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Learning Lens Blur Fields

Lens blur field shown in step 2 is from the dual pixels of a Pixel 4a. Abstract Optical blur is an inherent property of any lens system and is challenging to model in modern cameras because of their complex optical elements. To tackle this challenge, we introduce a high‑dimensional neural representation of blur—the lens blur field—and a practical method for acquisition. The lens blur field is a multilayer perceptron (MLP) designed to (1) accurately capture variations of the lens 2‑D point sprea

Protobuffers Are Wrong (2018)

I’ve spent a good deal of my professional life arguing against using protobuffers. They’re clearly written by amateurs, unbelievably ad-hoc, mired in gotchas, tricky to compile, and solve a problem that nobody but Google really has. If these problems of protobuffers remained quarantined in serialization abstractions, my complaints would end there. But unfortunately, the bad design of protobuffers is so persuasive that these problems manage to leak their way into your code as well. Ad-Hoc and Bu

Hyperpb: Faster dynamic Protobuf parsing that's faster than generated code

Today we’re announcing public availability of hyperpb, a fully-dynamic Protobuf parser that is 10x faster than dynamicpb, the standard Go solution for dynamic Protobuf. In fact, it’s so efficient that it’s 3x faster than parsing with generated code! It also matches or beats vtprotobuf’s generated code at almost every benchmark, without skimping on correctness. Don’t believe us? We think our parsing benchmarks speak for themselves. Here, we show two benchmark variants for hyperpb: out-of-the-bo

Hyperpb: 10x faster dynamic Protobuf parsing that's faster than generated code

Today we’re announcing public availability of hyperpb, a fully-dynamic Protobuf parser that is 10x faster than dynamicpb, the standard Go solution for dynamic Protobuf. In fact, it’s so efficient that it’s 3x faster than parsing with generated code! It also matches or beats vtprotobuf’s generated code at almost every benchmark, without skimping on correctness. Don’t believe us? We think our parsing benchmarks speak for themselves. Here, we show two benchmark variants for hyperpb: out-of-the-bo

To be a better programmer, write little proofs in your head

This is a brief write-up of a trick I learned that helps me write code faster and more accurately. I say "trick", but it's really something I started to do without noticing as I moved further into my career. When you're working on something difficult, sketch a proof in your head as you go that your code will actually do what you want it to do. A simple idea, but easier said than done: doing this "online" without interrupting your flow takes a lot of practice. But once you get really good at it,

Borderlands 4 promises seamless combat, looting and leveling up | hands-on preview

Borderlands 4 is coming on September 12 on the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the Windows PC. I had a chance to play it for a few hours in a preview session, and I liked how familiar it felt. The action role-playing first-person shooter looter game is now priced at $70 instead of the previously floated $80, per Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford’s tweet this week. At a Gearbox event in Novato, California, I also interviewed the creative director of the game, Graeme Timm