AI Headshot Make

AI Headshot Make — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Auralization

    Auralization

    Auralization is a procedure designed to model and simulate the experience of acoustic phenomena rendered as a soundfield in a virtualized space. This is useful in configuring the soundscape of architectural structures, concert venues, and public spaces, as well as in making coherent sound environments within virtual immersion systems. == History == The English term auralization was used for the first time by Kleiner et al. in an article in the journal of the AES en 1991. The increase of computational power allowed the development of the first acoustic simulation software towards the end of the 1960s. == Principles == Auralizations are experienced through systems rendering virtual acoustic models made by convolving or mixing acoustic events recorded 'dry' (or in an anechoic chamber) projected within a virtual model of an acoustic space, the characteristics of which are determined by means of sampling its impulse response (IR). Once this h ( t ) {\displaystyle h(t)} has been determined, the simulation of the resulting soundfield s ( t ) {\displaystyle s(t)} in the target environment is obtained by convolution: r ( t ) = h ( t ) ∗ s ( t ) {\displaystyle r(t)=h(t)s(t)} The resulting sound r ( t ) {\displaystyle r(t)} is heard as it would if emitted in that acoustic space. == Binaurality == For auralizations to be perceived as realistic, it is critical to emulate the human hearing in terms of position and orientation of the listener's head with respect to the sources of sound. For IR data to be convolved convincingly, the acoustic events are captured using a dummy head where two microphones are positioned on each side of the head to record an emulation of sound arriving at the locations of human ears, or using an ambisonics microphone array and mixed down for binaurality. Head-related transfer functions (HRTF) datasets can be used to simplify the process insofar as a monaural IR can be measured or simulated, then audio content is convolved with its target acoustic space. In rendering the experience, the transfer function corresponding to the orientation of the head is applied to simulate the corresponding spatial emanation of sound.

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  • Graphics Turing test

    Graphics Turing test

    In computer graphics the graphics Turing test is a variant of the Turing test, the twist being that a human judge viewing and interacting with an artificially generated world should be unable to reliably distinguish it from reality. The original formulation of the test is: "The subject views and interacts with a real or computer generated scene. The test is passed if the subject can not determine reality from simulated reality better than a random guess. (a) The subject operates a remotely controlled (or simulated) robotic arm and views a computer screen. (b) The subject enters a door to a controlled vehicle or motion simulator with computer screens for windows. An eye patch can be worn on one eye, as stereo vision is difficult to simulate." The "graphics Turing scale" of computer power is then defined as the computing power necessary to achieve success in the test. It was estimated in, as 1036.8 TFlops peak and 518.4 TFlops sustained. Actual rendering tests with a Blue Gene supercomputer showed that current supercomputers are not up to the task scale yet. A restricted form of the graphic Turing test has been investigated, where test subjects look into a box, and try to tell whether the contents are real or virtual objects. For the very simple case of scenes with a cardboard pyramid or a styrofoam sphere, subjects were not able to reliably tell reality and graphics apart.

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  • China brain

    China brain

    In the philosophy of mind, the China brain thought experiment (also known as the Chinese Nation, Chinese Gym, or China-body) considers what would happen if each person in the entire population of China were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. The question this thought experiment attempts to answer is whether this arrangement would have a mind or consciousness in the same way that the human brain exhibits. Early versions of this scenario were put forward in 1961 by Anatoly Dneprov, in 1974 by Lawrence Davis, and again in 1978 by Ned Block. Block argues that the China brain would not have a mind, whereas Daniel Dennett argues that it would. The China brain problem is a special case of the more general problem of whether minds could exist within other, larger minds. The Chinese room scenario analyzed by John Searle is a similar thought experiment in philosophy of mind that relates to artificial intelligence. Instead of people who each model a single neuron of the brain, in the Chinese room, clerks who do not speak Chinese accept notes in Chinese and return an answer in Chinese according to a set of rules, without the people in the room ever understanding what those notes mean. In fact, the original short story The Game (1961) by Dneprov contains both the China brain and the Chinese room scenarios. == Background == Many theories of mental states are materialist, that is, they describe the mind as the behavior of a physical object like the brain. One formerly prominent example is the identity theory, which says that mental states are brain states. One criticism is the problem of multiple realizability. The physicalist theory that responds to this is functionalism, which states that a mental state can be whatever functions as a mental state. That is, the mind can be composed of neurons, or it could be composed of wood, rocks or toilet paper, as long as it provides mental functionality. == Description == Suppose that the whole nation of China were reordered to simulate the workings of a single brain (that is, to act as a mind according to functionalism). Each Chinese person acts as (say) a neuron, and communicates by special two-way radio in corresponding way to the other people. The current mental state of the China brain is displayed on satellites that may be seen from anywhere in China. The China brain would then be connected via radio to a body, one that provides the sensory inputs and behavioral outputs of the China brain. Thus, the China brain possesses all the elements of a functional description of mind: sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and internal mental states causally connected to other mental states. If the nation of China can be made to act in this way, then, according to functionalism, this system would have a mind. Block's goal is to show how unintuitive it is to think that such an arrangement could create a mind capable of thoughts and feelings. == Consciousness == The China brain argues that consciousness is a problem for functionalism. Block's Chinese nation presents a version of what is known as the absent qualia objection to functionalism because it purports to show that it is possible for something to be functionally equivalent to a human being and yet have no conscious experience. A creature that functions like a human being but does not feel anything is known as a "philosophical zombie". So the absent qualia objection to functionalism could also be called the "zombie objection". == Criticisms == Some philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, have concluded that the China brain does create a mental state. Functionalist philosophers of mind endorse the idea that something like the China brain can realise a mind, and that neurons are, in principle, not the only material that can create a mental state.

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  • Semantic network

    Semantic network

    A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, which represent concepts, and edges, which represent semantic relations between concepts, mapping or connecting semantic fields. A semantic network may be instantiated as, for example, a graph database or a concept map. Typical standardized semantic networks are expressed as semantic triples. Semantic networks are used in natural language processing applications such as semantic parsing and word-sense disambiguation. Semantic networks can also be used as a method to analyze large texts and identify the main themes and topics (e.g., of social media posts), to reveal biases (e.g., in news coverage), or even to map an entire research field. == History == Examples of the use of semantic networks in logic, directed acyclic graphs as a mnemonic tool, dates back centuries. The earliest documented use being the Greek philosopher Porphyry's commentary on Aristotle's categories in the third century AD. In computing history, "Semantic Nets" for the propositional calculus were first implemented for computers by Richard H. Richens of the Cambridge Language Research Unit in 1956 as an "interlingua" for machine translation of natural languages. Although the importance of this work and the CLRU was only belatedly realized. Semantic networks were also independently implemented by Robert F. Simmons and Sheldon Klein, using the first order predicate calculus as a base, after being inspired by a demonstration of Victor Yngve. The "line of research was originated by the first President of the Association [Association for Computational Linguistics], Victor Yngve, who in 1960 had published descriptions of algorithms for using a phrase structure grammar to generate syntactically well-formed nonsense sentences. Sheldon Klein and I about 1962-1964 were fascinated by the technique and generalized it to a method for controlling the sense of what was generated by respecting the semantic dependencies of words as they occurred in text." Other researchers, most notably M. Ross Quillian and others at System Development Corporation helped contribute to their work in the early 1960s as part of the SYNTHEX project. It's from these publications at SDC that most modern derivatives of the term "semantic network" cite as their background. Later prominent works were done by Allan M. Collins and Quillian (e.g., Collins and Quillian; Collins and Loftus Quillian). Still later in 2006, Hermann Helbig fully described MultiNet. In the late 1980s, two Netherlands universities, Groningen and Twente, jointly began a project called Knowledge Graphs, which are semantic networks but with the added constraint that edges are restricted to be from a limited set of possible relations, to facilitate algebras on the graph. In the subsequent decades, the distinction between semantic networks and knowledge graphs was blurred. In 2012, Google gave their knowledge graph the name Knowledge Graph. The Semantic Link Network was systematically studied as a social semantics networking method. Its basic model consists of semantic nodes, semantic links between nodes, and a semantic space that defines the semantics of nodes and links and reasoning rules on semantic links. The systematic theory and model was published in 2004. This research direction can trace to the definition of inheritance rules for efficient model retrieval in 1998 and the Active Document Framework ADF. Since 2003, research has developed toward social semantic networking. This work is a systematic innovation at the age of the World Wide Web and global social networking rather than an application or simple extension of the Semantic Net (Network). Its purpose and scope are different from that of the Semantic Net (or network). The rules for reasoning and evolution and automatic discovery of implicit links play an important role in the Semantic Link Network. Recently it has been developed to support Cyber-Physical-Social Intelligence. It was used for creating a general summarization method. The self-organised Semantic Link Network was integrated with a multi-dimensional category space to form a semantic space to support advanced applications with multi-dimensional abstractions and self-organised semantic links It has been verified that Semantic Link Network play an important role in understanding and representation through text summarisation applications. Semantic Link Network has been extended from cyberspace to cyber-physical-social space. Competition relation and symbiosis relation as well as their roles in evolving society were studied in the emerging topic: Cyber-Physical-Social Intelligence More specialized forms of semantic networks has been created for specific use. For example, in 2008, Fawsy Bendeck's PhD thesis formalized the Semantic Similarity Network (SSN) that contains specialized relationships and propagation algorithms to simplify the semantic similarity representation and calculations. == Basics of semantic networks == A semantic network is used when one has knowledge that is best understood as a set of concepts that are related to one another. Most semantic networks are cognitively based. They also consist of arcs and nodes which can be organized into a taxonomic hierarchy. Semantic networks contributed ideas of spreading activation, inheritance, and nodes as proto-objects. == Examples == === In Lisp === The following code shows an example of a semantic network in the Lisp programming language using an association list. To extract all the information about the "canary" type, one would use the assoc function with a key of "canary". === WordNet === An example of a semantic network is WordNet, a lexical database of English. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets. Some of the most common semantic relations defined are meronymy (A is a meronym of B if A is part of B), holonymy (B is a holonym of A if B contains A), hyponymy (or troponymy) (A is subordinate of B; A is kind of B), hypernymy (A is superordinate of B), synonymy (A denotes the same as B) and antonymy (A denotes the opposite of B). WordNet properties have been studied from a network theory perspective and compared to other semantic networks created from Roget's Thesaurus and word association tasks. From this perspective the three of them are a small world structure. === Other examples === It is also possible to represent logical descriptions using semantic networks such as the existential graphs of Charles Sanders Peirce or the related conceptual graphs of John F. Sowa. These have expressive power equal to or exceeding standard first-order predicate logic. Unlike WordNet or other lexical or browsing networks, semantic networks using these representations can be used for reliable automated logical deduction. Some automated reasoners exploit the graph-theoretic features of the networks during processing. Other examples of semantic networks are Gellish models. Gellish English with its Gellish English dictionary, is a formal language that is defined as a network of relations between concepts and names of concepts. Gellish English is a formal subset of natural English, just as Gellish Dutch is a formal subset of Dutch, whereas multiple languages share the same concepts. Other Gellish networks consist of knowledge models and information models that are expressed in the Gellish language. A Gellish network is a network of (binary) relations between things. Each relation in the network is an expression of a fact that is classified by a relation type. Each relation type itself is a concept that is defined in the Gellish language dictionary. Each related thing is either a concept or an individual thing that is classified by a concept. The definitions of concepts are created in the form of definition models (definition networks) that together form a Gellish Dictionary. A Gellish network can be documented in a Gellish database and is computer interpretable. SciCrunch is a collaboratively edited knowledge base for scientific resources. It provides unambiguous identifiers (Research Resource IDentifiers or RRIDs) for software, lab tools etc. and it also provides options to create links between RRIDs and from communities. Another example of semantic networks, based on category theory, is ologs. Here each type is an object, representing a set of things, and each arrow is a morphism, representing a function. Commutative diagrams also are prescribed to constrain the semantics. In the social sciences people sometimes use the term semantic network to refer to co-occurrence networks. == Software tools == There are also elaborate types of semantic networks connected with corresponding sets of software tools used for

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  • Instance-based learning

    Instance-based learning

    In machine learning, instance-based learning (sometimes called memory-based learning) is a family of learning algorithms that, instead of performing explicit generalization, compare new problem instances with instances seen in training, which have been stored in memory. Because computation is postponed until a new instance is observed, these algorithms are sometimes referred to as "lazy." It is called instance-based because it constructs hypotheses directly from the training instances themselves. This means that the hypothesis complexity can grow with the data: in the worst case, a hypothesis is a list of n training items and the computational complexity of classifying a single new instance is O(n). One advantage that instance-based learning has over other methods of machine learning is its ability to adapt its model to previously unseen data. Instance-based learners may simply store a new instance or throw an old instance away. Examples of instance-based learning algorithms are the k-nearest neighbors algorithm, kernel machines and RBF networks. These store (a subset of) their training set; when predicting a value/class for a new instance, they compute distances or similarities between this instance and the training instances to make a decision. To battle the memory complexity of storing all training instances, as well as the risk of overfitting to noise in the training set, instance reduction algorithms have been proposed.

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  • Plinian Core

    Plinian Core

    Plinian Core is a set of vocabulary terms that can be used to describe different aspects of biological species information. Under "biological species Information" all kinds of properties or traits related to taxa—biological and non-biological—are included. Thus, for instance, terms pertaining descriptions, legal aspects, conservation, management, demographics, nomenclature, or related resources are incorporated. == Description == The Plinian Core is aimed to facilitate the exchange of information about the species and upper taxa. What is in scope? Species level catalogs of any kind of biological objects or data. Terminology associated with biological collection data. Striving for compatibility with other biodiversity-related standards. Facilitating the addition of components and attributes of biological data. What is not in scope? Data interchange protocols. Non-biodiversity-related data. Occurrence level data. This standard is named after Pliny the Elder, a very influential figure in the study of the biological species. Plinian Core design requirements includes: ease of use, to be self-contained, able to support data integration from multiple databases, and ability to handle different levels of granularity. Core terms can be grouped in its current version as follows: Metadata Base Elements Record Metadata Nomenclature and Classification Taxonomic description Natural history Invasive species Habitat and Distribution Demography and Threats Uses, Management and Conservation associatedParty, MeasurementOrFact, References, AncillaryData == Background == Plinian Core started as a collaborative project between Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad and GBIF Spain in 2005. A series of iterations in which elements were defined and implanted in different projects resulted in a "Plinian Core Flat" [deprecated]. As a result, a new development was impulse to overcome them in 2012. New formal requirements, additional input and a will to better support the standard and its documentation, as well as to align it with the processes of TDWG, the world reference body for biodiversity information standards. A new version, Plinian Core v3.x.x was defined. This provides more flexibility to fully represent the information of a species in a variety of scenarios. New elements to deal with aspects such as IPR, related resources, referenced, etc. were introduced, and elements already included were better-defined and documented. Partner for the development of Plinian Core in this new phase incorporated the University of Granada (UG, Spain), the Alexander von Humboldt Institute (IAvH, Colombia), the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio, Mexico) and the University of São Paulo (USP, Brazil). A "Plinian Core Task Group" within TDWG "Interest Group on species Information" was constituted and currently working on its development. == Levels of the standard == Plinian Core is presented in to levels: the abstract model and the application profiles. The abstract model (AM), comprising the abstract model schema(xsd) and the terms' URIs, is the normative part. It is all comprehensive, and allows for different levels of granularity in describing species properties. The AM should be taken as a "menu" from which to choose terms and level of detail needed in any specific project. The subsets of the abstract model intended to be implemented in specific projects are the "application profiles" (APs). Besides containing part of the elements of the AM, APs can impose additional specifications on the included elements, such as controlled vocabularies. Some examples of APs in use follow: Application profile CONABIO Application profile INBIO Application profile GBIF.ES Application profile Banco de Datos de la Naturaleza.Spain Application profile SIB-COLOMBIA == Relation to other standards == Plinian incorporates a number of elements already defined by other standards. The following table summarizes these standards and the elements used in Plinian Core:

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  • Automatic1111

    Automatic1111

    AUTOMATIC1111 Stable Diffusion Web UI (SD WebUI, A1111, or Automatic1111) is an open source generative artificial intelligence program that allows users to generate images from a text prompt. It uses Stable Diffusion as the base model for its image capabilities together with a large set of extensions and features to customize its output. == History == SD WebUI was released on GitHub on August 22, 2022, by AUTOMATIC1111, 1 month after the initial release of Stable Diffusion. At the time, Stable Diffusion could only be run via the command line. SD WebUI quickly rose in popularity and has been described as "the most popular tool for running diffusion models locally." SD WebUI is one of the most popular user interfaces for Stable Diffusion, together with ComfyUI. In February 2024, a book was published by ja:Gijutsu Hyoronsha on using Stable Diffusion with SD WebUI in Japanese. As of July 2024, the project had 136,000 stars on GitHub. == Features == SD WebUI uses Gradio for its user interface. Each parameter in the Stable Diffusion program is exposed via a UI interface within SD WebUI. SD WebUI contains additional parameters not included in Stable Diffusion itself, such as support for Low-rank adaptations, ControlNet and custom variational autoencoders. SD WebUI supports prompt weighting, image-to-image based generation, inpainting, outpainting and image scaling. It supports over 20 samplers including DDIM, Euler, Euler a, DPM++ 2M Karras, and UniPC. It is also used for its various optimizations over the base Stable Diffusion. == Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge == Stable Diffusion WebUI Forge (Forge) is a notable fork of SD WebUI started by Lvmin Zhang, who is also the creator of ControlNet and Fooocus. The initial goal of Forge was to improve the performance and features of SD WebUI with the intention to upstream changes back to SD WebUI. One of Forge's optimizations allowed users with low VRAM to generate images faster on some versions of Stable Diffusion. It improved generation speed for users with 8GB and 6GB VRAM by 30-45% and 60-75%, respectively. Forge also includes extra features such as support for more samplers than standard SD WebUI. Some of Forge's optimizations were borrowed from ComfyUI, and others were developed by the Forge team. In August 2024, Forge added support for the Flux diffusion model developed by Black Forest Labs, which is not yet supported by SD WebUI.

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  • Cleverpath AION Business Rules Expert

    Cleverpath AION Business Rules Expert

    Cleverpath AION Business Rules Expert (formerly Platinum AIONDS, and before that Trinzic AIONDS, and originally Aion) is an expert system and Business rules engine owned by Computer Associates by 2000. == History == The product was created around 1986 as "Aion" by the Aion company. In its initial release Aion was multi-platform and continues to be deliverable to the PC, Unixs, and Mainframe computer's. In addition it ties in seamlessly with a variety of databases including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and ODBC. Aion was founded by Harry Reinstein, Larry Cohn, Garry Hallee, Scott Grinis, and others. From Scott Grinis's bio: Scott founded Aion, a company that developed expert systems and whose advanced inference engine and object technology were used by financial services and insurance firms to develop risk-scoring and underwriting applications. Harry Reinstein was quoted as saying: “Our biggest competitor was not AICorp, it was COBOL” Trinzic owned AION by 1993. A reference in a 1993 announcement indicates that Trinzic's formation was the result of a merger (paraphased): Trinzic set three development initiatives shortly after its formation from the merger of Aion Corp. and AICorp. The other initiatives -- adding SQL extensions to Aion/DS and evaluating the unbundling of some of that product's object-oriented programming capabilities -- are still active. Writing in 1993 Judith Hodges and Deborah Melewski give the date for the merger: Two rival artificial intelligence software vendors -- AICorp, Inc. and Aion Corp. -- merged in September 1992 to form Trinzic Corp. As part of the merger, redundant jobs were eliminated (20% of the combined work force), leaving a total work force of 245 employees worldwide. The new firm also boasted a combined installed base of more than 1,200 sites representing more than 10,000 software licenses. Although in the merger, technically AICorp bought Aion, as AICorp was a public company and Aion was still private, the reality was that Aion's leadership and technology subsumed AICorp's. Jim Gagnard, the CEO of Aion, became CEO of Trinzic and AICorp's flagship product, KBMS, was discontinued, while the Aion Development System continued to be enhanced and KBMS customers were assisted in converting to AIONDS, under the continued technical leadership of Garry Hallee and Scott Grinis. On August 1, 1994 Trinzic released version 6.4 of AIONDS saying, in part: Trinzic Corp., Palo Alto, Calif., has unveiled The Aion Development System (AionDS) Version 6.4, an upgrade to the company's development environment for building business process automation applications. Version 6.4 provides a visual development environment for Microsoft Windows or OS/2 PM applications using business rules. Trinzic was acquired by PLATINUM Technologies in 1995 which retained at least some of Trinzic's acquisitions Platinum Technologies was acquired by Computer Associates in 1999. CA changed the system's name to CA Aion Business Rules Expert" on or before 2009. It is currently (June 2011) at Release 11 on a wide range of supported platforms. == Applications using Aion == Aion has been used in a variety of industries including Energy, Insurance, Military, Aviation, and Banking. At one point an Aion expert system application written by Covia, LLC existed to do airport gate assignment. Colossus, a computer program, developed by Computer Sciences Corporation is the insurance industry’s leading expert system for assisting adjusters in the evaluation of bodily injury claims (aka "pain and suffering"). Colossus helps adjusters reduce variance in payouts on similar bodily injury claims through objective use of industry standard rules.

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  • Vero (app)

    Vero (app)

    Vero (stylized as VERO) is a social media platform and mobile app company. Vero markets itself as a social network free from advertisements, data mining and algorithms. == History == The app was founded by French-Lebanese billionaire Ayman Hariri who is the son of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. The name is taken from the Italian word for true. The app launched officially in 2015 as an alternative to Facebook and their popular photo-blogging app Instagram. Within weeks of its release the app surged in popularity although users expressed mixed reports with some feeling confused about how the app worked. Cosplayers were early to adopt the app as their photo-sharing platform of choice, favouring the app's pinch and zoom magnification feature over Instagram's zoom feature. Other creative communities soon followed, and the app became popular with niche groups of makeup artists, tattoo artists, and skateboarders. In March 2018, Vero's popularity surged, partly helped by an exodus from Facebook and Instagram following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. In the wake of the scandal, Vero devised an advertising campaign aimed at defected Facebook and Instagram users, hoping the app's policies and privacy settings would assuage concerns over sharing personal information on the internet. Within the space of one week, the app went from being a small service, akin to Ello or Peach, to being the most downloaded app in eighteen countries. In December 2020, Vero released its most significant update to date, Vero 2.0 which introduced new features including voice and video calls, game and app posts and bookmarks, and refinements to the UI. In October 2021, Vero introduced their Desktop app (beta) with multiple post options and a re-sizable multi-column feed. == Concept and funding == Vero's content feed resembles Instagram's although users can share a wider variety of content and the app has a chronological content feed whereas Facebook and Instagram's feeds are algorithm based. Vero's business plan is also distinct from similar social media apps. Whereas its competitors such as Facebook or Instagram make money from in-app advertising revenue and the sale of user data, Vero's business plan was to invite the first one million users to use the app for free then charge any subsequent users a subscription fee. The app was entirely funded by its founder and generated additional revenues by charging affiliate fees when someone buys a product they find on Vero. == Awards == Vero was recognized at the 2021 Webbys, being named as an Honoree in the Best Visual Design - Aesthetic Category. == Controversies == === Privacy === Vero has faced some criticism over the wording of their manifesto, in particular, the statement "Vero only collects the data we believe is necessary to provide users with a great experience and to ensure the security of their accounts." Because this policy does not explicitly state that the app will not sell data on to third parties some users fear that the need to monetise the app through data might prove too tempting. Users have also complained about not being able to delete their accounts. While this was never the case, the option was hidden deep in the app's settings. === Russian involvement === Although Vero remains transparent about the app's Russian development team, they have been caught up in concerns about Russian interference on social media platforms. The app's founder Ayman Hariri was quick to dismiss the remarks as xenophobic and defend the nationality of his employees, stating in an interview with Time Magazine; "At the end of the day, where people are from is really not how anybody should judge anyone". === Criticism of the app's founder === Until 2013, Vero's founder Ayman Harari was deputy CEO and chairman of Saudi Oger, the Saudi Arabian construction company which collapsed in 2017, mired by controversies over the welfare and treatment of their employees. However, Hariri is quick to point out that he divested from the firm in 2014 and the worker's rights violations occurred after he had left the company.

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  • Shakey the robot

    Shakey the robot

    Shakey the Robot was the first general-purpose mobile robot able to reason about its own actions. While other robots would have to be instructed on each individual step of completing a larger task, Shakey could analyze commands and break them down into basic chunks by itself. Due to its nature, the project combined research in robotics, computer vision, and natural language processing. Because of this, it was the first project that melded logical reasoning and physical action. Shakey was developed at the Artificial Intelligence Center of Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI International). Some of the most notable results of the project include the A search algorithm, the Hough transform, and the visibility graph method. == History == Shakey was developed from approximately 1966 through 1972 with Charles Rosen, Nils Nilsson and Peter Hart as project managers. Other major contributors included Alfred Brain, Sven Wahlstrom, Bertram Raphael, Richard Duda, Richard Fikes, Thomas Garvey, Helen Chan Wolf and Michael Wilber. The project was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) based on a SRI proposal submitted in April 1964 for research in "Intelligent Automata", later "Intelligent Automata to Reconnaissance". It was originally designed to have two retractable arms. Now retired from active duty, Shakey is currently on view in a glass display case at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. The project inspired numerous other robotics projects, most notably the Centibots. == Software == The robot's programming was primarily done in LISP. The Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver (STRIPS) planner it used was conceived as the main planning component for the software it utilized. As the first robot that was a logical, goal-based agent, Shakey experienced a limited world. A version of Shakey's world could contain a number of rooms connected by corridors, with doors and light switches available for the robot to interact with. Shakey had a short list of available actions within its planner. These actions involved traveling from one location to another, turning the light switches on and off, opening and closing the doors, climbing up and down from rigid objects, and pushing movable objects around. The STRIPS automated planner could devise a plan to enact all the available actions, even though Shakey himself did not have the capability to execute all the actions within the plan personally. An example mission for Shakey might be something like, an operator types the command "push the block off the platform" at a computer console. Shakey looks around, identifies a platform with a block on it, and locates a ramp in order to reach the platform. Shakey then pushes the ramp over to the platform, rolls up the ramp onto the platform, and pushes the block off the platform. == Hardware == Physically, the robot was particularly tall, and had an antenna for a radio link, sonar range finders, a television camera, on-board processors, and collision detection sensors ("bump detectors"). The robot's tall stature and tendency to shake resulted in its name: We worked for a month trying to find a good name for it, ranging from Greek names to whatnot, and then one of us said, 'Hey, it shakes like hell and moves around, let’s just call it Shakey.' == Research results == The development of Shakey provided far-reaching impact on the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as computer science in general. Some of the more notable results include the development of the A search algorithm, which is widely used in pathfinding and graph traversal, the process of plotting an efficiently traversable path between points; the Hough transform, which is a feature extraction technique used in image analysis, computer vision, and digital image processing; and the visibility graph method for finding Euclidean shortest paths among obstacles in the plane. == Media and awards == In 1969 the SRI published "SHAKEY: Experimentation in Robot Learning and Planning", a 24-minute video. The project then received media attention. This included an article in the New York Times on April 10, 1969. In 1970, Life referred to Shakey as the "first electronic person"; and in November 1970 National Geographic Magazine covered Shakey and the future of computers. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's AI Video Competition's awards are named "Shakeys" because of the significant impact of the 1969 video. Shakey was inducted into Carnegie Mellon University's Robot Hall of Fame in 2004 alongside such notables as ASIMO and C-3PO. Shakey has been honored with an IEEE Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing. Shakey was showcased in the BBC's Towards Tomorrow: Robot (1967) documentary.

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  • Semantic analysis (knowledge representation)

    Semantic analysis (knowledge representation)

    Semantic analysis is a method for eliciting and representing knowledge about organisations. Initially the problem must be defined by domain experts and passed to the project analyst(s). The next step is the generation of candidate affordances. This step will generate a list of semantic units that may be included in the schema. The candidate grouping follows where some of the semantic units that will appear in the schema are placed in simple groups. Finally the groups will be integrated together into an ontology chart. Semantic analysis always starts from the problem definition which if not clear, require the analyst to employ relevant literature, interviews with the stakeholders and other techniques towards collecting supplementary information. All assumptions made must be genuine and not limiting the system.

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  • WYSIWYM (interaction technique)

    WYSIWYM (interaction technique)

    What you see is what you meant (WYSIWYM) is a text editing interaction technique that emerged from two projects at University of Brighton. It allows users to create abstract knowledge representations such as those required by the Semantic Web using a natural language interface. Natural language understanding (NLU) technology is not employed. Instead, natural language generation (NLG) is used in a highly interactive manner. The text editor accepts repeated refinement of a selected span of text as it becomes progressively less vacuous of authored semantics. Using a mouse, a text property held in the evolving text can be further refined by a set of options derived by NLG from a built-in ontology. An invisible representation of the semantic knowledge is created which can be used for multilingual document generation, formal knowledge formation, or any other task that requires formally specified information. The two projects at Brighton worked in the field of Conceptual Authoring to lay a foundation for further research and development of a Semantic Web Authoring Tool (SWAT). This tool has been further explored as a means for developing a knowledge base by those without prior experience with Controlled Natural Language tools.

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  • List of video editing software

    List of video editing software

    The following is a list of video editing software. The criterion for inclusion in this list is the ability to perform non-linear video editing. Most modern transcoding software supports transcoding a portion of a video clip, which would count as cropping and trimming. However, items in this article have one of the following conditions: Can perform other non-linear video editing function such as montage or compositing Can do the trimming or cropping without transcoding == Free (libre) or open-source == The software listed in this section is either free software or open source, and may or may not be commercial. === Active and stable === === Inactive === == Proprietary (non-commercial) == The software listed in this section is proprietary, and freeware or freemium. === Active === === Discontinued === == Proprietary (commercial) == The software listed in this section is proprietary and commercial. === Active === === Discontinued ===

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  • Visual hierarchy

    Visual hierarchy

    Visual hierarchy, in Gestalt psychology, describes how particular elements in a visual field stand out more than others in a pattern, creating a perceived order of importance. Although it can occur naturally, the term is most often used in design—especially graphic design and cartography—where elements are arranged to appear more important than others. This order is created by the visual contrast between forms in a field of perception. Objects with highest contrast to their surroundings are recognized first by the human mind. == Evidence == There is some scientific evidence for visual hierarchy using eye tracking. For example, one study found that when people agree that a graphic design is good, they exhibit more similar eye movements; measured by the Fréchet distance. == Theory == The concept of visual hierarchy is based in Gestalt psychological theory, an early 20th-century German theory that proposes that the human brain has innate organizing tendencies that “structure individual elements, shapes or forms into a coherent, organized whole,” especially when processing visual information. The German word Gestalt translates into “form,” “pattern,” or “shape” in English. When an element in a visual field disconnects from the ‘whole’ created by the brain's perceptual organization, it “stands out” to the viewer. The shapes that disconnect most severely from their surroundings stand out the most. This is commonly encapsulated as the Von Restorff effect, which states that isolation attracts attention. === Physical characteristics === The brain distinguishes objects based on differences in their physical appearances. These characteristics fall into four categories: color, size, alignment, and character. Each type of contrast can be used to construct a visual hierarchy. The same characteristics are also sometimes categorized (especially among cartographers) according to the visual variables of Jacques Bertin. Color encompasses the hue, saturation, value, and perceived texture of forms. Dark figures will stand out on a light background, light figures will stand out on a dark background, brightly colored figures will stand out on a muted background, and so on. The fluorescent colors used for tennis balls and other sports equipment is intended to make them instantly stand out against almost any natural visual field. Size has a strong influence on visual hierarchy. Large elements typically attract attention, provided that they can be recognized as figures. Alignment is the arrangement of forms relative to one another. For example, items in the upper left corner of a page are often seen first (at least for those readers accustomed to western languages), the center of the field has prominence. Negative space can also be employed: a figure isolated among large amounts of white space will stand out more than one amid other figures. Character includes several kinds of contrasts based on shape. For example, complex patterns attract more attention than simple or predictable patterns, intricate shapes attract more attention than generalized ones. Even large-scale patterns can attract attention if they contrast with the pattern in the remainder of the visual field. Camouflage is an example of eliminating contrast in character in color and/or character specifically to reduce visual hierarchy. The "squint test" is often suggested as a simple, if unscientific, method to evaluate the visual hierarchy of a graphical product like a map or web page. When viewed out of focus (or from a great distance), the viewer is not distracted by details, but can only see overall (gestalt) patterns such as visual hierarchy. All of the above patterns, except some aspects of character, are recognizable by this method. == Application == Visual hierarchy is an important concept in the field of graphic design, a field that specializes in visual organization. Designers attempt to control visual hierarchy to guide the eye to information in a specific order for a specific purpose. One could compare visual hierarchy in graphic design to grammatical structure in writing in terms of the importance of each principle to these fields. === Cartography === In cartographic design, visual hierarchy is used to emphasize certain important features on a map over less important features. Typically, a map has a purpose that dictates a conceptual hierarchy of what should be more or less important, so one of the goals of the choice of map symbols is to match the visual hierarchy to the conceptual hierarchy. The Visual hierarchy of a map may apply to individual geographic features (such as making a single country stand out), to map layers of related features (e.g., making lakes stand out more than roads), and to the entire layout of map and non-map elements (e.g., making the title look more important than the scale bar). Like the main map elements, such features have weight, and the properties that apply to visual hierarchy of map layers also apply to other elements on the page. Size and alignment are the two main determinants of the visual hierarchy for these features. Cartographers often utilize principles of negative space and figure-ground contrast to design an appropriate visual hierarchy by employing contrast between unused space and layout features. === User experience design and behavioral design === In user experience design and behavioural design, such as web design, visual hierarchy is used to prioritize navigational structures and content, so that audiences focus on elements that facilitate system usage, or increases the chance that they notice content that contains psychological nudges. Color is one of many factors used in the design of a visual hierarchy, and a key factor due to the high salience of color perception.

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  • Historical Thesaurus of English

    Historical Thesaurus of English

    The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is the largest thesaurus in the world. It is called a historical thesaurus as it arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, according to the first documented occurrence of a word in the entire history of the English language. The HTE was conceived and begun in 1965 by the English Language & Linguistics department of the University of Glasgow, who have ever since continued to compile the thesaurus. From the 1980s onwards the project was moved from paper-based records to a computer database. Today, the HTE is available to the public online, but a print version, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED), was published in 2009. == Main project: The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) == The Historical Thesaurus of English (HTE) is a complete database of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary and other dictionaries (including Old English), arranged by semantic field and date. In this way, the HTE arranges the whole vocabulary of English, from the earliest written records in Old English to the present, alongside dates of use. It is the first historical thesaurus to be compiled for any of the world's languages and contains 800,000 meanings for 600,000 words, within 230,000 categories. As the HTE website states, "in addition to providing hitherto unavailable information for linguistic and textual scholars, the Historical Thesaurus online is a rich resource for students of social and cultural history, showing how concepts developed through the words that refer to them." === Structure === The work is divided into three main sections: the External World, the Mind, and Society. These are broken down into successively narrower domains. The text eventually discriminates more than 236,000 categories. The second order categories are: === History === The ambitious project was announced at a 1965 meeting of the Philological Society by its originator, Michael Samuels. Work on the HTE started in the same year. In 2017, the University of Glasgow was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education for the HTE. A second edition of the online HTE is currently in progress and is expected to be launched in late 2020. Work is released on the freely-available HTE website when available. == Print edition: Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) == On 22 October 2009, after 44 years of work, version 1.0 of the HTE was published by Oxford University Press in a two-volume slipcased set as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED). The two hardcover volumes together total nearly 4,500 pages.

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