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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Secure instant messaging |
| Founded | 2012 |
| Founder | Dr. Robert Statica, Kara Coppa, Christopher Howell, Nico Sell, York Sell |
| Defunct | June 2021 |
| Fate | Acquired by Amazon Web Services |
| Headquarters | New York , United States |
| Key people |
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| Website | www |
Wickr was an American software company based in New York City that was acquired by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in mid-2021.[1][2] It was known for its instant messaging applications of the same name. The Wickr messaging service allowed an organization's users (and, optionally, external guests) to exchange end-to-end encrypted and content-expiring messages.
Wickr was founded in 2012.[3] Nico Sell served as the company's CEO until May 2015, who then became the co-chairman of Wickr and CEO of Wickr Foundation, a newly launched nonprofit whose seed funding was provided by the company.[4] Mark Fields, who previously led CME's Strategic Investment Group, became the company's CEO.[5] He remained CEO until November 2016 when he was replaced by Joel Wallenstrom, co-founder of iSec Partners, becoming the company's CEO and president.[6][7]
The Wickr Foundation was a nonprofit founded by Wickr founder Nico Sell that operated from 2015-2017.[8][9] The foundation operated a social-impact venture fund with a global mission to advance the Private Web and transform how society uses the Internet.[10]
AWS acquired the company on June 25, 2021.[11][2] AWS stopped accepting new users to Wickr Me on December 31, 2022,[12] and discontinued it on December 31, 2023.[13][14]
The Wickr name and original logo were created by the Spanish artist Joan Bofill in 2012. In 2016, Daylight Design created a new logo and visual identity for the company.[15]
| Wickr Me | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Wickr Inc. |
| Release | June 2012 |
| Operating system | Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, iOS, Android |
| Type | Instant Messaging |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | wickr |
Wickr was known for producing secure messaging software, such as "Wickr Me". Its software received media coverage due to a security issue at a rival messaging company, Snapchat.[16]
In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Wickr a score of 5 out of 7 points on their "Secure Messaging Scorecard".[17] It received points for:
The missing 2 points were due to:
In 2015, Wickr published a white paper outlining the encryption protocol that they use for end-to-end encryption.[18]
In 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced that Wickr earned four out of five stars in every applicable category for its effort to protect user privacy.[19]
In February 2017, Wickr opened one of its cryptographic protocols for public review on GitHub and published a paper, “The Wickr Messaging Protocol”, as an aid to those who wish to review the source code.[20][21][22]
After McKinsey & Company was contracted by the New York State Department of Corrections in 2014, top consultants and prison officers allegedly exchanged project documents over Wickr, keeping the procedure off public oversight and record requests.[23]
Government transparency advocates noted that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's use of Wickr destroys government records before any determination of whether they should be public can be made, under the Freedom of Information Act and state law.[24]
In March 2014, Wickr announced its Series A funding round of $9 million led by Gilman Louie of Alsop Louie Partners. The series also included investments from Juniper Networks and the Knight Foundation.[25] Its Series B funding round of $30 million, also announced in 2014, was led by Breyer Capital, including CME Group and Wargaming.[26]
On 12 October 2021, a Vice Motherboard article revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had invested $1.6 million into Wickr via the CIA's venture capital company In-Q-Tel.[27]
Gilman Louie is the former CEO of In-Q-Tel, and other investors, including Richard Clarke and Michael Wertheimer, also have close ties to the U.S. intelligence and national security communities. It is also known that Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, is one of the principal investors.[28]
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Wickr was an American software company based in New York City that was acquired by Amazon Web Services (AWS) in mid-2021. It was known for its instant messaging applications of the same name. The Wickr messaging service allowed an organization's users (and, optionally, external guests) to exchange end-to-end encrypted and content-expiring messages.
Gilman Louie (born 1960) is an American technology venture capitalist and former video game designer. He is co-founder and chief executive (CEO) of America's Frontier Fund, a non profit investment fund focused on emerging technologies. Louie served as the first chief executive of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital firm created to invest in technologies of interest to the United States intelligence community. Through his company Nexa Corporation, Louie designed and developed multiple computer games such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon flight simulator series. His company later merged with Spectrum Holobyte where he was CEO until its acquisition by Hasbro, after which he became Chief Creative Officer and General Manager of its Games.com group. He has been on a number of boards of directors, including Wizards of the Coast, Niantic, Total Entertainment Network, FASA Interactive, Wickr, Aerospike, the Chinese American International School, Markle Foundation, Digital Promise, and Maxar Technologies. He is chairman of the Federation of American Scientists and Vricon. He is a member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.
"Black Widow" is a song by Australian rapper Iggy Azalea featuring British singer Rita Ora. Released through Def Jam Recordings, the song impacted on mainstream radio stations in the US on 8 July 2014, as the fifth single from her debut studio album, The New Classic (2014). It was written by Azalea, Katy Perry, Sarah Hudson, Benny Blanco, and duo Stargate, while the latter also produced the song. Lyrically, it addressed revenge after a failed romantic relationship. An accompanying music video for the song was released on 13 August 2014. Initially a track recorded by Katy Perry for her fourth studio album, Prism (2013), it was excluded from Prism track listing, and Perry handed the demo to Azalea for her to complete. "Black Widow" has been described as "channeling the Pop" genre, containing an ominous steel drum rhythm, heavy bass and a sparse beat. The song peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, becoming Azalea's third top-five hit, following "Fancy" and "Problem". The song also became Ora's first top-three hit in the US. It has also reached number one in Bulgaria and Romania, number four in the UK, and number fifteen in Australia. Its composition has been the subject of music critics' comparisons to Perry's "Dark Horse". Other journalists praised its beat and Azalea and Ora's vocals. "Black Widow" charted due to strong digital sales during the debut week of The New Classic. Accordingly, before becoming a single it achieved peaks of number 91 in the United Kingdom and number 86 in Australia, and appeared on several component charts. Azalea has performed the song live as part of the setlist for her first headlining tour, The New Classic Tour (2014).
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered, pay-as-you-go basis. Clients often use this in combination with autoscaling (a process that allows a client to use more computing in times of high application usage, and then scale down to reduce costs when there is less traffic). These cloud computing web services provide various services related to networking, compute, storage, middleware, IoT and other processing capacity, as well as software tools via AWS server farms. This frees clients from managing, scaling, and patching hardware and operating systems. One of the foundational services is Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows users to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, with extremely high availability, which can be interacted with over the Internet via REST APIs, a CLI or the AWS console. AWS's virtual computers emulate most of the attributes of a real computer, including hardware central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) for processing; local/RAM memory; hard-disk (HDD)/SSD storage; a choice of operating systems; networking; and pre-loaded application software such as web servers, databases, and customer relationship management (CRM). AWS services are delivered to customers via a network of AWS server farms located throughout the world. Fees are based on a combination of usage (known as a "Pay-as-you-go" model), hardware, operating system, software, and networking features chosen by the subscriber requiring various degrees of availability, redundancy, security, and service options. Subscribers can pay for a single virtual AWS computer, a dedicated physical computer, or clusters of either. Amazon provides select portions of security for subscribers (e.g. physical security of the data centers) while other aspects of security are the responsibility of the subscriber (e.g. account management, vulnerability scanning, patching). AWS operates from many global geographical regions, including nine in North America. Amazon markets AWS to subscribers as a way of obtaining large-scale computing capacity more quickly and cheaply than building an actual physical server farm. All services are billed based on usage, but each service measures usage in varying ways. As of 2023 Q1, AWS has 31% market share for cloud infrastructure while the next two competitors Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have 25%, and 11% respectively, according to Synergy Research Group. AWS was the first cloud provider to build infrastructure specifically for U.S. government with respect to security and compliance requirements (2011; launched AWS GovCloud), accredited to support classified workloads (2014; launched AWS Top Secret), and achieve accreditation across all U.S. government data classifications (2017; launched AWS Secret).
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
