Hostile Waters, released as Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising in America, is a hybrid vehicle and strategy game developed and published by Rage Software for Microsoft Windows. It was inspired by Carrier Command (Realtime Games, 1988). It has won several awards and one unofficial award from Rock Paper Shotgun as a "lost classic" or "The best game you've never played". == Plot == Hostile Waters takes place in a Utopian future where war has been abolished. In the year 2012, a revolutionary war takes place between the corrupt and power-hungry politicians, leaders and businessmen (described as the "Old Guard") and the people. The Old Guard were defeated, with only a few of their leaders escaping. By 2032, the world has been rebuilt as a utopia, with the help of nano-technological assemblers, which are used in "creation engines" to create matter from energy and waste, for free. The newly united world is governed from a capital city known as Central. Missile attacks are suddenly launched against major cities all over the world from an unknown location. This is eventually discovered to be an island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. A response to the missile attacks was a special forces team sent in to investigate the area for preliminary investigations. The Ministry of Intelligence (MinIntel) loses contact with it shortly thereafter. The world government authorises a reactivation of the Antaeus program, a series of warships able to create any weapon of their choosing using their on-board nano-technological creation engine. Two of these were left on the seabed in the case of an emergency, capable of being re-activated and refloating itself. On board are a series of "soulcatcher" chips, a classified 1990s military program researched into for the storage of human brain functions on a silicon chip. The soulcatcher technology was used to store the minds of every crew member ever assigned to an Antaeus vessel. It is soon discovered that one of the cruisers does not respond to the awakening signal. The other cruiser, however, is refloated and re-activated, with heavy damage to vital ship components. A course is plotted for a nearby disused wet-dock. As the Antaeus progresses from the wet-dock, unusual biological life-forms are discovered amongst the enemy bases on the islands. The identity of the aggressor firing the missiles is confirmed as the leftovers of the old, pre-Central forces, known as the Cabal. Outnumbering Central's army a thousand to one, they are fighting with thousands of troops and weapons that they hid away when it was apparent that the war was lost. The Antaeus is deployed into the chicane to stop the Cabal's operations there. It's later discovered that along with their superior numbers, they have also biologically engineered a species of organic machines, designed in the popular likeness of extraterrestrials, which they intend to use to create the fear of an alien invasion, to facilitate their taking over the world and the removal of the public use of creation engines. The Cabal later lose control of the species, which eventually turns on its masters, destroying them. The species starts spreading, modifying the planetary climate and geographical features in an attempt to exterminate humanity and make the planet more hospitable to itself. Having exterminated its creators, the species resolves to cleanse humanity as a whole from the planet using a massive 'disassembler cannon', only to be stopped by the Antaeus. The species subsequently attempts to flee into the cosmos and colonise the surrounding planets and stars, by launching a massive number of 'culture stones' (information devices that also double as creation engines) into space from an enormous, artificially-grown organic "island", the final staging point. Central's only option is to bind the Antaeus' creation engine and the disassembler cannon stolen from the aliens together to create a makeshift bomb, and detonate it at the central "column" containing the culture stones. The plan succeeds, and the Antaeus is sacrificed to save the world. The final cinematic show the organic disassembler cannon and the Antaeus' creation engine moving closer together and fusing, creating something new. A post-credits scene also shows that two of the species' culture stones have managed to get into space. == Gameplay == Each Mission takes place on and or near a fortified enemy island containing various forms of anti-air and ground defence, with scattered unit-production complexes powered by oil-derricks and fuel containers (which are dependent on the oil-derricks) that the player can destroy to keep the enemy from replacing destroyed forces. Vehicles are built on the Antaeus and, if desired, land vehicles can be delivered to a location by the air-lifting "magpie". Units are created by providing Antaeus with a number of resources which are obtained at the beginning of the level and debris which are taken from destroyed enemy units and structures. Transport helicopters such as the "Pegasus" can fly to an object and airlift it to the ship-board recycling system with little resources required. The carrier can analyse objects it disassembles at the rear of the Antaeus cruiser, and several of the game's vehicles and items are unlocked by "sampling" them in this fashion. The game has a number of vehicles that are progressively unlocked as the missions progress. Vehicles contain a number of slots for equipment and a selection of different types of weapons to use in the vehicle. A variety of vehicle equipment combinations can be designed. Vehicles have an individual damage multiplier such that different vehicles with the same weapon will do different damage. In addition to this, each soul-chip personality specializes in one unit along with specific equipment, which, if equipped will gain them a bonus in efficiency. == Development == The game was developed by 12 people. == Reception == The game received "favourable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Carla Harker of NextGen said, "You'll feel like a real battlefield general when you take to the field in Antaeus Rising." Jake The Snake of GamePro said, "If the usual game categories leave you unscathed, get bloodied in these Hostile Waters."
Shape table
Shape tables are a feature of the Apple II ROMs which allows for manipulation of small images encoded as a series of vectors. An image (or shape) can be drawn in the high-resolution graphics mode—with scaling and rotation—via software routines in the ROM. Shape tables are supported via Applesoft BASIC and from machine code in the "Programmer's Aid" package that was bundled with the original Integer BASIC ROMs for that computer. Applesoft's high-resolution graphics routines were not optimized for speed, so shape tables were not typically used for performance-critical software such as games, which were typically written in assembly language and used pre-shifted bitmap shapes. Shape tables were used primarily for static shapes and sometimes for fancy text; Beagle Bros offered a number of fonts in Font Mechanic as Applesoft shape tables. == Technical details == The vectors of a two-dimensional graphic, each encoding a direction from the previous pixel along with a flag indicating whether the new pixel should be illuminated or not, were encoded up to three in a byte. These were stored in a table via the Monitor or the POKE command. From there, the graphic could be referenced by number (a table could contain up to 255 shapes), and built-in Applesoft routines permitted scaling, rotating, and drawing or erasing the shape. An XOR mode was also available to allow the shape to be visible on any color background; this had the advantage, also, of allowing the shape to be easily erased by redrawing it. Apple did not provide any utilities for creating shape tables; they had to be created by hand, usually by plotting on graph paper, then calculating the hexadecimal values and entering them into the computer. Beagle Bros created a shape table editing program, which eliminated the "number crunching", called Apple Mechanic, and a related program, Font Mechanic.
Iubenda
iubenda (stylized in lowercase; Italian pronunciation: [juˈbɛnda]) is an Italian software company that develops tools intended to support website and application compliance with data protection and privacy regulations, including consent management platforms. The company was founded in 2011 in Milan by Andrea Giannangelo. In February 2022, the company was acquired by team.blue. == History == iubenda was founded in 2011 in Milan, Italy, initially focusing on automated privacy policy generation. In 2015, the company expanded its services to include cookie compliance tools following the implementation of ePrivacy regulations in Italy. In 2018, following the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, iubenda expanded its products to include consent management and compliance documentation services. In February 2022, iubenda was acquired by team.blue, which obtained a majority stake in the company. Italian media described the acquisition as one of the largest Italian technology startup exits in recent years. In October 2022, iubenda acquired consentmanager, a Sweden-based consent management provider. In 2025, the company acquired CookieFirst, a Netherlands-based consent management platform. In 2025, iubenda partnered with AccessiWay, a digital accessibility company owned by team.blue. == Activities == iubenda develops software tools intended to support compliance with data protection and privacy regulations. Its products include generators for privacy policies, cookie banners, terms and conditions documents, and consent management platforms. The company’s consent management platform integrates with frameworks used for online advertising and privacy compliance, including Google's Consent Mode. The platform is designed to support compliance with regulatory frameworks including the GDPR in the European Union, the UK GDPR, Brazil’s LGPD, Switzerland’s FADP and privacy laws in the United States. Its tools can be integrated with content management systems, web applications, and other digital platforms, including WordPress. The company operates internationally, with a customer base of more than 150,000 organisations, primarily in Europe and the Americas.
Identi.ca
identi.ca is a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several other pump.io-based hosts provided by E14N which continue to accept new registrations. == Features == Identi.ca is similar to social networking sites like Facebook and Google+, allowing unlimited length status updates, rich text, and images. The Activity Streams protocol supports many kinds of activities such as games. OpenFarmGame is a prototype application for an Activity Streams-based game. Previous features from its StatusNet version such as hashtags, groups, and global search are not supported. == History == === StatusNet === The service received more than 8,000 registrations and 19,000 updates within the first 24 hours of publicly launching on July 2, 2008, and reached its 1,000,000th notice on November 4, 2008. In January 2009, identi.ca received investment funds from venture capital group Montreal Start Up. On March 30, 2009, Control Yourself (since renamed StatusNet Inc) announced that Identi.ca was to become part of a hosted microblogging service called status.net to be launched in May 2009. Status.net offers individual microblogs under a subdomain to be chosen by the customer. Identi.ca will remain a free service. All notices will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license by default, but paying customers will be free to choose a different license. Formerly based on StatusNet, a micro-blogging software package built on the OStatus specification (and earlier based on the OpenMicroBlogging specification), Identi.ca allowed users to send text updates (known as "notices") up to 140 characters long. While similar to Twitter in both concept and operation, Identi.ca/StatusNet provided many features not currently implemented by Twitter, including XMPP support and personal tag clouds. In addition, Identi.ca/StatusNet allowed free export and exchange of personal and "friend" data based on the FOAF standard; therefore, notices could be fed into a Twitter account or other service, and also ported in to a private system similar to Yammer. === pump.io === Developer Evan Prodromou chose to change the site to the pump.io software platform in development, because pump.io offers more features making it technically more advanced. Registration on Identi.ca was closed in December 2012 in preparation for the switch to pump.io software (the popularity of Identi.ca and "official" Status.net hosting were considered a hindrance to the creation of a federated social network). The conversion was completed on 12 July 2013. The 140 character per post limit was removed (in StatusNet, it was a setting, not an inherent limitation); now the blog posts can contain formatting and images. Groups, hashtags, and a page listing popular posts are not yet implemented in pump.io.
EnQuire
Enquire is a web-based software application used as a platform for project, contract and grant management, as well as reporting and planning. Initially designed for the specific business requirements of the Australian Government, Queensland Government and Queensland Regional Bodies to manage natural resource projects, Enquire has since seen adoption outside of this industry and user segment. The use of Enquire by Natural Resource Management bodies within Queensland has been cited as a reason for the improved efficiency, quantity and quality of reporting. Technically, Enquire is implemented as a Java application built on a MySQL database. Enquire is hosted and supported under the software as a service model by Tactiv Pty Ltd. == History == The system was first released in 2005 under the name ViSTA NRM Online, proactively changing its name to Enquire in 2007 to avoid possible confusion with Windows Vista, which was being released at the time. In 2012, the Enquire project and support team was commercialized as its own company called Tactiv Pty Ltd. Tactiv is based predominantly in Brisbane, Australia. Tactiv has continued to develop and grow the Enquire Grant, Contract and Project management solution, releasing a new platform in 2017. Since commercialization, Tactiv has grown its client base to include government and non-government organizations such as foundations and not-for-profit organizations. == Functionality == The functionality of Enquire can be broken down into 5 key lifecycle solutions, all fully integrated and supported by over 40 feature rich and configurable modules: Grant Management Contract Management Project Portfolio Management Procurement Management Relationship Management The system provides its platform to meet the needs of "off the shelf" customers looking for a ready to use best practice option as well as a fully configurable option for specific requirements. The system offers a client supplier portal for external applicants or suppliers, a management portal for internal team usage and an administration portal for clients to manage access, roles, information, and other configurations. Key functional modules include: Online authoring and publishing for forms and applications Workflows Project Tracking Performance Reporting Financial Reporting Stakeholder Communication Budget management Document Management Milestone tracking Payments and Variations Management KPI tracking and Impact reporting The Enquire system is used to report against the Queensland Government's Q2 Coast and Country Program and parts of the Australian Government's Caring for our Country program. There is also a strategic planning module, which provides functionality to manage core-business administration and reporting requirements, whilst providing visibility of key activities and their alignment against organizational goals and strategic objectives. The systems architecture supports a range of implementation models with the capacity to manage one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many relationships between investors and investees. Under the usage model within Queensland, Regional Bodies use Enquire to load project contracts and report against these online. The regional bodies also record output, target and financial information in Enquire, which can then be used for operational purposes including financial, performance and target reporting. == External Audit == The Australian National Audit Office Audit Report No.21 2007–08 undertook a case study on Enquire. It noted: "The Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management has developed the first integrated web-based system [Enquire] to manage performance information about Natural Resource Management activities in Queensland." Four of Queensland's 14 regional bodies commented on Enquire through the ANAO's survey. These four regional bodies indicated that Enquire offers a means of consistent reporting at the State level.
Imix video cube
The Imix (also known as ImMix) Video Cube is one of the first computer non-linear editing systems that was a full broadcast quality online video finishing machine. After its release in 1994, Imix released a more advanced version, the Imix Turbo Cube, which boasted 4 channels of real time layered visual effects. It was a hardware computer system controlled by an Apple Macintosh computer.
Kounta (software company)
Kounta is an Australian software company founded in 2012. The company's flagship product, Kounta, comprises a cloud based point of sale mobile app. == History == Kounta was founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Nick Cloete. The company is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. In 2012, the company launched its flagship product, Kounta, a hospitality-focused point of sale (POS) mobile app for iPad, Android, Mac, and Windows. The app was initially a web-based application, and later developed into an online cash register and inventory management system that allows businesses to take payments from customers via mobile devices. The app has been made available for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices; as well as iOS, Windows, and other peripherals. In 2012, Kounta partnered with Epson, providing a cloud-based POS platform for Epson printers. In 2013, the company formed a partnership with PayPal, integrating cashless and cardless transaction options via PayPal's mobile app. In 2014, MYOB (company) made an undisclosed investment towards Kounta. This partnership led to the development of MYOB Kounta, a co-branded application merging Kounta's POS with MYOB's application software. MYOB Kounta launched in October of the same year. In 2016, Kounta announced a partnership with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to include the Kounta app onto "Albert", the bank's EFTPOS tablet, which allowed the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to become the first bank to manage all customers operations from a single device and mobile application. == Technology == The Kounta POS is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) that runs as an application in web browsers as well as natively on iOS and Android operating systems. Kounta also incorporates an Open API, making it possible for other software providers to integrate complementary apps, further extending the software's use. Traditional IT tasks, such as data backup and encryption, hardware maintenance, and server upgrades are handled by Kounta's data center. Kounta is made accessible via paid monthly subscription licenses. == Acquisition by Lightspeed == In October 2019, Kounta was acquired by Lightspeed, an advanced commerce platform for retail, hospitality, and golf businesses based in Montreal, Canada. Lightspeed acquired Kounta for $35.3 million USD.