JRepin

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31824667

The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.4. This fresh new release improves on nearly every front, with progress being made in accessibility, color rendering, tablet support, window management, and more.

Plasma already offered virtual desktops and customizable tiles to help organize your windows and activities, and now it lets you choose a different configuration of tiles on each virtual desktop. The Wayland session brings some new accessibility features: you can now move the pointer using your keyboard’s number pad keys, or use a three-finger touchpad pinch gesture to zoom in or out. Plasma file transfer notification now shows a speed graph, giving you a more visual idea of how fast the transfer is going, and how long it will take to complete. When any applications are in full screen mode Plasma will now enter Do Not Disturb mode and only show urgent notifications, and when you exit full screen mode, you’ll see a summary of any notifications you missed. Now when an application tries to access the microphone and finds it muted, a notification will pop up. A new feature in the Application Launcher widget will place a green New! tag next to newly installed apps, so you can easily find where something you just installed lives in the menu. The Display and Monitor page in System Settings comes with a brand new HDR calibration wizard, and support for Extended Dynamic Range (a different kind of HDR) and P010 video color format has been added. System Monitor now supports usage monitoring for AMD and Intel graphic cards, it can even show the GPU usage on a per-process basis. Spectacle, the built-in app for taking screenshots and screen recordings, has much improved design and more streamlined functionality. The background of the desktop or window now darkens when an authentication dialog shows up, helping you locate and focus on the window asking for your password. There’s a brand-new Animations page in System Settings that groups all the settings for purely visual animated effects into one place, making it easier to find and configure them. Aurorae is a newly added SVG vector graphics theme engine for KWin window decorations.

You can read more about these and many other other features in the Plasma 6.4 anounncement and complete changelog.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31824667

The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.4. This fresh new release improves on nearly every front, with progress being made in accessibility, color rendering, tablet support, window management, and more.

Plasma already offered virtual desktops and customizable tiles to help organize your windows and activities, and now it lets you choose a different configuration of tiles on each virtual desktop. The Wayland session brings some new accessibility features: you can now move the pointer using your keyboard’s number pad keys, or use a three-finger touchpad pinch gesture to zoom in or out. Plasma file transfer notification now shows a speed graph, giving you a more visual idea of how fast the transfer is going, and how long it will take to complete. When any applications are in full screen mode Plasma will now enter Do Not Disturb mode and only show urgent notifications, and when you exit full screen mode, you’ll see a summary of any notifications you missed. Now when an application tries to access the microphone and finds it muted, a notification will pop up. A new feature in the Application Launcher widget will place a green New! tag next to newly installed apps, so you can easily find where something you just installed lives in the menu. The Display and Monitor page in System Settings comes with a brand new HDR calibration wizard, and support for Extended Dynamic Range (a different kind of HDR) and P010 video color format has been added. System Monitor now supports usage monitoring for AMD and Intel graphic cards, it can even show the GPU usage on a per-process basis. Spectacle, the built-in app for taking screenshots and screen recordings, has much improved design and more streamlined functionality. The background of the desktop or window now darkens when an authentication dialog shows up, helping you locate and focus on the window asking for your password. There’s a brand-new Animations page in System Settings that groups all the settings for purely visual animated effects into one place, making it easier to find and configure them. Aurorae is a newly added SVG vector graphics theme engine for KWin window decorations.

You can read more about these and many other other features in the Plasma 6.4 anounncement and complete changelog.

The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.4. This fresh new release improves on nearly every front, with progress being made in accessibility, color rendering, tablet support, window management, and more.

Plasma already offered virtual desktops and customizable tiles to help organize your windows and activities, and now it lets you choose a different configuration of tiles on each virtual desktop. The Wayland session brings some new accessibility features: you can now move the pointer using your keyboard’s number pad keys, or use a three-finger touchpad pinch gesture to zoom in or out. Plasma file transfer notification now shows a speed graph, giving you a more visual idea of how fast the transfer is going, and how long it will take to complete. When any applications are in full screen mode Plasma will now enter Do Not Disturb mode and only show urgent notifications, and when you exit full screen mode, you’ll see a summary of any notifications you missed. Now when an application tries to access the microphone and finds it muted, a notification will pop up. A new feature in the Application Launcher widget will place a green New! tag next to newly installed apps, so you can easily find where something you just installed lives in the menu. The Display and Monitor page in System Settings comes with a brand new HDR calibration wizard, and support for Extended Dynamic Range (a different kind of HDR) and P010 video color format has been added. System Monitor now supports usage monitoring for AMD and Intel graphic cards, it can even show the GPU usage on a per-process basis. Spectacle, the built-in app for taking screenshots and screen recordings, has much improved design and more streamlined functionality. The background of the desktop or window now darkens when an authentication dialog shows up, helping you locate and focus on the window asking for your password. There’s a brand-new Animations page in System Settings that groups all the settings for purely visual animated effects into one place, making it easier to find and configure them. Aurorae is a newly added SVG vector graphics theme engine for KWin window decorations.

You can read more about these and many other other features in the Plasma 6.4 anounncement and complete changelog.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31251815

I asked teachers to tell me how AI has changed how they teach.

The response from teachers and university professors was overwhelming. In my entire career, I’ve rarely gotten so many email responses to a single article, and I have never gotten so many thoughtful and comprehensive responses.

One thing is clear: teachers are not OK.

They describe trying to grade “hybrid essays half written by students and half written by robots,” trying to teach Spanish to kids who don’t know the meaning of the words they’re trying to teach them in English, and students who use AI in the middle of conversation. They describe spending hours grading papers that took their students seconds to generate: “I've been thinking more and more about how much time I am almost certainly spending grading and writing feedback for papers that were not even written by the student,” one teacher told me. “That sure feels like bullshit.”

I asked teachers to tell me how AI has changed how they teach.

The response from teachers and university professors was overwhelming. In my entire career, I’ve rarely gotten so many email responses to a single article, and I have never gotten so many thoughtful and comprehensive responses.

One thing is clear: teachers are not OK.

They describe trying to grade “hybrid essays half written by students and half written by robots,” trying to teach Spanish to kids who don’t know the meaning of the words they’re trying to teach them in English, and students who use AI in the middle of conversation. They describe spending hours grading papers that took their students seconds to generate: “I've been thinking more and more about how much time I am almost certainly spending grading and writing feedback for papers that were not even written by the student,” one teacher told me. “That sure feels like bullshit.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31250679

"this morning, as I was finishing up work on a video about a new mini Pi cluster, I got a cheerful email from YouTube saying my video on LibreELEC on the Pi 5 was removed because it promoted:

Dangerous or Harmful Content Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn't allowed on YouTube.

I never described any of that stuff, only how to self-host your own media library.

This wasn't my first rodeo—in October last year, I got a strike for showing people how to install Jellyfin!

In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)

So I thought, this case will be similar:

• The video's been up for over a year, without issue
• The video's had over half a million views
• The video doesn't promote or highlight any tools used to circumvent copyright, get around paid subscriptions, or reproduce any content illegally

Slam-dunk, right? Well, not according to whomever reviewed my appeal. Apparently self-hosted open source media library management is harmful.

Who knew open source software could be so subversive?"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31250679

"this morning, as I was finishing up work on a video about a new mini Pi cluster, I got a cheerful email from YouTube saying my video on LibreELEC on the Pi 5 was removed because it promoted:

Dangerous or Harmful Content Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn't allowed on YouTube.

I never described any of that stuff, only how to self-host your own media library.

This wasn't my first rodeo—in October last year, I got a strike for showing people how to install Jellyfin!

In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)

So I thought, this case will be similar:

• The video's been up for over a year, without issue
• The video's had over half a million views
• The video doesn't promote or highlight any tools used to circumvent copyright, get around paid subscriptions, or reproduce any content illegally

Slam-dunk, right? Well, not according to whomever reviewed my appeal. Apparently self-hosted open source media library management is harmful.

Who knew open source software could be so subversive?"

"this morning, as I was finishing up work on a video about a new mini Pi cluster, I got a cheerful email from YouTube saying my video on LibreELEC on the Pi 5 was removed because it promoted:

Dangerous or Harmful Content Content that describes how to get unauthorized or free access to audio or audiovisual content, software, subscription services, or games that usually require payment isn't allowed on YouTube.

I never described any of that stuff, only how to self-host your own media library.

This wasn't my first rodeo—in October last year, I got a strike for showing people how to install Jellyfin!

In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)

So I thought, this case will be similar:

• The video's been up for over a year, without issue
• The video's had over half a million views
• The video doesn't promote or highlight any tools used to circumvent copyright, get around paid subscriptions, or reproduce any content illegally

Slam-dunk, right? Well, not according to whomever reviewed my appeal. Apparently self-hosted open source media library management is harmful.

Who knew open source software could be so subversive?"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31246361

Vcc - the Vulkan Clang Compiler, is a proof-of-concept C and C++ compiler for Vulkan leveraging Clang as a front-end, and Shady our own research IR and compiler. Unlike other shading languages, Vcc aims to stick closely to standard C/C++ languages and merely adds a few new intrinsics to cover GPU features. Vcc is similar to CUDA or Metal in this regard, and aims to bring the advantages of standard host languages to Vulkan shaders.

Key Features

Vcc supports advanced C/C++ features usually left out of shading languages such as HLSL or GLSL, in particular raising the bar when it comes to pointer support and control-flow:

• Unrestricted pointers
  • Arithmetic is legal, they can be bitcasted to and from integers
• Generic pointers
  • Generic pointers do not have an address space in their type, rather they carry the address space as a tag in the upper bits.
• True function calls
  • Including recursion, a stack is implemented to handle this in the general case
• Function pointers
  • Lets you write code in a functional style on the GPU without limitations
• Arbitrary goto statements - code does not need to be strictly structured !

Many of these capabilities are present in compute APIs, but are not supported in most graphics APIs such as DirectX or Vulkan. We aim to address this gap by proving these features can and should be implemented. More on why we think that’s important.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31246361

Vcc - the Vulkan Clang Compiler, is a proof-of-concept C and C++ compiler for Vulkan leveraging Clang as a front-end, and Shady our own research IR and compiler. Unlike other shading languages, Vcc aims to stick closely to standard C/C++ languages and merely adds a few new intrinsics to cover GPU features. Vcc is similar to CUDA or Metal in this regard, and aims to bring the advantages of standard host languages to Vulkan shaders.

Key Features

Vcc supports advanced C/C++ features usually left out of shading languages such as HLSL or GLSL, in particular raising the bar when it comes to pointer support and control-flow:

• Unrestricted pointers
  • Arithmetic is legal, they can be bitcasted to and from integers
• Generic pointers
  • Generic pointers do not have an address space in their type, rather they carry the address space as a tag in the upper bits.
• True function calls
  • Including recursion, a stack is implemented to handle this in the general case
• Function pointers
  • Lets you write code in a functional style on the GPU without limitations
• Arbitrary goto statements - code does not need to be strictly structured !

Many of these capabilities are present in compute APIs, but are not supported in most graphics APIs such as DirectX or Vulkan. We aim to address this gap by proving these features can and should be implemented. More on why we think that’s important.

Vcc - the Vulkan Clang Compiler, is a proof-of-concept C and C++ compiler for Vulkan leveraging Clang as a front-end, and Shady our own research IR and compiler. Unlike other shading languages, Vcc aims to stick closely to standard C/C++ languages and merely adds a few new intrinsics to cover GPU features. Vcc is similar to CUDA or Metal in this regard, and aims to bring the advantages of standard host languages to Vulkan shaders.

Key Features

Vcc supports advanced C/C++ features usually left out of shading languages such as HLSL or GLSL, in particular raising the bar when it comes to pointer support and control-flow:

• Unrestricted pointers
  • Arithmetic is legal, they can be bitcasted to and from integers
• Generic pointers
  • Generic pointers do not have an address space in their type, rather they carry the address space as a tag in the upper bits.
• True function calls
  • Including recursion, a stack is implemented to handle this in the general case
• Function pointers
  • Lets you write code in a functional style on the GPU without limitations
• Arbitrary goto statements - code does not need to be strictly structured !

Many of these capabilities are present in compute APIs, but are not supported in most graphics APIs such as DirectX or Vulkan. We aim to address this gap by proving these features can and should be implemented. More on why we think that’s important.

Open-source RISC-V cores are increasingly demanded in domains like automotive and space, where achieving high instructions per cycle (IPC) through superscalar and out-of-order (OoO) execution is crucial. However, high-performance open-source RISC-V cores face adoption challenges: some (e.g. BOOM, Xiangshan) are developed in Chisel with limited support from industrial electronic design automation (EDA) tools. Others, like the XuanTie C910 core, use proprietary interfaces and protocols, including non-standard AXI protocol extensions, interrupts, and debug support.

In this work, we present a modified version of the OoO C910 core to achieve full RISC-V standard compliance in its debug, interrupt, and memory interfaces. We also introduce CVA6S+, an enhanced version of the dual-issue, industry-supported open-source CVA6 core. CVA6S+ achieves 34.4% performance improvement over CVA6 core.

We conduct a detailed performance, area, power, and energy analysis on the superscalar out-of-order C910, superscalar in-order CVA6S+ and vanilla, single-issue in-order CVA6, all implemented in a 22nm technology and integrated into Cheshire, an open-source modular SoC. We examine the performance and efficiency of different microarchitectures using the same ISA, SoC, and implementation with identical technology, tools, and methodologies. The area and performance rankings of CVA6, CVA6S+, and C910 follow expected trends: compared to the scalar CVA6, CVA6S+ shows an area increase of 6% and an IPC improvement of 34.4%, while C910 exhibits a 75% increase in area and a 119.5% improvement in IPC. However, efficiency analysis reveals that CVA6S+ leads in area efficiency (GOPS/mm2), while the C910 is highly competitive in energy efficiency (GOPS/W). This challenges the common belief that high performance in superscalar and out-of-order cores inherently comes at a significant cost in area and energy efficiency.