Immersive video offers a 6-Dof-free viewing experience, potentially playing a key role in future video technology. Recently, 4D Gaussian Splatting has gained attention as an effective approach for immersive video due to its high rendering efficiency and quality, though maintaining quality with manageable storage remains challenging. To address this, we introduce GIFStream, a novel 4D Gaussian representation using a canonical space and a deformation field enhanced with time-dependent feature streams. These feature streams enable complex motion modeling and allow efficient compression by leveraging their motion-awareness and temporal correspondence. Additionally, we incorporate both temporal and spatial compression networks for endto-end compression.
Experimental results show that GIFStream delivers high-quality immersive video at 30 Mbps, with real-time rendering and fast decoding on an RTX 4090.
DB Browser for SQLite (DB4S) is a high quality, visual, open source tool designed for people who want to create, search, and edit SQLite or SQLCipher database files. DB4S gives a familiar spreadsheet-like interface on the database in addition to providing a full SQL query facility. It works with Windows, macOS, and most versions of Linux and Unix. Documentation for the program is on the wiki.
If you’re serious about AI Agents, this is the guide you’ve been waiting for. It’s packed with everything you need to build powerful AI agents. It follows a very hands-on approach that cuts down your time and avoids the common mistakes most developers make.
Andreas Horn on AI Agents vs Agentic AI
1. 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆, 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻 𝗟𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘀 ➜ AI agents are modular, goal-directed systems that operate within clearly defined boundaries. They’re built to: * Use tools (APIs, browsers, databases) * Execute specific, task-oriented workflows * React to prompts or real-time inputs * Plan short sequences and return actionable outputs
But even the most advanced are limited by scope. They don’t initiate. They don’t collaborate. They execute what we ask!
2. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗔𝗜: 𝗔 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 ➜ Agentic AI is an architectural leap. It’s not just one smarter agent — it’s multiple specialized agents working together toward shared goals. These systems exhibit: * Multi-agent collaboration * Goal decomposition and role assignment * Inter-agent communication via memory or messaging * Persistent context across time and tasks * Recursive planning and error recovery * Distributed orchestration and adaptive feedback
Agentic AI systems don’t just follow instructions. They coordinate. They adapt. They manage complexity.
Maya blue is a highly unusual pigment because it is a mix of organic indigo and an inorganic clay mineral called palygorskite.
Echoing the color of an azure sky, the indelible pigment was used to accentuate everything from ceramics to human sacrifices in the Late Preclassic period (300 B.C. to A.D. 300).
A team of researchers led by Dean Arnold, an adjunct curator of anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, determined that the key to Maya blue was actually a sacred incense called copal. By heating the mixture of indigo, copal and palygorskite over a fire, the Maya produced the unique pigment, he reported at the time.
If you’re serious about protecting your IP, client relationships, and professional credibility, you need to stop treating generative AI tools like consumer-grade apps. This isn’t about fear, it’s about operational discipline. Below are immediate steps you can take to reduce your exposure and stay in control of your creative pipeline.
Use ChatGPT via the API, not the public app, for any sensitive data.
Isolate ComfyUI to a sandboxed VM, Docker container, or offline machine.
Audit every custom node, don’t blindly trust GitHub links or ComfyUI workflows
Educate your team, a single mistake can leak an unreleased game asset, a feature film script, or trade secrets.
The new Vancouver virtual stage will measure 50 feet in diameter, 23 feet tall, and will have a 14 foot deep semi-circle to surround actors and physical sets with a digital environment. There’s also two movable wild walls 20 feet wide and 16.5 feet tall and mounted on a ground-hover system to allow quick repositioning, especially for capturing car driving scenes.
In color technology, color depth also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, OR the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel.
When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bits per pixel (bpp).
When referring to a color component, the concept can be defined as bits per component, bits per channel, bits per color (all three abbreviated bpc), and also bits per pixel component, bits per color channel or bits per sample (bps). Modern standards tend to use bits per component, but historical lower-depth systems used bits per pixel more often.
Color depth is only one aspect of color representation, expressing the precision with which the amount of each primary can be expressed; the other aspect is how broad a range of colors can be expressed (the gamut). The definition of both color precision and gamut is accomplished with a color encoding specification which assigns a digital code value to a location in a color space.
For years, tech firms were fighting a war for talent. Now they are waging war on talent.
This shift has led to a weakening of the social contract between employees and employers, with culture and employee values being sidelined in favor of financial discipline and free cash flow.
The operating environment has changed from a high tolerance for failure (where cheap capital and willing spenders accepted slipped dates and feature lag) to a very low – if not zero – tolerance for failure (fiscal discipline is in vogue again).
While preventing and containing mistakes staves off shocks to the income statement, it doesn’t fundamentally reduce costs. Years of payroll bloat – aggressive hiring, aggressive comp packages to attract and retain people – make labor the biggest cost in tech. …
Of course, companies can reduce their labor force through natural attrition. Other labor policy changes – return to office mandates, contraction of fringe benefits, reduction of job promotions, suspension of bonuses and comp freezes – encourage more people to exit voluntarily. It’s cheaper to let somebody self-select out than it is to lay them off. …
Employees recruited in more recent years from outside the ranks of tech were given the expectation that we’ll teach you what you need to know, we want you to join because we value what you bring to the table. That is no longer applicable. Runway for individual growth is very short in zero-tolerance-for-failure operating conditions. Job preservation, at least in the short term for this cohort, comes from completing corporate training and acquiring professional certifications. Training through community or experience is not in the cards. …
The ability to perform competently in multiple roles, the extra-curriculars, the self-directed enrichment, the ex-company leadership – all these things make no matter. The calculus is what you got paid versus how you performed on objective criteria relative to your cohort. Nothing more. …
Here is where the change in the social contract is perhaps the most blatant. In the “destination employer” years, the employee invested in the community and its values, and the employer rewarded the loyalty of its employees through things like runway for growth (stretch roles and sponsored work innovation) and tolerance for error (valuing demonstrable learning over perfection in execution). No longer. …
import math,sys
def Exposure2Intensity(exposure):
exp = float(exposure)
result = math.pow(2,exp)
print(result)
Exposure2Intensity(0)
def Intensity2Exposure(intensity):
inarg = float(intensity)
if inarg == 0:
print("Exposure of zero intensity is undefined.")
return
if inarg < 1e-323:
inarg = max(inarg, 1e-323)
print("Exposure of negative intensities is undefined. Clamping to a very small value instead (1e-323)")
result = math.log(inarg, 2)
print(result)
Intensity2Exposure(0.1)
Why Exposure?
Exposure is a stop value that multiplies the intensity by 2 to the power of the stop. Increasing exposure by 1 results in double the amount of light.
Artists think in “stops.” Doubling or halving brightness is easy math and common in grading and look-dev. Exposure counts doublings in whole stops:
+1 stop = ×2 brightness
−1 stop = ×0.5 brightness
This gives perceptually even controls across both bright and dark values.
Why Intensity?
Intensity is linear. It’s what render engines and compositors expect when:
Summing values
Averaging pixels
Multiplying or filtering pixel data
Use intensity when you need the actual math on pixel/light data.
Formulas (from your Python)
Intensity from exposure: intensity = 2**exposure
Exposure from intensity: exposure = log₂(intensity)
Guardrails:
Intensity must be > 0 to compute exposure.
If intensity = 0 → exposure is undefined.
Clamp tiny values (e.g. 1e−323) before using log₂.
Use Exposure (stops) when…
You want artist-friendly sliders (−5…+5 stops)
Adjusting look-dev or grading in even stops
Matching plates with quick ±1 stop tweaks
Tweening brightness changes smoothly across ranges
Use Intensity (linear) when…
Storing raw pixel/light values
Multiplying textures or lights by a gain
Performing sums, averages, and filters
Feeding values to render engines expecting linear data
Examples
+2 stops → 2**2 = 4.0 (×4)
+1 stop → 2**1 = 2.0 (×2)
0 stop → 2**0 = 1.0 (×1)
−1 stop → 2**(−1) = 0.5 (×0.5)
−2 stops → 2**(−2) = 0.25 (×0.25)
Intensity 0.1 → exposure = log₂(0.1) ≈ −3.32
Rule of thumb
Think in stops (exposure) for controls and matching. Compute in linear (intensity) for rendering and math.
