• Pl chevron_right

      KDE Snaps Weekly report, Debian recommenced!

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Friday, 25 August, 2023 - 17:40 · 2 minutes

    Now that all the planets are fixed, please see what you missed here!

    / https://www.scarlettgatelymoore.dev/kde-a-day-in-the-life-the-kde-snapcrafter-part-2/

    EXTREMELY IMPORTANT : I am still looking for a super awesome team lead for a super amazing project involving KDE and Snaps. Time is running out and well the KDE world will be a better a better place if this project goes through! I would like to clarify, this is a paid position! A current KDE developer would be ideal as it is a small team so your time will be split managing and coding alike. If you or anyone you know might be interested please contact me ASAP!

    Lots of news on the snap front 23.04.3 is now complete with new snaps! I know, just in time for 23.08.0. I have fixed some major issues in this release, 23.08 should go much quicker. Even quicker if my per repo snapcraft files gets approved!

    • kirigami-gallery
    • Itinerary

    We have more PIM snaps, however I am waiting for reserved name approvals from the snap store.

    I was approached to decouple qt and frameworks sdk snaps and I have agreed for the fact that security updates are near impossible when new versions are released. Conversation here:

    https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/proposal-for-changes-to-kde-content-snap-and-extension

    I have started qt5 here https://github.com/ScarlettGatelyMoore/qt-5-15-10-snap

    And some exciting news – I have started the KF6 content pack! I am doing like above and I am using the qt6 content pack Jarred Wilson has made. This is a requirement to start the plasma snap. Progress can be tracked here: https://github.com/ScarlettGatelyMoore/kf6-snap

    I am still have on on going request for snapcraft files in their respective repositories. While defending my request I have tested some options. Snapcraft files in the repository does allow for proper snap recipes in launchpad by mirroring the repo in launchpad -> create snap recipe. I created a recipe based on stable branch and it created and published the snap as expected.

    After being pointed to the flatpak workflow I discovered snaps has a similiar store feature with github, however I will need to create a github repo for each snap, which is tempting. I want to avoid duplication of snapcraft files, but I guess this is what they do for flatpak? I never received an answer.

    Snapcraft: Some more tidying of the qmake plugin and resolved some review conversations.

    Debian!

    I am back to getting things in Debian proper, starting with the golang packages I was working on for bubble-gum a cool console beautification application. As each one passes through NEW I will keep uploading. I will be checking in with the qt-kde team to see what needs doing. I am looking into seeing if openvoices is still a viable replacement for mycroft, hopefully all that work isn’t wasted time.

    And finally, I do hate having to ask, but as we quickly approach September, I have not come close to enough to pay my pesky bills, required to have a place to live and eat! I am seeking employment as a backup if my amazing project falls through. I tried to enable ads, but that broke my planet feeds, I can’t have that! So without further ado… Anything helps! Also please share! Thanks for your consideration.


    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      I cycled to all the villages in alphabetical order

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Friday, 25 August, 2023 - 00:33 · 6 minutes

    This last weekend I completed a bike rides project I started during the first Covid lockdown in 2020:

    I’ve cycled to every settlement (and radio observatory) within 20km of my house, in alphabetical order.

    Stir crazy

    In early 2020, during the first lockdown, I was going a bit stir crazy. Clare said “you’re going very strange, you have to go out and get some exercise”. After a bit of discussion, we came up with this plan: I’d visit all the local villages, in alphabetical order.

    Choosing the radius

    I decided that I would pick a round number of kilometers, as the crow flies, from my house. 20km seemed about right. 25km would have included Ely, which would have been nice, but it would have added a great many places, all of them quite distant.

    Software

    I wrote a short Rust program to process OSM data into a list of places to visit, and their distances and bearings.

    You can download a tarball of the alphabetical villages scanner . (I haven’t published the git history because it has my house’s GPS coordinates in it, and because I committed the output files from which that location can be derived.)

    The Rides

    I set off on my first ride, to Aldreth, on Sunday the 31st of May 2020. The final ride collected Yelling, on Saturday the 19th of August 2023.

    I did quite a few rides in June and July 2020 - more than one a week. (I’d read the lockdown rules, and although some of the government messaging said you should stay near your house, that wasn’t in the legislation. Of course I didn’t go into any buildings or anything.)

    I’m not much of a morning person, so I often set off after lunch. For the longer rides I would usually pack a picnic. Almost all of the rides I did just by myself. There were a handful where I had friends along:

    Dry Drayton, which I collected with Clare, at night. I held my bike up so the light shone at the village sign, so we could take a photo of it.

    Madingley, Melbourn and Meldreth, which was quite an expedition with my friend Ben. We went out as far as Royston and nearby Barley (both outside my radius and not on my list) mostly just so that my project would have visited Hertfordshire.

    The Hemingfords, where I had my friend Matthew along, and we had a very nice pub lunch.

    Girton and Wilburton, where I visited friends. Indeed, I stopped off in Wilburton on one or two other occasions.

    And, of course, Yelling, for which there were four of us, again with a nice lunch (in Eltisley).

    I had relatively little mechanical trouble. My worst ride for this was Exning: I got three punctures that day. Luckily the last one was close to home.

    I often would stop to take lots of photos en-route. My mum in particular appreciated all the pretty pictures.

    Rules

    I decided on these rules:

    I would cycle to each destination, in order, and it would count as collected if I rode both there and back. I allowed collecting multiple villages in the same outing, provided I did them in the right order. (And obviously I was allowed to pass through places out of order, without counting them.)

    I tried to get a picture of the village sign, where there was one. Failing that, I got a picture of something in the village with the village’s name on it. I think the only one I didn’t manage this for was Westley Bottom; I had to make do with the word “Westley” on some railway level crossing equipment. In Barway I had to make do with a planning application, stuck to a pole.

    I tried not to enter and leave a village by the same road, if possible.

    Edge cases

    I had to make some decisions:

    I decided that I would consider the project complete if I visited everywhere whose centre was within my radius. But the centre of a settlement is rather hard to define. I needed a hard criterion for my OpenStreetMap data mining: a place counted if there was any node , way or relation , with the relevant place tag, any part of which was within my ambit. That included some places that probably oughtn’t to have counted, but, fine.

    I also decided that I wouldn’t visit suburbs of Cambridge, separately from Cambridge itself. I don’t consider them separate settlements, at least, not if they’re conurbated with Cambridge. So that excluded Trumpington, for example. But I decided that Girton and Fen Ditton were (just) separable. Although the place where I consider Girton and Cambridge to nearly touch, is administratively well inside Girton, I chose to look at land use (on the ground, and in OSM data), rather than administrative boundaries.

    But I did visit both Histon and Impington, and all each of the Shelfords and Stapleford, as separate entries in my list. Mostly because otherwise I’d have to decide whether to skip (say) Impington, or Histon. Whereas skipping suburbs of Cambridge in favour of Cambridge itself was an easy decision, and it also got rid of a bunch of what would have been quite short, boring, urban expeditions.

    I sorted all the Greats and Littles under G and L, rather than (say) “Shelford, Great”, which seemed like it would be cheating because then I would be able to do “Shelford, Great” and “Shelford, Little” in one go.

    Northstowe turned from mostly a building site into something that was arguably a settlement, during my project. It wasn’t included in the output of my original data mining. Of course it’s conurbated with Oakington - but happily, Northstowe inserts right before Oakington in the alphabetical list, so I decided to add it, visiting both the old and new in the same day.

    There are a bunch of other minor edge cases. Some villages have an outlying hamlet. Mostly I included these. There are some individual farms, which I generally didn’t count.

    Some stats

    I visited 150 villages plus the Lords Bridge radio observatory. The project took 3 years and 3 months to complete.

    There were 96 rides, totalling about 4900km. So my mean distance was around 51km. The median distance per ride was a little higher, at around 52 km, and the median duration (including stoppages) was about 2h40. The total duration, if you add them all up, including stoppages, was about 275h, giving a mean speed including photo stops, lunches and all, of 18kph.

    The longest ride was 89.8km, collecting Scotland Farm, Shepreth, and Six Mile Bottom, so riding across the Cam valley. The shortest ride was 7.9km, collecting Cambridge (obviously); and I think that’s the only one I did on my Brompton. The rest were all on my trusty Thorn Audax.

    My fastest ride (ranking by distance divided by time spent in motion) was to collect Haddenham, where I covered 46.3km in 1h39, giving an average speed in motion of 28.0kph.

    The most I collected in one day was 5 places: West Wickham, West Wratting, Westley Bottom, Westley Waterless, and Weston Colville. That was the day of the Wests. (There’s only one East: East Hatley.)

    Map

    Here is a pretty picture of all of my tracklogs:

    alphabetical-villages-tracklogs.png

    Edited 2023-08-25 01:32 BST to correct a slip.


    comment count unavailable comments

    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      Netplan v0.107 is now available

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Thursday, 24 August, 2023 - 12:59 · 4 minutes

    I’m happy to announce that Netplan version 0.107 is now available on GitHub and is soon to be deployed into a Linux installation near you! Six months and more than 200 commits after the previous version (including a .1 stable release), this release is brought to you by 8 free software contributors from around the globe.

    Highlights

    Highlights of this release include the new configuration types for veth and dummy interfaces:

    network:
      version: 2
      virtual-ethernets:
        veth0:
          peer: veth1
        veth1:
          peer: veth0
      dummy-devices:
        dm0:
          addresses:
            - 192.168.0.123/24
          ...

    Furthermore, we implemented CFFI based Python bindings on top of libnetplan’s API, that can easily be consumed by 3rd party applications (see full cffi-bindings.py example):

    from netplan import Parser, State, NetDefinition
    from netplan import NetplanException, NetplanParserException
    parser = Parser()
    
    # Parse the full, existing YAML config hierarchy
    parser.load_yaml_hierarchy(rootdir='/')
    
    # Validate the final parser state
    state = State()
    try:
        # validation of current state + new settings
        state.import_parser_results(parser)
    except NetplanParserException as e:
        print('Error in', e.filename, 'Row/Col', e.line, e.column, '->', e.message)
    except NetplanException as e:
        print('Error:', e.message)
    
    # Walk through ethernet NetdefIDs in the state and print their backend
    # renderer, to demonstrate working with NetDefinitionIterator &
    # NetDefinition
    for netdef in state.ethernets.values():
        print('Netdef', netdef.id, 'is managed by:', netdef.backend)
        print('Is it configured to use DHCP?', netdef.dhcp4 or netdef.dhcp6)

    Changelog:

    Bug fixes:


    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      Retirement

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Wednesday, 23 August, 2023 - 15:52 · 1 minute

    Apparently it’s nearly four years since I last posted to my blog. Which is, to a degree, the point here. My time, and priorities, have changed over the years. And this lead me to the decision that my available time and priorities in 2023 aren’t compatible with being a Debian or Ubuntu developer, and realistically, haven’t been for years. As of earlier this month, I quit as a Debian Developer and Ubuntu MOTU.

    I think a lot of my blogging energy got absorbed by social media over the last decade, but with the collapse of Twitter and Reddit due to mismanagement, I’m trying to allocate more time for blog-based things instead. I may write up some of the things I’ve achieved at work (.NET 8 is now snapped for release Soon ™ ). I might even blog about work-adjacent controversial topics, like my changed feelings about the entire concept of distribution packages. But there’s time for that later. Maybe.

    I’ll keep tagging vaguely FOSS related topics with the Debian and Ubuntu tags, which cause them to be aggregated in the Planet Debian/Ubuntu feeds (RSS, remember that from the before times?!) until an admin on those sites gets annoyed at the off-topic posting of an emeritus dev and deletes them.

    But that’s where we are. Rather than ignore my distro obligations, I’ve admitted that I just don’t have the energy any more. Let someone less perpetually exhausted than me take over. And if they don’t, maybe that’s OK too.


    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      KDE: A Day in the Life the KDE Snapcrafter Part 2

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Tuesday, 22 August, 2023 - 17:55 · 1 minute

    KDE Mascot KDE Mascot

    Much to my dismay, I figured out that my blog has been disabled on the Ubuntu planet since May. If you are curious about what I have been up to, please go to the handy links -> and read up! This post is a continuation of last weeks https://www.scarlettgatelymoore.dev/kde-a-day-in-the-life-of-the-kde-snapcrafter/

    IMPORTANT: I am still looking for a super awesome team lead for a super amazing project involving KDE and Snaps. Time is running out and well the KDE world will be a better a better place if this project goes through! I would like to clarify, this is a paid position! A current KDE developer would be ideal as it is a small team so your time will be split managing and coding alike. If you or anyone you know might be interested please contact me ASAP!

    Snaps: I am wrapping up the 23.04.3 KDE applications release! Head on over to https://snapcraft.io/search?q=KDE and enjoy! We are now up to 180 snaps! PIM snaps will be slowly rolling in as they go through manual reviews for D-Bus.

    Snapcraft: minor fix in qmake plugin found by ruff.

    Launchpad: I almost have approval for per application repository snapcraft files, but I have to prove it will work to our benefit and not cause loads of polling etc. So I have been testing various methods of achieving such a task, and so far I have come up with launchpads ability to watch and download release tarballs into a project. I will then need to script getting the tarball and pushing it to a bzr branch from which I can create a proper snap recipe. Unfortunately, my proper snap recipe fails! Hopefully a very helpful cjwatson will chime in, or if anyone wants to take a gander please chime in here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/2031307

    As reality sets in that my project may not happen if I don’t find anyone, I need help surviving until I find work or funding to continue my snap work ( still much to do! ) If you or anyone else you know enjoys our snaps please consider a donation, anything helps! Please share! Thank you for your consideration!


    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      AMD Driver-specific Properties for Color Management on Linux (Part 1)

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Monday, 21 August, 2023 - 11:13 · 10 minutes

    TL;DR:

    Color is a visual perception. Human eyes can detect a broader range of colors than any devices in the graphics chain. Since each device can generate, capture or reproduce a specific subset of colors and tones, color management controls color conversion and calibration across devices to ensure a more accurate and consistent color representation. We can expose a GPU-accelerated display color management pipeline to support this process and enhance results, and this is what we are doing on Linux to improve color management on Gamescope/SteamDeck . Even with the challenges of being external developers, we have been working on mapping AMD GPU color capabilities to the Linux kernel color management interface , which is a combination of DRM and AMD driver-specific color properties. This more extensive color management pipeline includes pre-defined Transfer Functions , 1-Dimensional LookUp Tables (1D LUTs) , and 3D LUTs before and after the plane composition/blending.


    The study of color is well-established and has been explored for many years. Color science and research findings have also guided technology innovations. As a result, color in Computer Graphics is a very complex topic that I’m putting a lot of effort into becoming familiar with. I always find myself rereading all the materials I have collected about color space and operations since I started this journey (about one year ago). I also understand how hard it is to find consensus on some color subjects, as exemplified by all explanations around the 2015 online viral phenomenon of The Black and Blue Dress . Have you heard about it? What is the color of the dress for you?

    So, taking into account my skills with colors and building consensus, this blog post only focuses on GPU hardware capabilities to support color management :-D If you want to learn more about color concepts and color on Linux, you can find useful links at the end of this blog post.

    Linux Kernel, show me the colors ;D

    DRM color management interface only exposes a small set of post-blending color properties. Proposals to enhance the DRM color API from different vendors have landed the subsystem mailing list over the last few years. On one hand, we got some suggestions to extend DRM post-blending/CRTC color API: DRM CRTC 3D LUT for R-Car (2020 version) ; DRM CRTC 3D LUT for Intel (draft - 2020) ; DRM CRTC 3D LUT for AMD by Igalia (v2 - 2023) ; DRM CRTC 3D LUT for R-Car (v2 - 2023) . On the other hand, some proposals to extend DRM pre-blending/plane API: DRM plane colors for Intel (v2 - 2021) ; DRM plane API for AMD (v3 - 2021) ; DRM plane 3D LUT for AMD - 2021 . Finally, Simon Ser sent the latest proposal in May 2023: Plane color pipeline KMS uAPI , from discussions in the 2023 Display/HDR Hackfest , and it is still under evaluation by the Linux Graphics community.

    All previous proposals seek a generic solution for expanding the API, but many seem to have stalled due to the uncertainty of matching well the hardware capabilities of all vendors. Meanwhile, the use of AMD color capabilities on Linux remained limited by the DRM interface, as the DCN 3.0 family color caps and mapping diagram below shows the Linux/DRM color interface without driver-specific color properties [*]:

    Bearing in mind that we need to know the variety of color pipelines in the subsystem to be clear about a generic solution, we decided to approach the issue from a different perspective and worked on enabling a set of Driver-Specific Color Properties for AMD Display Drivers . As a result, I recently sent another round of the AMD driver-specific color mgmt API .

    For those who have been following the AMD driver-specific proposal since the beginning (see [RFC] [V1] ), the main new features of the latest version [v2] are the addition of pre-blending Color Transformation Matrix (plane CTM) and the differentiation of Pre-defined Transfer Functions (TF) supported by color blocks. For those who just got here, I will recap this work in two blog posts. This one describes the current status of the AMD display driver in the Linux kernel/DRM subsystem and what changes with the driver-specific properties. In the next post, we go deeper to describe the features of each color block and provide a better picture of what is available in terms of color management for Linux.

    The Linux kernel color management API and AMD hardware color capabilities

    Before discussing colors in the Linux kernel with AMD hardware, consider accessing the Linux kernel documentation (version 6.5.0-rc5). In the AMD Display documentation, you will find my previous work documenting AMD hardware color capabilities and the Color Management Properties . It describes how AMD Display Manager (DM) intermediates requests between the AMD Display Core component (DC) and the Linux/DRM kernel interface for color management features. It also describes the relevant function to call the AMD color module in building curves for content space transformations.

    A subsection also describes hardware color capabilities and how they evolve between versions. This subsection, DC Color Capabilities between DCN generations , is a good starting point to understand what we have been doing on the kernel side to provide a broader color management API with AMD driver-specific properties.

    Why do we need more kernel color properties on Linux?

    Blending is the process of combining multiple planes (framebuffers abstraction) according to their mode settings. Before blending, we can manage the colors of various planes separately; after blending, we have combined those planes in only one output per CRTC. Color conversions after blending would be enough in a single-plane scenario or when dealing with planes in the same color space on the kernel side. Still, it cannot help to handle the blending of multiple planes with different color spaces and luminance levels. With plane color management properties, userspace can get a more accurate representation of colors to deal with the diversity of color profiles of devices in the graphics chain, bring a wide color gamut (WCG) , convert High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) content to Standard-Dynamic-Range (SDR) content (and vice-versa). With a GPU-accelerated display color management pipeline, we can use hardware blocks for color conversions and color mapping and support advanced color management.

    The current DRM color management API enables us to perform some color conversions after blending, but there is no interface to calibrate input space by planes. Note that here I’m not considering some workarounds in the AMD display manager mapping of DRM CRTC de-gamma and DRM CRTC CTM property to pre-blending DC de-gamma and gamut remap block, respectively. So, in more detail, it only exposes three post-blending features:

    • DRM CRTC de-gamma: used to convert the framebuffer’s colors to linear gamma;
    • DRM CRTC CTM: used for color space conversion;
    • DRM CRTC gamma: used to convert colors to the gamma space of the connected screen.

    AMD driver-specific color management interface

    We can compare the Linux color management API with and without the driver-specific color properties. From now, we denote driver-specific properties with the AMD prefix and generic properties with the DRM prefix. For visual comparison, I bring the DCN 3.0 family color caps and mapping diagram closer and present it here again:

    Mixing AMD driver-specific color properties with DRM generic color properties, we have a broader Linux color management system with the following features exposed by properties in the plane and CRTC interface, as summarized by this updated diagram:

    The blocks highlighted by red lines are the new properties in the driver-specific interface developed by me (Igalia) and Joshua (Valve). The red dashed lines are new links between API and AMD driver components implemented by us to connect the Linux/DRM interface to AMD hardware blocks, mapping components accordingly. In short, we have the following color management properties exposed by the DRM/AMD display driver:

    • Pre-blending - AMD Display Pipe and Plane (DPP):
      • AMD plane de-gamma: 1D LUT and pre-defined transfer functions; used to linearize the input space of a plane;
      • AMD plane CTM: 3x4 matrix; used to convert plane color space;
      • AMD plane shaper: 1D LUT and pre-defined transfer functions; used to delinearize and/or normalize colors before applying 3D LUT;
      • AMD plane 3D LUT: 17x17x17 size with 12 bit-depth; three dimensional lookup table used for advanced color mapping;
      • AMD plane blend/out gamma: 1D LUT and pre-defined transfer functions; used to linearize back the color space after 3D LUT for blending.
    • Post-blending - AMD Multiple Pipe/Plane Combined (MPC):
      • DRM CRTC de-gamma: 1D LUT (can’t be set together with plane de-gamma) ;
      • DRM CRTC CTM: 3x3 matrix (remapped to post-blending matrix) ;
      • DRM CRTC gamma: 1D LUT + AMD CRTC gamma TF; added to take advantage of driver pre-defined transfer functions;

    Note: You can find more about AMD display blocks in the Display Core Next (DCN) - Linux kernel documentation , provided by Rodrigo Siqueira (Linux/AMD display developer) in a 2021-documentation series . In the next post, I’ll revisit this topic, explaining display and color blocks in detail.

    How did we get a large set of color features from AMD display hardware?

    So, looking at AMD hardware color capabilities in the first diagram, we can see no post-blending (MPC) de-gamma block in any hardware families. We can also see that the AMD display driver maps CRTC/post-blending CTM to pre-blending (DPP) gamut_remap, but there is post-blending (MPC) gamut_remap (DRM CTM) from newer hardware versions that include SteamDeck hardware. You can find more details about hardware versions in the Linux kernel documentation/AMDGPU Product Information .

    I needed to rework these two mappings mentioned above to provide pre-blending/plane de-gamma and CTM for SteamDeck. I changed the DC mapping to detach stream gamut remap matrixes from the DPP gamut remap block. That means mapping AMD plane CTM directly to DPP/pre-blending gamut remap block and DRM CRTC CTM to MPC/post-blending gamut remap block. In this sense, I also limited plane CTM properties to those hardware versions with MPC/post-blending gamut_remap capabilities since older versions cannot support this feature without clashes with DRM CRTC CTM.

    Unfortunately, I couldn’t prevent conflict between AMD plane de-gamma and DRM plane de-gamma since post-blending de-gamma isn’t available in any AMD hardware versions until now. The fact is that a post-blending de-gamma makes little sense in the AMD color pipeline, where plane blending works better in a linear space, and there are enough color blocks to linearize content before blending. To deal with this conflict, the driver now rejects atomic commits if users try to set both AMD plane de-gamma and DRM CRTC de-gamma simultaneously.

    Finally, we had no other clashes when enabling other AMD driver-specific color properties for our use case, Gamescope/SteamDeck. Our main work for the remaining properties was understanding the data flow of each property, the hardware capabilities and limitations, and how to shape the data for programming the registers - AMD color block capabilities (and limitations) are the topics of the next blog post. Besides that, we fixed some driver bugs along the way since it was the first Linux use case for most of the new color properties, and some behaviors are only exposed when exercising the engine.

    Take a look at the Gamescope/Steam Deck Color Pipeline [**], and see how Gamescope uses the new API to manage color space conversions and calibration (please click on the image for a better view):

    In the next blog post, I’ll describe the implementation and technical details of each pre- and post-blending color block/property on the AMD display driver.

    * Thank Harry Wentland for helping with diagrams, color concepts and AMD capabilities.

    ** Thank Joshua Ashton for providing and explaining Gamescope/Steam Deck color pipeline.

    *** Thanks to the Linux Graphics community - explicitly Harry, Joshua, Pekka, Simon, Sebastian, Siqueira, Alex H. and Ville - to all the learning during this Linux DRM/AMD color journey. Also, Carlos and Tomas for organizing the 2023 Display/HDR Hackfest where we have a great and immersive opportunity to discuss Color & HDR on Linux.

    Useful Links

    1. Cinematic Color - 2012 SIGGRAPH course notes by Jeremy Selan : an introduction to color science, concepts and pipelines.
    2. Color management and HDR documentation for FOSS graphics by Pekka Paalanen : documentation and useful links on applying color concepts to the Linux graphics stack.
    3. HDR in Linux by Jeremy Cline : a blog post exploring color concepts for HDR support on Linux.
    4. Methods for conversion of high dynamic range content to standard dynamic range content and vice-versa by ITU-R : guideline for conversions between HDR and SDR contents.
    5. Using Lookup Tables to Accelerate Color Transformations by Jeremy Selan : Nvidia blog post about Lookup Tables on color management.
    6. The Importance of Being Linear by Larry Gritz and Eugene d’Eon : Nvidia blog post about gamma and color conversions.

    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      FreshRSS

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Monday, 21 August, 2023 - 08:29 · 1 minute

    Now that it's more convenient for me to run containers at home , I thought I'd write a bit about web apps I am enjoying.

    First up, FreshRSS , a web feed aggregator. I used to make heavy use of Google Reader until Google killed it, and although a bunch of self-hosted cloned sprung up very quickly afterwards, I didn't transition to any of them.

    Then followed a number of years within which, in retrospect, I basically didn't do a great job of organising reading the web. This lasted until a couple of years ago when, on a whim, I tried out NetNewsWire for iOS. NetNewsWire is a well-established and much-loved feed reader for Mac which I've never used. I used the iOS version in isolation for a long time: only dipping into web feeds on my phone and never on another device.

    I'd like to see the old web back , and do my part to make that happen. I've continually published rss and atom feeds for my own blog. I'm also trying to blog more: this might be easier now that Twitter (which, IMHO, took a lot of the energy for quick writing out of blogging) is mortally wounded.

    So, I'm giving FreshRSS a go. Early signs are good: it's fast, lightweight, easy to use, vaguely resembles how I remember Google Reader, and has a native dark-mode. It's still early days building up a new list of feeds to follow. I'll be sure to share interesting ones as I discover them!


    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      Review: Some Desperate Glory

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Monday, 21 August, 2023 - 04:30 · 5 minutes

    Review: Some Desperate Glory , by Emily Tesh

    Publisher: Tordotcom
    Copyright: 2023
    ISBN: 1-250-83499-6
    Format: Kindle
    Pages: 438

    Some Desperate Glory is a far-future space... opera? That's probably the right genre classification given the setting, but this book is much more intense and character-focused than most space opera. It is Emily Tesh's first novel, although she has two previous novellas that were published as books.

    The alien majo and their nearly all-powerful Wisdom have won the war by destroying Earth with an antimatter bomb. The remnants of humanity were absorbed into the sprawling majo civilization. Gaea Station is the lone exception: a marginally viable station deep in space, formed from a lifeless rocky planetoid and the coupled hulks of the last four human dreadnoughts. Gaea Station survives on military discipline, ruthless use of every available resource, and constant training, raising new generations of soldiers for the war that it refuses to let end.

    While Earth's children live, the enemy shall fear us.

    Kyr is a warbreed, one of a genetically engineered line of soldiers that, following an accident, Gaea Station has lost the ability to make except the old-fashioned way. Among the Sparrows, her mess group, she is the best at the simulated combat exercises they use for training. She may be the best of her age cohort except her twin Magnus. As this novel opens, she and the rest of the Sparrows are about to get their adult assignments. Kyr is absolutely focused on living up to her potential and the attention of her uncle Jole, the leader of the station.

    Kyr's future will look nothing like what she expects.

    This book was so good , and I despair of explaining why it was so good without unforgivable spoilers. I can tell you a few things about it, but be warned that I'll be reduced to helpless gestures and telling you to just go read it. It's been a very long time since I was this surprised by a novel, possibly since I read Code Name: Verity for the first time.

    Some Desperate Glory follows Kyr in close third-person throughout the book, which makes the start of this book daring. If you're getting a fascist vibe from the setup, you're not wrong, and this is intentional on Tesh's part. But Kyr is a true believer at the start of the book, so the first quarter has a protagonist who is sometimes nasty and cruel and who makes some frustratingly bad decisions. Stay with it, though; Tesh knows exactly what she's doing.

    This is a coming of age story, in a way. Kyr has a lot to learn and a lot to process, and Some Desperate Glory is about that process. But by the middle of part three, halfway through the book, I had absolutely no idea where Tesh was going with the story. She then pulled the rug out from under me, in the best way, at least twice more. Part five of this book is an absolute triumph, the payoff for everything that's happened over the course of the novel, and there is no way I could have predicted it in advance. It was deeply satisfying in that way where I felt like I learned some things along with the characters, and where the characters find a better ending than I could possibly have worked out myself.

    Tesh does use some world-building trickery, which is at its most complicated in part four. That was the one place where I can point to a few chapters where I thought the world-building got a bit too convenient in order to enable the plot. But it also allows for some truly incredible character work. I can't describe that in detail because it would be a major spoiler, but it's one of my favorite tropes in fiction and Tesh pulls it off beautifully. The character growth and interaction in this book is just so good: deep and complicated and nuanced and thoughtful in a way that revises reader impressions of earlier chapters.

    The other great thing about this book is that for a 400+ page novel, it moves right along. Both plot and character development is beautifully paced with only a few lulls. Tesh also doesn't belabor conversations. This is a book that provides just the right amount of context for the reader to fully understand what's going on, and then trusts the reader to be following along and moves straight to the next twist. That makes it propulsively readable. I had so much trouble putting this book down at any time during the second half.

    I can't give any specifics, again because of spoilers, but this is not just a character story. Some Desperate Glory has strong opinions on how to ethically approach the world, and those ethics are at the center of the plot. Unlike a lot of books with a moral stance, though, this novel shows the difficulty of the work of deriving that moral stance. I have rarely read a book that more perfectly captures the interior experience of changing one's mind with all of its emotional difficulty and internal resistance. Tesh provides all the payoff I was looking for as a reader, but she never makes it easy or gratuitous (with the arguable exception of one moment at the very end of the book that I think some people will dislike but that I personally needed).

    This is truly great stuff, probably the best science fiction novel that I've read in several years. Since I read it (I'm late on reviews again), I've pushed it on several other people, and I've not had a miss yet. The subject matter is pretty heavy, and this book also uses several tropes that I personally adore and am therefore incapable of being objective about, but with those caveats, this gets my highest possible recommendation.

    Some Desperate Glory is a complete story in one novel with a definite end, although I love these characters so much that I'd happily read their further adventures, even if those are thematically unnecessary.

    Content warnings: Uh, a lot. Genocide, suicide, sexual assault, racism, sexism, homophobia, misgendering, and torture, and I'm probably forgetting a few things. Tesh doesn't linger on these long, but most of them are on-screen. You may have to brace yourself for this one.

    Rating: 10 out of 10


    Značky: #Debian

    • Pl chevron_right

      RcppRedis 0.2.4 on CRAN: Maintenance

      pubsub.slavino.sk / planetdebian · Sunday, 20 August, 2023 - 22:16 · 1 minute

    Another minor release, now at 0.2.4, of our RcppRedis package arrived on CRAN yesterday. RcppRedis is one of several packages connecting R to the fabulous Redis in-memory datastructure store (and much more). RcppRedis does not pretend to be feature complete, but it may do some things faster than the other interfaces, and also offers an optional coupling with MessagePack binary (de)serialization via RcppMsgPack . The package has carried production loads on a trading floor for several years. It also supports pub/sub dissemination of streaming market data as per this earlier example .

    This update is (just like the previous one) fairly mechanical. CRAN noticed a shortcoming of the default per-package help page in a number of packages, in our case it was matter of adding one line for a missing alias to the Rd file. We also demoted the mention of the suggested (but retired) rredis package to a mere mention in the DESCRIPTION file as a formal Suggests: entry, even with an added Additional_repositories, create a NOTE. Life is simpler without those,

    The detailed changes list follows.

    Changes in version 0.2.4 (2023-08-19)

    • Add missing alias for ‘RcppRedis-package’ to rhiredis.Rd .

    • Remove Suggests: rredis which triggers a NOTE nag as it is only on an ‘Additional_repositories’.

    Courtesy of my CRANberries , there is also a diffstat report for this this release . More information is on the RcppRedis page .

    If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub .

    This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.


    Značky: #Debian