AI Coding Claude

AI Coding Claude — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Apache Kudu

    Apache Kudu

    Apache Kudu is a free and open source column-oriented data store of the Apache Hadoop ecosystem. It is compatible with most of the data processing frameworks in the Hadoop environment. It provides completeness to Hadoop's storage layer to enable fast analytics on fast data. The open source project to build Apache Kudu began as internal project at Cloudera. The first version Apache Kudu 1.0 was released 19 September 2016. == Comparison with other storage engines == Kudu was designed and optimized for OLAP workloads. Like HBase, it is a real-time store that supports key-indexed record lookup and mutation. Kudu differs from HBase since Kudu's datamodel is a more traditional relational model, while HBase is schemaless. Kudu's "on-disk representation is truly columnar and follows an entirely different storage design than HBase/Bigtable".

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  • Differentiable imaging

    Differentiable imaging

    Differentiable imaging is a method within computational imaging that incorporates differentiable programming to design imaging systems. It treats the entire imaging process - from light passing through optical components to the numerical reconstruction—as a differentiable programming problem. This approach links optical hardware with numerical reconstruction, enabling joint optimization of both parts through differentiable programming. Differentiable imaging additionally extends the scope of computational imaging beyond image reconstruction, such as by aiding in characterization of optical components. == Background == Computational imaging combines optical hardware and computational algorithms to capture and reconstruct information that conventional imaging system cannot. This is achieved from a combination of the imaging system and the software used in the image reconstruction. Since the captured information may not directly show the image of the target, these systems often rely on numerical models that describe how light encodes the target. In practice, such models may deviate from the physical systems due to uncertainties such as noise, misalignments, manufacturing imperfections, environmental variations, etc. These uncertainties can cause a mismatch between the physical system and its numerical model, which may degrade reconstruction quality and limit the effectiveness of the hardware–software co-design. Uncertainty quantification is also studied in other hybrid physical–numerical systems, such as digital twin. While numerical modeling imaging systems date back to the several decades, such as the multislice method in electron microscopy or X-Ray nanotomography, differentiable imaging emphasizes jointly modeling uncertainties and solving inverse problems with image reconstruction simultaneously. Differentiable imaging transforms the traditional encoding model y = f ( x ) {\textstyle y=f(x)} into a more comprehensive formulation y = f ( x , θ ) {\textstyle y=f(x,\theta )} , where θ {\displaystyle \theta } represents a parameter set of mismatches between physical systems and numerical models. The forward model captures the entire imaging pipeline through a series of interconnected component functions: y = f ( x , θ ) , f = f n o i s e ∘ f c ∘ f o c ∘ f x ∘ f o i ∘ f i , {\displaystyle y=f(x,\theta ),\qquad f=f_{noise}\circ f_{c}\circ f_{oc}\circ f_{x}\circ f_{oi}\circ f_{i},} where the function composition operator ∘ {\displaystyle \circ } connects each system component, and θ = { θ c , θ o c , … } {\displaystyle \theta =\{\theta _{c},\theta _{oc},\ldots \}} encompasses uncertainty system parameters. Each component corresponds to specific physical processes within the imaging system, from illumination through object interactions to sensor behavior and noises. This forward model enables the formulation of an inverse problem that simultaneously optimizes system parameters while reconstructing images: x ∗ , θ ∗ = argmin x , θ L ( f ( x , θ ) , y ) + ∑ n = 1 N β n R n ( x ) {\displaystyle x^{},\theta ^{}={\text{argmin}}_{x,\theta }{\mathcal {L}}(f(x,\theta ),y)+\sum _{n=1}^{N}\beta _{n}{\mathcal {R}}_{n}(x)} s . t . x ∈ Ω x , θ ∈ Ω θ {\displaystyle s.t.\quad x\in \Omega _{x},\theta \in \Omega _{\theta }} Here, L ( f ( x , θ ) , y ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}(f(x,\theta ),y)} represents the fidelity term that quantifies the discrepancy between the model predictions and measured data. The whole process of the y = f ( x , θ ) {\displaystyle y=f(x,\theta )} is constructed as a computer graph based on differentiable programming, and the inverse problem is solved with gradient based algorithm, while the gradient is calculated with automatic differentiation. == Applications == One application of differentiable imaging is uncertainty management, which seeks to quantify and mitigate the impact of factors induce reality-numerical mismatch. Explicitly accounting for uncertainties can improve reconstruction accuracy and system robustness. Examples include: Model-related uncertainties: unknown or unmeasurable variables—for instance, optical system quantities that differ from the design specifications Data and system uncertainties: artifacts introduced during image acquisition, such as low-quality data, noise, or hardware imperfections Manufacturing uncertainties: variability in the production of imaging hardware—such as slight deviations in lens curvature or sensor alignment—that alters the physical system's behavior

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  • Pandas (software)

    Pandas (software)

    Pandas (styled as pandas) is a software library written for the Python programming language for data manipulation and analysis. In particular, it offers data structures and operations for manipulating numerical tables and time series. It is free software released under the three-clause BSD license. The name is derived from the term "panel data", an econometrics term for data sets that include observations over multiple time periods for the same individuals, as well as a play on the phrase "Python data analysis". Wes McKinney started building what would become Pandas at AQR Capital while he was a researcher there from 2007 to 2010. The development of Pandas introduced into Python many comparable features of working with DataFrames that were established in the R programming language. The library is built upon another library, NumPy. == History == Developer Wes McKinney started working on Pandas in 2008 while at AQR Capital Management out of the need for a high performance, flexible tool to perform quantitative analysis on financial data. Before leaving AQR, he was able to convince management to allow him to open source the library in 2009. Another AQR employee, Chang She, joined the effort in 2012 as the second major contributor to the library. In 2015, Pandas signed on as a fiscally sponsored project of NumFOCUS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity in the United States. == Data model == Pandas is built around data structures called Series and DataFrames. Data for these collections can be imported from various file formats such as comma-separated values, JSON, Parquet, SQL database tables or queries, and Microsoft Excel. === Series === A Series is a one-dimensional array-like object that stores a sequence of values together with an associated set of labels, called an index. It is built on top of NumPy's array and affords many similar functionalities, but instead of using implicit integer positions, a Series allows explicit index labels of many data types. A Series can be created from Python lists, dictionaries, or NumPy arrays. If no index is provided, pandas automatically assigns a default integer index ranging from 0 to n-1, where n is the number of items in the Series. A simple example with customized labels is: To access a value or list of values from a Series, use its index or list of indices: Series can be used arithmetically, as in the statement series_3 = series_1 + series_2. This will align data points with corresponding index values in series_1 and series_2 (similar to a join in relational algebra), then add them together to produce new values in series_3. A Series has various attributes, such as name (Series name), dtype (data type of values), shape (number of rows), values, and index. They can be used in many of the same operations as NumPy arrays, with additional methods for reindexing, label-based selection, and handling missing data. === DataFrame === A DataFrame is a two-dimensional, tabular data structure with labeled rows and columns. Each column is stored internally as a Series and may hold a different data type (numeric, string, boolean, etc.). DataFrames can be created by a variety of means, including dictionaries of lists, NumPy arrays, and external files such as CSV or Excel spreadsheets: To retrieve a DataFrame column as a Series, use either 1) the index (dict-like notation) or 2) the name of column if the name is a valid Python identifier (attribute-like access). DataFrames support operations such as column assignment, row and column deletion, label-based indexing with loc, position-based indexing with iloc, reshaping, grouping, and joining. Merge operations implement a subset of relational algebra and allow one-to-one, many-to-one, and many-to-many joins. Some common attributes of a DataFrame include dtypes (data type of each column), shape (dimensions of the DataFrame returned as a tuple with form (number of rows, number of columns)), index/columns (labels of the DataFrame's rows/columns, respectively, returned as an Index object), values (data in the DataFrame returned as a 2D array), and empty (returns True if the DataFrame is empty). === Index === Index objects hold metadata for Series and Dataframe objects, such as axis labels and names, and are automatically created from input data. By default, a pandas index is a series of integers ascending from 0, similar to the indices of Python arrays. However, indices can also use any NumPy data type, including floating point, timestamps, or strings. Indices are also immutable, which allows them to be safely shared across multiple objects. pandas' syntax for mapping index values to relevant data is the same syntax Python uses to map dictionary keys to values. For example, if s is a Series, s['a'] will return the data point at index a. Unlike dictionary keys, index values are not guaranteed to be unique. If a Series uses the index value a for multiple data points, then s['a'] will instead return a new Series containing all matching values. A DataFrame's column names are stored and implemented identically to an index. As such, a DataFrame can be thought of as having two indices: one column-based and one row-based. Because column names are stored as an index, these are not required to be unique. If data is a Series, then data['a'] returns all values with the index value of a. However, if data is a DataFrame, then data['a'] returns all values in the column(s) named a. To avoid this ambiguity, Pandas supports the syntax data.loc['a'] as an alternative way to filter using the index. Pandas also supports the syntax data.iloc[n], which always takes an integer n and returns the nth value, counting from 0. This allows a user to act as though the index is an array-like sequence of integers, regardless of how it is actually defined. pandas also supports hierarchical indices with multiple values per data point through the "MultiIndex" class. MultiIndex objects allow a single DataFrame to represent multiple dimensions, similar to a pivot table in Microsoft Excel, where each level can optionally carry its own unique name. In practice, data with more than 2 dimensions is often represented using DataFrames with hierarchical indices, instead of the higher-dimension Panel and Panel4D data structures. == Functionality == pandas supports a variety of indexing and subsetting techniques, allowing data to be selected by label, index, or Boolean conditions. For example, df[df['col1'] > 5] will return all rows in the DataFrame df for which the value of the column col1 exceeds 5. The library also implements grouping operations based on the split-apply-combine approach, enabling users to aggregate, transform, or restructure data according to column values or functions applied to index labels. For example, df['col1'].groupby(df['col2']) groups the data in 'col1' by their values in 'col2', while df.groupby(lambda i: i % 2) groups all data in the whole DataFrame by whether their index is even. The library also provides extensive tools for transforming, filtering and summarizing data. Users may apply arbitrary functions to Series and DataFrames, and because the library is built on top of Numpy, most NumPy functions can be applied directly to pandas objects as well. The library also includes built-in operations for arithmetic operations, string processing, and descriptive statistics such as mean, median, and standard deviation. These built-in functions are designed to handle missing data, usually represented by the floating-point value NaN. In addition, pandas includes tools for reorganizing data into different structural formats, with methods that can reshape tabular data between "wide" and "long" formats and pivot values based on column labels. pandas also implements a flexible set of relational operations for combining datasets. For instance, merge() links row in DataFrames based on one or more shared keys or indices, supporting one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships in a manner analogous to join operations in relational databases like SQL. DataFrames can also be concatenated or stacked together along an axis through the concat() method, and overlapping data can be further spliced together using combine_first() to fill in missing values. Furthermore, the library includes specialized support for working with time-series data. Features include the ability to interpolate values and filter using a range of timestamps, such as data['1/1/2023':'2/2/2023'] , which will return all dates between January 1 and February 2. Missing values in time-series data are represented by a dedicated NaT (Not a Timestamp) object, instead of the NaN value it uses elsewhere. == Criticisms == Pandas has been criticized for its inefficiency. The entire dataset must be loaded in RAM, and the library does not optimize query plans or support parallel computing across multiple cores. Wes McKinney, the creator of Pandas, has recommended Apache Arrow as an alternative to address these performance concerns and ot

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  • List of assembly software and tools

    List of assembly software and tools

    This is a list of assembly software and tools, including software used for assembly language programming, machine code generation, disassembly, debugging, binary analysis, reverse engineering, and instruction-set simulation. == Assemblers and machine-code generators == == Disassemblers and binary-analysis tools == == Debuggers with assembly-level features == == Educational IDEs, simulators and emulators == == Portable and intermediate assembly-like languages == == Assembly language families == Assembly language is not a single programming language, but a family of low-level languages associated with particular instruction set architectures and processor families. Examples include:

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  • Color normalization

    Color normalization

    Color normalization is a topic in computer vision concerned with artificial color vision and object recognition. In general, the distribution of color values in an image depends on the illumination, which may vary depending on lighting conditions, cameras, and other factors. Color normalization allows for object recognition techniques based on color to compensate for these variations. == Main concepts == === Color constancy === Color constancy is a feature of the human internal model of perception, which provides humans with the ability to assign a relatively constant color to objects even under different illumination conditions. This is helpful for object recognition as well as identification of light sources in an environment. For example, humans see an object approximately as the same color when the sun is bright or when the sun is dim. === Applications === Color normalization has been used for object recognition on color images in the field of robotics, bioinformatics and general artificial intelligence, when it is important to remove all intensity values from the image while preserving color values. One example is in case of a scene shot by a surveillance camera over the day, where it is important to remove shadows or lighting changes on same color pixels and recognize the people that passed. Another example is automated screening tools used for the detection of diabetic retinopathy as well as molecular diagnosis of cancer states, where it is important to include color information during classification. == Known issues == The main issue about certain applications of color normalization is that the result looks unnatural or too distant from the original colors. In cases where there is a subtle variation between important aspects, this can be problematic. More specifically, the side effect can be that pixels become divergent and not reflect the actual color value of the image. A way of combating this issue is to use color normalization in combination with thresholding to correctly and consistently segment a colored image. == Transformations and algorithms == There is a vast array of different transformations and algorithms for achieving color normalization and a limited list is presented here. The performance of an algorithm is dependent on the task and one algorithm which performs better than another in one task might perform worse in another (no free lunch theorem). Additionally, the choice of the algorithm depends on the preferences of the user for the end-result, e.g. they may want a more natural-looking color image. === Grey world === The grey world normalization makes the assumption that changes in the lighting spectrum can be modelled by three constant factors applied to the red, green and blue channels of color. More specifically, a change in illuminated color can be modelled as a scaling α, β and γ in the R, G and B color channels and as such the grey world algorithm is invariant to illumination color variations. Therefore, a constancy solution can be achieved by dividing each color channel by its average value as shown in the following formula: ( α R , β G , γ B ) → ( α R α n ∑ i R , β G β n ∑ i G , γ B γ n ∑ i B ) {\displaystyle \left(\alpha R,\beta G,\gamma B\right)\rightarrow \left({\frac {\alpha R}{{\frac {\alpha }{n}}\sum _{i}R}},{\frac {\beta G}{{\frac {\beta }{n}}\sum _{i}G}},{\frac {\gamma B}{{\frac {\gamma }{n}}\sum _{i}B}}\right)} As mentioned above, grey world color normalization is invariant to illuminated color variations α, β and γ, however it has one important problem: it does not account for all variations of illumination intensity and it is not dynamic; when new objects appear in the scene it fails. To solve this problem there are several variants of the grey world algorithm. Additionally there is an iterative variation of the grey world normalization, however it was not found to perform significantly better. === Histogram equalization === Histogram equalization is a non-linear transform which maintains pixel rank and is capable of normalizing for any monotonically increasing color transform function. It is considered to be a more powerful normalization transformation than the grey world method. The results of histogram equalization tend to have an exaggerated blue channel and look unnatural, due to the fact that in most images the distribution of the pixel values is usually more similar to a Gaussian distribution, rather than uniform. === Histogram specification === Histogram specification transforms the red, green and blue histograms to match the shapes of three specific histograms, rather than simply equalizing them. It refers to a class of image transforms which aims to obtain images of which the histograms have a desired shape. As specified, firstly it is necessary to convert the image so that it has a particular histogram. Assume an image x. The following formula is the equalization transform of this image: y = f ( x ) = ∫ 0 x p x ( u ) d u {\displaystyle y=f(x)=\int \limits _{0}^{x}p_{x}(u)du} Then assume wanted image z. The equalization transform of this image is: y ′ = g ( z ) = ∫ 0 z p z ( u ) d u {\displaystyle y'=g(z)=\int \limits _{0}^{z}p_{z}(u)du} Of course p z ( u ) {\displaystyle p_{z}(u)} is the histogram of the output image. The formula to find the inverse of the above transform is: z = g − 1 ( y ′ ) {\displaystyle z=g^{-1}(y')} Therefore, since images y and y' have the same equalized histogram they are actually the same image, meaning y = y' and the transform from the given image x to the wanted image z is: z = g − 1 ( y ′ ) = g − 1 ( y ) = g − 1 ( f ( x ) ) {\displaystyle z=g^{-1}(y')=g^{-1}(y)=g^{-1}(f(x))} Histogram specification has the advantage of producing more realistic looking images, as it does not exaggerate the blue channel like histogram equalization. === Comprehensive Color Normalization === The comprehensive color normalization is shown to increase localization and object classification results in combination with color indexing. It is an iterative algorithm which works in two stages. The first stage is to use the red, green and blue color space with the intensity normalized, to normalize each pixel. The second stage is to normalize each color channel separately, so that the sum of the color components is equal to one third of the number of pixels. The iterations continue until convergence, meaning no additional changes. Formally: Normalize the color image f ( t ) = [ f i j ( t ) ] i = 1... N , j = 1... M {\displaystyle f^{(t)}=[f_{ij}^{(t)}]_{i=1...N,j=1...M}} which consists of color vectors f i j ( t ) = ( r i j ( t ) , g i j ( t ) , b i j ( t ) ) T . {\displaystyle f_{ij}^{(t)}=(r_{ij}^{(t)},g_{ij}^{(t)},b_{ij}^{(t)})^{T}.} For the first step explained above, compute: S i j := r i j ( t ) + g i j ( t ) + b i j ( t ) {\displaystyle S_{ij}:=r_{ij}^{(t)}+g_{ij}^{(t)}+b_{ij}^{(t)}} which leads to r i j ( t + 1 ) = r i j ( t ) S i j , g i j ( t + 1 ) = g i j ( t ) S i j {\displaystyle r_{ij}^{(t+1)}={\frac {r_{ij}^{(t)}}{S_{ij}}},g_{ij}^{(t+1)}={\frac {g_{ij}^{(t)}}{S_{ij}}}} and b i j ( t + 1 ) = b i j ( t ) S i j . {\displaystyle b_{ij}^{(t+1)}={\frac {b_{ij}^{(t)}}{S_{ij}}}.} For the second step explained above, compute: r ′ = 3 N M ∑ i = 1 N ∑ j = 1 M r i j ( t + 1 ) {\displaystyle r'={\frac {3}{NM}}\sum _{i=1}^{N}\sum _{j=1}^{M}r_{ij}^{(t+1)}} and normalize r i j ( t + 2 ) = r i j ( t + 1 ) r ′ . {\displaystyle r_{ij}^{(t+2)}={\frac {r_{ij}^{(t+1)}}{r'}}.} Of course the same process is done for b' and g'. Then these two steps are repeated until the changes between iteration t and t+2 are less than some set threshold. Comprehensive color normalization, just like the histogram equalization method previously mentioned, produces results that may look less natural due to the reduction in the number of color values.

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  • Viaweb

    Viaweb

    Viaweb was a web-based application that allowed users to build and host their own online stores with little technical expertise using a web browser. The company was started in July 1995 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris (using the pseudonym "John McArtyem"), and Trevor Blackwell. Graham claims Viaweb was the first application service provider. Viaweb was also unusual for being partially written in the Lisp programming language. The software was originally called Webgen, but another company was using the same name, so the company renamed it to Viaweb, "because it worked via the Web". In 1998, Yahoo! Inc. bought Viaweb for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! capital stock, valued at about $49 million, and renamed it Yahoo! Store. Viaweb's example has been influential in Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture, largely due to Graham's widely read essays and his subsequent career as a successful venture capitalist.

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  • Sunrise Calendar

    Sunrise Calendar

    Sunrise is a discontinued electronic calendar application for mobile and desktop. The service was launched in 2013 by designers Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van. In October 2015, Microsoft announced that they had merged the Sunrise Calendar team into the larger Microsoft Outlook team where they will work closely with the Microsoft Outlook Mobile service. == History == The first iteration of Sunrise launched in 2012 and was a daily email digest of appointments, events and birthdays. Sunrise was launched initially as an iPhone application on February 19, 2013. In June 2013, Sunrise raised $2.2 million (~$2.91 million in 2024) in venture funding from Resolute.vc, NextView Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, SV Angel, and other angel investment firms like Loïc Le Meur, Dave Morin, Fabrice Grinda. In May 2014, Sunrise launched on Android as well as on the web via a web application. In July 2014, Sunrise announced it had raised $6 million (~$7.81 million in 2024) Series A from Balderton Capital. Bernard Liautaud joined the board. On February 11, 2015, Sunrise Atelier, Inc. was acquired by Microsoft for US$100 million (~$129 million in 2024). On October 28, 2015, Microsoft announced that Sunrise would be discontinued, and its functionality merged into Outlook Mobile. Microsoft later stated that the app would permanently cease functioning on August 31, 2016, but the shutdown was delayed to September 13, 2016, to coincide with an update to Outlook Mobile that incorporates aspects of Sunrise into its calendar interface. == Features == Sunrise allowed users to connect with Google Calendar, iCloud calendar and with Exchange Server. The following third-party services featured integration with Sunrise: Foursquare, GitHub, TripIt, Asana, Evernote, Google Tasks, Trello, Songkick, and Wunderlist. As a web app, users could sign-in and use Sunrise in a web browser, with no downloads required. A native Sunrise app could also be downloaded for OS X 10.9 and later, iOS 8.0 and later (both iPhone and iPad) as well as Android phones and tablets. In May 2015, Sunrise launched Meet, a keyboard for Android and iOS that lets users select available time slots in their calendar to schedule one-to-ones.

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  • NumPy

    NumPy

    NumPy (pronounced NUM-py) is a library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. The predecessor of NumPy, Numeric, was originally created by Jim Hugunin with contributions from several other developers. In 2005, Travis Oliphant created NumPy by incorporating features of the competing Numarray into Numeric, with extensive modifications. NumPy is open-source software and has many contributors. NumPy is fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS. == History == === matrix-sig === The Python programming language was not originally designed for numerical computing, but attracted the attention of the scientific and engineering community early on. In 1995 the special interest group (SIG) matrix-sig was founded with the aim of defining an array computing package; among its members was Python designer and maintainer Guido van Rossum, who extended Python's syntax (in particular the indexing syntax) to make array computing easier. === Numeric === An implementation of a matrix package was completed by Jim Fulton, then expanded to support multi-dimensional arrays by Jim Hugunin and called Numeric (also variously known as the "Numerical Python extensions" or "NumPy"), with influences from the APL family of languages, Basis, MATLAB, FORTRAN, S and S+, and others. Hugunin, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in 1997 to work on JPython, leaving Paul Dubois of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to take over as maintainer. Other early contributors include David Ascher, Konrad Hinsen and Travis Oliphant. === Numarray === A new package called Numarray was written as a more flexible replacement for Numeric. Like Numeric, it too is now deprecated. Numarray had faster operations for large arrays, but was slower than Numeric on small ones, so for a time both packages were used in parallel for different use cases. The last version of Numeric (v24.2) was released on 11 November 2005, while the last version of numarray (v1.5.2) was released on 24 August 2006. There was a desire to get Numeric into the Python standard library, but Guido van Rossum decided that the code was not maintainable in its state then. === NumPy === In early 2005, NumPy developer Travis Oliphant wanted to unify the community around a single array package and ported Numarray's features to Numeric, releasing the result as NumPy 1.0 in 2006. This new project was part of SciPy. To avoid installing the large SciPy package just to get an array object, this new package was separated and called NumPy. Support for Python 3 was added in 2011 with NumPy version 1.5.0. In 2011, PyPy started development on an implementation of the NumPy API for PyPy. As of 2023, it is not yet fully compatible with NumPy. == Features == NumPy targets the CPython reference implementation of Python, which is a non-optimizing bytecode interpreter. Mathematical algorithms written for this version of Python often run much slower than compiled equivalents due to the absence of compiler optimization. NumPy addresses the slowness problem partly by providing multidimensional arrays and functions and operators that operate efficiently on arrays; using these requires rewriting some code, mostly inner loops, using NumPy. Using NumPy in Python gives functionality comparable to MATLAB since they are both interpreted, and they both allow the user to write fast programs as long as most operations work on arrays or matrices instead of scalars. In comparison, MATLAB boasts a large number of additional toolboxes, notably Simulink, whereas NumPy is intrinsically integrated with Python, a more modern and complete programming language. Moreover, complementary Python packages are available; SciPy is a library that adds more MATLAB-like functionality and Matplotlib is a plotting package that provides MATLAB-like plotting functionality. Although MATLAB can perform sparse matrix operations, NumPy alone cannot perform such operations and requires the use of the scipy.sparse library. Internally, both MATLAB and NumPy rely on BLAS and LAPACK for efficient linear algebra computations. Python bindings of the widely used computer vision library OpenCV utilize NumPy arrays to store and operate on data. Since images with multiple channels are simply represented as three-dimensional arrays, indexing, slicing or masking with other arrays are very efficient ways to access specific pixels of an image. The NumPy array as universal data structure in OpenCV for images, extracted feature points, filter kernels and many more vastly simplifies the programming workflow and debugging. Importantly, many NumPy operations release the global interpreter lock, which allows for multithreaded processing. NumPy also provides a C API, which allows Python code to interoperate with external libraries written in low-level languages. === The ndarray data structure === The core functionality of NumPy is its "ndarray", for n-dimensional array, data structure. These arrays are strided views on memory. In contrast to Python's built-in list data structure, these arrays are homogeneously typed: all elements of a single array must be of the same type. Such arrays can also be views into memory buffers allocated by C/C++, Python, and Fortran extensions to the CPython interpreter without the need to copy data around, giving a degree of compatibility with existing numerical libraries. This functionality is exploited by the SciPy package, which wraps a number of such libraries (notably BLAS and LAPACK). NumPy has built-in support for memory-mapped ndarrays. === Limitations === Inserting or appending entries to an array is not as trivially possible as it is with Python's lists. The np.pad(...) routine to extend arrays actually creates new arrays of the desired shape and padding values, copies the given array into the new one and returns it. NumPy's np.concatenate([a1,a2]) operation does not actually link the two arrays but returns a new one, filled with the entries from both given arrays in sequence. Reshaping the dimensionality of an array with np.reshape(...) is only possible as long as the number of elements in the array does not change. These circumstances originate from the fact that NumPy's arrays must be views on contiguous memory buffers. Algorithms that are not expressible as a vectorized operation will typically run slowly because they must be implemented in "pure Python", while vectorization may increase memory complexity of some operations from constant to linear, because temporary arrays must be created that are as large as the inputs. Runtime compilation of numerical code has been implemented by several groups to avoid these problems; open source solutions that interoperate with NumPy include numexpr and Numba. Cython and Pythran are static-compiling alternatives to these. Many modern large-scale scientific computing applications have requirements that exceed the capabilities of the NumPy arrays. For example, NumPy arrays are usually loaded into a computer's memory, which might have insufficient capacity for the analysis of large datasets. Further, NumPy operations are executed on a single CPU. However, many linear algebra operations can be accelerated by executing them on clusters of CPUs or of specialized hardware, such as GPUs and TPUs, which many deep learning applications rely on. As a result, several alternative array implementations have arisen in the scientific python ecosystem over the recent years, such as Dask for distributed arrays and TensorFlow or JAX for computations on GPUs. Because of its popularity, these often implement a subset of NumPy's API or mimic it, so that users can change their array implementation with minimal changes to their code required. A library named CuPy, accelerated by Nvidia's CUDA framework, has also shown potential for faster computing, being a 'drop-in replacement' of NumPy. == Examples == NumPy is conventionally imported as np. === Basic operations === === Universal functions === === Linear algebra === === Multidimensional arrays === === Incorporation with OpenCV === === Nearest-neighbor search === Functional Python and vectorized NumPy version. === F2PY === Quickly wrap native code for faster scripts.

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  • Availability zone

    Availability zone

    In cloud computing, an availability region is a group of data centres that are located in the same geographical region. Availability regions comprise multiple availability zones, which are groups of data centres that are located far enough from each other to prevent large-scale outages in the event of failure of a single zone, whilst still being close enough to each other to enable low-latency connections. Distributed systems spanning multiple availability zones allow for high availability, even in the event of catastrophic failure, such as natural disasters. Services offering distinct availability zones include Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

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  • Curve (tonality)

    Curve (tonality)

    In image editing, a curve is a remapping of image tonality, specified as a function from input level to output level, used as a way to emphasize colours or other elements in a picture. Curves can usually be applied to all channels together in an image, or to each channel individually. Applying a curve to all channels typically changes the brightness in part of the spectrum. Light parts of a picture can be easily made lighter and dark parts darker to increase contrast. Applying a curve to individual channels can be used to stress a colour. This is particularly efficient in the Lab colour space due to the separation of luminance and chromaticity, but it can also be used in RGB, CMYK or whatever other colour models the software supports.

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  • Kounta (software company)

    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.

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  • CodeSandbox

    CodeSandbox

    CodeSandbox is a cloud-based online integrated development environment (IDE) focused on web application development. It supports popular web technologies such as JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Vue.js, and Node.js. CodeSandbox allows users to create, edit, and deploy web applications directly from the browser with zero setup. CodeSandbox is widely used for front-end development, rapid prototyping, sharing code snippets, and real-time collaborative coding. It provides GitHub integration, templates for common frameworks, and a cloud-based development container for full-stack projects. == Templates == == Limitations == Slower performance for larger tasks compared to native IDEs Some features require a paid subscription Performance and storage limits for free-tier users Limited offline capabilities

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  • Vulnerability assessment (computing)

    Vulnerability assessment (computing)

    Vulnerability assessment is a process of defining, identifying and classifying the security holes in information technology systems. An attacker can exploit a vulnerability to violate the security of a system. Some known vulnerabilities are Authentication Vulnerability, Authorization Vulnerability and Input Validation Vulnerability. == Purpose == Before deploying a system, it first must go through from a series of vulnerability assessments that will ensure that the build system is secure from all the known security risks. When a new vulnerability is discovered, the system administrator can again perform an assessment, discover which modules are vulnerable, and start the patch process. After the fixes are in place, another assessment can be run to verify that the vulnerabilities were actually resolved. This cycle of assess, patch, and re-assess has become the standard method for many organizations to manage their security issues. The primary purpose of the assessment is to find the vulnerabilities in the system, but the assessment report conveys to stakeholders that the system is secured from these vulnerabilities. If an intruder gained access to a network consisting of vulnerable Web servers, it is safe to assume that he gained access to those systems as well. Because of assessment report, the security administrator will be able to determine how intrusion occurred, identify compromised assets and take appropriate security measures to prevent critical damage to the system. == Assessment types == Depending on the system a vulnerability assessment can have many types and level. === Host assessment === A host assessment looks for system-level vulnerabilities such as insecure file permissions, application level bugs, backdoor and Trojan horse installations. It requires specialized tools for the operating system and software packages being used, in addition to administrative access to each system that should be tested. Host assessment is often very costly in term of time, and thus is only used in the assessment of critical systems. Tools like COPS and Tiger are popular in host assessment. === Network assessment === In a network assessment one assess the network for known vulnerabilities. It locates all systems on a network, determines what network services are in use, and then analyzes those services for potential vulnerabilities. This process does not require any configuration changes on the systems being assessed. Unlike host assessment, network assessment requires little computational cost and effort. == Vulnerability assessment vs penetration testing == Vulnerability assessment and penetration testing are two different testing methods. They are differentiated on the basis of certain specific parameters. == Regulatory requirements == Vulnerability assessments are mandated or strongly recommended by several regulatory frameworks. In the United States healthcare sector, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule requires covered entities to conduct periodic evaluations of their security posture, and a December 2024 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would explicitly require vulnerability scanning at least every six months for systems containing electronic protected health information. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requires quarterly vulnerability scans for organizations that process credit card transactions, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework includes vulnerability assessment as a core component of its Identify function.

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  • Podium (company)

    Podium (company)

    Podium is a private technology company headquartered in Lehi, Utah that develops cloud-based software related to messaging, customer feedback, online reviews, selling products, and requesting payments. == History == Podium was founded in 2014 by Eric Rea and Dennis Steele, who developed a tool to help small businesses "build their online reputation" through online reviews. Podium was initially known as RepDrive before rebranding as Podium in 2015. In 2015, Podium moved from a spare bedroom to a new location above a Provo bike shop. In March 2020, Podium added payments technology to its product suite. In November 2021, Podium raised $201 million in Series D funding and was valued at $3 billion. == Product == Podium is a software-as-a-service platform designed to improve business online reputation. It helps users manage business interactions in one tool. Users can communicate reviews, texts, chats, and post payment directly within the app.

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  • Diagnostically acceptable irreversible compression

    Diagnostically acceptable irreversible compression

    Diagnostically acceptable irreversible compression (DAIC) is the amount of lossy compression which can be used on a medical image to produce a result that does not prevent the reader from using the image to make a medical diagnosis. The term was first introduced at a workshop on irreversible compression convened by the European Society of Radiology (ESR) in Palma de Mallorca October 13, 2010, the results of which were reported in a subsequent position paper. == Determination == The "amount of compression" in irreversible compression used to be determined by the compression ratio, where the acceptable minimum is determined by the algorithm (typically JPEG or J2K) and the data type (body part and imaging method). Such a definition is easy to follow, and has been used by medical bodies in 2010 around the world. However, its downside is obvious: the compression ratio tells nothing about the real quality of the image, as different compressors can produce vastly different qualities under the same file size. For example, the JPEG format of 1992 can perform as well as many modern formats given newer techniques exploited in mozjpeg and ISO libjpeg, yet they would be lumped together with the legacy encoders in such a scheme. The image compression community has long used objective quality metrics like SSIM to measure the effects of compression. In the absence of good data regarding SSIM, the ESR review of 2010 concluded that it is still difficult to establish a criterion for whether a particular irreversible compression scheme applied with particular parameters to a particular individual image, or category of images, avoids the introduction of some quantifiable risk of a diagnostic error for any particular diagnostic task. A 2017 study showed that a SSIM variant called 4-G-r (4-component, gradient, structural component of SSIM) best reflects changes in images that affect the decision of radiologists out of 16 SSIM variants. A 2020 study shows that visual information fidelity (VIF), feature similarity index (FSIM), and noise quality metric (NQM) best reflect radiologist preferences out of ten metrics. It also mentions that the original version of SSIM works as poorly as a basic root-mean-square distance (RMSD) for this purpose, a result echoed by the 2017 study. The 4-G-r modification is not tested in the study.

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