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symisc_devel

1,866 karma · joined October 29, 2012

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symisc_devel··on Google limits Meta's use of its Gemini AI models
I do believe this will be the norm from now on to get access to top frontier model. Computing capacity plus state restrictions plus KYC will be imposed to organisations to get access, individuals will be served last on the queue with degraded performance. Once the Chinese models catch up, nobody (at least individuals) will turn back again to frontier labs.
symisc_devel··on Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons
BMW's latest infotainment despite being intimidating for first time users is quite decent and intuitive compared to the horrors I saw from other German car makers.
symisc_devel··on Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget
We got a $12,000 bill a few hours ago on a presumably leaked gemini API which I very much doubt, and we are trying to resolve the issue with a real support agent. I think they messed something internally and customers are getting these bills.
symisc_devel··on EmDash – A spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security
It is 100% vibe coded.
symisc_devel··on GPT-5.4
5.3 codex is a quite good coding agent for complex tasks.
symisc_devel··on Kimi Released Kimi K2.5, Open-Source Visual SOTA-Agentic Model
Gemini 3 pro is way better than Opus especially for large codebases.
symisc_devel··on ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering
There is already a C library that does realtime ascii rendering using décision trees:

GitHub: https://github.com/symisc/ascii_art/blob/master/README.md Docs: https://pixlab.io/art

symisc_devel··on Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI
Congratulations for the launch. Actually we launched a similar product recently named Vision Workspace (https://vision.pixlab.io). The general chat niche is quite saturated and practically locked by the major players. I recommend that you focus on one core feature and pivot from there. For us it was the built-in OCR and document query interface inside the UI that initiated the traction and the app is quite popular now in Japan and Malaysia.
symisc_devel··on Nano Banana can be prompt engineered for nuanced AI image generation
I work on the PixLab prompt based photo editor (https://editor.pixlab.io), and it follows exactly what you type with explicit CAPS.
symisc_devel··on Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser
Imagine paying $200/mo for this privacy nightmare
symisc_devel··on Boeing 787s must be reset every 51 days or 'misleading data' is shown (2020)
This issue is notorious for BMW cars. You have to notify the ECU each time you install a new battery.
symisc_devel··on Want to spot a deepfake? Look for the stars in their eyes
Well, they are relatively easy to spot with the current AI software used to generate them especially if you are dealing on a daily basis with presentation attacks aka deepfakes for facial recognition. FACEIO has already deployed a very powerful model to deter such attacks for the purpose of facial authentication: https://faceio.net/security-best-practice#faceSpoof
symisc_devel··on Writing GUI apps for Windows is painful
Open source GUI libraries are lacking behind the gate locked, closed ones like Adobe. Even Macromedia UI back in the days 20 years ago looks way more appealing and polished than the current open source offering. The only polished open source UI in my opinion is Blender but apparently they have their own rendering engine built from scratch just like Adobe.
symisc_devel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2023)
PixLab (https://pixlab.io) & FACEIO (https://faceio.net) | Full-or-part-time | Remote | Computer Vision / Full stack Engineers |

PixLab, a leading provider of Machine Vision, Face Recognition & Media Processing APIs is looking for:

* Embedded C & Computer Vision engineer(s) to work on the SOD (https://sod.pixlab.io), embedded computer vision library.

* Senior Python engineer with proficiency in PyTorch to work on FACEIO (https://faceio.net), our facial authentication web framework for web sites & apps.

* C++ developer with ML expertise to work on the port of Tiny-Dream (https://pixlab.io/tiny-dream), our embedded Stable Diffusion C++ library from ncnn to ggml.

* React/Vue JS Web developer(s) with expertise in fabric.js to work on a brand new, web based photo editing software backed by generative AI.

Reach out to Vincent via contact AT pixlab.io with your resume if interested.

symisc_devel··on Show HN: Tiny Dream – Header Only, Embedded Stable Diffusion C++ Library
Hi HN,

Tiny-dream is designed to be embedded on larger codebases (host programs) with an easy to use C++ API.

The project github is located at: https://github.com/symisc/tiny-dream The C++ API documentation is located at: https://pixlab.io/tiny-dream#cpp-api

The current tensor engine is backed by ncnn with planned transition to ggml in the short period. Nevertheless, in our experimental ggml port, we found out that ggml doesn't quantize well, and is better suited for LLMs than heavy computer vision tasks. You can refer to the roadmap page at https://pixlab.io/tiny-dream#roadmap for more information.

symisc_devel··on Ask HN: My mother is slowly losing her eyesight, how to prepare?
My company offer a custom version of the Talkie OCR app (https://i2s.symisc.net) for vision impaired persons. Basically, the app require minimal interaction with the end user. All he has to do is: Tap a single time anywhere in the screen to launch the camera, take a picture of the book page, magazine, or note, and the documented shall be automatically scanned, and played back on her favourite language (with built-in translation).
symisc_devel··on Show HN: VisionScript, abstract programming language for computer vision
Shameless plug: take a look to our embedded computer vision library SOD: https://sod.pixlab.io. It's a lightweight OpenCV alternative targeting embedded devices with most of the modern image processing algorithms already implemented including an experimental Stable Diffusion implementation.
symisc_devel··on Modern Image Processing Algorithms Implementation in C
Of course. Only Adsense is authorized. After a short investigation, it appears that the main reason these NSFW-limit ads are shown is because the article includes direct link to the PixLab NSFW API Endpoint (https://pixlab.io/cmd?id=nsfw) which is basically a bridge to our ML model that let you detect whether an image or video frame contains adult, bloody or gore content.
symisc_devel··on Modern Image Processing Algorithms Implementation in C
Hello,

It's a blog post by one of our engineers. Authors are free to monetize their content without inference from the company.

symisc_devel··on Lite XL: A lightweight text editor written in C and Lua
What GUI Library does the editor use?
symisc_devel··on Matrix-webcam displays your webcam video feed in the console
A similar transformation can be done on ASCII Art at Real-Time using a single decision tree:

https://art.pixlab.io/ https://github.com/symisc/ascii_art

symisc_devel··on Show HN: Face IO – Facial Authentication for the Web
Symisc Systems (our parent company) is working with security partners on SOC 2 reporting and full ISO 27001 certification. You can deploy on-premises (https://faceio.net/on-premise) or use AWS Rekognition as your default facial recognition engine (https://faceio.net/facialid#facial-recognition-engine) for complete control over facial hashes.
symisc_devel··on Show HN: Face IO – Facial Authentication for the Web
FACEIO itself (the service) including this Website, the fio.js facial authentication library, the Embedded Widget, the Rest API, the Console) does not store or handle biometrics nor even know anything about them. It is the responsibility of the selected facial recognition engine by the application owner (eg website or web application you use) to choose a cloud storage region or opt for on-premises deployment for storing biometrics hash.
symisc_devel··on Show HN: An AI program to check videos for NSFW content
Shameless plug: At PixLab, we offer similar model available as a REST API endpoint: https://pixlab.io/cmd?id=nsfw. The NSFW API endpoint which let you detect bloody & adult content. This can help the developer automate things such as filtering users' image uploads. A tutorial on using such API is available on https://dev.to/unqlite_db/filter-image-uploads-according-to-....

The solution can also be deployed on-promises for real-time, local video analysis without leaving the deployment environment: https://pixlab.io/on-premises.

symisc_devel··on Show HN: PixLab – Computer Vision and Media Processing API Portal
Hi HN,

My team and I, developed PixLab as a independent product (kind of subsidiary now) back in 2017 for our parent company (Symisc Systems). Since then, the platform has grown to over 130 Computer Vision API endpoints[1], and hundreds of API consumers. We currently serve over 29 million API requests each month. We’ve bootstrapped PixLab entirely ourselves. Our goal is to build a product that developers enjoy using.

PixLab is a unified API platform that integrates vision, storage, prediction, annotation, and media processing. We offer cloud Rest APIs (https://pixlab.io/api), on-premises deployment (https://pixlab.io/on-premises), and embedded C/C++ SDK (https://sod.pixlab.io). Our API offering includes Face Detection|Blur|Recognition, Content Moderation, NSFW Classification, Passports/ID Scan, Gender/Age detection, Image Tagging, and many others[1]. We’d love you to try PixLab and let us know what you think. You can find out some production ready code samples at the samples page[2] and the Github repository[3]

[1]: https://pixlab.io/cmdls

[2]: https://pixlab.io/examples

[3]: https://github.com/symisc/pixlab

symisc_devel··on How I, as someone who is visually impaired, use my iPhone (2020)
Shameless plug: One of our engineer developed a Vision Impaired OCR app that scan and read text aloud in the user favorite language and accent with built-in TTS and translation service. Basically, the app is voice driven and require minimal interaction. All the user has to do is take a picture and the scan process starts immediately and TTS takes place after scan.

App homepage: https://i2s.symisc.net

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/talkie-ocr-image-to-speech/id1...

symisc_devel··on HN was down
Hacker News is hosted at M5 and they are having a network outage:

http://status.m5hosting.com/pages/incident/5407b8e2b00244251...

edit: Unrelated to the Azure outage.

symisc_devel··on Launch HN: Xix.ai (YC W17) – Securely authenticate in web apps by face
Checkout the PixLab API[1] which offer KYC document verification (IDs & Passports) and face recognition via the same WEB API.

1: https://dev.to/unqlite_db/implement-a-minimalistic-kyc-form-....

symisc_devel··on Dual licensing GPL for fame and profit
At PixLab, we believe this is the right approach to license SDKs & C Libraries. We did this with our embedded Computer Vision Library (https://pixlab.io/downloads) and it did works quite well.

Corporations really hate anything GPL related and will ultimately purchase commercial licenses at high cost to get rid of GPL if they are interested enough in your product.

Note that dual licensing was first popularized by Sleepycat software makers of BerkeleyDB now absorbed by Oracle. They were profitable during their short lifespan thanks to this approach.

symisc_devel··on RetinaFace: Single-stage Dense Face Localisation, implemented in TensorFlow 2.0
The algorithm have been already shipped within the release of the PixLab Rest APIs 1.9.72: https://blog.pixlab.io/2020/08/pixlab-api-1972-released

Note however that Retina does not support real-time performance on the CPU especially on IoT devices and web browsers (WebAssembly). That's why we opted for a standard cascade approach for our WebAssembly port: https://sod.pixlab.io/articles/porting-c-face-detector-webas...

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