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  Instance-based learning

  In machine learning, instance-based learning (sometimes called memory-based learning) is a family of learning algorithms that, instead of performing explicit generalization, compare new problem instances with instances seen in training, which have been stored in memory. Because computation is postponed until a new instance is observed, these algorithms are sometimes referred to as "lazy." It is called instance-based because it constructs hypotheses directly from the training instances themselves. This means that the hypothesis complexity can grow with the data: in the worst case, a hypothesis is a list of n training items and the computational complexity of classifying a single new instance is O(n). One advantage that instance-based learning has over other methods of machine learning is its ability to adapt its model to previously unseen data. Instance-based learners may simply store a new instance or throw an old instance away. Examples of instance-based learning algorithms are the k-nearest neighbors algorithm, kernel machines and RBF networks. These store (a subset of) their training set; when predicting a value/class for a new instance, they compute distances or similarities between this instance and the training instances to make a decision. To battle the memory complexity of storing all training instances, as well as the risk of overfitting to noise in the training set, instance reduction algorithms have been proposed.

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  Visopsys

  Visopsys (Visual Operating System), is an operating system, written by Andy McLaughlin. Development of the operating system began in 1997. The operating system is licensed under the GNU GPL, with the headers and libraries under the less restrictive LGPL license. It runs on the 32-bit IA-32 architecture. It features a multitasking kernel, supports asynchronous I/O and the FAT line of file systems. It requires a Pentium processor. == History == The development of Visopsys began in 1997, being written by Andy McLaughlin. The first public release of the Operating System was on 2 March 2001, with version 0.1. In this release, Visopsys was a 32 bit operating system, supporting preemptive multitasking and virtual memory. == System overview == Visopsys uses a monolithic kernel, written in the C programming language, with elements of assembly language for certain interactions with the hardware. The operating system supports a graphical user interface, with a small C library.

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  Usage share of operating systems

  The usage share of an operating system is the percentage of computers running that operating system (OS). These statistics are estimates as wide scale OS usage data is difficult to obtain and measure. Reliable primary sources are limited and data collection methodology is not formally agreed. Currently devices connected to the internet allow for web data collection to approximately measure OS usage. As of December 2025, Android, which uses the Linux kernel, is the world's most popular operating system with 38.94% of the global market, followed by Windows with 29.99%, iOS with 15.66%, macOS with 2.14%, and other operating systems with 10.78%. This is for all device types excluding embedded devices. For smartphones and other mobile devices, Android has 72% market share, and Apple's iOS has 28%. For desktop computers and laptops, Microsoft Windows has 60.8%, followed by unknown operating systems at 19.7%, Mac OS at 14.4%, desktop Linux at 3.2%, then Google's ChromeOS at 1.6%, as of March 2026. For tablets, Apple's iPadOS (a variant of iOS) has 52% share and Android has 48% worldwide. For the top 500 most powerful supercomputers, Linux distributions have had 100% of the market share since 2017. The global server operating system market share has Linux leading with a 63.1% marketshare, followed by Windows, Unix and other operating systems. Linux is also most used for web servers, and the most common Linux distribution is Ubuntu, followed by Debian. Linux has almost caught up with the second-most popular (desktop) OS, macOS, in some regions, such as in South America, and in Asia it's at 6.4% (7% with ChromeOS) vs 9.7% for macOS. In the US, ChromeOS is third at 5.5%, followed by (desktop) Linux at 4.3%. The most numerous type of device with an operating system are embedded systems. Not all embedded systems have operating systems, instead running their application code on the "bare metal"; of those that do have operating systems, a high percentage are standalone or do not have a web browser, which makes their usage share difficult to measure. Some operating systems used in embedded systems are more widely used than some of those mentioned above; for example, modern Intel microprocessors contain an embedded management processor running a version of the Minix operating system. == Worldwide device shipments == Shipments (to stores) do not necessarily translate to sales to consumers, therefore suggesting the numbers indicate popularity and/or usage could be misleading. Not only do smartphones sell in higher numbers than PCs, but also a lot more by dollar value, with the gap only projected to widen, to well over double. According to Gartner, the following is the worldwide device shipments (referring to wholesale) by operating system from 2012 to 2016, which includes smartphones, tablets, laptops and PCs together. On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, the day after Apple announced "one billion devices": Apple's "active installed base" is now one billion devices. [..] Granted, some of those Apple devices were probably sold into the marketplace years ago. But that 1 billion figure can and should be compared to the numbers Microsoft touts for Windows 10 (200 million, most recently) or Windows more generally (1.5 billion active users, a number that hasn’t moved, magically, in years), and that Google touts for Android (over 1.4 billion, as of September). My understanding of iOS is that the user base was previously thought to be around 800 million strong, and when you factor out Macs and other non-iOS Apple devices, that's probably about right. But as you can see, there are three big personal computing platforms. And only one of them is actually declining. We’ll see how Windows 10 fares over the long term, but even if Microsoft hits the 1 billion figure in 1-2 years as promised, it will by then still be the smallest of those three platforms. In 2018, Apple stopped revealing unit sales in its reports. Since 2018, the company have been publishing only revenues per device models which, nonetheless, allowed the analysers to extrapolate the unit sales from the model revenues by applying the wholesale device prices. Other hardware manufacturers usually do not report unit sales. === PC shipments === For 2015 (and earlier), Gartner reports for "the year, worldwide PC shipments declined for the fourth consecutive year, which started in 2012 with the launch of tablets" with an 8% decline in PC sales for 2015 (not including cumulative decline in sales over the previous years). Microsoft backed away from their goal of one billion Windows 10 devices in three years (or "by the middle of 2018") and reported on 26 September 2016 that Windows 10 was running on over 400 million devices, and in March 2019, on more than 800 million. In May 2020, Gartner predicted further decline in all market segments for 2020 due to COVID-19, predicting a decline of 13.6% for all devices. while the "Work from Home Trend Saved PC Market from Collapse", with only a decline of 10.5% predicted for PCs. However, in the end, according to Gartner, PC shipments grew 10.7% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and reached 275 million units in 2020, a 4.8% increase from 2019 and the highest growth in ten years." Apple in 4th place for PCs had the largest growth in shipments for a company in Q4 of 31.3%, while "the fourth quarter of 2020 was another remarkable period of growth for Chromebooks, with shipments increasing around 200% year over year to reach 11.7 million units. In 2020, Chromebook shipments increased over 80% to total nearly 30 million units, largely due to demand from the North American education market." Chromebooks sold more (30 million) than Apple's Macs worldwide (22.5 million) in pandemic year 2020. According to the Catalyst group, the year 2021 had record high PC shipments with total shipments of 341 million units (including Chromebooks), 15% higher than 2020 and 27% higher than 2019, while being the largest shipment total since 2012. According to Gartner, worldwide PC shipments declined by 16.2% in 2022, the largest annual decrease since the mid-1990s, due to geopolitical, economic, and supply chain challenges. In 2024 and 2025, due to lower adoption of Windows 11 and Microsoft ending its support to Windows 10, the number of PCs shipped with pre-installed Windows OS dropped. Pundits attribute the low Windows 11 acceptance to its steep hardware requirements and especially the TPM 2.0 ready chipset requirement and the 2024 CrowdStrike-related IT outages. Meanwhile, the macOS device market share in PC device shipments increased to new heights, with improved numbers seen for Linux devices too. In Q3 2025, the macOS pre-installed device shipments increased by 14.9% year-over-year (YoY), while the overall PC-shipments increased only by 8.1%, in Q2 2025, it grew 21.4% YoY while the global PC-shipments increased only by 6.5%, and in Q1 2025, it grew 7% YoY while the global PC-shipments increased by 4.8%. === Tablet computers shipments === In 2015, eMarketer estimated at the beginning of the year that the tablet installed base would hit one billion for the first time (with China's use at 328 million, which Google Play doesn't serve or track, and the United States's use second at 156 million). At the end of the year, because of cheap tablets – not counted by all analysts – that goal was met (even excluding cumulative sales of previous years) as: Sales quintupled to an expected 1 billion units worldwide this year, from 216 million units in 2014, according to projections from the Envisioneering Group. While that number is far higher than the 200-plus million units globally projected by research firms IDC, Gartner and Forrester, Envisioneering analyst Richard Doherty says the rival estimates miss all the cheap Asian knockoff tablets that have been churning off assembly lines.[..] Forrester says its definition of tablets "is relatively narrow" while IDC says it includes some tablets by Amazon — but not all.[..] The top tech purchase of the year continued to be the smartphone, with an expected 1.5 billion sold worldwide, according to projections from researcher IDC. Last year saw some 1.2 billion sold.[..] Computers didn’t fare as well, despite the introduction of Microsoft's latest software upgrade, Windows 10, and the expected but not realized bump it would provide for consumers looking to skip the upgrade and just get a new computer instead. Some 281 million PCs were expected to be sold, according to IDC, down from 308 million in 2014. Folks tend to be happy with the older computers and keep them for longer, as more of our daily computing activities have moved to the smartphone.[..] While Windows 10 got good reviews from tech critics, only 11% of the 1-billion-plus Windows user base opted to do the upgrade, according to Microsoft. This suggests Microsoft has a ways to go before the software gets "hit" status. Apple's new operating system El Capitan has been

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  Digital video recorder

  A digital video recorder (DVR), also referred to as a personal video recorder (PVR) particularly in Canadian and British English, is an electronic device that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card, SSD or other local or networked mass storage device. The term includes set-top boxes (STB) with direct to disk recording, portable media players and TV gateways with recording capability, and digital camcorders. Personal computers can be connected to video capture devices and used as DVRs; in such cases the application software used to record video is an integral part of the DVR. Many DVRs are classified as consumer electronic devices. Similar small devices with built-in (~5 inch diagonal) displays and SSD support may be used for professional film or video production, as these recorders often do not have the limitations that built-in recorders in cameras have, offering wider codec support, the removal of recording time limitations and higher bitrates. == History == In the 1980s, prototype high-definition (HD) digital video recorders were developed by Fujitsu, Hitachi, Sanyo and Canon Inc. In 1985, Hitachi demonstrated a prototype digital video tape recorder (VTR) that used digital recording video tape as storage media to record digital HD video content. In 1987, the first commercial digital video recorder was the Sony DVR-1000, a digital video cassette recorder (VCR) that recorded digital video content on D-1 (Sony) digital video cassettes. === Hard-disk-based DVR === In early 1995, Tektronix introduced the "Profile" series PDR100 Video Disk Recorder, which recorded and played back video stored on hard disk as motion JPEG. In 1996, Sweden's TV4 used the PDR100 extensively in building a new facility in Stockholm, and NBC used PDR100s at the Olympic games in Atlanta Georgia. The Tektronix Profile disk recorder won an Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development" at the 1996 Primetime Emmy Awards. In 1997 the U.S. Patent Office granted Tektronix patent 5,642,497 for two claims key to Profile. In 1998, Tektronix introduced two Profile models which were combined VDRs and file servers: the PDR200 and PDR300. The PDR300 stored its compressed video as MPEG-2 (ISO/IEC 13818-2) A working disk-based DVR prototype was developed in 1998 at Stanford University Computer Science department. The DVR design was a chapter of Edward Y. Chang's PhD dissertation, supervised by Professors Hector Garcia-Molina and Jennifer Widom. Two design papers were published at the 1998 VLDB conference, and the 1999 ICDE conference. The prototype was developed in 1998 at Pat Hanrahan's CS488 class: Experiments in Digital Television, and the prototype was demoed to industrial partners including Sony, Intel, and Apple. Consumer digital video recorders ReplayTV and TiVo were launched at the 1999 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Microsoft also demonstrated a unit with DVR capability, but this did not become available until the end of 1999 for full DVR features in Dish Network's DISHplayer receivers. TiVo shipped their first units on March 31, 1999. ReplayTV won the "Best of Show" award in the video category with Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen as an early investor and board member, but TiVo was more successful commercially. Ad Age cited Forrester Research as saying that market penetration by the end of 1999 was "less than 100,000". In 2001, Toshiba introduced a combination DVR that allows video recording on both DVD recordable and hard disk drive. Legal action by media companies forced ReplayTV to remove many features such as automatic commercial skip and the sharing of recordings over the Internet, but newer devices have steadily regained these functions while adding complementary abilities, such as recording onto DVDs and programming and remote control facilities using PDAs, networked PCs, and Web browsers. In contrast to VCRs, hard-disk based digital video recorders make "time shifting" more convenient and also allow for functions such as pausing live TV, instant replay, chasing playback (viewing a recording before it has been completed) and skipping over advertising during playback. Many DVRs use the MPEG format for compressing the digital video. Video recording capabilities have become an essential part of the modern set-top box, as TV viewers have wanted to take control of their viewing experiences. As consumers have been able to converge increasing amounts of video content on their set-tops, delivered by traditional 'broadcast' cable, satellite and terrestrial as well as IP networks, the ability to capture programming and view it whenever they want has become a must-have function for many consumers. === DVR tied to video service === At the 1999 CES, Dish Network demonstrated the hardware that would later have DVR capability with the assistance of Microsoft software, which also included access to the WebTV service. By the end of 1999 the Dishplayer had full DVR capabilities and within a year, over 200,000 units were sold. In the UK, digital video recorders are often referred to as "plus boxes" (such as BSKYB's Sky+ and Virgin Media's V+ which integrates an HD capability, and the subscription free Freesat+ and Freeview+). Freeview+ have been around in the UK since the late 2000s, although the platform's first DVR, the Pace Twin, dates to 2002. British Sky Broadcasting marketed a popular combined receiver and DVR as Sky+, now replaced by the Sky Q box. TiVo launched a UK model in 2000, and is no longer supported, except for third party services, and the continuation of TiVo through Virgin Media in 2010. South African based Africa Satellite TV beamer Multichoice recently launched their DVR which is available on their DStv platform. In addition to ReplayTV and TiVo, there are a number of other suppliers of digital terrestrial (DTT) DVRs, including Technicolor SA, Topfield, Fusion, Commscope, Humax, VBox Communications, AC Ryan Playon and Advanced Digital Broadcast (ADB). Many satellite, cable and IPTV companies are incorporating digital video recording functions into their set-top box, such as with DirecTiVo, DISHPlayer/DishDVR, Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8xxx from Time Warner, Total Home DVR from AT&T U-verse, Motorola DCT6412 from Comcast and others, Moxi Media Center by Digeo (available through Charter, Adelphia, Sunflower, Bend Broadband, and soon Comcast and other cable companies), or Sky+. Astro introduced their DVR system, called Astro MAX, which was the first PVR in Malaysia but was phased out two years after its introduction. In the case of digital television, there is no encoding necessary in the DVR since the signal is already a digitally encoded MPEG stream. The digital video recorder simply stores the digital stream directly to disk. Having the broadcaster involved with, and sometimes subsidizing, the design of the DVR can lead to features such as the ability to use interactive TV on recorded shows, pre-loading of programs, or directly recording encrypted digital streams. It can, however, also force the manufacturer to implement non-skippable advertisements and automatically expiring recordings. In the United States, the FCC has ruled that starting on July 1, 2007, consumers will be able to purchase a set-top box from a third-party company, rather than being forced to purchase or rent the set-top box from their cable company. This ruling only applies to "navigation devices", otherwise known as a cable television set-top box, and not to the security functions that control the user's access to the content of the cable operator. The overall net effect on digital video recorders and related technology is unlikely to be substantial as standalone DVRs are currently readily available on the open market. In Europe Free-To-Air and Pay TV TV gateways with multiple tuners have whole house recording capabilities allowing recording of TV programs to Network Attached Storage or attached USB storage, recorded programs are then shared across the home network to tablet, smartphone, PC, Mac, Smart TV. === Introduction of dual tuners === In 2003 many Satellite and Cable providers introduced dual-tuner digital video recorders. In the UK, BSkyB introduced their first PVR Sky+ with dual tuner support in 2001. These machines have two independent tuners within the same receiver. The main use for this feature is the capability to record a live program while watching another live program simultaneously or to record two programs at the same time, possibly while watching a previously recorded one. Kogan.com introduced a dual-tuner PVR in the Australian market allowing free-to-air television to be recorded on a removable hard drive. Some dual-tuner DVRs also have the ability to output to two separate television sets at the same time. The PVR manufactured by UEC (Durban, South Africa) and used by Multichoice and Scientific Atlanta 8300DVB PVR have the ability to view two

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  Ampere Computing

  Ampere Computing LLC is an American fabless semiconductor company that designs ARM-based central processing units (CPUs) with high core counts for use in cloud computing and data center environments. Founded in 2017 by former Intel president Renée James, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and operates as an independent subsidiary of SoftBank Group since November 2025. == History == Ampere Computing was founded in fall 2017 by Renée James, ex-President of Intel, with funding from The Carlyle Group. James acquired a team from MACOM Technology Solutions (formerly AppliedMicro) in addition to several industry hires to start the company. Ampere Computing is an ARM architecture licensee and develops its own server microprocessors. Ampere fabricates its products at TSMC. In April 2019, Ampere announced its second major investment round, including investment from Arm Holdings and Oracle Corporation. In June 2019, Nvidia announced a partnership with Ampere to bring support for Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). In November 2019, Nvidia announced a reference design platform for graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated ARM-based servers including Ampere. In the first half of 2020, Ampere announced Ampere Altra, an 80-core processor, and Ampere Altra Max, a 128-core processor, without the use of simultaneous multithreading. In March 2020, the company announced a partnership with Oracle. In September 2020, Oracle said it would launch bare-metal and virtual machine instances in early 2021 based on Ampere Altra. In November 2020, Ampere was named one of the top 10 hottest semiconductor startups by CRN. In May 2021, the company announced a partnership with Microsoft. In April 2022, Ampere said that it had filed a confidential prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, signaling its intent to go public. In June 2022, HPE announced their Gen11 ProLiant system would use Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max Cloud Native Processors. In July 2022, Google announced T2A instances using Ampere Altra in the Google cloud and in August 2022 Microsoft announced their instances of Ampere running in Azure. On March 19, 2025, investment holding company SoftBank Group announced it will acquire Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion. The deal finalized in November 2025, with Ampere remaining as an independent subsidiary with its headquarters in Santa Clara, California. == Products == Ampere develops ARM-based computer processors and CPU cores under their Altra brands. These are used in databases, media encoding, web services, network acceleration, mobile gaming, AI inference processing, and other applications and programs that need to scale. On February 5, 2018, Ampere announced the eMAG 8180 featuring 32x Skylark cores fabricated on TSMC's 16FF+ process. It supports a turbo of up to 3.3 GHz with a TDP of 125 W, 8ch 64-bit DDR4, up to 1 TB DDR4 per socket, and 42x PCIe 3.0 Lanes. The Skylark cores were based on AppliedMicro's X-Gene 3. Packet offers servers with the eMAG 8180 and 128 GB DRAM, 480 GB SSD, and 2x 10 Gbit/s networking. On September 19, 2018, Ampere announced the availability of a version featuring 16x Skylark cores. === 2020 === On March 3, 2020, Ampere announced the Ampere Altra featuring 80 cores fabricated on TSMC's N7 process for hyperscale computing. It was the first server-grade processor to include 80 cores and the Q80-30 conserves power by running at 161 W in use. The cores are semi-custom Arm Neoverse N1 cores with Ampere modifications. It supports a frequency of up to 3.3 GHz with TDP of 250 W, 8ch 72-bit DDR4, up to 4 TB DDR4-3200 per socket, 128x PCIe 4.0 Lanes, 1 MB L2 per core and 32 MB SLC. Ampere also announced their roadmap with Ampere Altra Max (2021) in development and AmpereOne (2022) defined. === 2021 === The 128-core Altra Max was released in 2021 and targeted hyperscale cloud providers. It uses the same server socket and platforms as Ampere Altra, and both products have one thread per core. The Altra Max CPUs provide 128 Arm v8.2+ cores per chip and run up to 3.0 GHz. They also support eight channels of DDR4-3200 memory and 128 lanes of PCIe Gen4. Also in 2021, Oracle launched its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using Ampere Altra processors. === 2022 === In February 2022, Ampere and Rigetti Computing announced a strategic partnership to create hybrid quantum-classical computers. The companies will combine Ampere's Altra Max CPUs with Rigetti's Quantum Processing Units (QPU) in cloud-based High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments. In April, Microsoft previewed its Azure Virtual Machines running on the Ampere Altra. The VMs run scale-out workloads, web servers, application servers, open source databases, cloud native .NET applications, Java applications, gaming servers, media servers, and other processes. In May, Ampere announced the sampling of AmpereOne CPUs, 5 nanometer chips based on its in-house Ampere-developed core. AmpereOne will add support for DDR5 main memory and PCIe Gen5 peripherals. On June 28, 2022, HPE became first tier-one server provider to offer compute with optimized cloud-native silicon for service providers and enterprises embracing cloud-native development with new line of HPE ProLiant RL Gen11 servers, using Ampere® Altra® and Ampere® Altra® Max processors, delivering high performance and power efficiency. === 2023 === During April 2023, Ampere released the Altra developer's kit, an IoT Prototype Kit based on Ampere Altra, aimed at cloud developers, available in 32-core, 64-core, and 80-core formats. === 2024 === In May 2024, Ampere updated its AmpereOne roadmap to 256 cores and announced a joint effort with Qualcomm on CPUs and accelerators. == Customers == Ampere's customers include Microsoft Azure, Tencent Cloud, Oracle, ByteDance, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Cloudflare, Equinix, Kingsoft Cloud, Meituan, Scaleway, UCloud, Foxconn Industrial Internet, Gigabyte, Inspur, Cruise, Hetzner, Project Ronin, Wiwynn and Google Cloud Platform Cruise uses an Ampere Altra variant for its autonomous driving unit. The CPU was selected because of its throughput and low power consumption. In 2021, Oracle, Microsoft, Tencent, and ByteDance committed to using Ampere's customized chips, first announced in May. In April 2022, Microsoft previewed Ampere Altra processors in its new Azure D-and E- series virtual machines. The Dpsv5 series is built for Linux enterprise application types, and the Epsv5 series is for memory-intensive Linux workloads. They provide up to 64 vCPUs, include VM sizes with 2GiB, 4GiB, and 8GiB per vCPU memory configurations, up to 40 Gbit/s networking, and high-performance local SSD storage. In 2022, Microsoft's Ampere Altra-based Azure servers became the first cloud solution provider server to be Arm SystemReady SR certified. The Azure VMs, powered by Altra processors, were also the first to be SystemReady Virtual Environment standard certified. SystemReady defines a set of firmware and hardware standards as a baseline for system development for software developers, original equipment vendors, and chipmakers.

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  Digital inclusion

  Digital inclusion involves the activities necessary to ensure equitable access to and use of information and communications technologies for participation in social and economic life including for education, social services, health, social, and community participation. Digital inclusion includes access to affordable broadband Internet services, Internet-enabled devices, access to digital literacy training, quality technical support, and applications and online content designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation, and collaboration. Related concepts include digital divide, digital exclusion and digital inequality, however digital inclusion focuses more on the strategies, policies, and programs required to address the digital divide. As many services have moved online and with the increasing use of telehealth to deliver primary care, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, digital inclusion, including digital literacy and internet access is increasingly regarded as a social determinant of health. Accessibility, relevance, and impact have been identified as essential elements of digital inclusion as it pertains to health information systems. "Digital inclusion is broadly defined as different strategies designed to ensure that all people have equal access, opportunities and skills to benefit from digital technologies and systems" (ITU, 2019, as cited in Carmi and Yates, 2020). Since 2020, there have been many technology companies that have begun implementing different features or roles within their companies to support breaking down the digital divide. For example, HP has announced the digital divide accelerator. This accelerator will support nonprofits in Greece, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Spain. The goal for this role is to help equip children and other people within the community to understand the skills needed to become a part of the digital community. == Background == With the increasing use of computers and the Internet in the 1990s and early 2000s concerns rose around digital equality, however this primarily focused on the physical access to technology. This gave rise to the concept of the digital divide which was originally developed to describe the growing disparity in Internet access between rural and urban areas of the United States of America. This gradually expanded to considerations of digital access between countries in what is termed the global digital divide, which mirrors many of the disparities seen within countries but on an international scale. However, with the adoption of digital technologies across most sectors of society, and the increasing diversity of technologies and programs, access and use of ICT became more complex and essential for many aspects of daily life. This led to new terminology and a second wave of research on digital inequality which has been identified as the (1) usage gap, (2) second level digital divide, (3) emerging digital differentiation, and (4) digital inclusion. == Strategies for digital inclusion == A review of the literature in 2019 found that while physical access to digital technologies and the internet continues to be a barrier to digital inclusion, digital ability and attitude were also potential barriers. Key strategies identified for improving digital inclusion are social support, direct user experience and collaborative learning/design. Education is a key aspect of digital inclusion as digital technologies have become a key means of engaging with all levels of the education system, requiring levels of digital competence for successful engagement with the curriculum. In addition lifelong learning is required as technologies, services and systems are changing constantly. Public libraries and community service providers play a key role in supporting digital inclusion through access to computers, internet connection and expertise and training. Designing for digital inclusion may also help with poor written literacy, which remains a barrier for 10% of the world's population. UNESCO has developed Guidelines for designing digital technologies in ways that could assist those who are illiterate. == Indigenous digital inclusion == Digital inclusion is a critical issue for many Indigenous communities across the globe, many of whom lack access to adequate resources. The Australian Government has set a National Closing the Gap target for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to have equal levels of digital inclusion by 2026. Many people on tribal land and in Native Hawaiian land struggle with the technology gap. The Native Entities Capacity and Planning Grant Program has $45.3 million available to help address these challenges and empower Indian Tribes, Alaska Native entities, and Native Hawaiian organizations. Some of the impacts so far are in the education and workforce development and healthcare access through telehealth.[13] == Measuring digital inclusion == The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) is a research project which has been tracking digital inclusion throughout Australia since 2016. It uses survey data to measure digital inclusion across three dimensions of access, affordability and digital ability. == The Future of Digital Inclusion == On February 16, 2021, a global dialogue within the United Nations (UN) took a look at the future of digital inclusion. Through the adoption of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, Member States made a commitment. They pledged to "leave no one behind." By 2030, the UN's goal is to close the digital divide by providing access to the Internet and mobile technologies for all nations and peoples and for all segments of society. The UN sees the crisis of too many people in our global society still living unconnected and how the digital divide remains a challenge that must be addressed. == Gaming == The Xbox Adaptive Controller is a groundbreaking example of digital inclusion, designed to make gaming more accessible to people with limited mobility. Developed by Microsoft, it features large programmable buttons and ports that connect to a wide range of external devices like switches, joysticks, and mounts, allowing users to customize their gaming experience based on their unique needs. By removing traditional physical barriers to gameplay, the Xbox Adaptive Controller empowers more people to participate in digital entertainment, promotes equal access to technology, and fosters a more inclusive gaming community. == Digital inclusion advocacy groups == Australian Digital Inclusion Alliance National Digital Inclusion Alliance (US)

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  Content adaptation

  Content adaptation is the action of transforming content to adapt to device capabilities. Content adaptation is usually related to mobile devices, which require special handling because of their limited computational power, small screen size, and constrained keyboard functionality. Content adaptation could roughly be divided to two fields: Media content adaptation that adapts media files. Browsing content adaptation that adapts a website to mobile devices. == Browsing content adaptation == Advances in the capabilities of small, mobile devices such as mobile phones (cell phones) and Personal Digital Assistants have led to an explosion in the number of types of device that can now access the Web. Some commentators refer to the Web that can be accessed from mobile devices as the Mobile Web. The sheer number and variety of Web-enabled devices poses significant challenges for authors of websites who want to support access from mobile devices. The W3C Device Independence Working Group described many of the issues in its report Authoring Challenges for Device Independence. Content adaptation is one approach to a solution. Rather than requiring authors to create pages explicitly for each type of device that might request them, content adaptation transforms an author's materials automatically. For example, content might be converted from a device-independent markup language, such as XDIME, an implementation of the W3C's DIAL specification, into a form suitable for the device, such as XHTML Basic, C-HTML, or WML. Similarly, a suitable device-specific CSS style sheet or a set of in-line styles might be generated from abstract style definitions. Likewise, a device specific layout might be generated from abstract layout definitions. Once created, the device-specific materials form the response returned to the device from which the request was made. Another way is to use the latest trend responsive design based on CSS, covered in this article (RWD). Content adaptation requires a processor that performs the selection, modification, and generation of materials to form the device-specific result. IBM's Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal (WEMP), BEA Systems' WebLogic Mobility Server, Morfeo's MyMobileWeb, and Apache Cocoon are examples of such processors. Wurfl and WALL are popular open source tools for content adaptation. WURFL is an XML-based Device Description Repository with APIs to access the data in Java and PHP (and other popular programming languages). WALL (Wireless Abstraction Library) lets a developer author mobile pages which look like plain HTML, but converts them to WML, C-HTML, or XHTML Mobile Profile, depending on the capabilities of the device from which the HTTP request originates. GreasySpoon lets the developer build plugins for content editing, in JavaScript, Ruby (programming language), and more, just like the Firefox application GreaseMonkey. Alembik (Media Transcoding Server) is a Java (J2EE) application providing transcoding services for variety of clients and for different media types (image, audio, video, etc.). It is fully compliant with OMA's Standard Transcoder Interface specification and is distributed under the LGPL open source license. In 2007, the first large scale carrier-grade deployments of content transformation, on existing mass-market handsets, with no software download required, were deployed by Vodafone in the UK and globally for Yahoo! oneSearch, using the Novarra Vision solution. Novarra's content adaptation solution had been used in enterprise intranet deployments as early as 2003 (at that time, the platform was named "Engines for Wireless Data"). InfoGin, the 9-year-old content-adaptation company with customers like Vodafone, Orange, Telefónica and PCCW. The patented "Web to Mobile adaptation", Mobile Matrix Transcoder, Multimedia and Documents transcoders, Video adaptation supporte. Launched in 2007, Bytemobile's Web Fidelity Service was another carrier-grade, commercial infrastructure solution, which provided wireless content adaptation to mobile subscribers on their existing mass-market handsets, with no client download required.

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  Digital heritage

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

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  Cygwin

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

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  LTE Advanced

  LTE Advanced, also named or recognized as LTE+, LTE-A or 4G+, is a 4G mobile cellular communication standard developed by 3GPP as a major enhancement of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. Three technologies from the LTE-Advanced tool-kit – carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO and 256QAM modulation in the downlink – if used together and with sufficient aggregated bandwidth, can deliver maximum peak downlink speeds approaching, or even exceeding, 1 Gbit/s. This is significantly more than the peak 300 Mbit/s rate offered by the preceding LTE standard. Later developments have resulted in LTE Advanced Pro (or 4.9G) which increases bandwidth even further. The first ever LTE Advanced network was deployed in 2013 by SK Telecom in South Korea. In August 2019, the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) reported that there were 304 commercially launched LTE-Advanced networks in 134 countries. Overall, 335 operators are investing in LTE-Advanced (in the form of tests, trials, deployments or commercial service provision) in 141 countries. == Name == LTE Advanced is also named (indicated as) LTE+, LTE-A, or (on Samsung Galaxy and Xiaomi smartphones) as 4G+. Such networks have also often been described as ‘Gigabit LTE networks’ mirroring a term that is also used in the fixed broadband industry. == History == The mobile communication industry and standards organizations have therefore started work on 4G access technologies, such as LTE Advanced. At a workshop in April 2008 in China, 3GPP agreed the plans for work on Long Term Evolution (LTE). A first set of specifications were approved in June 2008. Besides the peak data rate 1 Gb/s as defined by the ITU-R, it also targets faster switching between power states and improved performance at the cell edge. Detailed proposals are being studied within the working groups. The LTE+ format was first proposed by NTT DoCoMo of Japan and has been adopted as the international standard. It was formally submitted as a candidate 4G to ITU-T in late 2009 as meeting the requirements of the IMT-Advanced standard, and was standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in March 2011 as 3GPP Release 10. The work by 3GPP to define a 4G candidate radio interface technology started in Release 9 with the study phase for LTE-Advanced. Being described as a 3.9G (beyond 3G but pre-4G), the first release of LTE did not meet the requirements for 4G (also called IMT Advanced as defined by the International Telecommunication Union) such as peak data rates up to 1 Gb/s. The ITU has invited the submission of candidate Radio Interface Technologies (RITs) following their requirements in a circular letter, 3GPP Technical Report (TR) 36.913, "Requirements for Further Advancements for E-UTRA (LTE-Advanced)." These are based on ITU's requirements for 4G and on operators’ own requirements for advanced LTE. Major technical considerations include the following: Continual improvement to the LTE radio technology and architecture Scenarios and performance requirements for working with legacy radio technologies Backward compatibility of LTE-Advanced with LTE. An LTE terminal should be able to work in an LTE-Advanced network and vice versa. Any exceptions will be considered by 3GPP. Consideration of recent World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) decisions regarding frequency bands to ensure that LTE-Advanced accommodates the geographically available spectrum for channels above 20 MHz. Also, specifications must recognize those parts of the world in which wideband channels are not available. Likewise, 'WiMAX 2', 802.16m, has been approved by ITU as the IMT Advanced family. WiMAX 2 is designed to be backward compatible with WiMAX 1 devices. Most vendors now support conversion of 'pre-4G', pre-advanced versions and some support software upgrades of base station equipment from 3G. == Proposals == The target of 3GPP LTE Advanced is to reach and surpass the ITU requirements. LTE Advanced should be compatible with first release LTE equipment, and should share frequency bands with first release LTE. In the feasibility study for LTE Advanced, 3GPP determined that LTE Advanced would meet the ITU-R requirements for 4G. The results of the study are published in 3GPP Technical Report (TR) 36.912. One of the important LTE Advanced benefits is the ability to take advantage of advanced topology networks; optimized heterogeneous networks with a mix of macrocells with low power nodes such as picocells, femtocells and new relay nodes. The next significant performance leap in wireless networks will come from making the most of topology, and brings the network closer to the user by adding many of these low power nodes – LTE Advanced further improves the capacity and coverage, and ensures user fairness. LTE Advanced also introduces multicarrier to be able to use ultra wide bandwidth, up to 100 MHz of spectrum supporting very high data rates. In the research phase many proposals have been studied as candidates for LTE Advanced (LTE-A) technologies. The proposals could roughly be categorized into: Support for relay node base stations Coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission and reception UE Dual TX antenna solutions for SU-MIMO and diversity MIMO, commonly referred to as 2x2 MIMO Scalable system bandwidth exceeding 20 MHz, up to 100 MHz Carrier aggregation of contiguous and non-contiguous spectrum allocations Local area optimization of air interface Nomadic / Local Area network and mobility solutions Flexible spectrum usage Cognitive radio Automatic and autonomous network configuration and operation Support of autonomous network and device test, measurement tied to network management and optimization Enhanced precoding and forward error correction Interference management and suppression Asymmetric bandwidth assignment for FDD Hybrid OFDMA and SC-FDMA in uplink UL/DL inter eNB coordinated MIMO SONs, Self Organizing Networks methodologies Within the range of system development, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX 2 can use up to 8x8 MIMO and 128-QAM in downlink direction. Example performance: 100 MHz aggregated bandwidth, LTE-Advanced provides almost 3.3 Gbit peak download rates per sector of the base station under ideal conditions. Advanced network architectures combined with distributed and collaborative smart antenna technologies provide several years road map of commercial enhancements. The 3GPP standards Release 12 added support for 256-QAM. A summary of a study carried out in 3GPP can be found in TR36.912. == Timeframe and introduction of additional features == Original standardization work for LTE-Advanced was done as part of 3GPP Release 10, which was frozen in April 2011. Trials were based on pre-release equipment. Major vendors support software upgrades to later versions and ongoing improvements. In order to improve the quality of service for users in hotspots and on cell edges, heterogeneous networks (HetNets) are formed of a mixture of macro-, pico- and femto base stations serving corresponding-size areas. Frozen in December 2012, 3GPP Release 11 concentrates on better support of HetNet. Coordinated Multi-Point operation (CoMP) is a key feature of Release 11 in order to support such network structures. Whereas users located at a cell edge in homogenous networks suffer from decreasing signal strength compounded by neighbor cell interference, CoMP is designed to enable use of a neighboring cell to also transmit the same signal as the serving cell, enhancing quality of service on the perimeter of a serving cell. In-device Co-existence (IDC) is another topic addressed in Release 11. IDC features are designed to ameliorate disturbances within the user equipment caused between LTE/LTE-A and the various other radio subsystems such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and the GPS receiver. Further enhancements for MIMO such as 4x4 configuration for the uplink were standardized. The higher number of cells in HetNet results in user equipment changing the serving cell more frequently when in motion. The ongoing work on LTE-Advanced in Release 12, amongst other areas, concentrates on addressing issues that come about when users move through HetNet, such as frequent hand-overs between cells. It also included use of 256-QAM. == First technology demonstrations and field trials == This list covers technology demonstrations and field trials up to the year 2014, paving the way for a wider commercial deployment of the VoLTE technology worldwide. From 2014 onwards various further operators trialled and demonstrated the technology for future deployment on their respective networks. These are not covered here. Instead a coverage of commercial deployments can be found in the section below. == LTE Advanced Pro == LTE Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro, also known as 4.5G, 4.5G Pro, 4.9G, Pre-5G, 5G Project) is a name for 3GPP release 13 and 14. It is an evolution of LTE Advanced (LTE-A) cellular standard supporting data rates in excess of 3 Gbit/s using 32-carrier aggregation. It also introduces th

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  G7 Rapid Response Mechanism

  The G7 Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) is an initiative introduced in the "Charlevoix Commitment on Defending Democracy from Foreign Threats", issued by the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) countries—United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy—on June 9, 2018, during their summit in Charlevoix, Quebec. The RRM's mandate is to strengthen the coordination of G7 member countries, as well as "to identify and respond to diverse and evolving threats to our democracies, including through sharing information and analysis, and identifying opportunities for coordinated response" The G7 is an informal international intergovernmental economic organization that meets annually, whose members represent the seven wealthiest advanced economies in the world, as measured by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). == Constituents == The following countries and organisations are members and observers (associate members) of the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism: Australia Canada France Germany Italy Japan Netherlands New Zealand Poland Sweden United Kingdom United States European Union North Atlantic Treaty Organization == Mandate == The RRM was mandated to "strengthen coordination to prevent, thwart and respond to malign and evolving threats to G7 democracies." It "will share information and threat analysis related to various threats to democracy, and is an established mechanism to identify opportunities for coordinated response." According to the Institute for Research on Public Policy's Policy Options magazine, the "RRM initiative seeks to strengthen the leading democracies' coordination to identify and respond to diverse and evolving threats…including through sharing information and analysis, and identifying opportunities for a coordinated response." == Administration == The RRM initiative is led by Canada through Global Affairs Canada's Centre for International Digital Policy. Tara Denham, Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy at Global Affairs Canada, directed the team responsible for setting up the RRM Coordination Unit. Global Affairs Canada—the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development—is the federal Canadian ministry responsible for diplomatic and consular relations, international trade, and international development and humanitarian assistance. The Centre for International Digital Policy includes the Digital Inclusion Lab and the RRM. Denham is also the RRM's Canadian Focal Point. At a briefing on "the security and intelligence threats to elections" of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, the chair Bob Zimmer (CPC), said that the 2019 general election "may be different" from past elections in Canada. as the "tools that were used to strengthen civic engagement are being used to undermine, disrupt and destabilize democracy." "Democracies around the world have entered a new era—an era of heightened threat and heightened vigilance—and 2019 will see a number of countries brace for volleys of attempted disruption: India, Australia, Ukraine, Switzerland, Belgium, the EU and, of course, Canada. Evidence has confirmed that the most recent Canadian general election, in 2015, was unencumbered by interference, although there were some relatively primitive attempts to disrupt, misinform and divide. These efforts were few in number and uncoordinated, and had no visible impact on the voter, either online or in line." Zimmer described the initiative's three pillars. "enhancing citizen preparedness" through the "digital citizen initiative" "improving organizational readiness" with national security and intelligence agencies supporting Elections Canada "ensure a comprehensive understanding of and response to any threats to Canada's democratic process." by establishing the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) which works as a team with the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as well as Global Affairs Canada Zimmer said that as part of the third pillar, "We have activated the G7 rapid response mechanism, announced at the G7 leaders' summit in Charlevoix, to strengthen coordination among our G7 allies and to ensure that there is international collaboration and coordination in responding to foreign threats to democracy." == Background == === Charlevoix summit === The G7 met from June 8 to 9, 2018 during their summit at the Manoir Richelieu in Charlevoix, in La Malbaie, Quebec. The Charlevoix Summit was the 44th G7 summit. The group issued eight "Commitments" at the summit. They included: Commitment on Defending Democracy from Foreign Threats Commitment on Equality and Economic Growth Commitment to End Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, Abuse and Harassment in Digital Contexts Declaration on Quality Education for Girls, Adolescent Girls and Women in Developing Countries Commitment on Innovative Financing for Development. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced five themes for Canada's G7 presidency which began in January 2018. === Defending Democracy from Foreign Threats === "We commit to take concerted action in responding to foreign actors who seek to undermine our democratic societies and institutions, our electoral processes, our sovereignty and our security as outlined in the Charlevoix Commitment on Defending Democracy from Foreign Threats. We recognize that such threats, particularly those originating from state actors, are not just threats to G7 nations, but to international peace and security and the rules-based international order. We call on others to join us in addressing these growing threats by increasing the resilience and security of our institutions, economies and societies, and by taking concerted action to identify and hold to account those who would do us harm." They committed to "cooperate in defending democracies from foreign threats and establish a response mechanism for that purpose". "Democracy and the rules-based international order are increasingly being challenged by authoritarianism and the defiance of international norms. In particular, foreign actors seek to undermine our democratic societies and institutions, our electoral processes, our sovereignty and our security. These malicious, multi-faceted and ever-evolving tactics constitute a serious strategic threat which we commit to confront together, working with other governments that share our democratic values." The Charlevoix Commitment states that "foreign actors seek to undermine our democratic societies and institutions, our electoral processes, our sovereignty and our security. These malicious, multi-faceted and ever-evolving tactics constitute a serious strategic threat which we commit to confront together, working together with other governments that share our democratic values." The Charlevoix Summit resolved to "establish a G7 Rapid Response Mechanism to strengthen our coordination to identify and respond to diverse and evolving threats to our democracies, including through sharing information and analysis, and identifying opportunities for coordinated response." == Monitored elections == === 2019 European Parliament election === RRM Canada's comprehensive report on the 2019 European Parliament election analyzed open data "related to foreign interference during and leading up to the 2019 European Union Parliamentary Elections, May 23–26, 2019". RRM Canada did not find "significant evidence of state-based foreign interference, or any large-scale, organized and coordinated efforts by non-state actors". They did find that "national or international non-state actors" used tactics based on those used by the Russian sponsored Internet Research Agency (IRA) in previous elections, "such as the 2016 U.S. Elections". For example, blogs, webpages, and social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit "were used to spread divisive and false information to damage and negatively impact social cohesion and trust in democratic processes and institutions" in coordinated networks of Facebook groups. === 2019 Alberta general election === RRM Canada's analyz report on the 2019 Alberta general election was intended to "identify any emerging tactics in foreign interference and draw lessons learned for the Canadian general elections scheduled to take place in October 2019." No foreign activity was detected, although the data revealed ""suspicious account creation pattern that is indicative of troll or bot activity". They found "automated inauthentic behaviour and trolling activities" but concluded that they were "very likely domestic". The data showed "suspicious account creation pattern that is indicative of troll or bot activity", and "spikes in account creation" which suggested the "presence of accounts developed for a specific purpose." The accounts were very likely domestic and were "mainly comprised of supporters of the United Conservative Party (UCP)." A seco

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  BitClout

  BitClout was an open source blockchain-based social media platform. On the platform, users could post short-form writings and photos, award money to posts they particularly like by clicking a diamond icon, as well as buy and sell "creator coins" (personalized tokens whose value depends on people's reputations). BitClout ran on a custom proof of work blockchain, and was a prototype of what can be built on DeSo (short for "Decentralized Social"). BitClout's founder and primary leader is Nader al-Naji, known pseudonymously as "Diamondhands". Under development since 2019, BitClout's blockchain created its first block in January 2021, and BitClout itself launched publicly in March 2021. The platform launched with 15,000 "reserved" accounts — a move intended to prevent impersonation, but which backfired as some people with reserved accounts tried to actively distance themselves. Later, in September 2021, BitClout was revealed to be the flagship product of the DeSo blockchain. == History == === Origins (2019 - March 2021) === In early 2019, Nader al-Naji became interested in "mixing investing and social media". He started creating a custom blockchain in May 2019, but didn't tell anyone else until November 2020. However, in the fall of 2020, al-Naji pitched BitClout's own investors under his real name and began posting job listings for a "new operation". Although BitClout was not originally intended to launch until mid-2021, its development was sped up due to "zeitgeist about decentralized social media" in January 2021. BitClout's first block was mined on 18 January 2021. Its next block was mined on 1 March 2021. === As BitClout (March - September 2021) === In early March 2021, about fifty investors received links to a password-protected website with the BitClout white paper. They were encouraged to explore the site and send the same link to "two or three other 'trusted contacts'". Within weeks users were spending millions of dollars per day on the platform. The platform's founders said they were "completely unprepared", having planned to have a "soft-launch". The leader went by the name "diamondhands" on the platform. On 24 March 2021, BitClout launched out of private beta. Investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm Social Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital Management, Alexis Ohanian, Polychain, Pantera, and Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk's parent company). During its initial launch, BitClout's currency could be bought with bitcoin, but not sold except on Discord servers or Twitter threads. A single bitcoin wallet related to BitClout received more than $165M worth of deposits. In March 2021, law firm Anderson Kill P.C. sent Nader al-Naji, the presumed leader of the BitClout platform, a cease-and-desist letter, demanding the removal of Brandon Curtis's account and alleging that BitClout violated sections 1798 and 3344 of the California Civil Code by using Curtis's name and likeness without his consent. Curtis also tweeted, "Adopting Bitcoin's aesthetic to raise VC funding to carry out unethical and blatantly illegal schemes like BitClout: not cool". (However, Curtis's coin, despite not being listed on the official website, can still be bought by users searching for the original username.) Additionally, in April 2021, Lee Hsien Loong asked for his name and photograph to be removed from the site, stating that he has "nothing to do with the platform" and that "it is misleading and done without [his] permission". On 18 May 2021, diamondhands announced that 100% of the BitClout code went public. On 12 June 2021, the supply of BitClout was capped at around 11 million coins. On 18 July 2021, BitClout added the ability for users to mint and purchase NFTs within the platform. === As part of DeSo (September 2021 - July 2024) === On 21 September 2021, it was revealed that BitClout was a prototype built on DeSo, short for "Decentralized Social". As a part of this revelation, diamondhands confirmed his identity as Nader al-Naji. (As early as April 2021, it had been believed that diamondhands indeed was that person.)The Bitclout project raised $200M in funding, which went to setting up the DeSo Foundation. === End and aftermath (July 2024 - present) === In July 2024, al-Naji was arrested by the FBI and charged with wire fraud involving BitClout. He also faced civil charges of securities fraud and unregistered offers and sales of securities from the Securities and Exchange Commission. In response, the official "deso" account posted that al-Naji was "safe and at home" and "that this experience has only reinforced [his] commitment to DeSo". In February 2025, the Justice Department dropped its case against al-Naji. In March 2026, the SEC voluntarily dismissed the enforcement case with prejudice. == Design == BitClout is a social media platform. Its users can post short-form writings and photos (similarly to Twitter). They can award money to posts they particularly like by clicking a diamond icon (similarly to Twitch Bits). The prices of each account's "creator coin" goes up and down with the popularity of the celebrity behind it. For example, if someone says something negative, the value of their corresponding account may go down. This price is computed automatically according to the formula p r i c e _ i n _ b i t c l o u t = .003 ∗ c r e a t o r _ c o i n s _ i n _ c i r c u l a t i o n 2 {\displaystyle price\_in\_bitclout=.003creator\_coins\_in\_circulation^{2}} . At launch time, BitClout scraped 15,000 profiles of celebrities from Twitter to create "reserved" accounts in their names. To claim a reserved account, the account holder would need to tweet about it (which also serves as a marketing strategy). At least 80 such reserved profiles have been claimed. Proof of stake was introduced in March 2024.

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  Apprenticeship learning

  In artificial intelligence, apprenticeship learning (or learning from demonstration or imitation learning) is the process of learning by observing an expert. It can be viewed as a form of supervised learning, where the training dataset consists of task executions by a demonstration teacher. == Mapping function approach == Mapping methods try to mimic the expert by forming a direct mapping either from states to actions, or from states to reward values. For example, in 2002 researchers used such an approach to teach an AIBO robot basic soccer skills. === Inverse reinforcement learning approach === Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) is the process of deriving a reward function from observed behavior. While ordinary "reinforcement learning" involves using rewards and punishments to learn behavior, in IRL the direction is reversed, and a robot observes a person's behavior to figure out what goal that behavior seems to be trying to achieve. The IRL problem can be defined as: Given 1) measurements of an agent's behaviour over time, in a variety of circumstances; 2) measurements of the sensory inputs to that agent; 3) a model of the physical environment (including the agent's body): Determine the reward function that the agent is optimizing. IRL researcher Stuart J. Russell proposes that IRL might be used to observe humans and attempt to codify their complex "ethical values", in an effort to create "ethical robots" that might someday know "not to cook your cat" without needing to be explicitly told. The scenario can be modeled as a "cooperative inverse reinforcement learning game", where a "person" player and a "robot" player cooperate to secure the person's implicit goals, despite these goals not being explicitly known by either the person nor the robot. In 2017, OpenAI and DeepMind applied deep learning to the cooperative inverse reinforcement learning in simple domains such as Atari games and straightforward robot tasks such as backflips. The human role was limited to answering queries from the robot as to which of two different actions were preferred. The researchers found evidence that the techniques may be economically scalable to modern systems. Apprenticeship via inverse reinforcement learning (AIRP) was developed by in 2004 Pieter Abbeel, Professor in Berkeley's EECS department, and Andrew Ng, Associate Professor in Stanford University's Computer Science Department. AIRP deals with "Markov decision process where we are not explicitly given a reward function, but where instead we can observe an expert demonstrating the task that we want to learn to perform". AIRP has been used to model reward functions of highly dynamic scenarios where there is no obvious reward function intuitively. Take the task of driving for example, there are many different objectives working simultaneously - such as maintaining safe following distance, a good speed, not changing lanes too often, etc. This task, may seem easy at first glance, but a trivial reward function may not converge to the policy wanted. One domain where AIRP has been used extensively is helicopter control. While simple trajectories can be intuitively derived, complicated tasks like aerobatics for shows has been successful. These include aerobatic maneuvers like - in-place flips, in-place rolls, loops, hurricanes and even auto-rotation landings. This work was developed by Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, and Andrew Ng - "Autonomous Helicopter Aerobatics through Apprenticeship Learning" === System model approach === System models try to mimic the expert by modeling world dynamics. == Plan approach == The system learns rules to associate preconditions and postconditions with each action. In one 1994 demonstration, a humanoid learns a generalized plan from only two demonstrations of a repetitive ball collection task. == Example == Learning from demonstration is often explained from a perspective that the working Robot-control-system is available and the human-demonstrator is using it. And indeed, if the software works, the Human operator takes the robot-arm, makes a move with it, and the robot will reproduce the action later. For example, he teaches the robot-arm how to put a cup under a coffeemaker and press the start-button. In the replay phase, the robot is imitating this behavior 1:1. But that is not how the system works internally; it is only what the audience can observe. In reality, Learning from demonstration is much more complex. One of the first works on learning by robot apprentices (anthropomorphic robots learning by imitation) was Adrian Stoica's PhD thesis in 1995. In 1997, robotics expert Stefan Schaal was working on the Sarcos robot-arm. The goal was simple: solve the pendulum swingup task. The robot itself can execute a movement, and as a result, the pendulum is moving. The problem is, that it is unclear what actions will result into which movement. It is an Optimal control-problem which can be described with mathematical formulas but is hard to solve. The idea from Schaal was, not to use a Brute-force solver but record the movements of a human-demonstration. The angle of the pendulum is logged over three seconds at the y-axis. This results into a diagram which produces a pattern. In computer animation, the principle is called spline animation. That means, on the x-axis the time is given, for example 0.5 seconds, 1.0 seconds, 1.5 seconds, while on the y-axis is the variable given. In most cases it's the position of an object. In the inverted pendulum it is the angle. The overall task consists of two parts: recording the angle over time and reproducing the recorded motion. The reproducing step is surprisingly simple. As an input we know, in which time step which angle the pendulum must have. Bringing the system to a state is called “Tracking control” or PID control. That means, we have a trajectory over time, and must find control actions to map the system to this trajectory. Other authors call the principle “steering behavior”, because the aim is to bring a robot to a given line.

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  Media preservation

  Preservation of documents, pictures, recordings, digital content, etc., is a major aspect of archival science. It is also an important consideration for people who are creating time capsules, family history, historical documents, scrapbooks and family trees. Common storage media are not permanent, and there are few reliable methods of preserving documents and pictures for the future. == Paper/prints (photos) == Color negatives and ordinary color prints may fade away to nothing in a relatively short period if not stored and handled properly. This happens even if the negatives and prints are kept in the dark, because ambient light is not the determining factor, but heat and humidity are. The color degradation is the result of the dyes used in the color processes. Because color processing results in a less stable image than traditional black-and-white processing, black-and-white pictures from the 1920s are more likely to survive long-term than color films and photographs from after the middle 20th century. Black-and-white photographic films using silver halide emulsions are the only film types that have proven to last for archival storage. The determining factors for longevity include the film base type, proper processing (develop, stop, fix and wash) and proper storage. Early films used a Cellulose nitrate base which was prone to decomposition and highly flammable. Nitrate film was replaced with acetate-base films. These Cellulose acetate films were later discovered to outgass acids (also referred to as vinegar syndrome). Acetate films were replaced in the early 1980s by polyester film base materials which have been determined to be more stable than film stocks with a nitrate or acetate base. Color prints made on most inkjet printers look very good at first but they have a very short lifespan, measured in months rather than in years. Even prints from commercial photo labs will start to fade in a matter of years if not processed properly and stored in cool, dry environments. == Documents/books == With documents for which the media are not so critical as what the documents contain, the information in documents can be copied by using photocopiers and image scanners. Books and manuscripts can also have their information saved without destruction by using a book scanner. Where the medium itself needs to be preserved, for example if a document is a crayon sketch by a famous artist on paper, a complex process of preservation may be used. Depending on the condition and importance of the item this can include gluing the media onto more stable media, or protective enclosing of the media. Polyester sleeves, acid-free folders, and pH buffered document boxes are common supportive protective enclosures whose selection must match the media's chemical and physical properties. Other considerations in preserving paper/books are: Damaging light, particularly UV light, which fades and destroys media over time by breaking down the molecules. Atmosphere contains small traces of sulfur dioxide and nitric acid which turn media yellow and break the fibers down. Humidity and moisture also aid in the breakdown of media. If there is too much, the document can be attacked by bacteria, and if too little, cellulose material breaks down. Temperature, particularly elevated ones, can destroy some media. Low temperatures can cause the water to form crystals which expands destroying the structure of paper-based documents. == Online photo albums == Although there are many websites that allow the upload of photographs and videos, digital preservation for the long-term is still considered an issue. There is a lack of confidence that such websites are capable of storing data for long periods of time (ex. 50 years) without data degradation or loss. == Optical media - CD, DVD, Blu-ray, M-Disc == Write-once optical media, such as CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, typically contain an organic dye that distinguishes data reading from data writing based on the dye's transparency along the disc. Conventional CDs and DVDs have finite shelf-life due to natural degradation of the dye; the newer M-DISC uses inorganic material technology to produce molded DVDs and Blu-Rays (up to 3-layer 100GB BDXL) with a claimed lifespan of 100-1000 years if stored correctly with most BD & BDXL rated read/writers enabling the higher power mode for the M-Disc format after 2011. The National Archives and Records Administration lists published life expectancies to be 10 or 25 years or more for normal CDs and DVDs and conservative life expectancies to be between 2 and 5 years. Storage environments, such as temperature and humidity, as well as handling conditions such as frequency of media use and compatibility between the recorder and media, affect media shelf-life. Improvements in media storage and migrations to new recording technologies can make certain formats obsolete within their respective lifespan. Technologists have pointed to internet streaming services, where services such as video-on-demand have contributed to the 33 percent decline in DVD sales the past 5 years, as a challenge for digital preservation. == Magnetic media - video cassettes, tapes, hard drives == Magnetic media such as audio and video tape and floppy disks also have limited life spans. Audio and video tapes require specific care and handling to ensure that the recorded information will be preserved. For information that must be preserved indefinitely, periodic transcription from old media to new ones is necessary, not only because the media are unstable but also because the recording technology may become obsolete. Magnetic media also deteriorates naturally with typical shelf lives between 10 and 20 years. Magnetic tape can degrade from binder hydrolysis or magnetic remanence decay. Binder hydrolysis, also known as sticky-shed syndrome, refers to the breakdown of binder, or glue, that holds the magnetic particles to the polyester base of the tape. Tapes which have been stored in hot, humid conditions are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon and may suffer from accelerated degradation. Severe binder can cause the magnetic material to fall off or sheds from the base, leaving a pile of dust and clear backing. Archivists can bake the tape, which evaporates water molecules on the tape, to temporarily restore the binder before making a copy. Magnetic tape can also be destabilized by magnetic remanence decay, which refers to the weakening of the tape's magnetization over time. This weakens the affected tape's readability, leading to reduced sound clarity and volume or picture hue and contrast. Baking the tape will not restore magnetization. Media at risk include recorded media such as master audio recordings of symphonies and videotape recordings of the news gathered over the last 40 years. Threats to media that must be considered when archiving important record media include accidental erasure, physical loss due to disasters such as fires and floods, and media degradation. Along with the actual media being degraded over the years, the machines that are available to play back or reproduce the audio sources are becoming archaic themselves. Manufacturers and their support (parts, technical updates) for their machines have disappeared throughout the years. Even if the medium is vaulted and archived correctly, the mechanical properties of the machines have deteriorated to the point that they could do more harm than good to the tape being played. Many major film studios are now backing up their libraries by converting them to electronic media files, such as .AIFF or .WAV-based files via digital audio workstations. That way, even if the digital platform manufacturer goes out of business or no longer supports their product, the files can still be played on any common computer. There is a detailed process that must take place previous to the final archival product now that a digital solution is in place. Sample rates and their conversion and reference speed are both critical in this process. In floppy disks, the lubricants inside the plastic jackets of many older floppies promote the decay of the magnetic medium. Also, the alignment of the magnetic particles of the disk substrate may gradually degrade, leading to a loss of formatting and data. Early laser disk media were prone to degradation as the layers of the disk substrate were bonded with an adhesive that was vulnerable to decay and would crumble over time. This would lead the different layers of the disk to peel apart, damaging the pitted data surface and rendering the disk unreadable.

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  Ajax (programming)

  The Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, usually referred to as Ajax (or AJAX, ) is a set of web development techniques that uses various web technologies on the client-side to create asynchronous web applications. With Ajax, web applications can send and retrieve data from a server asynchronously (in the background) without interfering with the display and behaviour of the existing page. By decoupling the data interchange layer from the presentation layer, Ajax allows web pages and, by extension, web applications, to change content dynamically without the need to reload the entire page. In practice, modern implementations commonly utilize JSON instead of XML. Ajax is not a technology, but rather a programming pattern. HTML and CSS can be used in combination to mark up and style information. The webpage can be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display (and allow the user to interact with) the new information. The built-in XMLHttpRequest object is used to execute Ajax on webpages, allowing websites to load content onto the screen without refreshing the page. == History == In the early-to-mid 1990s, most Websites were based on complete HTML pages. Each user action required a complete new page to be loaded from the server. This process was inefficient, as reflected by the user experience: all page content disappeared, then the new page appeared. Each time the browser reloaded a page because of a partial change, all the content had to be re-sent, even though only some of the information had changed. This placed additional load on the server and made bandwidth a limiting factor in performance. The foundations of AJAX originate back in 1996 with the introduction of JavaScript 1. Developers quickly discovered that any HTML element which accepted a "src" attribute could be used to fetch remote data. By changing the src of a hidden frame, a developer could fetch remote data, process or display it without a page refresh. The remote data could be a string, JavaScript code, XML or a partial HTML page generated on the server. The same could be done with and tags, but many developers were alarmed at the concept of an executable GIF and preferred to use the hidden