AI Chatbot Generator

AI Chatbot Generator — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • 3D-Coat

    3D-Coat

    3DCoat is a commercial digital sculpting program from Pilgway designed to create free-form organic and hard surfaced 3D models, with tools which enable users to sculpt, add polygonal topology (automatically or manually), create UV maps (automatically or manually), texture the resulting models with natural painting tools, and render static images or animated "turntable" movies. The program can also be used to modify imported 3D models from a number of commercial 3D software products by means of plugins called Applinks. Imported models can be converted into voxel objects for further refinement and for adding high resolution detail, complete UV unwrapping and mapping, as well as adding PBR textures for displacement, bump maps, specular and diffuse color maps. A live connection to a chosen external 3D application can be established through the Applink pipeline, allowing for the transfer of model and texture information. 3DCoat specializes in voxel sculpting and polygonal sculpting using dynamic patch tessellation technology and polygonal sculpting tools. It includes "auto-retopology", a proprietary skinning algorithm which generates a polygonal mesh skin over any voxel sculpture, composed primarily of quadrangles.

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  • FreePBX Distro

    FreePBX Distro

    The FreePBX Distro was a freeware unified communications software system that consisted of FreePBX, a graphical user interface (GUI) for configuring, controlling and managing Asterisk PBX software. The FreePBX Distro included packages that offer VoIP, PBX, Fax, IVR, voice-mail and email functions. The FreePBX Distro Linux distribution was based on CentOS, which maintains binary compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. FreePBX has contributed to the popularity of Asterisk. As a result of CentOS Linux being discontinued and the last version of CentOS 7 going out of support on June 30, 2024, FreePBX 17 has moved over to and is supported on Debian Linux. FreePBX will no longer be providing a pre-configured FreePBX Distro, but will provide a script to install FreePBX on a fresh install of Debian Linux. In-place migration will not be possible, but will be possible by restoring a backup on the new version from the previous version. As FreePBX 16 will be supported until the release of FreePBX 18, FreePBX on this distribution will still work and be supported, however, there will be no further support for the underlying operating system. == Installation == The Official FreePBX Distro is installed from a ISO image available by web download, that includes the system CentOS, Asterisk, FreePBX GUI and assorted dependencies. This can then either be burned to DVD or written to a USB stick for installation == Support for telephony hardware == The FreePBX Distro has built-in support for cards from multiple vendors, including Digium, OpenVox, Alto, Rhino Equipment, Xorcom and Sangoma. The FreePBX Distro supports a large number of phone models via open-source modules. Supported VoIP phone manufacturers include Algo, AND, AudioCodes, Cisco, Cyberdata, Digium, Grandstream, Mitel/Aastra, Nortel/Avaya, Panasonic, Polycom, Sangoma, Snom, Xorcom and Yealink. == Development == FreePBX made its debut in 2004 as the AMP project (Asterisk Management Portal). The FreePBX Distro was released in 2011 as an turnkey solution for building a PBX using Asterisk, CentOS and FreePBX. FreePBX has over 1 million active production PBXs and over 20,000 new systems added each month. The core telephony engine is Asterisk, as configured by the Open Source FreePBX GUI. The last stable release is FreePBX Distro Stable SNG7-PBX16-64bit-2302-1 based on these main components: FreePBX 16 CentOS 7.8 Asterisk 16, 18, 19 (20 supported by upgrade once installed)

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  • Digital heritage

    Digital heritage

    The Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage of UNESCO defines digital heritage as embracing "cultural, educational, scientific and administrative resources, as well as technical, legal, medical and other kinds of information created digitally, or converted into digital form from existing analogue resources". Digital heritage also includes the use of digital media in the service of understanding and preserving cultural or natural heritage. The digitization of both cultural heritage and Natural heritage serves to enable the permanent access of current and future generations to culturally important objects ranging from literature and paintings to flora, fauna, or habitats. It is also used in the preservation and access of objects with enduring or significant historical, scientific, or cultural value including buildings, archeological sites, and natural phenomena. The main idea is the transformation of a material object into a virtual copy. It should not be confused with digital humanities, which uses digitizing technology to specifically help with research. There have been several debates concerning the efficiency of the process of digitizing heritage. Some of the drawbacks refer to the deterioration and technological obsolescence due to the lack of funding for archival materials and underdeveloped policies that would regulate such a process. Another main social debate has taken place around the restricted accessibility due to the digital divide that exists around the world. Nevertheless, new technologies enable easy, instant and cross boarder access to the digitized work. Many of these technologies include spatial and surveying technology to gain aerial or 3D images. Digital heritage is also used to monitor cultural heritage sites over years to help with preservation, maintenance, and sustainable tourism. It aims to observe any changes, diseases, or deterioration that may occur on objects. == Cultural and natural heritage == Digital Heritage that is not born-digital can be divided into two separate groups—digital cultural heritage and digital natural heritage. Digital cultural heritage is the maintenance or preservation of cultural objects through digitization. These are objects, in some cases entire cities, that are considered of cultural importance. These objects are sometimes able to be digitized or physically represented in minute detail. Digital cultural heritage also includes intangible heritage. These are things such as "oral traditions, customs, value systems, skills, traditional dances, diets, performances" and other unique features of a culture. Intangible heritage is particularly vulnerable to destruction due to urbanization. There are several projects and programs which concentrate on digital cultural heritage. One such project is Mapping Gothic France, which aims to document and preserve cathedrals across France using images, VR tours, laser scans, and panoramas. This allows for scientific and historical study and preservation of the cathedrals and also provides detailed access to the sites for anyone in the world. The aim of projects like these is to help with the preservation and restoration of cultural objects. After the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019, digital scans are a major component in the ongoing restoration. Digital natural heritage pertains to objects of natural heritage that are considered of cultural, scientific, or aesthetic importance. Digital heritage in this instance is used not only to grant access to these objects, but to monitor any changes over time, such as with plant or animal habitats. Geographic information systems are a form of technology that is used primarily in the study of natural heritage. Western Australia has one such digital heritage project where they have created a digital repository of native plants important to both the region and the Aboriginal people. This is in order to protect and preserve the important biological heritage of Western Australia. == Educational impact == The digitization of these heritage objects has impacts around the world and across many disciplines. The increase of digital items means that people, especially the youth, are able to learn about new objects and cultures online through various media. They provide viewers with a more in-depth experience with an item or place, instead of just an image. The media is also able to be curated to age- or educational-level appropriateness, making learning easier. Some of the technology used in education, especially in museums, includes mobile apps, virtual reality, social media, and video games. Cultural heritage institutions are using this technology to try to expand access, increase appreciation for these items, and to gain new viewpoints on their collections. Digital heritage also helps scientists, archeologists, or other historians and specialists collect data on these objects, providing more information on the objects and the past. Digital Heritage is still currently being studied and improved by several sectors invested in cultural and intellectual preservation. It is particularly of interest to museums, governments, and academic institutions. Research by these groups are creating new concepts, methodologies, and techniques for the implementation of digital heritage to protect this type of cultural and natural heritage. As new technologies are created, museums and other heritage institutions are provided with more ways of disseminating their information and engaging with the public. A lack of resources within certain groups may still hinder everyone from accessing digital heritage. == Technologies used == The digitization of cultural heritage is attained through several means. Some of the main technology used is spatial and surveying technology. Space archaeological technology - Observations from space satellites are non-intrusive and can be integrated with other technologies on the ground. It is used to photograph vast areas of earth and help with research. Remnants of ancient civilizations or other human objects are also able to be spotted via satellite imaging. Unmanned aerial vehicles - UAV, such as drones, are commonly used in digitization of cultural heritage objects. The Great Wall of China is one such site that has been digitized and analyzed through unmanned aerial vehicle investigation. The resulting images, 3-D scans, maps, and other data are used to evaluate and maintain the Great Wall. Laser Scanning - Laser scanning is used to scan an area and recreate spatially accurate depictions, such as a 3D model. Virtual and Augmented Reality - VR is used primarily for education but does have uses for reconstruction and research. It is used to provide users with an immersive experience, as though they are actually at the site. Geographic Information systems - GIS are used primarily to study objects and sites over time. It is also important in studying the socioeconomic status of the past. 3D Modeling - 3D modeling has become more widely used due to an increase in technology that works specifically with heritage sites. It is often used in tandem with GIS to reconstruct objects for restoration, documentation, preservation, and educational purposes. Data is collected using satellite or other aerial imaging and ground-based imaging. There is some concern about the accuracy and authenticity of these types of digital reconstructions and their effects on the sites themselves. A major barrier to digital heritage is the amount of resources it takes to undertake such projects, such as money, time, and technology. Money and the lack of qualified personnel are two that are considered the most obstructive. This is especially an issue in less developed areas or within underfunded groups such as minorities. == Virtual heritage == A particular branch of digital heritage, known as "virtual heritage", is formed by the use of information technology with the aim of recreating the experience of existing cultural heritage, as in (approximations of) virtual reality. It is hard to differentiate this branch from the core contribution of digital heritage which is storing the heritage data digitally. Parsinejad et al. developed two techniques for Digital Twinning of the architectural assets and representation of the physical assets virtually in the museum context. Two techniques are hand recording and digital recording and both have challenges in adoption and implementation of Digital Twin as a revolutionary concept. == Digital heritage stewardship == Digital heritage stewardship is a form of digital curation which is modeled after collaborative curation. Digital heritage stewardship means stepping away from typical curatorial practices (e.g. discovering, arranging, and sharing information, material, and/or content) in favor of practices which allow its stakeholders the opportunity to contribute historical, political, and social context and culture. The collaborative practice encourages the creation, engagement, and maintena

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  • Radio network

    Radio network

    A radio network is a system that distributes radio signals to multiple receivers or enables two-way communication between stations and mobile units. Worldwide, radio networks include broadcast networks, such as BBC Radio in the United Kingdom and NPR in the United States, which transmit one-to-many signals for news, entertainment, and public information; two-way radio networks, used by police, fire services, taxicabs, and delivery fleets for operational communication; and cellular networks, such as Verizon, Vodafone, and China Mobile, which provide mobile telephony and data services using frequency or time division duplexing. While all rely on radio-frequency technology like transmitters, receivers, and antennas, their network architectures, protocols, and regulatory frameworks differ substantially across applications and regions. The two-way type of radio network shares many of the same technologies and components as the broadcast-type radio network but is generally set up with fixed broadcast points (transmitters) with co-located receivers and mobile receivers/transmitters or transceivers. In this way both the fixed and mobile radio units can communicate with each other over broad geographic regions ranging in size from small single cities to entire states/provinces or countries. There are many ways in which multiple fixed transmit/receive sites can be interconnected to achieve the range of coverage required by the jurisdiction or authority implementing the system: conventional wireless links in numerous frequency bands, fibre-optic links, or microwave links. In all of these cases the signals are typically backhauled to a central switch of some type where the radio message is processed and resent (repeated) to all transmitter sites where it is required to be heard. In contemporary two-way radio systems, a concept called trunking is commonly used to achieve better efficiency of radio spectrum use. It provides a very wide range of coverage, with no switching of channels required by the mobile radio user as it roams throughout the system coverage. Trunking of two-way radio is identical to the concept used for cellular phone systems where each fixed and mobile radio is specifically identified to the system controller and its operation is switched by the controller. == Broadcasting networks == The broadcast type of radio network is a network system which distributes radio programming to multiple stations simultaneously, or slightly delayed, for the purpose of extending total coverage beyond the limits of a single broadcast signal. The resulting expanded audience for radio programming or information essentially applies the benefits of mass-production to the broadcasting enterprise. A radio network has two sales departments, one to package and sell programs to radio stations, and one to sell the audience of those programs to advertisers. Most radio networks also produce much of their programming. Originally, radio networks owned some or all of the stations that broadcast the network's radio format programming. Presently however, there are many networks that do not own any stations and only produce and/or distribute programming. Similarly station ownership does not always indicate network affiliation. A company might own stations in several different markets and purchase programming from a variety of networks. Radio networks rose rapidly with the growth of regular broadcasting of radio to home listeners in the 1920s. This growth took various paths in different places. In Britain the BBC was developed with public funding, in the form of a broadcast receiver license, and a broadcasting monopoly in its early decades. In contrast, in the United States various competing commercial broadcasting networks arose funded by advertising revenue. In that instance, the same corporation that owned or operated the network often manufactured and marketed the listener's radio. Major technical challenges to be overcome when distributing programs over long distances are maintaining signal quality and managing the number of switching/relay points in the signal chain. Early on, programs were sent to remote stations (either owned or affiliated) by various methods, including leased telephone lines, pre-recorded gramophone records and audio tape. The world's first all-radio, non-wireline network was claimed to be the Rural Radio Network, a group of six upstate New York FM stations that began operation in June 1948. Terrestrial microwave relay, a technology later introduced to link stations, has been largely supplanted by coaxial cable, fiber, and satellite, which usually offer superior cost-benefit ratios. Many early radio networks evolved into television networks.

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  • Software development process

    Software development process

    A software development process prescribes a process for developing software. It typically divides an overall effort into smaller steps or sub-processes that are intended to ensure high-quality results. The process may describe specific deliverables – artifacts to be created and completed. Although not strictly limited to it, software development process often refers to the high-level process that governs the development of a software system from its beginning to its end of life – known as a methodology, model or framework. The system development life cycle (SDLC) describes the typical phases that a development effort goes through from the beginning to the end of life for a system – including a software system. A methodology prescribes how engineers go about their work in order to move the system through its life cycle. A methodology is a classification of processes or a blueprint for a process that is devised for the SDLC. For example, many processes can be classified as a spiral model. Software process and software quality are closely interrelated; some unexpected facets and effects have been observed in practice. == Methodology == The SDLC drives the definition of a methodology in that a methodology must address the phases of the SDLC. Generally, a methodology is designed to result in a high-quality system that meets or exceeds expectations (requirements) and is delivered on time and within budget even though computer systems can be complex and integrate disparate components. Various methodologies have been devised, including waterfall, spiral, agile, rapid prototyping, incremental, and synchronize and stabilize. A major difference between methodologies is the degree to which the phases are sequential vs. iterative. Agile methodologies, such as XP and scrum, focus on lightweight processes that allow for rapid changes. Iterative methodologies, such as Rational Unified Process and dynamic systems development method, focus on stabilizing project scope and iteratively expanding or improving products. Sequential or big-design-up-front (BDUF) models, such as waterfall, focus on complete and correct planning to guide larger projects and limit risks to successful and predictable results. Anamorphic development is guided by project scope and adaptive iterations. In scrum, for example, one could say a single user story goes through all the phases of the SDLC within a two-week sprint. By contrast the waterfall methodology, where every business requirement is translated into feature/functional descriptions which are then all implemented typically over a period of months or longer. A project can include both a project life cycle (PLC) and an SDLC, which describe different activities. According to Taylor (2004), "the project life cycle encompasses all the activities of the project, while the systems development life cycle focuses on realizing the product requirements". === History === The term SDLC is often used as an abbreviated version of SDLC methodology. Further, some use SDLC and traditional SDLC to mean the waterfall methodology. According to Elliott (2004), SDLC "originated in the 1960s, to develop large scale functional business systems in an age of large scale business conglomerates. Information systems activities revolved around heavy data processing and number crunching routines". The structured systems analysis and design method (SSADM) was produced for the UK government Office of Government Commerce in the 1980s. Ever since, according to Elliott (2004), "the traditional life cycle approaches to systems development have been increasingly replaced with alternative approaches and frameworks, which attempted to overcome some of the inherent deficiencies of the traditional SDLC". The main idea of the SDLC has been "to pursue the development of information systems in a very deliberate, structured and methodical way, requiring each stage of the life cycle––from the inception of the idea to delivery of the final system––to be carried out rigidly and sequentially" within the context of the framework being applied. Other methodologies were devised later: 1970s Structured programming since 1969 Cap Gemini SDM, originally from PANDATA, the first English translation was published in 1974. SDM stands for System Development Methodology 1980s Structured systems analysis and design method (SSADM) from 1980 onwards Information Requirement Analysis/Soft systems methodology 1990s Object-oriented programming (OOP) developed in the early 1960s and became a dominant programming approach during the mid-1990s Rapid application development (RAD), since 1991 Dynamic systems development method (DSDM), since 1994 Scrum, since 1995 Team software process, since 1998 Rational Unified Process (RUP), maintained by IBM since 1998 Extreme programming, since 1999 2000s Agile Unified Process (AUP) maintained since 2005 by Scott Ambler Disciplined agile delivery (DAD) Supersedes AUP 2010s Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) DevOps Since DSDM in 1994, all of the methodologies on the above list except RUP have been agile methodologies - yet many organizations, especially governments, still use pre-agile processes (often waterfall or similar). === Examples === The following are notable methodologies somewhat ordered by popularity. Agile Agile software development refers to a group of frameworks based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve via collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. The term was coined in the year 2001 when the Agile Manifesto was formulated. Waterfall The waterfall model is a sequential development approach, in which development flows one-way (like a waterfall) through the SDLC phases. Spiral In 1988, Barry Boehm published a software system development spiral model, which combines key aspects of the waterfall model and rapid prototyping, in an effort to combine advantages of top-down and bottom-up concepts. It emphases a key area many felt had been neglected by other methodologies: deliberate iterative risk analysis, particularly suited to large-scale complex systems. Incremental Various methods combine linear and iterative methodologies, with the primary objective of reducing inherent project risk by breaking a project into smaller segments and providing more ease-of-change during the development process. Prototyping Software prototyping is about creating prototypes, i.e. incomplete versions of the software program being developed. Rapid Rapid application development (RAD) is a methodology which favors iterative development and the rapid construction of prototypes instead of large amounts of up-front planning. The "planning" of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself. The lack of extensive pre-planning generally allows software to be written much faster and makes it easier to change requirements. Shape Up Shape Up is a software development approach introduced by Basecamp in 2018. It is a set of principles and techniques that Basecamp developed internally to overcome the problem of projects dragging on with no clear end. Its primary target audience is remote teams. Shape Up has no estimation and velocity tracking, backlogs, or sprints, unlike waterfall, agile, or scrum. Instead, those concepts are replaced with appetite, betting, and cycles. As of 2022, besides Basecamp, notable organizations that have adopted Shape Up include UserVoice and Block. Chaos Chaos model has one main rule: always resolve the most important issue first. Incremental funding Incremental funding methodology - an iterative approach. Lightweight Lightweight methodology - a general term for methods that only have a few rules and practices. Structured systems analysis and design Structured systems analysis and design method - a specific version of waterfall. Slow programming As part of the larger slow movement, emphasizes careful and gradual work without (or minimal) time pressures. Slow programming aims to avoid bugs and overly quick release schedules. V-Model V-Model (software development) - an extension of the waterfall model. Unified Process Unified Process (UP) is an iterative software development methodology framework, based on Unified Modeling Language (UML). UP organizes the development of software into four phases, each consisting of one or more executable iterations of the software at that stage of development: inception, elaboration, construction, and guidelines. === Comparison === The waterfall model describes the SDLC phases such that each builds on the result of the previous one. Not every project requires that the phases be sequential. For relatively simple projects, phases may be combined or overlapping. Alternative methodologies to waterfall are described and compared below. == Process meta-models == Some process models are abstract descriptions for evaluating, comparing, and improving the specific process adopted by an organization. ISO/IEC 12207 ISO/IEC 12207 i

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  • The Big Book of Social Media

    The Big Book of Social Media

    The Big Book of Social Media: Case Studies, Stories, Perspectives, released in November 2010 by Yorkshire Publishing, is a compilation of non-fiction articles and chapters written by social media experts in their respective fields and edited by Robert Fine, organizer of the Cool Social Conferences World Tour and founder of Cool Blue Press, with a foreword by Sam Feist, political director for CNN. == Synopsis == The publisher, on its site, summed up the book as, "Not business. Not marketing. This is an idea book." And an article in Business Insider described the book as bringing "the social back into social media." == Contributors == Contributing authors include: Alan Rosenblatt, Alane Anderson, Alecia Dantico, Alex Priest, Alfred Naranjo, Becky Carroll, Carri Bugbee, Cathy Scott, Colleen Crinklaw, Constantine Markides, Cordelia Mendoza, Craig Kanalley, Dave Ingland, Eric Andersen, Eric Brown, Gary Zukowski, Haja Rasambainarivo, Jennifer Kaplan, Kari Quaas, Lauri Stevens, Lev Ekster, Mark Stelzner, Matthew Felling, Matt Stewart, Melani Gordon, Michael Bourne, Michele Mattia, Mirna Bard, Neal Schaffer, Nic Evans, Noaf Ereiqat, Pek Pongpaet, Perri Gorman, Phil Baumann, Regina Holliday, Rory Cooper, Sam Feist, Shashi Bellamkonda, Shrinath Navghane, Steve Pratt, Ted Nguyen, Todd Schnick, Tonia Ries, Wayne Burke, as well as Robert Fine. In December 2011, some of the contributing authors organized "Tweet It Forward," a holiday charity fundraiser, with net proceeds benefitting the Food Bank for New York City. == Reception == Reviewer Mike Brown wrote on the Brainzooming blog that the book goes "beyond the valueless chatter out there; it provides solid discussions of real-life social media strategy implementations that have truly integrated organizational objectives and delivered real metrics." And Tech Cocktail wrote it in its review, "Through a collection of entertaining anecdotes and insightful marketing agendas, one sees what social media is truly all about and how it is revolutionizing the communications industry." In 2011, at the SXSW social media festival in Austin, Texas, Fine launched Cool Blue Press and reintroduced The Big Book of Social Media, with plans, he told a reporter from the Washington Examiner, for other new media books and publishing projects, including The Social Media Monthly magazine. The book was reviewed in 2012 by SAGE Publications for its Journalism and Mass Communication Educator magazine. It is also cited in several books and journals. === Awards === The book was a winner in the 4th Annual Reader's Choice "Small Business Book Awards" for 2011. Windmill Networking named it the Top 15 recommended social media books of 2010.

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  • GeForce RTX 50 series

    GeForce RTX 50 series

    The GeForce RTX 50 series of consumer graphics cards is the successor of Nvidia's GeForce 40 series. Announced at CES 2025, it debuted with the release of the RTX 5070, RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 in January 2025. It is based on Nvidia's Blackwell architecture featuring Nvidia RTX's fourth-generation RT cores for hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing, and fifth-generation deep learning–focused Tensor Cores. The GPUs are manufactured by TSMC on a custom 4N process node. == Background == In March 2024, Nvidia announced the Blackwell architecture for its datacenter products. Like Ampere, the architecture is shared by consumer and datacenter products rather than having distinct architectures released simultaneously like Ada Lovelace for consumers and Hopper for datacenter. At the Game Awards in December 2024, a cinematic trailer for The Witcher IV was shown that had been pre-rendered on an "unannounced Nvidia GeForce RTX GPU". This was assumed to be an upcoming GeForce RTX 50 series GPU. Following the RTX 50 series announcement, Nvidia confirmed that the trailer was "pre-rendered in Unreal Engine 5 on a GeForce RTX 5090". Later in the same month, it was reported that Nvidia had begun stockpiling GeForce RTX 50 series units in U.S. warehouses due to a threatened 10% import tariff and 60% tariff on Chinese imports that Donald Trump promised in his re-election campaign. === Announcement === On January 6, 2025, the GeForce RTX 50 series was officially announced for desktop and mobile devices during Nvidia's CES keynote in Las Vegas. The pricing announcement was met with surprise as the RTX 5080 at $999 was the same price that the RTX 4080 Super released at a year earlier despite the anticipated price increases. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang falsely claimed that the RTX 5070 could reach "RTX 4090 performance at $549", a figure that relies on the use of DLSS 4 upscaling and Multi Frame generation, and is not an indication of raw performance. == Features == === Blackwell architecture === The GeForce RTX 50 series is powered by the Blackwell microarchitecture, which continues Ada Lovelace's emphasis on high graphics frequencies and large L2 caches. The Blackwell architecture introduces Nvidia RTX's fourth-generation RT cores for hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing and fifth-generation Tensor Cores for AI compute and performing floating-point calculations. === GDDR7 === RTX 50 series GPUs are the first consumer GPUs to feature GDDR7 video memory for greater memory bandwidth over the same bus width compared to the GDDR6 and GDDR6X memory used in the GeForce 40 series. RTX 50 series desktop GPUs use GDDR7 modules from Samsung due to them being available for validation earlier than modules from SK Hynix and Micron. === 12V-2×6 connector === The GeForce RTX 50 series uses the 16-pin 12V-2×6 connector, which is a revision of the 12VHPWR connector featured on the GeForce 40 series. There were problems with the 12VHPWR connector melting on some RTX 4090 GPUs due to the connector not being fully seated and connector design flaws that did not implement a high enough safety and error tolerance. The 12V-2×6 connector revision, published by PCI-SIG in July 2023, addressed this by shortening the four sense pins so the connector will not push any power if it has not been fully seated. The 12VHPWR design would still draw up to 150W of power even if the sense pins were not making full contact. 12V-2×6 is backwards compatible with existing 12VHPWR cables and adapters. Nvidia has mandated to its AIB partners that the 16-pin 12V-2×6 connector be used on all RTX 50 series designs. With the GeForce 40 series, the 12VHPWR connector was only mandated on higher power cards such as the RTX 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti, RTX 4070 Ti Super, RTX 4080, RTX 4080 Super and RTX 4090 while RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070 AIB designs had the option of using 8-pin PCIe connectors. The 600W-capable 12VHPWR connector would not have been necessary on sub-200W cards. === DLSS 4 === The fourth generation of Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) was unveiled alongside the RTX 50 series. DLSS 4 upscaling uses a new vision transformer-based model for enhanced image quality with reduced ghosting and greater image stability in motion compared to the previous convolutional neural network (CNN) model. DLSS 4 also allows a greater number of frames to be generated and interpolated based on a single traditionally rendered frame. This form of frame generation called Multi Frame Generation is exclusive to the RTX 50 series while the GeForce 40 series is limited to one interpolated frame per traditionally rendered frame. Nvidia claims that DLSS 4's frame generation model uses 30% less video memory with the example of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide using 400 MB less memory at 4K resolution with frame generation enabled. Nvidia claims that 75 titles will integrate DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation at launch, including Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Star Wars Outlaws. === Media Engine and I/O === The RTX 50 series includes DisplayPort 2.1b UHBR20 (80Gbps) with higher display output data rates to support high resolution and high refresh rate displays. The GeForce 40 series received criticism for only including DisplayPort 1.4a (32Gbps) while the competing Radeon RX 7000 series included DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR13.5 (54Gbps). At CES 2025, VESA announced a collaboration with Nvidia on the new DP80LL ("low loss") UHBR20 active cable standard. DP80LL allows for 80Gbps DisplayPort 2.1 cables up to 3 meters long as passive DP80 cables are limited in length due to signal integrity concerns. The RTX 50 series introduces the ninth-generation NVENC encoder and sixth-generation NVDEC video decoder. For the first time in a consumer GeForce GPU, encoding and decoding video in the 4:2:2 color format for professional-grade higher color depth is supported. == List of GPUs == === Desktop === GeForce RTX 50 series desktop GPUs are the second consumer GPUs to utilize a PCIe 5.0 interface and the first to feature GDDR7 video memory (except for the entry level RTX 5050 that still uses GDDR6). They are fabricated by TSMC using a custom 5 nm process dubbed 4N. === Mobile === Laptops featuring GeForce RTX 50 series laptop GPUs were shown at CES 2025. Laptops with RTX 50 series GPUs were paired with Intel's Arrow Lake-HX and AMD's Strix Point and Fire Range CPUs. Nvidia claims that Blackwell architecture's new Max-Q features can increase battery life by up to 40% over GeForce 40 series laptops. For example, Advanced Power Gating saves power by turning off areas of the GPU that are unused and the paired GDDR7 memory can run in an "ultra" low-voltage state. Initial RTX 50 series laptops will become available in March 2025 starting at $1,299. == Controversies == === 12V-2x6 power connector issue === The 12V-2x6 connector used by multiple 5090 cards faces criticism due to a design flaw that can potentially cause the connector to melt. The flaw primarily affect Nvidia's own RTX 5090 FE and RTX 5080 FE cards and are similar to the failures seen on the RTX 40 series but models by third party OEMs have been affected as well. === Availability and pricing === The releases of the RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 Ti were marked by severe availability issues and pricing well above MSRP. Pricing became an issue again at the end of 2025 due to an ongoing memory supply shortage. Nvidia has been rumored to cut production of 16GB VRAM cards, affecting the availability of the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5070 Ti SKUs. === 32-bit support removal for CUDA, OpenCL, and GPU PhysX === Support for 32-bit OpenCL, and CUDA applications (and as a result 32-bit GPU-accelerated PhysX), was dropped for the GeForce RTX 50 series, which resulted in several applications encountering performance issues with GPU PhysX options or not being able to run at all, causing negative reactions from numerous gaming communities. On December 4, 2025, with the release of driver version 591.44, 32-bit GPU-accelerated PhysX support was restored for certain games. Support for more games was promised in the future. === Incomplete dies and missing ROPs === The dies of certain RTX 5090/5090D, 5080, and 5070 Ti cards were missing eight render output units (ROPs), resulting in slower graphics while pure compute and AI workloads are unaffected. Nvidia claimed that less than 0.5% of cards are affected and that the "production anomaly" has been rectified. === Black screen issues === Some RTX 5080 and 5090 users reported an issue where the system would boot into a black screen after installing Nvidia drivers. Nvidia confirmed the issue and said that a new driver update would fix it for people who hadn't received a VBIOS update yet. Released on February 27, 2025 Nvidia drivers version 572.60 claim to have fixed the issue. Nvidia has since released multiple hotfix and Game Ready drivers that contain additional fixes for the issue. === Windows driver branch quality and stabilit

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  • Mortimer Rogoff

    Mortimer Rogoff

    Mortimer Alan Rogoff (May 2, 1921 – August 1, 2008) was an American inventor, businessman, and author as well as an amateur photographer and radio operator. He is recognized for his work in spread spectrum technology which is the technology that modern cell phones and GPS systems are based on. He is also considered the grandfather of the electronic navigation chart. == Early life == Rogoff was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned his B.S.E.E. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1943 and his M.S.E.E. from Columbia University in 1948. While at Rensselaer he was a member of Kappa Nu fraternity and the Features Editor for the student newspaper. During World War II, he enlisted in the United States Navy and worked on developing radio communication and aerial navigation systems. One of the techniques he developed was undetectable by Axis forces because its power was below that of the background noise and its frequency varied in random ways. This secure transmission was the beginning of spread spectrum technology which would become the basis for GPS and CDMA cellular telephone systems. Although he was never able to patent the technology because it was a military secret he did get some recognition for it almost forty years later when he received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Pioneer Award in 1981. == Career == Rogoff worked for twenty-two years (1946 to 1968) for ITT Laboratories in New Jersey. In 1958, he became their deputy director of Engineering. He was Vice President of ITT Laboratories from 1962 to 1963. From 1963 to 1968, he was promoted to the corporate staff where he became head of European operations. In 1968 he left ITT to work for the Diebold Group where he became an Executive Vice President. After leaving the Diebold Group he founded several technology and automation businesses, including his own consulting firm, and Teletext Communications Corporation. Later in the 1970s, he was a Principal with Booz Allen Hamilton. In 1979, his book ‘’Calculator Navigation’’ was published. This book demonstrated practical methods for calculating precise ship locations using radio navigation with a consumer calculator. In 1981, he founded a new company, Navigation Sciences Inc., in Bethesda, Maryland. With this company he patented a method for marine navigation that combined radar maps with electronic charts in 1986. This was a major advancement in field. Today, this system is known as the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS). Rogoff had seen the need for a new charting system in 1968 from his apartment at 180 East End Avenue in New York City. From there, he saw a boating accident where a life was lost and decided there had to be a way to automate navigation. Rogoff then became of member of the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) sub-committee on Safety of Navigation, a representative to the International Electrotechnical Commission, and became the chairman of the Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services Special Committee 109 on Electronic Charts. He was able to use his influence on these boards to push through a proposal of ECDIS standards in 1989 where none has been before. As his friend Giuseppe Carnevali said, “Although nobody could argue against the need for a standard, no one was ready to endorse one; however, nobody was brave enough to oppose it.” A Test Bed project on these proposals was conducted by the United States Coast Guard. The amended standards were accepted by the IMO in November, 1995. In 2000, he was named as a Fellow of the Institute of Navigation. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. During this time, he was also president of the Navigational Electronic Charts System Association. == Personal == In 1979, he moved to Washington, D.C. and bought a home in Nantucket, Massachusetts. He married Sheila Zunser in 1943 and they were together for sixty-five years. They had three daughters: Louisa Thompson, Alice Rogoff, and Julia Peach. His sister was sociologist Natalie Rogoff Ramsøy of the University of Oslo. He was a member of the Cosmos Club and President of The Navigational Electronic Chart System Association (NECSA). He was a very good amateur photographer and liked amateur radio (call sign W2EE). He died in Nantucket from bladder cancer. == Patents == Patent number: 4176316 – Secure Communication System – November 27, 1979 With Louis A. DeRosa Patent number: 4590569 – Electronic Navigation System – May 20, 1986 With Peter M. Winkler and John N. Ackley Patent number: RE34004 – Secure Communication System – July 21, 1992 With Louis A. DeRosa == Publications == Rogoff, Mortimer September 1957. Automatic Analysis of Infrared Spectra. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences; vol. 69: no. 1: 27–37. Gen. P.C. Sandretto and Mortimer Rogoff. 1958 “A Novel Concept for Application to the Control of Airways Traffic.” NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation; vol. 6: no. 2: 102–107 Rogoff, Mortimer 1979. Calculator Navigation; ISBN 0-393-03192-6. Published by W.W. Norton & Company (New York and London). Rogoff, Mortimer December 1985. Electronic Charting. Yachting; vol. 158: no. 6: 54–57. Rogoff, Mortimer Winter 1990. Electronic Charts in the Nineties. NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation; vol. 37: no. 4: 305–318.

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  • Cygwin

    Cygwin

    Cygwin ( SIG-win) is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface (CLI) for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operating systems to be compiled and run on Windows. Cygwin provides native integration of Windows-based applications. The terminal emulator mintty is the default command-line interface provided to interact with the environment. The Cygwin installation directory layout mimics the root file system of Unix-like systems, with directories such as /bin, /home, /etc, /usr, and /var. Cygwin is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3. It was originally developed by Cygnus Solutions, which was later acquired by Red Hat (now part of IBM), to port the GNU toolchain to Win32, including the GNU Compiler Suite. Rather than rewrite the tools to use the Win32 runtime environment, Cygwin implemented a POSIX-compatible environment in the form of a DLL. The brand motto is "Get that Linux feeling – on Windows", although Cygwin doesn't have Linux in it. == History == Cygwin began in 1995 as a project of Steve Chamberlain, a Cygnus engineer who observed that Windows NT and 95 used COFF as their object file format, and that GNU already included support for x86 and COFF, and the C library newlib. He thought that it would be possible to retarget GCC and produce a cross compiler generating executables that could run on Windows. A prototype was later developed. Chamberlain bootstrapped the compiler on a Windows system, to emulate Unix to let the GNU configure shell script run. Initially, Cygwin was called Cygwin32. When Microsoft registered the trademark Win32, the "32" was dropped to simply become Cygwin. In 1999, Cygnus offered Cygwin 1.0 as a commercial product. Subsequent versions have not been released, instead relying on continued open source releases. Geoffrey Noer was the project lead from 1996 to 1999. Christopher Faylor was lead from 1999 to 2004; he left Red Hat and became co-lead with Corinna Vinschen. Corinna Vinschen has been the project lead from mid-2014 to date (as of September, 2024). From June 23, 2016, the Cygwin library version 2.5.2 was licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3. == Description == Cygwin is provided in two versions: the full 64-bit version and a stripped-down 32-bit version, whose final version was released in 2022. Cygwin consists of a library that implements the POSIX system call API in terms of Windows system calls to enable the running of a large number of application programs equivalent to those on Unix systems, and a GNU development toolchain (including GCC and GDB). Programmers have ported the X Window System, K Desktop Environment 3, GNOME, Apache, and TeX. Cygwin permits installing inetd, syslogd, sshd, Apache, and other daemons as standard Windows services. Cygwin programs have full access to the Windows API and other Windows libraries. Cygwin programs are installed by running Cygwin's "setup" program, which downloads them from repositories on the Internet. The Cygwin API library is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 (or later), with an exception to allow linking to any free and open-source software whose license conforms to the Open Source Definition. Cygwin consists of two parts: A dynamic-link library in the form of a C standard library that acts as a compatibility layer for the POSIX API and A collection of software tools and applications that provide a Unix-like look and feel. Cygwin supports POSIX symbolic links, representing them as plain-text files with the system attribute set. Cygwin 1.5 represented them as Windows Explorer shortcuts, but this was changed for reasons of performance and POSIX correctness. Cygwin also recognises NTFS junction points and symbolic links and treats them as POSIX symbolic links, but it does not create them. The POSIX API for handling access control lists (ACLs) is supported. === Technical details === A Cygwin-specific version of the Unix mount command allows mounting Windows paths as "filesystems" in the Unix file space. Initial mount points can be configured in /etc/fstab, which has a format very similar to Unix systems, except that Windows paths appear in place of devices. Filesystems can be mounted in binary mode (by default), or in text mode, which enables automatic conversion between LF and CRLF endings (which only affects programs that open files without explicitly specifying text or binary mode). Cygwin 1.7 introduced comprehensive support for POSIX locales, and the UTF-8 Unicode encoding became the default. The fork system call for duplicating a process is fully implemented, but the copy-on-write optimization strategy could not be used. Cygwin's default user interface is the bash shell running in the mintty terminal emulator. The DLL also implements pseudo terminal (pty) devices, and Cygwin ships with a number of terminal emulators that are based on them, including rxvt/urxvt and xterm. The version of GCC that comes with Cygwin has various extensions for creating Windows DLLs, such as specifying whether a program is a windowing or console-mode program. Support for compiling programs that do not require the POSIX compatibility layer provided by the Cygwin DLL used to be included in the default GCC, but as of 2014, it is provided by cross-compilers contributed by the MinGW-w64 project. == Software packages == Cygwin's base package selection is approximately 100MB, containing the bash (interactive user) and dash (installation) shells and the core file and text manipulation utilities. Additional packages are available as optional installs from within the Cygwin "setup" program and package manager ("setup-x86_64.exe" – 64 bit). The Cygwin Ports project provided additional packages that were not available in the Cygwin distribution itself. Examples included GNOME, K Desktop Environment 3, MySQL database, and the PHP scripting language. Most ports have been adopted by volunteer maintainers as Cygwin packages, and Cygwin Ports are no longer maintained. Cygwin ships with GTK+ and Qt. The Cygwin/X project allows graphical Unix programs to display their user interfaces on the Windows desktop for both local and remote programs.

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  • Microelectronics

    Microelectronics

    Microelectronics is a subfield of electronics. As the name suggests, microelectronics relates to the study and manufacture (or microfabrication) of very small electronic designs and components. Usually, but not always, this means micrometre-scale or smaller. These devices are typically made from semiconductor materials. Many components of a normal electronic design are available in a microelectronic equivalent. These include transistors, capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes and (naturally) insulators and conductors can all be found in microelectronic devices. Unique wiring techniques such as wire bonding are also often used in microelectronics because of the unusually small size of the components, leads and pads. This technique requires specialized equipment and is expensive. Digital integrated circuits (ICs) consist of billions of transistors, resistors, diodes, and capacitors. Analog circuits commonly contain resistors and capacitors as well. Inductors are used in some high frequency analog circuits, but tend to occupy larger chip area due to their lower reactance at low frequencies. Gyrators can replace them in many applications. As techniques have improved, the scale of microelectronic components has continued to decrease. At smaller scales, the relative impact of intrinsic circuit properties, such as unintended interactions between components or their parts, may become more significant. These are called parasitic effects, and the goal of the microelectronics design engineer is to find ways to compensate for or to minimize these effects, while delivering smaller, faster, and cheaper devices. Today, microelectronics design is largely aided by electronic design automation (EDA) software.

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  • Institute of Telecommunications Professionals

    Institute of Telecommunications Professionals

    The Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) is a membership organisation for professionals in the telecommunications industry, based in the United Kingdom. The Institute was originally founded in 1906. It is now a registered company with Companies House in the United Kingdom, incorporated in 2002. Brendan O' Mahony has been the chief executive of the ITP. Lucy Woods presided over ITP for fifteen years, until 2018, when the organization named Kevin Paige chairman for five years. In 2022 the ITP appointed its new CEO, Charlotte Goodwill. In 2021, the ITP assisted a UK fibre network Vorboss in establishing its training academy. In 2023, the ITP appointed Tim Creswick, the CEO of Vorboss, as the new chair of its board of directors. The institute has an associated journal, the Journal of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals, established in 2007 and published quarterly.

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  • W3C Device Description Working Group

    W3C Device Description Working Group

    The W3C Device Description Working Group (DDWG), operating as part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Mobile Web Initiative (MWI), was chartered to "foster the provision and access to device descriptions that can be used in support of Web-enabled applications that provide an appropriate user experience on mobile devices." Mobile devices exhibit the greatest diversity of capabilities, and therefore present the greatest challenge to content adaptation technologies. The group published several documents, including a list of requirements for an interface to a Device Description Repository (DDR) and a standard interface meeting those requirements. The group was rechartered in 2006 to work in public towards the development of the Application Programming Interface (API) for a DDR. Early in 2007, the group launched a wiki and a blog to add to the public mailing list. The group subsequently published a formal vocabulary of core device properties, and an API called the DDR Simple API, which became a W3C Recommendation in December 2008. The group closed at the end of 2008, but with the intention of maintaining the Web pages, blog and wiki through W3C volunteer effort. == Publications == The DDWG published several W3C Working Group Notes and one W3C Recommendation. A W3C WG Note that articulates what the W3C and other organizations are doing or have already done with regard to device information. This document suggests an environment in which these technologies work together to meet the goals of content adaptation. The completed document was published on 31 October 2007. A W3C WG Note describing the ecosystem surrounding creation, maintenance and use of device descriptions. The completed document was published on 31 October 2007. A W3C WG Note describing a set of requirements for a reference repository of device descriptions. The completed document was published on 17 December 2007. A W3C WG Note describing a process to manage contributions to an initial core vocabulary, identification of key device properties, a formal initial core vocabulary and the identification of a maintainer for the core vocabulary. The details were contained in the Working Group Note describing the DDWG Core Vocabulary published on 14 April 2008. A W3C WG Note defining useful grouping and structure patterns in device descriptions. The Device Description Structures document was published as a Working Draft on 5 December 2008. The intention is that this document will be future input to other W3C groups. A W3C Recommendation defining a language-neutral programming interface to a Device Description Repository. The DDR Simple API was published on 5 December 2008. There is the possibility of future publications on the DDWG wiki describing implementations of the API in various languages, including Java, IDL, WSDL, C# etc. Much of the DDWG's material was developed in public via the DDWG Wiki and through their public mailing lists.

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  • Croissant (metadata format)

    Croissant (metadata format)

    Croissant is a metadata format design to support sharing of datasets for machine learning applications. It is a platform-agnostic schema used to standardize metadata in data repositories like Hugging Face, kaggle, Dataverse and OpenML. == Structure == Croissant builds upon schema.org, uses primarily JSON-LD, and divides metadata in four "layers": Dataset Metadata, Resource, Structure and Semantic: The Dataset Metadata layer constrains which schema.org properties should be used, including additional properties, linking together the resources (files) of the dataset with general metadata, like licensing and citation information. The Resource layer describes the individual files and sets of those using two new classes, FileObject and FileSet. A FileSet may be a collection of related images. The Structure layer specifies how the files are organized in the dataset. A RecordSet class describes how resources are present, configurations that may very a lot between modality. This specification facilitates interoperability of the datasets. Finally, the Semantic layer adds information for practical reuse of the dataset, such as splits for train, test and validation subsets. It also provides a default extension for metadata related to responsible AI. The use of a standard machine-readable structure increases, for example, the discoverability of datasets in search engines such as Google Dataset Search. == History == Croissant was shared in arXiv in March 2024 and published in the proceedings of NeurIPS 2024. It started as community driven as a MLCommons Croissant Working Group, including stakeholders organizations from academia and industry, including Google, the open data institute, Sage Bionetworks and King's College London. Variations of Croissant are developed to support datasets in different areas of research, such as Geo-Croissant for geospatial datasets. Other technical extensions, such as support for RDF, soon followed.

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  • Macroelectronics

    Macroelectronics

    Macroelectronics are flexible electronics that cover a large area. The most visible example of macroelectronics is flat-panel displays. Other emerging applications include rollable display, printable thin film solar cell and electronic skin. Flat-panel displays fabricated on glass substrates are fragile so fabricating directly on flexible substrates, such as polymers is being explored. Displays made on thin polymer substrates can be more rugged than glass. In September 2005, Philips Polymer Vision revealed the world's first prototype of a rollable electronic reader, which can unfold to a 5-inch display and roll back into a pocket-size (100×60×20 mm) device. Thin-film devices on flexible polymer substrates can lend themselves to low-cost fabrication processes (i.e., roll-to-roll printing), resulting in lightweight, rugged and flexible macroelectronic products.

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  • Amino (app)

    Amino (app)

    Amino was a social media application originally developed by Narvii, Inc. It was originally created by Yin Wang and Ben Anderson in 2010, and then launched as an app in 2012. Amino was acquired by MediaLab AI Inc in January 2021, and the founders are no longer associated with the application. The platform ceased all operations in December 2025. == History == In 2010, Wang and Anderson came up with the idea for a convention-like community while attending an anime convention in Boston, Massachusetts. Later that year, they would release two apps revolving around K-pop and photography that allowed fans of those subjects to chat freely. That same year, Amino was officially released. === Shutdown === In early December 2025, the Amino platform abruptly stopped all operations. Users worldwide lost access to the mobile application and website, with server requests returning connection time-out errors. Parent company MediaLab AI has issued no official statement regarding the cause to date, or declared any possible cause behind it. === Final Message === According to Shawn, a member of Amino support, Amino has ceased operations as of December 19th. The message that was sent out from Shawn reads: "Hey there, Thanks for your message. Amino has ceased operations. As of December 19th, we no longer retain personal data relating to you. Accordingly, we are unable to provide a copy of your data. Kind regards, - Amino Support" This message was sent on January 4th, 2026. This was the final support message sent from the Amino Support mail. == Growth == Amino received 1.65 million dollars of seed funding in 2014, primarily from Union Ventures. Some additional seed investors include Google Ventures, SV Angel, Box Group, and other interested parties. By July 2014, Amino's apps were downloaded 500,000 times. Though only having 15 communities at that time, Amino eventually grew to have 41 communities in September 2015. Amino's apps had been downloaded 13 million times by July 2016. Fandoms had migrated from websites like Facebook and Reddit to Amino, partly because of the app's mobile-native experience. Before 2016, when a user wanted to join a new Amino, they had to download another app for the Amino they wanted to join, with each apps name beginning with "Amino for:". In 2016, Amino Apps launched a centralized portal that hosted every Amino community in one app, meaning users no longer had to download multiple apps. In July of the same year, ACM, an app that allowed users to create their own communities, was launched. This resulted in the number of communities on Amino skyrocketing to over 2.5 million as of June 2018. == Features == The main feature of Amino was communities dedicated to a certain topic that users could join. Users could also chat with other members of a community in three ways: text, voice, or screening room, which allowed users to watch videos together while voice chatting. Other features include polls, blog posts, image posts, wiki entries, stories, and quizzes. In some cases, posts that were very well-made and had been noticed by a community's administration would end up receiving a feature, making it appear on the front page along with other featured content. In 2018, a premium membership option called Amino+ was added. Amino+ comes with additional features such as exclusive stickers, the ability to make stickers, custom chat bubbles, high resolution images, and other perks. Membership can now only be purchased with money. Amino coins can be purchased or earned through enabling ads, watching ad videos, completing activities on the Offer Wall, and playing Lucky Draw when checking in, but are of little use due to the users not being able to buy Amino+ by amino coins anymore. Members can give and receive coins through props. In 2019, Amino introduced six original short-form animated series, labelled "Amino Originals," produced by independent artists from across the internet. ATJ's "Little Red," a re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood, premiered on November 15, 2019. "Little Red" was joined by five other shows in late December. Sophie Feher's "The Reef," a comedy featuring an aspiring marine biologist meeting a merman, premiered on December 27 alongside "Princely," an LGBT fairy tale created by Matt Bruneau-Richardson of Tiny Siren Animation. "Spaced Out," an alien abduction comedy by Michael Jae, and YouTuber Alex Clark's "Wyndvania II" premiered on December 28. Mysie Pereira's fairy tale "Turned to Stone" and Marcin Pawlowski's "Stranded" premiered on December 29, 2019. == Administration == On each community, there are two types of staff members, these being ‘Leader’ and ‘Curator.’ Leaders are higher rank than curators. Curators are usually the ones who feature posts, or post important announcements for users to see. Curators are able to disable a post or public chat, delete comments or chat threads, manage featured content, manage posts in topic categories, and approve Wiki entries. Leaders have more power than curators. In addition to curator powers, leaders can submit a community to be listed, change the Amino's features, change navigation, alter the community appearance, change the Amino's privacy settings, manage the Amino's join requests, send invites, appoint or demote Curators, strike or ban members, manage flagged content, change users' custom titles, manage topics and wiki categories, and create broadcasts (notifications sent for posts). One leader will have the status of agent. An agent is the primary leader of a community; the person who created the community is automatically agent. An agent has the ability to delete their community as long as it is not too large or too active. An agent can appoint and remove both leaders and curators. Agent status can be transferred voluntarily to another leader, curator, or community member. If an agent is inactive, Team Amino may assist in transferring agent status. == Apps == === Amino Community Manager === Otherwise known as ACM, this application is what users use to create and manage their own community in Amino. This app allows moderators to customize a community's theme, icon, and categories. ACM also allows moderation to customize community descriptions, pick leaders, change language settings, create a tagline for the community, change the home page lay out, alter the side navigation menu, and more. Unlisted communities are able to change their community's title and Amino ID, but this is not an option once a community is listed. A leader can use ACM to submit a request for their community to be listed on the explore page, after which the community will be reviewed by Team Amino for approval. Communities can be deleted on ACM, but only by the agent of that community. == Guidelines == Amino has a set of guidelines that all communities must comply with. Amino does not allow harassment or hate, spam or self-promotion (including promotion of one's own Amino community), sexual/NSFW content, self harm, real graphic/gross content (fictional content is generally acceptable), unsafe/illegal content, or content that violates copyright. Communities are allowed to have additional rules so long as they do not violate Amino's rules. In addition to Amino's rules, users are required to be at least 13 years of age in the U.S. and 16 years of age in European Union countries. While sexual imagery is not allowed in any community and text based sexual content is not allowed in public areas, some private communities are allowed to discuss sexual themes. However, they are not exempt from Amino's rules on NSFW content. If guidelines are broken, a leader may disable content or impose a warning, strike, or ban, depending on the severity of the infringement. A warning is a message informing the user that they have violated a guideline and may face further punishment unless they change their behaviour. A strike will put the user in read-only mode for up to 24 hours; this mode prevents the user from posting, chatting, or interacting with posts in that community. A ban removes the user from the community. Team Amino can separately issue users with strikes or bans across the entire platform. == Controversies == In 2017, organizations in Argentina for the protection of minors reported inappropriate material on the app, ranging from pornography to material promoting suicide to underage users. In 2019, Abilene police in Texas released a statement that sexual predators were using Amino chat rooms to approach minors. In 2020, authorities from the Christian County in the state of Kentucky alerted parents about possible sexual predators on Amino. In 2025, the British Police identified Amino as one of several platforms used by a child exploitation network that had previously extorted minors in different countries in Europe and North America. Several families reported to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that pedophiles were using the app for the purpose of sexual role-playing with minors, c

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