In machine learning, the perceptron is an algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers. A binary classifier is a function that can decide whether or not an input, represented by a vector of numbers, belongs to some specific class. It is a type of linear classifier, i.e. a classification algorithm that makes its predictions based on a linear predictor function combining a set of weights with the feature vector. == History == The artificial neuron and artificial neural network were invented in 1943 by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts in their seminal paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". In 1957, Frank Rosenblatt was at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. He simulated the perceptron on an IBM 704. Later, he obtained funding by the Information Systems Branch of the United States Office of Naval Research and the Rome Air Development Center, to build a custom-made computer, the Mark I Perceptron. It was first publicly demonstrated on 23 June 1960. The machine was "part of a previously secret four-year NPIC [the US' National Photographic Interpretation Center] effort from 1963 through 1966 to develop this algorithm into a useful tool for photo-interpreters". Rosenblatt described the details of the perceptron in a 1958 paper. His organization of a perceptron is constructed of three kinds of cells ("units"): S, A, R, which stand for "sensory", "association" and "response". He presented at the first international symposium on AI, Mechanisation of Thought Processes, which took place in 1958 November. Rosenblatt's project was funded under Contract Nonr-401(40) "Cognitive Systems Research Program", which lasted from 1959 to 1970, and Contract Nonr-2381(00) "Project PARA" ("PARA" means "Perceiving and Recognition Automata"), which lasted from 1957 to 1963. In 1959, the Institute for Defense Analysis awarded his group a $10,000 contract. By September 1961, the ONR awarded further $153,000 worth of contracts, with $108,000 committed for 1962. The ONR research manager, Marvin Denicoff, stated that ONR, instead of ARPA, funded the Perceptron project, because the project was unlikely to produce technological results in the near or medium term. Funding from ARPA go up to the order of millions dollars, while from ONR are on the order of 10,000 dollars. Meanwhile, the head of IPTO at ARPA, J.C.R. Licklider, was interested in 'self-organizing', 'adaptive' and other biologically-inspired methods in the 1950s; but by the mid-1960s he was openly critical of these, including the perceptron. Instead he strongly favored the logical AI approach of Simon and Newell. === Mark I Perceptron machine === The perceptron was intended to be a machine, rather than a program, and while its first implementation was in software for the IBM 704, it was subsequently implemented in custom-built hardware as the Mark I Perceptron with the project name "Project PARA", designed for image recognition. The machine is currently in Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The Mark I Perceptron had three layers. One version was implemented as follows: An array of 400 photocells arranged in a 20x20 grid, named "sensory units" (S-units), or "input retina". Each S-unit can connect to up to 40 A-units. A hidden layer of 512 perceptrons, named "association units" (A-units). An output layer of eight perceptrons, named "response units" (R-units). Rosenblatt called this three-layered perceptron network the alpha-perceptron, to distinguish it from other perceptron models he experimented with. The S-units are connected to the A-units randomly (according to a table of random numbers) via a plugboard (see photo), to "eliminate any particular intentional bias in the perceptron". The connection weights are fixed, not learned. Rosenblatt was adamant about the random connections, as he believed the retina was randomly connected to the visual cortex, and he wanted his perceptron machine to resemble human visual perception. The A-units are connected to the R-units, with adjustable weights encoded in potentiometers, and weight updates during learning were performed by electric motors.The hardware details are in an operators' manual. In a 1958 press conference organized by the US Navy, Rosenblatt made statements about the perceptron that caused a heated controversy among the fledgling AI community; based on Rosenblatt's statements, The New York Times reported the perceptron to be "the embryo of an electronic computer that [the Navy] expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence." The Photo Division of Central Intelligence Agency, from 1960 to 1964, studied the use of Mark I Perceptron machine for recognizing militarily interesting silhouetted targets (such as planes and ships) in aerial photos. === Principles of Neurodynamics (1962) === Rosenblatt described his experiments with many variants of the Perceptron machine in a book Principles of Neurodynamics (1962). The book is a published version of the 1961 report. Among the variants are: "cross-coupling" (connections between units within the same layer) with possibly closed loops, "back-coupling" (connections from units in a later layer to units in a previous layer), four-layer perceptrons where the last two layers have adjustable weights (and thus a proper multilayer perceptron), incorporating time-delays to perceptron units, to allow for processing sequential data, analyzing audio (instead of images). The machine was shipped from Cornell to Smithsonian in 1967, under a government transfer administered by the Office of Naval Research. === Perceptrons (1969) === Although the perceptron initially seemed promising, it was quickly proved that perceptrons could not be trained to recognise many classes of patterns. This caused the field of neural network research to stagnate for many years, before it was recognised that a feedforward neural network with two or more layers (also called a multilayer perceptron) had greater processing power than perceptrons with one layer (also called a single-layer perceptron). Single-layer perceptrons are only capable of learning linearly separable patterns. For a classification task with some step activation function, a single node will have a single line dividing the data points forming the patterns. More nodes can create more dividing lines, but those lines must somehow be combined to form more complex classifications. A second layer of perceptrons, or even linear nodes, are sufficient to solve many otherwise non-separable problems. In 1969, a famous book entitled Perceptrons by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert showed that it was impossible for these classes of network to learn an XOR function. It is often incorrectly believed that they also conjectured that a similar result would hold for a multi-layer perceptron network. However, this is not true, as both Minsky and Papert already knew that multi-layer perceptrons were capable of producing an XOR function. (See the page on Perceptrons (book) for more information.) Nevertheless, the often-miscited Minsky and Papert text caused a significant decline in interest and funding of neural network research. It took ten more years until neural network research experienced a resurgence in the 1980s. This text was reprinted in 1987 as "Perceptrons - Expanded Edition" where some errors in the original text are shown and corrected. === Subsequent work === Rosenblatt continued working on perceptrons despite diminishing funding. The last attempt was Tobermory, built between 1961 and 1967, built for speech recognition. It occupied an entire room. It had 4 layers with 12,000 weights implemented by toroidal magnetic cores. By the time of its completion, simulation on digital computers had become faster than purpose-built perceptron machines. He died in a boating accident in 1971. A simulation program for neural networks was written for IBM 7090/7094, and was used to study various pattern recognition applications, such as character recognition, particle tracks in bubble-chamber photographs; phoneme, isolated word, and continuous speech recognition; speaker verification; and center-of-attention mechanisms for image processing. The kernel perceptron algorithm was already introduced in 1964 by Aizerman et al. Margin bounds guarantees were given for the Perceptron algorithm in the general non-separable case first by Freund and Schapire (1998), and more recently by Mohri and Rostamizadeh (2013) who extend previous results and give new and more favorable L1 bounds. The perceptron is a simplified model of a biological neuron. While the complexity of biological neuron models is often required to fully understand neural behavior, research suggests a perceptron-like linear model can produce some behavior seen in real neurons. The solution spaces of decision boundaries for all binary functions and learning behaviors are studied in. == Definition == In the modern sense, the perceptron is an algori
Teechart
TeeChart is a charting library for programmers, developed and managed by Steema Software of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It is available as commercial and non-commercial software. TeeChart has been included in most Delphi and C++Builder products since 1997, and TeeChart Standard currently is part of Embarcadero RAD Studio 13 Florence. TeeChart Pro version is a commercial product that offers shareware releases for all of its formats. The TeeChart Charting Library offers charts, maps and gauges in versions for Delphi VCL/FMX, ActiveX, C# for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET. Full source code has always been available for all versions except the ActiveX version. TeeChart's user interface is translated into 38 languages. == History == The first version of TeeChart was authored in 1995 by David Berneda, co-founder of Steema, using the Borland Delphi Visual Component Library programming environment and TeeChart was first released as a shareware version and made available via Compuserve in the same year. It was written in the first version of Delphi VCL, as a 16-bit Charting Library named TeeChart version 1. The next version of TeeChart was released as a 32-bit library (Delphi 2 supported 32-bit compilation) but was badged as TeeChart VCL v3 to coincide with Borland's naming convention for inclusion on the toolbox palette of Borland Delphi v3 in 1997 and with C++ Builder v3 in 1998. It has been on the Delphi/C++ Builder toolbox palette ever since. The current version is Embarcadero RAD Studio 13 Florence. TeeChart's first ActiveX version named "version 3" too, to match the VCL version's nomenclature, was released in 1998. The version was optimised to work with Microsoft's Visual Studio v97 and v6.0 developer suites that include Visual Basic and Microsoft Visual C++ programming languages. Support for new programming environments followed with TeeChart's first native C# version for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET released in 2002 and TeeChart.Lite for .NET, a free charting component, released for Visual Studio.NET in 2003 and supporting too, Mono (programming). Steema Software released the first native TeeChart Java (programming language) version in 2006 and TeeChart's first native PHP version was released in 2009 and published as open-source in June 2010. Mobile versions of TeeChart, for Android (operating system) devices and Windows Phone 7 devices were released during the first half of 2011. In 2012 TeeChart extended functionality to iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry OS devices and a new JavaScript version was released in the same year to support HTML5 Canvas. In 2013 Steema launched TeeChart for .NET Chart for Windows Store applications and included support for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 mobile platform. TeeChart for Xamarin.Forms written with 100% C# code and cross-platform support for .NET desktops, Windows Phone, iOS and Android was released in 2014. Also since 2014 Webforms charts now offers HTML5 interactivity. Steema launched TeeChart for Avalonia (software framework) in 2022 and in 2023 .NET_MAUI support was added to the TeeChart for .NET. == Usage == TeeChart is a general purpose charting component designed for use in differing ambits, offering a wide range of aesthetics to chart data. Generally TeeCharts published in the field, in areas where large amounts of data must be interpreted regularly, remain by designer choice in their simplest form to maximize the "data-ink ratio". Sloan Digital Sky Survey, SDSS Web Services' use for charting "Scientific .. plotting of online data" at The Virtual Observatory Spectrum Services reflects that approach. The SDSS chart authors choose to represent data using TeeChart's standard 2D line display. Speed is also a factor when choosing how to most effectively plot data. Realtime data, at frequencies of up to tens or hundreds of data points or more per second, require the most processor economic approach to charting. Computer processing time dedicated to the plotting of data needs to be as lightweight as possible, freeing-up computer tasks "to achieve real-time data acquisition, display and analysis". A critical and stated aspect of many data visualisation applications is the ability to offer interactivity to the user; NASA's document, the Orbital Debris Engineering Model Model ORDEM 3.0 - User's Guide, 2014, states that "The user may manipulate the graphs to zoom, pan, and copy to the clipboard and export to various file types" and Computer and Computing Technologies in Agriculture II, Volume 1, Daoliang, Li; Chunjiang, Zhao (2009), also using TeeChart, states "the properties at any point in the chart can be viewed moving the mouse over it". Writing about control education, Juha Lindfors states "The desired charting functionality (such as zooming and scaling) is achieved..". Charting applications have become increasingly 'onlined', made available either to a wider public or to a territorially remote userbase via networked applications. The World Wide Web (the Web) has become "by far, the most popular Internet protocol" to disseminate online applications. Most major IDEs now offer environments for web application developede aimed at browser hosted applications. Charting components, TeeChart among them, have adapted to provide models that work within a browser environment, often using static images and scripted layering techniques such as Ajax (programming) to offer a level of interactivity, improve response times and hide apparent delay from the user. Options to enrich client, browser-side processing flexibility are exploited by TeeChart libraries via modules that offer 'micro-environments' within the browser, such as the long established ActiveX technology, Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight or Java Applets. Serverside environments offer too, a means to interact with browser based script to dynamically respond to charting requests. Joomla and CodeIgniter are host environments for TeeChart PHP and an example of an Embarcadero IntraWeb VCL designed application using TeeChart, is documented here. == Programmer reference == The Code Project includes a demo that uses TeeChart.Lite, called 'Self-Organizing Feature Maps (Kohonen maps)' written by Bashir Magomedovl and SourceForge includes a Database Stress and Monitor that also uses TeeChart.Lite. Books and information sources that include substantial sections about working with the Delphi version of TeeChart include "Mastering Delphi 6" by Marco Cantù, "C++ Builder 5 developer's guide", a video Delphi Tutorial on charting JPEG compression and support forums and reference pages at TeeChart Support Forums. Non-English language document sources include, in Czech "Myslíme v jazyku Delphi 7: knihovna zkušeného programátora" by Marco Cantù, and Chinese, Delphi 6, Delphi, and Delphi 5.
Hardware trojan
A hardware trojan (HT) is a malicious modification of the circuitry of an integrated circuit. A hardware trojan is completely characterized by its physical representation and its behavior. The payload of an HT is the entire activity that the Trojan executes when it is triggered. In general, trojans try to bypass or disable the security fence of a system: for example, leaking confidential information by radio emission. HTs also could disable, damage or destroy the entire chip or components of it. Hardware trojans may be introduced as hidden front-doors that are inserted while designing a computer chip, by using a pre-made application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) semiconductor intellectual property core (IP core) that have been purchased from a non-reputable source, or inserted internally by a rogue employee, either acting on their own, or on behalf of rogue special interest groups, or state sponsored spying and espionage. One paper published by IEEE in 2015 explains how a hardware design containing a trojan could leak a cryptographic key leaked over an antenna or network connection, provided that the correct "easter egg" trigger is applied to activate the data leak. In high security governmental IT departments, hardware trojans are a well known problem when buying hardware such as: a KVM switch, keyboards, mice, network cards, or other network equipment. This is especially the case when purchasing such equipment from non-reputable sources that could have placed hardware trojans to leak keyboard passwords, or provide remote unauthorized entry. == Background == In a diverse global economy, outsourcing of production tasks is a common way to lower a product's cost. Embedded hardware devices are not always produced by the firms that design and/or sell them, nor in the same country where they will be used. Outsourced manufacturing can raise doubt about the evidence for the integrity of the manufactured product (i.e., one's certainty that the end-product has no design modifications compared to its original design). Anyone with access to the manufacturing process could, in theory, introduce some change to the final product. For complex products, small changes with large effects can be difficult to detect. The threat of a serious, malicious, design alteration can be especially relevant to government agencies. Resolving doubt about hardware integrity is one way to reduce technology vulnerabilities in the military, finance, energy and political sectors of an economy. Since fabrication of integrated circuits in untrustworthy factories is common, advanced detection techniques have emerged to discover when an adversary has hidden additional components in, or otherwise sabotaged, the circuit's function. == Characterization of hardware trojans == An HT can be characterized by several methods such as by its physical representation, activation phase and its action phase. Alternative methods characterize the HT by trigger, payload and stealth. === Physical characteristics === One of this physical trojan characteristics is the type. The type of a trojan can be either functional or parametric. A trojan is functional if the adversary adds or deletes any transistors or gates to the original chip design. The other kind of trojan, the parametric trojan, modifies the original circuitry, e.g. thinning of wires, weakening of flip-flops or transistors, subjecting the chip to radiation, or using focused ion-beams (FIB) to reduce the reliability of a chip. The size of a trojan is its physical extension or the number of components it is made of. Because a trojan can consist of many components, the designer can distribute the parts of a malicious logic on the chip. The additional logic can occupy the chip wherever it is needed to modify, add, or remove a function. Malicious components can be scattered, called loose distribution, or consist of only few components, called tight distribution, so the area is small where the malicious logic occupies the layout of the chip. In some cases, high-effort adversaries in may regenerate the layout so that the placement of the components of the IC is altered. In rare cases the chip dimension is altered. These changes are structural alterations. === Activation characteristics === The typical trojan is condition-based: It is triggered by sensors, internal logic states, a particular input pattern or an internal counter value. Condition-based trojans are detectable with power traces to some degree when inactive. That is due to the leakage currents generated by the trigger or counter circuit activating the trojan. Hardware trojans can be triggered in different ways. A trojan can be internally activated, which means it monitors one or more signals inside the IC. The malicious circuitry could wait for a count down logic an attacker added to the chip, so that the trojan awakes after a specific time-span. The opposite is externally activated. There can be malicious logic inside a chip, that uses an antenna or other sensors the adversary can reach from outside the chip. For example, a trojan could be inside the control system of a cruising missile. The owner of the missile does not know, that the enemy will be able to switch off the rockets by radio. A trojan which is always-on can be a reduced wire. A chip that is modified in this way produces errors or fails every time the wire is used intensely. Always-on circuits are hard to detect with power trace. In this context combinational trojans and sequential trojans are distinguished. A combinational trojan monitors internal signals until a specific condition happens. A sequential trojan is also an internally activated condition-based circuit, but it monitors the internal signals and searches for sequences not for a specific state or condition like the combinational trojans do. ==== Cryptographic key extraction ==== Extraction of secret keys by means of a hardware trojan without detecting the trojan requires that the trojan uses a random signal or some cryptographic implementation itself. To avoid storing a cryptographic key in the trojan itself and reduction, a physical unclonable function can be used. Physical unclonable functions are small in size and can have an identical layout while the cryptographic properties are different. === Action characteristics === A HT could modify the chip's function or could change the chip's parametric properties (e.g. provokes a process delay). Confidential information can also be transmitted to the adversary (transmission of key information). === Peripheral device hardware trojans === A relatively new threat vector to networks and network endpoints is a HT appearing as a physical peripheral device that is designed to interact with the network endpoint using the approved peripheral device's communication protocol. For example, a USB keyboard that hides all malicious processing cycles from the target network endpoint to which it is attached by communicating with the target network endpoint using unintended USB channels. Once sensitive data is ex-filtrated from the target network endpoint to the HT, the HT can process the data and decide what to do with the data: store the data to memory for later physical retrieval of the HT or possibly ex-filtrate the data to the internet using wireless or using the compromised network endpoint as a pivot. == Potential of threat == A common trojan is passive most of the time-span an altered device is in use. If a trojan is activated the device functionality can be changed, the device can be destroyed or disabled, the device can leak confidential information or the HT may tear down the security and safety of the device. Trojans are stealthy, to avoid detection of the trojan the precondition for activation is a very rare event. Traditional testing techniques are not sufficient. A manufacturing fault happens at a random position while malicious changes are well placed to avoid detection. == Detection == === Physical inspection === First, the molding coat is cut to reveal the circuitry. Then, the engineer repeatedly scans the surface while grinding the layers of the chip. There are several operations to scan the circuitry. Typical visual inspection methods are: scanning optical microscopy (SOM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), pico-second imaging circuit analysis (PICA), voltage contrast imaging (VCI), light induced voltage alteration (LIVA) or charge induced voltage alteration (CIVA). To compare the floor plan of the chip has to be compared with the image of the actual chip. This is still quite challenging to do. To detect Trojan hardware which include (crypto) keys which are different, an image diff can be taken to reveal the different structure on the chip. The only known hardware Trojan using unique crypto keys but having the same structure is. This property enhances the undetectability of the trojan. === Functional testing === This detection method stimulates the input ports of a chip and monitors the output
List of video games using NFC
This is a list of video games that use near field communication (NFC) technology. Currently, games have leveraged NFC in unlocking additional features through payment. This takes the form of a direct transaction over NFC or by purchasing a physical item, which signals to the platform that a certain set of features has been purchased (e.g. Skylanders). This list catalogues gaming NFC platforms by device. == Mobile == === Android === Gun Bros. Near Field Ninja NFC Cards Skylanders, with an NFC base. The Haunted House: Soul Fighters, with an NFC base. === iOS === ==== As item-triggered game enhancement ==== Skylanders, with an NFC base. ==== As payment ==== In-App Purchases Here, games that leverage Apple's In-App Purchase framework use information stored in the NFC Secure Element to process the purchase through Apple Pay. While an NFC radio is not used here, the NFC protocol is used nonetheless. == Console == === Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, Switch 2, 3DS and 2DS === ==== As item-triggered game enhancement ==== Pokémon Rumble U NFC Figure Amiibo, built into Nintendo consoles since 2014. Works with Wii U, New Nintendo 3DS/3DS XL, New Nintendo 2DS XL, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and older Nintendo 3DS/Nintendo 2DS systems via a peripheral device. Disney Infinity, with an NFC base. Works with Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 2DS and Wii U. Lego Dimensions, with an NFC base. Works with Wii U. Skylanders, with an NFC base. Works with Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 2DS and Wii U. The Nintendo Switch version of Skylanders: Imaginators uses the NFC built into the game controller, it is also has full backward compatibility with Nintendo Switch 2. Some functionalities are missing compared to the other versions. ==== As payment ==== The Wii U GamePad controller, Joy-Con R, Joy-Con 2 R, Nintendo Switch Pro Controller and Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller can read information from an NFC data source. === PlayStation === Disney Infinity, with an NFC base. Works with PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Lego Dimensions, with an NFC base. Works with PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Skylanders, with an NFC base. Works with PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. === Xbox === While NFC bases are normally interoperable between all platforms, the Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X require specific bases that are compatible only with the respective platform. Disney Infinity, with an NFC base. Lego Dimensions, with an NFC base. Skylanders, with an NFC base.
End-to-end encryption
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a method of implementing a secure communication system where only the sender and intended recipient can read the messages. No one else, including the system provider, telecom providers, Internet providers or malicious actors, can access the cryptographic keys needed to read or send messages. End-to-end encryption prevents data from being read or secretly modified, except by the sender and intended recipients. In many applications, messages are relayed from a sender to some recipients by a service provider. In an E2EE-enabled service, messages are encrypted on the sender's device such that no third party, including the service provider, has the means to decrypt them. The recipients retrieve encrypted messages and decrypt them independently on their own devices. Since third parties cannot decrypt the data being communicated or stored, services with E2EE are better at protecting user data from data breaches and espionage. Computer security experts, digital freedom organizations, and human rights activists advocate for the use of E2EE due to its security and privacy benefits, including its ability to resist mass surveillance. Popular messaging apps like WhatsApp, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and Signal use end-to-end encryption for chat messages, with some also supporting E2EE of voice and video calls. As of May 2025, WhatsApp is the most widely used E2EE messaging service, with over 3 billion users. Meanwhile, Signal with an estimated 70 million users, is regarded as the current gold standard in secure messaging by cryptographers, protestors, and journalists. Since end-to-end encrypted services cannot offer decrypted messages in response to government requests, the proliferation of E2EE has been met with controversy. Around the world, governments, law enforcement agencies, and child protection groups have expressed concerns over its impact on criminal investigations. As of 2025, some governments have successfully passed legislation targeting E2EE, such as Australia's Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Act (2018) and the Online Safety Act (2023) in the UK. Other attempts at restricting E2EE include the EARN IT Act in the US and the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation in the EU.[1] Nevertheless, some government bodies such as the UK's Information Commissioner's Office and the US's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have argued for the use of E2EE, with Jeff Greene of the CISA advising that "encryption is your friend" following the discovery of the Salt Typhoon espionage campaign in 2024. == Definitions == End-to-end encryption is a means of ensuring the security of communications in applications like secure messaging. Under E2EE, messages are encrypted on the sender's device such that they can be decoded only by the final recipient's device. In many non-E2EE messaging systems, including email and many chat platforms, messages pass through intermediaries and are stored by a third party service provider, from which they are retrieved by the recipient. Even if messages are encrypted, they are only encrypted 'in transit', and are thus accessible by the service provider. Server-side disk encryption is also distinct from E2EE because it does not prevent the service provider from viewing the information, as they have the encryption keys and can simply decrypt it. The term "end-to-end encryption" originally only meant that the communication is never decrypted during its transport from the sender to the receiver. For example, around 2003, E2EE was proposed as an additional layer of encryption for GSM or TETRA, in addition to the existing radio encryption protecting the communication between the mobile device and the network infrastructure. This has been standardized by SFPG for TETRA. Note that in TETRA, the keys are generated by a Key Management Centre (KMC) or a Key Management Facility (KMF), not by the communicating users. Later, around 2014, the meaning of "end-to-end encryption" started to evolve when WhatsApp encrypted a portion of its network, requiring that not only the communication stays encrypted during transport, but also that the provider of the communication service is not able to decrypt the communications—maliciously or when requested by law enforcement agencies. Similarly, messages must be undecryptable in transit by attackers through man-in-the-middle attacks. This new meaning is now the widely accepted one. == Motivations == The lack of end-to-end encryption can allow service providers to easily provide search and other features, or to scan for illegal and unacceptable content. However, it also means that content can be read by anyone who has access to the data stored by the service provider, by design or via a backdoor. This can be a concern in many cases where privacy is important, such as in governmental and military communications, financial transactions, and when sensitive information such as health and biometric data are sent. If this content were shared without E2EE, a malicious actor or adversarial government could obtain it through unauthorized access or subpoenas targeted at the service provider. E2EE alone does not guarantee privacy or security. For example, the data may be held unencrypted on the user's own device or accessed through their own app if their credentials are compromised. == Modern implementations == === Messaging === In May 2026, Meta ended support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on Instagram, reversing a previous commitment to expand the technology across its messaging services. The company justified the move as a measure to mitigate fraudulent activity and facilitate the detection of harmful content. The decision highlighted a conflict between digital privacy and online safety; while child protection organizations supported the change to better identify predatory behavior, privacy advocates argued that removing E2EE compromises user security. As of 2025, messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp are designed to exclusively use end-to-end encryption. Both Signal and WhatsApp use the Signal Protocol. Other messaging apps and protocols that support end-to-end encryption include Facebook Messenger, iMessage, Telegram, Matrix, and Keybase. Although Telegram supports end-to-end encryption, it has been criticized for not enabling it by default, instead supporting E2EE through opt-in "secret chats". As of 2020, Telegram did not support E2EE for group chats and no E2EE on its desktop clients. In 2022, after controversy over the use of Facebook Messenger messages in an abortion lawsuit in Nebraska, Facebook added support for end-to-end encryption in the Messenger app. Writing for Wired, technologist Albert Fox Cahn criticized Messenger's approach to end-to-end encryption, which required the user to opt into E2EE for each conversation and split the message thread into two chats which were easy for users to confuse. In December 2023, Facebook announced plans to enable end-to-end encryption by default despite pressure from British law enforcement agencies. As of 2016, many server-based communications systems did not include end-to-end encryption. These systems can only guarantee the protection of communications between clients and servers, meaning that users have to trust the third parties who are running the servers with the sensitive content. End-to-end encryption is regarded as safer because it reduces the number of parties who might be able to interfere or break the encryption. In the case of instant messaging, users may use a third-party client or plugin to implement an end-to-end encryption scheme over an otherwise non-E2EE protocol. === Audio and video conferencing === Signal and WhatsApp use end-to-end encryption for audio and video calls. Since 2020, Signal has also supported end-to-encrypted video calls. In 2024, Discord added end-to-end encryption for audio and video calls, voice channels, and certain live streams. However, they had no plans to implement E2EE for messages. In 2020, after acquiring Keybase, Zoom announced end-to-end encryption would be limited to paid accounts. Following criticism from human rights advocates, Zoom extended the feature to all users with accounts. In 2021, Zoom settled an $85M class action lawsuit over past misrepresentation about end-to-end encryption. The FTC confirmed Zoom previously retained access to meeting keys. === Other uses === Some encrypted backup and file sharing services provide client-side encryption. Nextcloud and MEGA, offer end-to-end encryption of shared files. The term "end-to-end encryption" is sometimes incorrectly used to describe client-side encryption. Some non-E2EE systems, such as Lavabit and Hushmail, have described themselves as offering "end-to-end" encryption when they did not. == Law enforcement and regulation == In 2022, Facebook Messenger came under scrutiny because the messages between a mother and daughter in Nebraska were used to seek criminal charges in an abortion-rel
Vatican News App
The Vatican News App is an official mobile application software issued by the Vatican's Dicastery for Communication. Formerly titled The Pope App, the app was launched on January 23, 2013, under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, a now-defunct dicastery that was merged into the Secretariat (now Dicastery) for Communication in March 2016. Initially, The Pope App was available only on iOS devices, but became available for Android phones at the end of February 2013. The app is available for download on iOS and Android in five languages: English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. It was originally promoted as an application with focus on the figure of the Pope which made it possible to follow the Pope's events while they are taking place. Alerts notified the followers by informing and offering access to "official papal-related content in a variety of formats". The app also enabled its users to see areas of the Vatican through webcams allocated throughout St. Peter's Square in Rome that broadcast images. In early 2018, The Pope App was relaunched as the Vatican News App, accompanied by a redesign that eliminated many of the previous version's features, reducing the app to a more conventional news service, with increased emphasis on news from the Vatican and the worldwide Catholic Church and less focus on the day-to-day activities of the Pope.
Open Sound Control
Open Sound Control (OSC) is a protocol for networking sound synthesizers, computers, and other multimedia devices for purposes such as musical performance or show control. OSC's advantages include interoperability, accuracy, flexibility and enhanced organization and documentation. Its disadvantages include higher bandwidth requirements, increased load on embedded processors, and lack of standardized messages/interoperability. The first specification was released in March 2002. == Motivation == OSC is a content format developed at CNMAT by Adrian Freed and Matt Wright comparable to XML, WDDX, or JSON. It was originally intended for sharing music performance data (gestures, parameters and note sequences) between musical instruments (especially electronic musical instruments such as synthesizers), computers, and other multimedia devices. OSC is sometimes used as an alternative to the 1983 MIDI standard, when higher resolution and a richer parameter space is desired. OSC messages are transported across the internet and within local subnets using UDP/IP and Ethernet. OSC messages between gestural controllers are usually transmitted over serial endpoints of USB wrapped in the SLIP protocol. == Features == OSC's main features, compared to MIDI, include: Open-ended, dynamic, URI-style symbolic naming scheme Symbolic and high-resolution numeric data Pattern matching language to specify multiple recipients of a single message High resolution time tags "Bundles" of messages whose effects must occur simultaneously == Applications == There are dozens of OSC applications, including real-time sound and media processing environments, web interactivity tools, software synthesizers, programming languages and hardware devices. OSC has achieved wide use in fields including musical expression, robotics, video performance interfaces, distributed music systems and inter-process communication. The TUIO community standard for tangible interfaces such as multitouch is built on top of OSC. Similarly the GDIF system for representing gestures integrates OSC. OSC is used extensively in experimental musical controllers, and has been built into several open source and commercial products. The Open Sound World (OSW) music programming language is designed around OSC messaging. OSC is the heart of the DSSI plugin API, an evolution of the LADSPA API, in order to make the eventual GUI interact with the core of the plugin via messaging the plugin host. LADSPA and DSSI are APIs dedicated to audio effects and synthesizers. In 2007, a standardized namespace within OSC called SYN, for communication between controllers, synthesizers and hosts, was proposed. == Design == OSC messages consist of an address pattern (such as /oscillator/4/frequency), a type tag string (such as ,fi for a float32 argument followed by an int32 argument), and the arguments themselves (which may include a time tag). Address patterns form a hierarchical name space, reminiscent of a Unix filesystem path, or a URL, and refer to "Methods" inside the server, which are invoked with the attached arguments. Type tag strings are a compact string representation of the argument types. Arguments are represented in binary form with four-byte alignment. The core types supported are 32-bit two's complement signed integers 32-bit IEEE floating point numbers Null-terminated arrays of eight-bit encoded data (C-style strings) arbitrary sized blob (e.g. audio data, or a video frame) An example message is included in the spec (with null padding bytes represented by ␀): /oscillator/4/frequency␀,f␀␀, Followed by the 4-byte float32 representation of 440.0: 0x43dc0000. Messages may be combined into bundles, which themselves may be combined into bundles, etc. Each bundle contains a timestamp, which determines whether the server should respond immediately or at some point in the future. Applications commonly employ extensions to this core set. More recently some of these extensions such as a compact Boolean type were integrated into the required core types of OSC 1.1. The advantages of OSC over MIDI are primarily internet connectivity; data type resolution; and the comparative ease of specifying a symbolic path, as opposed to specifying all connections as seven-bit numbers with seven-bit or fourteen-bit data types. This human-readability has the disadvantage of being inefficient to transmit and more difficult to parse by embedded firmware, however. The spec does not define any particular OSC Methods or OSC Containers. All messages are implementation-defined and vary from server to server.