AI Chat UI Design

AI Chat UI Design — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Luxafor

    Luxafor

    Luxafor () is a brand of office productivity tools designed to improve efficiency and communication in workplaces. The brands main product is LED status indicators for use in office settings. Luxafor is a product line under the company SIA Greynut, based in Riga, Latvia. == History == Luxafor was developed by the technology company SIA Greynut. The brand first gained attention through a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, which aimed to fund its initial product, the Luxafor Flag. Although the campaign was unsuccessful in reaching its funding goal, the product was still brought to market. In 2017, Luxafor launched another Kickstarter campaign for the Luxafor Bluetooth, a wireless version of its LED status indicator. This campaign also did not meet its funding goal, but like its predecessor, the product was still developed and released. Despite initial setbacks, Luxafor Bluetooth has become one of the brand's leading products. == Products == Luxafors main product range is LED status indicators, including: === Luxafor Flag === A USB-powered LED indicator that shows different colors to signal the user's availability. === Luxafor Bluetooth === A wireless LED indicator controlled via Bluetooth, integrating with productivity tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. === Luxafor Switch === An advanced status indicator designed to manage room and workspace availability. === Other === Other Luxafor products include CO2 Dongle, Smart Button, Mute Button, Pomodoro Timer and others. == Features == Luxafor products are known for their customizable indicators, integration capabilities with IFTTT, Zapier, and remote control features. They are compatible with various operating systems, including Windows and macOS, and can be integrated with numerous communication and productivity platforms, like Microsoft Teams and Cisco Jabber.

    Read more →
  • WYSIWYS

    WYSIWYS

    In cryptography, What You See Is What You Sign (WYSIWYS) is a property of digital signature systems that ensures the semantic content of signed messages can not be changed, either by accident or intent. == Mechanism of WYSIWYS == When digitally signing a document, the integrity of the signature relies not just on the soundness of the digital signature algorithms that are used, but also on the security of the computing platform used to sign the document. The WYSIWYS property of digital signature systems aims to tackle this problem by defining a desirable property that the visual representation of a digital document should be consistent across computing systems, particularly at the points of digital signature and digital signature verification. It is relatively easy to change the interpretation of a digital document by implementing changes on the computer system where the document is being processed, and the greater the semantic distance, the easier it gets. From a semantic perspective this creates uncertainty about what exactly has been signed. WYSIWYS is a property of a digital signature system that ensures that the semantic interpretation of a digitally signed message cannot be changed, either by accident or by intent. This property also ensures that a digital document to be signed can not contain hidden semantic content that can be revealed after the signature has been applied. Though a WYSIWYS implementation is only as secure as the computing platform it is running on, various methods have been proposed to make WYSIWYS more robust. The term WYSIWYS was coined by Peter Landrock and Torben Pedersen to describe some of the principles in delivering secure and legally binding digital signatures for Pan-European projects.

    Read more →
  • Instagram egg

    Instagram egg

    The Instagram egg is a photo of an egg posted by the account @world_record_egg on the social media platform Instagram. It became a global phenomenon and an internet meme within days of its publication on 4 January 2019. It is the second most-liked Instagram post and was the most-liked Instagram post from 14 January 2019 until 20 December 2022, when it was overtaken by Lionel Messi's post showing him and his teammates celebrating after Argentina won the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The owner of the account was revealed to be Chris Godfrey, a British advertising creative, who later worked with his two friends Alissa Khan-Whelan and CJ Brown on a Hulu commercial featuring the egg, intended to raise mental health awareness. == Background == The photo was originally taken by Serghei Platanov, who then posted it to Shutterstock on 23 June 2015 with the title "eggs isolated on white background". == History == On 4 January 2019, the @world_record_egg account was created, and posted an image of a bird egg with the caption, "Let's set a world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram. Beating the current world record held by Kylie Jenner (18 million)! We got this." Jenner's previous record, the first photo of her daughter Stormi, had garnered a total of 18.4 million likes. The post quickly reached 18.4 million likes in just under 10 days, becoming the most-liked Instagram post at the time. It then continued to rise over 45 million likes in the next 48 hours, surpassing the "Despacito" music video and taking the world record for the most-liked online post (on any media platform) in history. After the account became verified on 14 January 2019, the post rose in popularity and likes, which snowballed into coverage in various media outlets. By 18 March 2019, the post had accumulated over 53.3 million likes, nearly three times the previous record of 18.4 million. It posted frequent updates for a few days in the form of Instagram Stories. Alongside the like tally, as of January 2023 the post has 3.8 million comments. Several individuals tried to claim that they were the account's creator, the claims being dismissed by "the egg" on Instagram direct messages. On 3 February 2019, the creator of the Instagram egg was revealed by Hulu and The New York Times to be Chris Godfrey, a British advertising creative. Alissa Khan-Whelan, his colleague, was also outed. On 18 January 2019, the account posted a second picture of an egg, almost identical to the first one apart from a small crack at the top left. As of 25 February 2019, the post accumulated 11.8 million likes. On 22 January 2019, the account posted a third picture of an egg, this time having two larger cracks. In less than 25 minutes, the post accumulated 1 million likes, and by 25 February 2019, it had accumulated 9.5 million likes. On 29 January 2019, a fourth picture of an egg was posted to the account which has another large crack on the right hand side, attracting 7.6 million likes by 25 February 2019. On 1 February 2019, a fifth picture of an egg was posted with stitching like that of a football, referencing the upcoming Super Bowl. That post had accumulated 6.5 million likes by 25 February 2019. The account promised that it would reveal what was inside the egg on 3 February, on the subscription video on demand service Hulu. The Hulu Instagram egg reveal was used to promote an animation about a mental health campaign. A caption from the clip read, "Recently I've started to crack, the pressure of social media is getting to me. If you're struggling too, talk to someone." The video was later posted on the @world_record_egg Instagram account, and this post received over 33 million views by May 2019. As of May 2020, it had received over 41 million views. On 16 July 2019, Chris Godfrey (the creator of the account) was listed as one of the top 25 most influential people on the internet. On 20 December 2022, the record for the most-liked Instagram post was surpassed by a post from Argentine footballer Lionel Messi, showing him and his teammates celebrating after winning the 2022 FIFA World Cup with their national team. The world record egg responded to being overtaken in likes by Messi with "Today [Lionel Messi] has taken the crown, for now. But I'm still left with one question… Who is the greatest of all time – Cristiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi?" The account sold to Dubai-based investor Mustafa El Fishawy in April 2024 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum. Reed Smith, who advised Godfrey, Brown, and Khan-Whelan in the transaction, stated they opted to sell it to "focus on new ventures." On 3 June, @world_record_egg posted an egg with the flag of Palestine in support of the country during the Gaza war; the post's caption described it as an "Egg for Peace" and hoped to "set a new world record together and get the most liked post on Instagram for a good cause." == Reception == In response to breaking the world record for the most-liked Instagram post, the account's owner wrote "This is madness. What a time to be alive." Hours later, Jenner posted a video on Instagram of her cracking open an egg and pouring its yolk onto the ground, with the caption: "Take that little egg." Pundits pontificated on the meaning of the egg picture's dominance over social media's "first family". As Vogue observed, tapping a heart pictogram is easy, and eggs are "lovable". More pointedly: [T]he attention economy is a scam based on requiring little to no labor from both producer and consumer despite commanding the most space, and therefore value, in our digital lives... but it very well could be: As a metaphor for the fragility of the influencer ecosystem, the egg has broken the Internet. The significance of the event and its massive republishing are a topic of discussion. A University of Westminster researcher of internet memes compared it to the movement to name a scientific research vessel in the United Kingdom as Boaty McBoatface. The Instagrammer's success is a rare victory for the unpaid viral campaign on social media. "There is a bit of an anti-celebrity revolt here – 'look what we can do with a simple egg'" The researcher suggests that the accomplishment of becoming such a widely heralded unpaid viral post may become increasingly rare, as social networks rely more on paid and business promotion. The post's spread has been characterized as a populist backlash against "consumerism" and is seen by some as a triumph of community over celebrity. However, propelled by their popular success, the creators promised to release 'egg-centric' memorabilia. Hundreds of games based on the Instagram egg have appeared on Apple's App Store. The creators of the Instagram egg also reached a deal to promote Hulu.

    Read more →
  • Secret London

    Secret London

    Secret London is a Facebook group started by 21-year-old Bristol University graduate, Tiffany Philippou, on 19 January 2010 in response to a Saatchi & Saatchi competition. The group grew rapidly (180,000 members as of 8 February 2010) and is composed mostly of Londoners who use the site to share suggestions and photos of London. After the group's early success, the founder announced her intention to launch a website of the same name by crowdsourcing the design and development. The website was launched on 16 February 2010. == Other secret cities == Following the initial success of Secret London, a number of other secret groups were independently started around the world, some of which already have over 100,000 users. As of 19 February 2010, the list of other groups includes: Secret Frankfurt, Secret Tel Aviv, Secret Paris, Secret New York, Secret Tokyo, Secret Toronto, Secret Los Angeles, Secret Exeter, Secret Boston, Secret Norwich, Secret Singapore, Secret Brighton, Secret Minneapolis, Secret Sydney, Secret Canberra, Secret Brisbane, Secret Wellington, Secret Christchurch, Secret Madeira, Secret Funchal, Secret Bristol and Secret Cardiff. == Controversy == Some commentators have questioned whether it possible to share secrets without compromising them, and whether sharing tips publicly will lead to over-exposure of the businesses who are recommended.

    Read more →
  • Gonioreflectometer

    Gonioreflectometer

    A gonioreflectometer is a device for measuring a bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF). The device consists of a light source illuminating the material to be measured and a sensor that captures light reflected from that material. The light source should be able to illuminate and the sensor should be able to capture data from a hemisphere around the target. The hemispherical rotation dimensions of the sensor and light source are the four dimensions of the BRDF. The 'gonio' part of the word refers to the device's ability to measure at different angles. Several similar devices have been built and used to capture data for similar functions. Most of these devices use a camera instead of the light intensity-measuring sensor to capture a two-dimensional sample of the target. Examples include: a spatial gonioreflectometer for capturing the SBRDF (McAllister, 2002). a camera gantry for capturing the light field (Levoy and Hanrahan, 1996). an unnamed device for capturing the bidirectional texture function (Dana et al., 1999).

    Read more →
  • Omni-Path

    Omni-Path

    Omni-Path Architecture (OPA) is a high-performance communication architecture developed by Intel. It aims for low communication latency, low power consumption and a high throughput. It directly competes with InfiniBand. Intel planned to develop technology based on this architecture for exascale computing. The current owner of Omni-Path is Cornelis Networks. == History == Production of Omni-Path products started in 2015 and delivery of these products started in the first quarter of 2016. In November 2015, adapters based on the 2-port "Wolf River" ASIC were announced, using QSFP28 connectors with channel speeds up to 100 Gbit/s. Simultaneously, switches based on the 48-port "Prairie River" ASIC were announced. First models of that series were available starting in 2015. In April 2016, implementation of the InfiniBand "verbs" interface for the Omni-Path fabric was discussed. In October 2016, IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, Seagate Technology, Micron Technology, Western Digital and SK Hynix announced a joint consortium called Gen-Z to develop an open specification and architecture for non-volatile storage and memory products—including Intel's 3D Xpoint technology—which might in part compete against Omni-Path. Intel offered their Omni-Path products and components via other (hardware) vendors. For example, Dell EMC offered Intel Omni-Path as Dell Networking H-series, following the naming-standard of Dell Networking in 2017. In July 2019, Intel announced it would not continue development of Omni-Path networks and canceled OPA 200 series (200-Gbps variant of Omni-Path). In September 2020, Intel announced that the Omni-Path network products and technology would be spun out into a new venture with Cornelis Networks. Intel would continue to maintain support for legacy Omni-Path products, while Cornelis Networks continues the product line, leveraging existing Intel intellectual property related to Omni-Path architecture. In 2021, Cornelis announced Omni-Path Express, which replaces PSM2-based drivers and middleware, which trace back to PathScale's PSM created in 2003, for the existing Omni-Path hardware, with a native libfabric provider.

    Read more →
  • Codebook

    Codebook

    A codebook is a type of document used for gathering and storing cryptography codes. Originally, codebooks were often literally books, but today "codebook" is a byword for the complete record of a series of codes, regardless of physical format. == Cryptography == In cryptography, a codebook is a document used for implementing a code. A codebook contains a lookup table for coding and decoding; each word or phrase has one or more strings which replace it. To decipher messages written in code, corresponding copies of the codebook must be available at either end. The distribution and physical security of codebooks presents a special difficulty in the use of codes compared to the secret information used in ciphers, the key, which is typically much shorter. The United States National Security Agency documents sometimes use codebook to refer to block ciphers; compare their use of combiner-type algorithm to refer to stream ciphers. Codebooks come in two forms, one-part or two-part: In one-part codes, the plaintext words and phrases and the corresponding code words are in the same alphabetical order. They are organized similar to a standard dictionary. Such codes are half the size of two-part codes but are more vulnerable since an attacker who recovers some code word meanings can often infer the meaning of nearby code words. One-part codes may be used simply to shorten messages for transmission or have their security enhanced with superencryption methods, such as adding a secret number to numeric code words. In two-part codes, one part is for converting plaintext to ciphertext, the other for the opposite purpose. They are usually organized similarly to a language translation dictionary, with plaintext words (in the first part) and ciphertext words (in the second part) presented like dictionary headwords. The earliest known use of a codebook system was by Gabriele de Lavinde in 1379 working for the Antipope Clement VII. Two-part codebooks go back as least as far as Antoine Rossignol in the 1800s. From the 15th century until the middle of the 19th century, nomenclators (named after nomenclator) were the most used cryptographic method. Codebooks with superencryption were the most used cryptographic method of World War I. The JN-25 code used in World War II used a codebook of 30,000 code groups superencrypted with 30,000 random additives. The book used in a book cipher or the book used in a running key cipher can be any book shared by sender and receiver and is different from a cryptographic codebook. == Social sciences == In social sciences, a codebook is a document containing a list of the codes used in a set of data to refer to variables and their values, for example locations, occupations, or clinical diagnoses. == Data compression == Codebooks were also used in 19th- and 20th-century commercial codes for the non-cryptographic purpose of data compression. Codebooks are used in relation to precoding and beamforming in mobile networks such as 5G and LTE. The usage is standardized by 3GPP, for example in the document TS 38.331, NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC); Protocol specification.

    Read more →
  • Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

    Semi-Automatic Ground Environment

    The Semi-Automated Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. SAGE directed and controlled the NORAD response to a possible Soviet air attack, operating in this role from the late 1950s into the 1980s. The processing power behind SAGE was supplied by the largest discrete component-based computer ever built, the AN/FSQ-7, manufactured by IBM. Each SAGE Direction Center (DC) housed an FSQ-7 which occupied an entire floor, approximately 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) not including supporting equipment. The FSQ-7 was actually two computers, "A" side and "B" side. Computer processing was switched from "A" side to "B" side on a regular basis, allowing maintenance on the unused side. Information was fed to the DCs from a network of radar stations as well as readiness information from various defense sites. The computers, based on the raw radar data, developed "tracks" for the reported targets, and automatically calculated which defenses were within range. Operators used light guns to select targets on-screen for further information, select one of the available defenses, and issue commands to attack. These commands would then be automatically sent to the defense site via teleprinter. Connecting the various sites was an enormous network of telephones, modems and teleprinters. Later additions to the system allowed SAGE's tracking data to be sent directly to CIM-10 Bomarc missiles and some of the US Air Force's interceptor aircraft in-flight, directly updating their autopilots to maintain an intercept course without operator intervention. Each DC also forwarded data to a Combat Center (CC) for "supervision of the several sectors within the division" ("each combat center [had] the capability to coordinate defense for the whole nation"). SAGE became operational in the late 1950s and early 1960s at an estimated total cost between 8 and 12 billion dollars, four times the cost of the Manhattan Project. Throughout its development, there were continual concerns about its real ability to deal with large attacks, and the Operation Sky Shield tests showed that only about one-fourth of enemy bombers would have been intercepted. Nevertheless, SAGE was the backbone of NORAD's air defense system into the 1980s, by which time the tube-based FSQ-7s were increasingly costly to maintain and completely outdated. Today the same command and control task is carried out by microcomputers, based on the same basic underlying data. == Background == === Earlier systems === Just prior to World War II, Royal Air Force (RAF) tests with the new Chain Home (CH) radars had demonstrated that relaying information to the fighter aircraft directly from the radar sites was not feasible. The radars determined the map coordinates of the enemy, but could generally not see the fighters at the same time. This meant the fighters had to be able to determine where to fly to perform an interception but were often unaware of their own exact location and unable to calculate an interception while also flying their aircraft. The solution was to send all of the radar information to a central control station where operators collated the reports into single tracks, and then reported these tracks to the airbases, or sectors. The sectors used additional systems to track their own aircraft, plotting both on a single large map. Operators viewing the map could then see what direction their fighters would have to fly to approach their targets and relay that simply by telling them to fly along a certain heading or vector. This Dowding system was the first ground-controlled interception (GCI) system of large scale, covering the entirety of the UK. It proved enormously successful during the Battle of Britain, and is credited as being a key part of the RAF's success. The system was slow, often providing information that was up to five minutes out of date. Against propeller driven bombers flying at perhaps 225 miles per hour (362 km/h) this was not a serious concern, but it was clear the system would be of little use against jet-powered bombers flying at perhaps 600 miles per hour (970 km/h). The system was extremely expensive in manpower terms, requiring hundreds of telephone operators, plotters and trackers in addition to the radar operators. This was a serious drain on manpower, making it difficult to expand the network. The idea of using a computer to handle the task of taking reports and developing tracks had been explored beginning late in the war. By 1944, analog computers had been installed at the CH stations to automatically convert radar readings into map locations, eliminating two people. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy began experimenting with the Comprehensive Display System (CDS), another analog computer that took X and Y locations from a map and automatically generated tracks from repeated inputs. Similar systems began development with the Royal Canadian Navy, DATAR, and the US Navy, the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS). A similar system was also specified for the Nike SAM project, specifically referring to a US version of CDS, coordinating the defense over a battle area so that multiple batteries did not fire on a single target. All of these systems were relatively small in geographic scale, generally tracking within a city-sized area. === Valley Committee === When the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949, the topic of air defense of the US became important for the first time. A study group, the "Air Defense Systems Engineering Committee", was set up under the direction of Dr. George Valley to consider the problem and is known to history as the "Valley Committee". Their December report noted a key problem in air defense using ground-based radars. A bomber approaching a radar station would detect the signals from the radar long before the reflection off the bomber was strong enough to be detected by the station. The committee suggested that when this occurred, the bomber would descend to low altitude, thereby greatly limiting the radar horizon, allowing the bomber to fly past the station undetected. Although flying at low altitude greatly increased fuel consumption, the team calculated that the bomber would only need to do this for about 10% of its flight, making the fuel penalty acceptable. The only solution to this problem was to build a huge number of stations with overlapping coverage. At that point the problem became one of managing the information. Manual plotting was ruled out as too slow, and a computerized solution was the only possibility. To handle this task, the computer would need to be fed information directly, eliminating any manual translation by phone operators, and it would have to be able to analyze that information and automatically develop tracks. A system tasked with defending cities against the predicted future Soviet bomber fleet would have to be dramatically more powerful than the models used in the NTDS or DATAR. The Committee then had to consider whether or not such a computer was possible. The Valley Committee was introduced to Jerome Wiesner, associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Wiesner noted that the Servomechanisms Laboratory had already begun development of a machine that might be fast enough. This was the Whirlwind I, originally developed for the Office of Naval Research as a general purpose flight simulator that could simulate any current or future aircraft by changing its software. Wiesner introduced the Valley Committee to Whirlwind's project lead, Jay Forrester, who convinced him that Whirlwind was sufficiently capable. In September 1950, an early microwave early-warning radar system at Hanscom Field was connected to Whirlwind using a custom interface developed by Forrester's team. An aircraft was flown past the site, and the system digitized the radar information and successfully sent it to Whirlwind. With this demonstration, the technical concept was proven. Forrester was invited to join the committee. === Project Charles === With this successful demonstration, Louis Ridenour, chief scientist of the Air Force, wrote a memo stating "It is now apparent that the experimental work necessary to develop, test, and evaluate the systems proposals made by ADSEC will require a substantial amount of laboratory and field effort." Ridenour approached MIT President James Killian with the aim of beginning a development lab similar to the war-era Radiation Laboratory that made enormous progress in radar technology. Killian was initially uninterested, desiring to return the school to its peacetime civilian charter. Ridenour eventually convinced Killian the idea was sound by describing the way the lab would lead to the development of a local electronics industry based on the needs of the lab and the students who would leave the lab to start their

    Read more →
  • Graph cut optimization

    Graph cut optimization

    Graph cut optimization is a combinatorial optimization method applicable to a family of functions of discrete variables, named after the concept of cut in the theory of flow networks. Thanks to the max-flow min-cut theorem, determining the minimum cut over a graph representing a flow network is equivalent to computing the maximum flow over the network. Given a pseudo-Boolean function f {\displaystyle f} , if it is possible to construct a flow network with positive weights such that each cut C {\displaystyle C} of the network can be mapped to an assignment of variables x {\displaystyle \mathbf {x} } to f {\displaystyle f} (and vice versa), and the cost of C {\displaystyle C} equals f ( x ) {\displaystyle f(\mathbf {x} )} (up to an additive constant) then it is possible to find the global optimum of f {\displaystyle f} in polynomial time by computing a minimum cut of the graph. The mapping between cuts and variable assignments is done by representing each variable with one node in the graph and, given a cut, each variable will have a value of 0 if the corresponding node belongs to the component connected to the source, or 1 if it belong to the component connected to the sink. Not all pseudo-Boolean functions can be represented by a flow network, and in the general case the global optimization problem is NP-hard. There exist sufficient conditions to characterise families of functions that can be optimised through graph cuts, such as submodular quadratic functions. Graph cut optimization can be extended to functions of discrete variables with a finite number of values, that can be approached with iterative algorithms with strong optimality properties, computing one graph cut at each iteration. Graph cut optimization is an important tool for inference over graphical models such as Markov random fields or conditional random fields, and it has applications in computer vision problems such as image segmentation, denoising, registration and stereo matching. == Representability == A pseudo-Boolean function f : { 0 , 1 } n → R {\displaystyle f:\{0,1\}^{n}\to \mathbb {R} } is said to be representable if there exists a graph G = ( V , E ) {\displaystyle G=(V,E)} with non-negative weights and with source and sink nodes s {\displaystyle s} and t {\displaystyle t} respectively, and there exists a set of nodes V 0 = { v 1 , … , v n } ⊂ V − { s , t } {\displaystyle V_{0}=\{v_{1},\dots ,v_{n}\}\subset V-\{s,t\}} such that, for each tuple of values ( x 1 , … , x n ) ∈ { 0 , 1 } n {\displaystyle (x_{1},\dots ,x_{n})\in \{0,1\}^{n}} assigned to the variables, f ( x 1 , … , x n ) {\displaystyle f(x_{1},\dots ,x_{n})} equals (up to a constant) the value of the flow determined by a minimum cut C = ( S , T ) {\displaystyle C=(S,T)} of the graph G {\displaystyle G} such that v i ∈ S {\displaystyle v_{i}\in S} if x i = 0 {\displaystyle x_{i}=0} and v i ∈ T {\displaystyle v_{i}\in T} if x i = 1 {\displaystyle x_{i}=1} . It is possible to classify pseudo-Boolean functions according to their order, determined by the maximum number of variables contributing to each single term. All first order functions, where each term depends upon at most one variable, are always representable. Quadratic functions f ( x ) = w 0 + ∑ i w i ( x i ) + ∑ i < j w i j ( x i , x j ) . {\displaystyle f(\mathbf {x} )=w_{0}+\sum _{i}w_{i}(x_{i})+\sum _{i 0 {\displaystyle p>0} then w i j k ( x i , x j , x k ) = w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 0 ) + p 1 ( x i − 1 ) + p 2 ( x j − 1 ) + p 3 ( x k − 1 ) + p 23 ( x j − 1 ) x k + p 31 x i ( x k − 1 ) + p 12 ( x i − 1 ) x j − p x i x j x k {\displaystyle w_{ijk}(x_{i},x_{j},x_{k})=w_{ijk}(0,0,0)+p_{1}(x_{i}-1)+p_{2}(x_{j}-1)+p_{3}(x_{k}-1)+p_{23}(x_{j}-1)x_{k}+p_{31}x_{i}(x_{k}-1)+p_{12}(x_{i}-1)x_{j}-px_{i}x_{j}x_{k}} with p 1 = w i j k ( 1 , 0 , 1 ) − w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 1 ) p 2 = w i j k ( 1 , 1 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 1 , 0 , 1 ) p 3 = w i j k ( 0 , 1 , 1 ) − w i j k ( 0 , 1 , 0 ) p 23 = w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 1 ) + w i j k ( 0 , 1 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 0 , 1 , 1 ) p 31 = w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 1 ) + w i j k ( 1 , 0 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 1 , 0 , 1 ) p 12 = w i j k ( 0 , 1 , 0 ) + w i j k ( 1 , 0 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 0 , 0 , 0 ) − w i j k ( 1 , 1 , 0 ) . {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}p_{1}&=w_{ijk}(1,0,1)-w_{ijk}(0,0,1)\\p_{2}&=w_{ijk}(1,1,0)-w_{ijk}(1,0,1)\\p_{3}&=w_{ijk}(0,1,1)-w_{ijk}(0,1,0)\\p_{23}&=w_{ijk}(0,0,1)+w_{ijk}(0,1,0)-w_{ijk}(0,0,0)-w_{ijk}(0,1,1)\\p_{31}&=w_{ijk}(0,0,1)+w_{ijk}(1,0,0)-w_{ijk}(0,0,0)-w_{ijk}(1,0,1)\\p_{12}&=w_{ijk}(0,1,0)+w_{ijk}(1,0,0)-w_{ijk}(0,0,0)-w_{ijk}(1,1

    Read more →
  • Virtual collective consciousness

    Virtual collective consciousness

    Virtual collective consciousness (VCC) is a term rebooted and promoted by two behavioral scientists, Yousri Marzouki and Olivier Oullier in their 2012 Huffington Post article titled: "Revolutionizing Revolutions: Virtual Collective Consciousness and the Arab Spring", after its first appearance in 1999-2000. VCC is now defined as an internal knowledge catalyzed by social media platforms and shared by a plurality of individuals driven by the spontaneity, the homogeneity, and the synchronicity of their online actions. VCC occurs when a large group of persons, brought together by a social media platform think and act with one mind and share collective emotions. Thus, they are able to coordinate their efforts efficiently, and could rapidly spread their word to a worldwide audience. When interviewed about the concept of VCC that appeared in the book - Hyperconnectivity and the Future of Internet Communication - he edited, Professor of Pervasive Computing, Adrian David Cheok mentioned the following: "The idea of a global (collective) virtual consciousness is a bottom-up process and a rather emergent property resulting from a momentum of complex interactions taking place in social networks. This kind of collective behaviour (or intelligence) results from a collision between a physical world and a virtual world and can have a real impact in our life by driving collective action." == Etymology == In 1999-2000, Richard Glen Boire provided a cursory mention and the only occurrence of the term "Virtual collective consciousness" in his text as follows: The trend of technology is to overcome the limitations of the human body. And, the Web has been characterized as a virtual collective consciousness and unconsciousness The recent definition of VCC evolved from the first empirical study that provided a cyberpsychological insight into the contribution of Facebook to the 2011 Tunisian revolution. In this study, the concept was originally called "collective cyberconsciousness". The latter is an extension of the idea of "collective consciousness" coupled with "citizen media" usage. The authors of this study also made a parallel between this original definition of VCC and other comparable concepts such as Durkheim's collective representation, Žižek's "collective mind" or Boguta's "new collective consciousness" that he used to describe the computational history of the Internet shutdown during the Egyptian revolution. Since VCC is the byproduct of the network's successful actions, then these actions must be timely, acute, rapid, domain-specific, and purpose-oriented to successfully achieve their goal. Before reaching a momentum of complexity, each collective behavior starts by a spark that triggers a chain of events leading to a crystallized stance of a tremendous amount of interactions. Thus, VCC is an emergent global pattern from these individual actions. In 2012, the term virtual collective consciousness resurfaced and was brought to light after extending its applications to the Egyptian case and the whole social networking major impact on the success of the so-called Arab Spring. Moreover, the acronym VCC was suggested to identify the theoretical framework covering on-line behaviors leading to a virtual collective consciousness. Hence, online social networks have provided a new and faster way of establishing or modifying "collective consciousness" that was paramount to the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world. == Theoretical underpinnings of VCC == Various theoretical references in fields ranging from sociology to computer science were mentioned in order to account for the key features that render the framework for a virtual collective consciousness. The following list is not exhaustive, but the references it contains are often highlighted: Émile Durkheim's collective representations are at the heart of VCC since collectivity taken decisions according to Durkheim's assumptions will approve or disapprove individuals' actions and help them eventually reach their final goal. Marshall McLuhan's global village: The shrinking of our big world to a small place called cyberspace is made possible by technological extensions of human consciousness. Carl Jung's collective unconscious: When a society witnesses significant changes, the anchoring of archetypal images (e.g., political leaders) seems to be deeply rooted in individuals' collective unconscious that is likely to bias their political choices. Individual memories of public events were also supposed to convey a "collective awareness" that can be subconsciously altered by the instantaneous spread of information through social networking around the world. Daniel Wegner's transactive memory (TM): social-networking platforms such as Facebook during the Tunisian revolution or Twitter during the Egyptian revolution served as placeholders of a VCC where information can be harnessed and steered to the highly specific revolutionary purpose. Although research on TM was originally limited to couples, small groups, and organizations, recent studies strongly suggest that an effective TM can operate on a very large scale too. James Surowiecki's wisdom of crowds Collective influence algorithm: The CI (Collective influence) algorithm is effective in finding influential nodes in a variety of networks, including social networks, communication networks, and biological networks. It has been used to identify influencers on social-media platforms, to identify key nodes in transportation networks, and to identify potential drug-targets in biological networks. == Some illustrations of VCC == Besides the studied effect of social networking on the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, the former via Facebook and the latter via Twitter other applications were studied under the prism of VCC framework: The Whitacre's virtual choir: A compelling example of the degree of autonomy and self-identity members of a spontaneously created network through a VCC is Eric Whitacre's unique musical project that involved a collection of singers performing remotely to create a virtual Choir. The effect of all the voices illustrated a genuine virtual collective empathy merging the artist's mind with all the singers through his silent conducting gestures. The Harlem Shake dance: The Bitcoin protocol: It was questioned whether or not the Bitcoin protocol can morph into virtual collective consciousness. The Byzantine generals problem was used as an analogy to understand the behavioral complexity of the community of Bitcoin's users. Artificial Social Networking Intelligence (ASNI): refers to the application of artificial intelligence within social networking services and social media platforms. It encompasses various technologies and techniques used to automate, personalize, enhance, improve, and synchronize users' interactions and experiences within social networks. ASNI is expected to evolve rapidly, influencing how we interact online and shaping our digital experiences. Transparency, ethical considerations, media influence bias, and user control over data will be crucial to ensure responsible development and positive impact.

    Read more →
  • Cryptochannel

    Cryptochannel

    In telecommunications, a cryptochannel is a complete system of crypto-communications between two or more holders or parties. It includes: (a) the cryptographic aids prescribed; (b) the holders thereof; (c) the indicators or other means of identification; (d) the area or areas in which effective; (e) the special purpose, if any, for which provided; and (f) pertinent notes as to distribution, usage, etc. A cryptochannel is analogous to a radio circuit.

    Read more →
  • Initialization vector

    Initialization vector

    In cryptography, an initialization vector (IV) or starting variable is an input to a cryptographic primitive being used to provide the initial state. The IV is typically required to be random or pseudorandom, but sometimes an IV only needs to be unpredictable or unique. Randomization is crucial for some encryption schemes to achieve semantic security, a property whereby repeated usage of the scheme under the same key does not allow an attacker to infer relationships between (potentially similar) segments of the encrypted message. For block ciphers, the use of an IV is described by the modes of operation. Some cryptographic primitives require the IV only to be non-repeating, and the required randomness is derived internally. In this case, the IV is commonly called a nonce (a number used only once), and the primitives (e.g. CBC) are considered stateful rather than randomized. This is because an IV need not be explicitly forwarded to a recipient but may be derived from a common state updated at both sender and receiver side. (In practice, a short nonce is still transmitted along with the message to consider message loss.) An example of stateful encryption schemes is the counter mode of operation, which has a sequence number for a nonce. The IV size depends on the cryptographic primitive used; for block ciphers it is generally the cipher's block-size. In encryption schemes, the unpredictable part of the IV has at best the same size as the key to compensate for time/memory/data tradeoff attacks. When the IV is chosen at random, the probability of collisions due to the birthday problem must be taken into account. Traditional stream ciphers such as RC4 do not support an explicit IV as input, and a custom solution for incorporating an IV into the cipher's key or internal state is needed. Some designs realized in practice are known to be insecure; the WEP protocol is a notable example, and is prone to related-IV attacks. == Motivation == A block cipher is one of the most basic primitives in cryptography, and frequently used for data encryption. However, by itself, it can only be used to encode a data block of a predefined size, called the block size. For example, a single invocation of the AES algorithm transforms a 128-bit plaintext block into a ciphertext block of 128 bits in size. The key, which is given as one input to the cipher, defines the mapping between plaintext and ciphertext. If data of arbitrary length is to be encrypted, a simple strategy is to split the data into blocks each matching the cipher's block size, and encrypt each block separately using the same key. This method is not secure as equal plaintext blocks get transformed into equal ciphertexts, and a third party observing the encrypted data may easily determine its content even when not knowing the encryption key. To hide patterns in encrypted data while avoiding the re-issuing of a new key after each block cipher invocation, a method is needed to randomize the input data. In 1980, the NIST published a national standard document designated Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) PUB 81, which specified four so-called block cipher modes of operation, each describing a different solution for encrypting a set of input blocks. The first mode implements the simple strategy described above, and was specified as the electronic codebook (ECB) mode. In contrast, each of the other modes describe a process where ciphertext from one block encryption step gets intermixed with the data from the next encryption step. To initiate this process, an additional input value is required to be mixed with the first block, and which is referred to as an initialization vector. For example, the cipher-block chaining (CBC) mode requires an unpredictable value, of size equal to the cipher's block size, as additional input. This unpredictable value is added to the first plaintext block before subsequent encryption. In turn, the ciphertext produced in the first encryption step is added to the second plaintext block, and so on. The ultimate goal for encryption schemes is to provide semantic security: by this property, it is practically impossible for an attacker to draw any knowledge from observed ciphertext. It can be shown that each of the three additional modes specified by the NIST are semantically secure under so-called chosen-plaintext attacks. == Properties == Properties of an IV depend on the cryptographic scheme used. A basic requirement is uniqueness, which means that no IV may be reused under the same key. For block ciphers, repeated IV values devolve the encryption scheme into electronic codebook mode: equal IV and equal plaintext result in equal ciphertext. In stream cipher encryption uniqueness is crucially important as plaintext may be trivially recovered otherwise. Example: Stream ciphers encrypt plaintext P to ciphertext C by deriving a key stream K from a given key and IV and computing C as C = P xor K. Assume that an attacker has observed two messages C1 and C2 both encrypted with the same key and IV. Then knowledge of either P1 or P2 reveals the other plaintext since C1 xor C2 = (P1 xor K) xor (P2 xor K) = P1 xor P2. Many schemes require the IV to be unpredictable by an adversary. This is effected by selecting the IV at random or pseudo-randomly. In such schemes, the chance of a duplicate IV is negligible, but the effect of the birthday problem must be considered. As for the uniqueness requirement, a predictable IV may allow recovery of (partial) plaintext. Example: Consider a scenario where a legitimate party called Alice encrypts messages using the cipher-block chaining mode. Consider further that there is an adversary called Eve that can observe these encryptions and is able to forward plaintext messages to Alice for encryption (in other words, Eve is capable of a chosen-plaintext attack). Now assume that Alice has sent a message consisting of an initialization vector IV1 and starting with a ciphertext block CAlice. Let further PAlice denote the first plaintext block of Alice's message, let E denote encryption, and let PEve be Eve's guess for the first plaintext block. Now, if Eve can determine the initialization vector IV2 of the next message she will be able to test her guess by forwarding a plaintext message to Alice starting with (IV2 xor IV1 xor PEve); if her guess was correct this plaintext block will get encrypted to CAlice by Alice. This is because of the following simple observation: CAlice = E(IV1 xor PAlice) = E(IV2 xor (IV2 xor IV1 xor PAlice)). Depending on whether the IV for a cryptographic scheme must be random or only unique the scheme is either called randomized or stateful. While randomized schemes always require the IV chosen by a sender to be forwarded to receivers, stateful schemes allow sender and receiver to share a common IV state, which is updated in a predefined way at both sides. == Block ciphers == Block cipher processing of data is usually described as a mode of operation. Modes are primarily defined for encryption as well as authentication, though newer designs exist that combine both security solutions in so-called authenticated encryption modes. While encryption and authenticated encryption modes usually take an IV matching the cipher's block size, authentication modes are commonly realized as deterministic algorithms, and the IV is set to zero or some other fixed value. == Stream ciphers == In stream ciphers, IVs are loaded into the keyed internal secret state of the cipher, after which a number of cipher rounds are executed prior to releasing the first bit of output. For performance reasons, designers of stream ciphers try to keep that number of rounds as small as possible, but because determining the minimal secure number of rounds for stream ciphers is not a trivial task, and considering other issues such as entropy loss, unique to each cipher construction, related-IVs and other IV-related attacks are a known security issue for stream ciphers, which makes IV loading in stream ciphers a serious concern and a subject of ongoing research. == WEP IV == The 802.11 encryption algorithm called WEP (short for Wired Equivalent Privacy) used a short, 24-bit IV, leading to reused IVs with the same key, which led to it being easily cracked. Packet injection allowed for WEP to be cracked in times as short as several seconds. This ultimately led to the deprecation of WEP. == SSL 2.0 IV == In cipher-block chaining mode (CBC mode), the IV need not be secret, but must be unpredictable (In particular, for any given plaintext, it must not be possible to predict the IV that will be associated to the plaintext in advance of the generation of the IV.) at encryption time. Additionally for the output feedback mode (OFB mode), the IV must be unique. In particular, the (previously) common practice of re-using the last ciphertext block of a message as the IV for the next message is insecure (for example, this method was used by SSL 2.0). If an attacker knows

    Read more →
  • Web Dynpro

    Web Dynpro

    Web Dynpro (WD) is a web application technology developed by SAP SE that focuses on the development of server-side business applications. For modern releases (for instance as of NetWeaver 750, software layer SAP_UI) the user interface is rendered according to the HTML5 web standard. Since Netweaver 754 (software layer SAP_UI, ABAP Platform 1909) a touch enabled user interface is available. The newly released versions usually follow the SAP Fiori design principles. One of its main design features is that the user interface is defined in an entirely declarative manner. Web Dynpro applications can be developed using either the Java (Web Dynpro for Java, WDJ or WD4J) or ABAP (Web Dynpro ABAP, WDA or WD4A) development infrastructure. == Overview == The earliest version of Web Dynpro appeared in 2003 and was based on Java. This variant was released approximately 18 months before the ABAP variant. As of 2010, the Java variant of Web Dynpro was put into maintenance mode. WD follows a design architecture based on an interpretation of the MVC design pattern and uses a model driven development approach ("minimize coding, maximize design"). The Web Dynpro Framework is a server-side runtime environment into which many dedicated "hook methods" are available. The developer then places their own custom coding within these hook methods in order to implement the desired business functionality. These hook methods belong to one of the broad categories of either "life-cycle" and "round-trip"; that is, those methods that are concerned with the life-cycle of a software component (i.e. processing that takes place at start up and shut down etc.), and those methods that are concerned with processing the fixed sequence of events that take place during a client-initiated round trip to the server. Web Dynpro is aimed at the development of business applications that follow standardized UI principles, applications that connect to backend systems and which are scalable. Key Capabilities Declarative way of development: Web Dynpro offers a graphical and declarative means of UI development. UI controls, building blocks, views and windows are modeled, and the business logic can be coded separately. Separation of user interface and business logic: One advantage of Web Dynpro over SAP GUI is the separation between business logic and user interface, and the structured development process with less implementation effort. Support of stateful application: The state of the application is kept in the back-end. This leads to a reduced data transfer from ABAP server to browser and vice versa. Regarding Web Dynpro ABAP there is only one programming language (ABAP) and only one system necessary. Therefore, development can be easier and cost efficient.

    Read more →
  • Social media mining

    Social media mining

    Social media mining is the process of obtaining data from user-generated content on social media in order to extract actionable patterns, form conclusions about users, and act upon the information. Mining supports targeting advertising to users or academic research. The term is an analogy to the process of mining for minerals. Mining companies sift through raw ore to find the valuable minerals; likewise, social media mining sifts through social media data in order to discern patterns and trends about matters such as social media usage, online behaviour, content sharing, connections between individuals, buying behaviour. These patterns and trends are of interest to companies, governments and not-for-profit organizations, as such organizations can use the analyses for tasks such as design strategies, introduce programs, products, processes or services. Social media mining uses concepts from computer science, data mining, machine learning, and statistics. Mining is based on social network analysis, network science, sociology, ethnography, optimization and mathematics. It attempts to formally represent, measure and model patterns from social media data. In the 2010s, major corporations, governments and not-for-profit organizations began mining to learn about customers, clients and others. Platforms such as Google, Facebook (partnered with Datalogix and BlueKai) conduct mining to target users with advertising. Scientists and machine learning researchers extract insights and design product features. Users may not understand how platforms use their data. Users tend to click through Terms of Use agreements without reading them, leading to ethical questions about whether platforms adequately protect users' privacy. During the 2016 United States presidential election, Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign, to analyze the data of an estimated 87 million Facebook users to profile voters, creating controversy when this was revealed. == Background == As defined by Kaplan and Haenlein, social media is the "group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." There are many categories of social media including, but not limited to, social networking (Facebook or LinkedIn), microblogging (Twitter), photo sharing (Flickr, Instagram, Photobucket, or Picasa), news aggregation (Google Reader, StumbleUpon, or Feedburner), video sharing (YouTube, MetaCafe), livecasting (Ustream or Twitch), virtual worlds (Kaneva), social gaming (World of Warcraft), social search (Google, Bing, or Ask.com), and instant messaging (Google Talk, Skype, or Yahoo! messenger). The first social media website was introduced by GeoCities in 1994. It enabled users to create their own homepages without having a sophisticated knowledge of HTML coding. The first social networking site, SixDegrees.com, was introduced in 1997. Since then, many other social media sites have been introduced, each providing service to millions of people. These individuals form a virtual world in which individuals (social atoms), entities (content, sites, etc.) and interactions (between individuals, between entities, between individuals and entities) coexist. Social norms and human behavior govern this virtual world. By understanding these social norms and models of human behavior and combining them with the observations and measurements of this virtual world, one can systematically analyze and mine social media. Social media mining is the process of representing, analyzing, and extracting meaningful patterns from data in social media, resulting from social interactions. It is an interdisciplinary field encompassing techniques from computer science, data mining, machine learning, social network analysis, network science, sociology, ethnography, statistics, optimization, and mathematics. Social media mining faces grand challenges such as the big data paradox, obtaining sufficient samples, the noise removal fallacy, and evaluation dilemma. Social media mining represents the virtual world of social media in a computable way, measures it, and designs models that can help us understand its interactions. In addition, social media mining provides necessary tools to mine this world for interesting patterns, analyze information diffusion, study influence and homophily, provide effective recommendations, and analyze novel social behavior in social media. == Uses == Social media mining is used across several industries including business development, social science research, health services, and educational purposes. Once the data received goes through social media analytics, it can then be applied to these various fields. Often, companies use the patterns of connectivity that pervade social networks, such as assortativity—the social similarity between users that are induced by influence, homophily, and reciprocity and transitivity. These forces are then measured via statistical analysis of the nodes and connections between these nodes. Social analytics also uses sentiment analysis, because social media users often relay positive or negative sentiment in their posts. This provides important social information about users' emotions on specific topics. These three patterns have several uses beyond pure analysis. For example, influence can be used to determine the most influential user in a particular network. Companies would be interested in this information in order to decide who they may hire for influencer marketing. These influencers are determined by recognition, activity generation, and novelty—three requirements that can be measured through the data mined from these sites. Analysts also value measures of homophily: the tendency of two similar individuals to become friends. Users have begun to rely on information of other users' opinions in order to understand diverse subject matter. These analyses can also help create recommendations for individuals in a tailored capacity. By measuring influence and homophily, online and offline companies are able to suggest specific products for individuals consumers, and groups of consumers. Social media networks can use this information themselves to suggest to their users possible friends to add, pages to follow, and accounts to interact with. == Perception == Modern social media mining is a controversial practice that has led to exponential gains in user growth for tech giants such as Facebook, Inc., Twitter, and Google. Companies such as these, considered "Big Tech" are companies that build algorithms that take advantage of user input to understand their preferences, and keep them on the platform as much as possible. These inputs, that can be as simple as time spent on a given screen, provide the data being mined, and lead to companies profiting heavily from using that data to capitalize on extremely accurate predictions about user behavior. The growth of platforms accelerated rapidly once these strategies were put in place; Most of the largest platforms now average over 1 billion active users per month as of 2021. It has been claimed by a multitude of anti-algorithm personalities, like Tristan Harris or Chamath Palihapitiya, that certain companies (specifically Facebook) valued growth above all else, and ignored potential negative impacts from these growth engineering tactics. At the same time, users have now created their own data arbitrages with the help of their own data, through content monetization and becoming influencers. Users typically have access to a varied set of analytics specific to people that interact with them on social media, and can use these as building blocks for their own targeting and growth strategies through ads and posts that cater to their audiences. Influencers also commonly promote products and services for established brands, creating one of the largest digital industries: Influencer marketing. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, and others have long given access to platform analytics, and allowed third parties to access that information as well, at times unbeknownst to even the user whose data is being viewed/bought. == Research == === Research areas === Social media event detection – Social networks enable users to freely communicate with each other and share their recent news, ongoing activities or views about different topics. As a result, they can be seen as a potentially viable source of information to understand the current emerging topics/events. Public health monitoring and surveillance - Using large-scale analysis of social media to study large cohorts of patients and the general public, e.g. to obtain early warning signals of drug-drug interactions and adverse drug reactions, or understand human reproduction and sexual interest. Community structure (Community Detection/Evolution/Evaluation) – Identifying communities on social networks, how t

    Read more →
  • Social profiling

    Social profiling

    Social profiling is the process of constructing a social media user's profile using their social data. In general, profiling refers to the data science process of generating a person's profile with computerized algorithms and technology. There are various platforms for sharing this information with the proliferation of growing popular social networks, including but not limited to LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook and Twitter. == Social profile and social data == A person's social data refers to the personal data that they generate either online or offline (for more information, see social data revolution). A large amount of these data, including one's language, location and interest, is shared through social media and social network. Users join multiple social media platforms and their profiles across these platforms can be linked using different methods to obtain their interests, locations, content, and friend list. Altogether, this information can be used to construct a person's social profile. Meeting the user's satisfaction level for information collection is becoming more challenging. This is because of too much "noise" generated, which affects the process of information collection due to explosively increasing online data. Social profiling is an emerging approach to overcome the challenges faced in meeting user's demands by introducing the concept of personalized search while keeping in consideration user profiles generated using social network data. A study reviews and classifies research inferring users social profile attributes from social media data as individual and group profiling. The existing techniques along with utilized data sources, the limitations, and challenges were highlighted. The prominent approaches adopted include machine learning, ontology, and fuzzy logic. Social media data from Twitter and Facebook have been used by most of the studies to infer the social attributes of users. The literature showed that user social attributes, including age, gender, home location, wellness, emotion, opinion, relation, influence are still need to be explored. === Personalized meta-search engines === The ever-increasing online content has resulted in the lack of proficiency of centralized search engine's results. It can no longer satisfy user's demand for information. A possible solution that would increase coverage of search results would be meta-search engines, an approach that collects information from numerous centralized search engines. A new problem thus emerges, that is too much data and too much noise is generated in the collection process. Therefore, a new technique called personalized meta-search engines was developed. It makes use of a user's profile (largely social profile) to filter the search results. A user's profile can be a combination of a number of things, including but not limited to, "a user's manual selected interests, user's search history", and personal social network data. == Social media profiling == According to Samuel D. Warren II and Louis Brandeis (1890), disclosure of private information and the misuse of it can hurt people's feelings and cause considerable damage in people's lives. Social networks provide people access to intimate online interactions; therefore, information access control, information transactions, privacy issues, connections and relationships on social media have become important research fields and are subjects of concern to the public. Ricard Fogues and other co-authors state that "any privacy mechanism has at its base an access control", that dictate "how permissions are given, what elements can be private, how access rules are defined, and so on". Current access control for social media accounts tend to still be very simplistic: there is very limited diversity in the category of relationships on for social network accounts. User's relationships to others are, on most platforms, only categorized as "friend" or "non-friend" and people may leak important information to "friends" inside their social circle but not necessarily users to they consciously want to share the information to. The below section is concerned with social media profiling and what profiling information on social media accounts can achieve. === Privacy leaks === A lot of information is voluntarily shared on online social networks, such as photos and updates on life activities (new job, hobbies, etc.). People rest assured that different social network accounts on different platforms will not be linked as long as they do not grant permission to these links. However, according to Diane Gan, information gathered online enables "target subjects to be identified on other social networking sites such as Foursquare, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+, where more personal information was leaked". The majority of social networking platforms use the "opt out approach" for their features. If users wish to protect their privacy, it is user's own responsibility to check and change the privacy settings as a number of them are set to default option. A major social network platforms have developed geo-tag functions and are in popular usage. This is concerning because 39% of users have experienced profiling hacking; 78% burglars have used major social media networks and Google Street-view to select their victims; and an astonishing 54% of burglars attempted to break into empty houses when people posted their status updates and geo-locations. === Facebook === Formation and maintenance of social media accounts and their relationships with other accounts are associated with various social outcomes. In 2015, for many firms, customer relationship management is essential and is partially done through Facebook. Before the emergence and prevalence of social media, customer identification was primarily based upon information that a firm could directly acquire: for example, it may be through a customer's purchasing process or voluntary act of completing a survey/loyalty program. However, the rise of social media has greatly reduced the approach of building a customer's profile/model based on available data. Marketers now increasingly seek customer information through Facebook; this may include a variety of information users disclose to all users or partial users on Facebook: name, gender, date of birth, e-mail address, sexual orientation, marital status, interests, hobbies, favorite sports team(s), favorite athlete(s), or favorite music, and more importantly, Facebook connections. However, due to the privacy policy design, acquiring true information on Facebook is no trivial task. Often, Facebook users either refuse to disclose true information (sometimes using pseudonyms) or setting information to be only visible to friends, Facebook users who "LIKE" your page are also hard to identify. To do online profiling of users and cluster users, marketers and companies can and will access the following kinds of data: gender, the IP address and city of each user through the Facebook Insight page, who "LIKED" a certain user, a page list of all the pages that a person "LIKED" (transaction data), other people that a user follow (even if it exceeds the first 500, which we usually can not see) and all the publicly shared data. === Twitter === First launched on the Internet in March 2006, Twitter is a platform on which users can connect and communicate with any other user in just 280 characters. Like Facebook, Twitter is also a crucial tunnel for users to leak important information, often unconsciously, but able to be accessed and collected by others. According to Rachel Nuwer, in a sample of 10.8 million tweets by more than 5,000 users, their posted and publicly shared information are enough to reveal a user's income range. A postdoctoral researcher from the University of Pennsylvania, Daniel Preoţiuc-Pietro and his colleagues were able to categorize 90% of users into corresponding income groups. Their existing collected data, after being fed into a machine-learning model, generated reliable predictions on the characteristics of each income group. The mobile app called Streamd.in displays live tweets on Google Maps by using geo-location details attached to the tweet, and traces the user's movement in the real world. === Profiling photos on social network === The advent and universality of social media networks have boosted the role of images and visual information dissemination. Many types of visual information on social media transmit messages from the author, location information and other personal information. For example, a user may post a photo of themselves in which landmarks are visible, which can enable other users to determine where they are. In a study done by Cristina Segalin, Dong Seon Cheng and Marco Cristani, they found that profiling user posts' photos can reveal personal traits such as personality and mood. In the study, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is introduced. It builds on the main characteristics of computational

    Read more →