AI Analytics Certification

AI Analytics Certification — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Waveform graphics

    Waveform graphics

    Waveform graphics is a simple vector graphics system introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) on the VT55 and VT105 terminals in the mid-1970s. It was used to produce graphics output from mainframes and minicomputers. DEC used the term "waveform graphics" to refer specifically to the hardware, but it was used more generally to describe the whole system. The system was designed to use as little computer memory as possible. At any given X location it could draw two dots at given Y locations, making it suitable for producing two superimposed waveforms, line charts or histograms. Text and graphics could be mixed, and there were additional tools for drawing axes and markers. The waveform graphics system was used only for a short period of time before it was replaced by the more sophisticated ReGIS system, first introduced on the VT125 in 1981. ReGIS allowed the construction of arbitrary vectors and other shapes. Whereas DEC normally provided a backward compatible solution in newer terminal models, they did not choose to do this when ReGIS was introduced, and waveform graphics disappeared from later terminals. == Description == Waveform graphics was introduced on the VT55 terminal in October 1975, an era when memory was extremely expensive. Although it was technically possible to produce a bitmap display using a framebuffer using technology of the era, the memory needed to do so at a reasonable resolution was typically beyond the price point that made it practical. All sorts of systems were used to replace computer memory with other concepts, like the storage tubes used in the Tektronix 4010 terminals, or the zero memory racing-the-beam system used in the Atari 2600. DEC chose to attack this problem through a clever use of a small buffer representing only the vertical positions on the screen. Such a system could not draw arbitrary shapes, but would allow the display of graph data. The system was based on a 512 by 236 pixel display, producing 512 vertical columns along the X-axis, and 236 horizontal rows on the Y-axis. Y locations were counted up from the bottom, so the coordinate 0,0 was in the lower left, and 511, 235 in the upper right. Had this been implemented using a framebuffer with each location represented by a single bit, 512 × 236 × 1 = 120,832 bits, or 15,104 bytes, would have been required. At the time, memory cost about $50 per kilobyte, so the buffer alone would cost over $700 (equivalent to $4,570 in 2025). Instead, the waveform graphic system used one byte of memory for each X axis location, with the byte's value representing the Y location. This required only 512 bytes for each graph, a total of 1024 bytes for the two graphs. Drawing a line required the programmer to construct a series of Y locations and send them as individual points, the terminal could not connect the dots itself. To make this easier, the terminal automatically incremented the X location every time an Y coordinate was received, so a graph line could be sent as a long string of numbers for subsequent Y locations instead of having to repeatedly send the X location every time. Drawing normally started by sending a single instruction to set the initial X location, often 0 on the left, and then sending in data for the entire curve. The system also included storage for up to 512 markers on both lines. These were always drawn centered on the Y value of the line they were associated with, meaning that a simple on/off indication for X locations was all that was needed, requiring only 1024 bits, or 128 bytes, in total. The markers extended 16 pixels vertically, and could only be aligned on 16-pixel boundaries, so they were not necessarily centered across the underlying graph. Markers were used to indicate important points on the graph, where a symbol of some sort would normally be used. The system also allowed a vertical line to be drawn for every horizontal location and a horizontal one at every vertical location. These were also stored as simple on/off bits, requiring another 128 bytes of memory. These lines were used to draw axes and scale lines, or could be used for a screen-spanning crosshair cursor. A separate set of two 7-bit registers held additional information about the drawing style and other settings. Although complex from the user's perspective, this system was easy to implement in hardware. A cathode ray tube produces a display by scanning the screen in a series of horizontal motions, moving down one vertical line after each horizontal scan. At any given instant during this process, the display hardware examines a few memory locations to see if anything needs to be displayed. For instance, it can determine whether to draw a marker on graph 0 by examining register 1 to see if markers are turned on, looking in the marker buffer to see if there is a 1 at the current X location, and then examining the Y location of graph 0 to see if it is within 16 pixels of the current scan line. If all of these are true, a spot is drawn to present that portion of the marker. As this will be true for 16 vertical locations during the scanning process, a 16-pixel high marker will be drawn. Sold alone, the VT55 was priced at $2,496 (equivalent to $16,295 in 2025),. Like other models of the VT50 series, the terminal could be equipped with an optional wet-paper printer in a panel on the right of the screen. This added $800 (equivalent to $5,223 in 2025) to the price. DEC also offered VT55 in a package with a small model of the PDP-11 to create one model of the DEClab 11/03 system. The DEClab normally sold for $14,000 (equivalent to $91,397 in 2025) with a DECwriter II (LA36) hard-copy terminal for $15,000 (equivalent to $97,925 in 2025), with the VT55. The system had I/O channels for up to 15 lab devices, and included libraries for FORTRAN and BASIC for reading the data and creating graphs. The fairly extensive VT55 Programmers Manual covered the latter in depth. == Commands and data == Data was sent to the terminal using an extended set of codes similar to those introduced on the VT52. VT52 codes generally started with the ESC character (octal 33, decimal 27) and was then followed by a single letter instruction. For instance, the string of four characters ESC H ESC J would reposition the cursor in the upper left (home) and then clear the screen from that point down. These codes were basically modeless; triggered by the ESC the resulting escape mode automatically exited again when the command was complete. Escape codes could be interspersed with display text anywhere in the stream of data. In contrast, the graphics system was entirely modal, with escape sequences being sent to cause the terminal to enter or exit graph drawing mode. Data sent between these two codes were interpreted by the graphics hardware, so text and graphics could not be mixed in a single stream of instructions. Graphics mode was entered by sending the string ESC 1, and exited again with the string ESC 2. Even the commands within the graphics mode were modal; characters were interpreted as being additional data for the previous load character (command) until another load character is seen. Ten load characters were available: @ - no operation, used to tell the terminal the last command is no longer active A - load data into register 0, selecting the drawing mode for the two graphs I - load data into register 1, selecting other drawing options H - load the starting X position (Horizontal) for the following commands B - load data for Y locations for graph 0 starting at the H position selected earlier J - load data for Y locations for graph 1 starting at the H position selected earlier C - store a marker on graph 0 at the following X location K - store a marker on graph 1 at the following X location D - draw a horizontal line at the given Y location L - draw a vertical line at the given X location X and Y locations were sent as 10-bit decimal numbers, encoded as ASCII characters, with 5 bits per character. This means that any number within the 1024 number space (210) can be stored as a string of two characters. To ensure the characters can be transmitted over 7-bit links, the pattern 01 is placed in front of both 5-bit numbers, producing 7-bit ASCII values that are always within the printable range. This results in a somewhat complex encoding algorithm. For instance, if one wanted to encode the decimal value 102, first you convert that to the 10-bit decimal pattern 0010010010. That is then split that into upper and lower 5-bit parts, 00100 and 10010. Then append 01 binary to produce 7-bit numbers 0100100 and 0110010. Individually convert back to decimal 40 and 50, and then look up those characters in an ASCII chart, finding ( and 2. These have to be sent to the terminal least significant character first. If these were being used to set the X coordinate, the complete string would be H2(. When used as X and Y locations for the graphs, extra digits were ignored. For instance, the 512 pixel X axis r

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  • Lise Getoor

    Lise Getoor

    Lise Getoor is an American computer scientist who is a distinguished professor and Baskin Endowed chair in the Computer Science and Engineering department, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an adjunct professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary research interests are in machine learning and reasoning with uncertainty, applied to graphs and structured data. She also works in data integration, social network analysis and visual analytics. She has edited a book on Statistical relational learning that is a main reference in this domain. She has published many highly cited papers in academic journals and conference proceedings. She has also served as action editor for the Machine Learning Journal, JAIR associate editor, and TKDD associate editor. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, her M.S. from UC Berkeley, and her B.S. from UC Santa Barbara. Prior to joining University of California, Santa Cruz, she was a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park until November 2013. == Recognition == Getoor has multiple best paper awards, an NSF Career Award, and is an Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Fellow. In 2019, she was elected as an ACM Fellow "for contributions to machine learning, reasoning under uncertainty, and responsible data science", was selected as a Distinguished Alumna of the UC Santa Barbara Computer Science Department, was awarded the UCSC WiSE Chancellor's Achievement Award for Diversity, and was selected to give the UC Santa Cruz Faculty Research Lecture 2018-19, one of the highest recognitions given to UC faculty. She was named an IEEE Fellow in 2021, "for contributions to machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty". In October 2022, Getoor was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2024, she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S). Also in 2024, she received the ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award recognizing individuals with outstanding technical innovations in the field of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining that have had a lasting impact in advancing the theory and practice of the field. == Personal life == Getoor's father was mathematician Ronald Getoor (1929–2017).

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  • Is an AI Pair Programmer Worth It in 2026?

    Is an AI Pair Programmer Worth It in 2026?

    Shopping for the best AI pair programmer? An AI pair programmer is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it keeps getting smarter as the underlying models improve. Pricing, accuracy, and the size of the model behind the tool are the three factors that most affect daily usefulness. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI pair programmer slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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  • Suffix automaton

    Suffix automaton

    In computer science, a suffix automaton is an efficient data structure for representing the substring index of a given string which allows the storage, processing, and retrieval of compressed information about all its substrings. The suffix automaton of a string S {\displaystyle S} is the smallest directed acyclic graph with a dedicated initial vertex and a set of "final" vertices, such that paths from the initial vertex to final vertices represent the suffixes of the string. In terms of automata theory, a suffix automaton is the minimal partial deterministic finite automaton that recognizes the set of suffixes of a given string S = s 1 s 2 … s n {\displaystyle S=s_{1}s_{2}\dots s_{n}} . The state graph of a suffix automaton is called a directed acyclic word graph (DAWG), a term that is also sometimes used for any deterministic acyclic finite state automaton. Suffix automata were introduced in 1983 by a group of scientists from the University of Denver and the University of Colorado Boulder. They suggested a linear time online algorithm for its construction and showed that the suffix automaton of a string S {\displaystyle S} having length at least two characters has at most 2 | S | − 1 {\textstyle 2|S|-1} states and at most 3 | S | − 4 {\textstyle 3|S|-4} transitions. Further works have shown a close connection between suffix automata and suffix trees, and have outlined several generalizations of suffix automata, such as compacted suffix automaton obtained by compression of nodes with a single outgoing arc. Suffix automata provide efficient solutions to problems such as substring search and computation of the largest common substring of two and more strings. == History == The concept of suffix automaton was introduced in 1983 by a group of scientists from University of Denver and University of Colorado Boulder consisting of Anselm Blumer, Janet Blumer, Andrzej Ehrenfeucht, David Haussler and Ross McConnell, although similar concepts had earlier been studied alongside suffix trees in the works of Peter Weiner, Vaughan Pratt and Anatol Slissenko. In their initial work, Blumer et al. showed a suffix automaton built for the string S {\displaystyle S} of length greater than 1 {\displaystyle 1} has at most 2 | S | − 1 {\displaystyle 2|S|-1} states and at most 3 | S | − 4 {\displaystyle 3|S|-4} transitions, and suggested a linear algorithm for automaton construction. In 1983, Mu-Tian Chen and Joel Seiferas independently showed that Weiner's 1973 suffix-tree construction algorithm while building a suffix tree of the string S {\displaystyle S} constructs a suffix automaton of the reversed string S R {\textstyle S^{R}} as an auxiliary structure. In 1987, Blumer et al. applied the compressing technique used in suffix trees to a suffix automaton and invented the compacted suffix automaton, which is also called the compacted directed acyclic word graph (CDAWG). In 1997, Maxime Crochemore and Renaud Vérin developed a linear algorithm for direct CDAWG construction. In 2001, Shunsuke Inenaga et al. developed an algorithm for construction of CDAWG for a set of words given by a trie. == Definitions == Usually when speaking about suffix automata and related concepts, some notions from formal language theory and automata theory are used, in particular: "Alphabet" is a finite set Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } that is used to construct words. Its elements are called "characters"; "Word" is a finite sequence of characters ω = ω 1 ω 2 … ω n {\displaystyle \omega =\omega _{1}\omega _{2}\dots \omega _{n}} . "Length" of the word ω {\displaystyle \omega } is denoted as | ω | = n {\displaystyle |\omega |=n} ; "Formal language" is a set of words over given alphabet; "Language of all words" is denoted as Σ ∗ {\displaystyle \Sigma ^{}} (where the "" character stands for Kleene star), "empty word" (the word of zero length) is denoted by the character ε {\displaystyle \varepsilon } ; "Concatenation of words" α = α 1 α 2 … α n {\displaystyle \alpha =\alpha _{1}\alpha _{2}\dots \alpha _{n}} and β = β 1 β 2 … β m {\displaystyle \beta =\beta _{1}\beta _{2}\dots \beta _{m}} is denoted as α ⋅ β {\displaystyle \alpha \cdot \beta } or α β {\displaystyle \alpha \beta } and corresponds to the word obtained by writing β {\displaystyle \beta } to the right of α {\displaystyle \alpha } , that is, α β = α 1 α 2 … α n β 1 β 2 … β m {\displaystyle \alpha \beta =\alpha _{1}\alpha _{2}\dots \alpha _{n}\beta _{1}\beta _{2}\dots \beta _{m}} ; "Concatenation of languages" A {\displaystyle A} and B {\displaystyle B} is denoted as A ⋅ B {\displaystyle A\cdot B} or A B {\displaystyle AB} and corresponds to the set of pairwise concatenations A B = { α β : α ∈ A , β ∈ B } {\displaystyle AB=\{\alpha \beta :\alpha \in A,\beta \in B\}} ; If the word ω ∈ Σ ∗ {\displaystyle \omega \in \Sigma ^{}} may be represented as ω = α γ β {\displaystyle \omega =\alpha \gamma \beta } , where α , β , γ ∈ Σ ∗ {\displaystyle \alpha ,\beta ,\gamma \in \Sigma ^{}} , then words α {\displaystyle \alpha } , β {\displaystyle \beta } and γ {\displaystyle \gamma } are called "prefix", "suffix" and "subword" (substring) of the word ω {\displaystyle \omega } correspondingly; If T = T 1 … T n {\displaystyle T=T_{1}\dots T_{n}} and T l T l + 1 … T r = S {\displaystyle T_{l}T_{l+1}\dots T_{r}=S} (with 1 ≤ l ≤ r ≤ n {\displaystyle 1\leq l\leq r\leq n} ) then S {\displaystyle S} is said to "occur" in T {\displaystyle T} as a subword. Here l {\displaystyle l} and r {\displaystyle r} are called left and right positions of occurrence of S {\displaystyle S} in T {\displaystyle T} correspondingly. == Automaton structure == Formally, deterministic finite automaton is determined by 5-tuple A = ( Σ , Q , q 0 , F , δ ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}=(\Sigma ,Q,q_{0},F,\delta )} , where: Σ {\displaystyle \Sigma } is an "alphabet" that is used to construct words, Q {\displaystyle Q} is a set of automaton "states", q 0 ∈ Q {\displaystyle q_{0}\in Q} is an "initial" state of automaton, F ⊂ Q {\displaystyle F\subset Q} is a set of "final" states of automaton, δ : Q × Σ ↦ Q {\displaystyle \delta :Q\times \Sigma \mapsto Q} is a partial "transition" function of automaton, such that δ ( q , σ ) {\displaystyle \delta (q,\sigma )} for q ∈ Q {\displaystyle q\in Q} and σ ∈ Σ {\displaystyle \sigma \in \Sigma } is either undefined or defines a transition from q {\displaystyle q} over character σ {\displaystyle \sigma } . Most commonly, deterministic finite automaton is represented as a directed graph ("diagram") such that: Set of graph vertices corresponds to the state of states Q {\displaystyle Q} , Graph has a specific marked vertex corresponding to initial state q 0 {\displaystyle q_{0}} , Graph has several marked vertices corresponding to the set of final states F {\displaystyle F} , Set of graph arcs corresponds to the set of transitions δ {\displaystyle \delta } , Specifically, every transition δ ( q 1 , σ ) = q 2 {\textstyle \delta (q_{1},\sigma )=q_{2}} is represented by an arc from q 1 {\displaystyle q_{1}} to q 2 {\displaystyle q_{2}} marked with the character σ {\displaystyle \sigma } . This transition also may be denoted as q 1 σ ⟶ q 2 {\textstyle q_{1}{\begin{smallmatrix}{\sigma }\\[-5pt]{\longrightarrow }\end{smallmatrix}}q_{2}} . In terms of its diagram, the automaton recognizes the word ω = ω 1 ω 2 … ω m {\displaystyle \omega =\omega _{1}\omega _{2}\dots \omega _{m}} only if there is a path from the initial vertex q 0 {\displaystyle q_{0}} to some final vertex q ∈ F {\displaystyle q\in F} such that concatenation of characters on this path forms ω {\displaystyle \omega } . The set of words recognized by an automaton forms a language that is set to be recognized by the automaton. In these terms, the language recognized by a suffix automaton of S {\displaystyle S} is the language of its (possibly empty) suffixes. === Automaton states === "Right context" of the word ω {\displaystyle \omega } with respect to language L {\displaystyle L} is a set [ ω ] R = { α : ω α ∈ L } {\displaystyle [\omega ]_{R}=\{\alpha :\omega \alpha \in L\}} that is a set of words α {\displaystyle \alpha } such that their concatenation with ω {\displaystyle \omega } forms a word from L {\displaystyle L} . Right contexts induce a natural equivalence relation [ α ] R = [ β ] R {\displaystyle [\alpha ]_{R}=[\beta ]_{R}} on the set of all words. If language L {\displaystyle L} is recognized by some deterministic finite automaton, there exists unique up to isomorphism automaton that recognizes the same language and has the minimum possible number of states. Such an automaton is called a minimal automaton for the given language L {\displaystyle L} . Myhill–Nerode theorem allows it to define it explicitly in terms of right contexts: In these terms, a "suffix automaton" is the minimal deterministic finite automaton recognizing the language of suffixes of the word S = s 1 s 2 … s n {\displaystyle S=s_{1}s_{2}\dots s_{n}} . The right context of the word ω {\displaystyle \omeg

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  • Real-time transcription

    Real-time transcription

    Real-time transcription is the general term for transcription by court reporters using real-time text technologies to deliver computer text screens within a few seconds of the words being spoken. Specialist software allows participants in court hearings or depositions to make notes in the text and highlight portions for future reference. Real-time transcription is also used in the broadcasting environment where it is more commonly termed "captioning." == Career opportunities == Real-time reporting is used in a variety of industries, including entertainment, television, the Internet, and law. Specific careers include the following: Judicial reporters use a stenotype to provide instant transcripts on computer screens as a trial or deposition occurs. Communication access real-time translation (CART) reporters assist the hearing-impaired by transcribing spoken words, giving them personal access to the communications they need day to day. Television broadcast captioners use real-time reporting technology to allow hard-of-hearing or deaf people to see what is being said on live television broadcasts such as news, emergency broadcasts, sporting events, awards shows, and other programs. Internet information (or Webcast) reporters provide real-time reporting of sales meetings, press conferences, and other events, while simultaneously transmitting the transcripts to computers worldwide. Other rapid data entry positions. == History == Before the advent of the stenotype machine, court reporters wrote official trial transcripts by hand using a shorthand system of stenoforms that could later be translated into readable English. It often took eight years of training to learn this manual form of writing at the necessary speed. Walter Heironimus was among the first stenographers to make use of the stenotype machine during his work in the U.S. District Court system in New Jersey in 1935. A "transcript crisis" arose during the later half of the twentieth century due to the increasing volume of lawsuits. There were not enough number of court reporters to match the increasing number of trials. Not only were court reporters unavailable to attend many court proceedings, court transcripts were constantly late and the qualities varied. Some believed it was due to the non-interchangeability between court reporters, and others believed it was simply due to a labor shortage. In the meantime, magnetic audiotape recording, or known as electronic recording (ER) began to threaten all reporters' job since it could record long-hour courtroom trials and replace a court reporter's position in the courtroom. As a result, machine translation (MT) intended to serve as a solution for preventing ER from potentially replacing reporters' jobs. However, MT relied heavily on human labors operating behind the system and many started to question if it should be the right way to end the "transcript crisis." Later in 1964, set up by CIA, the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC) was set to review whether MT was capable of solving this crisis. They concluded that MT had failed to do so. Then Patrick O'Neill, a skilled and experienced court reporter, stayed to work on the stenotype-translation project with CIA and developed the prototype CAT system. After adopting the CAT system in court-reporting community, CAT was brought into the television broadcasting system, aiming to provide captions for the deaf or hard-of-hearing communities. In 1983, Linda Miller developed a further use for the CAT system. She successfully translated a lecture live on the television screen and provided a transcript for students. This technique is known as Computer-Aided Real-time Translation, or CART. == Court reporter == It is the court reporter's job to note down the exact words spoken by every participants during a court or deposition proceeding. Then court reporters will provide verbatim transcripts. The reason to have an official court transcript is that the real-time transcriptions allows attorneys and judges to have immediate access to the transcript. It also helps when there's a need to look up for information from the proceeding. Additionally, the deaf and the hard-of-hearing communities can also participate in the judicial process with the help of real-time transcriptions provided by court reporters. === Education and training === The required degree level for a court reporter to have is an Associate's degree or postsecondary certificate. In order to become a court reporter, more than 150 reporter training programs are provided at proprietary schools, community colleges, and four-year universities. After graduation, court reporters can choose to further pursue certifications to achieve a higher level of expertise and increase their marketability during a job search. In most states, Certificates of Proficiency from the NCRA or from state agencies are now required certificates for court reporters to have in order to qualify for appointments. The NCRA aims to set the national standard for the certification of court reporters, and since 1937 it has offered its certification program which is now accepted by 22 states instead of state licenses. Court reporter training programs include but not limited to: Training in rapid writing skill, or shorthand, which will enable students to record, with accuracy, at least 225 words per minute Training in typing, which will enable students to type at least 60 words per minute A general training in English, which covers aspects of grammar, word formation, punctuation, spelling and capitalization Taking Law related courses in order to understand the overall principles of civil and criminal law, legal terminology and common Latin phrases, rules of evidence, court procedures, the duties of court reporters, the ethics of the profession Visits to actual trials Taking courses in elementary anatomy and physiology and medical word study including medical prefixes, roots and suffixes. Other than official court reporters, who are assigned to and work for a particular court, other types of court reporters include free-lance reporter, who either works for a court reporting firm or self-employed. They are different from official court reporters in that they have the chances to work on a wider range of assignments and work on basis of hourly wage. Hearing reporters work at governmental agency hearings. Legislative reporters work in law-making bodies. The demand for reporters is not limited in just the court settings. Reporters are also needed in conferences, meetings, conventions, investigations, and a variety of industries with needs for employers with real-time data entry skills. == Non-English transcription == Transcription services are universally necessary, so it is not limited to the English language. A stenographer's ability to transcribe languages beyond only English is especially valuable as society as a whole becomes increasingly multilingual. Education in non-English transcription demands a comprehensive understanding of the given language. Phonetic differences between English and other languages are a particular challenge in carrying English transcription skills over into other languages. Stenography represents various sounds of a language in a formal system of shorthand, so differences within the sets of sounds that emerge in other languages require an alternative system of shorthand transcription. For example, the presence of many diphthongs and triphthongs in Spanish requires certain sounds to be distinguished that would not be present in transcribing English into shorthand. == Controversies == The usage of transcription in the context of linguistic discussions has been controversial. Typically, two kinds of linguistic records are considered to be scientifically relevant. First, linguistic records of general acoustic features, and secondly, records that only focuses on the distinctive phonemes of a language. While transcriptions are not entirely illegitimate, transcriptions without enough detailed commentary regarding any linguistic features, or transcriptions of poor quality resources, has a great chance of the content being misinterpreted. Besides misinterpretation, transcribers could also bring in cultural biases and ignorance that reflect onto their transcription. These instances may cause a disruption of reliability in the final real-time transcription, which could influence how the written utterance is seen as an evidence for a court-case. === Quality issues === Problems in the final resulting transcription can be caused by either the quality of the transcriber or the original source that is being transcribed. Transcribers can come from different levels of skill and training background. This makes the final transcription prone to poor quality, or if the transcription is being done by multiple people, lack of consistency in the content. If the source of the transcription is a recording, the problem may root back to the quality of the re

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  • Is an AI Paraphrasing Tool Worth It in 2026?

    Is an AI Paraphrasing Tool Worth It in 2026?

    Curious about the best AI paraphrasing tool? An AI paraphrasing tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI paraphrasing tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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  • Best AI Code-review Tools in 2026

    Best AI Code-review Tools in 2026

    Looking for the best AI code-review tool? An AI code-review tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it can save you hours every week by automating repetitive work. Most options offer a generous free tier, with paid plans unlocking higher limits, faster processing, and team features. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI code-review tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. This guide breaks down the top picks, their pros and cons, and who each one is best for.

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  • Is an AI Humanizer Worth It in 2026?

    Is an AI Humanizer Worth It in 2026?

    Shopping for the best AI humanizer? An AI humanizer is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it keeps getting smarter as the underlying models improve. Pricing, accuracy, and the size of the model behind the tool are the three factors that most affect daily usefulness. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI humanizer slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. We tested the leading options and ranked them by quality, value, and ease of use.

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  • Imo.im

    Imo.im

    imo.im is a proprietary audio/video calling and instant messaging software service. It allows sending music, video, PDFs and other files, along with various free stickers. It supports encrypted group video and voice calls with up to 20 participants. According to its developer, the service possesses over 200 million users and over 50 million messages per day are sent through it. == History == The product was created as a web-based application in 2005 for accessing multiple chat platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, and Skype chat. It was developed by Pagebites, which is a subsidiary of Singularity IM, Inc. and required a subscriber's phone number to verify the users' account. In March 2014, support for all third-party messaging networks ended. In January 2018, the app reached 500 million installs. imo.im has implemented end-to-end encryption for its chats and calls, ensuring that the conversations remain private between the sender and receiver.

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  • Machine-readable medium and data

    Machine-readable medium and data

    In communications and computing, a machine-readable medium (or computer-readable medium) is a medium capable of storing data in a format easily readable by a digital computer or a sensor. It contrasts with human-readable medium and data. The result is called machine-readable data or computer-readable data, and the data itself can be described as having machine-readability. == Data == Machine-readable data must be structured data. Attempts to create machine-readable data occurred as early as the 1960s. At the same time that seminal developments in machine-reading and natural-language processing were releasing (like Weizenbaum's ELIZA), people were anticipating the success of machine-readable functionality and attempting to create machine-readable documents. One such example was musicologist Nancy B. Reich's creation of a machine-readable catalog of composer William Jay Sydeman's works in 1966. In the United States, the OPEN Government Data Act of 14 January 2019 defines machine-readable data as "data in a format that can be easily processed by a computer without human intervention while ensuring no semantic meaning is lost." The law directs U.S. federal agencies to publish public data in such a manner, ensuring that "any public data asset of the agency is machine-readable". Machine-readable data may be classified into two groups: human-readable data that is marked up so that it can also be read by machines (e.g. microformats, RDFa, HTML), and data file formats intended principally for processing by machines (CSV, RDF, XML, JSON). These formats are only machine readable if the data contained within them is formally structured; exporting a CSV file from a badly structured spreadsheet does not meet the definition. Machine readable is not synonymous with digitally accessible. A digitally accessible document may be online, making it easier for humans to access via computers, but its content is much harder to extract, transform, and process via computer programming logic if it is not machine-readable. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is designed to be both human- and machine-readable, and Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is used to improve the presentation of the data for human readability. For example, XSLT can be used to automatically render XML in Portable Document Format (PDF). Machine-readable data can be automatically transformed for human-readability but, generally speaking, the reverse is not true. For purposes of implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Modernization Act, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines "machine readable format" as follows: "Format in a standard computer language (not English text) that can be read automatically by a web browser or computer system. (e.g.; xml). Traditional word processing documents and portable document format (PDF) files are easily read by humans but typically are difficult for machines to interpret. Other formats such as extensible markup language (XML), (JSON), or spreadsheets with header columns that can be exported as comma separated values (CSV) are machine readable formats. As HTML is a structural markup language, discreetly labeling parts of the document, computers are able to gather document components to assemble tables of contents, outlines, literature search bibliographies, etc. It is possible to make traditional word processing documents and other formats machine readable but the documents must include enhanced structural elements." == Media == Examples of machine-readable media include magnetic media such as magnetic disks, cards, tapes, and drums, punched cards and paper tapes, optical discs, barcodes and magnetic ink characters. Common machine-readable technologies include magnetic recording, processing waveforms, and barcodes. Optical character recognition (OCR) can be used to enable machines to read information available to humans. Any information retrievable by any form of energy can be machine-readable. Examples include: Acoustics Chemical Photochemical Electrical Semiconductor used in volatile RAM microchips Floating-gate transistor used in non-volatile memory cards Radio transmission Magnetic storage Mechanical Tins And Swins Punched card Paper tape Music roll Music box cylinder or disk Grooves (See also: Audio Data) Phonograph cylinder Gramophone record DictaBelt (groove on plastic belt) Capacitance Electronic Disc Optics Optical storage Thermodynamic == Applications == === Documents === === Catalogs === === Dictionaries === === Passports ===

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  • Statistical machine translation

    Statistical machine translation

    Statistical machine translation (SMT) is a machine translation approach where translations are generated on the basis of statistical models whose parameters are derived from the analysis of bilingual text corpora. The statistical approach contrasts with the rule-based approaches to machine translation as well as with example-based machine translation, that superseded the previous rule-based approach that required explicit description of each and every linguistic rule, which was costly, and which often did not generalize to other languages. The first ideas of statistical machine translation were introduced by Warren Weaver in 1949, including the ideas of applying Claude Shannon's information theory. Statistical machine translation was re-introduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s by researchers at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Before the introduction of neural machine translation, it was by far the most widely studied machine translation method. == Basis == The idea behind statistical machine translation comes from information theory. A document is translated according to the probability distribution p ( e | f ) {\displaystyle p(e|f)} that a string e {\displaystyle e} in the target language (for example, English) is the translation of a string f {\displaystyle f} in the source language (for example, French). The problem of modeling the probability distribution p ( e | f ) {\displaystyle p(e|f)} has been approached in a number of ways. One approach which lends itself well to computer implementation is to apply Bayes' theorem, that is p ( e | f ) ∝ p ( f | e ) p ( e ) {\displaystyle p(e|f)\propto p(f|e)p(e)} , where the translation model p ( f | e ) {\displaystyle p(f|e)} is the probability that the source string is the translation of the target string, and the language model p ( e ) {\displaystyle p(e)} is the probability of seeing that target language string. This decomposition is attractive as it splits the problem into two subproblems. Finding the best translation e ~ {\displaystyle {\tilde {e}}} is done by picking up the one that gives the highest probability: e ~ = a r g max e ∈ e ∗ p ( e | f ) = a r g max e ∈ e ∗ p ( f | e ) p ( e ) {\displaystyle {\tilde {e}}=arg\max _{e\in e^{}}p(e|f)=arg\max _{e\in e^{}}p(f|e)p(e)} . For a rigorous implementation of this one would have to perform an exhaustive search by going through all strings e ∗ {\displaystyle e^{}} in the native language. Performing the search efficiently is the work of a machine translation decoder that uses the foreign string, heuristics and other methods to limit the search space and at the same time keeping acceptable quality. This trade-off between quality and time usage can also be found in speech recognition. As the translation systems are not able to store all native strings and their translations, a document is typically translated sentence by sentence. Language models are typically approximated by smoothed n-gram models, and similar approaches have been applied to translation models, but this introduces additional complexity due to different sentence lengths and word orders in the languages. Statistical translation models were initially word based (Models 1-5 from IBM Hidden Markov model from Stephan Vogel and Model 6 from Franz-Joseph Och), but significant advances were made with the introduction of phrase based models. Later work incorporated syntax or quasi-syntactic structures. == Benefits == The most frequently cited benefits of statistical machine translation (SMT) over rule-based approach are: More efficient use of human and data resources There are many parallel corpora in machine-readable format and even more monolingual data. Generally, SMT systems are not tailored to any specific pair of languages. More fluent translations owing to use of a language model == Shortcomings == Corpus creation can be costly. Specific errors are hard to predict and fix. Results may have superficial fluency that masks translation problems. Statistical machine translation usually works less well for language pairs with significantly different word order. The benefits obtained for translation between Western European languages are not representative of results for other language pairs, owing to smaller training corpora and greater grammatical differences. == Word-based translation == In word-based translation, the fundamental unit of translation is a word in some natural language. Typically, the number of words in translated sentences are different, because of compound words, morphology and idioms. The ratio of the lengths of sequences of translated words is called fertility, which tells how many foreign words each native word produces. Necessarily it is assumed by information theory that each covers the same concept. In practice this is not really true. For example, the English word corner can be translated in Spanish by either rincón or esquina, depending on whether it is to mean its internal or external angle. Simple word-based translation cannot translate between languages with different fertility. Word-based translation systems can relatively simply be made to cope with high fertility, such that they could map a single word to multiple words, but not the other way about. For example, if we were translating from English to French, each word in English could produce any number of French words— sometimes none at all. But there is no way to group two English words producing a single French word. An example of a word-based translation system is the freely available GIZA++ package (GPLed), which includes the training program for IBM models and HMM model and Model 6. The word-based translation is not widely used today; phrase-based systems are more common. Most phrase-based systems are still using GIZA++ to align the corpus. The alignments are used to extract phrases or deduce syntax rules. And matching words in bi-text is still a problem actively discussed in the community. Because of the predominance of GIZA++, there are now several distributed implementations of it online. == Phrase-based translation == In phrase-based translation, the aim is to reduce the restrictions of word-based translation by translating whole sequences of words, where the lengths may differ. The sequences of words are called blocks or phrases. These are typically not linguistic phrases, but phrasemes that were found using statistical methods from corpora. It has been shown that restricting the phrases to linguistic phrases (syntactically motivated groups of words, see syntactic categories) decreased the quality of translation. The chosen phrases are further mapped one-to-one based on a phrase translation table, and may be reordered. This table could be learnt based on word-alignment, or directly from a parallel corpus. The second model is trained using the expectation maximization algorithm, similarly to the word-based IBM model. == Syntax-based translation == Syntax-based translation is based on the idea of translating syntactic units, rather than single words or strings of words (as in phrase-based MT), i.e. (partial) parse trees of sentences/utterances. Until the 1990s, with advent of strong stochastic parsers, the statistical counterpart of the old idea of syntax-based translation did not take off. Examples of this approach include DOP-based MT and later synchronous context-free grammars. == Hierarchical phrase-based translation == Hierarchical phrase-based translation combines the phrase-based and syntax-based approaches to translation. It uses synchronous context-free grammar rules, but the grammars can be constructed by an extension of methods for phrase-based translation without reference to linguistically motivated syntactic constituents. This idea was first introduced in Chiang's Hiero system (2005). == Language models == A language model is an essential component of any statistical machine translation system, which aids in making the translation as fluent as possible. It is a function that takes a translated sentence and returns the probability of it being said by a native speaker. A good language model will for example assign a higher probability to the sentence "the house is small" than to "small the is house". Other than word order, language models may also help with word choice: if a foreign word has multiple possible translations, these functions may give better probabilities for certain translations in specific contexts in the target language. == Systems implementing statistical machine translation == Google Translate (started transition to neural machine translation in 2016) Microsoft Translator (started transition to neural machine translation in 2016) Yandex.Translate (switched to hybrid approach incorporating neural machine translation in 2017) == Challenges with statistical machine translation == Problems with statistical machine translation include: === Sentence alignment === Single sentences in one language can be found translated into several sentences in the o

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  • Eugene Charniak

    Eugene Charniak

    Eugene Charniak (June 2, 1946 – June 13, 2023) was a professor of computer Science and cognitive Science at Brown University. He held an A.B. in Physics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. in Computer Science. His research was in the area of language understanding or technologies which relate to it, such as knowledge representation, reasoning under uncertainty, and learning. Since the early 1990s he was interested in statistical techniques for language understanding. His research in this area included work in the subareas of part-of-speech tagging, probabilistic context-free grammar induction, and, more recently, syntactic disambiguation through word statistics, efficient syntactic parsing, and lexical resource acquisition through statistical means. He was a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence and was previously a Councilor of the organization. He was also honored with the 2011 Association for Computational Linguistics Lifetime Achievement Award and awarded the 2011 Calvin & Rose G Hoffman Prize. In 2011, he was named a fellow of the Association for Computational Linguistics. In 2015, he won the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Classic Paper Award for a paper (“Statistical Parsing with a Context-Free Grammar and Word Statistics”) that he presented at the Fourteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in 1997. == Books == He published six books: Computational Semantics, (with Yorick Wilks), Amsterdam: North-Holland (1976) Artificial Intelligence Programming (now in a second edition) (with Chris Riesbeck, Drew McDermott, and James Meehan), Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (1980, 1987) Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (with Drew McDermott), Reading MA: Addison-Wesley (1985) Statistical Language Learning, Cambridge: MIT Press (1993) Introduction to Deep Learning, Cambridge: MIT Press (2019) AI & I: An Intellectual History of Artificial Intelligence, Cambridge: MIT Press (2024)

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  • Smart object

    Smart object

    A smart object is an object that enhances the interaction with not only people but also with other smart objects. Also known as smart connected products or smart connected things (SCoT), they are products, assets and other things embedded with processors, sensors, software and connectivity that allow data to be exchanged between the product and its environment, manufacturer, operator/user, and other products and systems. Connectivity also enables some capabilities of the product to exist outside the physical device, in what is known as the product cloud. The data collected from these products can be then analysed to inform decision-making, enable operational efficiencies and continuously improve the performance of the product. It can not only refer to interaction with physical world objects but also to interaction with virtual (computing environment) objects. A smart physical object may be created either as an artifact or manufactured product or by embedding electronic tags such as RFID tags or sensors into non-smart physical objects. Smart virtual objects are created as software objects that are intrinsic when creating and operating a virtual or cyber world simulation or game. The concept of a smart object has several origins and uses, see History. There are also several overlapping terms, see also smart device, tangible object or tangible user interface and Thing as in the Internet of things. == History == In the early 1990s, Mark Weiser, from whom the term ubiquitous computing originated, referred to a vision "When almost every object either contains a computer or can have a tab attached to it, obtaining information will be trivial", Although Weiser did not specifically refer to an object as being smart, his early work did imply that smart physical objects are smart in the sense that they act as digital information sources. Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer refer to tangible objects in terms of tangibles bits or tangible user interfaces that enable users to "grasp & manipulate" bits in the center of users' attention by coupling the bits with everyday physical objects and architectural surfaces. The smart object concept was introduced by Marcelo Kallman and Daniel Thalmann as an object that can describe its own possible interactions. The main focus here is to model interactions of smart virtual objects with virtual humans, agents, in virtual worlds. The opposite approach to smart objects is 'plain' objects that do not provide this information. The additional information provided by this concept enables far more general interaction schemes, and can greatly simplify the planner of an artificial intelligence agent. In contrast to smart virtual objects used in virtual worlds, Lev Manovich focuses on physical space filled with electronic and visual information. Here, "smart objects" are described as "objects connected to the Net; objects that can sense their users and display smart behaviour". More recently in the early 2010s, smart objects are being proposed as a key enabler for the vision of the Internet of things. The combination of the Internet and emerging technologies such as near field communications, real-time localization, and embedded sensors enables everyday objects to be transformed into smart objects that can understand and react to their environment. Such objects are building blocks for the Internet of things and enable novel computing applications. In 2018, one of the world's first smart houses was built in Klaukkala, Finland in the form of a five-floor apartment block, using the Kone Residential Flow solution created by KONE, allowing even a smartphone to act as a home key. == Characteristics == Although we can view interaction with physical smart object in the physical world as distinct from interaction with virtual smart objects in a virtual simulated world, these can be related. Poslad considers the progression of: how humans use models of smart objects situated in the physical world to enhance human to physical world interaction; versus how smart physical objects situated in the physical world can model human interaction in order to lessen the need for human to physical world interaction; versus how virtual smart objects by modelling both physical world objects and modelling humans as objects and their subsequent interactions can form a predominantly smart virtual object environment. === Smart physical objects === The concept smart for a smart physical object simply means that it is active, digital, networked, can operate to some extent autonomously, is reconfigurable and has local control of the resources it needs such as energy, data storage, etc. Note, a smart object does not necessarily need to be intelligent as in exhibiting a strong essence of artificial intelligence—although it can be designed to also be intelligent. Physical world smart objects can be described in terms of three properties: Awareness: is a smart object's ability to understand (that is, sense, interpret, and react to) events and human activities occurring in the physical world. Representation: refers to a smart object's application and programming model—in particular, programming abstractions. Interaction: denotes the object's ability to converse with the user in terms of input, output, control, and feedback. Based upon these properties, these have been classified into three types: Activity-Aware Smart Objects: Are objects that can record information about work activities and its own use. Policy-Aware Smart Objects: Are objects that are activity-aware Objects can interpret events and activities with respect to predefined organizational policies. Process-Aware Smart Objects: Processes play a fundamental role in industrial work management and operation. A process is a collection of related activities or tasks that are ordered according to their position in time and space. === Smart virtual objects === For the virtual object in a virtual world case, an object is called smart when it has the ability to describe its possible interactions. This focuses on constructing a virtual world using only virtual objects that contain their own interaction information. There are four basic elements to constructing such a smart virtual object framework. Object properties: physical properties and a text description Interaction information: position of handles, buttons, grips, and the like Object behavior: different behaviors based on state variables Agent behaviors: description of the behavior an agent should follow when using the object Some versions of smart objects also include animation information in the object information, but this is not considered to be an efficient approach, since this can make objects inappropriately oversized. === Categorization === The terms smart, connected product or smart product can be confusing as it is used to cover a broad range of different products, ranging from smart home appliances (e.g., smart bathroom scales or smart light bulbs) to smart cars (e.g., Tesla). While these products share certain similarities, they often differ substantially in their capabilities. Raff et al. developed a conceptual framework that distinguishes different smart products based on their capabilities, which features 4 types of smart product archetypes (in ascending order of "smartness"). Digital Connected Responsive Intelligent == Advantages == Smart, connected products have three primary components: Physical – made up of the product's mechanical and electrical parts. Smart – made up of sensors, microprocessors, data storage, controls, software, and an embedded operating system with enhanced user interface. Connectivity – made up of ports, antennae, and protocols enabling wired/wireless connections that serve two purposes, it allows data to be exchanged with the product and enables some functions of the product to exist outside the physical device. Each component expands the capabilities of one another resulting in "a virtuous cycle of value improvement". First, the smart components of a product amplify the value and capabilities of the physical components. Then, connectivity amplifies the value and capabilities of the smart components. These improvements include: Monitoring of the product's conditions, its external environment, and its operations and usage. Control of various product functions to better respond to changes in its environment, as well as to personalize the user experience. Optimization of the product's overall operations based on actual performance data, and reduction of downtimes through predictive maintenance and remote service. Autonomous product operation, including learning from their environment, adapting to users' preferences and self-diagnosing and service. === The Internet of things (IoT) === The Internet of things is the network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment. The phrase "Internet of things" reflects the gro

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  • Hideto Tomabechi

    Hideto Tomabechi

    Hideto Tomabechi (苫米地 英人, Tomabechi Hideto; born 1959) is a Japanese cognitive scientist who is an adjunct fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and has had an executive role in several companies. == Early life and education == He grew up in Minato-ku, Tokyo. He graduated from Komaba Toho High School and then joined the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his first degree from Sophia University, then joined Mitsubishi Real Estate. Tomabechi was a Fulbright Scholar at Yale University and became member of Yale University Artificial Intelligence Research Center and Yale Cognitive Science Program. Hideto Tomabechi's research topic was: Cognition Models for Language Expressions and Computational Methods (Tomabechi Algorithm). Hideto Tomabechi received his Ph.D. in the field of computational linguistics from Carnegie Mellon University. His 1993 Ph.D. Thesis was entitled "Efficient Unification for Natural Language". == Career timeline == 1992-1998: Director, Justsystem Scientific Institute. 1998: CEO of Cognitive Research Laboratories Inc. 2007: Adjunct Fellow at the Cyber Security & Privacy Research Institute (CyLab) at Carnegie Mellon University. 2020: Visiting professor at Nano & Life Research Center, Waseda University. 2020: Chairman, Resilience Japan, LLC. 2022: Chairman of Japan Society for Foreign Policy. == Brain research == In 1993, Hideto Tomabechi became director of the Development Department. Later, Tomabechi became director of the JustSystems Basic Research Institute Tomabechi researched the basic functions of the human brain and mind. The purpose of brain and consciousness research were to develop the human machine interface. The main areas of research were altered states of consciousness, hypnosis, homeostasis, brain functions, and functions of the human mind in cyberspace. Dr. Tomabechi founded the Bechi Unit, the world's first virtual currency at JustSystems, based on Tomabech Algorithms. == Brainwashing == Tomabechi was the scientist who deprogrammed the leaders of the religious cult responsible for the terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway. The cult (Aum Shinrikyo) brainwashed its people and they carried out the attacks in an influenced state of consciousness.

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  • Best AI Paraphrasing Tools in 2026

    Best AI Paraphrasing Tools in 2026

    Curious about the best AI paraphrasing tool? An AI paraphrasing tool is software that uses machine learning to help you get more done — it combines speed, accuracy, and an interface that just works. Hands-on testing shows real-world results vary, so a short free trial is the smartest way to decide. Whether you are a beginner or a pro, the right AI paraphrasing tool slots into your workflow and pays for itself fast. Read on for hands-on impressions, pricing tiers, and the standout features that matter.

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