AI Content Vs Human Content

AI Content Vs Human Content — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Medical data breach

    Medical data breach

    Medical data, including patients' identity information, health status, disease diagnosis and treatment, and biogenetic information, not only involve patients' privacy but also have a special sensitivity and important value, which may bring physical and mental distress and property loss to patients and even negatively affect social stability and national security once leaked. However, the development and application of medical AI must rely on a large amount of medical data for algorithm training, and the larger and more diverse the amount of data, the more accurate the results of its analysis and prediction will be. However, the application of big data technologies such as data collection, analysis and processing, cloud storage, and information sharing has increased the risk of data leakage. In the United States, the rate of such breaches has increased over time, with 176 million records breached by the end of 2017. By 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported 725 large healthcare data breaches affecting approximately 275 million individual records in a single year, marking a significant escalation in both the frequency and scale of incidents. == Black market for health data == In February 2015 an NPR report claimed that organized crime networks had ways of selling health data in the black market. In 2015 a Beazley employee estimated that medical records could sell on the black market for US$40-50. == How data is lost == Theft, data loss, hacking, and unauthorized account access are ways in which medical data breaches happen. Among reported breaches of medical information in the United States networked information systems accounted for the largest number of records breached. There are many data breaches happening in the US health care system, among business associates of the health care providers that continuously gain access to patients' data. == List of data breaches == In February 2024, a ransomware attack on Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, compromised the protected health information of approximately 100 million individuals, making it the largest healthcare data breach in United States history. The attack disrupted claims processing for healthcare providers nationwide for several weeks. In May 2024, MediSecure suffered a cyberattack involving ransomware in Australia. In May 2021, the Health Service Executive in the Republic of Ireland was the victim of a cyberattack involving ransomware, in the Health Service Executive cyberattack, with admission records and test results present in a sample of the data reviewed by the Financial Times. In October 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the US reported that around 75,000 individual records had been affected by a data breach that took place through the ACA Agent and Broker Portal. In 2018, Social Indicators Research published the scientific evidence of 173,398,820 (over 173 million) individuals affected in USA from October 2008 (when the data were collected) to September 2017 (when the statistical analysis took place). In 2015, Anthem Inc. lost data for 37 million people in the Anthem medical data breach In 2014 4.5 million people using Complete Health Systems had their data stolen In 2013-14 1 million people using Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services had their data stolen In 2013 4 million people using Advocate Health and Hospitals Corporation had their data stolen In 2011 4.9 million users of Tricare services had their data stolen due to an employee error by Science Applications International Corporation In 2011 1.9 million people using Health Net had their data stolen In 2011 1 million people using Nemours Foundation had their data stolen In 2010 6800 people using New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center had their data breached. In response, those organizations agreed to pay the United States Department of Health and Human Services a US$4.8 million dollar fine. In 2009 1 million people using BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee had their data stolen == Regulation == In the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act require companies to report data breaches to affected individuals and the federal government. Under the HIPAA Breach Notification Rule, covered entities must notify affected individuals without unreasonable delay and no later than 60 days after discovering a breach of unsecured protected health information. Breaches affecting 500 or more individuals must also be reported to the HHS Secretary and to prominent media outlets serving the affected state or jurisdiction within the same timeframe; HHS publicly lists these larger breaches on its breach portal, commonly known as the "wall of shame." Breaches affecting fewer than 500 individuals are reported to HHS annually, no later than 60 days after the end of the calendar year in which they were discovered. Health Information Privacy Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). - 45 CFR Parts 160 and 164, Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information and Security Standards for the Protection of Electronic Protected Health Information. HIPAA includes provisions designed to save health care businesses money by encouraging electronic transactions, as well as regulations to protect the security and confidentiality of patient information. The Privacy Rule became effective April 14, 2001, and most covered entities (health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers that conduct certain financial and administrative transactions electronically) had until April 2003 to comply. This security provision became effective April 21, 2003. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the baseline set of federal regulations governing medical information. It does three things: i. i. i.Establish a structure for how personal health information is disclosed and establish the rights of individuals with respect to health information; ii.Specify security standards for the retention and transmission of electronic patient information; iii.Need a common format and data structure for the electronic exchange of health information. California-Specific Laws California’s medical privacy laws, primarily the Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA), the data breach sections of the Civil Code, and sections of the Health and Safety Code, provide HIPAA-like protections, although the terminology is different. HIPAA establishes a federal "minimum standard" that applies where there are gaps in California law, and HIPAA also specifies that stricter state laws will override or supersede HIPAA. California's health care privacy laws apply to providers who provide personal health records (PHR), while HIPAA only applies when the provider providing the PHR is a business associate of a covered entity. Federal law does not grant individuals the right to file a lawsuit in the event of a data breach (only the Attorney General can file a lawsuit), but California law does. This means that California law sets a higher standard for medical privacy, and that individuals in California enjoy stronger legal protections and more ways to hold entities that violate their medical privacy accountable. In the UK, the legal framework for how patient data is cared for and processed is the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA), which incorporates the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into law, and the common law duty of confidentiality (CLDC). The data protection legislation requires that the collection and processing of personal data be fair, lawful and transparent. This means that the collection and processing of data as defined by data protection legislation must always have a valid lawful basis and must also meet the requirements of the CLDC. In the China, Article 18 of the "National Health Care Big Data Standards, Security and Services Management Measures (for Trial Implementation)" (National Health Planning and Development (2018) No. 23) promulgated by the National Health Care Commission in 2018 states, "The responsible unit shall adopt measures such as data classification, important data backup, and encryption authentication to guarantee the security of health care big data." However, the scope and definition of important data are not covered. Although the "Information Security Technology-Healthcare Data Security Guide" (the "Guide") issued by the National Standardization Committee also proposes that important data should be evaluated and approved in accordance with the regulations, there is likewise no definition of the connotation and definition of important data.

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  • Majal (organization)

    Majal (organization)

    Majal is a regional not-for-profit organization focused on "amplifying voices of dissent" throughout the Middle East and North Africa via digital media. Founded in Bahrain, the organization "creates platforms and web applications that promote freedom of expression and social justice." Majal, which relies on open source platforms, like WordPress and Ruby on Rails, was launched in 2006 by Esra'a Al Shafei as a simple group-blogging idea. However, it has changed course to focus on the development of unique applications and tools. == Objectives and means == Majal's content, in addition to its projects and applications, is free open source content to ensure right to access information for everyone. The organization uses a broad spectrum of social media tools, ranging from written blogs, podcasts, vlogs, comics, video animation and pictures to live broadcasting through radio. == Projects and applications == Majal runs various active projects that include Alliance for Kurdish Rights, The Muslim Network for Baháʼí Rights, a discussion tool for Arab LGBT youth and various Mobile apps. == Funding == Majal is funded through private donations and grants from non-governmental organizations, as well as any potential revenues earned through freelance development. Its primary funders are the Shuttleworth Foundation and the Omidyar Network. In 2008, Majal won the Berkman Award from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University in the Human Rights/Global Advocacy category. This $10,000 award was Majal’s first source of funding. This award is presented to “people or institutions that have made a significant contribution to the Internet and its impact on society over the past decade.” In 2009, the March 18 Movement, a project of Majal, received the Think Social Award, which demonstrates how social media can be used to solve the world’s problems. Esra'a Al-Shafei was named a 2009 Echoing Green Fellow for Civil and Human Rights, a seed funding award for young entrepreneurs engaged in social change. Financially, the fellowship consists of a $60,000 stipend paid over two years. Most recently, MEY has received a grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture for its Mideast Tunes website. == Awards == Winner of Human Rights Tulip 2014 Human Rights Tulip - Human rights - Government.nl Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media competition in 2011 for their CrowdVoice project. Monaco Media Prize 2011 for Majal founder and director Esra'a Al Shafei in 2011. The BOBS Special Topic Human Rights award in 2011 for the Majal website Migrant Rights. ThinkSocial Award in 2009, as powerful model for how social media can be used to address global problems. Echoing Green, 2009 Fellowship. TEDGlobal 2009 Fellowship. Berkman Award for Internet Innovation from Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in 2008 for the outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society. The Global Journal selected Majal as one of the Top 100 NGOs in 2013. 2013-2014 Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship. == Leadership == Majal team is led primarily by women. The organization was founded by Esra'a Al Shafei, a blogger from Bahrain in 2006. Ahmed Zidan of Egypt has served for over three years as the Editor-in-Chief of Majal Arabic, and is the co-founder of Ahwaa, and is also a podcaster. Other team members include Mona Kareem, Rima Kalush, Abir Ghattas, Namita Malhotra, and Vani Saraswathi. == 2011 Middle East and North Africa protests == Blogs and video played a role in the documentation of protests throughout the Middle East and North Africa during 2010-2011, also known as the Arab Spring. During this period, MEY's project, CrowdVoice (launched in 2010) helped curate and archive the large amounts of videos, images, and eye-witness reports being aggregated and crowdsourced from across the region. As a result, it had been censored temporarily in Yemen and is still censored in Bahrain. == Media coverage == Majal claims to have received various coverage from news agencies, TV satellite channels, radio stations, newspapers, magazines. For instance, Sky News, CNN, New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, NPR, Time, MTV political blog "Act", VH1, Daily Telegraph, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Rundschau FR-online, Toronto Star, TechCrunch, Rolling Stone Middle East, Abu Dhabi TV, Gulf News, Al-Hasnaa' magazine, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, The Next Web, Radio Sawt Beirut International, Radio Farda among many others.

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  • Cypherpunks (book)

    Cypherpunks (book)

    Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet is a 2012 book by Julian Assange, in discussion with Internet activists and cypherpunks Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn and Jérémie Zimmermann. Its primary topic is society's relationship with information security. In the book, the authors warn that the Internet has become a tool of the police state, and that the world is inadvertently heading toward a form of totalitarianism. They promote the use of cryptography to protect against state surveillance. In the introduction, Assange says that the book is "not a manifesto [...] [but] a warning". He told Guardian journalist Decca Aitkenhead: A well-defined mathematical algorithm can encrypt something quickly, but to decrypt it would take billions of years – or trillions of dollars' worth of electricity to drive the computer. So cryptography is the essential building block of independence for organisations on the Internet, just like armies are the essential building blocks of states, because otherwise one state just takes over another. There is no other way for our intellectual life to gain proper independence from the security guards of the world, the people who control physical reality. Assange later wrote in The Guardian: "Strong cryptography is a vital tool in fighting state oppression." saying that was the message of his book, Cypherpunks. Cypherpunks is published by OR Books. It is primarily a transcript of World Tomorrow episode eight, a two-part interview between Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn, and Jérémie Zimmermann. In the foreword, Assange said, "the Internet, our greatest tool for emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen".

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  • Social computing

    Social computing

    Social computing is an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems. It is based on creating or fostering existing social conventions and social contexts through the use of software and technology. Blogs, email, instant messaging, social network services, wikis, social bookmarking and other instances of what is often called social software illustrate ideas from social computing. The rise in social computing is attributed to the prevalence of personal devices and increased overall computing power. This enables a growing number of users to participate in sharing content and interact with another. == Definitions == Humans—and human behavior—are profoundly social. Humans tend to orient to one another and develop abilities to interact with each other and other species. This ranges from expression and gesture through spoken, written, and body language. Humans are influenced by the behavior of those around them and can rely on social context and cues to make decisions. An example of a behavior relying on social contexts is applauding at the end of the play. This is based on the context that the show ended, and other audience members are applauding. Social information provides a basis for inferences, planning, and coordinating activity. == Examples == Common tools include blogs, email, instant messaging, social networking sites, wikis, and social bookmarking platforms. These technologies enable users to generate content, share knowledge, and interact in real time. == Applications == The rise of social computing has highlighted opportunities for businesses. Businesses are interacting on social computing platforms and investing in facilities to support and research social computing.Business models can leverage the massive customer bases that accumulate through social computing channels. Some organizations have started their own blogs and networks (McAfee, 2006, Joe, 2005). Organizations from diverse industry sectors such as Google, Cisco, and Fox, have sought to acquire or invest in successful social computing enterprises. A business blog can serve as a source of information and promotion for the company. This allows the company to share content about the company and their initiatives. Businesses have also interacted with social computing to market themselves and interact with customers. A notable example is Wendy's with their X (formerly Twitter) account. The account was primarily used to promote business promotions and interact with users in a playful or meaningful way. E-commerce web sites have allowed users to leave reviews and feedback on purchases which has improved online shopping experience for sellers and consumers.As another example of social computing’s business applications, many e-commerce Web sites have adopted online product/vendor feedback/reputation systems. Such systems provide an asynchronous platform for the consumer community to share experiences collectively and influence their purchasing behavior. They also provide a vehicle for eliciting feedback information valuable to the vendors and e-commerce site operators.Consumers can use the feedback systems to make a more educated choice on a purchase by comparing reviews between products or vendors. Sellers can track consumer behaviors and trends regarding a product and adjust their supply according to the demand. == Challenges and criticism == Social computing raises several concerns related to privacy, data security, and algorithmic bias. The widespread collection and analysis of user-generated data can lead to ethical dilemmas, especially when users are unaware of how their information is used. Critics also highlight issues of digital labor, surveillance, and the spread of misinformation, which can influence public opinion and social dynamics. === Term appearance === The term appeared in the mid 1990s after technology advancements and development of the web. In 1994, the concept of social computing was first proposed by Schuler. He thought, "Social computing is a computing application, with software as the medium or focus of social relationships." === Premise === The premise of social computing is that it is possible to design digital systems that support useful functionality by making socially produced information available to their users. This information may be provided directly, as when systems show the number of users who have rated a review as helpful or not. Or the information may be provided after being filtered and aggregated, as is done when systems recommend a product based on what else people with similar purchase history have purchased. Alternatively, the information may be provided indirectly, as is the case with Google's page rank algorithms which orders search results based on the number of pages that (recursively) point to them. In all of these cases, information that is produced by a group of people is used to provide or enhance the functioning of a system. Social computing is concerned with systems of this sort and the mechanisms and principles that underlie them. Social computing can be defined as follows: "Social Computing" refers to systems that support the gathering, representation, processing, use, and dissemination of information that is distributed across social collectivities such as teams, communities, organizations, and markets. Moreover, the information is not "anonymous" but is significantly precise because it is linked to people, who are in turn linked to other people. More recent definitions, however, have foregone the restrictions regarding anonymity of information, acknowledging the continued spread and increasing pervasiveness of social computing. As an example, Hemmatazad, N. (2014) defined social computing as "the use of computational devices to facilitate or augment the social interactions of their users, or to evaluate those interactions in an effort to obtain new information." Social computing has to do with supporting "computations" that are carried out by groups of people, an idea that has been popularized in James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Examples of social computing in this sense include collaborative filtering, online auctions, reputation systems, computational social choice, tagging, and verification games. The social information processing page focuses on this sense of social computing. == History == === Technology infrastructure === Users were able to interact more with websites after the development of Web 2.0. This was an advancement from Web 1.0. Comode G. and Krishnamurthy B. (2008) note that "content creators were few in Web 1.0 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content." Web 2.0 provided functionalities that allowed for low-cost web-hosting services and introduced features with browser windows that used basic information structure and expanded it to as many devices as possible using HTTP, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Sometimes referred to as "Enterprise 2.0", a term derived from Web 2.0, social software for enterprise generally refers to the use of social computing in corporate intranets and in other medium- and large-scale business environments. It consisted of a class of tools that allowed for networking and social changes to businesses at the time. It was a layering of the business tools on Web 2.0 and brought forth several applications and collaborative software with specific uses. FinanceElectronic negotiation, which first came up in 1969 and was adapted over time to suit financial markets networking needs, represents an important and desirable coordination mechanism for electronic markets. Negotiation between agents (software agents as well as humans) allows cooperative and competitive sharing of information to determine a proper price. Recent research and practice has also shown that electronic negotiation is beneficial for the coordination of complex interactions among organizations. Electronic negotiation has recently emerged as a very dynamic, interdisciplinary research area covering aspects from disciplines such as Economics, Information Systems, Computer Science, Communication Theory, Sociology and Psychology.Social computing has become more widely known because of its relationship to a number of recent trends. These include the growing popularity of social software and Web 3.0, increased academic interest in social network analysis, the rise of open source as a viable method of production, and a growing conviction that all of this can have a profound impact on daily life. A February 13, 2006 paper by market research company Forrester Research suggested that: === Developments === PLATO was one of the earliest examples of social computing in a live production environment with initially hundreds and soon thousands of users. The PLATO computer system was developed by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in 1960s. In the 70s, the system supported social software applications for multi-us

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  • Knowledge as a service

    Knowledge as a service

    Knowledge as a service (KaaS) is a computing service that delivers information to users, backed by a knowledge model, which might be drawn from a number of possible models based on decision trees, association rules, or neural networks. A knowledge as a service provider responds to knowledge requests from users through a centralised knowledge server, and provides an interface between users and data owners. KaaS is one of several cloud computing-dependent business models in which computer resources are sold on an on-demand and pay-as-you-use basis. == Overview == At the International Semantic Web Conference 2019, it was described how knowledge can be made live and evolve on the web allowing users to learn directly from elaborated knowledge, now appearing in the form of knowledge graphs. KaaS appear when knowledge graphs are accessed via services This is opposed to DaaS which might "compute large volumes of data; integrate and analyzes that data; and publish it in real-time, using Web service APIs" (from Data as a Service) where the KaaS is able to exploit context - both the context of the user in relation to their information requests of the KaaS (where and when they make the request) and also the context of the information in relation to some objective or purpose of the users either understood by the KaaS automatically or indicated to it by the user. == Differentiating knowledge from data == Conceptual models that make such a differentiation such as the so-called DIKW pyramid have existed for perhaps more than 40 years (see a 1974 journal article about this) however definitions are not stable and universally accepted (see the discussion about the conceptualizations of DIKW within the DIKW Wikipedia article that question value of wisdom). The knowledge component of DIKW is generally agreed to be an elusive concept which is difficult to define, however Rowley 2007, in a well known student textbook differentiated knowledge from data by stating that knowledge is "defined with reference to information" and that it contains more than just facts but also "beliefs and expectations". In relation to knowledge graphs, knowledge may be additional content they provide over and above pure data which is the definition of the categories, properties and relations between the concepts, data and entities that substantiate one, many or all domains of discourse (see the definition of Ontology). The ability to represent "beliefs and expectations", or other forms of not so straightforwardly explicit knowledge is an on-going area of improvement in information sciences (see Tacit knowledge) and, with relation to KaaS, the establishment of recent informatics mechanics to do so it critical to the legitimacy of KaaS as it is differentiated from just value-added DaaS. Knowledge graphs' ability to represent context via the definition of the categories, properties and relations between the concepts, data and entities that substantiate one, many or all domains of discourse that they provide (see the definition of Ontology) has led to the idea that supplying access to KNs might be a required competency of a KaaS. == Delivery of knowledge == Much service-delivered content is dependent on a session to provide much of the context that the user (client) needs to understand answers to questions. For example, using current HTTP internet protocols, a GET request to retrieve information identified by a URI, such as a web page, a client (a human or a machine) may have access information supplied automatically to enable that client to bypass paywalls or other content access controls. Such context, in this case about the client's information access allowances, can alter the information provided. In a logical extension to this internet protocols example, a server would receive from the client, either manually or automatically, a full context which would be information about the situation the client is in and this would allow the server to best interpret the client's request. Current internet protocols allow for formats, languages and related preferences to be expressed by clients but make no mention of what a client already knows and what they may understand. The recent Content Negotiation by Profile proposes additions to both the HTTP internet protocols and related services that allow clients to also request information - a response from the server - that accords with an identified information model. This then allows clients to indicate not just formats and languages that they understand (technically that they prefer) but also domains of discourse that that do, which is a step towards comprehensive client context provision.

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  • Viral marketing

    Viral marketing

    Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product or service on social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. It can be delivered by word of mouth, or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks. The concept is often misused or misunderstood, as people apply it to any successful enough story without taking into account the word "viral". Viral advertising is personal and, while coming from an identified sponsor, it does not mean businesses pay for its distribution. Most of the well-known viral ads circulating online are ads paid by a sponsor company, launched either on their own platform (company web page or social media profile) or on social media websites such as YouTube. Consumers receive the page link from a social media network or copy the entire ad from a website and pass it along through e-mail or posting it on a blog, web page or social media profile. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages. The most commonly utilized transmission vehicles for viral messages include pass-along based, incentive based, trendy based, and undercover based. However, the creative nature of viral marketing enables an "endless amount of potential forms and vehicles the messages can utilize for transmission", including mobile devices. The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period. The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—marketing strategies that advertise a product to people without them knowing they are being marketed to. == History == The emergence of "viral marketing", as an approach to advertisement, has been tied to the popularization of the notion that ideas spread like viruses. The field that developed around this notion, memetics, peaked in popularity in the 1990s. As this then began to influence marketing gurus, it took on a life of its own in that new context. The brief career of Australian pop singer Marcus Montana is largely remembered as an early example of viral marketing. In early 1989, thousands of posters declaring "Marcus is Coming" were placed around Sydney, generating discussion and interest within the media and the community about the meaning of the mysterious advertisements. The campaign successfully made Montana's musical debut a talking point, but his subsequent music career was a failure. The term is found in PC User magazine in 1989 with a somewhat differing meaning. It was later used by Jeffrey Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing", and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users. Doug Rushkoff, a media critic, wrote about viral marketing on the Internet in 1996. Bob Gerstley wrote about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential." Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, due to their personal nature. In early 2013, the first ever Viral Summit was held in Las Vegas. == Factors == Marketer Jonah Berger defines six key factors that drive virality, organized in an acronym called STEPPS: Social currency – the better something makes people look, the more likely they will be to share it Triggers – things that are "top of mind" are more likely to be "tip of the tongue" Emotion – when people care, they share Public – the easier something is to see, the more likely people are to imitate it Practical value – people share useful information to help others Stories – like a Trojan Horse, stories carry messages and ideas along for the ride. Another important factor that drives virality is the propagativity of the content, referring to the ease with which consumers can redistribute it. == Psychology == To form deeper connections with viewers and increase the chances of virality, many marketers use psychological principles. They argue that this approach is scientific and can foster an environment where the odds of gaining traction are much higher. People find psychological safety and can develop a sense of trust when more people interact with online content. For this reason, marketers work to develop media that resonates with viewers on a deeper, emotional level as this approach frequently results in higher engagement. This level of interaction serves as a sign of approval, reducing the personal risk that is subconsciously linked to associating oneself with a company or brand’s content. Professor Jonah Berger at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business affirms that marketing campaigns that trigger psychological responses linked to strong emotions tend to perform better. In particular, Berger found that positive emotions like happiness, joy, and excitement have more successful share rates than their negative counterparts. This outcome results from the human instinct to respond more positively to content with activating emotions, increasing the desire to share content, which contributes to its virality. Viral marketing utilizes the primitive feeling of frisson to increase their view and share counts. This feeling of excitement is considered powerful because of its ability to cause a physical response. From increased heart rates to full body chills, Professor Brent Coker at the University of Melbourne describes that this approach to marketing triggers a primitive response that immerses the viewer in the content on a deeper level. Researchers Juliana Fernandes from the University of Florida and Sigal Segev from the Florida International University also found that people are more inclined to share emotional campaigns over those that are heavily informational. They claim that consumers do not often care to learn about a product’s actual features and benefits. Instead, people prefer to be immersed in experience-based content that creates an emotional impact. Companies and brands can benefit from treating their content in this manner and go viral more frequently than those who do not. Social proof is another psychological phenomenon that impacts viral content. Experts in this field argue that it is a natural instinct to want to behave similarly to others because it results in positive validation. This phenomenon explains the human need to conform, so marketers focus on creating engaging content that encourages interactions and causes a snowball effect. This subconsciously influences people to like, comment, and share if they already see others doing the same. Social proof goes further by providing people with a form of social currency. When individuals interact with and share content, they become associated with the topics at hand. People naturally tend to perceive one another, and this pattern carries over to the digital world. As a result, many people tend to be vigilant about the viral marketing they engage with, since they want to be perceived positively. Companies and brands have the opportunity to develop social currency themselves by aligning with their target audiences and creating marketing campaigns that fit their interests or match their values. == Methods and metrics == According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment: Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the transformation of an ordinary message into a viral one: market mavens, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are individuals who are continuously 'on the pulse' of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an exceptionally large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distr

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  • Conjugate coding

    Conjugate coding

    Conjugate coding is a cryptographic tool, introduced by Stephen Wiesner in the late 1960s. It is part of the two applications Wiesner described for quantum coding, along with a method for creating fraud-proof banking notes. The application that the concept was based on was a method of transmitting multiple messages in such a way that reading one destroys the others. This is called quantum multiplexing and it uses photons polarized in conjugate bases as "qubits" to pass information. Conjugate coding also is a simple extension of a random number generator. At the behest of Charles Bennett, Wiesner published the manuscript explaining the basic idea of conjugate coding with a number of examples but it was not embraced because it was significantly ahead of its time. Because its publication has been rejected, it was developed to the world of public-key cryptography in the 1980s as oblivious transfer, first by Michael Rabin and then by Shimon Even. It is used in the field of quantum computing. The initial concept of quantum cryptography developed by Bennett and Gilles Brassard was also based on this concept.

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  • Social advertising (social relationships)

    Social advertising (social relationships)

    Social advertising is advertising that relies on social information or networks in generating, targeting, and delivering marketing communications. Many current examples of social advertising use a particular Internet service to collect social information, establish and maintain relationships with consumers, and for delivering communications. For example, the advertising platforms provided by Google, Twitter, and Facebook involve targeting and presenting ads based on relationships articulated on those same services. Social advertising can be part of a broader social media marketing strategy designed to connect with consumers. == Social targeting == Since a pair of consumers connected via a relationship are more likely to be similar than an unconnected pair, information about such relationships can be used to infer characteristics of consumers useful for targeting. For example, predictions of an individual's home location can be improved using geographic information about their peers. Existing advertising platforms can allow advertisers to explicitly target the peers (e.g., Facebook friends, Twitter followers) of consumers who have a known affiliation with their brand. Thus, one way social advertising is expected to be effective is because social networks encode information about unobserved characteristics of consumers, including their susceptibility to adopt a product and to influence their peers to adopt. Social advertisement targets audiences' demographics based on customers browsing histories. This helped companies understand users' interests and target a specific group of users. Whether it is location or personal interest, different categories of companies can make the consumers on social media rely heavily on their advertisements. This is one of the reasons why social advertising has grown over time. Targeting their audience to real life stakeholders generally increase the attention of the advertised deal which brings up more profits for companies. Subsequently, the psychological effects that social media gives off to its users play a huge role in advertisement companies keeping their customers online. One of the main reasons users rely on social media is because it's a source of entertainment that provides them with a feeling of inclusiveness. In making the customers feel the inclusiveness, social advertising targeting a specific group of users is presented as if these advertisements are customized for the users in their perspective making them feel the attention that they do not often feel in the real world. You can use Social signals checker tool to find more information about links. Social signals are metrics that measure how much people interact with your content on social media. From likes, to shares, to comments; each of these signals contributes to an overall number that tells search engines like Google how much people like your content. The more social signals your website gets, the more likely it is to rank higher in Google. The reason for this is two-fold. First, social media is used by millions of people every day, and if your content is being shared and interacted with on these sites, it shows that it’s worthy of being seen. And second, social media sites are highly trusted by Google. So if you can get your content seen and interacted with on these platforms, you’ll be off to a great start. == Social cues in advertisements == Social ads often include information about the affiliation of a peer with an advertised entity. For example, a social ad might indicate a friend has endorsed a product, highly rated a restaurant, or watched a particular film. In fact, some definitions make these personalized social signals a necessary condition for the advertising being social advertising. Inclusion of personalized social signals creates a channel for social influence. Experiments that remove peers' names or images from social advertisements provide evidence that their presence increases proximal outcomes (e.g., clicks on advertisements). This is technically how trends are started on social media. Since social media links a single profile to thousands of other accounts some being real-life friends or even acquaintances, the opinions and the bias a user has for other users who are also a customer of an advertisement on the feed can heavily affect whether to click on the advertisement or not. Once this pattern continues, the brand benefits from increased customers, profit, and attention. Social networking can spread rapidly because 71 percent of the world's population contributes and uses social media which means social advertising gives companies a better marketing technique than a physical poster advertisement. == Word of mouth == Advertisers often attempt to use word of mouth to affect consumers and their decisions to adopt products and services. Ads and other inducements targeted at a seed set of individuals can be designed to produce a larger cascade of adoption through influence. Businesses are also using social media to attempt to identify and persuade influential consumers to spread positive messages about their products or services. Consequently, not only on social platforms but also in physical settings, users start talking to each other. When individuals develop an intimate relationship with each other, it is quite heavily based on shared characteristics, interests, and personalities. If one social media user becomes a regular customer to a well-known company that advertises often, there is a higher chance that all the other people who have intimate relationships with that one customer will be exposed to the online advertisement more than another user who might be completely new to a brand that is being advertised on screen. In reality, this happens to not only one user but to most of the users which mean a single brand advertisement online can have to potential of being talked about between billions and trillions of people all around the globe. == Relationship marketing == To accurately conduct relationship marketing, businesses must develop and manage six marketplaces: internal, customer, referral, supplier, influencer and employee. To maintain relationship marketing, customers often see social media influencers getting free sponsorships or PR boxes just to advertise their products. At times, users who become customers through these social influencers will get a better deal than regular customers which stands as a very commonly used marketing technique. By doing this, users think they are receiving special treatment when in reality it very much benefits social influencers and brands. Especially for brands that are just starting, they use this marketing technique so that their names can be out there, and people will start talking, which is their initial goal.

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  • Referring expression generation

    Referring expression generation

    Referring expression generation (REG) is the subtask of natural language generation (NLG) that received most scholarly attention. While NLG is concerned with the conversion of non-linguistic information into natural language, REG focuses only on the creation of referring expressions (noun phrases) that identify specific entities called targets. This task can be split into two sections. The content selection part determines which set of properties distinguish the intended target and the linguistic realization part defines how these properties are translated into natural language. A variety of algorithms have been developed in the NLG community to generate different types of referring expressions. == Types of referring expressions == A referring expression (RE), in linguistics, is any noun phrase, or surrogate for a noun phrase, whose function in discourse is to identify some individual object (thing, being, event...) The technical terminology for identify differs a great deal from one school of linguistics to another. The most widespread term is probably refer, and a thing identified is a referent, as for example in the work of John Lyons. In linguistics, the study of reference relations belongs to pragmatics, the study of language use, though it is also a matter of great interest to philosophers, especially those wishing to understand the nature of knowledge, perception and cognition more generally. Various devices can be used for reference: determiners, pronouns, proper names... Reference relations can be of different kinds; referents can be in a "real" or imaginary world, in discourse itself, and they may be singular, plural, or collective. === Pronouns === The simplest type of referring expressions are pronoun such as he and it. The linguistics and natural language processing communities have developed various models for predicting anaphor referents, such as centering theory, and ideally referring-expression generation would be based on such models. However most NLG systems use much simpler algorithms, for example using a pronoun if the referent was mentioned in the previous sentence (or sentential clause), and no other entity of the same gender was mentioned in this sentence. === Definite noun phrases === There has been a considerable amount of research on generating definite noun phrases, such as the big red book. Much of this builds on the model proposed by Dale and Reiter. This has been extended in various ways, for example Krahmer et al. present a graph-theoretic model of definite NP generation with many nice properties. In recent years a shared-task event has compared different algorithms for definite NP generation, using the TUNA corpus. === Spatial and temporal reference === Recently there has been more research on generating referring expressions for time and space. Such references tend to be imprecise (what is the exact meaning of tonight?), and also to be interpreted in different ways by different people. Hence it may be necessary to explicitly reason about false positive vs false negative tradeoffs, and even calculate the utility of different possible referring expressions in a particular task context. === Criteria for good expressions === Ideally, a good referring expression should satisfy a number of criteria: Referential success: It should unambiguously identify the referent to the reader. Ease of comprehension: The reader should be able to quickly read and understand it. Computational complexity: The generation algorithm should be fast No false inferences: The expression should not confuse or mislead the reader by suggesting false implicatures or other pragmatic inferences. For example, a reader may be confused if he is told Sit by the brown wooden table in a context where there is only one table. == History == === Pre-2000 era === REG goes back to the early days of NLG. One of the first approaches was done by Winograd in 1972 who developed an "incremental" REG algorithm for his SHRDLU program. Afterwards researchers started to model the human abilities to create referring expressions in the 1980s. This new approach to the topic was influenced by the researchers Appelt and Kronfeld who created the programs KAMP and BERTRAND and considered referring expressions as parts of bigger speech acts. Some of their most interesting findings were the fact that referring expressions can be used to add information beyond the identification of the referent as well as the influence of communicative context and the Gricean maxims on referring expressions. Furthermore, its skepticism concerning the naturalness of minimal descriptions made Appelt and Kronfeld's research a foundation of later work on REG. The search for simple, well-defined problems changed the direction of research in the early 1990s. This new approach was led by Dale and Reiter who stressed the identification of the referent as the central goal. Like Appelt they discuss the connection between the Gricean maxims and referring expressions in their culminant paper in which they also propose a formal problem definition. Furthermore, Reiter and Dale discuss the Full Brevity and Greedy Heuristics algorithms as well as their Incremental Algorithm(IA) which became one of the most important algorithms in REG. === Later developments === After 2000 the research began to lift some of the simplifying assumptions, that had been made in early REG research in order to create more simple algorithms. Different research groups concentrated on different limitations creating several expanded algorithms. Often these extend the IA in a single perspective for example in relation to: Reference to Sets like "the t-shirt wearers" or "the green apples and the banana on the left" Relational Descriptions like "the cup on the table" or "the woman who has three children" Context Dependency, Vagueness and Gradeability include statements like "the older man" or "the car on the left" which are often unclear without a context Salience and Generation of Pronouns are highly discourse dependent making for example "she" a reference to "the (most salient) female person" Many simplifying assumptions are still in place or have just begun to be worked on. Also a combination of the different extensions has yet to be done and is called a "non-trivial enterprise" by Krahmer and van Deemter. Another important change after 2000 was the increasing use of empirical studies in order to evaluate algorithms. This development took place due to the emergence of transparent corpora. Although there are still discussions about what the best evaluation metrics are, the use of experimental evaluation has already led to a better comparability of algorithms, a discussion about the goals of REG and more task-oriented research. Furthermore, research has extended its range to related topics such as the choice of Knowledge Representation(KR) Frameworks. In this area the main question, which KR framework is most suitable for the use in REG remains open. The answer to this question depends on how well descriptions can be expressed or found. A lot of the potential of KR frameworks has been left unused so far. Some of the different approaches are the usage of: Graph search which treats relations between targets in the same way as properties. Constraint Satisfaction which allows for a separation between problem specification and the implementation. Modern Knowledge Representation which offers logical inference in for example Description Logic or Conceptual Graphs. == Problem definition == Dale and Reiter (1995) think about referring expressions as distinguishing descriptions. They define: The referent as the entity that should be described The context set as set of salient entities The contrast set or potential distractors as all elements of the context set except the referent A property as a reference to a single attribute–value pair Each entity in the domain can be characterised as a set of attribute–value pairs for example ⟨ {\displaystyle \langle } type, dog ⟩ {\displaystyle \rangle } , ⟨ {\displaystyle \langle } gender, female ⟩ {\displaystyle \rangle } or ⟨ {\displaystyle \langle } age, 10 years ⟩ {\displaystyle \rangle } . The problem then is defined as follows: Let r {\displaystyle r} be the intended referent, and C {\displaystyle C} be the contrast set. Then, a set L {\displaystyle L} of attribute–value pairs will represent a distinguishing description if the following two conditions hold: Every attribute–value pair in L {\displaystyle L} applies to r {\displaystyle r} : that is, every element of L {\displaystyle L} specifies an attribute–value that r {\displaystyle r} possesses. For every member c {\displaystyle c} of C {\displaystyle C} , there is at least one element l {\displaystyle l} of L {\displaystyle L} that does not apply to c {\displaystyle c} : that is, there is an l {\displaystyle l} in L {\displaystyle L} that specifies an attribute–value that c {\displaystyle c} does not possess. l {\displaystyle l} is said

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  • Data steward

    Data steward

    A data steward is an oversight or data governance role within an organization, and is responsible for ensuring the quality and fitness for purpose of the organization's data assets, including the metadata for those data assets. A data steward may share some responsibilities with a data custodian, such as the awareness, accessibility, release, appropriate use, security and management of data. A data steward would also participate in the development and implementation of data assets. A data steward may seek to improve the quality and fitness for purpose of other data assets their organization depends upon but is not responsible for. Data stewards have a specialist role that utilizes an organization's data governance processes, policies, guidelines and responsibilities for administering an organizations' entire data in compliance with policy and/or regulatory obligations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA). The overall objective of a data steward is the data quality of the data assets, datasets, data records and data elements. This includes documenting metainformation for the data, such as definitions, related rules/governance, physical manifestation, and related data models (most of these properties being specific to an attribute/concept relationship), identifying owners/custodian's various responsibilities, relations insight pertaining to attribute quality, aiding with project requirement data facilitation and documentation of capture rules. Data stewards begin the stewarding process with the identification of the data assets and elements which they will steward, with the ultimate result being standards, controls and data entry. The steward works closely with business glossary standards analysts (for standards), with data architect/modelers (for standards), with DQ analysts (for controls) and with operations team members (good-quality data going in per business rules) while entering data. Data stewardship roles are common when organizations attempt to exchange data precisely and consistently between computer systems and to reuse data-related resources. Master data management often makes references to the need for data stewardship for its implementation to succeed. Data stewardship must have precise purpose, fit for purpose or fitness. == Data steward responsibilities == A data steward ensures that each assigned data element: Has clear and unambiguous data element definition Does not conflict with other data elements in the metadata registry (removes duplicates, overlap etc.) Has clear enumerated value definitions if it is of type Code Is still being used (remove unused data elements) Is being used consistently in various computer systems Is being used, fit for purpose = Data Fitness Has adequate documentation on appropriate usage and notes Documents the origin and sources of authority on each metadata element Is protected against unauthorised access or change Responsibilities of data stewards vary between different organisations and institutions. For example, at Delft University of Technology, data stewards are perceived as the first contact point for any questions related to research data. They also have subject-specific background allowing them to easily connect with researchers and to contextualise data management problems to take into account disciplinary practices. == Types of data stewards == Depending on the set of data stewardship responsibilities assigned to an individual, there are 4 types (or dimensions of responsibility) of data stewards typically found within an organization: Data object data steward - responsible for managing reference data and attributes of one business data entity Business data steward - responsible for managing critical data, both reference and transactional, created or used by one business function. The data steward may also serve as a liaison between the organization's data users and technical teams, helping to bridge the gap between business needs and technical requirements. They may also play a role in educating others within the organization about best practices for data management, and advocating for data-driven decision-making. Process data steward - responsible for managing data across one business process System data steward - responsible for managing data for at least one IT system == Benefits of data stewardship == Systematic data stewardship can foster: Faster analysis Consistent use of data management resources Easy mapping of data between computer systems and exchange documents Lower costs associated with migration to (for example) service-oriented architecture (SOA) Mitigation of data risk Better control of dangers associated with privacy, legal, errors, etc. Assignment of each data element to a person sometimes seems like an unimportant process. But multiple groups have found that users have greater trust and usage rates in systems where they can contact a person with questions on each data element. == Examples == Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) offers an example of data stewardship implementation at a research institution. In 2017 the Data Stewardship Project was initiated at TU Delft to address research data management needs in a disciplinary manner across the whole campus. Dedicated data stewards with subject-specific background were appointed at every TU Delft faculty to support researchers with data management questions and to act as a linking point with the other institutional support services. The project is coordinated centrally by TU Delft Library, and it has its own website, blog and a YouTube channel. The [1]EPA metadata registry furnishes an example of data stewardship. Note that each data element therein has a "POC" (point of contact). In 2023, ETH Zurich launched the Data Stewardship Network (DSN) to facilitate collaboration among employees engaged in data management, analysis, and code development across research groups. The DSN serves as a platform for networking and knowledge exchange, aiming to professionalize the role of data stewards who support research data management and reproducible workflows. Established by the team for Research Data Management and Digital Curation at the ETH Library, the DSN collaborates with Scientific IT Services to provide expertise in areas such as storage infrastructure and reproducible workflows. == Data stewardship applications == Information stewardship applications are business solutions used by business users acting in the role of information steward (interpreting and enforcing information governance policy, for example). These developing solutions represent, for the most part, an amalgam of a number of disparate, previously IT-centric tools already on the market, but are organized and presented in such a way that information stewards (a business role) can support the work of information policy enforcement as part of their normal, business-centric, day-to-day work in a range of use cases. The initial push for the formation of this new category of packaged software came from operational use cases — that is, use of business data in and between transactional and operational business applications. This is where most of the master data management efforts are undertaken in organizations. However, there is also now a faster-growing interest in the new data lake arena for more analytical use cases.

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  • Kurzsignale

    Kurzsignale

    The Short Signal Code, also known as the Short Signal Book (German: Kurzsignalbuch), was a short code system used by the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) during World War II to minimize the transmission duration of messages. == Description == The transmission of radio messages had the potential risks of revealing the submarine's presence and direction; if decoded the content was also revealed. Submarines need to provide information, mostly in standard form (position of convoy to attack and of submarine, weather information), to their bases. Initially Morse code transmissions could be used. To inhibit detection, the duration of messages needed to be minimised; for this, Kurzsignale short-coding was used. To prevent interception, messages needed to be encrypted by the Enigma machine. To shorten transmission even further, the message could be sent by a fast machine instead of a human radio operator. For example, the Kurier system – not implemented in time – decreased the time to send a Morse dot from around 50 milliseconds for a human to 1 millisecond. == Short Signal book == The Kurzsignale code was intended to shorten transmission time to below the time required to get a directional fix. It was not primarily intended to hide signal contents; protection was intended to be achieved by encoding with the Enigma machine. A copy of the Kurzsignale code book was captured from German submarine U-110 on 9 May 1941. In August 1941, Dönitz began addressing U-boats by the names of their commanders, instead of boat numbers. The method of defining U-boat meeting points in the Short Signal Book was regarded as compromised, so a method was defined by B-Dienst cryptanalysts to disguise their positions on the Kriegsmarine German Naval Grid System (German:Gradnetzmeldeverfahren) was introduced and used until the end of the war == Radio direction finding == Aware of the danger presented by radio direction finding (RDF), the Kriegsmarine developed various systems to speed up broadcast. The Kurzsignale code system condensed messages into short codes consisting of short sequences for common terms such as "convoy location" so that additional descriptions would not be needed in the message. The resulting Kurzsignal was then encoded with the Enigma machine and subsequently transmitted as rapidly as possible, typically taking about 20 seconds. Typical length of an information or weather signal was about 25 characters. Conventional RDF needed about a minute to fix the bearing of a radio signal, and the Kurzsignale protected against this. However, the huff-duff system which was in use by the Allies could cope with these short transmissions. The fully automated burst transmission Kurier system, in testing from August 1944, could send a Kurzsignal in not more than 460 milliseconds; this was short enough to prevent location even by huff-duff and, if deployed, would have been a serious setback for Allied anti-submarine and code-breaking activities. By late 1944 the Kurier program was a top priority, but the war ended before the system was operational. == Short Weather cipher == A similar coding system was used for weather reports from U-boats, the Wetterkurzschlüssel (Short Weather Cipher). Code books were captured from U-559 on 30 October 1942.

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  • Conditional disclosure of secrets

    Conditional disclosure of secrets

    Conditional disclosure of secrets (CDS) is a primitive, studied in information-theoretic cryptography, that allows distributed, non-communicating parties to coordinate the release of information to a third party. CDS was initially introduced for use in the context of private information retrieval, and has been related to communication complexity and non-local quantum computation. == Definition of conditional disclosure of secrets == The conditional disclosure of secrets setting involves three players; Alice, Bob and the referee. Alice receives an input x ∈ { 0 , 1 } n {\displaystyle x\in \{0,1\}^{n}} and a secret z ∈ { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle z\in \{0,1\}} , and Bob receives a string y ∈ { 0 , 1 } n {\displaystyle y\in \{0,1\}^{n}} . A choice of Boolean function f : { 0 , 1 } 2 n → { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle f:\{0,1\}^{2n}\rightarrow \{0,1\}} is fixed in advance and known to all players. Alice and Bob cannot communicate with one another, but share a string of random bits which we label r {\displaystyle r} . Alice and Bob compute messages m A = m A ( x , z , r ) {\displaystyle m_{A}=m_{A}(x,z,r)} and m B = m B ( y , r ) {\displaystyle m_{B}=m_{B}(y,r)} , which they send to the referee. The referee knows ( x , y ) {\displaystyle (x,y)} . A CDS protocol consists of the encoding maps applied by Alice and Bob. A protocol is said to be ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } -correct if, for all ( x , y ) ∈ f − 1 ( 1 ) {\displaystyle (x,y)\in f^{-1}(1)} , the referee can determine z {\displaystyle z} with probability 1 − ϵ {\displaystyle 1-\epsilon } . A protocol is said to be δ {\displaystyle \delta } -secure if, for all ( x , y ) ∈ f − 1 ( 0 ) {\displaystyle (x,y)\in f^{-1}(0)} the distribution of the messages is δ {\displaystyle \delta } close to a simulator distribution (in total variation distance), where the simulator distribution is independent of z {\displaystyle z} . The communication complexity of a CDS protocol P is the total number of bits of message sent by Alice and Bob. The CDS communication cost of a function, C D S ϵ , δ ( f ) {\displaystyle CDS_{\epsilon ,\delta }(f)} is the minimal communication cost of an ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } -correct, δ {\displaystyle \delta } secure protocol that implements f {\displaystyle f} . The randomness complexity and randomness cost of implementing a function in the CDS model are defined similarly, but consider the number of bits of shared random bits held by Alice and Bob. == Basic properties of the primitive == === Amplification === Supposing we have an ϵ {\displaystyle \epsilon } -correct and δ {\displaystyle \delta } -secure CDS protocol, it is known that we can find a new protocol which reduces the correctness and privacy errors at the expense of an increased communication and randomness cost. More specifically, the following theorem has been proven Theorem (Amplification). A CDS protocol for f which supports a single-bit secret with privacy and correctness error of 1/3 can be transformed into a new CDS protocol with privacy and correctness error of 2 − Ω ( k ) {\displaystyle 2^{-\Omega (k)}} and communication/randomness complexity which are larger than those of the original protocol by a multiplicative factor of O(k). In fact, somewhat more than the above theorem is true in that the size of the secret can also be made to be of length k {\displaystyle k} , while simultaneously reducing the correctness and privacy errors as above. The proof involves first encoding the secret z {\displaystyle z} into a secret sharing scheme, and then running the original CDS protocol on each share of the resulting scheme. === Closure === If a CDS protocol for a function f {\displaystyle f} is known, then certain simple modifications of f {\displaystyle f} have CDS protocols with similar efficiency. The simplest case is to consider a CDS protocol for function f {\displaystyle f} and ask for a similarly efficient protocol for the negation of f {\displaystyle f} , labelled ¬ f {\displaystyle \neg f} . This is addressed by the following theorem Theorem (CDS is closed under complement). Suppose that f has a CDS protocol with randomness cost of ρ {\displaystyle \rho } bits, communication complexity of t {\displaystyle t} bits, and privacy and correctness errors δ = ϵ = 2 − k {\displaystyle \delta =\epsilon =2^{-k}} . Then ¬ f {\displaystyle \neg f} has a CDS scheme with similar privacy and correctness errors, and randomness and communication complexity of O ( k 3 ρ 2 t + k 3 ρ 3 ) {\displaystyle O(k^{3}\rho ^{2}t+k^{3}\rho ^{3})} . The cost of a CDS protocol is also closed under formula's, in the following sense. Consider two functions f 1 {\displaystyle f_{1}} and f 2 {\displaystyle f_{2}} . Then, the communication and randomness costs of f 1 ∧ f 2 {\displaystyle f_{1}\wedge f_{2}} as well as f 1 ∨ f 2 {\displaystyle f_{1}\vee f_{2}} are not much larger than the sum of the costs for f 1 {\displaystyle f_{1}} and f 2 {\displaystyle f_{2}} . See Applebaum et al. for a precise statement. == Upper and lower bounds on communication cost == Given a function f {\displaystyle f} we would like to understand the communication and randomness costs to implement f {\displaystyle f} in the CDS setting. Towards understanding this, protocols for implementing CDS have been developed (which give an upper bound on the cost) and lower bound strategies have been developed. For most functions, there is a large gap between the known upper and lower bound, so understanding the cost of CDS remains largely an open problem. This section presents some of what is known so far about the cost of CDS. === Secret sharing based upper bound === A subject with a close relationship to CDS is secret sharing. Secret sharing constructions provide an upper bound on the cost of CDS protocols. A secret sharing scheme encodes a secret, s {\displaystyle s} into a set of shares S 1 , . . . , S n {\displaystyle S_{1},...,S_{n}} . Associated to any secret sharing scheme is an access structure, which consists of a set of authorized sets A = A 1 , . . . , A k {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}={A_{1},...,A_{k}}} with A i ⊆ { S 1 , . . . , S n } {\displaystyle A_{i}\subseteq \{S_{1},...,S_{n}\}} . The authorized sets are those subsets of the A i {\displaystyle A_{i}} from which it is possible to recover the secret recorded into the scheme. A succinct way to describe an access structure is in terms of a function f A : { 0 , 1 } n → { 0 , 1 } {\displaystyle f_{\mathcal {A}}:\{0,1\}^{n}\rightarrow \{0,1\}} . Each subset of the shares K [ x ] ⊂ { S 1 , . . . , S n } {\displaystyle K[x]\subset \{S_{1},...,S_{n}\}} is labelled by a string x ∈ { 0 , 1 } n {\displaystyle x\in \{0,1\}^{n}} such that x i = 1 {\displaystyle x_{i}=1} if and only if S i ∈ K {\displaystyle S_{i}\in K} . Then we define f A {\displaystyle f_{\mathcal {A}}} to be such that f A ( x ) = 1 {\displaystyle f_{\mathcal {A}}(x)=1} if and only if K [ x ] ∈ A {\displaystyle K[x]\in {\mathcal {A}}} . In words, the function f A {\displaystyle f_{\mathcal {A}}} is 1 when given an authorized subset as input, and 0 otherwise. A basic result in the theory of secret sharing is that an access structure A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} can be realized in a secret sharing scheme if and only if f A {\displaystyle f_{\mathcal {A}}} is monotone. The size of a secret sharing scheme is defined as the total number of bits in the shares S i {\displaystyle S_{i}} . For monotone functions, there is an upper bound on the communication cost in CDS for any monotone function f {\displaystyle f} in terms of the size of any secret sharing scheme with access structure given by f {\displaystyle f} , C D S ϵ = 0 , δ = 0 ( f ) ≤ S h a r i n g S i z e ( f ) {\displaystyle CDS_{\epsilon =0,\delta =0}(f)\leq SharingSize(f)} For some concrete classes of secret sharing schemes, this relationship can be extended to general (non-monotone) Boolean functions. This leads to an upper bound on CDS cost in terms of the size of any span program that computes f {\displaystyle f} , C D S ϵ = 0 , δ = 0 ( f ) ≤ S P k ( f ) {\displaystyle CDS_{\epsilon =0,\delta =0}(f)\leq SP_{k}(f)} The class of problems with efficient (polynomial size) span program is the complexity class M o d k L {\displaystyle Mod_{k}L} , so problems in this class have efficient CDS protocols. === Sub-exponential upper bounds for all functions === Using a matching vector family based construction, it has been proven that ∀ f , C D S ϵ = 0 , δ = 0 ( f ) ≤ 2 O ( n log ⁡ n ) {\displaystyle \forall f,\,\,\,\,\,\,CDS_{\epsilon =0,\delta =0}(f)\leq 2^{O({\sqrt {n\log n}})}} . The technique for this proof is similar to one used to prove upper bounds on private information retrieval. This upper bound on CDS also leads to sub-exponential upper bounds on the size of a large class of secret sharing schemes. === Lower bounds from communication complexity === In a CDS protocol, the referee is given the inputs ( x , y ) {\displaystyle (x,y)} . This means it is not clear if the messages sent by Alice a

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  • Clipping (computer graphics)

    Clipping (computer graphics)

    Clipping, in the context of computer graphics, is a method to selectively enable or disable rendering operations within a defined region of interest. Mathematically, clipping can be described using the terminology of constructive geometry. A rendering algorithm only draws pixels in the intersection between the clip region and the scene model. Lines and surfaces outside the view volume (aka. frustum) are removed. Clip regions are commonly specified to improve render performance. Pixels that will be drawn are said to be within the clip region. Pixels that will not be drawn are outside the clip region. More informally, pixels that will not be drawn are said to be "clipped." == In 2D graphics == In two-dimensional graphics, a clip region may be defined so that pixels are only drawn within the boundaries of a window or frame. Clip regions can also be used to selectively control pixel rendering for aesthetic or artistic purposes. In many implementations, the final clip region is the composite (or intersection) of one or more application-defined shapes, as well as any system hardware constraints In one example application, consider an image editing program. A user application may render the image into a viewport. As the user zooms and scrolls to view a smaller portion of the image, the application can set a clip boundary so that pixels outside the viewport are not rendered. In addition, GUI widgets, overlays, and other windows or frames may obscure some pixels from the original image. In this sense, the clip region is the composite of the application-defined "user clip" and the "device clip" enforced by the system's software and hardware implementation. Application software can take advantage of this clip information to save computation time, energy, and memory, avoiding work related to pixels that aren't visible. == In 3D graphics == In three-dimensional graphics, the terminology of clipping can be used to describe many related features. Typically, "clipping" refers to operations in the plane that work with rectangular shapes, and "culling" refers to more general methods to selectively process scene model elements. This terminology is not rigid, and exact usage varies among many sources. Scene model elements include geometric primitives: points or vertices; line segments or edges; polygons or faces; and more abstract model objects such as curves, splines, surfaces, and even text. In complicated scene models, individual elements may be selectively disabled (clipped) for reasons including visibility within the viewport (frustum culling); orientation (backface culling), obscuration by other scene or model elements (occlusion culling, depth- or "z" clipping). Sophisticated algorithms exist to efficiently detect and perform such clipping. Many optimized clipping methods rely on specific hardware acceleration logic provided by a graphics processing unit (GPU). The concept of clipping can be extended to higher dimensionality using methods of abstract algebraic geometry. === Near clipping === Beyond projection of vertices & 2D clipping, near clipping is required to correctly rasterise 3D primitives; this is because vertices may have been projected behind the eye. Near clipping ensures that all the vertices used have valid 2D coordinates. Together with far-clipping it also helps prevent overflow of depth-buffer values. Some early texture mapping hardware (using forward texture mapping) in video games suffered from complications associated with near clipping and UV coordinates. === Occlusion clipping (Z- or depth clipping) === In 3D computer graphics, "Z" often refers to the depth axis in the system of coordinates centered at the viewport origin: "Z" is used interchangeably with "depth", and conceptually corresponds to the distance "into the virtual screen." In this coordinate system, "X" and "Y" therefore refer to a conventional cartesian coordinate system laid out on the user's screen or viewport. This viewport is defined by the geometry of the viewing frustum, and parameterizes the field of view. Z-clipping, or depth clipping, refers to techniques that selectively render certain scene objects based on their depth relative to the screen. Most graphics toolkits allow the programmer to specify a "near" and "far" clip depth, and only portions of objects between those two planes are displayed. A creative application programmer can use this method to render visualizations of the interior of a 3D object in the scene. For example, a medical imaging application could use this technique to render the organs inside a human body. A video game programmer can use clipping information to accelerate game logic. For example, a tall wall or building that occludes other game entities can save GPU time that would otherwise be spent transforming and texturing items in the rear areas of the scene; and a tightly integrated software program can use this same information to save CPU time by optimizing out game logic for objects that aren't seen by the player. == Algorithms == Line clipping algorithms: Cohen–Sutherland Liang–Barsky Fast-clipping Cyrus–Beck Nicholl–Lee–Nicholl Skala O(lg N) algorithm Polygon clipping algorithms: Greiner–Hormann Sutherland–Hodgman Weiler–Atherton Vatti Rendering methodologies Painter's algorithm

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  • Azuqua

    Azuqua

    Azuqua is an American cloud-based integration and automation company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. As such, they integrate SaaS applications and create automations that are designed to eliminate manual work. Azuqua's platform has the ability to set up workflows between multiple applications so disparate teams can stay in the loop. Azuqua's customers include companies such as Charles Schwab, General Electric, General Motors, HubSpot, and Airbnb. == History == Nikhil Hasija and Craig Unger founded Azuqua in 2011. In 2013, the team participated in Techstars Microsoft's Windows Azure Accelerator, a Seattle-based incubator that helps entrepreneurs gain traction through deep mentor engagement and rapid iteration cycles. Azuqua announced in 2014 that they have received their Series A funding from Ignition Partners which amounted to $5 million. 2017 included a 65% growth in new customers, a doubling of new SaaS connectors, and a 50% growth in overall employee headcount. Azuqua also received their Series B funding which totaled to $10.8 million. This funding was led by Insight Ventures Partners, with DFJ and Ignition Partners also joining the round In March 2018, Azuqua hired Todd Owens as CEO. Owens was previously CEO of Appuri, a customer data platform. Hasija has transitioned to the role of Chief Product Officer. Azuqua also hired on Dan Kogan who has taken on the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Kogan previously worked at Tableau, a BI and analytics company, as a Senior Director of Product Marketing. Okta acquired Azuqua in 2019. == Product Description/Features == Logic Library: Logic functions that can be used for data processing, branching logic, and business rules Drag and Drop Visual Designer: No-code visual designer Use of API's for each cloud service a business is using to allow the various apps to communicate and share data API Publishing: Integrations and automations can be made available as secure endpoints, webhooks, or open services Connector Builder: Build a connector to an application Connector Library: Pre-built connectors to SaaS applications Error Handling: Automations that execute when an error is detected

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  • Localhost

    Localhost

    In computer networking, localhost is a hostname that refers to the current computer used to access it. The name localhost is reserved for loopback purposes. It is used to access the network services that are running on the host via the loopback network interface. Using the loopback interface bypasses any local network interface hardware. == Loopback == The local loopback mechanism may be used to run a network service on a host without requiring a physical network interface, or without making the service accessible from the networks the computer may be connected to. For example, a locally installed website may be accessed from a Web browser by the URL http://localhost to display its home page. IPv4 network standards reserve the entire address block 127.0.0.0/8 (more than 16 million addresses) for loopback purposes. That means any packet sent to any of those addresses is looped back. The address 127.0.0.1 is the standard address for IPv4 loopback traffic; the rest are not supported by all operating systems. However, they can be used to set up multiple server applications on the host, all listening on the same port number. In the IPv6 addressing architecture there is only a single address assigned for loopback: ::1. The standard precludes the assignment of that address to any physical interface, as well as its use as the source or destination address in any packet sent to remote hosts. == Name resolution == The name localhost normally resolves to the IPv4 loopback address 127.0.0.1, and to the IPv6 loopback address ::1. This resolution is normally configured by the following lines in the operating system's hosts file: 127.0.0.1 localhost ::1 localhost The name may also be resolved by Domain Name System (DNS) servers, but there are special considerations governing the use of this name: An IPv4 or IPv6 address query for the name localhost must always resolve to the respective loopback address. Applications may resolve the name to a loopback address themselves, or pass it to the local name resolver mechanisms. When a name resolver receives an address (A or AAAA) query for localhost, it should return the appropriate loopback addresses, and negative responses for any other requested record types. Queries for localhost should not be sent to caching name servers. To avoid burdening the Domain Name System root servers with traffic, caching name servers should never request name server records for localhost, or forward resolution to authoritative name servers. When authoritative name servers receive queries for 'localhost' in spite of the provisions mentioned above, they should resolve them appropriately. In addition to the mapping of localhost to the loopback addresses (127.0.0.1 and ::1), localhost may also be mapped to other IPv4 (loopback) addresses and it is also possible to assign other, or additional, names to any loopback address. The mapping of localhost to addresses other than the designated loopback address range in the hosts file or in DNS is not guaranteed to have the desired effect, as applications may map the name internally. In the Domain Name System, the name .localhost is reserved as a top-level domain name, originally set aside to avoid confusion with the hostname localhost. Domain name registrars are precluded from delegating domain names in the top-level .localhost domain. == Historical notes == In 1981, the block 127.0.0.0/8 got a 'reserved' status, as not to assign it as a general purpose class A IP network. This block was officially assigned for loopback purposes in 1986. Its purpose as a Special Use IPv4 Address block was confirmed in 1994,, 2002, 2010,, and last in 2013. From the outset, in 1995, the single IPv6 loopback address ::1 was defined. Its purpose and definition was unchanged in 1998,, 2003,, and up to the current definition, in 2006. == Packet processing == The processing of any packet sent to a loopback address, is implemented in the link layer of the TCP/IP stack. Such packets are never passed to any network interface controller (NIC) or hardware device driver and must not appear outside of a computing system, or be routed by any router. This permits software testing and local services, even in the absence of any hardware network interfaces. Looped-back packets are distinguished from any other packets traversing the TCP/IP stack only by the special IP address they were addressed to. Thus, the services that ultimately receive them respond according to the specified destination. For example, an HTTP service could route packets addressed to 127.0.0.99:80 and 127.0.0.100:80 to different Web servers, or to a single server that returns different web pages. To simplify such testing, the hosts file may be configured to provide appropriate names for each address. Packets received on a non-loopback interface with a loopback source or destination address must be dropped. Such packets are sometimes referred to as Martian packets. As with any other bogus packets, they may be malicious and any problems they might cause can be avoided by applying bogon filtering. == Special cases == The releases of the MySQL database differentiate between the use of the hostname localhost and the use of the addresses 127.0.0.1 and ::1. When using localhost as the destination in a client connector interface of an application, the MySQL application programming interface connects to the database using a Unix domain socket, while a TCP connection via the loopback interface requires the direct use of the explicit address. One notable exception to the use of the 127.0.0.0/8 addresses is their use in Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) traceroute error detection, in which their property of not being routable provides a convenient means to avoid delivery of faulty packets to end users.

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