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Softball at the Summer Olympics

Olympic women's fast-pitch softball tournament, also called softball at the Games; debuted Atlanta 1996, played 1996-2008 and Tokyo 2020, returns at LA 2028 in Oklahoma City; US leads with 3 golds.

SoftBank AI investments

SoftBank's AI investments are the Japanese technology group's debt-financed funding of frontier AI, centered on $64.6 billion committed to OpenAI for about 13% ownership and the Stargate data-center project.

SoftBank Group

SoftBank Group Corp., known in Japanese as Sofutobanku Kabushiki-gaisha, is a Japanese investment holding company that owns Arm and SoftBank Corp. and holds major stakes in OpenAI and ByteDance.

SoftBank Mobile

SoftBank Mobile (ソフトバンクモバイル株式会社) was a Japanese mobile carrier, formed from J-PHONE and Vodafone K.K. and acquired by SoftBank in 2006, renamed SoftBank Corp. in 2015.

SoftBank Robotics

SoftBank Robotics Group Corp. is the Tokyo-headquartered robotics business of Japan's SoftBank Group, known for the humanoid robot Pepper, launched in 2014, and the Whiz cleaning robot.

Softcore pornography

Softcore pornography: erotic film, video, or photography showing nudity and simulated sexual situations without explicit depiction of genitalia or intercourse; sits between erotica and hardcore, spanning sexploitation cinema, Cinemax serials, and Japan's pink film.

SoftHand

The Pisa/IIT SoftHand is an anthropomorphic robotic hand with 19 degrees of freedom driven by a single motor, developed at the University of Pisa and the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia.

SoftKey

SoftKey, also known as SoftKey International, was a Canadian consumer software company founded by Kevin O'Leary in Toronto in 1986, a low-price consolidator of educational software.

Softmax function

The softmax function, also known as the normalized exponential, converts a vector of scores into probabilities that sum to 1; it is the standard output layer of multi-class neural classifiers.

Softphone

A softphone is a software application that places and receives telephone calls over the internet, connecting to a VoIP provider instead of a physical desk phone.

Softswitch

A softswitch, also called a call agent, call server, or media gateway controller, is software that performs telephone exchange call-control functions on general-purpose hardware, directing calls between media gateways.

Software

Software is the computer code, with its supporting data structures and documentation, that makes electronic systems work; unlike hardware, it is engineered rather than manufactured and does not wear out.

Software AG

Software AG was a German enterprise software company founded in Darmstadt in 1969, best known for ADABAS and Natural, and taken private by Silver Lake in 2023.

Software architecture

Software architecture, also called program architecture, is the set of design decisions governing a software system's overall structure and behavior, shaping qualities such as modifiability, availability, and security.

Software Arts

Software Arts was a Massachusetts software company founded by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in 1979, best known as the developer of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet.

Software as a service

Software as a service, also called on-demand software, is a model in which a provider hosts an application and customers use it over a network, typically through a web browser.

Software Bill of Materials

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a formal record of the components and supply chain relationships used in building software, like an ingredients list.

Software bloat

Software bloat is the growth of a program's size, resource use, or features beyond what its function requires, at the cost of performance and simplicity.

Software bug

A software bug, also called a software defect or fault, is a flaw in a program or its specification that causes incorrect or unpredictable behavior.

Software categories

Software categories, also called software genres, are the groupings used to classify computer software, most commonly by function into system, programming, application, and embedded software.

Software composition analysis

Software composition analysis (SCA) is a software engineering method that scans an application's dependencies to identify open-source components, their licenses, and known security vulnerabilities, producing an SBOM.

Software configuration management

Software configuration management, also known as software change management, is the discipline of identifying software configuration items, controlling changes to them, and recording their status throughout development.

Software cracking

Software cracking, which produces cracked software, is the defeat or removal of copy protection so unauthorized users gain a program's full functionality, typically through patches, keygens, or stolen product keys.

Software deployment

Software deployment, also called application deployment, is the activity of installing a new version of software for real users, using strategies like blue-green, rolling, and canary deployments.

Software design

Software design is the process of defining a software system's architecture, components, interfaces, and data structures to satisfy specified functional and quality requirements, guided by principles such as modularity.

Software design pattern

A software design pattern, also called a programming design pattern, is a named, reusable solution to a recurring design problem, cataloged by the Gang of Four in 1994.

Software development

Software development is the full set of activities carrying a software product or service from conception through development, operation, support, and retirement, whether performed inside an organization or externally.

Software development kit

A software development kit, also called a devkit or SDK, is a collection of tools, libraries, documentation, and sample code for building software for a specific platform.

Software development process

The software development process, also called the software development methodology or SDLC, is the organized set of activities used to design, create, test, deploy, and maintain software.

Software documentation

Software documentation is written, onscreen, or printed information explaining what a software product is, how to use it, and how it works, covering tutorials, how-to guides, reference, and explanation.