For many modern programming languages, the associated tooling has the lock-file based dependency management mechanism baked in. For a great example, consider Rust’s Cargo.
Not so with Python.
The default package manager for Python is pip. The default instruction to install a package is to run pip install package. Unfortunately, this imperative approach for creating your environment is entirely divorced from the versioning of your code. You very quickly end up in a situation where you have 100’s of packages installed. You no longer know which packages you explicitly asked to install, and which packages got installed because they were a transitive dependency. You no longer know which version of the code worked in which environment, and there is no way to roll back to an earlier version of your environment. Installing any new package could break your environment. …
Avat3r takes 4 input images of a person’s face and generates an animatable 3D head avatar in a single forward pass. The resulting 3D head representation can be animated at interactive rates. The entire creation process of the 3D avatar, from taking 4 smartphone pictures to the final result, can be executed within minutes.
The Nemesis system, for those unfamiliar, is a clever in-game mechanic which tracks a player’s actions to create enemies that feel capable of remembering past encounters. In the studio’s Middle-earth games, this allowed foes to rise through the ranks and enact revenge.
The patent itself – which you can view here – was originally filed back in 2016, before it was granted in 2021. It is dubbed “Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games”. As it stands, the patent has an expiration date of 11th August, 2036.
zopieux on Dec 5, 2024 : Ultralytics was attacked (or did it on purpose, waiting for a post mortem there), 8.3.41 contains nefarious code downloading and running a crypto miner hosted as a GitHub blob.
A spokesperson confirmed there will be some layoffs in its Vancouver studio as a result of this shift in business strategy. In addition to the Tiana series, the studio is also scrapping an unannounced feature-length project that was set to go straight to Disney+.
Insiders say that Walt Disney Animation remains committed to releasing one theatrical film per year in addition to other shorts and special projects
The illustration below highlights the algorithms most frequently utilized in our everyday activities: They play a key role in everything we do from online shopping recommendations, navigation apps, social media, email spam filters and even smart home devices.
🔹 𝗦𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺 – Organize data for efficiency. ➜ Example: Sorting email threads or search results.
🔹 𝗗𝗶𝗷𝗸𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮’𝘀 𝗔𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺 – Finds the shortest path in networks. ➜ Example: Google Maps driving routes.
🔹 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 – AI models that understand context and meaning. ➜ Example: ChatGPT, Claude and other LLMs.
The verdict is in: OpenAI’s newest and most capable traditional AI model, GPT-4.5, is big, expensive, and slow, providing marginally better performance than GPT-4o at 30x the cost for input and 15x the cost for output. The new model seems to prove that longstanding rumors of diminishing returns in training unsupervised-learning LLMs were correct and that the so-called “scaling laws” cited by many for years have possibly met their natural end.
Celebrated film editor Walter Murch’s vivid, multifaceted, thought-provoking essay on film editing. Starting with the most basic editing question — Why do cuts work? — Murch takes the reader on a wonderful ride through the aesthetics and practical concerns of cutting film. Along the way, he offers unique insights on such subjects as continuity and discontinuity in editing, dreaming, and reality; criteria for a good cut; the blink of the eye as an emotional cue; digital editing; and much more. In this second edition, Murch revises his popular first edition’s lengthy meditation on digital editing in light of technological changes. Francis Ford Coppola says about this book: “Nothing is as fascinating as spending hours listening to Walter’s theories of life, cinema and the countless tidbits of wisdom that he leaves behind like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs…….”
🔸 Gaussian Splats: imagine throwing thousands of tiny ellipsoidal paint drops. They overlap, blend, and create a smooth, photorealistic look. Fast, great for visualization, but less structured for measurements.
🔸 Point Clouds: every dot is a measured hit. LiDAR or photogrammetry gives us millions of them forming a constellation of reality. Amazing for accuracy, but they don’t connect the dots out of the box.
🔸 Meshes: take those points, connect them into triangles, and you get very realistic surfaces. Strong for 3D analysis, simulation as continues watertight models.
![[gamma correction test]](http://www.madore.org/~david/misc/color/gammatest.png "sRGB gamma correction test")
