AI Headshot Examples

AI Headshot Examples — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

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  BabyCenter

  BabyCenter is an online media company based in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles that provides information on conception, pregnancy, birth, and early childhood development for parents and expecting parents. BabyCenter operates 8 country and region specific properties including websites, apps, emails, print publications, and an online community where parents can connect on a variety of topics. The visitors of website and the users of the app can sign up for free weekly email newsletters that guide them through pregnancy and their child's development. In addition to publishing detailed, medically reviewed information about pregnancy and parenting, BabyCenter, under its Mission Motherhood initiative, ran numerous social programs and has participated in public health initiatives in partnership with hospitals, healthcare agencies, nonprofits, NGOs, and government agencies to provide pregnancy and parenting advice. It also annually publishes the most popular baby names. BabyCenter LLC is part of the Everyday Health Group, a division of Ziff Davis. == History == BabyCenter was founded in October 1997 by Stanford University MBA graduates Matt Glickman and Mark Selcow, who recognized a need for information about pregnancy and parenting on the internet. BabyCenter was initially funded through $13.5 million in startup capital funding from venture capital firms, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel, and Trinity Ventures. The funds were used to open the BabyCenter Store in October 1998. In the early years of its operation, BabyCenter offered multiple resources and services for parents, including a website that provided medically reviewed information and guidance to new and expectant parents on such topics as fertility, labor, and childcare; a weekly email for pregnant women tailored to their week of pregnancy (based on their pregnancy due date); and community groups and chat rooms for pregnant couples and parents to discuss pregnancy and child-rearing strategies. The site grew quickly, and by early 1999 had 175 employees and an annual revenue of $35 million. In April of that year, the two founders sold BabyCenter to another website, eToys.com, for $190 million in stock. Twenty-three months later, in 2001, shortly before declaring bankruptcy, eToys sold the site to Johnson & Johnson for $10 million. During the eToys ownership, BabyCenter launched its first international E-commerce site in the UK during the spring of 2000. Starting in 2005, BabyCenter launched an expansion plan, extending its global network to Australia, Canada and other countries, staffing each outpost with local editors. In 2007, BabyCenter debuted a Mandarin-language site in China, initiated operations in India, launched a Spanish language website, and introduced its first mobile site. BabyCenter released My Pregnancy Today, its first mobile app, to Apple's App Store in August 2010 and to the Android market in April 2011. The app provided daily information, nutrition tips, advice relevant to the user's week of pregnancy, and 3-D animated videos showcasing a baby's development in utero. The My Pregnancy app was joined by a My Baby Today app in October 2011. In 2015, BabyCenter released Mom Feed, its first mobile app for parents of toddlers and older children (ages 1 to 8). Mom Feed offered personalized, stage-based information as well as content from the BabyCenter Community and Blog in a real-time stream. In 2016, BabyCenter launched its web-based Baby Names Finder. In 2018, Mom Feed was discontinued and BabyCenter replaced that experience with a separate Child Health content area on its website. Also in 2018, BabyCenter launched its mobile baby name generator, the Baby Names app, which, like the web-based Baby Names Finder, leverages data from hundreds of thousands of parents that culminates in its annual most popular Baby Names Report. In 2019, Johnson & Johnson sold Baby Center to Everyday Health Group, a division of New York-based parent company of Ziff Davis, Inc. Neither side disclosed terms of the deal. == Popular research == BabyCenter's most popular baby names is released annually and often cited by the media. In March 2024, BabyCenter did a review of the app Temu and said that the website has found products that have been recalled, could be counterfeit or circumvent U.S. safety standards and features that are important in preventing issues like choking. In 2025, BabyCenter released a report about the cost of raising a newborn baby in the first year. == Content and products == === Websites === BabyCenter has 8 country and region-specific websites around the world, including sites for the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, India, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Latin America. Users can find parenting and pregnancy advice in seven languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, German, and Hindi BabyCenter content for each country- or region-specific site is written by an editorial team based in that country or region. Medical and health content for each site is reviewed by a medical advisory board based there and adheres to that country or region's medical standards. For example, the U.S. site works with and follows the recommendations of such U.S. medical authorities as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. BabyCenter regularly conducts research and provides thought leadership on pregnancy and parenting topics, popularly cited by major media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Insider, MarketWatch, Axios. === Community, blogs and social === From its earliest days, BabyCenter has had a community area that allows people to join a group of parents with children born in the same month, known as a Birth Club. BabyCenter launched a blog called Momformation in 2007. Eventually, the name was changed to BabyCenter Blog. In April 2021, the BabyCenter Community was identified in a research article within the journal PLOS Computational Biology as facilitating "unobstructed communication" between parents, which avoids the "strong echo chamber phenomena" that can foster and perpetuate vaccine misinformation. === My Pregnancy and Baby Today App === The app is available in six languages, although not all features are supported for every market. Initially the apps only featured pregnancy articles that could be found on the BabyCenter website, but over the years the feature set has expanded to include a growing list of app-specific tools such as weekly fetal development information, a kick tracker, a birth plan worksheet, a contraction timer, a baby growth tracker, a photo journal for pregnant women to record their pregnancy bellies, and a photo journal for documenting a baby's first year. === Mission Motherhood™ === BabyCenter was a cofounder of the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), a public-private partnership between USAID, Johnson & Johnson, the UN Foundation, and BabyCenter from 2011 to-to 2015. The MAMA program sparked the creation of MomConnect, an initiative of the South African Department of Health for which BabyCenter developed SMS messages with health information about pregnancy and a child's first year of life. BabyCenter helped develop similar messages for mMitra, a voice messaging program in India. A research article in the Maternal and Child Health Journal stated the mMitra program offered strong evidence "that tailored mobile phone voice messages can improve key infant care knowledge and practices that lead to improved infant health outcomes in low-resource settings. BabyCenter's Mission Motherhood Messages were available to qualifying organizations on the BabyCenter website. BabyCenter contributed websites for Free Basics. These websites featured age and stage-based pregnancy and baby articles targeted to low-income, lower-education women who would not otherwise have access to health information. Content developed for this program was also used to support a UNICEF SMS program during the 2016 Zika outbreak. == Awards and recognition == In 1998, BabyCenter won a Webby Award for Best Home Site. Since then, it has been nominated for a Webby Award 19 times and won either a Webby or a People's Choice Webby Award 12 times – including a People's Voice win in 2021 for Lifestyle websites and mobile sites. In 2002, it won Service Journalism award from Online Journalism Awards (OJA). In 2015, BabyCenter won five Digital Health Awards for content about autism in children. In 2016, BabyCenter won seven Digital Health Awards: four for videos about the aches and pains of pregnancy, baby sleep, and the walking milestone in child development; two for articles about baby sleep training and sleep apnea in babies; and one for the BabyCenter mobile app My Pregnancy & Baby Today. In 2021, Forbes Health chose My Pregnancy & Baby Today as the best pregnancy app of 2021, and Women's Health identified it

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  Cleo Communications

  Cleo Communications LLC, simply referred to as Cleo, is a privately held software company founded in 1976. The company is best known for its ecosystem integration platform, Cleo Integration Cloud with RADAR. == History == Cleo originally began as a division of Phone 1 Inc., a voice data gathering systems manufacturer, and built data concentrators and terminal emulators — multi-bus computers, modems, and terminals to interface with IBM mainframes via bisynchronous communications. The company then began developing mainframe middleware in the 1980s, and with the rise of the PC, moved into B2B data communications and secure file transfer software. Cleo Communications was acquired in 2012 by Global Equity Partners along with other investment companies. Since being acquired in 2012, the company’s offerings have evolved into Cleo Integration Cloud, a platform for enterprise business integration. == Business == Based in Rockford, Illinois (USA), with offices in Chicago, Pennsylvania, London, and Bangalore, Cleo has about 400 employees and more than 4,100 direct customers. The company's flagship offering, Cleo Integration Cloud, provides both on-premise and cloud-based integration technologies and comprises solutions for B2B/EDI, application integration, data movement and data transformation. Previous products now incorporated into the Cleo Integration Cloud platform include Cleo Harmony, Cleo Clarify, and Cleo Jetsonic. Cleo solutions span a variety of industries, including manufacturing, logistics and supply chain, retail, third-party logistics, warehouse management and transportation management, healthcare, financial services and government. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs adopted Cleo's fax technology, Cleo Streem, in 2013 when in need of FIPS 140-2-compliant technology to protect information, and the City of Atlanta has used Cleo Streem for network and desktop faxing since 2006. Cleo also serves U.S. transportation logistics company MercuryGate International and SaaS-based food logistics organization ArrowStream. It powers the architecture for several major supply chain companies, such as Blue Yonder and SAP. Cleo integrates the pharmaceutical supply chain for such companies as Octapharma. Key partners include FourKites and ClientsFirst, among many others. In May 2023, Cleo announced it entered a global partnership with consulting and multinational information technology services company, Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH). Together, the companies announced CCIB, powered by Cleo, which is a B2B iPaaS solution that provides B2B managed services with built-in, scalable infrastructure on the cloud. The solution comprises elements from Cleo’s flagship offering, Cleo Integration Cloud. == Expansion == In June 2014, Cleo opened an office in Chicago for members of its support and Ashok and teams. In 2014, the company hired Jorge Rodriguez as Senior Vice President of Product Development and John Thielens as Vice President of Technology. Cleo hired Dave Brunswick as Vice President of Solutions for North America in 2015, and Cleo hired Ken Lyons to lead global sales in 2016. Lyons now serves as the company's Chief Revenue Officer. More recent additions to the company's leadership team include Vipin Mittal, Vice President, Customer Experience, and Tushar Patel, CMO. Cleo opened its product development facility in Bengaluru, India, in 2015 and expanded its hybrid cloud integration teams into a new office there in 2017. The company also opened a London office in 2016 and expanded its network of channel partners in EMEA. In 2016, Cleo acquired EXTOL International, a Pottsville, Pa.-based business and EDI integration and data transformation company for an undisclosed amount. In 2017, the company moved its headquarters from Loves Park, Illinois, to Rockford. In 2021 the company received a significant growth investment from H.I.G. Capital. In July 2022, Cleo opened a new, 5,000-square-foot office located in Chicago's Loop. In November 2022, Cleo launched an accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics 365 SCM-to-X12 and a connector for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. These pre-built solutions allow businesses and users to quickly build integration flows that integrate their digital ecosystems. In March 2023, Cleo released CIC PAVE (Procurement Automation and Vendor Enablement). PAVE provides customers with enhanced supply chain visibility via a supplier portal that allows the customer to keep vendor interaction in a single location, even if they cannot use EDI or have API-ready applications. In December 2023, Cleo acquired ECS International, an integration technology company based in the Netherlands. == Certification == Cleo regularly submits its products to Drummond Group's interoperability software testing for AS2, AS3 and ebMS 2.0. In January 2020, Cleo announced that its new application connector for Acumatica ERP has been recognized as an Acumatica-Certified Application (ACA). The company also holds SOC 2, Type 2 certification. == Awards == Cleo was a Xerox partner of the year award for five years, from 2009 to 2014. The Cleo Streem solution integrates with Xerox multi-function products, providing customers with solutions for network fax and interactive messaging needs. Cleo was named to Food Logistics’ FL100+ Top Software and Technology Providers Lists in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2020. Cleo CEO, Mahesh Rajasekharan was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022 Midwest Award winner. Rajasekharan is serving as a judge for the 2023 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of the Year Awards. As of April 2022, Cleo has been named a Leader in EDI on the G2 Grid, a peer-to-peer review site, for 20 straight quarters. In Spring 2023, Cleo won 23 G2 awards—including EDI Leader Enterprise, MFT Leader Enterprise, On-Premise Data Integration Best Support Enterprise, and iPaaS High Performer Asia.

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  Menu hack

  A menu hack is a non-standard method of ordering food, usually at fast-food or fast casual restaurants, that offers a different result than what is explicitly stated on a menu. Menu hacks may range from a simple alternate flavor to "gaming the system" in order to obtain more food than normal. They are often spread on social media platforms such as TikTok, and are more popular with Generation Z, which has been known to customize their orders more than previous generations. Hacks are sometimes officially added to the menu after their popularity grows. However, in some cases, they have been criticized for overburdening fast food employees with outlandish requests, sparking debate as to whether certain menu hacks are unethical. The list of all possible menu hacks is called a secret menu. == History == The term "menu hack" stems from hacker culture and its tradition of overcoming previously imposed limitations. However, the tradition of ordering from a secret menu dates back to the early days of fast food. "Animal style" fries, a word of mouth menu item ordered from In-N-Out since the 1960s, was rumored to have been created by local surfers. In the Information Age, the rise of social media gave influencers the ability to communicate unique food combinations to their followers, which proved to go viral easily. Design mistakes in food ordering apps also proved to be easily exploitable. In some cases, these hacks boosted the profile of brands on social media, while in others, they caused financial harm when the company was unprepared to handle the sudden influx of unusual orders. One restaurant chain notable for the phenomenon is Chipotle Mexican Grill. A viral hack from Alexis Frost, suggesting a quesadilla with fajita vegetables inside, dipped in Chipotle vinaigrette mixed with sour cream, obtained 1.9 million views on TikTok, overloading the chain's workers, who had to work harder to prepare more vegetables and vinaigrette. Some restaurants began to deny the dish to customers, forcing them to only order meat and cheese on quesadillas. The company ultimately left the dish on the menu, but urged customers to stop ordering it via social media. When it later officially added the Fajita Quesadilla to the menu, digital sales nearly doubled. A method to order nachos, which are not officially on the menu, was also noted by customers. Starbucks is also famous for menu hacks, including the Pink Drink, a "Barbiecore" beverage in which coconut milk replaced the water in the strawberry açaí refresher. After it went viral, the company made it a permanent menu item and distributed it bottled in grocery stores. == Controversy == Menu hacks have been subject to a growing backlash, with employees stating that they "dread" younger customers due to the proliferation of unusual orders. Service industry workers, already overworked and underpaid, have called the rise of menu hacks and their difficulty to make an additional reason to unionize and demand higher wages.

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  Data lineage

  Data lineage refers to the process of tracking how data is generated, transformed, transmitted and used across systems over time. It documents data's origins, transformations and movements, providing detailed visibility into its life cycle. This process simplifies the identification of errors in data analytics workflows, by enabling users to trace issues back to their root causes. Data lineage facilitates the ability to replay specific segments or inputs of the dataflow. This can be used in debugging or regenerating lost outputs. In database systems, this concept is closely related to data provenance, which involves maintaining records of inputs, entities, systems and processes that influence data. Data provenance provides a historical record of data origins and transformations. It supports forensic activities such as data-dependency analysis, error/compromise detection, recovery, auditing and compliance analysis: "Lineage is a simple type of why provenance." Data governance plays a critical role in managing metadata by establishing guidelines, strategies and policies. Enhancing data lineage with data quality measures and master data management adds business value. Although data lineage is typically represented through a graphical user interface (GUI), the methods for gathering and exposing metadata to this interface can vary. Based on the metadata collection approach, data lineage can be categorized into three types: Those involving software packages for structured data, programming languages and Big data systems. Data lineage information includes technical metadata about data transformations. Enriched data lineage may include additional elements such as data quality test results, reference data, data models, business terminology, data stewardship information, program management details and enterprise systems associated with data points and transformations. Data lineage visualization tools often include masking features that allow users to focus on information relevant to specific use cases. To unify representations across disparate systems, metadata normalization or standardization may be required. == Representation of data lineage == Representation broadly depends on the scope of the metadata management and reference point of interest. Data lineage provides sources of the data and intermediate data flow hops from the reference point with backward data lineage, leading to the final destination's data points and its intermediate data flows with forward data lineage. These views can be combined with end-to-end lineage for a reference point that provides a complete audit trail of that data point of interest from sources to their final destinations. As the data points or hops increase, the complexity of such representation becomes incomprehensible. Thus, the best feature of the data lineage view is the ability to simplify the view by temporarily masking unwanted peripheral data points. Tools with the masking feature enable scalability of the view and enhance analysis with the best user experience for both technical and business users. Data lineage also enables companies to trace sources of specific business data to track errors, implement changes in processes and implementing system migrations to save significant amounts of time and resources. Data lineage can improve efficiency in business intelligence BI processes. Data lineage can be represented visually to discover the data flow and movement from its source to destination via various changes and hops on its way in the enterprise environment. This includes how the data is transformed along the way, how the representation and parameters change and how the data splits or converges after each hop. A simple representation of the Data Lineage can be shown with dots and lines, where dots represent data containers for data points, and lines connecting them represent transformations the data undergoes between the data containers. Data lineage can be visualized at various levels based on the granularity of the view. At a very high-level, data lineage is visualized as systems that the data interacts with before it reaches its destination. At its most granular, visualizations at the data point level can provide the details of the data point and its historical behavior, attribute properties and trends and data quality of the data passed through that specific data point in the data lineage. The scope of the data lineage determines the volume of metadata required to represent its data lineage. Usually, data governance and data management of an organization determine the scope of the data lineage based on their regulations, enterprise data management strategy, data impact, reporting attributes and critical data elements of the organization. == Rationale == Distributed systems like Google Map Reduce, Microsoft Dryad, Apache Hadoop (an open-source project) and Google Pregel provide such platforms for businesses and users. However, even with these systems, Big Data analytics can take several hours, days or weeks to run, simply due to the data volumes involved. For example, a ratings prediction algorithm for the Netflix Prize challenge took nearly 20 hours to execute on 50 cores, and a large-scale image processing task to estimate geographic information took 3 days to complete using 400 cores. "The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is expected to generate terabytes of data every night and eventually store more than 50 petabytes, while in the bioinformatics sector, the 12 largest genome sequencing houses in the world now store petabytes of data apiece. It is very difficult for a data scientist to trace an unknown or an unanticipated result. === Big data debugging === Big data analytics is the process of examining large data sets to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations, market trends, customer preferences and other useful business information. Machine learning, among other algorithms, is used to transform and analyze the data. Due to the large size of the data, there could be unknown features in the data. The massive scale and unstructured nature of data, the complexity of these analytics pipelines, and long runtimes pose significant manageability and debugging challenges. Even a single error in these analytics can be extremely difficult to identify and remove. While one may debug them by re-running the entire analytics through a debugger for stepwise debugging, this can be expensive due to the amount of time and resources needed. Auditing and data validation are other major problems due to the growing ease of access to relevant data sources for use in experiments, the sharing of data between scientific communities and use of third-party data in business enterprises. As such, more cost-efficient ways of analyzing data intensive scale-able computing (DISC) are crucial to their continued effective use. === Challenges in Big Data debugging === ==== Massive scale ==== According to an EMC/IDC study, 2.8 ZB of data were created and replicated in 2012. Furthermore, the same study states that the digital universe will double every two years between now and 2020, and that there will be approximately 5.2 TB of data for every person in 2020. Based on current technology, the storage of this much data will mean greater energy usage by data centers. ==== Unstructured data ==== Unstructured data usually refers to information that doesn't reside in a traditional row-column database. Unstructured data files often include text and multimedia content, such as e-mail messages, word processing documents, videos, photos, audio files, presentations, web pages and many other kinds of business documents. While these types of files may have an internal structure, they are still considered "unstructured" because the data they contain doesn't fit neatly into a database. The amount of unstructured data in enterprises is growing many times faster than structured databases are growing. Big data can include both structured and unstructured data, but IDC estimates that 90 percent of Big Data is unstructured data. The fundamental challenge of unstructured data sources is that they are difficult for non-technical business users and data analysts alike to unbox, understand and prepare for analytic use. Beyond issues of structure, the sheer volume of this type of data contributes to such difficulty. Because of this, current data mining techniques often leave out valuable information and make analyzing unstructured data laborious and expensive. In today's competitive business environment, companies have to find and analyze the relevant data they need quickly. The challenge is going through the volumes of data and accessing the level of detail needed, all at a high speed. The challenge only grows as the degree of granularity increases. One possible solution is hardware. Some vendors are using increased memory and parallel processing to crunch large volumes of data quickly. Another method is putting data in-memory but using a grid

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  MY F.C.

  MY F.C. is a freemium app designed to organise and administer football teams. It is developed by MY F.C. Limited, a private company headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. The app allows users to build a team by adding players and from there they can create trainings and matches, keep up with relevant news in the curated newsfeed, record statistics both individually and team based, follow the games live in the match-centre. The app also features integrated lineup builder with custom team kits. == History == Founders Sam Jenkins, Mike Simpson and Sam Jasper started MY F.C. in 2015 to help them "run their football lives". The app was launched on Android and iOS on 14 February 2017. == Accolades == MY F.C. won the first place prize at Bank of New Zealand Start-up Alley 2017 competition that aims to discover New Zealand start-ups who are doing innovative work and ready to establish themselves as long-term, sustainable businesses. The prize package included $15,000 and a trip to San Francisco.

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  Social media use in education

  Social media in education is the use of social media to enhance education. Social media are "a group of Internet-based applications...that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content". It is also known as the read/write web. As time went on and technology evolved, social media has been an integral part of people's lives, including students, scholars, and teachers. However, social media are controversial because, in addition to providing new means of connection, critics claim that they damage self-esteem, shorten attention spans, and increase mental health issues. A 2016 dissertation presented surveys that focused on the impact of social media. It reported that 54.6% of students believed that social media affected their studies positively (38% agree, 16.6% strongly agree). About 40% disagreed, and 4.7% of students strongly disagreed. 53% of female students reported that social media negatively impacted their studies. Among male students, 40% agreed that social media had a negative impact on studies, while 59% disagreed. A 2023 article dives deep into the rewards system of the brain in response to social media. This study compares the social rewards system in our brain to those from social media. From ages 10-12, most are receiving a cell phone, social rewards in the brain start to feel more satisfying. Leading to adulthood, the effects of social rewards are less likely to feel reliant on feedback from peers. Equivalent to a more mature prefrontal cortex, this enables a better management of their emotional reaction to these social rewards, meaning a more balanced and controlled reaction. == History == A survey from Cambridge International of nearly 20,000 teachers and students (ages 12–19) from 100 countries found that 48% of students use a desktop computer in class, 42% uses phones, 33% use interactive whiteboards and 20% use tablets. Desktop computers are more used than tablets. Teachers were abandoning the "no phones at school" rule. A 2024 research survey through Common Sense Education reported 54% of age 8-12 and 69% of ages 13-18 social media is an extensive distraction from homework. === United States === The long-running technology boom accelerated after the millennium. As of 2018, 95% of US teenage students had access to a smartphone and 45% said they were online almost constantly. In the early days of social media, access to technology was a significant issue as many students did not own not compatible devices and school budgets were often insufficient to purchase devices for student use. Despite backlash, Missouri passed a law that prohibited teachers from communicating privately with students over social media in 2011. Supporters were concerned that online communication between underage students and faculty could lead to inappropriate relationships. Some schools adopted a "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) policy, allowing students to bring Internet-accessing devices, such as phones or tablets to class. During the pandemic, the federal government offered funds that allowed more schools to purchase devices. Over time, more students acquired phones with social media access. Personal devices increased student satisfaction, but reduced teachers' ability to control device use in their classrooms. A 2018 Pew Research study reported that 95% of teenagers had a phone and used social media consistently. === Canada === The Peel District School Board (PDSB) in Ontario accepted the use of social media in the classroom. In 2013, the PDSB introduced BYOD and unblocked many social media sites. That was later replaced by a policy that dealt specifically with social media. == Uses == === Classroom === In the classroom, social media offers a way to systematically distribute and gather information from students. Teachers can supply documents, and audio/video media to students for immediate or later use. One study on higher education reported that devices and social media: created opportunities for interaction provided occasions for collaboration sped up information access offered more ways to learn situated learning. Frustrations included anti-technology instructors, device challenges, and devices as a distraction. Social media in classrooms can have a negative effect. A Yale University publication reported that students who used laptops in class for non-academic reasons had poorer performance. Students spent most of their time on social media, shopping, and other personal activities. Social media has helped many educators mentor their students more effectively. === Outside of class === Social media offer a venue for video calls, stories, feeds, and game playing that can enhance the learning process. Teachers can utilize social media to communicate with their students. Social media can provide students with resources that they can utilize in essays, projects, and presentations. Students can easily access comments made by teachers and peers and offer feedback to teachers. Social media can offer students the opportunity to collaborate by sharing information without requiring face to face meetings. Social media can allow students to more easily connect with experts, to go beyond course materials. Instructors in a 2010 study reported that online technologies (social media) can help students become comfortable having discussions outside the classroom better than traditional means. Teachers may face some risk when using social media outside the classroom, without appropriate work rules. Studies explores how college students' engagement with social media platforms influences their communication preferences and habits, particularly in relation to using school email for academic purposes. === Professional development === Social media can aid professional development, as teachers become students, enhancing knowledge transfer, skill master, and collaboration. === Non-academic uses === Schools can use social media to make public announcements. Teachers and administrators can communicate other important information to parents and students and to receive feedback from them. Families can keep up with school events and policies. === Ecology education === The potential of using social media in ecological, nature and forest education include: virtual nature groups can help promote good habits in forest tourism and recreation (nature ethics), by entering general rules in the regulations by administrators, e.g. "DO NOT PICK UP PLANTS UNKNOWN TO US", which is to protects rare species from pointless picking. social media activity motivates people to learn about nature in the field, allows them to gain knowledge, dispels popular myths, enables contact with scientists and practitioners, promotes valuable literature, websites, and at the same time reveals distortions and substantive errors in popular news services. contact is not only virtual. Despite financial barriers and distance, Internet users organize nature conventions. Such meetings are an opportunity not only to make friends, but also to learn about nature together and have fun. the possibility of contact between scientists and nature lovers via Facebook has become a source of cooperation in species inventory, e.g. the online campaign of the NATRIX Herpetological Society, which consists not only of collecting reports of observations of the smooth snake by Internet users, but also of drawing attention to the biology and threats to this species. Social media has become a place where ecology education quickly reaches people of different ages and social statuses. The nature groups that have been created, in which nature lovers, biologists, foresters and scientists participate, can have a real impact on the state of knowledge and data collection through citizen science. == Apps and services == Social media can allow students to participate in their field by working with organizations outside the classroom. By offering easier access to peers outside the classroom, students can broaden their perspectives and find support resources. Social media aided learning outside of the classroom through collaboration and innovation. One specific study, "Exploring education-related use of social media," called this "audience connectors". Audience connectors bring students together while studying with WhatsApp and Facebook. This study reported that "60 percent [of students in the study] agreed that technology changes education for the better." While social media can promote a beneficial education platform, downsides exist. Students may become skilled at "lifting material from the internet" rather than enhancing their personal understanding. Another downside is student attention spans decline. A concern raised by the students of this study showed how many use spell-check as a crutch and will see a trend of points taken off when spell-check is not an option. Apps like X allowed teachers to make classroom accounts where students can learn about social media in a controlled context. Teachers can post assignments on th

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  TRAME

  TRAME (TRAnsmission of MEssages) was the name of the second computer network in the world similar to the internet to be used in an electric utility. Like the internet, the base technology was packet switching; it was developed by the electric utility ENHER in Barcelona. It was deployed by the same utility, first in Catalonia and Aragón, Spain, and later in other places. Its development started in 1974 and the first routers, called nodes at that time, were deployed by 1978. The network was in operation until 2016 (38 years) with successive technological software and hardware updates. == Beginnings == In 1974, packet switching was a technology known only in research circles. The concept began in 1968 in association with the United States' Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) research project ARPANET. The idea of applying the packet switching concept to electric utilities control communication networks first appeared in 1974 when the Swedish power utility Vattenfall started to create its TIDAS packet-switching network and was followed by the Spanish electric utility ENHER, which aimed to telecontrol and automate its high-voltage power grid. For this purpose, ENHER created a specific team of people to develop both the packet-switching network and the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, also called the telecontrol system. By 1978 the first four TRAME routers were available and by 1980, eight of them were deployed and operating. The printed circuit boards (PCBs) controlling the communication lines were connected to a shared memory PCB allowing them to exchange data and messages. The project was developed together with its main initial application, the Telecontrol or SCADA system SICL (Sistema Integral de Control Local) with which initially they shared a very similar hardware. The maximum link capacity was 9600 bit/s, which in 1980 was the maximum possible on a 4 kHz wide voice channel at the time. These channels were the basic unit of the then-analog communication systems in use. By that time power utilities used either telephone calls or low speed (below 1200bit/s) dedicated links for telecontrol, typically shared among ten high-voltage electrical substations. == Services == The basic service provided by the TRAME network was SCADA or Telecontrol to automate the high-voltage power grid, thus improving operational efficiency, which was until then operated manually with telephone communication between human operators. Each TRAME router was associated with one or more remote terminal units (RTUs) of the SICL telecontrol system. It also had connected screens, and later PCs, located in electrical substations to interchange messages between them and with the Control Center located in the well-known Casa Fuster in Barcelona. It was a kind of predecessor to today's e-mail. Later, in the 1990s, other protocols (X.25, IP) were developed to include corporate information technology (IT) terminals, company physical surveillance systems and other services. Additionally, applications and terminals were developed for the transmission of voice and video over the TRAME network. == Protocols == The TRAME routing system, like that of the original ARPANET, was based on the Bellman-Ford algorithm but with "split-horizon" as in the Swedish TIDAS network, but with an original improvement. This protocol allows optimal paths to be found in meshed networks for each packet to be transmitted, allowing the shared use of the same network by multiple services. In contrast, traditional circuit-switched technology used to establish dedicated circuits for each service or communication. The addressing of routers and terminals used a proprietary system with a 16-bit address; it would be the equivalent of the well-known IP (Internet Protocol) version 4 (IPv4), still in use on the internet today, which uses 32-bit addresses. It is necessary to take into account that in 1978, the IPv4 protocol did not yet exist since the IPv4 version used on the internet did not appear until 1981, and in fact, did not reach the general public until much later. The line protocols were also proprietary and were called UCL (Unidad de Control de Línea, 'line control unit'), which linked the routers together, and UTR (Unión TRAME-Remotas), the access protocol. They were designed to offer the highest quality of service required by the telecontrol/SCADA function in terms of data integrity and availability set by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) IEC-870-5-1 and ANSI C37.1. standards, and because the protocol used at the time in corporate computer networks, HDLC (high-level data link control), did not offer enough quality for critical industrial applications. Later on, other protocols like X.25 and IP were also made compatible with the aforementioned TRAME protocols. In 2000, the UTR protocol was replaced by the international standard IEC 60870- 5-101/104. Initially network flow control was based on the management of eight data priorities in head-of-the-line (HOL) waiting queues. Later and after some experimentation, a flow control method based on a bit indicating route congestion and management of the gap between packets when accessing the network was adopted. This required measuring the capacity of the route bottleneck. An end-to-end protocol was also added for some flows requiring order preservation like X.25. == Evolution == To last for 38 years, the technology had to endure intense evolution. There were essentially four TRAME generations which are summarized in the table. A description of the four generations of TRAME is provided below. === TRAME 1 === The project began in 1974 and in 1978 a first network with four routers was already installed and in operation at the electric utility ENHER. In 1980, the network had eight nodes in operation (see Figure I). The hardware was based on the Zilog Z80 processor and had a multiprocessor structure with 16 processors sharing a common memory. The software was developed at ENHER's headquarters located in the well-known Casa Fuster, Passeig de Gràcia, 132, Barcelona, using the Z80 assembly language. Beyond 1980 the software began to be written in C programming language and an HP64000 Logic Development System emulator was used for the purpose. The hardware was produced by ISEL, an INI (Instituto Nacional de Indústria) company. The routing system was a variant of Bellman-Ford with split-horizon. It was an improvement of the original ARPA network routing system consisting of an original update procedure which allowed for a faster reaction to changes. The distance function was the number of packets in the output waiting queues plus one. The line protocols (UCL for internal lines linking routers and UTR for accessing the network) were designed to meet the stringent requirements set for telecontrol (SCADA) of high-voltage power networks (IEC-870-5-1 and ANSI C37.1 standards). At the OSI transport layer, windows with a width of 1 to 8, depending on the required service, residing in the terminals were used. Initially, addresses were only 14 bits long to address both the routers (called nodes by then) and the devices connected to them. They were made up of two fields, an 8-bit field to address the router and a 6-bit sub-address to address the terminals connected to it. The node address was assigned to the nodes and not to the ends of the links as in the internet. The basic advantages of TRAME over other technologies used in electric utilities at the time were in part due to the packet technology itself: ability to manage any network topology, automatic adaptability to topological and traffic changes, integration of different link technologies (digital or analog) and capacities in a single network, open and decentralized intercommunicability between users and devices, simultaneous communication with several users and locations from a single physical connection, and integrated network supervision. In fact, the network was provided from its inception with a supervision center consisting of a computer and a synoptic board located at the company's headquarters (see Figure II). But other advantages were due to the specific design of TRAME: high data integrity, priority support for packets, and ease of including special protocols such as the many SCADA protocols in use at that time. All of the above resulted in improved quality of service, especially with respect to data availability and data integrity, and in the integration of services in a single network. Part of the evolution of its deployment can be seen in Figures II to IV. === TRAME 2 === In 1990, TRAME 2 was fully deployed and TRAME 1 was replaced. The processor of the new hardware was Intel 80286 and the hardware structure and external appearance of the routers was very similar to that of TRAME 1. The software was written in C and the above-mentioned emulator continued to be used. Improvements over TRAME 1 were the introduction of the standardized X.25 access protocol

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  Data deduplication

  In computing, data deduplication is a technique for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data. Successful implementation of the technique can improve storage utilization, which may in turn lower capital expenditure by reducing the overall amount of storage media required to meet storage capacity needs. It can also be applied to network data transfers to reduce the number of bytes that must be sent. The deduplication process requires comparison of data 'chunks' (also known as 'byte patterns') which are unique, contiguous blocks of data. These chunks are identified and stored during a process of analysis, and compared to other chunks within existing data. Whenever a match occurs, the redundant chunk is replaced with a small reference that points to the stored chunk. Given that the same byte pattern may occur dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times (the match frequency is dependent on the chunk size), the amount of data that must be stored or transferred can be greatly reduced. A related technique is single-instance (data) storage, which replaces multiple copies of content at the whole-file level with a single shared copy. While possible to combine this with other forms of data compression and deduplication, it is distinct from newer approaches to data deduplication (which can operate at the segment or sub-block level). Deduplication is different from data compression algorithms, such as LZ77 and LZ78. Whereas compression algorithms identify redundant data inside individual files and encodes this redundant data more efficiently, the intent of deduplication is to inspect large volumes of data and identify large sections – such as entire files or large sections of files – that are identical, and replace them with a shared copy. == Functioning principle == For example, a typical email system might contain 100 instances of the same 1 MB (megabyte) file attachment. Each time the email platform is backed up, all 100 instances of the attachment are saved, requiring 100 MB storage space. With data deduplication, only one instance of the attachment is actually stored; the subsequent instances are referenced back to the saved copy for deduplication ratio of roughly 100 to 1. Deduplication is often paired with data compression for additional storage saving: Deduplication is first used to eliminate large chunks of repetitive data, and compression is then used to efficiently encode each of the stored chunks. In computer code, deduplication is done by, for example, storing information in variables so that they don't have to be written out individually but can be changed all at once at a central referenced location. Examples are CSS classes and named references in MediaWiki. == Benefits == Storage-based data deduplication reduces the amount of storage needed for a given set of files. It is most effective in applications where many copies of very similar or even identical data are stored on a single disk. In the case of data backups, which routinely are performed to protect against data loss, most data in a given backup remain unchanged from the previous backup. Common backup systems try to exploit this by omitting (or hard linking) files that haven't changed or storing differences between files. Neither approach captures all redundancies, however. Hard-linking does not help with large files that have only changed in small ways, such as an email database; differences only find redundancies in adjacent versions of a single file (consider a section that was deleted and later added in again, or a logo image included in many documents). In-line network data deduplication is used to reduce the number of bytes that must be transferred between endpoints, which can reduce the amount of bandwidth required. See WAN optimization for more information. Virtual servers and virtual desktops benefit from deduplication because it allows nominally separate system files for each virtual machine to be coalesced into a single storage space. At the same time, if a given virtual machine customizes a file, deduplication will not change the files on the other virtual machines—something that alternatives like hard links or shared disks do not offer. Backing up or making duplicate copies of virtual environments is similarly improved. == Classification == === Post-process versus in-line deduplication === Deduplication may occur "in-line", as data is flowing, or "post-process" after it has been written. With post-process deduplication, new data is first stored on the storage device and then a process at a later time will analyze the data looking for duplication. The benefit is that there is no need to wait for the hash calculations and lookup to be completed before storing the data, thereby ensuring that store performance is not degraded. Implementations offering policy-based operation can give users the ability to defer optimization on "active" files, or to process files based on type and location. One potential drawback is that duplicate data may be unnecessarily stored for a short time, which can be problematic if the system is nearing full capacity. Alternatively, deduplication hash calculations can be done in-line: synchronized as data enters the target device. If the storage system identifies a block which it has already stored, only a reference to the existing block is stored, rather than the whole new block. The advantage of in-line deduplication over post-process deduplication is that it requires less storage and network traffic, since duplicate data is never stored or transferred. On the negative side, hash calculations may be computationally expensive, thereby reducing the storage throughput. However, certain vendors with in-line deduplication have demonstrated equipment which performs in-line deduplication at high rates. Post-process and in-line deduplication methods are often heavily debated. === Data formats === The SNIA Dictionary identifies two methods: Content-agnostic data deduplication – a data deduplication method that does not require awareness of specific application data formats. Content-aware data deduplication – a data deduplication method that leverages knowledge of specific application data formats. === Source versus target deduplication === Another way to classify data deduplication methods is according to where they occur. Deduplication occurring close to where data is created, is referred to as "source deduplication". When it occurs near where the data is stored, it is called "target deduplication". Source deduplication ensures that data on the data source is deduplicated. This generally takes place directly within a file system. The file system will periodically scan new files creating hashes and compare them to hashes of existing files. When files with same hashes are found then the file copy is removed and the new file points to the old file. Unlike hard links however, duplicated files are considered to be separate entities and if one of the duplicated files is later modified, then using a system called copy-on-write a copy of that changed file or block is created. The deduplication process is transparent to the users and backup applications. Backing up a deduplicated file system will often cause duplication to occur resulting in the backups being bigger than the source data. Source deduplication can be declared explicitly for copying operations, as no calculation is needed to know that the copied data is in need of deduplication. This leads to a new form of link on file systems, called a reference-counted link, or reflink, in some systems (e.g. Linux), or a cloned file on macOS, where one or more inodes (file information entries) are made to share some or all of their data. It is named analogously to hard links, which work at the inode level, and symbolic links, which work at the filename level.The individual entries have a copy-on-write behavior that is non-aliasing, i.e. changing one copy afterwards will not affect other copies. Microsoft's ReFS also supports this operation. Target deduplication is the process of removing duplicates when the data was not generated at that location. Example of this would be a server connected to a SAN/NAS, The SAN/NAS would be a target for the server (target deduplication). The server is not aware of any deduplication, the server is also the point of data generation. A second example would be backup. Generally this will be a backup store such as a data repository or a virtual tape library. === Deduplication methods === One of the most common forms of data deduplication implementations works by comparing chunks of data to detect duplicates. For that to happen, each chunk of data is assigned an identification, calculated by the software, typically using cryptographic hash functions. In many implementations, the assumption is made that if the identification is identical, the data is identical, even though this cannot be true in all cases due to the pigeonhole principle; other implementations do not as

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  Intel Management Engine

  The Intel Management Engine (ME), also known as the Intel Manageability Engine, is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel's processor chipsets since 2008. It is located in the Platform Controller Hub of modern Intel motherboards. The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off. This issue can be mitigated with the deployment of a hardware device which is able to disconnect all connections to mains power as well as all internal forms of energy storage. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and some security researchers have voiced concern that the Management Engine is a backdoor. Intel's main competitor, AMD, has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs. == Difference from Intel AMT == The Management Engine is often confused with Intel AMT (Intel Active Management Technology). AMT runs on the ME, but is only available on processors with vPro. AMT gives device owners remote administration of their computer, such as powering it on or off, and reinstalling the operating system. However, the ME itself has been built into all Intel chipsets since 2008, not only those with AMT. While AMT can be unprovisioned by the owner, there is no official, documented way to disable the ME. == Design == The subsystem primarily consists of proprietary firmware running on a separate microprocessor that performs tasks during boot-up, while the computer is running, and while it is asleep. As long as the chipset or SoC is supplied with power (via battery or power supply), it continues to run even when the system is turned off. Intel claims the ME is required to provide full performance. Its exact workings are largely undocumented and its code is obfuscated using confidential Huffman tables stored directly in hardware, so the firmware does not contain the information necessary to decode its contents. === Hardware === Starting with ME 11 (introduced in Skylake CPUs), it is based on the Intel Quark x86-based 32-bit CPU and runs the MINIX 3 operating system. The ME firmware is stored in a partition of the SPI BIOS Flash, using the Embedded Flash File System (EFFS). Previous versions were based on an ARC core, with the Management Engine running the ThreadX RTOS. Versions 1.x to 5.x of the ME used the ARCTangent-A4 (32-bit only instructions) whereas versions 6.x to 8.x used the newer ARCompact (mixed 32- and 16-bit instruction set architecture). Starting with ME 7.1, the ARC processor could also execute signed Java applets. The ME has its own MAC and IP address for the out-of-band management interface, with direct access to the Ethernet controller; one portion of the Ethernet traffic is diverted to the ME even before reaching the host's operating system, for what support exists in various Ethernet controllers, exported and made configurable via Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP). The ME also communicates with the host via PCI interface. Under Linux, communication between the host and the ME is done via /dev/mei or /dev/mei0. Until the release of Nehalem processors, the ME was usually embedded into the motherboard's northbridge, following the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) layout. With the newer Intel architectures (Intel 5 Series onwards), the ME is integrated into the Platform Controller Hub (PCH). === Firmware === By Intel's current terminology as of 2017, ME is one of several firmware sets for the Converged Security and Manageability Engine (CSME). Prior to AMT version 11, CSME was called Intel Management Engine BIOS Extension (Intel MEBx). Management Engine (ME) – mainstream chipsets Server Platform Services (SPS) – server chipsets and SoCs Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) – tablet/embedded/low power It was also found that the ME firmware version 11 runs MINIX 3. Management of the ME modules for provisioning inside the UEFI is done via a tool called Intel Flash Image Tool (FITC). ==== Modules ==== Active Management Technology (AMT) Intel Boot Guard (IBG) and Secure Boot Quiet System Technology (QST), formerly known as Advanced Fan Speed Control (AFSC), which provides support for acoustically optimized fan speed control, and monitoring of temperature, voltage, current and fan speed sensors that are provided in the chipset, CPU and other devices present on the motherboard. Communication with the QST firmware subsystem is documented and available through the official software development kit (SDK). Protected Audio Video Path, enforces HDCP Intel Anti-Theft Technology (AT), discontinued in 2015 Serial over LAN (SOL) Intel Platform Trust Technology (PTT), a firmware-based Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Near Field Communication, a middleware for NFC readers and vendors to access NFC cards and provide secure element access, found in later MEI versions. == The intricacies of working with Intel ME == It should also be noted that the ME region requires special cleaning and subsequent initialisation, for example, after replacing the platform hub on the motherboard. Usually, this requires an SPI programmer. There are known successful cases of this operation being performed. == Security vulnerabilities == Several weaknesses have been found in the ME. On May 1, 2017, Intel confirmed a Remote Elevation of Privilege bug (SA-00075) in its Management Technology. Every Intel platform with provisioned Intel Standard Manageability, Active Management Technology, or Small Business Technology, from Nehalem in 2008 to Kaby Lake in 2017 has a remotely exploitable security hole in the ME. Several ways to disable the ME without authorization that could allow ME's functions to be sabotaged have been found. Additional major security flaws in the ME affecting a very large number of computers incorporating ME, Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Server Platform Services (SPS) firmware, from Skylake in 2015 to Coffee Lake in 2017, were confirmed by Intel on November 20, 2017 (SA-00086). Unlike SA-00075, this bug is even present if AMT is absent, not provisioned or if the ME was "disabled" by any of the known unofficial methods. In July 2018, another set of vulnerabilities was disclosed (SA-00112). In September 2018, yet another vulnerability was published (SA-00125). === Ring −3 rootkit === A ring −3 rootkit was demonstrated by Invisible Things Lab for the Q35 chipset; it does not work for the later Q45 chipset as Intel implemented additional protections. The exploit worked by remapping the normally protected memory region (top 16 MB of RAM) reserved for the ME. The ME rootkit could be installed regardless of whether the AMT is present or enabled on the system, as the chipset always contains the ARC ME coprocessor. (The "−3" designation was chosen because the ME coprocessor works even when the system is in the S3 state. Thus, it was considered a layer below the System Management Mode rootkits.) For the vulnerable Q35 chipset, a keystroke logger ME-based rootkit was demonstrated by Patrick Stewin. === Zero-touch provisioning === Another security evaluation by Vassilios Ververis showed serious weaknesses in the GM45 chipset implementation. In particular, it criticized AMT for transmitting unencrypted passwords in the SMB provisioning mode when the IDE redirection and Serial over LAN features are used. It also found that the "zero touch" provisioning mode (ZTC) is still enabled even when the AMT appears to be disabled in BIOS. For about 60 euros, Ververis purchased from GoDaddy a certificate that is accepted by the ME firmware and allows remote "zero touch" provisioning of (possibly unsuspecting) machines, which broadcast their HELLO packets to would-be configuration servers. === SA-00075 (a.k.a. Silent Bob is Silent) === In May 2017, Intel confirmed that many computers with AMT have had an unpatched critical privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2017-5689). The vulnerability was nicknamed "Silent Bob is Silent" by the researchers who had reported it to Intel. It affects numerous laptops, desktops and servers sold by Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard (later Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.), Intel, Lenovo, and possibly others. Those researchers claimed that the bug affects systems made in 2010 or later. Other reports claimed the bug also affects systems made as long ago as 2008. The vulnerability was described as giving remote attackers: "full control of affected machines, including the ability to read and modify everything. It can be used to install persistent malware (possibly in firmware), and read and modify any data." === PLATINUM === In June 2017, the PLATINUM cybercrime group became notable for exploiting the serial over LAN (SOL) capabilities of AMT to perform data exfiltration of stolen documents. SOL is disabled by default and must be enabled to exploit this vulnerability. === SA-00086 === Some months after the previous bugs, and subsequent warnings from the EFF, securi

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  Cryptochannel

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

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  Tumblr

  Tumblr ( TUM-blər) is a microblogging and social media platform founded by David Karp in 2007 and operated by American company Tumblr, Inc., a subsidiary of Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. It has attracted significant attention and controversy for hosting a wide range of progressive user-generated content. == History == === Beginnings (2006–2012) === Development of Tumblr began in 2006 during a two-week gap between contracts at David Karp's software consulting company, Davidville. Karp had been interested in tumblelogs (short-form blogs, hence the name Tumblr) for some time and was waiting for one of the established blogging platforms to introduce their own tumblelogging platform. As none had done so after a year of waiting, Karp and developer Marco Arment began working on their own platform. Tumblr was launched in February 2007, and within two weeks had gained 75,000 users. Arment left the company in September 2010 to work on Instapaper. In June 2012, Tumblr featured its first major brand advertising campaign in collaboration with Adidas, who launched an official soccer Tumblr blog and bought ad placements on the user dashboard. This launch came only two months after Tumblr announced it would be moving towards paid advertising on its site. === Ownership by Yahoo! (2013–2018) === On May 20, 2013, it was announced that Yahoo and Tumblr had reached an agreement for Yahoo! Inc. to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. Many of Tumblr's users were unhappy with the news, causing some to start a petition, achieving nearly 170,000 signatures. David Karp remained CEO and the deal was finalized on June 20, 2013. Advertising sales goals were not met and in 2016 Yahoo wrote down $712 million of Tumblr's value. Verizon Communications acquired Yahoo in June 2017, and placed Yahoo and Tumblr under its Oath subsidiary. Karp announced in November 2017 that he would be leaving Tumblr by the end of the year. Jeff D'Onofrio, Tumblr's president and COO, took over leading the company. The site, along with the rest of the Oath division (renamed Verizon Media Group in 2019), continued to struggle under Verizon. In March 2019, Similarweb estimated Tumblr had lost 30% of its user traffic since December 2018, when the site had introduced a stricter content policy with heavier restrictions on adult content (which had been a notable draw to the service). In May 2019, it was reported that Verizon was considering selling the site due to its continued struggles since the purchase (as it had done with another Yahoo property, Flickr, via its sale to SmugMug). Following this news, Pornhub's vice president publicly expressed interest in purchasing Tumblr, with a promise to reinstate the previous adult content policies. === Automattic (2019–present) === On August 12, 2019, Verizon Media announced that it would sell Tumblr to Automattic, the operator of blog service WordPress.com and corporate backer of the open source blog software of the same name. The sale was for an undisclosed amount, but Axios reported that the sale price was less than $3 million, less than 0.3% of Yahoo's original purchase price. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg stated that the site will operate as a complementary service to WordPress.com, and that there were no plans to reverse the content policy decisions made during Verizon ownership. In November 2022, Mullenweg stated that Tumblr will add support for the decentralized social networking protocol ActivityPub. In November 2023, most of Tumblr's product development and marketing teams were transferred to other groups within Automattic. Mullenweg stated that focus would shift to core functionality and streamlining existing features. In February 2024, Automattic announced that it would begin selling user data from Tumblr and WordPress.com to Midjourney and OpenAI. Tumblr users are opted-in by default, with an option to opt out. In August 2024, Automattic announced that it would migrate Tumblr's backend to an architecture derived from WordPress, in order to ease development and code sharing between the platforms. The company stated that this migration would not impact the service's user experience and content, and that users "won't even notice a difference from the outside". In January 2025, Mullenweg stated that the migration, once completed, would also "unlock" ActivityPub access for Tumblr, including native support for the company's official ActivityPub plugin for WordPress. In April 2025, Automattic announced layoffs for 16% of its workforce, reducing a large portion of Tumblr staff. On March 16, 2026, Tumblr implemented a change to how notes were assigned to reblogs, making it more similar to sites like Twitter and Bluesky. The change was rolled back the next day after heavy user backlash. == Features == === Blog management === Dashboard: The dashboard is the primary tool for the typical Tumblr user. It is a live feed of recent posts from blogs that they follow. Through the dashboard, users are able to comment, reblog, and like posts from other blogs that appear on their dashboard. The dashboard allows the user to upload text posts, images, videos, quotes, or links to their blog with a click of a button displayed at the top of the dashboard. Users are also able to connect their blogs to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, so that whenever they make a post, it will also be sent as a tweet and a status update. As of June 2022, users can also turn off reblogs on specific posts through the dashboard. Queue: Users are able to set up a schedule to delay posts that they make. They can spread their posts over several hours or even days. Tags: Users can help their audience find posts about certain topics by adding tags. If someone were to upload a picture to their blog and wanted their viewers to find pictures, they would add the tag #picture, and their viewers could use that word to search for posts with the tag #picture. HTML editing: Tumblr allows users to edit their blog's theme using HTML to control the appearance of their blog. Custom themes are able to be shared and used by other users, or sold. Custom domains: Tumblr allows users to use custom domains for their blogs. Users must purchase a domain from Tumblr Domains, an in-house registrar that provides domains that can only be used with Tumblr unless removed from the user's blog and transferred to another registrar. Blogs previously were able to be linked with any domain/subdomain from any registrar, however following the introduction of the Tumblr Domains service, now requires you to purchase a domain directly from Tumblr to be used with a blog. Users who kept their blogs connected to a domain after the introduction got to keep their custom domain, as long as they do not disconnect it from Tumblr or let the domain expire. === Tags === The tagging system on the website operates on a hybrid tagging system, involving both self-tagging (user write their own tags on their posts) and an auto-manual function (the website will recommend popular tags and ones that the user has used before.) Only the first 20 tags added to any post will be indexed by the site. The tags are prefaced by a hashtag and separated by commas, and spaces and special characters are allowed, but only up to 140 characters total per tag. There are two main types used by Tumblr users: descriptive tagging, and opinion or commentary tagging. Descriptive tags are usually introduced by the original poster, and describe what is in the post (e.g. #art, #sky). These are important for the original poster to use, so their post will be indexed and searchable by others wishing to view that subject of content. Tags used as a form of communication are unique to Tumblr, and are typically more personal, expressing opinions, reactions, meta-commentary, background information, and more. Instead of adding onto the reblogged post (with their comments becoming an addition to each subsequent reblog from them) a user may add their comments in the tags, not changing the content or appearance of the original post in any way. Not all users choose to use tags this way, but those who do use tags for commentary may prefer it over adding a comment on the actual post. === Mobile === With Tumblr's 2009 acquisition of Tumblerette, an iOS application created by Jeff Rock and Garrett Ross, the service launched its official iPhone app. The site became available to BlackBerry smartphones on April 17, 2010, via a Mobelux application in BlackBerry World. In June 2012, Tumblr released a new version of its iOS app, Tumblr 3.0, allowing support for Spotify integration, hi-res images and offline access. An app for Android is also available. A Windows Phone app was released on April 23, 2013. An app for Google Glass was released on May 16, 2013. === Inbox and messaging === Tumblr blogs have the option to allow users to submit questions, either as themselves or anonymously, to the blog for a response. Tumblr

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  Social media use in African politics

  Since the Egyptian Revolution in 2011 and the Tunisian Revolution, social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, began to gain traction as a political tool in Africa. Various political actors have used social media to pursue a wide range of political objectives. State actors can use social media to encourage political discourse, campaign, or implement censorship and surveillance. Non-state actors, such as civil society organizations and opposition movements, can use social media to address political concerns and to organize widespread uprisings, such as the 2014 Burkinabé uprising. Meanwhile, extremist organizations can use social media to further their propaganda and recruitment. However, social media has been criticized for its limited accessibility and for facilitating the spread of misinformation, causing some skepticism about its effectiveness. Due to low entry barriers and user-generated content, social media provides a platform where people from different social classes can engage and interact with one another. Under traditional media, the public had limited opportunities to voice their political opinions. Social media enables people to both create and consume content. The public has become increasingly comfortable and confident in expressing political opinions online, often away from government scrutiny. Scholars argue that social media use has democratizing effects in African countries. == State actors == === Promoting political discourse === Through social media, the government and its citizens can discuss policy ideas, policy implementation, and political actions. Regardless of geographical location and distance, people are able to voice their opinions to the government. Social media includes citizens who were previously not able to express their discontent or share their ideas to the government. As state actors keep the public informed, social media can increase civic engagement. With more civic engagement, policies can be discussed without politicization. Before the commonplace use of social media, African countries faced weak feedback mechanisms that effectively excluded the average African citizen from policy discourse. In South Africa, the government uses social media to connect with constituencies. The South African president runs an official Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr accounts to engage with the public. === Campaigning === Political parties also use social media for political campaigns during election periods. In South Africa, the ANC (African National Congress) and DA (Democratic Alliance) use social media for political purposes. These parties specifically use Facebook as a tool for campaigning and engaging with the public to improve their relationship with citizens. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan employed social media to campaign for the presidential election in 2011, which he won. When President Goodluck Jonathan announced his bid for the presidency on social media in 2010, it reached about 217,000 people. As his campaign progressed, President Goodluck Jonathan was able to increase his followers to half a million by early 2011. === Censorship & Surveillance === While state actors can use social media to encourage their party or discourse, social media can be used to censor and surveil citizens. For example, the ANC and DA use Facebook to monitor South Africans. The government is able to track down people who have spoken against the government and translate this information into physical action to stop any possibility of a revolution. Social media platforms can be shut down to manipulate the flow of information. In Chad, citizens cannot access information through online platforms. This censorship blocked "Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Viber". In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the government shut down the internet before contested elections. In Zimbabwe, the government shut down the internet to hide civilian protests against fuel price increases. == Non-state actors == === Civil society organizations (CSOs) === Civil society organizations have also used social media networks in an effort to recruit supporters and communicate with the public. CSOs can use social media to mobilize people to support their cause, such as the Ghanaian Committee for Joint Action (CJA). In 2005 and 2006, the CJA gathered support to protest against the 50% fuel price increase. CSOs can play the role of a counterforce against state actors and state propaganda during times of crises, such as protests and military clashes. In some cases, CSOs release their own videos and photos on social media which challenges traditional forms of media. CSOs have also served to monitor elections to reduce corruption and violence during election day. For instance, the Zambian Bantu Watch started the #bantuwatch social media campaign to monitor the 2011 presidential election. Zambians used Facebook and Twitter to report polling station results to mitigate election fraud and election violence. In South Africa, CSOs created 'amandla.mobi' to campaign for public policies by creating petitions. Through 'amandla.mobi', CSOs are able to circulate petitions on social media to collect signatures. South African CSOs reported how social media helped their organizations to gain support and share ideas. However, CSOs struggle to attract media attention and often have to pay for media coverage. === Opposition forces against the government === Social media is also used by the public or opposition forces against the government. Through horizontal social media, organizing can lead to street protests and revolutions, some of which are successful. For instance, during the Egyptian revolution of 2011, "The Day of the Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption, and Unemployment" and "We Are All Khaled Said" gathered support against President Hosni Mubarak. In particular, "We Are All Khaled Said" had Egyptian citizens gather around the death of Khaled Said who was brutally tortured and killed by the Egyptian government because Said wanted to uncover government corruption. As unrest erupted into public demonstrations, President Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign. Witnessing the success of social media during the Egyptian revolution, the Tunisian Revolution, or the Jasmine Revolution, mobilized through Facebook and Twitter. Likewise, in South Africa, Malawi, and Mozambique, these countries have used social media as "new protest drums." Due to social media's low entry barrier, opposition forces against the government can facilitate political discourse that can lead to accountability. Whistleblowers and opposition forces are able to expose corruption through social media, where they face less repression while reaching a larger audience. For example, the youth of Zimbabwe and South Africa use Facebook to discuss politics without judgment. Specifically, in Zimbabwe, political youth used Facebook to avoid state surveillance. Social media is used as a supplemental tool for activism. In 2015, South African student activists started the hashtag #RhodesMustFall to push the issue of colonialism and racism at the forefront of the public. === Extremist organizations === Social media is easily accessible and created by user-based content. Therefore, marginalized groups are able to use social media to spread extremist ideas. For instance, Boko Haram created the Media Office of West Africa Province and perpetuated propaganda through Twitter and YouTube. Boko Haram's online propaganda campaign targets and persuades young dissuaded Nigerians to join their cause. It is important to note that social media has also been used against Boko Haram. In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls and an international campaign fought for their return through #BringBackOurGirls. Another extremist group, Al-Shabaab, has created an online presence through Twitter and YouTube. Through these social media networks, Al-Shabaab recruits new members to their extremist group through their propaganda which emphasizes the group's successes. Albeit their efforts, Al-Shabaab has not been very successful in coordinating their members but they are successful in financing their group. Furthermore, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) use social media to target and recruit individuals to their cause. ISIL's social media usage is more diverse compared to Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab; ISIL uses "Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, Telegram, JustPaste.it, Kik and Ask.fm." Since ISIL's Twitter accounts kept getting shut down, ISIL uses Telegram and WhatsApp chat rooms to privately conduct meetings. Due to the spread of extremist ideology, Zhuravskaya et al. acknowledge social media's potential to be misused. == Challenges == Although social media can be used as a political tool, it faces challenges in Africa. Due to low literacy rates in Africa, social media networks exclude many of the population members. In addition, lack of access to electricity and the internet can fur

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  Adversarial stylometry

  Adversarial stylometry is the practice of altering writing style to reduce the potential for stylometry to discover the author's identity or their characteristics. This task is also known as authorship obfuscation or authorship anonymisation. Stylometry poses a significant privacy challenge in its ability to unmask anonymous authors or to link pseudonyms to an author's other identities, which, for example, creates difficulties for whistleblowers, activists, and hoaxers and fraudsters. The privacy risk is expected to grow as machine learning techniques and text corpora develop. All adversarial stylometry shares the core idea of faithfully paraphrasing the source text so that the meaning is unchanged but the stylistic signals are obscured. Such a faithful paraphrase is an adversarial example for a stylometric classifier. Several broad approaches to this exist, with some overlap: imitation, substituting the author's own style for another's; translation, applying machine translation with the hope that this eliminates characteristic style in the source text; and obfuscation, deliberately modifying a text's style to make it not resemble the author's own. Manually obscuring style is possible, but laborious; in some circumstances, it is preferable or necessary. Automated tooling, either semi- or fully-automatic, could assist an author. How best to perform the task and the design of such tools is an open research question. While some approaches have been shown to be able to defeat particular stylometric analyses, particularly those that do not account for the potential of adversariality, establishing safety in the face of unknown analyses is an issue. Ensuring the faithfulness of the paraphrase is a critical challenge for automated tools. It is uncertain if the practice of adversarial stylometry is detectable in itself. Some studies have found that particular methods produced signals in the output text, but a stylometrist who is uncertain of what methods may have been used may not be able to reliably detect them. == History == Rao & Rohatgi (2000), an early work in adversarial stylometry, identified machine translation as a possibility, but noted that the quality of translators available at the time presented severe challenges. Kacmarcik & Gamon (2006) is another early work. Brennan, Afroz & Greenstadt (2012) performed the first evaluation of adversarial stylometric methods on actual texts. Brennan & Greenstadt (2009) introduced the first corpus of adversarially authored texts specifically for evaluating stylometric methods; other corpora include the International Imitation Hemingway Competition, the Faux Faulkner contest, and the hoax blog A Gay Girl in Damascus. == Motivations == Rao & Rohatgi (2000) suggest that short, unattributed documents (i.e., anonymous posts) are not at risk of stylometric identification, but pseudonymous authors who have not practiced adversarial stylometry in producing corpuses of thousands of words may be vulnerable. Narayanan et al. (2012) attempted large-scale deanonymisation of 100,000 blog authors with mixed results: the identifications were significantly better than chance, but only accurately matched the blog and author a fifth of the time; identification improved with the number of posts written by the author in the corpus. Even if an author is not identified, some of their characteristics may still be deduced stylometrically, or stylometry may narrow the anonymity set of potential authors sufficiently for other information to complete the identification. Detecting author characteristics (e.g., gender or age) is often simpler than identifying an author from a large, possibly open, set of candidates. Modern machine learning techniques offer powerful tools for identification; further development of corpora and computational stylometric techniques are likely to raise further privacy issues. Gröndahl & Asokan (2020a) say that the general validity of the hypothesis underlying stylometry—that authors have invariant, content-independent 'style fingerprints'—is uncertain, but "the deanonymisation attack is a real privacy concern". Those interested in practicing adversarial stylometry and stylistic deception include whistleblowers avoiding retribution; journalists and activists; perpetrators of frauds and hoaxes; authors of fake reviews; literary forgers; criminals disguising their identity from investigators; and, generally, anyone with a desire for anonymity or pseudonymity. Authors, or agents acting on behalf of authors, may also attempt to remove stylistic clues to author characteristics (e.g., race or gender) so that knowledge of those characteristics cannot be used for discrimination (e.g., through algorithmic bias). Another possible use for adversarial stylometry is in disguising automatically generated text as human-authored. == Methods == With imitation, the author attempts to mislead stylometry by matching their style to another author's. An incomplete imitation, where some of the true author's unique characteristics appear alongside the imitated author's, can be a detectable signal for the use of adversarial stylometry. Imitation can be performed automatically with style transfer systems, though this typically requires a large corpus in the target style for the system to learn from. Another approach is translation, which employs machine translation of a source text to eliminate characteristic style, often through multiple translators in sequence to produce a round-trip translation. Such chained translation can lead to texts being significantly altered, even to the point of incomprehensibility; improved translation tools reduce this risk. More simply-structured texts can be easier to machine translate without losing the original meaning. Machine translation blurs into direct stylistic imitation or obfuscation achieved through automated style transfer, which can be viewed as a "translation" with the same language as input and output. With low-quality translation tools, an author can be required to manually correct major translation errors while avoiding the hazard of re-introducing stylistic characteristics. Wang, Juola & Riddell (2022) found that gross errors introduced by Google Translate were rare, but more common with several intermediate translations—however, occasional simple or short sentences and misspellings in the source text appeared verbatim in the output, potentially providing an identifying signal. Chain translation can leave characteristic traces of its application in a document, which may allow reconstruction of the intermediate languages used and the number of translation steps performed. Obfuscation involves deliberately changing the style of a text to reduce its similarity to other texts by some metric; this may be performed at the time of writing by conscious modification, or as part of a revision process with feedback from the metric being targeted as an input to decide when the text has been sufficiently obfuscated. In contrast to translation, complex texts can offer more opportunities for effective obfuscation without altering meaning, and likewise genres with more permissible variation allow more obfuscation. However, longer texts are harder to thoroughly obfuscate. Obfuscation can blend into imitation if the author develops a novel target style, distinct from their original style. With respect to masking author characteristics, obfuscation may aim to achieve a union (adding signals for imitated characteristics) or an intersection (removing signals and normalising) of other authors' styles. Avoiding the author's own idiosyncrasies and producing a "normalised" text is a critical obfuscatory step: an author may have a unique tendency to misspell certain words, use particular variants, or to format a document in a characteristic way. Stylometric signals vary in how simply they can be adversarially masked; an author may easily change their vocabulary by conscious choice, but altering the pattern of grammar or the letter frequency in their text may be harder to achieve, though Juola & Vescovi (2011) report that imitation typically succeeds at masking more characteristics than obfuscation. Automated obfuscation may require large amounts of training data written by the author. Concerning automated implementations of adversarial stylometry, two possible implementations are rule-based systems for paraphrasing; and encoder–decoder architectures, where the text passes through an intermediate format that is (intended to be) style-neutral. Another division in automated methods is whether there is feedback from an identification system or not. With such feedback, finding paraphrases for author masking has been characterised as a heuristic search problem, exploring textual variants until the result is stylistically sufficiently far (in the case of obfuscation) or near (in the case of imitation), which then constitutes an adversarial example for that identification system. == Evaluation == How

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  Open Data-Link Interface

  The Open Data-Link Interface (ODI) is an application programming interface (API) for network interface controllers (NICs) developed by Apple and Novell. The API serves the same function as Microsoft and 3COM's Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS). Originally, ODI was written for NetWare and Macintosh environments. Like NDIS, ODI provides rules that establish a vendor-neutral interface between the protocol stack and the adapter driver. It resides in Layer 2, the Data Link layer, of the OSI model. This interface also enables one or more network drivers to support one or more protocol stacks.

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  Secret London

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

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