Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure, sometimes stylized Azure, and formerly Windows Azure, is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It offers management, access and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments through its global infrastructure. Microsoft Azure supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. Azure was first introduced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2008 under the codename "Project Red Dog". It was officially launched as Windows Azure in February 2010 and later renamed to Microsoft Azure on March 25, 2014. == Services == Microsoft Azure uses large-scale virtualization at Microsoft data centers worldwide and offers more than 600 services. Microsoft Azure offers a service level agreement (SLA) that guarantees 99.9% availability for applications and data hosted on its platform, subject to specific terms and conditions outlined in the SLA documentation. === Computer services === Virtual machines, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), allowing users to launch general-purpose Microsoft Windows and Linux virtual machines, software as a service (SaaS), as well as preconfigured machine images for popular software packages. Starting in 2022, these virtual machines are now powered by Ampere Cloud-native processors. Most users run Linux on Azure, some of the many Linux distributions offered, including Microsoft's own Linux-based Azure Sphere. App services, platform as a service (PaaS) environment, letting developers easily publish and manage websites. Azure Web Sites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, Java, or Python, which can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial, Azure DevOps, or uploaded through the user portal. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event. Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open-source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed Web Apps in April 2015. Web Jobs are applications that can be deployed to an App Service environment to implement background processing that can be invoked on a schedule, on-demand, or run continuously. The Blob, Table, and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides the capability to deploy production-ready Kubernetes clusters in Azure. In July 2023, watermarking support on Azure Virtual Desktop was announced as an optional feature of Screen Capture to provide additional security against data leakage. === Identity === Entra ID connect is used to synchronize on-premises directories and enable SSO (Single Sign On). Entra ID B2C allows the use of consumer identity and access management in the cloud. Entra Domain Services is used to join Azure virtual machines to a domain without domain controllers. Azure information protection can be used to protect sensitive information. Entra ID External Identities is a set of capabilities that allow organizations to collaborate with external users, including customers and partners. On July 11, 2023, Microsoft announced the renaming of Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID. The name change took place four days later. === Mobile services === Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight users' behavior. It also provides push notifications to mobile devices. HockeyApp can be used to develop, distribute, and beta-test mobile apps. === Storage services === Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by the partition key and primary key. Azure Table Service is a NoSQL non-relational database. Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as object storage blobs that can be accessed by an HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data. Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues. File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the REST APIs or the SMB protocol. === Communication services === Azure Communication Services offers an SDK for creating web and mobile communications applications that include SMS, video calling, VOIP and PSTN calling, and web-based chat. === Data management === Azure Data Explorer provides big data analytics and data-exploration capabilities. Azure Search provides text search and a subset of OData's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. Cosmos DB is a NoSQL database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. Azure Cache for Redis is a managed implementation of Redis. StorSimple manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. Azure SQL Database works to create, scale, and extend applications into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server technology. It also integrates with Active Directory, Microsoft System Center, and Hadoop. Azure Synapse Analytics is a fully managed cloud data warehouse. Azure Data Factory is a data integration service that allows creation of data-driven workflows in the cloud for orchestrating and automating data movement and data transformation. Azure Data Lake is a scalable data storage and analytic service for big data analytics workloads that require developers to run massively parallel queries. Azure HDInsight is a big data-relevant service that deploys Hortonworks Hadoop on Microsoft Azure and supports the creation of Hadoop clusters using Linux with Ubuntu. Azure Stream Analytics is a Serverless scalable event-processing engine that enables users to develop and run real-time analytics on multiple streams of data from sources such as devices, sensors, websites, social media, and other applications. === Messaging === The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off-premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The Azure service bus supports four different types of communication mechanisms: Event Hubs, which provides event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at a massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example, an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as coordinating with a GPS in real time. Queues, which allows one-directional communication. A sender application would send the message to the service bus queue and a receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue, only one would process a single message. Topics, which provides one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It is similar to a queue; however, each subscriber will receive a copy of the message sent to a Topic. Optionally, the subscriber can filter out messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber. Relays, which provides bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay does not store in-flight messages in its memory; instead, it just passes them on to the destination application. === Media services === A PaaS offering that can be used for encoding, content protection, streaming, or analytics. === CDN === Azure has a worldwide content delivery network (CDN) designed to efficiently deliver audio, video, applications, images, and other static files. It improves the performance of websites by caching static files closer to users, based on their geographic location. Users can manage the network using a REST-based HTTP API. Azure has 118 point-of-presence locations across 100 cities worldwide (also known as Edge locations) as of January 2023. === Developer === Application Insights Azure DevOps === Management === With Azure Automation, users can easily automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks, often prone to cloud or enterprise setting errors. They can accomplish it using runbooks or desired state configurations for process automation. Microsoft SMA === Azure AI === Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML) provides tools and frameworks for developers to create their own machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Azure AI Services by Microsoft comprises prebuilt APIs, SDKs, and services developers can customize. These services encompass perceptual and cognitive intelligence features such as speech recognition, speaker recognition, neural speech synthesis, face recognition, computer vision, OCR/form understanding, natural language processing, machine translation, and business decision services. Many AI characteristics in Microsoft's products and services, namely Bing, Office, Teams, Xbox, and Windows, are driven by Azure AI Services. Microsoft Foundry (formerly known as Azure AI Studio)

Evolvability (computer science)

The term evolvability is a framework of computational learning introduced by Leslie Valiant in his paper of the same name. The aim of this theory is to model biological evolution and categorize which types of mechanisms are evolvable. Evolution is an extension of PAC learning and learning from statistical queries. == General framework == Let F n {\displaystyle F_{n}\,} and R n {\displaystyle R_{n}\,} be collections of functions on n {\displaystyle n\,} variables. Given an ideal function f ∈ F n {\displaystyle f\in F_{n}} , the goal is to find by local search a representation r ∈ R n {\displaystyle r\in R_{n}} that closely approximates f {\displaystyle f\,} . This closeness is measured by the performance Perf ⁡ ( f , r ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} (f,r)} of r {\displaystyle r\,} with respect to f {\displaystyle f\,} . As is the case in the biological world, there is a difference between genotype and phenotype. In general, there can be multiple representations (genotypes) that correspond to the same function (phenotype). That is, for some r , r ′ ∈ R n {\displaystyle r,r'\in R_{n}} , with r ≠ r ′ {\displaystyle r\neq r'\,} , still r ( x ) = r ′ ( x ) {\displaystyle r(x)=r'(x)\,} for all x ∈ X n {\displaystyle x\in X_{n}} . However, this need not be the case. The goal then, is to find a representation that closely matches the phenotype of the ideal function, and the spirit of the local search is to allow only small changes in the genotype. Let the neighborhood N ( r ) {\displaystyle N(r)\,} of a representation r {\displaystyle r\,} be the set of possible mutations of r {\displaystyle r\,} . For simplicity, consider Boolean functions on X n = { − 1 , 1 } n {\displaystyle X_{n}=\{-1,1\}^{n}\,} , and let D n {\displaystyle D_{n}\,} be a probability distribution on X n {\displaystyle X_{n}\,} . Define the performance in terms of this. Specifically, Perf ⁡ ( f , r ) = ∑ x ∈ X n f ( x ) r ( x ) D n ( x ) . {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} (f,r)=\sum _{x\in X_{n}}f(x)r(x)D_{n}(x).} Note that Perf ⁡ ( f , r ) = Prob ⁡ ( f ( x ) = r ( x ) ) − Prob ⁡ ( f ( x ) ≠ r ( x ) ) . {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} (f,r)=\operatorname {Prob} (f(x)=r(x))-\operatorname {Prob} (f(x)\neq r(x)).} In general, for non-Boolean functions, the performance will not correspond directly to the probability that the functions agree, although it will have some relationship. Throughout an organism's life, it will only experience a limited number of environments, so its performance cannot be determined exactly. The empirical performance is defined by Perf s ⁡ ( f , r ) = 1 s ∑ x ∈ S f ( x ) r ( x ) , {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} _{s}(f,r)={\frac {1}{s}}\sum _{x\in S}f(x)r(x),} where S {\displaystyle S\,} is a multiset of s {\displaystyle s\,} independent selections from X n {\displaystyle X_{n}\,} according to D n {\displaystyle D_{n}\,} . If s {\displaystyle s\,} is large enough, evidently Perf s ⁡ ( f , r ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} _{s}(f,r)} will be close to the actual performance Perf ⁡ ( f , r ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} (f,r)} . Given an ideal function f ∈ F n {\displaystyle f\in F_{n}} , initial representation r ∈ R n {\displaystyle r\in R_{n}} , sample size s {\displaystyle s\,} , and tolerance t {\displaystyle t\,} , the mutator Mut ⁡ ( f , r , s , t ) {\displaystyle \operatorname {Mut} (f,r,s,t)} is a random variable defined as follows. Each r ′ ∈ N ( r ) {\displaystyle r'\in N(r)} is classified as beneficial, neutral, or deleterious, depending on its empirical performance. Specifically, r ′ {\displaystyle r'\,} is a beneficial mutation if Perf s ⁡ ( f , r ′ ) − Perf s ⁡ ( f , r ) ≥ t {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} _{s}(f,r')-\operatorname {Perf} _{s}(f,r)\geq t} ; r ′ {\displaystyle r'\,} is a neutral mutation if − t < Perf s ⁡ ( f , r ′ ) − Perf s ⁡ ( f , r ) < t {\displaystyle -t<\operatorname {Perf} _{s}(f,r')-\operatorname {Perf} _{s}(f,r) 0 {\displaystyle \epsilon >0\,} , for all ideal functions f ∈ F n {\displaystyle f\in F_{n}} and representations r 0 ∈ R n {\displaystyle r_{0}\in R_{n}} , with probability at least 1 − ϵ {\displaystyle 1-\epsilon \,} , Perf ⁡ ( f , r g ( n , 1 / ϵ ) ) ≥ 1 − ϵ , {\displaystyle \operatorname {Perf} (f,r_{g(n,1/\epsilon )})\geq 1-\epsilon ,} where the sizes of neighborhoods N ( r ) {\displaystyle N(r)\,} for r ∈ R n {\displaystyle r\in R_{n}\,} are at most p ( n , 1 / ϵ ) {\displaystyle p(n,1/\epsilon )\,} , the sample size is s ( n , 1 / ϵ ) {\displaystyle s(n,1/\epsilon )\,} , the tolerance is t ( 1 / n , ϵ ) {\displaystyle t(1/n,\epsilon )\,} , and the generation size is g ( n , 1 / ϵ ) {\displaystyle g(n,1/\epsilon )\,} . F {\displaystyle F\,} is evolvable over D {\displaystyle D\,} if it is evolvable by some R {\displaystyle R\,} over D {\displaystyle D\,} . F {\displaystyle F\,} is evolvable if it is evolvable over all distributions D {\displaystyle D\,} . == Results == The class of conjunctions and the class of disjunctions are evolvable over the uniform distribution for short conjunctions and disjunctions, respectively. The class of parity functions (which evaluate to the parity of the number of true literals in a given subset of literals) are not evolvable, even for the uniform distribution. Evolvability implies PAC learnability.

Collateral freedom

Collateral freedom is an anti-censorship strategy that attempts to make it economically prohibitive for censors to block content on the Internet. This is achieved by hosting content on cloud services that are considered by censors to be "too important to block", and then using encryption to prevent censors from identifying requests for censored information that is hosted among other content, forcing censors to either allow access to the censored information or take down entire services.

Graphics address remapping table

The graphics address remapping table (GART), also known as the graphics aperture remapping table, or graphics translation table (GTT), is an I/O memory management unit (IOMMU) used by Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and PCI Express (PCIe) graphics cards. The GART allows the graphics card direct memory access (DMA) to the host system memory, through which buffers of textures, polygon meshes and other data are loaded. AMD later reused the same mechanism for I/O virtualization with other peripherals including disk controllers and network adapters. A GART is used as a means of data exchange between the main memory and video memory through which buffers (i.e. paging/swapping) of textures, polygon meshes and other data are loaded, but can also be used to expand the amount of video memory available for systems with only integrated or shared graphics (i.e. no discrete or inbuilt graphics processor), such as Intel HD Graphics processors. However, this type of memory (expansion) remapping has a caveat that affects the entire system: specifically, any GART, pre-allocated memory becomes pooled and cannot be utilised for any other purposes but graphics memory and display rendering. Since PCI Express, the GART is extended to the GTT (Graphics Translation Table), which act as a buffer or cache between system memory and graphics card, and in PCI Express, the GTT buffer size is changeable by the GPU driver. == Operating system support == === Windows === Support for AGP GART was added since Windows 95 OSR2. Later, support for GTT was added since Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista. === Linux === Jeff Hartmann served as the primary maintainer of the Linux kernel's agpgart driver, which began as part of Brian Paul's Utah GLX accelerated Mesa 3D driver project. The developers primarily targeted Linux 2.4.x kernels, but made patches available against older 2.2.x kernels. Dave Jones heavily reworked agpgart for the Linux 2.6.x kernels, along with more contributions from Jeff Hartmann. === FreeBSD === In FreeBSD, the agpgart driver appeared in its 4.1 release. === Solaris === AGPgart support was introduced into Solaris Express Developer Edition as of its 7/05 release.

Image texture

An image texture is the small-scale structure perceived on an image, based on the spatial arrangement of color or intensities. It can be quantified by a set of metrics calculated in image processing. Image texture metrics give us information about the whole image or selected regions. Image textures can be artificially created or found in natural scenes captured in an image. Image textures are one way that can be used to help in segmentation or classification of images. For more accurate segmentation the most useful features are spatial frequency and an average grey level. To analyze an image texture in computer graphics, there are two ways to approach the issue: structured approach and statistical approach. == Structured approach == A structured approach sees an image texture as a set of primitive texels in some regular or repeated pattern. This works well when analyzing artificial textures. To obtain a structured description a characterization of the spatial relationship of the texels is gathered by using Voronoi tessellation of the texels. == Statistical approach == A statistical approach sees an image texture as a quantitative measure of the arrangement of intensities in a region. In general this approach is easier to compute and is more widely used, since natural textures are made of patterns of irregular subelements. === Edge detection === The use of edge detection is to determine the number of edge pixels in a specified region, helps determine a characteristic of texture complexity. After edges have been found the direction of the edges can also be applied as a characteristic of texture and can be useful in determining patterns in the texture. These directions can be represented as an average or in a histogram. Consider a region with N pixels. the gradient-based edge detector is applied to this region by producing two outputs for each pixel p: the gradient magnitude Mag(p) and the gradient direction Dir(p). The edgeness per unit area can be defined by F e d g e n e s s = | { p | M a g ( p ) > T } | N {\displaystyle F_{edgeness}={\frac {|\{p|Mag(p)>T\}|}{N}}} for some threshold T. To include orientation with edgeness histograms for both gradient magnitude and gradient direction can be used. Hmag(R) denotes the normalized histogram of gradient magnitudes of region R, and Hdir(R) denotes the normalized histogram of gradient orientations of region R. Both are normalized according to the size NR Then F m a g , d i r = ( H m a g ( R ) , H d i r ( R ) ) {\displaystyle F_{mag,dir}=(H_{mag}(R),H_{dir}(R))} is a quantitative texture description of region R. === Co-occurrence matrices === The co-occurrence matrix captures numerical features of a texture using spatial relations of similar gray tones. Numerical features computed from the co-occurrence matrix can be used to represent, compare, and classify textures. The following are a subset of standard features derivable from a normalized co-occurrence matrix: A n g u l a r 2 n d M o m e n t = ∑ i ∑ j p [ i , j ] 2 C o n t r a s t = ∑ i = 1 N g ∑ j = 1 N g n 2 p [ i , j ] , where | i − j | = n C o r r e l a t i o n = ∑ i = 1 N g ∑ j = 1 N g ( i j ) p [ i , j ] − μ x μ y σ x σ y E n t r o p y = − ∑ i ∑ j p [ i , j ] l n ( p [ i , j ] ) {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}Angular{\text{ }}2nd{\text{ }}Moment&=\sum _{i}\sum _{j}p[i,j]^{2}\\Contrast&=\sum _{i=1}^{Ng}\sum _{j=1}^{Ng}n^{2}p[i,j]{\text{, where }}|i-j|=n\\Correlation&={\frac {\sum _{i=1}^{Ng}\sum _{j=1}^{Ng}(ij)p[i,j]-\mu _{x}\mu _{y}}{\sigma _{x}\sigma _{y}}}\\Entropy&=-\sum _{i}\sum _{j}p[i,j]ln(p[i,j])\\\end{aligned}}} where p [ i , j ] {\displaystyle p[i,j]} is the [ i , j ] {\displaystyle [i,j]} th entry in a gray-tone spatial dependence matrix, and Ng is the number of distinct gray-levels in the quantized image. One negative aspect of the co-occurrence matrix is that the extracted features do not necessarily correspond to visual perception. It is used in dentistry for the objective evaluation of lesions [DOI: 10.1155/2020/8831161], treatment efficacy [DOI: 10.3390/ma13163614; DOI: 10.11607/jomi.5686; DOI: 10.3390/ma13173854; DOI: 10.3390/ma13132935] and bone reconstruction during healing [DOI: 10.5114/aoms.2013.33557; DOI: 10.1259/dmfr/22185098; EID: 2-s2.0-81455161223; DOI: 10.3390/ma13163649]. === Laws texture energy measures === Another approach is to use local masks to detect various types of texture features. Laws originally used four vectors representing texture features to create sixteen 2D masks from the outer products of the pairs of vectors. The four vectors and relevant features were as follows: L5 = [ +1 +4 6 +4 +1 ] (Level) E5 = [ -1 -2 0 +2 +1 ] (Edge) S5 = [ -1 0 2 0 -1 ] (Spot) R5 = [ +1 -4 6 -4 +1 ] (Ripple) To these 4, a fifth is sometimes added: W5 = [ -1 +2 0 -2 +1 ] (Wave) From Laws' 4 vectors, 16 5x5 "energy maps" are then filtered down to 9 in order to remove certain symmetric pairs. For instance, L5E5 measures vertical edge content and E5L5 measures horizontal edge content. The average of these two measures is the "edginess" of the content. The resulting 9 maps used by Laws are as follows: L5E5/E5L5 L5R5/R5L5 E5S5/S5E5 S5S5 R5R5 L5S5/S5L5 E5E5 E5R5/R5E5 S5R5/R5S5 Running each of these nine maps over an image to create a new image of the value of the origin ([2,2]) results in 9 "energy maps," or conceptually an image with each pixel associated with a vector of 9 texture attributes. === Autocorrelation and power spectrum === The autocorrelation function of an image can be used to detect repetitive patterns of textures. == Texture segmentation == The use of image texture can be used as a description for regions into segments. There are two main types of segmentation based on image texture, region based and boundary based. Though image texture is not a perfect measure for segmentation it is used along with other measures, such as color, that helps solve segmenting in image. === Region based === Attempts to group or cluster pixels based on texture properties. === Boundary based === Attempts to group or cluster pixels based on edges between pixels that come from different texture properties.

The Triple Revolution

"The Triple Revolution" was an open memorandum sent to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and other government figures on March 22, 1964. It concerned three megatrends of the time: increasing use of automation, the nuclear arms race, and advancements in human rights. Drafted under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, it was signed by an array of noted social activists, professors, and technologists who identified themselves as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution. The chief initiator of the proposal was W. H. "Ping" Ferry, at that time a vice-president of CSDI, basing it in large part on the ideas of the futurist Robert Theobald. == Overview == The statement identified three revolutions underway in the world: the cybernation revolution of increasing automation; the weaponry revolution of mutually assured destruction; and the human rights revolution. It discussed primarily the cybernation revolution. The committee claimed that machines would usher in "a system of almost unlimited productive capacity" while continually reducing the number of manual laborers needed, and increasing the skill needed to work, thereby producing increasing levels of unemployment. It proposed that the government should ease this transformation through large-scale public works, low-cost housing, public transit, electrical power development, income redistribution, union representation for the unemployed, and government restraint on technology deployment. == Legacy == Martin Luther King Jr.'s final Sunday sermon, delivered six days before his April 1968 assassination, explicitly references the thesis of "The Triple Revolution": There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare; then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place. And there is still the voice crying through the vista of time saying, "Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away." In Harlan Ellison's 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions, Philip José Farmer's story "Riders of the Purple Wage" uses the Triple Revolution document as the premise of a future society, in which the "purple wage" of the title is a guaranteed income dole on which most of the population lives. At the 1968 World Science Fiction Convention in San Francisco, Farmer delivered a lengthy Guest of Honor speech in which he called for the founding of a grassroots activist organization called REAP which would work for implementation of the Ad Hoc Committee's recommendations. Looking back on the proposal in his 2008 book, Daniel Bell wrote: "the cybernetic revolution quickly proved to be illusory. There were no spectacular jumps in productivity. ... Cybernation had proved to be one more instance of the penchant for overdramatizing a momentary innovation and blowing it up far out of proportion to its actuality. ... The image of a completely automated production economy—with an endless capacity to turn out goods—was simply a social-science fiction of the early 1960s. Paradoxically, the vision of Utopia was suddenly replaced by the spectre of Doomsday. In place of the early-sixties theme of endless plenty, the picture by the end of the decade was one of a fragile planet of limited resources whose finite stocks were being rapidly depleted, and whose wastes from soaring industrial production were polluting the air and waters." In his 2015 book Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford claims The Triple Revolution's predictions of steady decline in future employment were not wrong, but rather premature. He cites "Seven Deadly Trends" that began in the 1970s-1980s and by the mid-2010s appeared set to continue: Stagnation in real wages Decline in labor's share of national income in many countries (breakdown of Bowley's law), while corporate profits increased Declining labor force participation Diminishing job creation, lengthening jobless recoveries, and soaring long-term unemployment Rising inequality Declining incomes, and underemployment for recent college graduates Polarization and part-time jobs (middle-class jobs are disappearing, to be replaced by a small number of high-paying jobs and large number of low-paying jobs) According to Ford, the 1960s were part of what in retrospect seems like a golden age for labor in the United States, when productivity and wages rose together in near lockstep, and unemployment was low. But after about 1980, wages began stagnating while productivity continued to rise. Labor's share of the economic output began to decline. Ford describes the role that automation and information technology play in these trends, and how new technologies including narrow AI threaten to destroy jobs faster than displaced workers can be retrained for new jobs, before automation takes the new jobs as well. This includes many job categories, such as in transportation, that were never threatened by automation before. According to a 2013 study, about 47% of US jobs are susceptible to automation. == Signatories ==

Exercism

Exercism is an online, open-source, free coding platform that offers code practice and mentorship on 77 different programming languages. == History == Software developer Katrina Owen created Exercism while she was teaching programming at Jumpstart Labs. The platform was developed as an internal tool to solve the problem of her own students not receiving feedback on the coding problems they were practicing. Katrina put the site publicly online and found that people were sharing it with their friends, practicing together and giving each other feedback. Within 12 months, the site had organically grown to see over 6,000 users had submitted code or feedback, and hundreds of volunteers contribute to the languages or tooling on the platform. In 2016, Jeremy Walker joined as co-founder and CEO. In July 2018, the site was relaunched with a new design and centered around a formal mentoring mode, at which point Katrina stepped back from day-to-day involvement. == Product == In the past, the website differed from other coding platforms by requiring students to download exercises through a command line client, solve the code on their own computers then submit the solution for feedback, at which point they can also view other's solutions to the same problem. Since its second relaunch in 2021, solutions can be edited and submitted through a web editor, though the command line client remains available. Exercism has tracks for 74 programming languages. Among the notable languages taught: ABAP, C, C#, C++, CoffeeScript, Delphi, Elm, Erlang, F#, Gleam, Go, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Kotlin, Objective-C, PHP, Python, Raku, Red, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Swift, and V (Vlang). In 2023, the site launched a "12 in 23" challenge for users to learn the basics of 12 different languages - one per month in 2023. == Open source == The Exercism codebase is open source. In April 2016, it consisted of 50 repositories including website code, API code, command-line code and, most of all, over 40 stand-alone repositories for different language tracks. As of February 2024 Exercism has 14,344 contributors, maintains 366 repositories, and 19,603 mentors.