AI Face Time

AI Face Time — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • CLEVER score

    CLEVER score

    The CLEVER (Cross Lipschitz Extreme Value for nEtwork Robustness) score is a way of measuring the robustness of an artificial neural network towards adversarial attacks. It was developed by a team at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab in IBM Research and first presented at the 2018 International Conference on Learning Representations. It was mentioned and reviewed by Ian Goodfellow as well. It was adopted into an educational game Fool The Bank by Narendra Nath Joshi, Abhishek Bhandwaldar and Casey Dugan

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  • Comparison of JavaScript-based web frameworks

    Comparison of JavaScript-based web frameworks

    This is a comparison of web frameworks for front-end web development that are reliant on JavaScript code for their behavior. == General information == == High-level framework comparison == JavaScript-based web application frameworks, such as React and Vue, provide extensive capabilities but come with associated trade-offs. These frameworks often extend or enhance features available through native web technologies, such as routing, component-based development, and state management. While native web standards, including Web Components, modern JavaScript APIs like Fetch and ES Modules, and browser capabilities like Shadow DOM, have advanced significantly, frameworks remain widely used for their ability to enhance developer productivity, offer structured patterns for large-scale applications, simplify handling edge cases, and provide tools for performance optimization. Frameworks can introduce abstraction layers that may contribute to performance overhead, larger bundle sizes, and increased complexity. Modern frameworks, such as React 18 and Vue 3, address these challenges with features like concurrent rendering, tree-shaking, and selective hydration. While these advancements improve rendering efficiency and resource management, their benefits depend on the specific application and implementation context. Lightweight frameworks, such as Svelte and Preact, take different architectural approaches, with Svelte eliminating the virtual DOM entirely in favor of compiling components to efficient JavaScript code, and Preact offering a minimal, compatible alternative to React. Framework choice depends on an application’s requirements, including the team’s expertise, performance goals, and development priorities. A newer category of web frameworks, including enhance.dev, Astro, and Fresh, leverages native web standards while minimizing abstractions and development tooling. These solutions emphasize progressive enhancement, server-side rendering, and optimizing performance. Astro renders static HTML by default while hydrating only interactive parts. Fresh focuses on server-side rendering with zero runtime overhead. Enhance.dev prioritizes progressive enhancement patterns using Web Components. While these tools reduce reliance on client-side JavaScript by shifting logic to build-time or server-side execution, they still use JavaScript where necessary for interactivity. This approach makes them particularly suitable for performance-critical and content-focused applications. == Features == == Browser support ==

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  • ISO/IEC 11801

    ISO/IEC 11801

    International standard ISO/IEC 11801 Information technology — Generic cabling for customer premises specifies general-purpose telecommunication cabling systems (structured cabling) that are suitable for a wide range of applications (analog and ISDN telephony, various data communication standards, building control systems, factory automation). It is published by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It covers both balanced copper cabling and optical fibre cabling. The standard was designed for use within commercial premises that may consist of either a single building or of multiple buildings on a campus. It was optimized for premises that span up to 3 km, up to 1 km2 office space, with between 50 and 50,000 persons, but can also be applied for installations outside this range. A major revision was released in November 2017, unifying requirements for commercial, home and industrial networks. == Classes and categories == The standard defines several link/channel classes and cabling categories of twisted-pair copper interconnects, which differ in the maximum frequency for which a certain channel performance is required: Class A: Up to 100 kHz using Category 1 cable and connectors Class B: Up to 1 MHz using Category 2 cable and connectors Class C: Up to 16 MHz using Category 3 cable and connectors Class D: Up to 100 MHz using Category 5e cable and connectors Class E: Up to 250 MHz using Category 6 cable and connectors Class EA: Up to 500 MHz using category 6A cable and connectors (Amendments 1 and 2 to ISO/IEC 11801, 2nd Ed.) Class F: Up to 600 MHz using Category 7 cable and connectors Class FA: Up to 1 GHz (1000 MHz) using Category 7A cable and connectors (Amendments 1 and 2 to ISO/IEC 11801, 2nd Ed.) Class BCT-B: Up to 1 GHz (1000 MHz) using with coaxial cabling for BCT applications. (ISO/IEC 11801-1, Edition 1.0 2017-11) Class I: Up to 2 GHz (2000 MHz) using Category 8.1 cable and connectors (ISO/IEC 11801-1, Edition 1.0 2017-11) Class II: Up to 2 GHz (2000 MHz) using Category 8.2 cable and connectors (ISO/IEC 11801-1, Edition 1.0 2017-11) The standard link impedance is 100 Ω. (The older 1995 version of the standard also permitted 120 Ω and 150 Ω in Classes A−C, but this was removed from the 2002 edition.) The standard defines several classes of optical fiber interconnect: OM1: Multimode, 62.5 μm core; minimum modal bandwidth of 200 MHz·km at 850 nm OM2: Multimode, 50 μm core; minimum modal bandwidth of 500 MHz·km at 850 nm OM3: Multimode, 50 μm core; minimum modal bandwidth of 2000 MHz·km at 850 nm OM4: Multimode, 50 μm core; minimum modal bandwidth of 4700 MHz·km at 850 nm OM5: Multimode, 50 μm core; minimum modal bandwidth of 4700 MHz·km at 850 nm and 2470 MHz·km at 953 nm OS1: Single-mode, maximum attenuation 1 dB/km at 1310 and 1550 nm OS1a: Single-mode, maximum attenuation 1 dB/km at 1310, 1383, and 1550 nm OS2: Single-mode, maximum attenuation 0.4 dB/km at 1310, 1383, and 1550 nm Grandfathered === OM5 === OM5 fiber is designed for wideband applications using SWDM multiplexing of 4–16 carriers (40G=4λ×10G, 100G=4λ×25G, 400G=4×4λ×25G) in the 850–953 nm range. === Category 7 === Class F channel and Category 7 cable are backward compatible with Class D/Category 5e and Class E/Category 6. Class F features even stricter specifications for crosstalk and system noise than Class E. To achieve this, shielding was added for individual wire pairs and the cable as a whole. Unshielded cables rely on the quality of the twists to protect from EMI. This involves a tight twist and carefully controlled design. Cables with individual shielding per pair such as Category 7 rely mostly on the shield and therefore have pairs with longer twists. The Category 7 cable standard was ratified in 2002, and primarily introduced to support 10 gigabit Ethernet over 100 m of copper cabling. Like the earlier standards, it contains four twisted copper wire pairs rated for transmission frequencies of up to 600 MHz. However, in 2006, Category 6A was ratified for Ethernet to allow 10 Gbit/s while still using the conventional 8P8C connector. Care is required to avoid signal degradation by mixing cable and connectors not designed for that use, however similar. Most manufacturers of active equipment and network cards have chosen to support the 8P8C for their 10 gigabit Ethernet products on copper and not GG45, ARJ45, or TERA connectors as Class F would have originally called for. Therefore, the Category 6 specification was revised to Category 6A to permit this use; products therefore require a Class EA channel (ie, Cat 6A). As of 2019, some equipment has been introduced which has connectors supporting the Class F (Category 7) channel. Note, however, that Category 7 is not recognized by the TIA/EIA. === Category 7A === Class FA (Class F Augmented) channels and Category 7A cables, introduced by ISO 11801 Edition 2 Amendment 2 (2010), are defined at frequencies up to 1000 MHz. The intent of the Class FA was to possibly support the future 40 gigabit Ethernet: 40GBASE-T. Simulation results have shown that 40 gigabit Ethernet may be possible at 50 meters and 100 gigabit Ethernet at 15 meters. In 2007, researchers at Pennsylvania State University predicted that either 32 nm or 22 nm circuits would allow for 100 gigabit Ethernet at 100 meters. However, in 2016, the IEEE 802.3bq working group ratified the amendment 3 which defines 25GBASE-T and 40GBASE-T on Category 8 cabling specified to 2000 MHz. The Class FA therefore does not support 40G Ethernet. As of 2025, there is no equipment that has connectors supporting the Class FA (Category 7A) channel. Category 7A is not recognized in TIA/EIA. === Category 8 === Category 8 was ratified by the TR43 working group under ANSI/TIA 568-C.2-1. It is defined up to 2000 MHz and only for distances up to 30 m or 36 m, depending on the patch cords used. ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25/WG 3 developed the equivalent standard ISO/IEC 11801-1:2017/COR 1:2018, with two options: Class I channel (Category 8.1 cable): minimum cable design U/FTP or F/UTP, fully backward compatible and interoperable with Class EA (Category 6A) using 8P8C connectors; Class II channel (Category 8.2 cable): F/FTP or S/FTP minimum, interoperable with Class FA (Category 7A) using TERA or GG45. == Abbreviations for twisted pairs == Annex E, Acronyms for balanced cables, provides a system to specify the exact construction for both unshielded and shielded balanced twisted pair cables. It uses three letters—U for unshielded, S for braided shielding, and F for foil shielding—to form a two-part abbreviation in the form of xx/xTP, where the first part specifies the type of overall cable shielding, and the second part specifies shielding for individual cable elements. Common cable types include U/UTP (unshielded cable); U/FTP (individual pair shielding without the overall screen); F/UTP, S/UTP, or SF/UTP (overall screen without individual shielding); and F/FTP, S/FTP, or SF/FTP (overall screen with individual foil shielding). == 2017 edition == In November 2017, a new edition was released by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 25 "Interconnection of information technology equipment" subcommittee. It is a major revision of the standard which has unified several prior standards for commercial, home, and industrial networks, as well as data centers, and defines requirements for generic cabling and distributed building networks. The new series of standards replaces the former 11801 standard and includes six parts: == Versions == ISO/IEC 11801:1995 (Ed. 1) ISO/IEC 11801:2000 (Ed. 1.1) – Edition 1, Amendment 1 ISO/IEC 11801:2002 (Ed. 2) ISO/IEC 11801:2008 (Ed. 2.1) – Edition 2, Amendment 1 ISO/IEC 11801:2010 (Ed. 2.2) – Edition 2, Amendment 2 ISO/IEC 11801-1:2017, -1:2017/Cor 1:2018, -2:2017, -3:2017, -3:2017/Amd 1:2021, -3:2017/Cor 1:2018, -4:2017, -4:2017/Cor 1:2018, -5:2017, -5:2017/Cor 1:2018, -6:2017, -6:2017/Cor 1:2018 (As of September 2023, this set is current.)

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  • Polyfill (programming)

    Polyfill (programming)

    In software development, a polyfill is code that implements a new standard feature of a deployment environment within an old version of that environment that does not natively support the feature. Most often, it refers to JavaScript code that implements an HTML5 or CSS web standard, either an established standard (supported by some browsers) on older browsers, or a proposed standard (not supported by any browsers) on existing browsers. Polyfills are also used in PHP and Python. Polyfills allow web developers to use an API regardless of whether or not it is supported by a browser, and usually with minimal overhead. Typically they first check if a browser supports an API, and use it if available, otherwise using their own implementation. Polyfills themselves use other, more supported features, and thus different polyfills may be needed for different browsers. The term is also used as a verb: polyfilling is providing a polyfill for a feature. == Definition == The term is a neologism, coined by Remy Sharp, who required a word that meant "replicate an API using JavaScript (or Flash or whatever) if the browser doesn’t have it natively" while co-writing the book Introducing HTML5 in 2009. Formally, "a shim is a library that brings a new API to an older environment, using only the means of that environment." Polyfills exactly fit this definition; the term shim was also used for early polyfills. However, to Sharp shim connoted non-transparent APIs and workarounds, such as spacer GIFs for layout, sometimes known as shim.gif, and similar terms such as progressive enhancement and graceful degradation were not appropriate, so he invented a new term. The term is based on the multipurpose filling paste brand Polyfilla, a paste used to cover up cracks and holes in walls, and the meaning "fill in holes (in functionality) in many (poly-) ways." The word has since gained popularity, particularly due to its use by Paul Irish and in Modernizr documentation. The distinction that Sharp makes is: What makes a polyfill different from the techniques we have already, like a shim, is this: if you removed the polyfill script, your code would continue to work, without any changes required in spite of the polyfill being removed. This distinction is not drawn by other authors. At times various other distinctions are drawn between shims, polyfills, and fallbacks, but there are no generally accepted distinctions: most consider polyfills a form of shim. The term polyfiller is also occasionally found. == Examples == === core-js === core-js is one of the most popular JavaScript standard library polyfills. Includes polyfills for ECMAScript up to the latest version of the standard: promises, symbols, collections, iterators, typed arrays, many other features, ECMAScript proposals, some cross-platform WHATWG / W3C features and proposals like URL. You can load only required features or use it without global namespace pollution. It can be integrated with Babel, which allows it to automatically inject required core-js modules into your code. === html5shiv === In IE versions prior to 9, unknown HTML elements like

    and
  • Software component

    Software component

    A software component is a modular unit of software that encapsulates specific functionality. The desired characteristics of a component are reusability and maintainability. == Value == Components allow software developers to assemble software with reliable parts rather than writing code for every aspect. It makes implementation more like factory assembly than custom building. == Attributes == Desirable attributes of a component include but are not limited to: Cohesive – encapsulates related functionality Reusable Robust Substitutable – can be replaced by another component with the same interface Documented Tested == Third-party == Some components are built in-house by the same organization or team building the software system. Some are third-party, developed elsewhere and assembled into the software system. == Component-based software engineering == For large-scale systems, component-based development encourages a disciplined process to manage complexity. == Framework == Some components conform to a framework technology that allows them to be consumed in a well-known way. Examples include: CORBA, COM, Enterprise JavaBeans, and the .NET Framework. == Modeling == Component design is often modeled visually. In Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 a component is shown as a rectangle, and an interface is shown as a lollipop to indicate a provided interface and as a socket to indicate consumption of an interface. == History == The idea of reusable software components was promoted by Douglas McIlroy in his presentation at the NATO Software Engineering Conference of 1968. (One goal of that conference was to resolve the so-called software crisis of the time.) In the 1970s, McIlroy put this idea into practice with the addition of the pipeline feature to the Unix operating system. Brad Cox refined the concept of a software component in the 1980s. He attempted to create an infrastructure and market for reusable third-party components by inventing the Objective-C programming language. IBM introduced System Object Model (SOM) in the early 1990s. Microsoft introduced Component Object Model (COM) in the early 1990s. Microsoft built many domain-specific component technologies on COM, including Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), and ActiveX.

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  • Digital goods

    Digital goods

    Digital goods or e-goods are intangible goods that exist in digital form. Examples are Wikipedia articles; digital media, such as e-books, downloadable music, internet radio, internet television and streaming media; fonts, logos, photos and graphics; digital subscriptions; online ads (as purchased by the advertiser); internet coupons; electronic tickets; electronically treated documentation in many different fields; downloadable software (Digital Distribution) and mobile apps; cloud-based applications and online games; virtual goods used within the virtual economies of online games and communities; community access; workbooks; worksheets; planners; e-learning (online courses); webinars, video tutorials, blog posts; cards; patterns; website themes and templates. == Legal concerns about digital goods == Special legal concerns regarding digital goods include copyright infringement and taxation. Also the question of the ownership (versus licensed use or service only) of purely digital goods is not finally resolved. For instance, the software installers of the digital software distributor gog.com are technically independent to the account but are still subject to the EULA, where a "licensed, not sold" formulation is used. Therefore, it is not clear if the software can be legally used after a hypothetical loss of the account; a question which was also raised before in practice for the similar service Steam. In July 2012, the European Court of Justice ruled in the case UsedSoft GMbH v. Oracle International Corp. that the sale of a software product, either through a physical support or download, constituted a transfer of ownership in EU law, thus the first sale doctrine applies; the ruling thereby breaks the "licensed, not sold" legal theory, but leaves open numerous questions. Therefore, it is also permissible to resell software licenses even if the digital good has been downloaded directly from the Internet, as the first-sale doctrine applied whenever software was originally sold to a customer for an unlimited amount of time, thus prohibiting any software maker from preventing the resale of their software by any of their legitimate owners. The court requires that the previous owner must no longer be able to use the licensed software after the resale, but finds that the practical difficulties in enforcing this clause should not be an obstacle to authorizing resale, as they are also present for software which can be installed from physical supports, where the first-sale doctrine is in force. In several cases, content providers have faced criticism for revoking access to digital goods due to expired licenses or the discontinuation of a product, such as ebooks (which resulted in a lawsuit against Amazon.com, Inc.), digital video (with Sony Interactive Entertainment revoking access to purchased StudioCanal content from its now-defunct PlayStation video store; a similar move involving Warner Bros. Discovery content was averted by an updated license agreement), and video games (such as Ubisoft discontinuing and revoking access to its game The Crew without providing refunds or the ability to redownload the game) In September 2024, the U.S. state of California implemented a consumer protection law that prohibits the use of terms such as "buy" or "purchase" during transactions involving digital goods if there is no way to obtain the purchases in a manner that cannot be revoked by the seller (such as allowing it to be downloaded for permanent, offline access), and requires a disclaimer to be displayed to the customer at the time of purchase.

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  • Svelte

    Svelte

    Svelte is a free and open-source component-based front-end software framework and language created by Rich Harris and maintained by the Svelte core team. Svelte is not a monolithic JavaScript library imported by applications: instead, Svelte compiles HTML templates to specialized code that manipulates the DOM directly, which may reduce the size of transferred files and give better client performance. Application code is also processed by the compiler, inserting calls to automatically recompute data and re-render UI elements when the data they depend on is modified. This also avoids the overhead associated with runtime intermediate representations, such as virtual DOM, unlike traditional frameworks (such as React and Vue) which carry out the bulk of their work at runtime, i.e. in the browser. The compiler itself is written in JavaScript. Its source code is licensed under MIT License and hosted on GitHub. Among comparable frontend libraries, Svelte has one of the smallest bundle footprints at merely 2KB. == History == The predecessor of Svelte is Ractive.js, which Rich Harris created in 2013. Version 1 of Svelte was written in JavaScript and was released on 29 November 2016. The name Svelte was chosen by Rich Harris and his coworkers at The Guardian. Version 2 of Svelte was released on 19 April 2018. It set out to correct what the maintainers viewed as mistakes in the earlier version such as replacing double curly braces with single curly braces. Version 3 of Svelte was written in TypeScript and was released on 21 April 2019. It rethought reactivity by using the compiler to instrument assignments behind the scenes. The SvelteKit web framework was announced in October 2020 and entered beta in March 2021. SvelteKit 1.0 was released in December 2022 after two years in development. Version 4 of Svelte was released on 22 June 2023. It was a maintenance release, smaller and faster than version 3. A part of this release was an internal rewrite from TypeScript back to JavaScript, with JSDoc type annotations. This was met with confusion from the developer community, which was addressed by the creator of Svelte, Rich Harris. Version 5 of Svelte was released on October 19, 2024 at Svelte Summit Fall 2024 with Rich Harris cutting the release live while joined by other Svelte maintainers. Svelte 5 was a ground-up rewrite of Svelte, changing core concepts such as reactivity and reusability. Its primary feature, runes, reworked how reactive state is declared and used. Runes are function-like macros that are used to declare a reactive state, or code that uses reactive states. These runes are used by the compiler to indicate values that may change and are depended on by other states or the DOM. Svelte 5 also introduces Snippets, which are reusable "snippets" of code that are defined once and can be reused anywhere else in the component. Svelte 5 was initially met with controversy due to its many changes, and thus deprecations caused primarily by runes. However, most of this has subsided since the initial announcement of runes, and the further refining of Svelte 5. Also at Svelte Summit Fall 2024, Ben McCann announced the Svelte CLI under the sv package name on npm. In early 2025, the Svelte team announced Asynchronous Svelte, an experimental feature set centered around asynchronous reactivity in Svelte using await expressions. As of August 2025, the feature is available via an experimental compiler option. This coincided with the experimental release of remote functions, an RPC feature in SvelteKit, Svelte's metaframework. Key early contributors to Svelte became involved with Conduitry joining with the release of Svelte 1, Tan Li Hau joining in 2019, and Ben McCann joining in 2020. Rich Harris and Simon Holthausen joined Vercel to work on Svelte fulltime in 2022. Dominic Gannaway joined Vercel from the React core team to work on Svelte fulltime in 2023. == Syntax == Svelte applications and components are defined in .svelte files, which are HTML files extended with templating syntax that is based on JavaScript and is similar to JSX. Svelte's core features are accessed through runes, which syntactically look like functions, but are used as macros by the compiler. These runes include: The $state rune, used for declaring a reactive state value The $derived rune, used for declaring reactive state derived from one or more states The $effect rune, used for declaring code that reruns whenever its dependencies change Starting with Svelte 5, the framework introduced a significant reactivity overhaul that replaces the previous `$:` reactive declarations with new runes such as $state, $derived, and $effect. The $effect rune is now used for post-render operations without modifying state, while $derived is used for computations that depend on other reactive values. This change aims to simplify the mental model of reactivity and make component logic more explicit. Additionally, the { JavaScript code } syntax can be used for templating in HTML elements and components, similar to template literals in JavaScript. This syntax can also be used in element attributes for uses such as two-way data binding, event listeners, and CSS styling. A Todo List example made in Svelte is below: == Associated projects == The Svelte maintainers created SvelteKit as the official way to build projects with Svelte. It is a Next.js/Nuxt-style full-stack framework that dramatically reduces the amount of code that gets sent to the browser. The maintainers had previously created Sapper, which was the predecessor of SvelteKit. The Svelte maintainers also maintain a number of integrations for popular software projects under the Svelte organization including integrations for Vite, Rollup, Webpack, TypeScript, VS Code, Chrome Developer Tools, ESLint, and Prettier. A number of external projects such as Storybook have also created integrations with Svelte and SvelteKit. == Influence == Vue.js modeled its API and single-file components after Ractive.js, the predecessor of Svelte. == Adoption == Svelte is widely praised by developers. Taking the top ranking in multiple large scale developer surveys, it was chosen as the Stack Overflow 2021 most loved web framework and 2020 State of JS frontend framework with the most satisfied developers. Recent surveys continue to show Svelte's strong developer satisfaction, with the 2024 State of JS survey maintaining its position among the most praised frontend frameworks. The 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey reported that 73% of developers who used Svelte want to continue working with it, and noted that Stack Overflow's own team used Svelte for building their 2024 Developer Survey results site. Svelte has been adopted by a number of high-profile web companies including The New York Times, Google, Apple, Spotify, Radio France, Square, Yahoo, ByteDance, Rakuten, Bloomberg, Reuters, Ikea, Facebook, Logitech, and Brave. A community group of primarily non-maintainers, known as the Svelte Society, run the Svelte Summit conference, write a Svelte newsletter, host a Svelte podcast, and host a directory of Svelte tooling, components, and templates.

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  • OpenWebRTC

    OpenWebRTC

    OpenWebRTC (OWR) is a free software stack that implements the WebRTC standard, a set of protocols and application programming interfaces defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It is an alternative to the reference implementation that is based on software from Global IP Solutions (GIPS). It is published under the terms of the Simplified (2-clause) BSD license and officially supports iOS, Linux, OS X, and Android operating systems. It is meant to also work outside web browsers, e.g. to power native mobile apps. It is mostly written in C and based largely on the multimedia framework GStreamer and a number of other, smaller external libraries. It officially supports both VP8 and H.264 as video formats. For H.264 it uses OpenH264 to which Cisco pays the patent licensing bills. Development of OpenWebRTC started at Ericsson Research under the lead of Stefan Ålund. They released it as free software in September 2014, together with the proof-of-concept web browser "Bowser" that is based on the stack. Among other things, this initial version didn't support data channels yet and was said to still be less mature than Google's reference implementation.

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  • United States Tech Force

    United States Tech Force

    The U.S. Tech Force (also styled as US Tech Force, Tech Force, or Government Tech Force) is a federal hiring initiative launched by the second Donald Trump administration in December 2025. The program, administered by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), aims to recruit about 1,000 early-career technology professionals into two-year government jobs to modernize federal IT systems, advance artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and address technological gaps in government operations. The initiative is an effort to plug capability gaps created by Trump-administration efforts to shrink the federal government, which led to the departure of some 220,000 federal employees, including many in IT. The initiative seeks early-career workers; officials said it would offer competitive salaries and opportunities to work on high-impact government technology projects. Major technology companies—including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Google, and OpenAI—agreed to help identify and refer candidates. Candidates are allowed to take Tech Force positions on leaves of absence and without divesting their stock, raising conflict-of-interest questions. In January 2026, OPM direction Scott Kupor said the deadline for applying to Tech Force was being extended because of "tremendous interest" without saying how many people had actually applied. Also in December 2025, news broke that the administration is planning another novel use of private-sector workers: hiring cybersecurity firms for offensive cyber operations.

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  • Usage share of operating systems

    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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  • Signal-to-crosstalk ratio

    Signal-to-crosstalk ratio

    The signal-to-crosstalk ratio at a specified point in a circuit is the ratio of the power of the wanted signal to the power of the unwanted signal from another channel. The signals are adjusted in each channel so that they are of equal power at the zero transmission level point in their respective channels. The signal-to-crosstalk ratio is usually expressed in dB.

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  • Media Block

    Media Block

    A Media Block or Integrated Media Block (IMB) is a component in a digital cinema projection system. Its purpose is to convert the Digital Cinema Package (DCP) content into data that ultimately produces picture and sound in a theater in compliance with DCI anti-piracy encryption requirements. == Terminology == DCI specification allows for two different security system architectures. In the first the Media Block is outside of the projector. This design is simply referred to as a "Media Block" and is typically a device attached directly to the motherboard of a Digital Cinema server. The media block is usually connected to the projector by dual-link SDI cables. Such media block is limited to processing 2K output, downscaling 4K DCPs if necessary. The second architecture describes an "Integrated Media Block". This refers to a device attached and integrated directly into the projector, which receives image data from the server, usually via a cat6 Ethernet connection. They can process 2K and 4K output. Some hardware implementations integrate the entire server on a single board and are able to work both as a MB as well as an IMB. == Security features == All security functions are contained within a Secure Processing Block (SPB), a tamper-proof physical device. Upon ingestion into a DCP server, Key Delivery Messages (KDM) are stored on flash memory in the media block or IMB. A KDM is written to enable the playback of a specific DCP during a specific time window and on a specific media block or IMB, identified by its serial number during the authoring process. Media blocks and IMBs also contain a secure clock that is set in the factory cannot be altered by the end user, which the DCP servers to which they are attached use to determine showtimes. The secure clock prevents theaters from showing encrypted movies outside the times authorized by the KDM (e.g. after it has expired) by simply changing the date and time in the server's BIOS. Media blocks and IMBs also typically include anti-tamper devices, designed to self-destruct the unit if unauthorized modification of its hardware, software or secure clock is attempted.

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  • Artificial intelligence of things

    Artificial intelligence of things

    Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) is the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with the Internet of things (IoT) infrastructure to create systems capable of sensing, learning, and acting on data without continuous human intervention. While IoT focuses on connectivity and sensor data collection, AI enables IoT devices to analyse data in real time and produce actionable outputs, including automated decisions at the edge. == Applications == === Manufacturing and predictive maintenance === Manufacturing accounts for the largest share of AIoT adoption by industry vertical. A common application is predictive maintenance, where sensors measuring vibration, temperature, current draw, and acoustic emissions feed machine learning models trained to detect signatures that precede equipment failure. These systems can flag developing faults weeks or months in advance, and in more advanced deployments can autonomously adjust machine parameters such as motor speed or cooling cycles to delay or prevent failure. === Other industries === In healthcare, AIoT enables remote patient monitoring through wearable devices that collect vital signs and apply AI models to detect anomalies or predict deterioration. In logistics, GPS and telematics sensors combined with AI models support real-time route optimisation, vehicle maintenance prediction, and fuel cost forecasting. Smart building systems use occupancy, temperature, and energy sensors with AI to dynamically adjust HVAC and lighting, reducing energy consumption. == Architecture == AIoT systems typically operate across three layers: a device layer of sensors and actuators that collect data, a connectivity layer that transmits data via protocols such as MQTT or HTTP, and a compute layer where AI models process the data either in the cloud or at the edge. The trend toward edge-based processing, where inference runs on low-cost processors near the data source rather than in a centralised cloud, has accelerated as hardware costs have fallen and applications increasingly require sub-second response times. == Market == Market sizing estimates for AIoT vary significantly depending on scope and definition. Fortune Business Insights valued the AIoT market at USD 35.65 billion in 2023, projecting growth to USD 253.86 billion by 2030 at a compound annual growth rate of 32.4%. Grand View Research estimated the broader market at USD 171.4 billion in 2024 with a CAGR of 31.7% through 2030, reflecting a wider definition that includes AI-integrated hardware components. North America accounted for approximately 40% of global market share in 2024, with the Asia-Pacific region projected as the fastest-growing market.

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  • T.38

    T.38

    T.38 is an ITU recommendation for allowing transmission of fax over IP networks (FoIP) in real time. == History == The T.38 fax relay standard was devised in 1998 as a way to transport faxes across IP networks between existing Group 3 (G3) fax terminals. T.4 and related fax standards were published by the ITU in 1980, before the rise of the Internet. In the late 1990s, VoIP, or voice over IP, began to gain ground as an alternative to the conventional public switched telephone network (PSTN). However, because most VoIP systems are optimized (through their use of aggressive lossy bandwidth-saving compression) for voice rather than data calls, conventional fax machines worked poorly or not at all on them due to the network impairments such as delay, jitter, packet loss, and so on. Thus, some way of transmitting fax over IP was needed. == Overview == In practical scenarios, a T.38 fax call has at least part of the call being carried over PSTN, although this is not required by the T.38 definition, and two T.38 devices can send faxes to each other. This particular type of device is called Internet-Aware Fax device, or IAF, and it is capable of initiating or completing a fax call towards the IP network. The typical scenario where T.38 is used is – T.38 fax relay – where a T.30 fax device sends a fax over PSTN to a T.38 fax gateway which converts or encapsulates the T.30 protocol into a T.38 data stream. This is then sent either to a T.38-enabled end point such as fax machine or fax server or another T.38 gateway that converts it back to a PSTN PCM or analog signal and terminates the fax on a T.30 device. The T.38 recommendation defines the use of both TCP and UDP to transport T.38 packets. Implementations tend to use UDP, due to TCP's requirement for acknowledgement packets and resulting retransmission during packet loss, which introduces delays. When using UDP, T.38 copes with packet loss by using redundant data packets. T.38 is not a call setup protocol, thus the T.38 devices need to use standard call setup protocols to negotiate the T.38 call, e.g. H.323, SIP & MGCP. == Operation == There are two primary ways that fax transactions are conveyed across packet networks. The T.37 standard specifies how a fax image is encapsulated in e-mail and transported, ultimately, to the recipient using a store-and-forward process through intermediary entities. T.38, however, defines a protocol that supports the use of the T.30 protocol in both the sender and recipient terminals. (See diagram above.) T.38 lets one transmit a fax across an IP network in real time, just as the original G3 fax standards did for the traditional (time-division multiplexed (TDM)) network, also called the public switched telephone network or PSTN. A special protocol is needed for real-time fax over IP (Internet Protocol) since existing fax terminals only supported PSTN connections, where the information flow was generally smooth and uninterrupted, as opposed to the jittery arrival of IP packets. The trick was to come up with a protocol that makes the IP network “invisible” to the endpoint fax terminals, which would mean the user of a legacy fax terminal need not know that the fax call was traversing an IP network. The network interconnections supported by T.38 are shown above. The two fax terminals on either side of the figure communicate using the T.30 fax protocol published by the ITU in 1980. Interconnection of the PSTN with the IP packet network requires a “gateway” between the PSTN and IP networks. PSTN-IP Gateways support TDM voice on the PSTN side and VoIP and FoIP on the packet side. For voice sessions, the gateway will take in voice packets on the IP side, accumulate a few packets to ensure a smooth flow of TDM data upon their release, and then meter them out over TDM where they eventually are heard by a human or stored on a computer for later playback. The gateway employs packet-management techniques to enhance the quality of the speech in the presence of network errors by taking advantage of the natural ability of a listener to not really hear the occasional missing or repeated packet. But facsimile data are transmitted by modems, which aren't as forgiving as the human ear is for speech. Missing packets will often cause a fax session to fail at worst or create one or more image lines in error at best. So the job of T.38 is to “fool” the terminal into “thinking” that it's communicating directly with another T.30 terminal. It will also correct for network delays with so-called spoofing techniques, and missing or delayed packets with fax-aware buffer-management techniques. Spoofing refers to the logic implemented in the protocol engine of a T.38 relay that modifies the protocol commands and responses on the TDM side to keep network delays on the IP side from causing the transaction to fail. This is done, for example, by padding image lines or deliberately causing a message to be re-transmitted to render network delays transparent to the sending/receiving fax terminals. Networks that do not have packet loss or excessive delay can exhibit acceptable fax performance without T.38, provided the PCM clocks in all gateways are of very high accuracy (explained below). T.38 not only removes the effect of PCM clocks not being synchronized, but also reduces the required network bandwidth by a factor of 10, while it corrects for packet loss and delay. === Bandwidth reduction === As shown in the diagram below, a T.38 gateway is composed of two primary elements: the fax modems and the T.38 subsystem. The fax modems modulate and demodulate the PCM samples of the analog data, turning the sampled-data representation of the fax terminal's analog signal to its binary translation, and vice versa. The PSTN network samples the analog signal of a voice or modem signal (it doesn't know the difference) 8,000 times per second (SPS), and encodes them as 8-bit data bytes. This means 8000 samples-per-second times 8-bits per sample, or 64,000 bits per second (bit/s) to represent the modem (or voice) data in one direction. For both directions the modem transaction consumes 128,000 bits of network bandwidth. However, the typical modem in a fax terminal transmits the image data at 33,600 bit/s, so if the analog data are first converted to the digital content they represent, only 33,600 bits (plus network overhead of a few bytes) are needed. And since T.30 fax is a half-duplex protocol, the network is only needed for one direction at a time. Refer to RFC 3261 === PCM clock synchronization === In the diagram above, there is a sample-rate clock in the fax terminal and one in the gateway's modems that is used to trigger the sampling of the analog line 8,000 times per second. These clocks are usually quite accurate, but in some low-cost terminal adapters (a one or two-line gateway) the PCM clock can be surprisingly inaccurate. If the terminal is sending data to the gateway, and the gateway's clock is too slow, the buffers (jitter buffers) in the gateway will eventually overflow, causing the transaction to fail. Since the difference is often quite small, this problem occurs on long, detailed fax images giving the clocks more time to cause the jitter buffer in gateway to either underflow or overflow, which is just the same as missing or duplicated packets. === Packet loss === T.38 provides facilities to eliminate the effects of packet loss through data redundancy. When a packet is sent, either zero, one, two, three, or even more of the previously sent packets are repeated. (The specification does not impose a limit.) This increases the network bandwidth required (it's still much less than not using T.38) but it allows the receiving gateway to reconstruct the complete packet sequence, even with a fairly high level of packet loss. == Related standards == T.4 is the umbrella specification for fax. It specifies the standard image sizes, two forms of image-data compression (encoding), the image-data format, and references, T.30 and the various modem standards. T.6 specifies a compression scheme that reduces the time required to transmit an image by roughly 50-percent. T.30 specifies the procedures that a sending and receiving terminal use to set up a fax call, determine the image size, encoding, and transfer speed, the demarcation between pages, and the termination of the call. T.30 also references the various modem standards. V.21, V.27ter, V.29, V.17, V.34: ITU modem standards used in facsimile. The first three were ratified prior to 1980, and were specified in the original T.4 and T.30 standards. V.34 was published for fax in 1994. T.37 The ITU standard for sending a fax-image file via e-mail to the intended recipient of a fax. G.711 pass through - this is where the T.30 fax call is carried in a VoIP call encoded as audio. This is sensitive to network packet loss, jitter and clock synchronization. When using voice high-compression encoding techniques such as, but not limited to, G.729, some fax tonal signa

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  • Telecommunications device for the deaf

    Telecommunications device for the deaf

    A telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) is a teleprinter, an electronic device for text communication over a telephone line, that is designed for use by persons with hearing or speech difficulties. Other names for the device include teletypewriter (TTY), textphone (common in Europe), and minicom (United Kingdom). The typical TDD is a device about the size of a typewriter or laptop computer with a QWERTY keyboard and small screen that uses an LED, LCD, or VFD screen to display typed text electronically. In addition, TDDs commonly have a small spool of paper on which text is also printed – old versions of the device had only a printer and no screen. The text is transmitted live, via a telephone line, to a compatible device, i.e. one that uses a similar communication protocol. Special telephone services have been developed to carry the TDD functionality even further. In certain countries, there are systems in place so that a deaf person can communicate with a hearing person on an ordinary voice phone using a human relay operator. There are also "carry-over" services, enabling people who can hear but cannot speak ("hearing carry-over", a.k.a. "HCO"), or people who cannot hear but are able to speak ("voice carry-over", a.k.a. "VCO") to use the telephone. The term TDD is sometimes discouraged because people who are deaf are increasingly using mainstream devices and technologies to carry out most of their communication. The devices described here were developed for use on the partially-analog Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). They do not work well on the new internet protocol (IP) networks. Thus as society increasingly moves toward IP based telecommunication, the telecommunication devices used by people who are deaf will not be TDDs. In the US and Canada, the devices are referred to as TTYs. Teletype Corporation, of Skokie, Illinois, made page printers for text, notably for news wire services and telegrams, but these used standards different from those for deaf communication, and although in quite widespread use, were technically incompatible. Furthermore, these were sometimes referred to by the "TTY" initialism, short for "Teletype". When computers had keyboard input mechanisms and page printer output, before CRT terminals came into use, Teletypes were the most widely used devices. They were called "console typewriters". (Telex used similar equipment, but was a separate international communication network.) == History == === APCOM acoustic coupler or MODEM device === The TDD concept was developed by James C. Marsters (1924–2009), a dentist and private airplane pilot who became deaf as an infant because of scarlet fever, and Robert Weitbrecht, a deaf physicist. In 1964, Marsters, Weitbrecht and Andrew Saks, an electrical engineer and grandson of the founder of the Saks Fifth Avenue department store chain, founded APCOM (Applied Communications Corp.), located in the San Francisco Bay area, to develop the acoustic coupler, or modem; their first product was named the PhoneType. APCOM collected old teleprinter machines (TTYs) from the Department of Defense and junkyards. Acoustic couplers were cabled to TTYs enabling the AT&T standard Model 500 telephone to couple, or fit, into the rubber cups on the coupler, thus allowing the device to transmit and receive a unique sequence of tones generated by the different corresponding TTY keys. The entire configuration of teleprinter machine, acoustic coupler, and telephone set became known as the TTY. Weitbrecht invented the acoustic coupler modem in 1964. The actual mechanism for TTY communications was accomplished electro-mechanically through frequency-shift keying (FSK) allowing only half-duplex communication, where only one person at a time can transmit. === Paul Taylor TTY device === During the late 1960s, Paul Taylor combined Western Union Teletype machines with modems to create teletypewriters, known as TTYs. He distributed these early, non-portable devices to the homes of many in the deaf community in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked with others to establish a local telephone wake-up service. In the early 1970s, these small successes in St. Louis evolved into the nation's first local telephone relay system for the deaf. === Micon Industries MCM device === In 1973, the Manual Communications Module (MCM), which was the world's first electronic portable TTY allowing two-way telecommunications, premiered at the California Association of the Deaf convention in Sacramento, California. The battery-powered MCM was invented and designed by a deaf news anchor and interpreter, Kit Patrick Corson, in conjunction with Michael Cannon and physicist Art Ogawa. It was manufactured by Michael Cannon's company, Micon Industries, and initially marketed by Kit Corson's company, Silent Communications. In order to be compatible with the existing TTY network, the MCM was designed around the five-bit Baudot code established by the older TTY machines instead of the ASCII code used by computers. The MCM was an instant success with the deaf community despite the drawback of a $599 cost. Within six months there were more MCMs in use by the deaf and hard of hearing than TTY machines. After a year Micon took over the marketing of the MCM and subsequently concluded a deal with Pacific Bell (who coined the term "TDD") to purchase MCMs and rent them to deaf telephone subscribers for $30 per month. After Micon formed an alliance with APCOM, Michael Cannon (Micon), Paul Conover (Micon), and Andrea Saks (APCOM) successfully petitioned the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), resulting in a tariff that paid for TTY devices to be distributed free of cost to deaf persons. Micon produced over 1,000 MCMs per month, resulting in approximately 50,000 MCMs being disseminated into the deaf community. Before he left Micon in 1980, Michael Cannon developed several computer compatible variations of the MCM and a portable, battery operated printing TTY, but they were never as popular as the original MCM. Newer model TTYs could communicate with selectable codes that allow communications at a higher bit rate on those models similarly equipped. However, the lack of true computer interface functionality spelled the demise of the original TTY and its clones. During the mid-1970s, other so-called portable telephone devices were being cloned by other companies, and this was the time period when the term "TDD" began being used largely by those outside the deaf community. === Text messaging and the Def-Tone System (DTS) === This relay system became known commonly as the Def-Tone System (DTS) because the tones representing letters of the alphabet were eventually carried in tones outside the range of human hearing. Today, this is commonly called multi-tap because you press a number 1, 2 or 3 times to get a corresponding letter. In 1994 Joseph Alan Poirier, a college student-worker, recommended using the system to send texts to forklifts to improve delivery of parts to the assembly line at GM Powertrain in Toledo, Ohio, and sending a text to pagers. He recommended taking pagers to alphanumeric displays incorporating the same system in discussions with the pager supplier for Outback Steakhouse and having relays put in the forklifts to ping alert messages to the pagers used in that system. He called it text messaging, coining the phrase. It is theorized that when Toyota forklift was allegedly hired by GM for this work, one of the subcontractors, Kyocera, utilized the work for the Toyota forklift company to create text messaging for cell phones. === Marsters Award === In 2009, AT&T received the James C. Marsters Promotion Award from TDI (formerly Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc.) for its efforts to increase accessibility to communication for people with disabilities. The award holds some irony; it was AT&T that, in the 1960s, resisted efforts to implement TTY technology, claiming it would damage its communication equipment. In 1968, the Federal Communications Commission struck down AT&T's policy and forced it to offer TTY access to its network. == Protocols == There are many different standards for TDDs and textphones. === Original 5-bit Baudot code === The original standard used by TTYs is a variant of the Baudot code. The maximum speed of this protocol is 10 characters per second. This is a half-duplex protocol, which means that only one person at a time may transmit characters. If both try to transmit at the same time, the characters will be garbled on the other end. This protocol is commonly used in the United States. This is a variant of the Baudot code, implemented as 5-bits per character transmitted asynchronously using frequency-shift key-modulation at either 45.5 or 50 baud, 1 start bit, 5 data bits, and 1.5 stop bits. Details of the protocol implementation are available in TIA-825-A and also in T-REC V.18 Annex A "5-bit operational mode". === Turbo Code === The UltraTec company implements another protocol known as Enh

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