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Topic Review
Personally Identifiable Information
Personal information, described in United States legal fields as either personally identifiable information (PII), or sensitive personal information (SPI), as used in information security and privacy laws, is information that can be used on its own or with other information to identify, contact, or locate a single person, or to identify an individual in context. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the U.S. context, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on personal / personally, and identifiable / identifying. Not all are equivalent, and for legal purposes the effective definitions vary depending on the jurisdiction and the purposes for which the term is being used. (In other countries with privacy protection laws derived from the OECD privacy principles, the term used is more often "personal information", which may be somewhat broader: in Australia's Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) "personal information" also includes information from which the person's identity is "reasonably ascertainable", potentially covering some information not covered by PII.) Under European and other data protection regimes, which centre primarily around the General Data Protection Regulation, the term "personal data" is significantly broader, and determines the scope of the regulatory regime. NIST Special Publication 800-122 defines PII as "any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother's maiden name, or biometric records; and (2) any other information that is linked or linkable to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information." So, for example, a user's IP address is not classed as PII on its own, but is classified as linked PII. The concept of PII has become prevalent as information technology and the Internet have made it easier to collect PII leading to a profitable market in collecting and reselling PII. PII can also be exploited by criminals to stalk or steal the identity of a person, or to aid in the planning of criminal acts. As a response to these threats, many website privacy policies specifically address the gathering of PII, and lawmakers have enacted a series of legislation to limit the distribution and accessibility of PII. However, PII is a legal concept, not a technical concept, and as noted, it is not utilised in all jurisdictions. Because of the versatility and power of modern re-identification algorithms, the absence of PII data does not mean that the remaining data does not identify individuals. While some attributes may not be uniquely identifying on their own, any attribute can be potentially identifying in combination with others. These attributes have been referred to as quasi-identifiers or pseudo-identifiers. While such data may not constitute PII in the United States, it is highly likely to remain personal data under European data protection law.
  • 742
  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Social Login
Social login is a form of single sign-on using existing information from a social networking service such as Facebook, Twitter or Google, to sign into a third party website instead of creating a new login account specifically for that website. It is designed to simplify logins for end users as well as provide more and more reliable demographic information to web developers.
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  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Descartes' Rule of Signs
In mathematics, Descartes' rule of signs, first described by René Descartes in his work La Géométrie, is a technique for getting information on the number of positive real roots of a polynomial. It asserts that the number of positive roots is at most the number of sign changes in the sequence of polynomial's coefficients (omitting the zero coefficients), and that the difference between these two numbers is always even. This implies, in particular, that if the number of sign changes is zero or one, then there are exactly zero or one positive roots, respectively. By a homographic transformation of the variable, one may use Descartes' rule of signs for getting a similar information on the number of roots in any interval. This is the basic idea of Budan's theorem and Budan–Fourier theorem. By repeating the division of an interval into two intervals, one gets eventually a list of disjoints intervals containing together all real roots of the polynomial, and containing each exactly one real root. Descartes rule of signs and homographic transformations of the variable are, nowadays, the basis of the fastest algorithms for computer computation of real roots of polynomials (see Real-root isolation). Descartes himself used the transformation x → –x for using his rule for getting information of the number of negative roots.
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  • 03 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Georg Cantor's First Set Theory Article
Georg Cantor published his first set theory article in 1874, and it contains the first theorems of transfinite set theory, which studies infinite sets and their properties. One of these theorems is "Cantor's revolutionary discovery" that the set of all real numbers is uncountably, rather than countably, infinite. This theorem is proved using Cantor's first uncountability proof, which differs from the more familiar proof using his diagonal argument. The title of the article, "On a Property of the Collection of All Real Algebraic Numbers" ("Ueber eine Eigenschaft des Inbegriffes aller reellen algebraischen Zahlen"), refers to its first theorem: the set of real algebraic numbers is countable. Cantor's article also contains a proof of the existence of transcendental numbers. As early as 1930, mathematicians have disagreed on whether this proof is constructive or non-constructive. Books as recent as 2014 and 2015 indicate that this disagreement has not been resolved. Since Cantor's proof either constructs transcendental numbers or does not, an analysis of his article can determine whether his proof is constructive or non-constructive. Cantor's correspondence with Richard Dedekind shows the development of his ideas and reveals that he had a choice between two proofs, one that uses the uncountability of the real numbers and one that does not. Historians of mathematics have examined Cantor's article and the circumstances in which it was written. For example, they have discovered that Cantor was advised to leave out his uncountability theorem in the article he submitted; he added it during proofreading. They have traced this and other facts about the article to the influence of Karl Weierstrass and Leopold Kronecker. Historians have also studied Dedekind's contributions to the article, including his contributions to the theorem on the countability of the real algebraic numbers. In addition, they have looked at the article's legacy, which includes the impact that the uncountability theorem and the concept of countability have had on mathematics.
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  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Group Algebra
In functional analysis and related areas of mathematics, group algebras are constructions that generalize the concept of group ring to some classes of topological groups with the aim to reduce the theory of representations of topological groups to the theory of representations of topological algebras. There are several nonequivalent definitions of group algebra, each of which is considered convenient in a particular situation.
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  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Saturn Launch Vehicle Digital Computer
The Saturn Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC) was a computer that provided the autopilot for the Saturn V rocket from launch to Earth orbit insertion. Designed and manufactured by IBM's Electronics Systems Center in Owego, N.Y., it was one of the major components of the Instrument Unit, fitted to the S-IVB stage of the Saturn V and Saturn IB rockets. The LVDC also supported pre- and post-launch checkout of the Saturn hardware. It was used in conjunction with the Launch Vehicle Data Adaptor (LVDA) which performed signal conditioning to the sensor inputs to the computer from the launch vehicle.
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  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Delphi (IDE)
Delphi is an integrated development environment (IDE) for rapid application development of desktop, mobile, web, and console software, developed by Embarcadero Technologies. It is also an event-driven language. Delphi's compilers use their own Object Pascal dialect of Pascal and generate native code for Microsoft Windows, macOS (IA-32 only), iOS, Android and Linux (x64 only). Since 2016, there have been new releases of Delphi every six months, with new platforms being added approximately every second release. Delphi includes a code editor, a visual designer, an integrated debugger, a source code control component, and support for third-party plugins. The code editor features Code Insight (code completion), Error Insight (real-time error-checking), and refactoring. The visual forms designer has traditionally used Visual Component Library (VCL) for native Windows development, but the FireMonkey (FMX) platform was later added for cross-platform development. Database support in Delphi is very strong. A Delphi project of a million lines to compile in a few seconds – one benchmark gave 170,000 lines per second. Delphi was originally developed by Borland as a rapid application development tool for Windows as the successor of Turbo Pascal. Delphi added full object-oriented programming to the existing language, and since then the language has grown to support generics and anonymous methods, and native Component Object Model (COM) support. In 2006, Borland’s developer tools section was transferred from Borland to a wholly owned subsidiary known as CodeGear, which was sold to Embarcadero Technologies in 2008. In 2015, Embarcadero was purchased by Idera Software, but the Embarcadero mark was retained for the developer tools division. Delphi and its C++ counterpart, C++Builder, are interoperable. They share many core components, notably the IDE, VCL, and much of the runtime library. In addition, they can be used jointly in a project. For example, C++Builder 6 and later can consume Delphi source code and C++ in one project, while packages compiled with C++Builder can be used from within Delphi. In 2007, the products were released jointly as RAD Studio, a shared host for Delphi and C++Builder, which can be purchased with either or both.
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  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
KIVA
KIVA is a family of Fortran-based Computational Fluid Dynamics software developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The software predicts complex fuel and air flows as well as ignition, combustion, and pollutant-formation processes in engines. The KIVA models have been used to understand combustion chemistry processes, such as auto-ignition of fuels, and to optimize diesel engines for high efficiency and low emissions. General Motors has used KIVA in the development of direct-injection, stratified charge gasoline engines as well as the fast burn, homogeneous-charge gasoline engine. Cummins reduced development time and cost by 10%–15% using KIVA to develop its high-efficiency 2007 ISB 6.7-L diesel engine that was able to meet 2010 emission standards in 2007. At the same time, the company realized a more robust design and improved fuel economy while meeting all environmental and customer constraints.
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  • 02 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Atom (Web Standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related Web standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources. Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a website. To provide a web feed, the site owner may use specialized software (such as a content management system) that publishes a list (or "feed") of recent articles or content in a standardized, machine-readable format. The feed can then be downloaded by programs that use it, like websites that syndicate content from the feed, or by feed reader programs that allow internet users to subscribe to feeds and view their content. A feed contains entries, which may be headlines, full-text articles, excerpts, summaries or links to content on a website along with various metadata. The Atom format was developed as an alternative to RSS. Ben Trott, an advocate of the new format that became Atom, believed that RSS had limitations and flaws—such as lack of on-going innovation and its necessity to remain backward compatible—and that there were advantages to a fresh design. Proponents of the new format formed the IETF Atom Publishing Format and Protocol Workgroup. The Atom Syndication Format was published as an IETF proposed standard in RFC 4287 (December 2005), and the Atom Publishing Protocol was published as RFC 5023 (October 2007).
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Topic Review
After Dark
After Dark is a series of computer screensaver software introduced by Berkeley Systems in 1989 for the Apple Macintosh, and in 1991 for Microsoft Windows. Following the original, additional editions included More After Dark, Before Dark, and editions themed around licensed properties such as Star Trek, The Simpsons, Looney Tunes, Marvel, and Disney characters. On top of the included animated screensavers, the program allowed for the development and use of third-party modules, many hundreds of which were created at the height of its popularity.
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  • 02 Nov 2022
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