Photo-realistic single image super-resolution using a generative adversarial network

Photo-realistic single image super-resolution using a generative adversarial network Ledig et al., arXiv’16

Today’s paper choice also addresses an image-to-image translation problem, but here we’re interested in one specific challenge: super-resolution. In super-resolution we take as input a low resolution image like this:

And produce as output an estimation of a higher-resolution up-scaled version:

For the example above, here’s the ground truth hi-resolution image from which the low-res input was initially generated:

Especially challenging of course, is to recover / generate realistic looking finer texture details when super-resolving at large upscaling factors. (Look at the detail around the hat band and neckline in the above figures for example).

In this paper, we present SRGAN, a generative adversarial network (GAN) for image super-resolution (SR). To our knowledge, it is the first framework capable of inferring photo-realistic natural images for 4x upscaling factors.

In a mean-opinion score test, the scores obtained by SRGAN are closer to those of the original high-resolution images than those obtained by any other state-of-the-art method.

Here’s an example of the fine-detail SRGAN can create, even when upscaling by a factor of 4. Note how close it is to the original.

Your Loss is my GA(i)N

A Continue reading

The Rise of Edge Compute: The Video

The Rise of Edge Compute: The Video

The Rise of Edge Compute: The Video

At the end of March, Kenton Varda, tech lead and architect for Cloudflare Workers, traveled to London and led a talk about the Rise of Edge Compute where he laid out our vision for the future of the Internet as a platform.

Several of those who were unable to attend on-site asked for us to produce a recording. Well, we've completed the audio edits, so here it is!

Visit the Workers category on Cloudflare's community forum to learn more about Workers and share questions, answers, and ideas with other developers.

Visit the Community Forum Here »

How to manage access in a web-scale data center

One of the consistent questions that arises during the web-scale transition is the impact of managed access to networking infrastructure. How do we take traditional management techniques and adapt them to the new operational paradigm of web-scale networking, where automation drives the majority of changes and the infrastructure is treated as a holistic entity rather than node-by-node?

Local privileges

In the most basic way, we can migrate existing workflows to the new paradigm. Though inefficient, the old way of doing things still works with the new web-scale paradigm. The easiest way to do this is to restrict access to your switches using local privileges. In Linux, users are controlled using the adduser command, and the permissions for that user are controlled using the chmod commands.

A list of all users is stored in the /etc/passwd folder of Linux:

 cumulus@leaf02:~$ cat /etc/passwd
 root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
 daemon:x:1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/usr/sbin/nologin
 bin:x:2:2:bin:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin
 sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/usr/sbin/nologin
 sync:x:4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
 games:x:5:60:games:/usr/games:/usr/sbin/nologin
 man:x:6:12:man:/var/cache/man:/usr/sbin/nologin
 lp:x:7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/usr/sbin/nologin
 mail:x:8:8:mail:/var/mail:/usr/sbin/nologin
 news:x:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/usr/sbin/nologin
 uucp:x:10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/usr/sbin/nologin
 proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin
 www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
 backup:x:34:34:backup:/var/backups:/usr/sbin/nologin
 list:x:38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/usr/sbin/nologin
 irc:x:39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/usr/sbin/nologin
 gnats:x:41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/usr/sbin/nologin
 nobody:x:65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
 systemd-timesync:x:100:103:systemd Time Synchronization,,,:/run/systemd:/bin/false
 systemd-network:x:101:104:systemd Network Management,,,:/run/systemd/netif:/bin/false
 systemd-resolve:x:102:105:systemd Resolver,,,:/run/systemd/resolve:/bin/false
 systemd-bus-proxy:x:103:106:systemd Bus Proxy,,,:/run/systemd:/bin/false
 frr:x:104:109:Frr routing suite,,,:/var/run/frr/:/bin/false
 ntp:x:105:110::/home/ntp:/bin/false
 uuidd:x:106:111::/run/uuidd:/bin/false
 messagebus:x:107:112::/var/run/dbus:/bin/false
 sshd:x:108:65534::/var/run/sshd:/usr/sbin/nologin
 snmp:x:109:114::/var/lib/snmp:/usr/sbin/nologin
 dnsmasq:x:110:65534:dnsmasq,,,:/var/lib/misc:/bin/false
 _lldpd:x:111:115::/var/run/lldpd:/bin/false
 cumulus:x:1000:1000:cumulus,,,:/home/cumulus:/bin/bash

Users can be added and deleted using the adduser and deluser commands:

 cumulus@leaf02:~$ sudo  Continue reading

Arista applies cloud principles to campus networks

Arista Networks has arguably been the most disruptive data center network vendor in the past 10 years. The company built a product specifically designed for the rise of software-defined networking (SDN) and made “spline” a household word, assuming you live in a house full of network engineers. If you don’t eat, live, and breathe networking and you’re not familiar with a spline, it’s a single-tier network optimized for the era of cloud computing.The rise of east-west traffic gave birth to the concept of a two-tier leaf-spine network, but Arista further simplified that down into a single tier. By collapsing the leaf and spine into a single tier, Arista is able to scale its network out rapidly simply by adding more switches to the spline — making it theoretically infinitely scalable. Arista took this model and applied it to data center interconnect, routing, and other use cases related to data centers.To read this article in full, please click here

Arista applies cloud principles to campus networks

Arista Networks has arguably been the most disruptive data center network vendor in the past 10 years. The company built a product specifically designed for the rise of software-defined networking (SDN) and made “spline” a household word, assuming you live in a house full of network engineers. If you don’t eat, live, and breathe networking and you’re not familiar with a spline, it’s a single-tier network optimized for the era of cloud computing.The rise of east-west traffic gave birth to the concept of a two-tier leaf-spine network, but Arista further simplified that down into a single tier. By collapsing the leaf and spine into a single tier, Arista is able to scale its network out rapidly simply by adding more switches to the spline — making it theoretically infinitely scalable. Arista took this model and applied it to data center interconnect, routing, and other use cases related to data centers.To read this article in full, please click here

The Internet Society and African Union Commission Launch Personal Data Protections Guidelines for Africa

The Internet Society and the African Union Commission (AUC) today launched the Personal Data Protection Guidelines for Africa (“the Guidelines”) at the Africa Internet Summit in Dakar, Senegal. Grounded on principles of privacy, trust and responsible use, the Guidelines introduced another step in securing the African Internet infrastructure and emphasized the notion that good data protection strengthens trust in online services and contributes to sustainable growth of the digital economy. This timely development follows a recent massive privacy breach at Facebook and the much talked about Cambridge Analytica saga which mishandled the data of millions of Facebook users, including many on the African continent.

Speaking at the launch event, the Director for Africa Regional Bureau, Dawit Bekele, applauded Senegal for becoming the first country in Africa to show leadership and commitment towards building a solid information society. “Africa – indeed like the rest of the world – considers personal data protection as key in securing the Internet infrastructure and Senegal has shown us the way by being the first African country to ratify the Malabo Convention.”

The African digital economy is continuing to grow, with the potential to reach $300 billion or 10% of GDP of the African economy Continue reading

TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU: Manage Windows like Linux with Ansible

Ansible_Window_Love

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is the movie "10 Things I Hate About You". If you're not familiar with it, it's a 90's teenybopper flick that's loosely based on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". In the movie, our hero Patrick is surreptitiously paid to woo the man-hating Kat so that slimy Joey will be allowed to date her younger sister Bianca. Kat initially can't stand Patrick and his numerous bad habits, but by the end of the story has fallen for him. She reads him a poem that starts off describing ten things she hates about him, but wraps it up declaring her love for him instead.

I love Windows, but I know many Linux admins can't stand it, and avoid working with it at any cost. While working on a talk to espouse the use of Ansible to manage Windows in the same way as Linux, I imagined a Linux admin discovering the power of Ansible's features and common language to see the beauty in an automated Windows setup. It inspired me to write my own version of Kat's poem:

I hate that you're not SSH, and the shell that you call "Power",
I hate Continue reading

BrandPost: The Adaptive Network Vision – An Executive Q&A

The networking industry is being disrupted. There is an explosion in network demand, driven by ultra-mobile users who want the ability to access the cloud and consume high-definition content, video, and applications when and where they choose. This network disruption will only continue in the future with the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G—both of which require billions of devices to interact with machines, users, and the cloud to drive consumer and business interactions.As a result, network providers must prepare for an industry transformation that will create new opportunities. We sat down with Ciena’s Rebecca Prudhomme, VP of Portfolio Marketing, to address what network providers need to do to seize these opportunities. To read this article in full, please click here

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