Spleak was an IM platform where users could publish and rate content. It existed in the form of six bots covering as many subject areas: CelebSpleak, SportSpleak, VoteSpleak, TVSpleak, GameSpleak, and StyleSpleak. == Overview == Users can add a "multi-Spleak" (which contains all of the different Spleak bots in one) or add the separate bots to their IM buddy lists on MSN and AIM. Users are also allowed access to Spleak online by using a CelebSpleak, SportSpleak, or VoteSpleak widget, or through the CelebSpleak and SportSpleak applications with Facebook. Spleak was an alternate reality game and is moving to its own company, Spleak Media Network. "Celebrate Spleak" was introduced throughout 2007, launched in 2008, and was forced to retire in 2009. == Key people == Spleak was co-founded by Morten Lund and Nicolaj Reffstrup. The company's chief executive officer is Morrie Eisenburg; Josh Scott is Vice President in Product and Tyler Wells is Vice President in Engineering.
Headway (app)
Headway, also known as the Headway App, is an educational technology (EdTech) product that provides short text and audio summaries of nonfiction books. The product was launched in 2019 by Anton Pavlovsky and is developed by Headway Inc, a global consumer tech company that operates in the lifelong learning space. == History == The Headway app was launched in January 2019, with the first version of the application released the same year. In 2021, Headway ranked first globally in downloads within the book summary application niche. In 2022, the application received the Golden Novum Design Award for product design. In 2023 and 2024, Headway appeared in several App Store editorial selections, including App of the Day in multiple countries, and received an Editors’ Choice label in the United States. In April 2025, the application was listed as a Webby Honoree in the Learning & Education category. The company has also launched the Headway Scholarship for Book Lovers. As of 2025, publicly available reporting notes that the Headway app has surpassed 50 million downloads and is among the Top 10 iOS applications by revenue in the Education category worldwide. == Products and features == The Headway app provides short-form summaries of nonfiction books in both text and audio formats. Content is produced by an in-house team of writers, editors, and voice actors. Features include highlighting and saving key insights, spaced repetition for knowledge retention, and offline access to downloaded summaries. The app is available on iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, Android, CarPlay, and Android Auto, and supports multiple languages. == Pricing == Headway operates on a subscription business model, with optional paid plans alongside free access. The company publicly provides its terms of use, privacy policy, subscription details, and AI usage policy on its official website. == Technology and integrations == Headway reports that its book summaries are written and edited manually, while artificial intelligence tools are used in limited supporting functions, such as experimental conversational features and selected marketing processes. == Adoption == According to figures released by the company, the app has exceeded 50 million downloads worldwide. Sensor Tower data indicates that Headway has been the most downloaded application in its niche since October 2020. In January 2025, the app claimed the #1 position in the Education category in both the United States and United Kingdom App Stores and remained among the Top 10 iOS applications globally by revenue within the Education category. == Awards == The Headway app has received several product-level distinctions. In 2023 and 2024, it appeared in multiple App Store editorial selections, including App of the Day features and an Editors’ Choice label in the United States. In 2025, the app was recognized as a Webby Honoree in the Learning & Education category. The product has also been featured in independent media roundups of notable educational applications.
Open Compute Project
The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that facilitates the sharing of data center product designs and industry best practices among companies. Founded in 2011, OCP has significantly influenced the design and operation of large-scale computing facilities worldwide. As of February 2025, over 400 companies across the world are members of OCP, including Arm, Meta, IBM, Wiwynn, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NVIDIA, Cisco, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Lenovo, Accton Technology Corporation and Alibaba Group. == Structure == The Open Compute Project Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit incorporated in the state of Delaware, United States. OCP has multiple committees, including the board of directors, advisory board and steering committee to govern its operations. As of July 2020, there are seven members who serve on the board of directors which is made up of one individual member and six organizational members. Mark Roenigk (Facebook) is the Foundation's president and chairman. Andy Bechtolsheim is the individual member. In addition to Mark Roenigk who represents Facebook, other organizations on the Open Compute board of directors include Intel (Rebecca Weekly), Microsoft (Kushagra Vaid), Google (Partha Ranganathan), and Rackspace (Jim Hawkins). A list of members can be found on the OCP website. == History == The Open Compute Project began at Facebook (now Meta) in 2009 as an internal project called "Project Freedom". The hardware designs and engineering teams were led by Amir Michael (Manager, Hardware Design) and sponsored by Jonathan Heiliger (VP, Technical Operations) and Frank Frankovsky (Director, Hardware Design and Infrastructure). The three would later open source the designs of Project Freedom and co-found the Open Compute Project. The project was announced at a press event at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto on April 7, 2011. == OCP projects == The Open Compute Project Foundation maintains a number of OCP projects, such as: === Server designs === In 2013, two years after the Open Compute Project had started, it was noted that the goal of a more modular server design was "still a long way from live data centers". However, by then some aspects published had been used in Facebook's Prineville data center to improve energy efficiency, as measured by the power usage effectiveness index defined by The Green Grid. Efforts to advance server compute node designs included one for Intel processors and one for AMD processors. Also in 2013, Calxeda contributed a design with ARM architecture processors. Since then, several generations of OCP server designs have been deployed: Wildcat (Intel), Spitfire (AMD), Windmill (Intel E5-2600), Watermark (AMD), Winterfell (Intel E5-2600 v2) and Leopard (Intel E5-2600 v3). === OCP Accelerator Module === OCP Accelerator Module (OAM) is a design specification for hardware architectures that implement artificial intelligence systems that require high module-to-module bandwidth. OAM is used in some of AMD's Instinct accelerator modules. === Rack and power designs === Designs for a mechanical mounting system to replace standard 19-inch racks have been published, with a cabinet the same outside width (600 mm) and depth as existing racks, but with an interior space allowing for wider equipment chassis with a 537 mm width (21 inches). This allows more equipment to fit in the same volume and improves air flow. Compute chassis sizes are defined in multiples of an OpenU or OU, which is 48 mm, slightly taller than the 44 mm rack unit defined for 19-inch racks. As of March 2026, the most current base mechanical definition is the Open Rack V3.1 Specification. At the time the base specification was released, Meta also defined in greater depth the specifications for the rectifiers and power shelf. Specifications for the power monitoring interface (PMI), a communications interface enabling upstream communications between the rectifiers and battery backup unit(BBU) were published by Meta that same year, with Delta Electronics as the main technical contributor to the BBU spec. However, since 2022 the AI boom in the data center has created higher power requirements in order to satisfy the demands of AI accelerators that have been released. As of September 2024, Meta is in the process of updating its Open Rack v3 rectifier, power shelf, battery backup and power management interface specifications to accommodate this increased energy demand. In May 2024, at an Open Compute regional summit, Meta and Rittal outlined their plans for development of their High Power Rack (HPR) ecosystem in conjunction with rack, power and cable partners, increasing power capacity in the rack to 92 kilowatts or more. At the same meeting, Delta Electronics and Advanced Energy reported on their progress in developing new Open Compute standard specifications for power shelf and rectifier designs for HPR applications. Rittal also outlined their collaboration with Meta in designing airflow containment, busbar designs and grounding schemes for the new HPR requirements. === Data storage === Open Vault storage building blocks (also called "Knox") offer high disk densities, with 30 drives in a 2 OU Open Rack chassis designed for easy disk drive replacement. The 3.5 inch disks are stored in two drawers, five across and three deep in each drawer, with connections via serial attached SCSI. There is a "cold storage" variant where idle disks power down to reduce energy consumption. Another design concept was contributed by Hyve Solutions, a division of Synnex, in 2012. At the OCP Summit 2016 Facebook, together with Taiwanese ODM Wistron's spin-off Wiwynn, introduced "Lightning", a flexible NVMe JBOF (just a bunch of flash), based on the existing Open Vault (Knox) design. === Energy efficient data centers === The OCP has published data center designs for energy efficiency. These include power distribution at three-phase 277/480 VAC, which eliminates one transformer stage in typical North American data centers, a single voltage (12.5 VDC) power supply designed to work with 277/480 VAC input, and 48 VDC battery backup. For European (and other 230V countries) datacenters, there is a specification for 230/400 VAC power distribution and its conversion to 12.5 VDC. === Open networking switches === On May 8, 2013, an effort to define an open network switch was announced. The plan was to allow Facebook to load its own operating system software onto its top-of-rack switches. Press reports predicted that more expensive and higher-performance switches would continue to be popular, while less expensive products treated more like a commodity. The first attempt at an open networking switch by Facebook was designed together with Taiwanese ODM Accton using Broadcom Trident II chip and is called "Wedge"; the Linux OS that it runs is called "FBOSS". Later switch contributions include "6-pack" and Wedge-100, based on Broadcom Tomahawk chips. Similar switch hardware designs have been contributed by: Accton Technology Corporation (and its Edgecore Networks subsidiary), Mellanox Technologies, Interface Masters Technologies, Agema Systems. Capable of running Open Network Install Environment (ONIE)-compatible network operating systems such as Cumulus Linux, Switch Light OS by Big Switch Networks, or PICOS by Pica8. A similar project for a custom switch for the Google platform had been rumored, and evolved to use the OpenFlow protocol. === Servers === A sub-project for Mezzanine (NIC) OCP NIC 3.0 specification 1v00 was released in late 2019 establishing three form factors: SFF, TSFF, and LFF. == Litigation == In March, 2015, BladeRoom Group Limited and Bripco (UK) Limited sued Facebook, Emerson Electric Co. and others alleging that Facebook has disclosed BladeRoom and Bripco's trade secrets for prefabricated data centers in the Open Compute Project. Facebook petitioned for the lawsuit to be dismissed, but this was rejected in 2017. A confidential mid-trial settlement was agreed in April 2018.
Read–write conflict
In computer science, in the field of databases, read–write conflict, also known as unrepeatable reads, is a computational anomaly associated with interleaved execution of transactions. Specifically, a read–write conflict occurs when a "transaction requests to read an entity for which an unclosed transaction has already made a write request." Given a schedule S S = [ T 1 T 2 R ( A ) R ( A ) W ( A ) C o m . R ( A ) W ( A ) C o m . ] {\displaystyle S={\begin{bmatrix}T1&T2\\R(A)&\\&R(A)\\&W(A)\\&Com.\\R(A)&\\W(A)&\\Com.&\end{bmatrix}}} In this example, T1 has read the original value of A, and is waiting for T2 to finish. T2 also reads the original value of A, overwrites A, and commits. However, when T1 reads from A, it discovers two different versions of A, and T1 would be forced to abort, because T1 would not know what to do. This is an unrepeatable read. This could never occur in a serial schedule, in which each transaction executes in its entirety before another begins. Strict two-phase locking (Strict 2PL) or Serializable Snapshot Isolation (SSI) prevent this conflict. == Real-world example == Alice and Bob are using a website to book tickets for a specific show. Only one ticket is left for the specific show. Alice signs on first to see that only one ticket is left, and finds it expensive. Alice takes time to decide. Bob signs on and also finds one ticket left, and orders it instantly. Bob purchases and logs off. Alice decides to buy a ticket, to find there are no tickets. This is a typical read–write conflict situation.
VMDS
VMDS abbreviates the relational database technology called Version Managed Data Store provided by GE Energy as part of its Smallworld technology platform and was designed from the outset to store and analyse the highly complex spatial and topological networks typically used by enterprise utilities such as power distribution and telecommunications. VMDS was originally introduced in 1990 as has been improved and updated over the years. Its current version is 6.0. VMDS has been designed as a spatial database. This gives VMDS a number of distinctive characteristics when compared to conventional attribute only relational databases. == Distributed server processing == VMDS is composed of two parts: a simple, highly scalable data block server called SWMFS (Smallworld Master File Server) and an intelligent client API written in C and Magik. Spatial and attribute data are stored in data blocks that reside in special files called data store files on the server. When the client application requests data it has sufficient intelligence to work out the optimum set of data blocks that are required. This request is then made to SWMFS which returns the data to the client via the network for processing. This approach is particularly efficient and scalable when dealing with spatial and topological data which tends to flow in larger volumes and require more processing then plain attribute data (for example during a map redraw operation). This approach makes VMDS well suited to enterprise deployment that might involve hundreds or even thousands of concurrent clients. == Support for long transactions == Relational databases support short transactions in which changes to data are relatively small and are brief in terms in duration (the maximum period between the start and the end of a transaction is typically a few seconds or less). VMDS supports long transactions in which the volume of data involved in the transaction can be substantial and the duration of the transaction can be significant (days, weeks or even months). These types of transaction are common in advanced network applications used by, for example, power distribution utilities. Due to the time span of a long transaction in this context the amount of change can be significant (not only within the scope of the transaction, but also within the context of the database as a whole). Accordingly, it is likely that the same record might be changed more than once. To cope with this scenario VMDS has inbuilt support for automatically managing such conflicts and allows applications to review changes and accept only those edits that are correct. == Spatial and topological capabilities == As well as conventional relational database features such as attribute querying, join fields, triggers and calculated fields, VMDS has numerous spatial and topological capabilities. This allows spatial data such as points, texts, polylines, polygons and raster data to be stored and analysed. Spatial functions include: find all features within a polygon, calculate the Voronoi polygons of a set of sites and perform a cluster analysis on a set of points. Vector spatial data such as points, polylines and polygons can be given topological attributes that allow complex networks to be modelled. Network analysis engines are provided to answer questions such as find the shortest path between two nodes or how to optimize a delivery route (the travelling salesman problem). A topology engine can be configured with a set of rules that define how topological entities interact with each other when new data is added or existing data edited. == Data abstraction == In VMDS all data is presented to the application as objects. This is different from many relational databases that present the data as rows from a table or query result using say JDBC. VMDS provides a data modelling tool and underlying infrastructure as part of the Smallworld technology platform that allows administrators to associate a table in the database with a Magik exemplar (or class). Magik get and set methods for the Magik exemplar can be automatically generated that expose a table's field (or column). Each VMDS row manifests itself to the application as an instance of a Magik object and is known as an RWO (or real world object). Tables are known as collections in Smallworld parlance. # all_rwos hold all the rwos in the database and is heterogeneous all_rwos << my_application.rwo_set() # valve_collection holds the valve collection valves << all_rwos.select(:collection, {:valve}) number_of_valves << valves.size Queries are built up using predicate objects: # find 'open' valves. open_valves << valves.select(predicate.eq(:operating_status, "open")) number_of_open_valves << open_valves.size _for valve _over open_valves.elements() _loop write(valve.id) _endloop Joins are implemented as methods on the parent RWO. For example, a manager might have several employees who report to him: # get the employee collection. employees << my_application.database.collection(:gis, :employees) # find a manager called 'Steve' and get the first matching element steve << employees.select(predicate.eq(:name, "Steve").and(predicate.eq(:role, "manager")).an_element() # display the names of his direct reports. name is a field (or column) # on the employee collection (or table) _for employee _over steve.direct_reports.elements() _loop write(employee.name) _endloop Performing a transaction: # each key in the hash table corresponds to the name of the field (or column) in # the collection (or table) valve_data << hash_table.new_with( :asset_id, 57648576, :material, "Iron") # get the valve collection directly valve_collection << my_application.database.collection(:gis, :valve) # create an insert transaction to insert a new valve record into the collection a # comment can be provide that describes the transaction transaction << record_transaction.new_insert(valve_collection, valve_data, "Inserted a new valve") transaction.run()
Deep Instinct
Deep Instinct is a cybersecurity company that applies deep learning to cybersecurity. The company implements artificial intelligence to the task of preventing and detecting malware. The company was the recipient of the Technology Pioneer by The World Economic Forum in 2017. Lane Bess has been CEO of the company since 2022. == Overview == In 2015, Deep Instinct was founded by Guy Caspi, Dr. Eli David, and Nadav Maman. The headquarters of the company is located in New York City. In July 2017, NVIDIA became an investor. According to Tom's Hardware, NVIDIA’s investment enabled access to a GPU-based neural network and CUDA platform, which they were using to achieve maximum vulnerability detection rates. As of February 2020, the company had raised $43 million in Series C funding round. In April 2021, Deep Instinct raised $100 million in Series D funding to accelerate growth. == Partnerships == In April 2019, Deep Instinct partnered with Chinese artist, Guo O. Dong on an art project titled, The Persistence of Chaos, consisting of a laptop infected with 6 pieces of malware that represented $95 billion in damages. The art was auctioned with a final bid of $1,345,000. In the same year, Globes reported that, HP Inc partnered with Deep Instinct to launch their security solution HP SureSense, which has been applied to the EliteBook and Zbook devices.
Ontology (information science)
In information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definitions of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, or entities that pertain to one, many, or all domains of discourse. More simply, an ontology is a way of showing the properties of a subject area and how they are related, by defining a set of terms and relational expressions that represent the entities in that subject area. The field which studies ontologies so conceived is sometimes referred to as applied ontology. Every academic discipline or field, in creating its terminology, thereby lays the groundwork for an ontology. Each uses ontological assumptions to frame explicit theories, research and applications. Improved ontologies may improve problem solving within that domain, interoperability of data systems, and discoverability of data. Translating research papers within every field is a problem made easier when experts from different countries maintain a controlled vocabulary of jargon between each of their languages. For instance, the definition and ontology of economics is a primary concern in Marxist economics, but also in other subfields of economics. An example of economics relying on information science occurs in cases where a simulation or model is intended to enable economic decisions, such as determining what capital assets are at risk and by how much (see risk management). What ontologies in both information science and philosophy have in common is the attempt to represent entities, including both objects and events, with all their interdependent properties and relations, according to a system of categories. In both fields, there is considerable work on problems of ontology engineering (e.g., Quine and Kripke in philosophy, Sowa and Guarino in information science), and debates concerning to what extent normative ontology is possible (e.g., foundationalism and coherentism in philosophy, BFO and Cyc in artificial intelligence). Applied ontology is considered by some as a successor to prior work in philosophy. However many current efforts are more concerned with establishing controlled vocabularies of narrow domains than with philosophical first principles, or with questions such as the mode of existence of fixed essences or whether enduring objects (e.g., perdurantism and endurantism) may be ontologically more primary than processes. Artificial intelligence has retained considerable attention regarding applied ontology in subfields like natural language processing within machine translation and knowledge representation, but ontology editors are being used often in a range of fields, including biomedical informatics and industry. Such efforts often use ontology editing tools such as Protégé. == Ontology in philosophy == Ontology is a branch of philosophy and intersects areas such as metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language, as it considers how knowledge, language, and perception relate to the nature of reality. Metaphysics deals with questions like "what exists?" and "what is the nature of reality?". One of five traditional branches of philosophy, metaphysics is concerned with exploring existence through properties, entities and relations such as those between particulars and universals, intrinsic and extrinsic properties, or essence and existence. Metaphysics has been an ongoing topic of discussion since recorded history. == Etymology == The compound word ontology combines onto-, from the Greek ὄν, on (gen. ὄντος, ontos), i.e. "being; that which is", which is the present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimí, i.e. "to be, I am", and -λογία, -logia, i.e. "logical discourse", see classical compounds for this type of word formation. While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself, the Neo-Latin form ontologia, appeared in 1606 in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexicon philosophicum by Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius). The first occurrence in English of ontology as recorded by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, online edition, 2008) came in Archeologia Philosophica Nova or New Principles of Philosophy (1663) by Gideon Harvey. == Formal ontology == Since the mid-1970s, researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have recognized that knowledge engineering is the key to building large and powerful AI systems. AI researchers argued that they could create new ontologies as computational models that enable certain kinds of automated reasoning, which was only marginally successful. In the 1980s, the AI community began to use the term ontology to refer to both a theory of a modeled world and a component of knowledge-based systems. In particular, David Powers introduced the word ontology to AI to refer to real world or robotic grounding, publishing in 1990 literature reviews emphasizing grounded ontology in association with the call for papers for a AAAI Summer Symposium Machine Learning of Natural Language and Ontology, with an expanded version published in SIGART Bulletin and included as a preface to the proceedings. Some researchers, drawing inspiration from philosophical ontologies, viewed computational ontology as a kind of applied philosophy. In 1993, the widely cited web page and paper "Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing" by Tom Gruber used ontology as a technical term in computer science closely related to earlier idea of semantic networks and taxonomies. Gruber introduced the term as a specification of a conceptualization: An ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can formally exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set of concept definitions, but more general. And it is a different sense of the word than its use in philosophy. Attempting to distance ontologies from taxonomies and similar efforts in knowledge modeling that rely on classes and inheritance, Gruber stated (1993): Ontologies are often equated with taxonomic hierarchies of classes, class definitions, and the subsumption relation, but ontologies need not be limited to these forms. Ontologies are also not limited to conservative definitions, that is, definitions in the traditional logic sense that only introduce terminology and do not add any knowledge about the world (Enderton, 1972). To specify a conceptualization, one needs to state axioms that do constrain the possible interpretations for the defined terms. Recent experimental ontology frameworks have also explored resonance-based AI-human co-evolution structures, such as IAMF (Illumination AI Matrix Framework), OntoMotoOS (a meta-operating system concept for ethical and ontological AI–human co-evolution), and PSRT (Phase-Structural Reality Theory across multi-scale ontological layers). Though not yet widely adopted in academic discourse, such models propose phased approaches to ethical harmonization and structural emergence. As refinement of Gruber's definition Feilmayr and Wöß (2016) stated: "An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization that is characterized by high semantic expressiveness required for increased complexity." == Formal ontology components == Contemporary ontologies share many structural similarities, regardless of the language in which they are expressed. Most ontologies describe individuals (instances), classes (concepts), attributes and relations. === Types === ==== Domain ontology ==== A domain ontology (or domain-specific ontology) represents concepts which belong to a realm of the world, such as biology or politics. Each domain ontology typically models domain-specific definitions of terms. For example, the word card has many different meanings. An ontology about the domain of poker would model the "playing card" meaning of the word, while an ontology about the domain of computer hardware would model the "punched card" and "video card" meanings. Since domain ontologies are written by different people, they represent concepts in very specific and unique ways, and are often incompatible within the same project. As systems that rely on domain ontologies expand, they often need to merge domain ontologies by hand-tuning each entity or using a combination of software merging and hand-tuning. This presents a challenge to the ontology designer. Different ontologies in the same domain arise due to different languages, different intended usage of the ontologies, and different perceptions of the domain (based on cultural background, education, ideology, etc.). At present, merging ontologies that are not developed from a common upper ontology is a largely manual process and therefore time-consuming and expensive. Domain ontologies that use the same upper ontology to provide a set of basic elements with which to specify the meanings of the domain ontology entities can be merged with less effo