data and determines the structure of a user interface. Essentially, when using the three-tiered system, the web browser sends requests to the engine, which then services them by making queries and updates against the database and generates a user interface. The 3-tier solution may fall short when dealing with more complex applications, and may need to be replaced with the n-tiered approach; the greatest benefit of which is how business logic (which resides on the application tier) is broken down into a more fine-grained model. Another benefit would be to add an integration tier, which separates the data tier and provides an easy-to-use interface to access the data. For example, the client data would be accessed by calling a "list_clients()" function instead of making an SQL query directly against the client table on the database. This allows the underlying database to be replaced without making any change to the other tiers. There are some who view a web application as a two-tier architecture. This can be a "smart" client that performs all the work and queries a "dumb" server, or a "dumb" client that relies on a "smart" server. The client would handle the presentation tier, the server would have the database (storage tier), and the business logic (application tier) would be on one of them or on both. While this increases the scalability of the applications and separates the display and the database, it still does not allow for true specialization of layers, so most applications will outgrow this model. == Security == Security breaches on these kinds of applications are a major concern because it can involve both enterprise information and private customer data. Protecting these assets is an important part of any web application, and there are some key operational areas that must be included in the development process. This includes processes for authentication, authorization, asset handling, input, and logging and auditing. Building security into the applications from the beginning is sometimes more effective and less disruptive in the long run. == Development == Writing web applications is simplified with the use of web application frameworks. These frameworks facilitate rapid application development by allowing a development team to focus on the parts of their application which are unique to their goals without having to resolve common development issues such as user management. In addition, there is potential for the development of applications on Internet operating systems, although currently there are not many viable platforms that fit this model.

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  • Rclone

    Rclone

    Rclone is an open source, multi threaded, command line computer program to manage or migrate content on cloud and other high latency storage. Its capabilities include sync, transfer, crypt, cache, union, compress and mount. The rclone website lists supported backends including S3 and Google Drive. Descriptions of rclone often carry the strapline "Rclone syncs your files to cloud storage". Those prior to 2020 include the alternative "Rsync for Cloud Storage". Rclone is well known for its rclone sync and rclone mount commands. It provides further management functions analogous to those ordinarily used for files on local disks, but which tolerate some intermittent and unreliable service. Rclone is commonly used with media servers such as Plex, Emby or Jellyfin to stream content direct from consumer file storage services. Official Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch, Brew, Chocolatey, and other package managers include rclone. == History == Nick Craig-Wood was inspired by rsync. Concerns about the noise and power costs arising from home computer servers prompted him to embrace cloud storage and he began developing rclone as open source software in 2012 under the name swiftsync. Rclone was promoted to stable version 1.00 in July 2014. In May 2017, Amazon Drive barred new users of rclone and other upload utilities, citing security concerns. Amazon Drive had been advertised as offering unlimited storage for £55 per year. Amazon's AWS S3 service continues to support new rclone users. The original rclone logo was updated in September 2018. In March 2020, Nick Craig-Wood resigned from Memset Ltd, a cloud hosting company he founded, to focus on open source software. Amazon's AWS April 2020 public sector blog explained how the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center were using rclone in their Motuz tool to migrate very large biomedical research datasets in and out of AWS S3 object stores. In November 2020, rclone was updated to correct a weakness in the way it generated passwords. Passwords for encrypted remotes can be generated randomly by rclone or supplied by the user. In all versions of rclone from 1.49.0 to 1.53.2 the seed value for generated passwords was based on the number of seconds elapsed in the day, and therefore not truly random. CVE-2020-28924 recommended users upgrade to the latest version of rclone and check the passwords protecting their encrypted remotes. Release 1.55 of rclone in March 2021 included features sponsored by CERN and their CS3MESH4EOSC project. The work was EU funded to promote vendor-neutral application programming interfaces and protocols for synchronisation and sharing of academic data on cloud storage. == Backends and commands == Rclone supports the following services as backends. There are others, built on standard protocols such as WebDAV or S3, that work. WebDAV backends do not support rclone functionality dependent on server side checksum or modtime. Remotes are usually defined interactively from these backends, local disk, or memory (as S3), with rclone config. Rclone can further wrap those remotes with one or more of alias, chunk, compress, crypt or union, remotes. Once defined, the remotes are referenced by other rclone commands interchangeably with the local drive. Remote names are followed by a colon to distinguish them from local drives. For example, a remote example_remote containing a folder, or pseudofolder, myfolder is referred to within a command as a path example_remote:/myfolder. Rclone commands directly apply to remotes, or mount them for file access or streaming. With appropriate cache options the mount can be addressed as if a conventional, block level disk. Commands are provided to serve remotes over SFTP, HTTP, WebDAV, FTP and DLNA. Commands can have sub-commands and flags. Filters determine which files on a remote that rclone commands are applied to. rclone rc passes commands or new parameters to existing rclone sessions and has an experimental web browser interface. === Crypt remotes === Rclone's crypt implements encryption of files at rest in cloud storage. It layers an encrypted remote over a pre-existing, cloud or other remote. Crypt is commonly used to encrypt / decrypt media, for streaming, on consumer storage services such as Google Drive. Rclone's configuration file contains the crypt password. The password can be lightly obfuscated, or the whole rclone.conf file can be encrypted. Crypt can either encrypt file content and name, or additionally full paths. In the latter case there is a potential clash with encryption for cloud backends, such as Microsoft OneDrive, having limited path lengths. Crypt remotes do not encrypt object modification time or size. The encryption mechanism for content, name and path is available, for scrutiny, on the rclone website. Key derivation is with scrypt. === Example syntax (Linux) === These examples describe paths and file names but object keys behave similarly. To recursively copy files from directory remote_stuff, at the remote xmpl, to directory stuff in the home folder:- -v enables logging and -P, progress information. By default rclone checks the file integrity (hash) after copy; can retry each file up to three times if the operation is interrupted; uses up to four parallel transfer threads, and does not apply bandwidth throttling. Running the above command again copies any new or changed files at the remote to the local folder but, like default rsync behaviour, will not delete from the local directory, files which have been removed from the remote. To additionally delete files from the local folder which have been removed from the remote - more like the behaviour of rsync with a --delete flag:- And to delete files from the source after they have been transferred to the local directory - more like the behaviour of rsync with a --remove-source-file flag:- To mount the remote directory at a mountpoint in the pre-existing, empty stuff directory in the home directory (the ampersand at the end makes the mount command run as a background process):- Default rclone syntax can be modified. Alternative transfer, filter, conflict and backend specific flags are available. Performance choices include number of concurrent transfer threads; chunk size; bandwidth limit profiling, and cache aggression. == Academic evaluation == In 2018, University of Kentucky researchers published a conference paper comparing use of rclone and other command line, cloud data transfer agents for big data. The paper was published as a result of funding by the National Science Foundation. Later that year, University of Utah's Center for High Performance Computing examined the impact of rclone options on data transfer rates. == Rclone use at HPC research sites == Examples are University of Maryland, Iowa State University, Trinity College Dublin, NYU, BYU, Indiana University, CSC Finland, Utrecht University, University of Nebraska, University of Utah, North Carolina State University, Stony Brook, Tulane University, Washington State University, Georgia Tech, National Institutes of Health, Wharton, Yale, Harvard, Minnesota, Michigan State, Case Western Reserve University, University of South Dakota, Northern Arizona University, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, University of Southern California, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, and SURFnet. == Rclone and cybercrime == May 2020 reports stated rclone had been used by hackers to exploit Diebold Nixdorf ATMs with ProLock ransomware. The FBI issued a Flash Alert MI-000125-MW on May 4, 2020, in relation to the compromise. They issued a further, related alert 20200901–001 in September 2020. Attackers had exfiltrated / encrypted data from organisations involved in healthcare, construction, finance, and legal services. Multiple US government agencies, and industrial entities were affected. Researchers established the hackers spent about a month exploring the breached networks, using rclone to archive stolen data to cloud storage, before encrypting the target system. Reported targets included LaSalle County, and the city of Novi Sad. The FBI warned January 2021, in Private Industry Notification 20210106–001, of extortion activity using Egregor ransomware and rclone. Organisations worldwide had been threatened with public release of exfiltrated data. In some cases rclone had been disguised under the name svchost. Bookseller Barnes & Noble, US retailer Kmart, games developer Ubisoft and the Vancouver metro system have been reported as victims. An April 2021, cybersecurity investigation into SonicWall VPN zero-day vulnerability SNWLID-2021-0001 by FireEye's Mandiant team established attackers UNC2447 used rclone for reconnaissance and exfiltration of victims' files. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Analysis Report AR21-126A confirmed this use of rclone in FiveHands ransomware attacks. A June 2021, Microsoft Security Intelligence Twitter post identified use of rclone in BazaCall cyber attacks. The attackers sent emails e

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  • Outline of brain mapping

    Outline of brain mapping

    The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to brain mapping: Brain mapping – set of neuroscience techniques predicated on the mapping of (biological) quantities or properties onto spatial representations of the (human or non-human) brain resulting in maps. Brain mapping is further defined as the study of the anatomy and function of the brain and spinal cord through the use of imaging (including intra-operative, microscopic, endoscopic and multi-modality imaging), immunohistochemistry, molecular and optogenetics, stem cell and cellular biology, engineering (material, electrical and biomedical), neurophysiology and nanotechnology. == Broad scope == History of neuroscience History of neurology Brain mapping Human brain Neuroscience Nervous system. === The neuron doctrine === Neuron doctrine – A set of carefully constructed elementary set of observations regarding neurons. For more granularity, more current, and more advanced topics, see the cellular level section Asserts that neurons fall under the broader cell theory, which postulates: All living organisms are composed of one or more cells. The cell is the basic unit of structure, function, and organization in all organisms. All cells come from preexisting, living cells. The Neuron doctrine postulates several elementary aspects of neurons: The brain is made up of individual cells (neurons) that contain specialized features such as dendrites, a cell body, and an axon. Neurons are cells differentiable from other tissues in the body. Neurons differ in size, shape, and structure according to their location or functional specialization. Every neuron has a nucleus, which is the trophic center of the cell (The part which must have access to nutrition). If the cell is divided, only the portion containing the nucleus will survive. Nerve fibers are the result of cell processes and the outgrowths of nerve cells. (Several axons are bound together to form one nerve fibril. See also: Neurofilament. Several nerve fibrils then form one large nerve fiber. Myelin, an electrical insulator, forms around selected axons. Neurons are generated by cell division. Neurons are connected by sites of contact and not via cytoplasmic continuity. (A cell membrane isolates the inside of the cell from its environment. Neurons do not communicate via direct cytoplasm to cytoplasm contact.) Law of dynamic polarization. Although the axon can conduct in both directions, in tissue there is a preferred direction of transmission from cell to cell. Elements added later to the initial Neuron doctrine A barrier to transmission exists at the site of contact between two neurons that may permit transmission. (Synapse) Unity of transmission. If a contact is made between two cells, then that contact can be either excitatory or inhibitory, but will always be of the same type. Dale's law, each nerve terminal releases a single type of neurotransmitter. Some of the basic postulates in the Neuron doctrine have been subsequently questioned, refuted, or updated. See the cellular level section topics for additional information. === Map, atlas, and database projects === Brain Activity Map Project – 2013 NIH $3 billion project to map every neuron in the human brain in ten years, based upon the Human Genome Project. NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative [1] Community outreach site for above where the public may comment [2] Human Brain Project (EU) – 1 billion euro, 10-year project to simulate the human brain with supercomputers. BigBrain A high-resolution 3D atlas of the human brain created as part of the HBP. Human Connectome Project – 2009 NIH $30 million project to build a network map of the human brain, including structural (anatomical) and functional elements. Emphasis included research into dyslexia, autism, Alzheimer's disease, and schizophrenia. See also Connectome a, comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain. Allen Brain Atlas – 2003 $100 million project funded by Paul Allen (Microsoft) BrainMaps – National Institute of Health (NIH) database including 60 terabytes of image scans of primate and non-primates, integrated with information covering structure and function. NeuroNames – Defines the brain in terms of about 550 primary structures (about 850 unique structures) to which all other structures, names, and synonyms are related. About 15,000 neuroanatomical terms are cross indexed, including many synonyms in seven languages. Coverage includes the brain and spinal cord of the four species most frequently studied by neuroscientists: human, macaque (monkey), rat and mouse. The controlled, standardized vocabulary for each structure is located in an unambiguous, strict physical hierarchy, and these terms are selected based on ease of pronunciation, mnemonic value, and frequency of use in recent neuroscientific publications. Relation of each structure to its superstructures and substructures is included. The controlled vocabulary is suitable for uniquely indexing neuroanatomical information in digital databases. Decade of the Brain 1990–1999 promotion by NIH and the Library of Congress "to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research". Communications targeted Members of Congress, staffs, and the general public to promote funding. Talairach Atlas see Jean Talairach Harvard Whole Brain Atlas see Human brain MNI Template see Medical image computing Blue Brain Project and Artificial brain International Consortium for Brain Mapping see Brain Mapping List of neuroscience databases NIH Toolbox National Institute of Health (USA) toolbox for the assessment of neurological and behavioral function Organization for Human Brain Mapping The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) is an international society dedicated to using neuroimaging to discover the organization of the human brain. == Imaging and recording systems == This section covers imaging and recording systems. The general section covers history, neuroimaging, and techniques for mapping specific neural connections. The specific systems section covers the various specific technologies, including experimental and widely deployed imaging and recording systems. === General === Most imaging work to date on individual neurons has been conducted outside the brain, typically on large neurons, and has been most frequently destructive. New techniques are however rapidly emerging. Search on "Single neuron imaging" and see related topics: Biological neuron model, Single-unit recording, Neural oscillation, Computational neuroscience. dMRI (above) is also promising in non-destructive imaging of single neurons inside the brain. History of neuroimaging (redirects from Brain scanner) Neuroimaging (redirects from Brain function map) Connectomics – mapping technique showing neural connections in a nervous system. === Specific systems === Cortical stimulation mapping Diffusion MRI (dMRI) – includes diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and diffusion functional MRI (DfMRI). dMRI is a recent breakthrough in brain mapping allowing the visualization of cross connections between different anatomical parts of the brain. It allows noninvasive imaging of white matter fiber structure and in addition to mapping can be useful in clinical observations of abnormalities, including damage from stroke. Electroencephalography (EEG) – uses electrodes on the scalp and other techniques to detect the electrical flow of currents. Electrocorticography – intracranial EEG, the practice of using electrodes placed directly on the exposed surface of the brain to record electrical activity from the cerebral cortex. Electrophysiological techniques for clinical diagnosis Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Medical image computing (brain research of leads medical and surgical uses of mapping technology) Neurostimulation (in research stimulation is frequently used in conjunction with imaging) Positron emission tomography (PET) – a nuclear medical imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide (tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Three-dimensional images of tracer concentration within the body are then constructed by computer analysis. In modern scanners, three dimensional imaging is often accomplished with the aid of a CT X-ray scan performed on the patient during the same session, in the same machine. === Imaging and recording componentry === ==== Electrochemical ==== Haemodynamic response – the rapid delivery of blood to active neuronal tissues. Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent signal (BOLD), corresponds to the concentration of deoxyhemoglobin. The BOLD effect is based on the fact that when neuronal activity is increased in one part of the brain, there is also an increased amount of cerebral blood flow to that area. Functional m

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  • Immediate mode (computer graphics)

    Immediate mode (computer graphics)

    Immediate mode is an API design pattern in computer graphics libraries, in which the client calls directly cause rendering of graphics objects to the display, or in which the data to describe rendering primitives is inserted frame by frame directly from the client into a command list (in the case of immediate mode primitive rendering), without the use of extensive indirection – thus immediate – to retained resources. It does not preclude the use of double-buffering. Retained mode is an alternative approach. Historically, retained mode has been the dominant style in GUI libraries; however, both can coexist in the same library and are not necessarily exclusive in practice. == Overview == In immediate mode, the scene (complete object model of the rendering primitives) is retained in the memory space of the client, instead of the graphics library. This implies that in an immediate mode application, the lists of graphical objects to be rendered are kept by the client and are not saved by the graphics library API. The application must re-issue all drawing commands required to describe the entire scene each time a new frame is required, regardless of actual changes. This method provides on the one hand a maximum of control and flexibility to the application program, but on the other hand it also generates continuous work load on the CPU. Examples of immediate mode rendering systems include Direct2D, OpenGL and Quartz. There are some immediate mode GUIs that are particularly suitable when used in conjunction with immediate mode rendering systems. == Immediate mode primitive rendering == Primitive vertex attribute data may be inserted frame by frame into a command buffer by a rendering API. This involves significant bandwidth and processor time (especially if the graphics processing unit is on a separate bus), but may be advantageous for data generated dynamically by the CPU. It is less common since the advent of increasingly versatile shaders, with which a graphics processing unit may generate increasingly complex effects without the need for CPU intervention. == Immediate mode rendering with vertex buffers == Although drawing commands have to be re-issued for each new frame, modern systems using this method are generally able to avoid the unnecessary duplication of more memory-intensive display data by referring to that unchanging data (via indirection) (e.g. textures and vertex buffers) in the drawing commands. == Immediate mode GUI == Graphical user interfaces traditionally use retained mode-style API design, but immediate mode GUIs instead use an immediate mode-style API design, in which user code directly specifies the GUI elements to draw in the user input loop. For example, rather than having a CreateButton() function that a user would call once to instantiate a button, an immediate-mode GUI API may have a DoButton() function which should be called whenever the button should be on screen. The technique was developed by Casey Muratori in 2002. Prominent implementations include Omar Cornut's Dear ImGui in C++, Nic Barker's Clay in C and Micha Mettke's Nuklear in C.

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  • Taskworld

    Taskworld

    Taskworld is a cloud-based collaboration platform created by Fred Mouawad. The SaaS (software as a service) is designed to facilitate project and task management, collaboration, delegation, communication, knowledge management, measure progress and provide performance metrics for evidence-based evaluations within teams. It allows team members to assign and receive tasks, add followers, record comments, share and store unlimited files and organize projects. == Background == An initial version of Taskworld was custom-built by the IT team working for Mouawad in 2006. This was done as a way to try and overcome internal issues regarding delegation, accountability and time-management. The application was constructed to prevent tasks from falling through the cracks and make it easy to follow up on-going projects where many individuals throughout various departments of the organization were involved. Mouawad’s Synergia One group of companies later implemented the application internally as the ‘Task Management System’ and found a general improvement in execution across international offices and departments. This successful implementation led Mouawad to found the ‘My Taskworld’ website which later evolved into ‘Taskworld.' The company was officially founded in February 2012, and in June later that year, Mouawad presented a prototype of the Taskworld website to an Executive Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. == Reception == The launch of the app was covered by the media as an addition to the Synergia One group of companies founded by CEO Fred Mouawad. The mobile app is currently available on both android and iOS platforms. Google Play gives the app 3.8 out of 5 stars while the Apple App Store gave it 2.9 out of 5 stars. Alex Williams in a 2014 article for Tech Crunch said, “Taskworld’s technology plays to human emotions. As the feedback is continuous, people are compelled to engage with the service. But in some respects, Taskworld is fairly simple and still needing more to make it a potent competitor in the market.” == Features == Taskworld's main features include, but are not limited to: Project &Task Management - Taskworld includes up to five levels of hierarchy including Project Group, Project, Tasklist, Task and Checklist. Some features in this group are assigning tasks, setting due dates, adding followers, task comments, set repeating tasks, tasks in multiple locations, project templates, copy project, archiving, smart notifications, drag and drop Kanban boards, image preview boards, file management, people page and personnel directory, customizable tags and colored labels. Enterprise Messaging - The app includes a native chat application with channels and groups, private and direct messaging capabilities. Other communication features inside of the app include project chat, drag and drop file attachments, an email bridge to send and receive messages and @mentions. Overview & Analytics - Taskworld includes several features under this section including a dashboard, workspace snapshot, workspace filter, interactive calendar, project analytics and health status, project burndown chart, project burn-up chart and interactive timeline. == Languages and customers == Taskworld is used by 4,000 companies in 80 countries. The app is currently available in eight languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Portuguese, Thai and Korean. == Customer support == The Taskworld User Guide offers details on how to use features of the application. Customer support is offered inside of the application for questions and feedback regarding the software, and also via email. The Taskworld customer support team has received a 98% Customer Satisfaction Rating, according to customer ratings on its support platform Zendesk. Free, live demos are also offered for those companies who need assistance.

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  • Recruitee

    Recruitee

    Tellent Recruitee is a cloud-based applicant tracking system (ATS) for talent acquisition owned by Tellent. It is used by internal HR teams for processes including job postings, candidate sourcing, reporting, and applicant tracking. == History == Perry Oostdam and Pawel Smoczyk founded Recruitee after working on a mobile gaming startup. The Recruitee was launched in August 2015. In September 2015, it received a seed funding round with participation from investors Robert Pijselman and Luc Brandts. Merger In February 2021, Recruitee and the Finnish HR software provider Sympa merged their operations, backed by the growth equity firm Providence Strategic Growth (PSG). Acquisition In 2022, the group acquired the French company Javelo and the German company kiwiHR. The parent company was subsequently renamed as Tellent while Recruitee renamed as Tellent Recruitee and continues to operate as a product unit within the Tellent group. == Platform == Tellent Recruitee is a customizable recruitment software. It functions as an ATS and talent acquisition platform and includes tools to create and publish job listings, source candidates, manage recruitment agencies, and track applicants through customizable pipelines. The interface allows drag-and-drop organization of candidates. The platform also includes features for team collaboration, such as shared notes, task assignments, and candidate evaluations. It also has integrated scheduling tools and automated email communication. Tellent Recruitee also provides analytics and reports on hiring and career site metrics. The software allows for customization of career site pages and application forms. It supports integrations with other HR and productivity software, such as WhatsApp, and has various AI functionalities to support with manual recruitment tasks.

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