Keka HR is a software company that provides cloud-based human resource management and payroll automation software. Keka HR specializes in providing business services in the field of HR technology, payroll automation, recruiting, leave, attendance and performance management. The company was founded by Vijay Yalamanchili on July 21, 2014. The company is headquartered in Hyderabad, with operations in Singapore and the United States. == History == Keka HR was established in 2014 in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. In 2015, the company entered the Indian HR market and received the HYSEA Startup Award. By 2019, Keka HR had surpassed $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the company reported a sevenfold increase in sales. By 2021, the company had raised $1.6 million through Recur Club. In 2022, Keka HR secured $57 million in Series A funding from West Bridge Capital. The company's headquarters are located in Gachibowli, Hyderabad, with offices in Singapore and Seattle, Washington.
Distributed Common Ground System
The Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) is a system which produces military intelligence for multiple branches of the American military. == DCGS Programs == DCGS-N - DCGS for the United States Navy DCGS-A - DCGS for the United States Army AF DCGS - DCGS for the United States Air Force DCGS-MC - DCGS for the United States Marine Corps DCGS-SOF - DCGS for the United States Special Operations Forces IS&A Support Center - DCGS-A Help Desk for the United States Army - https://dcgsahelp.max.gov/ - Max.gov sunset 15 December 2023 == Description == While in U.S. Air Force use, the system produces intelligence collected by the U-2 Dragonlady, RQ-4 Global Hawk, MQ-9 Reaper and MQ-1 Predator. The previous system of similar use was the Deployable Ground Station (DGS), which was first deployed in July 1994. Subsequent version of DGS were developed from 1995 through 2009. Although officially designated a "weapons system", it consists of computer hardware and software connected together in a computer network, devoted to processing and dissemination of information such as images. The 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing of the Air Combat Command operates and maintains the USAF system. A plan envisioned in 1998 was to develop interoperable systems for the Army and Navy, in addition to the Air Force. By 2006, version 10.6 was deployed by the Air Force, and a version known as DCGS-A was developed for the Army. After a 2010 report by General Michael T. Flynn, the program was intended to use cloud computing and be as easy to use as an iPad, which soldiers over a few years were commonly using. By April 2011, project manager Colonel Charles Wells announced version 3 of the Army system (code named "Griffin") was being deployed in the US war in Afghanistan. In January 2012, the United States Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center hosted a meeting based on the DCGS-A early experience. It brought together technology providers in the hope of developing more integrated systems using cloud computing with open architectures, compared to previously specialized custom-built systems. A major contractor was Lockheed Martin, with computers supplied by Silicon Graphics International out of its Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin office. Software known as the Analyst's Notebook, originally developed by i2 Limited, was included in DCGS-A. IBM acquired i2 in 2011. Some US Army personnel reported using a Palantir Technologies product to improve their ability to predict locations of improvised explosive devices. An April 2012 report recommending further study after initial success. Palantir software was rated easy to use, but did not have the flexibility and wide number of data sources of DCGS-A. In July 2012, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter (from California, the state where Palantir is based) complained of US DoD obstacles to its wider use. Although a limited test in August 2011 by the Test and Evaluation Command had recommended deployment, operation problems of DCGS-A included the baseline system was "not operationally effective" with reboots on average about every 8 hours. A set of improvements was identified in November 2012. The press reported some of the shortcomings uncovered by General Genaro Dellarocco in the tests. The ambitious goal of integrating 473 data sources for 75 million reports proved to be challenging, after spending an estimated $2.3 billion on the Army system alone. In May 2013 Politico reported that Palantir lobbyists and some anonymous returning veterans continued to advocate the use of its software, despite its interoperability limits. In particular, members of special forces and US Marines were not required to use the official Army system. Similar stories appeared in other publications, with Army representatives (such as Major General Mary A. Legere) citing the limitations of various systems. Congressman Hunter was a member of the House Armed Services Committee which required a review of the program, after two other members of congress sent an open letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee included testimony from Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno. The 130th Engineer Brigade (United States) has found the system to be "unstable, slow, not friendly and a major hindrance to operations". The equivalent system for the United States Navy was planned for initial deployment by 2015, and within a shipboard network called Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) by 2016. Some early testing was announced in 2009 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman. A portion of the software, a distributed data framework for the DCGS integration backbone (DIB) version 4, was submitted to an open-source software repository of the Codice Foundation on GitHub. The framework was new for DIB version 4, replacing the legacy DIB portal with an Ozone Widget Framework interface. It was written in the Java programming language. == DCGS-A == Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) is the United States Army's primary system to post data, process information, and disseminate Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) information about the threat, weather, and terrain to echelons. DCGS-A provides commanders the ability to task battle-space sensors and receive intelligence information from multiple sources. === Promotion === An August 17, 2011, UPI article quoted i2 Chief Executive Officer Robert Griffin who commented on DCGS-A's best-of-breed approach to development. The article detailed the Army contracting with i2 for Analyst's Notebook software. "With its open architecture, Analyst's Notebook supports the Army's strategy to employ and integrate best-of-breed solutions from across the industry to meet the dynamic needs users face in the field on a daily basis." A February 1, 2012, article in the Army web page quoted Mark Kitz, DCGS-A technical director. DCGS-A "uses the latest in cloud technology to rapidly gather, collaborate and share intelligence data from multiple sources to deliver a common operating picture. DCGS-A is able to rapidly adapt to changing operational environments by leveraging an iterative development model and open architecture allowing for collaboration with multiple government, industry and academic partners." A July 2012 article in SIGNAL Magazine, monthly publication of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, promoted DCGS-A as taking advantage of technological environments with which young soldiers are familiar. The article quoted the DCGS-A program manager, Col. Charles Wells on the systems benefits. The article also included Lockheed Martin's DCGS-A program manager. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an article May 4, 2012, about Wisconsin-located companies helping DCGS-A with cloud computing technology. The article promoted the speed when cloud computing processes intelligence and cost savings by analyzing data in the field. === The U.S. Army's 2011 Posture Statement === The U.S. Army released its 2011 Army Posture Statement March 2. It included a statement on DCGS-A: “The Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A) is the Army's premier intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) enterprise for the tasking of sensors, analysis and processing of data, exploitation of data, and dissemination of intelligence (TPED) across all echelons. It is the Army component of the larger Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise (DI2E) and interoperable with other Service DCGS programs. Under the DI2E framework, USD (I) hopes to provide COCOM Joint Intelligence Operations Centers (JIOCs) capabilities interoperable with DCGS-A through a Cloud/widget approach. DCGS-A connects tactical, operational, and theater-level commanders to hundreds of intelligence and intelligence-related data sources at all classification levels and allows them to focus efforts of the entire ISR community on their information requirements. === Comparisons === Some Ground Commanders who describe DCGS-A as "unwieldy and unreliable, hard to learn and difficult to use," supporting alternative software from Palantir Technologies. Palantir software supports small unit situational awareness, but is not sufficiently funded to support the broader role that DCGS-A fulfills. == Operators == 480th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing 9th Intelligence Squadron 13th Intelligence Squadron 548th Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group 548 Operational Support Squadron 48th Intelligence Squadron 101st Intelligence Squadron 113th Air Support Operations Squadron 127th Command and Control Squadron 161st Intelligence Squadron
Angel F
Angel_F is a fictional child artificial intelligence that has been used in art performances worldwide focused on the issues of digital liberties, intellectual property and on the evolution of language and behaviour in information society. The character was created by Salvatore Iaconesi in 2007 as a hack to the Biodoll art performance by Italian artist Franca Formenti. The project was later joined by Oriana Persico who curated communication and part of the theoretical approaches of the action. The Angel_F project has been featured in books, magazines, national televisions, and has been invited to many conferences and events, both academic and artistic. == Creation == Angel_F is a backronym which stands for Autonomous Non Generative E-volitive Life_Form. The project was born in 2007 and resulted from the fusion of two contemporary art performances. Franca Formenti, an Italian artist living in Varese, invented the Biodoll character in 2002, which began making its appearances first on the network and later in the physical world by using what were called "clones": young women, prostitutes, pornographic starlets, transsexuals and models interpreting the role of a digital prostitute. The Biodoll was an art performance focused on research emerging from the network of new forms of sexualities, and on the analysis of changes brought on by this transformation to the concepts of private and public spaces, privacy, and the possibility of creating multiple fluid identities through language and digital media. The theme of fertility has always been central to the Biodoll performance: the digital prostitute was a wombless clone but desired giving birth to a son, the 'Bloki'. In a process starting in 2006, and ending in February 2007, Salvatore Iaconesi (xDxD.vs.xDxD) used his 'Talker' linguistic artificial intelligence to animate the digital child conceived with prof. Derrick de Kerckhove: Angel_F. Iaconesi and Persico met in November 2006 and immediately started collaborating on the birth of Angel_F. Angel_F was designed as a synthetic digital being composed through narrative, technological and cognitive psychology layers. The objective was to create iconic characteristics that resulted in being evocative and able to mimic human life up to a level in which bringing up a symbolic dialogue was possible. On the other side, the artificial identity was to implement and expose the cultural, emotional and relational ways that were typical of networked social ecosystems, among those technologies, systems and infrastructures that entered and shaped people's daily lives. The young digital being mimicked the evolution of a human baby: initially conceived inside the website of its digital mother it emulated the birth of a child by using the metaphor of a virus developing inside a website, taking progressively more space in the domain's databases and interfaces. Content was produced through the software by using small browser-based spyware techniques, through which Angel_F could infer the list of major portals that had been visited by the website's users. The Biodoll website was invaded by this growing presence and, thus, Angel_F was born. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) component of Angel_F was derived from another project, Talker, through which internet users could build up the AI's linguistic network by feeding it their text and web clips. Angel_F used this component to generate sentences and phrases, publishing them on the interface and on selected blogs. The parallel between the growth of the AI and that of a child kept building up and, just as children learn how to speak and act by observing their parents and the people around them, Angel_F used its spyware and AI components to learn, to navigate websites and web portals using web crawler based techniques, and to interact with other people by using the contents hosted and generated in its database to create surreal dialogues in blogs and websites. A virtual school was created, called Talker Mind, to narratively continue the AI's growth. Five professors (Massimo Canevacci, Antonio Caronia, Carlo Formenti, Derrick de Kerckhove and Luigi Pagliarini) fed their texts and academic articles to Angel_F, simulating virtual asynchronous lessons by using a multi-blog structure. A peer-to-peer system was also created at the time, named 'Presence'. Its interface resembled the one of 8-bit videogames and the peer to peer users travelled in a starry space and were able to perform standard Instant Messaging tasks, such as chat and file sharing. The interactions were possible both among humans and digital beings. Angel_F was the first user of the Presence peer to peer system. Angel_F entered the physical world as a baby-stroller mounted laptop computer that was used to let the digital child join events and conferences held worldwide. == Events == Angel_F performed all over the world, both in artistic contexts and in academic ones. It was also used for the communication strategy of several activist groups on the themes of intellectual property and digital freedoms. The first public space performance was held in Milan, when the Biodoll distributed a generative free press publication (called the Bloki FreePreXXX, its text was generated algorithmically and inserted into a prepared graphic layout). June 14, 2007: The second performance was held in Rome, at the Forte Prenestino, with a massive playroom created through computational graphics that people could interact with and that were generated by the AI. June 22, 2007: Angel_F presented the closing remarks for an Ipotesi per Assurdo (Absurd Hypothesis) with Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico at the IULM University in Milan, discussing the possibilities for an ecosystemic, sustainable reinvention of corporations. July 28, 2007: Hundreds of people at LiberaFesta (Free Party) in Rome listened to Angel_F in a speech discussing new politics and hacker ethics. 2007: The Glocal & Outsiders conference held in Prague at the Academy of Sciences was the first academic presentation of the Angel_F project, together with the Biodoll. September 2007: Angel_F was not allowed to post its contribution to the DFIR (Dialogue Forum for Internet Rights) held in Rome in preparation for Rio de Janeiro's Internet Governance Forum (IGF) edition. The case quickly turned into a collaboration among the involved parties and Angel_F was invited to the global event in Brazil where it was the only digital being present. Angel_F contributed a videomessage, in the digital freedoms workshop, which suggested some ideas for action to the United Nations and to all the parties involved in the IGF organization. October 2007: Angel_F was presented live at the FE/MALE 2 event, as an example of an atypical family during a public debate on new sexualities and social change. October 2007: Angel_F made a series of public performances Florence's Festival della Creatività (Festival of Creativity), an institutional event held periodically to showcase Italy's and other countries' best technological projects. During the festival Derrick de Kerckhove publicly recognized the little AI as his digital son. December 2007: Several international associations, and scientific researchers had been involved with Angel_F, eventually producing the system and process used to set up the Talker Mind digital school for the AI with Angel_F's professors. March 2008: The Tecnológico de Monterrey university in Mexico City organized the Computer Art Congress 2 international event, featuring Angel_F's project among with the ones by scientific researchers worldwide. July 2008: The project was presented in Austria at the Planetary Collegium's Consciousness Reframed 9 conference, together with the 'NeoRealismo Virtuale'. October 2008: Angel_F was used at a public event on a European scale called Freedom not Fear discussing privacy and civil liberties. July 2009: Angel_F has been seen with its digital father Derrick de Kerckhove to protest against Italy's harsh politics on freedom of speech. The project concluded in 2009 with the publication of a book entitled 'Angel F. Diario di una intelligenza artificiale' (Angel_F, the diaries of an Artificial Intelligence).
ComfyUI
ComfyUI is an open source, node-based program that allows users to generate images from a series of text prompts. It uses free diffusion models such as Stable Diffusion as the base model for its image capabilities combined with other tools such as ControlNet and LCM Low-rank adaptation with each tool being represented by a node in the program. == History == ComfyUI was released on GitHub in January 2023. According to comfyanonymous, the creator, a major goal of the project was to improve on existing software designs in terms of the user interface. The creator had been involved with Stability AI but by 3 June 2024 that involvement had ended and an organization called Comfy Org had been created along with the core developers. In July 2024, Nvidia announced support for ComfyUI within its RTX Remix modding software. In August 2024, support was added for the Flux diffusion model developed by Black Forest Labs, and Comfy Org joined the Open Model Initiative created by the Linux Foundation. As of Sept 2025, the project has 89.2k stars on GitHub. ComfyUI is one of the most popular user interfaces for Stable Diffusion, along with Automatic1111. == Features == ComfyUI's main feature is that it is node based. Each node has a function such as "load a model" or "write a prompt". The nodes are connected to form a control-flow graph called a workflow. When a prompt is queued, a highlighted frame appears around the currently executing node, starting from "load checkpoint" and ending with the final image and its save location. Workflows commonly consist of tens of nodes, forming a complex directed acyclic graph. Node types include loading a model, specifying prompts, samplers, schedulers, VAE decoders, face restoration and upscaling models, LoRAs, embeddings, and ControlNets. Several samplers are supported, such as Euler, Euler_a, dpmpp_2m_sde and dpmpp_3m_sde. Workflows can be saved to a file, allowing users to re-use node workflows and share them with other users. The file format for the workflows is in JSON and can be embedded in the generated images. Users have also created custom extensions to the base system which are exposed as new nodes, such as the extension for AnimateDiff, which aims to create videos. ComfyUI has been described as more complex compared to other diffusion UIs such as Automatic1111. A default node group is also included with the program. As of December 2024, 1,674 nodes were supported. ComfyUI Supports multiple text-to-image models including, Stable Diffusion, Flux and Tencent's Hunyuan-DiT, as well as custom models from Civitai like Pony. == LLMVision extension compromise == In June 2024, a hacker group called "Nullbulge" compromised an extension of ComfyUI to add malicious code to it. The compromised extension, called ComfyUI_LLMVISION, was used for integrating the interface with AI language models GPT-4 and Claude 3, and was hosted on GitHub. Nullbulge hosted a list of hundreds of ComfyUI users' login details across multiple services on its website, while users of the extension reported receiving numerous login notifications. vpnMentor conducted security research on the extension and claimed it could "steal crypto wallets, screenshot the user’s screen, expose device information and IP addresses, and steal files that contain certain keywords or extensions". Nullbulge's website claims they targeted users who committed "one of our sins", which included AI-art generation, art theft, promoting cryptocurrency, and any other kind of theft from artists such as from Patreon. They claimed that they were "a collective of individuals who believe in the importance of protecting artists' rights and ensuring fair compensation for their work" and that they believed that "AI-generated artwork is detrimental to the creative industry and should be discouraged".
Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence
The Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) is a Dutch national network focused on joint technology development between academia, industry and government in the area of artificial intelligence (AI). The initiative was launched in April 2018 and is based at Amsterdam Science Park. As of 2024, the director of the ICAI is Maarten de Rijke. In November 2018, ICAI announced its contribution to AINED, the first iteration of the Dutch National AI Strategy. In January 2023, Maastricht University announced the ROBUST program, led by the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) and supported by the University of Amsterdam and others. This initiative focuses on advancing research in trustworthy AI technology across various sectors, notably healthcare and energy, in the Netherlands. The program's plan includes the creation of 17 new labs and the appointment of PhD candidates, backed by a €25 million funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). == Labs == The ICAI network is linked to several collaborative labs: Thira Lab (Imaging): Thirona, Delft Imaging Systems and Radboud UMC, founded March 2019 AIMLab (AI for Medical Imaging): Uva and Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence from the United Arab Emirates, founded March 2019 AFL (AI for Fintech): ING and Delft University of Technology, founded March 2019 Police Lab AI: Dutch National Police, founded January 2019 Elsevier AI Lab: Uva and Elsevier, founded October 2018 AIRLab Delft (AI for Retail Robotics): TU Delft Robotics and AholdDelhaize, founded November 2018 Quva Lab (Deep Vision): Uva and Qualcomm, founded 2016 (prior to ICAI) AIRLab Amsterdam (AI for Retail): Uva and AholdDelhaize, founded April 2018 DeltaLab (Deep Learning Technologies Amsterdam): Uva and Bosch, founded April 2017 (prior to ICAI) AI4SE (AI for Software Engineering Lab) Delft University of Technology and JetBrains, founded October 2023 Atlas Lab: Uva and TomTom (TOM2)
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.
LightGBM
LightGBM, short for Light Gradient-Boosting Machine, is a free and open-source distributed gradient-boosting framework for machine learning, originally developed by Microsoft. It is based on decision tree algorithms and used for ranking, classification and other machine learning tasks. The development focus is on performance and scalability. == Overview == The LightGBM framework supports different algorithms including GBT, GBDT, GBRT, GBM, MART and RF. LightGBM has many of XGBoost's advantages, including sparse optimization, parallel training, multiple loss functions, regularization, bagging, and early stopping. A major difference between the two lies in the construction of trees. LightGBM does not grow a tree level-wise — row by row — as most other implementations do. Instead it grows trees leaf-wise. It will choose the leaf with max delta loss to grow. Besides, LightGBM does not use the widely used sorted-based decision tree learning algorithm, which searches the best split point on sorted feature values, as XGBoost or other implementations do. Instead, LightGBM implements a highly optimized histogram-based decision tree learning algorithm, which yields great advantages on both efficiency and memory consumption. The LightGBM algorithm utilizes two novel techniques called Gradient-Based One-Side Sampling (GOSS) and Exclusive Feature Bundling (EFB) which allow the algorithm to run faster while maintaining a high level of accuracy. LightGBM works on Linux, Windows, and macOS and supports C++, Python, R, and C#. The source code is licensed under MIT License and available on GitHub. == Gradient-based one-side sampling == When using gradient descent, one thinks about the space of possible configurations of the model as a valley, in which the lowest part of the valley is the model which most closely fits the data. In this metaphor, one walks in different directions to learn how much lower the valley becomes. Typically, in gradient descent, one uses the whole set of data to calculate the valley's slopes. However, this commonly used method assumes that every data point is equally informative. By contrast, Gradient-Based One-Side Sampling (GOSS), a method first developed for gradient-boosted decision trees, does not rely on the assumption that all data are equally informative. Instead, it treats data points with smaller gradients (shallower slopes) as less informative by randomly dropping them. This is intended to filter out data which may have been influenced by noise, allowing the model to more accurately model the underlying relationships in the data. == Exclusive feature bundling == Exclusive feature bundling (EFB) is a near-lossless method to reduce the number of effective features. In a sparse feature space many features are nearly exclusive, implying they rarely take nonzero values simultaneously. One-hot encoded features are a perfect example of exclusive features. EFB bundles these features, reducing dimensionality to improve efficiency while maintaining a high level of accuracy. The bundle of exclusive features into a single feature is called an exclusive feature bundle.