AI Headshot Improver

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

  • Ogle app

    Ogle app

    Ogle is a free smartphone based social media application. It is available for iOS and Android. Ogle acts like a school wide forum that lets users and users' classmates share and interact. Users can share photos, videos, questions, even thoughts and watch submissions grow in popularity as other users vote and comment on them. == App Features == Campus Feed: Interact by watching and posting videos or pictures to your campus story. Photos and Videos: share what you want with many different timing options. Interact: Chat with friends and groups, or share a moment for all to see. Real-name system: choose to register an account with username and profile picture. Custom Stickers: Create stickers to add creativity and zest to your pictures. Flash Interaction: All private chat and group chat history will be deleted after 24 hours on Ogle Chat. == Controversies == Users can post anything on Ogle using text, photos, and videos. As a result, some Ogle user's sense of anonymity, posts have targeted specific schools and students with abusive and hurtful content. The Ogle app's user anonymity makes it difficult for school officials to quickly investigate issues that occur within the Ogle app. On March 28, 2016, three people were arrested after violent threats were made against an Anaheim high school. 18-year-old Miguel Meza was arrested Sunday afternoon during a traffic stop, along with his passenger, 23-year-old Johnny Aguilar. Police said both men had loaded handguns. Aguilar was also accused of violating his probation. "It is concerning the fact that they did have firearms, but we don't have a crystal ball. We can't determine if they possessed those firearms to engage in some kind of school violence or if they had it for another reason," Sgt. Daron Wyatt with the Anaheim Police Department said. Officials said Meza and Aguilar have known gang ties and detectives began investigating Meza after threats were made against the school on Ogle. On February 29, 2016, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies arrested a 16-year-old Aptos High School student Friday, accused of making an online threat of gun violence at Aptos High and Monte Vista Christian."He basically told detectives that it was all a joke. It's not a joke. You have multiple resources being spent to investigate these cases," said Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Sgt. Roy Morales. The schools remained open throughout the week, with a huge police presence on campus. In an anonymous emailed statement to the Daily Pilot on Thursday, the "Ogle team" said: "We are aware of the concern, and cyberbullying is absolutely NOT our intention for the app. Our goal for this app is to create a free and safe community space for students, for a better communication. We are currently working around the clock to improve the app. As a matter of fact, we are also in contact with local police departments, anti-bullying organizations and local high schools to try to help the students." In response to these incidents, Ogle expressed that they takes the safety of its users seriously and does not condone any type of behavior that is illegal or in violation of its content policies. The company also said it has instituted a content moderation team to increase review and identify and remove inappropriate content, and take action against “those who violate our community guidelines.”

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  • DeepSeek

    DeepSeek

    Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd., doing business as DeepSeek, is a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company that develops large language models (LLMs). Based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, DeepSeek is owned and funded by High-Flyer, a Chinese hedge fund. DeepSeek was founded in July 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, the co-founder of High-Flyer, who also serves as the CEO for both of the companies. The company launched an eponymous chatbot alongside its DeepSeek-R1 model in January 2025. DeepSeek-R1 provided responses comparable to other contemporary large language models, such as OpenAI's GPT-4 and o1. Its training cost was reported to be significantly lower than other LLMs. The company claims that it trained its V3 model for US$6 million—far less than the US$100 million cost for OpenAI's GPT-4 in 2023—and using approximately one-tenth the computing power consumed by Meta's comparable model, Llama 3.1. DeepSeek's success against larger and more established rivals has been described as "upending AI". DeepSeek's models are described as "open-weight", meaning the exact parameters are openly shared, but the training data is not openly licensed. Since the January 2025 debut of DeepSeek-R1, the company has made its new models available under free and open-source software licenses, primarily the MIT License. The company reportedly recruits AI researchers from top Chinese universities and also hires from outside traditional computer science fields to broaden its models' knowledge and capabilities. DeepSeek significantly reduced training expenses for their R1 model by incorporating techniques such as mixture of experts (MoE) layers. The company also trained its models during ongoing trade restrictions on AI chip exports to China, using weaker AI chips intended for export and employing fewer units overall. Observers say this breakthrough sent "shock waves" through the industry which were described as triggering a "Sputnik moment" for the US in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly due to its open-source, cost-effective, and high-performing AI models. This threatened established AI hardware leaders such as Nvidia; Nvidia's share price dropped sharply, losing US$600 billion in market value, the largest single-company decline in U.S. stock market history. == History == === Founding and early years (2016–2023) === In February 2016, High-Flyer was co-founded by AI enthusiast Liang Wenfeng, who had been trading since the 2008 financial crisis while attending Zhejiang University. The company began stock trading using a GPU-dependent deep learning model on 21 October 2016; before then, it had used CPU-based linear models. By the end of 2017, most of its trading was driven by AI. Liang established High-Flyer as a hedge fund focused on developing and using AI trading algorithms, and by 2021 the firm was using AI exclusively, often using Nvidia chips. In 2019, the company began constructing its first computing cluster, Fire-Flyer, at a cost of 200 million yuan; it contained 1,100 GPUs interconnected at 200 Gbit/s and was retired after 1.5 years in operation. By 2021, Liang had started buying large quantities of Nvidia GPUs for an AI project, reportedly obtaining 10,000 Nvidia A100 GPUs before the United States restricted chip sales to China. Computing cluster Fire-Flyer 2 began construction in 2021 with a budget of 1 billion yuan. It was reported that in 2022, Fire-Flyer 2's capacity had been used at over 96%, totaling 56.74 million GPU hours. 27% was used to support scientific computing outside the company. During 2022, Fire-Flyer 2 had 5,000 PCIe A100 GPUs in 625 nodes, each containing 8 GPUs. At the time, it exclusively used PCIe instead of the DGX version of A100, since at the time the models it trained could fit within a single 40 GB GPU VRAM and so there was no need for the higher bandwidth of DGX (i.e., it required only data parallelism but not model parallelism). Later, it incorporated NVLinks and NCCL (Nvidia Collective Communications Library) to train larger models that required model parallelism. On 14 April 2023, High-Flyer announced the launch of an artificial general intelligence (AGI) research lab, stating that the new lab would focus on developing AI tools unrelated to the firm's financial business. Two months later, on 17 July 2023, that lab was spun off into an independent company, DeepSeek, with High-Flyer as its principal investor and backer. Venture capital investors were reluctant to provide funding, as they considered it unlikely that the venture would be able to quickly generate an "exit". === Model releases since 2023 === DeepSeek released its first model, DeepSeek Coder, on 2 November 2023, followed by the DeepSeek-LLM series on 29 November 2023. In January 2024, it released two DeepSeek-MoE models (Base and Chat), and in April 3 DeepSeek-Math models (Base, Instruct, and RL). DeepSeek-V2 was released in May 2024, followed a month later by the DeepSeek-Coder V2 series. In September 2024, DeepSeek V2.5 was introduced and revised in December. On 20 November 2024, the preview of DeepSeek-R1-Lite became available via chat. In December, DeepSeek-V3-Base and DeepSeek-V3 (chat) were released. On 20 January 2025, DeepSeek launched the DeepSeek chatbot—based on the DeepSeek-R1 model—free for iOS and Android. By 27 January, DeepSeek surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded freeware app on the iOS App Store in the United States, triggering an 18% drop in Nvidia's share price. On 24 March 2025, DeepSeek released DeepSeek-V3-0324 under the MIT License. On 28 May 2025, DeepSeek released DeepSeek-R1-0528 under the MIT License. The model has been noted for more tightly following official Chinese Communist Party ideology and censorship in its answers to questions than prior models. On 21 August 2025, DeepSeek released DeepSeek V3.1 under the MIT License. This model features a hybrid architecture with thinking and non-thinking modes. It also surpasses prior models like V3 and R1, by over 40% on certain benchmarks like SWE-bench and Terminal-bench. It was updated to V3.1-Terminus on 22 September 2025. V3.2-Exp was released on 29 September 2025. It uses DeepSeek Sparse Attention, a more efficient attention mechanism based on previous research published in February. DeepSeek-V3.2 was released on 1 December 2025, alongside a DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale variant that focused on reasoning. In February 2026, Anthropic accused DeepSeek of using thousands of fraudulent accounts to generate millions of conversations with Claude to train its own large language models. In April 2026, investors began speaking with DeepSeek for a $300 million funding round, which would bring DeepSeek to a total valuation of $10 billion. On April 24, 2026, DeepSeek released a preview of its V4 series, including the 1.6-trillion parameter DeepSeek-V4-Pro and the 284-billion parameter DeepSeek-V4-Flash, both featuring a 1-million token context window, under the MIT License. DeepSeek's V4 LLM has been adopted by key semiconductor manufacturers and artificial intelligence chipmakers such as Huawei and Cambricon. == Company operation == DeepSeek is headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and is owned and funded by High-Flyer. Its co-founder, Liang Wenfeng, serves as CEO. As of May 2024, Liang personally held an 84% stake in DeepSeek through two shell corporations. === Strategy === DeepSeek has stated that it focuses on research and does not have immediate plans for commercialization. This posture also means it can skirt certain provisions of China's AI regulations aimed at consumer-facing technologies. DeepSeek's hiring approach emphasizes skills over lengthy work experience, resulting in many hires fresh out of university. The company likewise recruits individuals without computer science backgrounds to expand the range of expertise incorporated into the models, for instance in poetry or advanced mathematics. According to The New York Times, dozens of DeepSeek researchers have or have previously had affiliations with People's Liberation Army laboratories and the Seven Sons of National Defence. Due to the impact of United States restrictions on chips, DeepSeek refined its algorithms to maximise computational efficiency and thereby leveraged older hardware and reduced energy consumption. DeepSeek also expanded on the African continent as it offers more affordable and less power-hungry AI solutions. The company has bolstered African language models and generated a number of startups, for example in Nairobi. Along with Huawei's storage and cloud computing services, the impact on the tech scene in sub-saharan Africa is considerable. DeepSeek offers local data sovereignty and more flexibility compared to Western AI platforms. == Training framework == High-Flyer/DeepSeek had operated at least two primary computing clusters: Fire-Flyer (萤火一号) and Fire-Flyer 2 (萤火二号). Fire-Flyer 1 was constructed in 2019 and was retired after 1.5 years of operation. Fi

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  • MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

    MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

    Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI Lab). Housed within the Ray and Maria Stata Center, CSAIL is the largest on-campus laboratory as measured by research scope and membership. It is part of the Schwarzman College of Computing but is also overseen by the MIT Vice President of Research. == Research activities == CSAIL's research activities are organized around a number of semi-autonomous research groups, each of which is headed by one or more professors or research scientists. These groups are divided up into seven general areas of research: Artificial intelligence Computational biology Graphics and vision Language and learning Theory of computation Robotics Systems (includes computer architecture, databases, distributed systems, networks and networked systems, operating systems, programming methodology, and software engineering, among others) == History == Computing Research at MIT began with Vannevar Bush's research into a differential analyzer and Claude Shannon's electronic Boolean algebra in the 1930s, the wartime MIT Radiation Laboratory, the post-war Project Whirlwind and the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and MIT Lincoln Laboratory's SAGE in the early 1950s. At MIT, research in the field of artificial intelligence began in the late 1950s. === Project MAC === On July 1, 1963, Project MAC (the Project on Mathematics and Computation, later backronymed to Multiple Access Computer, Machine Aided Cognitions, or Man and Computer) was launched with a $2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Project MAC's original director was Robert Fano of MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). Fano decided to call MAC a "project" rather than a "laboratory" for reasons of internal MIT politics – if MAC had been called a laboratory, then it would have been more difficult to raid other MIT departments for research staff. The program manager responsible for the DARPA grant was J. C. R. Licklider, who had previously been at MIT conducting research in RLE, and would later succeed Fano as director of Project MAC. Project MAC would become famous for groundbreaking research in operating systems, artificial intelligence, and the theory of computation. Its contemporaries included Project Genie at Berkeley, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and (somewhat later) University of Southern California's (USC's) Information Sciences Institute. An "AI Group" including Marvin Minsky (the director), John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp), and a talented community of computer programmers were incorporated into Project MAC. They were interested principally in the problems of vision, mechanical motion and manipulation, and language, which they view as the keys to more intelligent machines. In the 1960s and 1970s the AI Group developed a time-sharing operating system called Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) which ran on PDP-6 and later PDP-10 computers. The early Project MAC community included Fano, Minsky, Licklider, Fernando J. Corbató, and a community of computer programmers and enthusiasts among others who drew their inspiration from former colleague John McCarthy. These founders envisioned the creation of a computer utility whose computational power would be as reliable as an electric utility. To this end, Corbató brought the first computer time-sharing system, Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), with him from the MIT Computation Center, using the DARPA funding to purchase an IBM 7094 for research use. One of the early focuses of Project MAC would be the development of a successor to CTSS, Multics, which was to be the first high availability computer system, developed as a part of an industry consortium including General Electric and Bell Laboratories. In 1966, Scientific American featured Project MAC in the September thematic issue devoted to computer science, that was later published in book form. At the time, the system was described as having approximately 100 TTY terminals, mostly on campus but with a few in private homes. Only 30 users could be logged in at the same time. The project enlisted students in various classes to use the terminals simultaneously in problem solving, simulations, and multi-terminal communications as tests for the multi-access computing software being developed. === AI Lab and LCS === In the late 1960s, Minsky's artificial intelligence group was seeking more space, and was unable to get satisfaction from project director Licklider. Minsky found that although Project MAC as a single entity could not get the additional space he wanted, he could split off to form his own laboratory and then be entitled to more office space. As a result, the MIT AI Lab was formed in 1970, and many of Minsky's AI colleagues left Project MAC to join him in the new laboratory, while most of the remaining members went on to form the Laboratory for Computer Science. Talented programmers such as Richard Stallman, who used TECO to develop EMACS, flourished in the AI Lab during this time. Those researchers who did not join the smaller AI Lab formed the Laboratory for Computer Science and continued their research into operating systems, programming languages, distributed systems, and the theory of computation. Two professors, Hal Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, chose to remain neutral—their group was referred to variously as Switzerland and Project MAC for the next 30 years. Among much else, the AI Lab led to the invention of Lisp machines and their attempted commercialization by two companies in the 1980s: Symbolics and Lisp Machines Inc. === CSAIL === On the fortieth anniversary of Project MAC's establishment, July 1, 2003, LCS was merged with the AI Lab to form the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL. This merger created the largest laboratory (over 600 personnel) on the MIT campus. In 2018, CSAIL launched a five-year collaboration program with IFlytek, a company sanctioned the following year for allegedly using its technology for surveillance and human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In October 2019, MIT announced that it would review its partnerships with sanctioned firms such as iFlyTek and SenseTime. In April 2020, the agreement with iFlyTek was terminated. CSAIL moved from the School of Engineering to the newly formed Schwarzman College of Computing by February 2020. == Offices == From 1963 to 2004, Project MAC, LCS, the AI Lab, and CSAIL had their offices at 545 Technology Square, taking over more and more floors of the building over the years. In 2004, CSAIL moved to the new Ray and Maria Stata Center, which was built specifically to house it and other departments. == Outreach activities == The IMARA (from Swahili word for "power") group sponsors a variety of outreach programs that bridge the global digital divide. Its aim is to find and implement long-term, sustainable solutions which will increase the availability of educational technology and resources to domestic and international communities. These projects are run under the aegis of CSAIL and staffed by MIT volunteers who give training, install and donate computer setups in greater Boston, Massachusetts, Kenya, Native American Indian tribal reservations in the American Southwest such as the Navajo Nation, the Middle East, and Fiji Islands. The CommuniTech project strives to empower under-served communities through sustainable technology and education and does this through the MIT Used Computer Factory (UCF), providing refurbished computers to under-served families, and through the Families Accessing Computer Technology (FACT) classes, it trains those families to become familiar and comfortable with computer technology. == Notable researchers == (Including members and alumni of CSAIL's predecessor laboratories) MacArthur Fellows Tim Berners-Lee, Erik Demaine, Dina Katabi, Daniela L. Rus, Regina Barzilay, Peter Shor, Richard Stallman, and Joshua Tenenbaum Turing Award recipients Leonard M. Adleman, Fernando J. Corbató, Shafi Goldwasser, Butler W. Lampson, John McCarthy, Silvio Micali, Marvin Minsky, Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir, Barbara Liskov, and Michael Stonebraker IJCAI Computers and Thought Award recipients Terry Winograd, Patrick Winston, David Marr, Gerald Jay Sussman, Rodney Brooks Rolf Nevanlinna Prize recipients Madhu Sudan, Peter Shor, Constantinos Daskalakis Gödel Prize recipients Shafi Goldwasser (two-time recipient), Silvio Micali, Maurice Herlihy, Charles Rackoff, Johan Håstad, Peter Shor, and Madhu Sudan Grace Murray Hopper Award recipients Robert Metcalfe, Shafi Goldwasser, Guy L. Steele, Jr., Richard Stallman, and W. Daniel Hillis Textbook authors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, Richard Stallman, Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Patrick Winston, Ronald L.

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  • Omar Al Olama

    Omar Al Olama

    Omar Sultan Al Olama (Arabic: عمر سلطان العلماء; born 16 February 1990) is Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications in the United Arab Emirates. He was appointed in October 2017 by Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The UAE was the first country to appoint a minister for artificial intelligence. == Early life and education == Al Olama was born on 16 February 1990 in Dubai. He has a bachelor's degree in Business and Administration and Management from the American University in Dubai, and a Diploma in Excellence and Project Management from the American University in Sharjah. == Career == Between February 2012 and May 2014, Al Olama was member of the corporate planning at the UAE's Prime Minister's Office. From November 2015 to November 2016, he was Deputy Head of Minister's Office at the UAE's Prime Minister's Office. Between December 2015 and October 2017, he was Secretary General of the World Organization of Racing Drones. In November 2017, he was appointed member of the Board of Trustees of Dubai Future Foundation and Deputy Managing Director of the Foundation. In July 2016, Al Olama was appointed the managing director, and later in 2021 appointed Vice-Chair of the World Government Summit. In 2021, Al Olama was appointed as the Chairman of the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, a sub-section of Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. During the cabinet reshuffle in 2023, Al Olama was appointed as the Director General of the Prime Minister's Office, concurrently maintaining his role as the Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications. == Memberships == In November 2017, Al Olama was appointed as a member of the Future of Digital Economy and Society Council, part of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Later in 2023, the World Economic Forum selected Al Olama to join the steering committee of the AI Governance Alliance, a group comprising 10 global leaders in the digital and technological fields. In 2019, Al Olama was appointed as Chair of the Advisory Board of the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. In 2022, Al Olama was appointed by the UAE Cabinet as Vice-Chair of the Higher Committee for Government Digital Transformation, and also appointed by the Government of Dubai as Vice-Chair of the Higher Committee for Future Technology. In 2022, Al Olama was appointed Chairman of the oversight committee of the Dubai Future District Fund. Since 2023, Al Olama has been on the High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. In 2023, Al Olama, recognized as the world's first minister for artificial intelligence, was included in Time Magazine's inaugural list of the 100 most influential people in AI.

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  • Computational humor

    Computational humor

    Computational humor is a branch of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence which uses computers in humor research. It is a relatively new area, with the first dedicated conference organized in 1996. The first "computer model of a sense of humor" was suggested by Suslov as early as 1992. Investigation of the general scheme of the information processing show a possibility of a specific malfunction, conditioned by the necessity of a quick deletion from consciousness of a false version. This specific malfunction can be identified with a humorous effect on the psychological grounds; however, an essentially new ingredient, a role of timing, is added to a well known role of ambiguity. In biological systems, a sense of humour inevitably develops in the course of evolution, because its biological function consists in quickening the transmission of processed information into consciousness and in a more effective use of brain resources. A realization of this algorithm in neural networks explains naturally the mechanism of laughter: deletion of a false version corresponds to zeroing of some part of the neural network and excessive energy of neurons is thrown out to the motor cortex, arousing muscular contractions. Unfortunately, a practical realization of this algorithm needs extensive databases, whose creation in the automatic regime was suggested only recently . As a result, this magistral direction was not developed properly and subsequent investigations (see below) accepted somewhat specialized colouring. == Joke generators == === Pun generation === An approach to analysis of humor is classification of jokes. A further step is an attempt to generate jokes basing on the rules that underlie classification. Simple prototypes for computer pun generation were reported in the early 1990s, based on a natural language generator program, VINCI. Graeme Ritchie and Kim Binsted in their 1994 research paper described a computer program, JAPE, designed to generate question-answer-type puns from a general, i.e., non-humorous, lexicon. (The program name is an acronym for "Joke Analysis and Production Engine".) Some examples produced by JAPE are: Q: What is the difference between leaves and a car? A: One you brush and rake, the other you rush and brake. Q: What do you call a strange market? A: A bizarre bazaar. Since then the approach has been improved, and the latest report, dated 2007, describes the STANDUP joke generator, implemented in the Java programming language. The STANDUP generator was tested on children within the framework of analyzing its usability for language skills development for children with communication disabilities, e.g., because of cerebral palsy. (The project name is an acronym for "System To Augment Non-speakers' Dialog Using Puns" and an allusion to standup comedy.) Children responded to this "language playground" with enthusiasm, and showed marked improvement on certain types of language tests. The two young people, who used the system over a ten-week period, regaled their peers, staff, family and neighbors with jokes such as: "What do you call a spicy missile? A hot shot!" Their joy and enthusiasm at entertaining others was inspirational. === Other === Stock and Strapparava described a program to generate funny acronyms. == Joke recognition == A statistical machine learning algorithm to detect whether a sentence contained a "That's what she said" double entendre was developed by Kiddon and Brun (2011). There is an open-source Python implementation of Kiddon & Brun's TWSS system. A program to recognize knock-knock jokes was reported by Taylor and Mazlack. This kind of research is important in analysis of human–computer interaction. An application of machine learning techniques for the distinguishing of joke texts from non-jokes was described by Mihalcea and Strapparava (2006). Takizawa et al. (1996) reported on a heuristic program for detecting puns in the Japanese language. == Applications == A possible application for assistance in language acquisition is described in the section "Pun generation". Another envisioned use of joke generators is in cases of a steady supply of jokes where quantity is more important than quality. Another obvious, yet remote, direction is automated joke appreciation. It is known that humans interact with computers in ways similar to interacting with other humans that may be described in terms of personality, politeness, flattery, and in-group favoritism. Therefore, the role of humor in human–computer interaction is being investigated. In particular, humor generation in user interface to ease communications with computers was suggested. Craig McDonough implemented the Mnemonic Sentence Generator, which converts passwords into humorous sentences. Based on the incongruity theory of humor, it is suggested that the resulting meaningless but funny sentences are easier to remember. For example, the password AjQA3Jtv is converted into "Arafat joined Quayle's Ant, while TARAR Jeopardized thurmond's vase," an example chosen by combining politicians names with verbs and common nouns. == Related research == John Allen Paulos is known for his interest in mathematical foundations of humor. His book Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor demonstrates structures common to humor and formal sciences (mathematics, linguistics) and develops a mathematical model of jokes based on catastrophe theory. Conversational systems which have been designed to take part in Turing test competitions generally have the ability to learn humorous anecdotes and jokes. Because many people regard humor as something particular to humans, its appearance in conversation can be quite useful in convincing a human interrogator that a hidden entity, which could be a machine or a human, is in fact a human.

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  • UMBEL

    UMBEL

    UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a logically organized knowledge graph of 34,000 concepts and entity types that can be used in information science for relating information from disparate sources to one another. It was retired at the end of 2019. UMBEL was first released in July 2008. Version 1.00 was released in February 2011. Its current release is version 1.50. The grounding of this information occurs by common reference to the permanent URIs for the UMBEL concepts; the connections within the UMBEL upper ontology enable concepts from sources at different levels of abstraction or specificity to be logically related. Since UMBEL is an open-source extract of the OpenCyc knowledge base, it can also take advantage of the reasoning capabilities within Cyc. UMBEL has two means to promote the semantic interoperability of information:. It is: An ontology of about 35,000 reference concepts, designed to provide common mapping points for relating different ontologies or schema to one another, and A vocabulary for aiding that ontology mapping, including expressions of likelihood relationships distinct from exact identity or equivalence. This vocabulary is also designed for interoperable domain ontologies. UMBEL is written in the Semantic Web languages of SKOS and OWL 2. It is a class structure used in Linked Data, along with OpenCyc, YAGO, and the DBpedia ontology. Besides data integration, UMBEL has been used to aid concept search, concept definitions, query ranking, ontology integration, and ontology consistency checking. It has also been used to build large ontologies and for online question answering systems. Including OpenCyc, UMBEL has about 65,000 formal mappings to DBpedia, PROTON, GeoNames, and schema.org, and provides linkages to more than 2 million Wikipedia pages (English version). All of its reference concepts and mappings are organized under a hierarchy of 31 different "super types", which are mostly disjoint from one another. Each of these "super types" has its own typology of entity classes to provide flexible tie-ins for external content. 90% of UMBEL is contained in these entity classes.

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  • China brain

    China brain

    In the philosophy of mind, the China brain thought experiment (also known as the Chinese Nation, Chinese Gym, or China-body) considers what would happen if each person in the entire population of China were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. The question this thought experiment attempts to answer is whether this arrangement would have a mind or consciousness in the same way that the human brain exhibits. Early versions of this scenario were put forward in 1961 by Anatoly Dneprov, in 1974 by Lawrence Davis, and again in 1978 by Ned Block. Block argues that the China brain would not have a mind, whereas Daniel Dennett argues that it would. The China brain problem is a special case of the more general problem of whether minds could exist within other, larger minds. The Chinese room scenario analyzed by John Searle is a similar thought experiment in philosophy of mind that relates to artificial intelligence. Instead of people who each model a single neuron of the brain, in the Chinese room, clerks who do not speak Chinese accept notes in Chinese and return an answer in Chinese according to a set of rules, without the people in the room ever understanding what those notes mean. In fact, the original short story The Game (1961) by Dneprov contains both the China brain and the Chinese room scenarios. == Background == Many theories of mental states are materialist, that is, they describe the mind as the behavior of a physical object like the brain. One formerly prominent example is the identity theory, which says that mental states are brain states. One criticism is the problem of multiple realizability. The physicalist theory that responds to this is functionalism, which states that a mental state can be whatever functions as a mental state. That is, the mind can be composed of neurons, or it could be composed of wood, rocks or toilet paper, as long as it provides mental functionality. == Description == Suppose that the whole nation of China were reordered to simulate the workings of a single brain (that is, to act as a mind according to functionalism). Each Chinese person acts as (say) a neuron, and communicates by special two-way radio in corresponding way to the other people. The current mental state of the China brain is displayed on satellites that may be seen from anywhere in China. The China brain would then be connected via radio to a body, one that provides the sensory inputs and behavioral outputs of the China brain. Thus, the China brain possesses all the elements of a functional description of mind: sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and internal mental states causally connected to other mental states. If the nation of China can be made to act in this way, then, according to functionalism, this system would have a mind. Block's goal is to show how unintuitive it is to think that such an arrangement could create a mind capable of thoughts and feelings. == Consciousness == The China brain argues that consciousness is a problem for functionalism. Block's Chinese nation presents a version of what is known as the absent qualia objection to functionalism because it purports to show that it is possible for something to be functionally equivalent to a human being and yet have no conscious experience. A creature that functions like a human being but does not feel anything is known as a "philosophical zombie". So the absent qualia objection to functionalism could also be called the "zombie objection". == Criticisms == Some philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, have concluded that the China brain does create a mental state. Functionalist philosophers of mind endorse the idea that something like the China brain can realise a mind, and that neurons are, in principle, not the only material that can create a mental state.

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  • R2ML

    R2ML

    The REWERSE Rule Markup Language (R2ML) is developed by the REWERSE Working Group I1 for the purpose of rules interchange between different systems and tools. == Scope == An XML based rule language; Support for: integrity rules, derivation rules, production rules and reaction rules; Integrate functional languages (such as OCL) with Datalog languages (such as SWRL); Serialization and interchange of rules by specific software tools; Integrating rule reasoning with actual server side technologies; Deploying, publishing and communicating rules in a network. == Design principles == Modeled using MDA; Rule concepts defined with the help of MOF/UML; Required to accommodate: Web naming concepts, such as URIs and XML namespaces; The ontological distinction between objects and data values; The datatype concepts of RDF and user-defined datatypes; Actions (following OMG PRR submission); Events; EBNF abstract syntax; XML based concrete syntax validated by an XML Schema; Allowing different semantics for rules.

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  • Pill reminder

    Pill reminder

    A pill reminder is any device that reminds users to take medications. Traditional pill reminders are pill containers with electric timers attached, which can be preset for certain times of the day to set off an alarm. More sophisticated pill reminders can also detect when they have been opened, and therefore when the user is away during the time they were supposed to take their medication, they will be reminded of it when they return. This reminder can be in the form of a light, which also helps for deaf or hearing-impaired users. == Mobile app == A newer type of pill reminder is a mobile app that reminds the owner to take the medication. Some of these applications might effectively support adherence to taking medications.

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  • Guideline execution engine

    Guideline execution engine

    A guideline execution engine is a computer program which can interpret a clinical guideline represented in a computerized format and perform actions towards the user of an electronic medical record. A guideline execution engine needs to communicate with a host clinical information system. Virtual Medical Record (vMR) is one possible interface which can be used. The engine's main function is to manage instances of executed guidelines of individual patients. == Architecture == The following modules are generally needed for any engine: interface to clinical information system new guidelines loading module guideline interpreter module clinical events parser alert/recommendations dispatch == Guideline Interchange Format == The Guideline Interchange Format (GLIF) is a computer representation format for clinical guidelines. Represented guidelines can be executed using a guideline execution engine. The format has several versions as it has been improved. In 2003 GLIF3 was introduced. == Use of third party workflow engine as a guideline execution engine == Some commercial electronic health record systems use a workflow engine to execute clinical guidelines. RetroGuide and HealthFlow are examples of such an approach.

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  • GPT-5.3-Codex

    GPT-5.3-Codex

    GPT-5.3-Codex (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 5.3 Codex) is a large language model (LLM) announced and released by OpenAI on February 5, 2026. It is made as a competitor to Claude's Opus 4.6, focusing on code generation, speed and the ability to search repositories, run terminal commands and at the same time, debug code. In technical benchmarks, it is reported that GPT-5.3 Codex is 25% faster than Opus 4.6. GPT-5.3 Codex is available in the Codex app and on the web; access via API is also planned. According to OpenAI, GPT-5.3-Codex is the company's "first model that was instrumental in creating itself." On February 12, 2026, GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark was released in a research preview, which is a smaller version of GPT-5.3-Codex which supports text-only input. As of February 2026, GPT-5.3-Codex is only available for ChatGPT Pro ($200/month) subscribers.

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  • Department of Defense Directive 3000.09

    Department of Defense Directive 3000.09

    Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 (DODD 3000.09), titled Autonomy in Weapon Systems, is the current U.S. military policy on autonomous weapons. It states: "Autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems will be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force." == History == Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter issued DOD's policy on autonomy in weapons systems, Department of Defense Directive (DODD) 3000.09, in November 2012. DOD updated the directive in January 2023. In February 2023, the US issued a related foreign policy proposal, Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy. == Definitions == There is no agreed definition of lethal autonomous weapon systems that is used in international fora. However, DODD 3000.09 provides definitions for different categories of autonomous weapon systems for the purposes of the U.S. military. These definitions are principally grounded in the role of the human operator with regard to target selection and engagement decisions, rather than in the technological sophistication of the weapon system. DODD 3000.09 defines LAWS as "weapon system[s] that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator." This concept of autonomy is also known as "human out of the loop" or "full autonomy." The directive contrasts LAWS with human-supervised, or "human on the loop," autonomous weapon systems, in which operators have the ability to monitor and halt a weapon's target engagement. Another category is semi-autonomous, or "human in the loop," weapon systems that "only engage individual targets or specific target groups that have been selected by a human operator." Semi-autonomous weapons include so-called "fire and forget" weapons, such as certain types of guided missiles, that deliver effects to human-identified targets using autonomous functions. The directive does not apply to autonomous or semi-autonomous cyberspace capabilities; unarmed platforms; unguided munitions; munitions manually guided by the operator (e.g., laser- or wire-guided munitions); mines; unexploded explosive ordnance; or autonomous or semi-autonomous systems that are not weapon systems, nor subject them to its guidelines. == Role of human operator == DODD 3000.09 requires that all systems, including LAWS, be designed to "allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force." As noted in an August 2018 U.S. government white paper, "'appropriate' is a flexible term that reflects the fact that there is not a fixed, one-size-fits-all level of human judgment that should be applied to every context. What is 'appropriate' can differ across weapon systems, domains of warfare, types of warfare, operational contexts, and even across different functions in a weapon system." Furthermore, "human judgment over the use of force" does not require manual human "control" of the weapon system, as is often reported, but rather broader human involvement in decisions about how, when, where, and why the weapon will be employed. This includes a human determination that the weapon will be used "with appropriate care and in accordance with the law of war, applicable treaties, weapon system safety rules, and applicable rules of engagement." To aid this determination, DODD 3000.09 requires that "[a]dequate training, [tactics, techniques, and procedures], and doctrine are available, periodically reviewed, and used by system operators and commanders to understand the functioning, capabilities, and limitations of the system's autonomy in realistic operational conditions." The directive also requires that the weapon's human-machine interface be "readily understandable to trained operators" so they can make informed decisions regarding the weapon's use. == Weapons review process == DODD 3000.09 requires that the software and hardware of covered semi-autonomous and autonomous weapon systems, be tested and evaluated to ensure they:Function as anticipated in realistic operational environments against adaptive adversaries taking realistic and practicable countermeasures, [and] complete engagements within a timeframe and geographic area, as well as other relevant environmental and operational constraints, consistent with commander and operator intentions. If unable to do so, the systems will terminate the engagement or obtain additional operator input before continuing the engagement.Systems must also be "sufficiently robust to minimize the probability and consequences of failures." Any changes to the system's operating state—for example, due to machine learning—would require the system to go through testing and evaluation again to ensure that it has retained its safety features and ability to operate as intended. The directive also notes that "the use of AI capabilities in autonomous or semi-autonomous systems will be consistent with the DOD AI Ethical Principles." In addition to the standard weapons review process, a secondary senior-level review is required for covered autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. This review requires the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD[P]), the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (VCJCS), and the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD[R&E]) to approve the system before formal development. USD(P), VCJCS, and the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD[A&S]) must then approve the system before fielding. In the event of "urgent military need," this senior-level review may be waived by the Deputy Secretary of Defense. DODD 3000.09 additionally establishes the Autonomous Weapon System Working Group—composed of representatives of USD(P); USD(R&E); USD(A&S); DOD General Counsel; the Chief Digital and AI Officer; the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation; and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—to support and advise the senior-level review process. == Congressional notification == Per Section 251 of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA; Pub. L. 118–31 (text) (PDF)), the Secretary of Defense is to notify the defense committees of any changes to DODD 3000.09 within 30 days. The Secretary is directed to provide a description of the modification and an explanation of the reasons for the modification. Section 1066 of the FY2025 NDAA (Pub. L. 118–159 (text) (PDF)) additionally requires the Secretary to "submit to the congressional defense committees a comprehensive report on the approval and deployment of lethal autonomous weapon systems by the United States," annually through December 31, 2029. Section 1061 of the FY2026 NDAA (P.L. Pub. L. 119–60 (menu; GPO has not yet published law)) amends the U.S. Code to require congressional notification of any waiver issued under DODD 3000.09. == AI safety == The second revision of DoDD 3000.09, effective January 25, 2023, requires that "The DoD will design and engineer AI capabilities to fulfill their intended functions while possessing the ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences, and the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behavior." == Criticism == As noted in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the policy requires that autonomous weapon systems that kill people or use kinetic force, selecting and engaging targets without further human intervention, be certified as compliant with "appropriate levels" and other standards, not that such weapon systems cannot meet these standards and are therefore forbidden. "Semi-autonomous" hunter-killers that autonomously identify and attack targets do not require certification.

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  • Wargame (hacking)

    Wargame (hacking)

    In hacking, a wargame (or war game) is a cyber-security challenge and mind sport in which the competitors must exploit or defend a vulnerability in a system or application, and/or gain or prevent access to a computer system. A wargame usually involves a capture the flag logic, based on pentesting, semantic URL attacks, knowledge-based authentication, password cracking, reverse engineering of software (often JavaScript, C and assembly language), code injection, SQL injections, cross-site scripting, exploits, IP address spoofing, forensics, and other hacking techniques. == Wargames for preparedness == Wargames are also used as a method of cyberwarfare preparedness. The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) organizes an annual event, Locked Shields, which is an international live-fire cyber exercise. The exercise challenges cyber security experts through real-time attacks in fictional scenarios and is used to develop skills in national IT defense strategies. == Additional applications == Wargames can be used to teach the basics of web attacks and web security, giving participants a better understanding of how attackers exploit security vulnerabilities. Wargames are also used as a way to "stress test" an organization's response plan and serve as a drill to identify gaps in cyber disaster preparedness.

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  • Mental mapping

    Mental mapping

    In behavioral geography, a mental map is a person's point-of-view perception of their area of interaction. Although this kind of subject matter would seem most likely to be studied by fields in the social sciences, this particular subject is most often studied by modern-day geographers. Researchers have also applied mental mapping to understand and define cognitive regions. They study it to determine subjective qualities from the public such as personal preference and practical uses of geography like driving directions. Mass media also have a virtually direct effect on a person's mental map of the geographical world. The perceived geographical dimensions of a foreign nation (relative to one's own nation) may often be heavily influenced by the amount of time and relative news coverage that the news media may spend covering news events from that foreign region. For instance, a person might perceive a small island to be nearly the size of a continent, merely based on the amount of news coverage that they are exposed to on a regular basis. In psychology, the term names the information maintained in the mind of an organism by means of which it may plan activities, select routes over previously traveled territories, etc. The rapid traversal of a familiar maze depends on this kind of mental map if scents or other markers laid down by the subject are eliminated before the maze is re-run. == Background == Mental maps are an outcome of the field of behavioral geography. The imagined maps are considered one of the first studies that intersected geographical settings with human action. The most prominent contribution and study of mental maps was in the writings of Kevin Lynch. In The Image of the City, Lynch used simple sketches of maps created from memory of an urban area to reveal five elements of the city; nodes, edges, districts, paths and landmarks. Lynch claimed that “Most often our perception of the city is not sustained, but rather partial, fragmentary, mixed with other concerns. Nearly every sense is in operation, and the image is the composite of them all.” (Lynch, 1960, p 2.) The creation of a mental map relies on memory as opposed to being copied from a preexisting map or image. In The Image of the City, Lynch asks a participant to create a map as follows: “Make it just as if you were making a rapid description of the city to a stranger, covering all the main features. We don’t expect an accurate drawing- just a rough sketch.” (Lynch 1960, p 141) In the field of human geography mental maps have led to an emphasizing of social factors and the use of social methods versus quantitative or positivist methods. Mental maps have often led to revelations regarding social conditions of a particular space or area. Haken and Portugali (2003) developed an information view, which argued that the face of the city is its information . Bin Jiang (2012) argued that the image of the city (or mental map) arises out of the scaling of city artifacts and locations. He addressed that why the image of city can be formed , and he even suggested ways of computing the image of the city, or more precisely the kind of collective image of the city, using increasingly available geographic information such as Flickr and Twitter . Using mental maps, we will be able to predict individual decision making and spatial selection, as well as evaluate their routing and navigation. A cognitive maps utility as a mnemonic and metaphorical device is precisely one of its other benefits as a shaper of the world and local attitudes. The first major field of study within the domain of memory maps is geography, spatial cognition and neurophysiology. This aims to understand how routes are drawn by subject from their set of subjects out into space which lead to memorization and internal representations. Overall these representations take the form of drawings, positioning in a graph, or oral/textual narratives, but are reflected as behavior is space that can be recorded as tracking items. == Research applications == Mental maps have been used in a collection of spatial research. Many studies have been performed that focus on the quality of an environment in terms of feelings such as fear, desire and stress. A study by Matei et al. in 2001 used mental maps to reveal the role of media in shaping urban space in Los Angeles. The study used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to process 215 mental maps taken from seven neighborhoods across the city. The results showed that people's fear perceptions in Los Angeles are not associated with high crime rates but are instead associated with a concentration of certain ethnicities in a given area. The mental maps recorded in the study draw attention to these areas of concentrated ethnicities as parts of the urban space to avoid or stay away from. Mental maps have also been used to describe the urban experience of children. In a 2008 study by Olga den Besten mental maps were used to map out the fears and dislikes of children in Berlin and Paris. The study looked into the absence of children in today's cities and the urban environment from a child's perspective of safety, stress and fear. Peter Gould and Rodney White have performed prominent analyses in the book “Mental Maps.” This book is an investigation into people's spatial desires. The book asks of its participants: “Suppose you were suddenly given the chance to choose where you would like to live- an entirely free choice that you could make quite independently of the usual constraints of income or job availability. Where would you choose to go?” (Gould, 1974, p 15) Gould and White use their findings to create a surface of desire for various areas of the world. The surface of desire is meant to show people's environmental preferences and regional biases. In an experiment done by Edward C. Tolman, the development of a mental map was seen in rats. A rat was placed in a cross shaped maze and allowed to explore it. After this initial exploration, the rat was placed at one arm of the cross and food was placed at the next arm to the immediate right. The rat was conditioned to this layout and learned to turn right at the intersection in order to get to the food. When placed at different arms of the cross maze however, the rat still went in the correct direction to obtain the food because of the initial mental map it had created of the maze. Rather than just deciding to turn right at the intersection no matter what, the rat was able to determine the correct way to the food no matter where in the maze it was placed. The idea of mental maps is also used in strategic analysis. David Brewster, an Australian strategic analyst, has applied the concept to strategic conceptions of South Asia and Southeast Asia. He argues that popular mental maps of where regions begin and end can have a significant impact on the strategic behaviour of states. A collection of essays, documenting current geographical and historical research in mental maps is published by the Journal of Cultural Geography in 2018.

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  • Horovod (machine learning)

    Horovod (machine learning)

    Horovod is a free and open-source distributed deep learning training framework for TensorFlow, Keras, PyTorch and Apache MXNet. It is designed to scale existing single-GPU training scripts to efficiently run on multiple GPUs and computer nodes with minimal code changes, using synchronous data-parallel training based on the ring-allreduce communication pattern. Horovod was initially developed at Uber and released as an open-source project in 2017, and is now hosted by the LF AI & Data Foundation, a project of the Linux Foundation. == History == Horovod was created at Uber as part of the company's internal machine learning platform Michelangelo to simplify scaling TensorFlow models across many GPUs. The first public release of the library, version 0.9.0, was tagged on GitHub in August 2017 under the Apache 2.0 licence. In October 2017, Uber Engineering publicly introduced Horovod as an open-source component of its deep learning toolkit. In February 2018 Alexander Sergeev and Mike Del Balso published a technical paper describing Horovod's design and benchmarking its performance on up to 512 GPUs, showing near-linear scaling for several image-classification models when compared with single-GPU baselines. In December 2018 Uber contributed Horovod to the LF Deep Learning Foundation (later LF AI & Data), making it a Linux Foundation project. Horovod entered incubation under LF AI & Data and graduated as a full foundation project in 2020. Since its initial release the project has expanded beyond TensorFlow to provide APIs for PyTorch, Keras and Apache MXNet, as well as integrations with frameworks such as Apache Spark and Ray, support for elastic training, and tooling for automated performance tuning and profiling. == Design and features == Horovod core principles are based on the MPI concepts size, rank, local rank, allreduce, allgather, broadcast, and alltoall. Horovod implements synchronous data-parallel training, in which each worker process maintains a replica of the model and computes gradients on different mini-batches of data. The gradients are aggregated across workers using the ring-allreduce communication pattern rather than a central parameter server, which reduces communication bottlenecks and can improve scaling on multi-GPU clusters. Communication is built on top of collective-communication libraries such as MPI, NCCL, Gloo and Intel oneCCL, and supports both GPU and CPU training. In the benchmark experiments reported in the original paper, Horovod achieved around 90% scaling efficiency on 512 GPUs for the ResNet-101 and Inception v3 convolutional neural networks, and around 68% scaling efficiency for the VGG-16 model. Horovod can be deployed on-premises or in cloud environments and is distributed as a Python package with optional GPU support via CUDA. The official documentation provides guides for running Horovod with Docker, Kubernetes (including via Kubeflow and the MPI Operator), commercial platforms such as Databricks, and cluster schedulers such as LSF. == Adoption and use cases == Within Uber, Horovod has been used for applications including autonomous driving research, fraud detection and trip forecasting. Major cloud providers have integrated Horovod into their managed machine learning offerings. Amazon Web Services supports distributed training with Horovod in services such as Amazon SageMaker and AWS Deep Learning Containers, while Microsoft Azure documents Horovod-based training workflows for Azure Synapse Analytics. Technical guides from academic and research computing centres, including Purdue University and the NASA Advanced Supercomputing programme, describe Horovod-based workflows for multi-GPU training on supercomputers and clusters. Horovod is also used in conjunction with Apache Spark and dedicated storage systems as part of end-to-end data processing and model-training pipelines. Industry blogs and technical tutorials describe deployments of Horovod on Kubernetes, on-premises clusters and cloud-managed Kubernetes services such as Amazon EKS.

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