JotterPad is a text editor app for Android, developed by Two App Studio. It is proprietary software that uses the freemium pricing strategy. == Features == Jotterpad supports the markdown and fountain markup languages. Among its features are themes, synchronisation with Google Drive and Dropbox, dictionary and thesaurus, and snapshots. JotterPad uses a freemium pricing model, which means that a restricted version of the app is offered for free, while access to additional functionality requires payment. About half of the features are available in the free version. The synchronisation feature was originally limited to one account, and in Jotterpad 12 the option to synchronise using multiple accounts was added as a monthly subscription service.
Avid Symphony
Avid Symphony is non-linear editing software aimed at professionals in the film and television industry. It is available for Microsoft Windows PCs and Apple Macintosh platforms. Symphony is Avid's high end SD/HD finishing platform for long form work, such as documentary and episodic TV. Its interface is based on the same look and feature set as the Media Composer and Xpress systems, but contains the highest level of features and resolution including secondary color correction, uncompressed HD, and higher real-time performance. == Release history == Symphony is the software component of a tightly integrated package that includes specific hardware audio/video interfaces, storage, and the computer, also sold by Avid. Its release history is therefore tightly related to the release of new Avid interface hardware: Symphony was introduced to the market in 1998. It was based on Avid's Meridien hardware, supporting SD only, and was available first only for the PC and later for the Macintosh platforms. Its last release was 5.0.5 which supported Windows 2000 and Mac OS X v10.2. The next major upgrade was Symphony Nitris in 2005, with a redesigned software and integration with the Nitris DNA hardware (PCI-X). It supported 8 bit and 10 bit SD and HD resolutions in both compressed and uncompressed forms, the MXF format and DNxHD codec, and ran only on Windows PC platforms. Symphony Nitris DX, released in 2008, added support for a range of HD codecs, including HDV, XDCAM-HD, DVCPRO HD, and AVC-I, and brought back Mac OS support for OS X 10.5, as well as Windows Vista. Since the introduction of Symphony 6, it can be used in software-only mode (where a Nitris or Nitris DX BOB used to be required), and at the same time, like Media Composer, Symphony was opened up with "Open I/O", allowing users to have Symphony use their third party hardware from companies like AJA, Matrox, BlueFish, Blackmagic Design and MOTU. The last remaining features that differentiate it from Media Composer are Advanced Color Correction (channels, secondary color correction,), Relational Color Correction (corrections based on common clip name, tape name, program track) and Universal HD Mastering (only with Nitris DX hardware). The latter allows cross-conversions of 23.976p or 24p projects sequences to most any other format during Digital Cut. In 2013, Avid announced it would no longer offer Symphony a standalone product. Starting version 7, Symphony will be sold as an option to Media Composer. This optional package (sold at a premium) will contain all the traditional Symphony-only features to any Media Composer install. == Use in movies == The Celibacy, Director: Horacio Bocaranda Avid Media Composer 6 and Avid Symphony 6 Nitris DX American Hardcore, Director: Paul Rachman Avid Xpress Pro and Symphony Summercamp!, Director: Spike Lee Avid Xpress Pro and Symphony When the Levees Broke Avid Media Composer and Symphony Nitris Superman Returns Edited with Mac-based Film Composer XL, but HD screenings prepped with Symphony
AgMES
The AgMES (Agricultural Metadata Element set) initiative was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and aims to encompass issues of semantic standards in the domain of agriculture with respect to description, resource discovery, interoperability, and data exchange for different types of information resources. There are numerous other metadata schemas for different types of information resources. The following list contains a list of a few examples: Document-like Information Objects (DLIOs): Dublin Core, Agricultural Metadata Element Set (AgMES) Events: VCalendar Geographic and Regional Information: Geographic information—Metadata ISO/IEC 11179 Standards Persons: Friend-of-a-friend (FOAF), vCard Plant Production and Protection: Darwin Core (1.0 and 2.0) (DwC) AgMES as a namespace is designed to include agriculture specific extensions for terms and refinements from established standard metadata namespaces like Dublin Core, AGLS etc. Thus, to be used for Document-like Information Objects, for example like publications, articles, books, web sites, papers, etc., it will have to be used in conjunction with the standard namespaces mentioned before. The AgMES initiative strives to achieve improved interoperability between information resources in agricultural domain by enabling means for exchange of information. Describing a DLIO with AgMES means exposing its major characteristics and contents in a standard way that can be reused easily in any information system. The more institutions and organizations in the agricultural domain that use AgMES to describe their DLIOs, the easier it will be to interchange data in between information systems like digital libraries and other repositories of agricultural information. == Use of AgMES == Metadata on agricultural Document-like Information Objects (DLIOs) can be created and stored in various formats: embedded in a web site (in the manner as with the HTML meta tag) in a separate metadata database in an XML file in an RDF file AgMES defines elements that can be used to describe a DLIO that can be used together with other metadata standards such as the Dublin Core, the Australian Government Locator Service. A complete list of all elements, refinements and schemes endorsed by AgMES is available from the AgMES website. === Creating application profiles === Application profiles are defined as schemas which consist of data elements drawn from one or more namespaces, combined by implementers, and optimized for a particular local application. Application profiles share the following four characteristics: They draw upon existing pool of metadata definition standards to extract suitable application- or requirement oriented elements. An application profile cannot create new elements. Application profiles specify the application specific details such as the schemes or controlled vocabularies. An application profile also contains information such as the format for the element value, cardinality or data type. Lastly, an application profile can refine standardized definitions as long as it is "semantically narrower or more specific". This capability of application profiles caters to situations where a domain specific terminology is needed to replace a more general one. === Sample application profiles using AgMES === The AGRIS Application Profile is a standard created specifically to enhance the description, exchange and subsequent retrieval of agricultural Document-like Information Objects (DLIOs). It is a format that allows sharing of information across dispersed bibliographic systems and is based on well-known and accepted metadata standards. The Event Application Profile is a standard created to allow members of the Agricultural community to 'know' about an upcoming event and guide them to the event Web site where they can find further information. The information communicated is thus minimum yet interoperable across domains and organizations. == AgMES and the semantic web == One of the advantages of the AgMES metadata schema is the ability to link between the metadata element and controlled vocabularies. The use of controlled vocabulary provides a "known" set of options to the indexer (and the search programmer) as to how the field can be filled out. Often the values may come from a specific thesaurus (e.g. AGROVOC) or classification schemes (e.g. the AGRIS/CARIS classification scheme) etc. Thanks to the possibility to use controlled vocabularies for metadata elements, the user is provided with the most precise information. In this context, work is also being carried out on exploiting the power of controlled vocabularies expressed as using URIs and machine-understandable semantics. In this context, FAO is promoting the Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) initiative with the objective of expressing more semantics within the traditional thesaurus AGROVOC and build a Concept Server as a repository from which it will be always possible to extract traditional KOS.
Drools
Drools is a business rule management system (BRMS) with a forward and backward chaining inference-based rules engine, more correctly known as a production rule system, using an enhanced implementation of the Rete algorithm. Drools supports the Java Rules Engine API (Java Specification Request 94) standard for its business rule engine and enterprise framework for the construction, maintenance, and enforcement of business policies in an organization, application, or service. == Drools in Apache Kie == Drools, as part of the Kie Community has entered Apache Incubator in January, 2023. == Red Hat Decision Manager == Red Hat Decision Manager (formerly Red Hat JBoss BRMS) is a business rule management system and reasoning engine for business policy and rules development, access, and change management. JBoss Enterprise BRMS is a productized version of Drools with enterprise-level support available. JBoss Rules is also a productized version of Drools, but JBoss Enterprise BRMS is the flagship product. Components of the enterprise version: JBoss Enterprise Web Platform – the software infrastructure, supported to run the BRMS components only JBoss Enterprise Application Platform or JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform – the software infrastructure, supported to run the BRMS components only Business Rules Engine – Drools Expert using the Rete algorithm and the Drools Rule Language (DRL) Business Rules Manager – Drools Guvnor - Guvnor is a centralized repository for Drools Knowledge Bases, with rich web-based GUIs, editors, and tools to aid in the management of large numbers of rules. Business Rules Repository – Drools Guvnor Drools and Guvnor are JBoss Community open source projects. As they are mature, they are brought into the enterprise-ready product JBoss Enterprise BRMS. Components of the JBoss Community version: Drools Guvnor (Business Rules Manager) – a centralized repository for Drools Knowledge Bases Drools Expert (rule engine) – uses the rules to perform reasoning Drools Flow (process/workflow), or jBPM 5 – provides for workflow and business processes Drools Fusion (event processing/temporal reasoning) – provides for complex event processing Drools Planner/OptaPlanner (automated planning) – optimizes automated planning, including NP-hard planning problems == Example == This example illustrates a simple rule to print out information about a holiday in July. It checks a condition on an instance of the Holiday class, and executes Java code if that condition is true. The purpose of dialect "mvel" is to point the getter and setters of the variables of your Plain Old Java Object (POJO) classes. Consider the above example, in which a Holiday class is used and inside the circular brackets (parentheses) "month" is used. So with the help of dialect "mvel" the getter and setters of the variable "month" can be accessed. Dialect "java" is used to help us write our Java code in our rules. There is one restriction or characteristic on this. We cannot use Java code inside the "when" part of the rule but we can use Java code in the "then" part. We can also declare a Reference variable $h1 without the $ symbol. There is no restriction on this. The main purpose of putting the $ symbol before the variable is to mark the difference between variables of POJO classes and Rules.
Ian Goodfellow
Ian J. Goodfellow (born 1987) is an American computer scientist, engineer, and executive, most noted for his work on artificial neural networks and deep learning. He is a research scientist at Google DeepMind, was previously employed as a research scientist at Google Brain and director of machine learning at Apple as well as one of the first employees at OpenAI, and has made several important contributions to the field of deep learning, including the invention of the generative adversarial network (GAN). Goodfellow co-wrote, as the first author, the textbook Deep Learning (2016) and wrote the chapter on deep learning in the authoritative textbook of the field of artificial intelligence, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (used in more than 1,500 universities in 135 countries). == Education == Goodfellow obtained his BSc and MSc in computer science from Stanford University under the supervision of Andrew Ng, and his PhD in machine learning from the Université de Montréal in February 2015, under the supervision of Yoshua Bengio and Aaron Courville. Goodfellow's thesis is titled Deep learning of representations and its application to computer vision. == Career == After graduation, Goodfellow joined Google as part of the Google Brain research team. In March 2016, he left Google to join the newly founded OpenAI research laboratory. 11 months later, in March 2017, Goodfellow returned to Google Research, but left again in 2019. In 2019, Goodfellow joined Apple as director of machine learning in the Special Projects Group. He resigned from Apple in April 2022 to protest Apple's plan to require in-person work for its employees. Shortly after, Goodfellow then joined Google DeepMind as a research scientist. In 2025, Goodfellow left Google. As of July 2026, based on information on Goodfellow's LinkedIn profile, he is co-founding a startup company. == Research == Goodfellow is best known for inventing generative adversarial networks (GANs), using deep learning to generate images. This approach uses two neural networks to competitively improve an image's quality. A “generator” network creates a synthetic image based on an initial set of images such as a collection of faces. A “discriminator” network tries to determine whether images are authentic or created by the generator. The generate-detect cycle is repeated. For each iteration, the generator and the discriminator use the other's feedback to improve or detect the generated images, until the discriminator can no longer distinguish between generated and authentic images. However, GANs have also been used to create deepfakes. At Google, Goodfellow developed a system enabling Google Maps to automatically transcribe addresses from photos taken by Street View cars and demonstrated security vulnerabilities of machine learning systems. == Recognition == In 2017, Goodfellow was cited in MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35. In 2019, he was included in Foreign Policy's list of 100 Global Thinkers.
Exploration–exploitation dilemma
The exploration–exploitation dilemma, also known as the explore–exploit tradeoff, is a fundamental concept in decision-making that arises in many domains. It is depicted as the balancing act between two opposing strategies. Exploitation involves choosing the best option based on current knowledge of the system (which may be incomplete or misleading), while exploration involves trying out new options that may lead to better outcomes in the future at the expense of an exploitation opportunity. Finding the optimal balance between these two strategies is a crucial challenge in many decision-making problems whose goal is to maximize long-term benefits. == Application in machine learning == In the context of machine learning, the exploration–exploitation tradeoff is fundamental in reinforcement learning (RL), a type of machine learning that involves training agents to make decisions based on feedback from the environment. Crucially, this feedback may be incomplete or delayed. The agent must decide whether to exploit the current best-known policy or explore new policies to improve its performance. === Multi-armed bandit methods === The multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem was a classic example of the tradeoff, and many methods were developed for it, such as epsilon-greedy, Thompson sampling, and the upper confidence bound (UCB). See the page on MAB for details. In more complex RL situations than the MAB problem, the agent can treat each choice as a MAB, where the payoff is the expected future reward. For example, if the agent performs an epsilon-greedy method, then the agent will often "pull the best lever" by picking the action that had the best predicted expected reward (exploit). However, it would pick a random action with probability epsilon (explore). Monte Carlo tree search, for example, uses a variant of the UCB method. === Exploration problems === There are some problems that make exploration difficult. Sparse reward. If rewards occur only once a long while, then the agent might not persist in exploring. Furthermore, if the space of actions is large, then the sparse reward would mean the agent would not be guided by the reward to find a good direction for deeper exploration. A standard example is Montezuma's Revenge. Deceptive reward. If some early actions give immediate small reward, but other actions give later large reward, then the agent might be lured away from exploring the other actions. Noisy TV problem. If certain observations are irreducibly noisy (such as a television showing random images), then the agent might be trapped exploring those observations (watching the television). === Exploration reward === This section based on. The exploration reward (also called exploration bonus) methods convert the exploration-exploitation dilemma into a balance of exploitations. That is, instead of trying to get the agent to balance exploration and exploitation, exploration is simply treated as another form of exploitation, and the agent simply attempts to maximize the sum of rewards from exploration and exploitation. The exploration reward can be treated as a form of intrinsic reward. We write these as r t i , r t e {\displaystyle r_{t}^{i},r_{t}^{e}} , meaning the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards at time step t {\displaystyle t} . However, exploration reward is different from exploitation in two regards: The reward of exploitation is not freely chosen, but given by the environment, but the reward of exploration may be picked freely. Indeed, there are many different ways to design r t i {\displaystyle r_{t}^{i}} described below. The reward of exploitation is usually stationary (i.e. the same action in the same state gives the same reward), but the reward of exploration is non-stationary (i.e. the same action in the same state should give less and less reward). Count-based exploration uses N n ( s ) {\displaystyle N_{n}(s)} , the number of visits to a state s {\displaystyle s} during the time-steps 1 : n {\displaystyle 1:n} , to calculate the exploration reward. This is only possible in small and discrete state space. Density-based exploration extends count-based exploration by using a density model ρ n ( s ) {\displaystyle \rho _{n}(s)} . The idea is that, if a state has been visited, then nearby states are also partly-visited. In maximum entropy exploration, the entropy of the agent's policy π {\displaystyle \pi } is included as a term in the intrinsic reward. That is, r t i = − ∑ a π ( a | s t ) ln π ( a | s t ) + ⋯ {\displaystyle r_{t}^{i}=-\sum _{a}\pi (a|s_{t})\ln \pi (a|s_{t})+\cdots } . === Prediction-based === This section based on. The forward dynamics model is a function for predicting the next state based on the current state and the current action: f : ( s t , a t ) ↦ s t + 1 {\displaystyle f:(s_{t},a_{t})\mapsto s_{t+1}} . The forward dynamics model is trained as the agent plays. The model becomes better at predicting state transition for state-action pairs that had been done many times. A forward dynamics model can define an exploration reward by r t i = ‖ f ( s t , a t ) − s t + 1 ‖ 2 2 {\displaystyle r_{t}^{i}=\|f(s_{t},a_{t})-s_{t+1}\|_{2}^{2}} . That is, the reward is the squared-error of the prediction compared to reality. This rewards the agent to perform state-action pairs that had not been done many times. This is however susceptible to the noisy TV problem. Dynamics model can be run in latent space. That is, r t i = ‖ f ( s t , a t ) − ϕ ( s t + 1 ) ‖ 2 2 {\displaystyle r_{t}^{i}=\|f(s_{t},a_{t})-\phi (s_{t+1})\|_{2}^{2}} for some featurizer ϕ {\displaystyle \phi } . The featurizer can be the identity function (i.e. ϕ ( x ) = x {\displaystyle \phi (x)=x} ), randomly generated, the encoder-half of a variational autoencoder, etc. A good featurizer improves forward dynamics exploration. The Intrinsic Curiosity Module (ICM) method trains simultaneously a forward dynamics model and a featurizer. The featurizer is trained by an inverse dynamics model, which is a function for predicting the current action based on the features of the current and the next state: g : ( ϕ ( s t ) , ϕ ( s t + 1 ) ) ↦ a t {\displaystyle g:(\phi (s_{t}),\phi (s_{t+1}))\mapsto a_{t}} . By optimizing the inverse dynamics, both the inverse dynamics model and the featurizer are improved. Then, the improved featurizer improves the forward dynamics model, which improves the exploration of the agent. Random Network Distillation (RND) method attempts to solve this problem by teacher–student distillation. Instead of a forward dynamics model, it has two models f , f ′ {\displaystyle f,f'} . The f ′ {\displaystyle f'} teacher model is fixed, and the f {\displaystyle f} student model is trained to minimize ‖ f ( s ) − f ′ ( s ) ‖ 2 2 {\displaystyle \|f(s)-f'(s)\|_{2}^{2}} on states s {\displaystyle s} . As a state is visited more and more, the student network becomes better at predicting the teacher. Meanwhile, the prediction error is also an exploration reward for the agent, and so the agent learns to perform actions that result in higher prediction error. Thus, we have a student network attempting to minimize the prediction error, while the agent attempting to maximize it, resulting in exploration. The states are normalized by subtracting a running average and dividing a running variance, which is necessary since the teacher model is frozen. The rewards are normalized by dividing with a running variance. Exploration by disagreement trains an ensemble of forward dynamics models, each on a random subset of all ( s t , a t , s t + 1 ) {\displaystyle (s_{t},a_{t},s_{t+1})} tuples. The exploration reward is the variance of the models' predictions. === Noise === For neural network–based agents, the NoisyNet method changes some of its neural network modules by noisy versions. That is, some network parameters are random variables from a probability distribution. The parameters of the distribution are themselves learnable. For example, in a linear layer y = W x + b {\displaystyle y=Wx+b} , both W , b {\displaystyle W,b} are sampled from Gaussian distributions N ( μ W , Σ W ) , N ( μ b , Σ b ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {N}}(\mu _{W},\Sigma _{W}),{\mathcal {N}}(\mu _{b},\Sigma _{b})} at every step, and the parameters μ W , Σ W , μ b , Σ b {\displaystyle \mu _{W},\Sigma _{W},\mu _{b},\Sigma _{b}} are learned via the reparameterization trick.
RightsCon
RightsCon is an annual conference on digital rights hosted by Access Now. It convenes international leaders and organizations to discuss global problems including internet censorship, the regulation of algorithms, electronic surveillance, the ethics of technology, online hate speech, content moderation, cyberwarfare, and more. == History == The conference was first convened by Access (today, Access Now) in Silicon Valley in 2011, with the intention of gathering civil society to discuss impacts of the growing tech industry on digital rights and human rights. It sought the participation of leaders from both industry (including companies such as Twitter, Google, Mozilla, and Comcast) and civil society organizations (such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and New America). Keynote speakers included the then-Assistant Secretary of State, Michael Posner; Egyptian blogger and political prisoner, Alaa Abd El-Fattah; and then-director of public policy at Google, Bob Boorstin. RightsCon organizers have sought to ensure the event is accessible to attendees from across the globe, particularly global majority countries, informing the decision to hold the conference in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. === Online convenings === In 2020, RightsCon was to be held in San José, Costa Rica, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting took place in an online format. In 2021, the 10th edition of RightsCon was again held online from Monday, June 7 to Friday, June 11, 2021, due to the continued global COVID-19 pandemic which altered several digital rights physical meetings. The topics for RightsCon2021 included: Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, data protection and user control, digital futures, democracy, elections, new business models, content control, peacebuilding, censorship, internet shutdowns, freedom of the media and many others were discussed by several digital rights organizations and individuals. === 2026 cancellation === The 14th RightsCon was scheduled to be held in Zambia from May 5 to 8, 2026. On April 29, 2026, the Zambian government abruptly postponed the conference, writing in a statement that the postponement was "necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure […] relating to key thematic issues proposed for discussion during the Summit." In May 2026, the conference was cancelled due to pressure from the Chinese government. In a statement the same day, Access Now wrote that it was "told that diplomats from the People's Republic of China (PRC) were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person." == List of conferences == Past RightsCon conferences include: