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Welcome to Day 2 at DrupalCon!! Today is another exhilarating day packed with cutting-edge sessions, collaborative workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities. There are few better ways to enhance your skills and connect you with the vibrant Drupal community. Let's dive deeper into the world of Drupal and check out a few highlights from Day 2:

Keynote: Open Source AI Now: Why Open Must Win the AI War

KDE e.V., the non-profit organisation supporting the KDE community, is looking for a web designer who is skilled with Hugo to implement a new environmental sustainability campaign for the KDE Eco website. Please see the [job ad]({{ '/resources/jobad-KDE-Eco-Website_2024.pdf' | prepend: site.url }}) for more details about this employment opportunity.

We are looking forward to your application.

Last month we took EvolveDrupal—a unique summit that fosters digital transformation and open source collaboration—to Atlanta for its first appearance in the United States.  

Couldn’t attend? Well, no need to feel left out! You can get the inside scoop right here. I’ve shared stories about 12 summit stars that’ll have you smiling, chuckling, or taking notes.

Attendees will find this a worthwhile read, too. Because unless you harnessed an AI bot to put you in three rooms at once, we’re betting there’s plenty you missed!

Ready to meet our stars? First, a quick refresher for those who need it.

Wait, What’s EvolveDrupal Again?

Ok, let’s rewind. About a year ago our digital agency started EvolveDrupal in our hometown of Montreal. After years of remote meet-ups, it was a way to finally reunite the tech and design communities in person. 

People were overjoyed to socialize in the same room as their peers again! Because let’s face it: sharing a beer on Zoom just isn’t the same. There’s none of those silly stories and spontaneous oversharing that really bring people together. 

After that first summit, we built on EvolveDrupal’s success with events in Toronto and Ottawa, before heading across the border to Atlanta. (Psst... a little birdy told me we're coming back to the U.S. in September for EvolveDrupal NYC.)

Meet the Stars of EvolveDrupal Atlanta

Now that you’re up to speed, here are all the juicy details you’re waiting for. Meet the standout stars who made EvolveDrupal Atlanta absolutely stellar. 

1. Our Event-Planning Extraordinaire, Maya Schaeffer

Maya wears multiple hats at Evolving Web. On top of taking care of us as our Employee Experience & Operations Manager, she’s the de facto Chief Event Organizer for EvolveDrupal. Maya learned on-the-job to orchestrate big corporate gatherings and she tirelessly ensures their success. You can find her at EvolveDrupal looking like she’s in her element.

Unforeseen challenges and setbacks are an inevitable part of events—like the time a well-known office supplies company printed all of our participants’ name tags upside down! But Maya has learned to roll with the punches and adapt quickly.

Maya’s can-do attitude means she sometimes tries to do everything herself, but she’s learned to delegate more over the past year. Her charming smile means that few people can say “no” to her requests. 

 

No one is a match for Maya's organizing skills!
2. Our Boss Baby: Sofia 

Just 15 months old, Sofia has been to more Drupal conferences than most seasoned developers. She has accompanied her parents (our co-founders Alex and Suzanne) to DrupalCon Pittsburgh, DrupalConLille, GovCon, High Ed Web, and all four of our previous EvolveDrupal summits.  

With this trajectory, in 20 years she’ll have the elusive combination that so many employers seek: a freshly minted college degree and two decades of Drupal experience. 

Expect to see Sofia in Forbes 5 Under 5 very soon.

 

Sofia loves showing her Drupal pride, accompanied by Alex (her dad), Maya, and Sammy the Eagle.
3. Artificial Intelligence  

I’d like to thank ChatGPT for writing this blog post. Joking! I’m a real person, I swear. Yet everywhere we look it seems that AI is popping up as a way to generate content, code, images, and so much more. So it was really helpful to get some perspective from the experts.

Nikhil Deshpande, Chief Digital & AI Officer at the Georgia Technology Authority, sat down for a Q&A session with our co-founder, Suzanne Dergacheva. Their discussion hit on a crucial dilemma: how to accelerate innovation through open source while retaining integrity and managing risk.

Some key takeaways from their talk include:

• AI has progressed beyond analytical tasks to creative endeavors like writing poetry.
• Its role in the workplace is expanding: over half of the U.S. workforce now uses AI tools to enhance productivity.
• AI is also shaping public services and government operations. In Minnesota, AI translation has improved accessibility for non-English speakers.
• In this age of AI, ethical considerations and good content governance are more important than ever. 
• The integration of AI technologies into existing systems will foster a new era of innovation—one where these tools not only enhance existing processes, but optimize creativity and problem solving.

We also heard from Misha Sulpovar, Head of AI at Cherre & Wired Cognition. In This Is not a Drill: Seeing the Real Opportunities Among the AI Hype, Misha debunked some common myths about AI. No, robots are not going to take over. No, the robots didn’t tell us to say that. In the face of concerns that machines will take our jobs, Misha argues that AI is actually enhancing—instead of replacing—human capabilities. It’s time to embrace the robots. They’re your new work besties. 

4. A11y (a.k.a. Accessibility)

Championing open source goes hand-in-hand with advocating for accessibility. At Evolving Web we’re committed to making the web a better place for all. So we were thrilled to host not one, but two accessibility sessions at EvolveDrupal Atlanta!

Mary Blabaum, Senior UX Manager at Acquia, gave a great overview of accessibility in her session 5 Ways to Grow Your Inclusive Design Approach: 

• Understand your user needs
• Activate by including inclusive strategy into your day to day
• Set standards such as adhering to WCAG
• Create with intent by baking inclusion into your design process
• Measure what matters using transparent accessibility conformance reports

 

Mary Blabaum from Acquia offered strategies to make accessibility the default in every design.

 

Penny Kronz, VP of Client Services at DubBot, gave us the rundown on the new success criteria in WCAG guidelines 2.2  with her session WCAG 2.2: What Changed? What Do I Need to Know? so that we can meet the latest accessibility requirements. Some notable changes include new criteria for increased touch target size, consistent focus appearance, and easy dismissal of pop-ups. While WCAG 2.2 retains the same structure as previous versions, it offers more specific guidance for building inclusive digital experiences.

5. OOUX  

So much more than a pleasing acronym, object-oriented UX (OOUX) is a proven method for making user experiences more human-centric. Sophia Prater taught us how to shift our UX process to turn complex processes into intuitive user flows in How to Fix UX Fails with Object-Oriented UX. The room was packed, with every seat taken and more participants standing at the back to catch the talk! 

One great takeaway from the talk was "ORCA". No relation to the whale. ORCA is an acronym that highlights great questions to ask when designing a single screen: 

• O: What are the objects in the users' mental model?
• R: What are the objects' relationships to each other?
• C: What calls-to-action do objects offer users?
• A: What are the attributes that make up the objects?

6. Our Creative Director, Morgan, and His Infallible Attention to Detail

Morgan decided to take a steamer to our backdrops. There wasn’t a single wrinkle to be seen when he was done with them. Not that he’s a Monica or anything (from the TV show Friends for those who—gasp!—don't get the reference.) 

Morgan also delivered From Chaos to Clarity: The Benefits and Challenges of Design Systems with Bryenne. They dived into the complexities and challenges our team has encountered over the years, offering up some invaluable best practices for creating a sustainable design system.

Finally, Morgan captivated a creative audience at our EvolveUX Unconference, an interactive session with real-time feedback from the audience. Morgan showcased the Planned Parenthood Direct app and took participants behind the scenes of the project. 

 

Creases? Not on Morgan's watch.
7. Sammy the Eagle

You read that right—the official mascot of Drupal GovCon swooped in to steal the show at EvolveDrupal Atlanta. I guess it’s easy when you have wings. Naturally, we set aside a free ticket and cleared his visit with the civil aviation authorities. 

 

The Eagle has landed. Sammy the Eagle, that is.
8. Steve Persch’s Twister Board

Steve Persch is a seasoned Drupalist and the Director of Developer Experience at Pantheon. He’s also a theater grad! Which explains why he brings a dramatic flair to even the most technical of presentations.  

In his talk The Fourth Decade of Web Deployments, Steve literally bent over backwards to illustrate how complex web pages have become. It certainly woke people up to see Steve pretzeling on a Twister board first thing in the morning. We’ve never seen a more visually stimulating illustration of a technical concept. Proof that majoring in theatre is useful, no matter what the haters say. 

 

Always stretch before attending EvolveDrupal.
9. The EPIC Page Builder Battle 

The boxing gloves came out when five speakers went head-to-head, each of them representing a different page building tool. And if you thought Drupal would have a leg up at an event with Drupal in the name, think again! It was no match for the ease with which our designer Yue Lu could build a site in Webflow.

Nevertheless, the key takeaway from our Page Builder Battle was that no single tool is perfect for everyone or every project. Choosing the right tool depends heavily on your unique needs.

We also learned that while Drupal’s content creation experience has room for improvement, the Drupal community is aware of this fact and actively working on it.

 

We duked it out to see which page builder tool is the ultimate champion.
10. Josh, Our Magic Weatherman

Our Atlanta-based team member, Josh, seems to have a mysterious ability to control the weather. Who knows how he did it, but Josh ordered some darn good weather for the event. 

Booking the rooftop patio three months in advance was always going to be a gamble. So we were biting our fingernails as rain poured down the day before… but the summit rolled around with nothing but the bluest of skies! Honourable mention to Josh because we're sure he had something to do with it. Definitely a wizard.

 

Team members Adrienne and Josh enjoying suspiciously good weather at the Zivtech rooftop after-party. 
11. The Drake Quote in our Brand Colours

As we left the elevator for the rooftop after-party, what did we see but a big quote from Drake on the wall! Way to make a canuck feel at home. And way to make us feel special, because it was in our brand green.  

 

We're definitely not team Kendrick.
12. The Airbnb Deer

This is becoming a weird trend for us. It all started with the Airbnb we stayed in for DrupalCamp Florida. Our team walked in to find a huge taxidermy deer on the wall. After initially feeling creeped out, they named him Luke and accepted him as part of the gang.

Would you believe it, when we turned up at our Airbnb for DrupalCamp New Jersey—oh dear, another deer! This one was named Frosty because he seemed a little aloof.

And then in Atlanta, what did we find but yet another deer! Perhaps we should just listen to the signs from the universe and get one for our office.
 

What should our Atlanta deer be called? Send name suggestions on a postcard.
Join the EvolveDrupal Adventure

Tickets are now on sale for EvolveDrupal Montreal on June 14. We're also heading back to the United States for EvolveDrupal NYC on September 20. 

Want to stay in the loop? Sign up for EvolveDrupal updates. You'll be among the first to hear about ticket sales, early bird discounts, and competitions for free stuff!

Here's what to read next: 9 Ways to Make the Most of EvolveDrupal. 

+ more awesome articles by Evolving Web

As pointed out in the first article, the Migrate API scope is to move over content and configuration. Porting modules and themes are out of scope. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at some of the assumptions and limitations. In addition to what will be presented in today’s article, I highly recommend reviewing the official documentation for upgrading from Drupal 7. Drupal is ever-evolving and the Migrate API documentation gets updated regularly. Of particular importance, review the page on known issues when upgrading from Drupal 7, as things get added and removed from that list as issues are discovered and fixed.

mauricio Wed, 05/08/2024 - 17:13

Breaking the rules to satisfy continuous integration.

A few months ago I blogged about forcing pip to require a virtualenv. However, when automating tests and deployments sometimes you work outside of virtualenvs. With pip this isn't a problem, you just don't set what I did in that article. However, what if you are using the rust-based uv where the default is to keep you in a virtualenv?

The answer is when you install dependencies using uv in this scenario, use the --python flag to specify the interpreter. According to the uv docs, this flag is intended for use in continuous integration (CI) environments or other automated workflows.

So without further ado, this is what I did:

python -m pip install uv uv pip install -p 3.12 -r requirements.txt

As a bonus, here's the command inside GitHub actions-flavored YAML:

- name: Install Dependencies run: | python -m pip install uv uv pip install -p 3.12 -r requirements.txt

Want to know how to handle multiple versions of Python? Here's how use a matrix on GitHub: https://github.com/pydanny/dj-notebook/blob/main/.github/workflows/python-ci.yml#L18-L19

In this episode, we discuss working on several different open-source Python packages. Antonio Cuni is our guest, and he chats about his work on PyScript, pdb++, pypy, HPy, and SPy.

Listen in as we chat about Python, packages, open source, and so much more!

Show Links

Here are some of the projects we talked about in the show:

• The Invent Framework

• PyScript

• pdb++ - A drop-in replacement for pdb

• pypy - The fast, compliant, alternative Python implementation

• HPy - A better C API for Python

• SPy - Static Python

PyTorch vs TensorFlow: What’s the difference? Both are open-source Python libraries that use graphs to perform numerical computations on data in deep learning applications. Both are used extensively in academic research and commercial code. Both are extended by a variety of APIs, cloud computing platforms, and model repositories.

If they’re so similar, then how do you decide which one is best for your project?

In this tutorial, you’ll learn:

• What the differences are between PyTorch and TensorFlow
• What tools and resources are available for each
• How to choose the best option for your specific use case

You’ll start by taking a close look at both platforms, beginning with the slightly older TensorFlow. Then, you’ll explore PyTorch and some considerations to help you determine which choice is best for your project. Let’s get started!

Get Your Decision Guide: Click here to download the free decision guide that will help you choose between PyTorch and TensorFlow for your Python deep learning project.

What Is TensorFlow?

TensorFlow was developed by Google and released as open-source in 2015. It grew out of Google’s homegrown machine learning software, which was refactored and optimized for use in production.

The name “TensorFlow” describes how you organize and perform operations on data. The basic data structure for both TensorFlow and PyTorch is a tensor. When you use TensorFlow, you perform operations on the data in these tensors by building a stateful dataflow graph, kind of like a flowchart that remembers past events.

Who Uses TensorFlow?

TensorFlow has a reputation for being a production-grade deep learning library. It has a large and active user base and a proliferation of official and third-party tools and platforms for training, deploying, and serving models.

After PyTorch was released in 2016, TensorFlow declined in popularity. But in late 2019, Google released TensorFlow 2.0—a major update that simplified the library and made it more user-friendly, leading to renewed interest among the machine learning community.

Code Style and Function

In TensorFlow 2.0, you can use eager execution, which is how Python normally works. Eager execution evaluates operations immediately, so you can write your code using Python control flow rather than graph control flow. To see this in action, you’ll take a look at how you would multiply two tensors using both Tensorflow 1.0 and 2.0.

To start, here’s an example of how to multiply tensors using TensorFlow 2.0. With eager execution, all you need is tf.math.multiply():

Python >>> import tensorflow as tf >>> x = [[2., 4., 6.]] >>> y = [[1.], [3.], [5.]] >>> m = tf.math.multiply(x, y) >>> m <tf.Tensor: shape=(3, 3), dtype=float32, numpy= array([[ 2., 4., 6.], [ 6., 12., 18.], [10., 20., 30.]], dtype=float32)> Copied!

In this code, you declare your tensors using Python’s list notation, and tf.math.multiply() executes the element-wise multiplication immediately when you call it.

Before TensorFlow 2.0, you had to manually stitch together an abstract syntax tree by making tf.* API calls. You then had to pass a set of output tensors and input tensors to a session.run() call and manually compile the model.

A Session object is a class for running TensorFlow operations. It contains the environment in which Tensor objects are evaluated and Operation objects are executed, and it can own resources like tf.Variable objects. The most common way to use a Session is as a context manager.

To see how a Session is used in this way, here’s an example of how you multiply two tensors using the old TensorFlow 1.0 method:

Python >>> import tensorflow as tf >>> tf.compat.v1.disable_eager_execution() >>> x = tf.compat.v1.placeholder(tf.float32, name = "x") >>> y = tf.compat.v1.placeholder(tf.float32, name = "y") >>> multiply = tf.math.multiply(x, y) >>> with tf.compat.v1.Session() as session: ... m = session.run( ... multiply, feed_dict={x: [[2., 4., 6.]], y: [[1.], [3.], [5.]]} ... ) ... print(m) [[ 2. 4. 6.] [ 6. 12. 18.] [10. 20. 30.]] Copied!

This code uses TensorFlow 2.x’s tf.compat API to access TensorFlow 1.x methods and disable eager execution.

You first declare the input tensors x and y using tf.compat.v1.placeholder tensor objects. Then you define the operation to perform on them. Note that nothing has been calculated at this point.

Next, using the tf.Session object as a context manager, you create a container to encapsulate the runtime environment and do the multiplication by feeding real values into the placeholders with a feed_dict. Finally, still inside the session, you print() the result.

Note: Keep in mind that because TensorFlow 1.0 has been deprecated, it probably isn’t the best option for your future projects, and you should stick with using TensorFlow 2.0.

Read the full article at https://realpython.com/pytorch-vs-tensorflow/ »

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

Last month, I asked for help migrating python-debianbts to zeep, a SOAP library that would replace the now unmaintained pysimplesoap. The main blocker was the lack of a proper WSDL file provided by Debian’s BTS software, debbugs.

Peter De Wachter pointed out other issues with debbugs’ SOAP implementation and provided a patch that solves the whole issue by removing the dependency on an external SOAP library altogether by implementing the required bits of the SOAP protocol directly in python-debianbts. The new version is completely backwards compatible, and the test suites of python-debianbts and reportbug are still passing.

Apparently, while working on this patch, Peter also uncovered an issue with the type hints defined in Python’s xml.etree module, for which he also provided a patch. Really great work!

I’ve uploaded the new version to Debian/experimental for now to get some exposure and feedback, before uploading it to unstable.

Peter, thank you very much for your support, I really appreciate it!

Dries announced the Starshot initiative, a default CMS config for easy Drupal project creation, prioritizing no-code and low-code features. 1xINTERNET supports the strategy to promote Drupal through pre-configured application and will contribute to Starshot's success.

The PSF’s Grants Program is a key plank in our charitable mission to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers. After much research, input, and analysis, we are pleased to share a PSF Grants Program 2022 & 2023 Transparency Report. The report includes context, numbers, analysis, and a proposed path forward. It also includes a supplemental analysis of several specific grant applications for which we were requested to share more information.

We feel it is important to acknowledge that Pythonistas, regional communities, and the broader community are behind these statistics and commentary. Our community called for this report to be created. While the report is focused on data and outcomes, we also feel it is important to acknowledge in this introduction the concerns and frustrations that brought us here, explained further in the ‘Setting context’ section below. We hope that this report, along with many other steps, helps to remediate this.

This report reflects the outcome of thousands of hours of PSF and volunteer efforts over 2022 and 2023 by the Grants Working Group, the PSF Board, Python organizers, and PSF Staff worldwide. We truly value this opportunity to share information on the last two years of increasing grants to the community and to improve our Grants Program while honoring the hard work of everyone involved in making the Program and our mission possible.

This report was compiled by PSF Staff and reviewed by the PSF Board and Grants Working Group. If you have questions, comments, or feedback about the Grants Program or this report, please email grants@pyfound.org.
 

Setting context

In December of 2023, we received an open letter from a coalition of organizers from the pan-African Python community asking the PSF to address concerns and frustrations around our Grants Program. Before receiving the letter, the PSF Board was aware of the Grant application that spurred this letter and published a transparency blog post regarding the September and October 2023 Board votes concerning that application. PSF Staff were aware of a need for a refresh of Grants Program documentation and processes and worked on these updates time allowing. Since receiving the letter in December, the PSF Board and Staff have:

• Spent time listening during many discussions with the letter writers and other community members.
• Re-prioritized reviewing and rewriting Grant-related documentation and processes, including revisiting the Grants Working Group Charter.
• Established monthly Grants Program Office Hours.
• Contracted Carol Willing to perform a DjangoCon Africa Grants Process Retrospective which is now available on the PSF Blog.

For a high-level idea of the scope of our Grants Program, we are happy to share:

• The PSF distributed $393K in Grants during 2022 and $623K during 2023 for the Grants Program and the PyCon US Travel Grants Program combined.
• The Grants Program distributed $215K in Grants during 2022 and $393K during 2023. 
• Noting this Transparency Report is focused on the Grants Program only. If you want to learn more about travel grants check out the Travel Grants Process for PyCon US 2024 blog post on the PyCon US blog.
  

The growth we saw from 2022 to 2023 is exciting to reflect on, and we’re looking forward to what 2024 and beyond has in store for our Grants Program!

  The numbers (in graph form)

 

Thanks to Tania Allard for helping improve the readability and accessibility of the graphs provided in this report.

Our analysis  General Trends, Observations, & Notes

• In 2022, Grants requests were not at “full capacity” as our community was still recovering from the impact of COVID-19 on events, initiatives, and collective burnout.
• The increase in total grant applications we received from 2023 over 2022 is encouraging. The program grew in 2023 as we began to return to in-person and hybrid events, and we anticipate more applications coming in throughout 2024 and beyond.

 Number of Total Grant Applications by Continent

• In both 2022 & 2023, we received the most number of applications from Africa and Europe, with South America not far behind.

 Percentage of Grants Approved

• The percentage of approved vs. declined applications is reasonable. Some reasons applications were denied include:
• Unable to meet PSF Grants Program criteria
• Unclear benefit to funding the application
• Not Python related
• Spam

 Percentage of Grant Applications by Continent

• The percentages across continents are reasonably balanced, with fewer applications from Asia, North America, and Oceania. Based on the distribution of populations globally, the percentage of applications from Asia is lower than expected. After receiving input on this directly from PyCon organizers from Asia, we have come to understand that this is based on an approach focused on sustainability. PyCon organizers in Asia are focused on local sponsorship, fiscal responsibility, and independence. We absolutely commend this approach, and at the same time, we urge organizers from Asia to request Grant funding to supplement and enhance their events.
• Additionally, note that we cannot award Grants to certain countries in Asia due to OFAC and our status as a US-based 501c3 non-profit.

 Approved & Declined Grant Applications by Continent

• The number of declined applications from Africa shows an area for improvement. Our conclusion is that our documentation is not clear enough on the requirements for a grant to be awarded and that results in applications that will not pass.

 Dollar Amount Granted by Continent & Percentage of Money Granted by Continent

• This graph appears to show that Europe received disproportionate funding. On further review, we believe this is because the grant applications we got from Europe were for conferences. In contrast, a large number of the grant applications from other regions were for meetups and workshops, including many Django Girls events. Conferences typically cost significantly more than meetups. Here’s a breakdown:

Continent Applications Received in 2022 Granted in 2022 Applications Received in 2023 Granted in 2023 Africa 4 conferences, 7 meetups 3 conferences, 7 meetups 7 Conferences, 16 meetups 5 conferences, 13 meetups Europe 12 conferences, 1 meetup 11 conferences, 1 meetup 15 conferences, 2 meetups 15 conferences, 2 meetups .table { display: block; overflow-y: hidden; overflow-x: auto; scroll-behavior: smooth; } .table thead { display: table-header-group; vertical-align: middle; border-color: inherit; color: white; background: darkcyan; } tr { display: table-row; vertical-align: inherit; border-color: inherit; } table th { padding: 16px; text-align: inherit; border-bottom: 1px solid black; color:white!important; } tbody { display: table-row-group; vertical-align: middle; border-color: inherit; } table:not(.tr-caption-container) { min-width: 100%; border-radius: 3px; }

• We are encouraged to see the dollar amount granted to the Africa region rise significantly between 2022 and 2023.

 Average Amount Granted by Continent

• Oceania is an outlier; the PSF received one application in 2022 and two in 2023 from Oceania. Many more grants were awarded to other regions, which caused their average dollar amount to be lower. With that in mind, we feel the average is reasonable. It means that we are receiving both large and small grant applications!
• Africa and South America received less on average than other regions. This is another example of the typical types of grant requests we are receiving from different regions (workshops and meetups vs. large conferences).

 Grant Decision Times in Weeks by Number & Percentage of Applications

• The majority of the average grant review period is 4 weeks, which we feel is reasonable based on the process and load of grant applications we receive.
• When we reviewed applications that took longer than 4 weeks to decide, we found a couple of scenarios.
• One of the main reasons for longer decision times is that applications are sometimes submitted without crucial information, and there is significant time spent on communications between applicants, PSF Staff, and the Grants Working Group. Once requested, there are often delays in receiving the required information back from applicants.
• The grant application was escalated to the Board who meet on a monthly basis. Grants can be escalated to the Board either because the amount requested is greater than $10,000 or because the Grants Working Group cannot reach a consensus on a decision.

 Grant Program Average Days to Decide by Continent

• This graph also shows Oceania as an outlier, and, again, it is skewed because we received only one application in 2022 and only two in 2023 applications from that region.
• In 2023, applications from Asia took longer to reach decisions. When we looked into this further, we found that the reasons for delays were that applications were submitted without the required information and that significant time was spent on communications between applicants, PSF Staff, and the Grants Working Group.
• We are pleased to see that the average number of days is very close across most regions. 

 
Supplemental information on specific grant requests

The open letter we received from the pan-African Python community asked us to specifically review the process and share information about several older grant applications from 2018, 2019, and 2022. We want to share as much information as possible while noting that some of these requests were managed by folks who have since moved on from the PSF and Grants Working Group (GWG).

Introducing Python and related technologies to more high schools in Uganda (2018)

• Grant request submitted January 2nd, 2018
• Requesting funding for four events in different schools for the 7-9 February, 12-14 February, 19-21 February, 26 Feb-1 March, of 2018.
• GWG Chair forwarded request to the GWG January 4th
• GWG reviewed and needed more information
• GWG Chair requested more information and forwarded that to GWG on January 12th
• GWG Chair acknowledged to the GWG on February 7th that the request was dropped
• No further comments added or actions taken

 PyLadies Fest in Kampala, Uganda (2019)

• Grant request submitted February 21st, 2019
• Requesting funding for a five day event starting on May 6th, 2019
• GWG Chair requested more information
• GWG Chair forwarded request and additional information to the GWG on March 25th
• GWG reviewed and needed more information
• GWG Chair requested more information and forwarded a reply to GWG on April 26th saying the grant requestor was working on solidifying the necessary information
• GWG Chair forwarded additional information to the GWG on July 10th and advised the GWG the event was rescheduled for September 16th
• No further comments added or actions taken

 PyLadies Kampala Open Source Workshop (2022)

• Grant request submitted September 20, 2022
• Requesting funding for a one day event for November 26th, 2022.
• GWG Chair requested more information, which was provided on September 26th
• GWG Chair forwarded request to GWG on October 20th
• GWG reviewed and no one objected
• GWG Chair moved the request to a vote on October 31st
• Board Member contacted PSF Staff for an update on November 2nd
• GWG approved the request and the GWG Chair sent the Resolution to the grant requester on November 3rd

 Our comments

We do not have many insights into the administration of these Grant requests outside of what exists on the GWG mailing list, including any off list emails or in-person conversations that might have occurred. The PSF Staff administering the GWG for the grant requests from 2018 and 2019 are no longer on the team. The request from 2022, which was approved, was 2 days over our goal of 6 week turnaround time for decisions on grant applications.

While our staff roster is currently small, it was even smaller in 2018 and 2019. We realized some time ago that as our grant requests increased having a solo administrator for the GWG was tough- it was hard for our staff to catch a break! When we put out a call for a Community Communications Manager in June of 2023, we planned for whoever stepped into that role to be a second administrator for the GWG to always have a stopgap at the ready. Our current administration for the GWG now includes two PSF Staff members. This is done purposefully to avoid situations where applications get dropped because a critical piece of information comes just as someone is scheduled to be out of the office or an emergency happens.

A path forward

Some of our goals:

• Review, rewrite, and improve the Grants Working Group Charter, including exploring various decision-making options and criteria.
• Review, rewrite, and improve documentation so that:
• Applicants can be confident that their application meets the Grants Program criteria before submitting.
• Reduce the need for follow-ups for additional information that can cause delays.
• Continue to host the PSF Grants Program Office Hours to increase ongoing transparency, support grant applicants, and understand the gaps in our documentation.
• Analyze and deliberate on the equity of designating grant funding allocated by region.
• Explore ways that the PSF could regularly support the organization of large-scale events in underserved regional communities.  
• Examine and update our processes regarding timeframes, including escalating grant applications after 4 weeks of review to avoid 8-week review periods.
• We’d like to receive more applications in the future by continuing to publicize the opportunity and providing support during our Office Hours.
• Revisit the effectiveness and sustainability of the Grants Program yearly.

 A final note

We hope this transparency report will help our community understand the state of our Grants Program over the last two years. It has been instructive to the Board, the Grants Working Group, and our staff who administer the program to understand where our strengths and weaknesses lay. This report will inform our efforts as we progress with improvements to the Grants Program. We also feel this exercise will continue to be helpful year over year, to both monitor the health of and analyze how our improvement efforts have impacted the success of the Grants Program.

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please email grants@pyfound.org.

A growing trend is seen in governments favouring free and open-source solutions (FOSS) for their official websites. The potential benefits of FOSS include enhanced security, flexibility, and cost savings. But how widespread is this trend, and which specific systems are gaining traction? To understand the scope of this trend, we examined the official websites of 195 countries globally. This analysis digs deeper into the trend of governments favouring free and open-source solutions for their online presence, uncovering which CMS systems—including Drupal, WordPress, and others—are most preferred for official government communication.

Os vídeos das palestras MiniDebConf BH 2024 estão disponíveis nos links abaixo:

• Youtube
• Peertube
• Arquivos

As fotos do evento estão nos links abaixo:

• Google photos
• Nextcloud

E os arquivos usados nas apresentações estão aqui:

• Repositório

Em breve divulgaremos um relato sobre o evento, aguardem :-)

Drupal beria 2024 brings together Spanish and Portuguese Drupal communities for the first time. Set in Évora on May 10th, this event, organized by Associação Drupal Portugal and Asociación Española de Drupal, aims to foster collaboration and unity. With a biennial format, it promises engaging sessions and keynotes, supporting both seasoned professionals and newcomers.

This week, approximately 1,400 Drupal enthusiasts came together for DrupalCon North America in Portland, Oregon. As a matter of tradition, I delivered my State of Drupal keynote, often referred to as "DriesNote". In case you missed it, you can watch the video or download my slides (385 MB).

This year's keynote was inspired by President John F. Kennedy's famous "Moonshot" speech. After being global leaders, the U.S. had fallen behind in the Space Race. Challenged by the Soviet cosmonaut program, President Kennedy rallied Americans around the ambitious goal of landing on the moon before the decade was out.

Drupal Starshot, a new version of Drupal

Drupal has always been known for its low-code capabilities. However, many competitors now offer similar features, and in some areas, they even surpass what Drupal provides. While Drupal is celebrated for its robustness, it can be challenging for newcomers, especially those with limited technical expertise. So in my keynote, I was excited to introduce Drupal Starshot, our "Moonshot" to make Drupal more accessible and easier to use.

Twenty-three years after Drupal's inception, we are preparing to launch a second official version of Drupal. For the time being, we're calling this second version "Drupal CMS". It will be built on top of Drupal Core and common contributed modules, and available as a separate download alongside Drupal Core. Wireframe of the Drupal.org download page featuring two options: Drupal CMS (Drupal Starshot) and Drupal Core, with Drupal CMS being promoted as the preferred starting point for most.

Drupal Starshot will be designed to have a great out-of-the-box experience. It will enable Ambitious Site Builders without Drupal experience to easily create a new Drupal site and extend it with pre-packaged recipes, all using their browser.

The vision for Drupal Starshot is the outcome of highly productive brainstorming sessions with Drupal Core Committers, the Drupal Association, colleagues at Acquia, various Drupal agencies, and others.

From an implementation standpoint, it will primarily rely on the Project Browser and Recipes initiatives, while also incorporating elements from the Experience Builder initiative. We actually started prototyping Drupal Starshot a few weeks ago and showcased our progress at DrupalCon. Our goal is to launch a first version of Drupal Starshot within 8 months.

At DrupalCon, hundreds of people pledged to get involved, and we had two "super BoFs" with over 50 people each. If you're interested in getting involved with the Drupal Starshot project, you can register your interest at https://drupal.org/starshot. Additionally, join the conversation in the #Starshot channel on Drupal Slack.

Drupal's brand refresh and marketing strategy

Alongside our technical efforts, we've launched a bold marketing strategy. At DrupalCon Lille, I discussed the need for a fresh marketing approach. Since then, we've made tremendous progress.

I introduced a Drupal brand refresh, which includes updated brand guidelines to ensure a consistent and modern visual identity. This refresh aims to invigorate our brand – making it more vibrant and appealing to newcomers, while still honoring our history and representing our diverse, global community.

I couldn't cover all the details around the brand refresh in my keynote, so I'm expanding on them in this blog post. For a detailed explanation of Drupal's refreshed brand, check out this video by Shawn Perritt: Drupal 2024 brand refresh explained.

Our efforts went beyond just a brand refresh. The Marketing Committee has also guided the community in developing a comprehensive marketing toolkit, which includes messaging guides, pitch decks, and more. All these resources will be available at https://www.drupal.org/marketing.

Let's reach for the stars

As we advance with Drupal Starshot, I recall President Kennedy's famous words:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

Embracing the Drupal Starshot initiative reflects a similar ethos; we're not choosing the easy path, but the one that tests our strength, creativity, and ability to do hard things. The success of Drupal Starshot will be a testament to the incredible collective power of the Drupal community. It's a challenge we are also unwilling to postpone, and intend to win.

Drupal Starshot is more than a technological leap; it represents a shift in how we think, innovate, and collaborate. It's about reaching for the stars and making the Open Web accessible to everyone.

Thank you for being part of this journey. I can't wait to see where it takes us together. The feedback from the last two days at DrupalCon has been overwhelmingly positive. I am more committed than ever and excited to pledge a significant amount of my time to this mission, and to the future of Drupal.

KGraphViewer 2.5.0 has been just released! The main focus of this release is the port to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 as well as general code modernisation, but of course some bugs have been squashed too. The full changelog can be found below.

About KGraphViewer:

KGraphViewer is a Graphviz DOT graph file viewer, aimed to replace the other outdated Graphviz tools. Graphs are commonly used in scientific domains and particularly in computer science.

You can learn more at https://apps.kde.org/kgraphviewer/

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/kgraphviewer/2.5.0/
SHA256: 872bee63fb4df6f7fb2b4eaf02ff825cba3ca953ac02509a287fe5cd0f1e2b69
Signed by: D81C 0CB3 8EB7 25EF 6691 C385 BB46 3350 D6EF 31EF Heiko Becker heiko.becker@kde.org
https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/release-keyring/-/raw/master/keys/heikobecker@key1.asc

Full changelog:

• appstream: Add upcoming 2.5.0 release
• Brush up menu & action terms a bit
• Add icons to more actions & submenus
• Update homepage URL in README
• Remove some outdated/unused files
• Avoid double look-ups in maps, use iterator returned from find method
• Add widget parent to QMenu instances
• DotGraphView: create popup menu only on demand
• Share also zoom actions between DotGraphView & KGraphViewerPart
• Use enum QColor constructor instead of string based one
• Use KStandardAction convenience creation methods, parent all to collecitions
• Drop file_open_recent from ui.rc files, given KStandardAction toolbar magic
• Use more member-function-pointer-based Qt signal/slot connects
• Port away from auto-casting from ascii strings
• Fix missing closing tags in D-Bus API xml files
• Use QList directly instead of Qt6-times alias QVector
• Make manual build & install fully optional
• Update links to graphviz website
• Fix handling file cmdl arguments with relative path
• Fix bad defaults for fonts, also for colors, shapes & style
• KGraphViewerPart CMake config file: drop KGraphViewerPart_INCLUDE_DIRS
• Bump version & SO version for first Qt6-based release
• Drop support for Qt5/KF5
• Clean up includes & forward declares
• Do not use Qt modules includes
• Deploy custom pixmaps as Qt resource
• Printing page settings: remove custom broken window icon
• Printing page settings: replace "lock ratio" button with checkbox
• KGraphViewer KPart metadata: use normal app display name as name
• Drop libkgraphviewer appstream file, no other libraries provide some
• Set target properties right after declaring the target
• Remove unused version header includes
• Drop code for no longer supported KF versions
• Fix another wrong min Qt version variable name usage
• Use ECMDeprecationSettings
• Port away from deprecated QMouseEvent::globalPos()
• KGraphEditor: fix bad port to QMessageBox::question
• Use Q_EMIT instead of emit
• Switch to ECM required-default KDE_COMPILERSETTINGS_LEVEL
• Remove unneeded ; after Q_DECLARE_PRIVATE() & Q_DECLARE_PUBLIC()
• Use more nullptr
• Fix wrong min Qt version variable name usage
• Add Qt6/KF6 build support
• Remove unneeded QApp::setOrganizationDomain, dupl. KAboutData::setApp...Data
• appdate: use desktop-application type, add developer & launchable tags
• Update homepage to apps.kde.org
• Port away from deprecated QDesktopWidget
• Port away from deprecated QPrinter::setOrientation()
• Port away from deprecated QPrinter::numCopies()
• Port away from deprecated operator+(Qt::Modifier, Qt::Key)
• Port away from deprecated QWheelEvent::delta()/orientation()
• Port away from deprecated signal QButtonGroup::buttonClicked(int)
• Port away from deprecated I18N_NOOP2
• Port away from deprecated KXmlGui RESTORE() macro
• Bump min required Qt/KF to 5.15.2/5.100.0
• Port away from deprecated QLayout::setMargin()
• Add missing includes for Qt6 build
• Remove unused include
• Drop usage of outdated no-effect QGraphicsView::DontClipPainter
• Port away from deprecated QStyle::PM_DefaultLayoutSpacing
• change QFontMetrics.width with horizontalAdvance
• replace QRegExp by QRegularExpression
• Use for instead of foreach
• Replace deprecated endl with Qt variant
• remove -qt5 suffix
• change path in gitlab-ci
• snapcraft: initial import snapcraft files.
• kgrapheditor: deploy ui.rc file as Qt resource
• Remove Designer's "." normaloff file data from icon properties in .ui files
• Add explicit moc includes to sources for moc-covered headers
• doc: use a non-deprecated entity for Frameworks
• Add releases
• Add Open Age Content Rating
• Remove warning about unknown DOT fonts
• Remove custom action to configure shortcuts
• Init graph members
• Remove unused graphviz/gvc.h includes
• Add KI18n and KDocTools macro to install translations
• Port away from deprecated KMessageBox Yes/No API
• Remove arcconfig
• Add interface library for part include dir
• Handle Qt6 change around enterEvent
• Add missing include
• Remove unused include
• Port away from deprecated KPluginLoader
• Port away from deprecated endl
• Adapt build system to Qt6
• Remove pointless/broken icons
• Enable highdpi pixmaps
• Add git blame ignore file
• Add GitLab CI
• Use ecm_qt_install_logging_categories to generate kdebugsettings file
• Drop code variants for no longer supported Qt/KF versions
• Use more target-centric cmake code
• Update .gitignore
• Use non-deprecated KDEInstallDirs variables
• Port away from deprecated KSelectAction::triggered(QString)
• Documentation updates - Update date and fix version numbers - Fix tagging and sync option's text
• Port away from deprecated QMatrix
• KAboutData::setupCommandLine() already adds help & version options
• kgraphviewer_part.desktop: remove unused key Categories
• Use .in suffix for header file that is passed to configure_file()
• Port away from deprecated signal QProcess::error
• Use default window flags for QInputDialog::getText
• Port away from deprecated KEditToolBar::newToolbarConfig
• Port to new KPluginMetaData-based KParts API
• Deploy ui.rc files as Qt resources
• Remove broken argument SERVICE_TYPES kpart.desktop from desktop2json call
• Handle Graphviz capitalization changes
• Capitalize Graphviz consistently
• cmake: Simplify and improve FindGraphviz.cmake
• Add KDE ClangFormat on CMake and run the target
• Fix link: ui.html -> menus.html
• Draw empty arrowheads closed
• add genericname for use on kde.org/applications
• Set StartupWMClass in desktop file
• Use more https in links (and update outdated ones)

Massif Visualizer 0.8.0 has been just released! The main focus of this release is the port to Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6 as well as general code modernisation, but of course some bugs have been squashed too. The full changelog can be found below.

About Massif Visualizer:

Massif Visualizer is a tool that - who'd guess that - visualizes massif data. You run your application in Valgrind with --tool=massif and then open the generated file in the visualizer. Gzip or Bzip2 compressed massif files can also be opened transparently.

You can learn more at https://apps.kde.org/massif-visualizer/

URL: https://download.kde.org/stable/massif-visualizer/0.8.0/src/
SHA256: 5fad3f0e0d9fbb6bc8cfb744cb4e2c99f231d57ee0dd66dd594d36c2cc588a80
Signed by: D81C 0CB3 8EB7 25EF 6691 C385 BB46 3350 D6EF 31EF Heiko Becker heiko.becker@kde.org
https://invent.kde.org/sysadmin/release-keyring/-/raw/master/keys/heikobecker@key1.asc

Full changelog:

• appdata: Add upcoming 0.8.0 release
• Unbreak KDE CI config: require "@stable-kf6" branch of kgraphviewer
• KDE CI: require tests to pass (for platforms where they currently do)
• KDE CI config: require "@same" branch of kgraphviewer
• appstream: use new id without hyphen
• Port away from QScopedPointer
• ParseWorker: fix switched error title & text for empty data file
• Overhaul action & title texts to follow KDE HIG, add more UI marker contexts
• Config dialog: align "Shorten Templates" checkbox with form fields
• Config dialog: avoid full-width comboboxes, use system style
• Update outdated Kate editor setting replace-trailing-space-save
• Use more function-pointer-based Qt signal/slot connections
• Remove some unused includes
• Use KStandardAction (member-)function-pointer-based overloads
• Use ECM-requirement-derived default KDE_COMPILERSETTINGS_LEVEL
• Drop any margins around document & tool views
• Use QList directly instead of Qt6-times alias QVector
• Switch from target_link_libraries' legacy LINK_PRIVATE to PRIVATE
• Use more target-centric cmake code
• CMake: remove unneeded explicit addition of current dirs to include dirs
• Fix build with older cmake: -D not expected with COMPILE_DEFINITIONS
• Update homepage to apps.kde.org
• Use commits.kde.org/kgraphviewer as source location for KGraphViewerPart
• Set version to 0.8.0
• Use CMake's project(VERSION)
• Drop support for Qt5/KF5
• Support Qt6/KF6 builds
• Rely on CMake's autorcc (enabled by KDECMakeSettings) to add Qt resources
• Use ECMDeprecationSettings
• Use KF6-proof KConfigGroup::group() overload
• Port away from deprecated KPluginFactory::create() overload
• Port away from deprecated KPluginLoader::factory()
• Port away from deprecated KFilterDev
• Port away from deprecated QPrinter::pageRect()
• Port away from deprecated QDesktopWidget
• Port away from deprecated QString::split overload
• Port away from deprecated QPixmap::grabWidget
• Port away from deprecated QTreeView::sortByColumn overload
• Port away from ModelTest copy to QAbstractItemModelTester
• Adapt iterator type to match actual type returned from QHash method
• Add explicit QRegExp includes
• Port away from deprecated QAlgorithmsPrivate::qReverse
• Port away from deprecated qSort
• Bump min required CMake/Qt/ECM/KF to 3.16/5.15.2/5.100/5.100
• appstream: use https for screenshot links
• appstream: use desktop-application type, add developer & launchable tags
• Appdata: Add developer name
• [CI/CD] Add flatpak job
• [CI] Don't depend on kgraphviewer on Windows
• Port to new CI template syntax
• snapcraft: initial import snapcraft files.
• Deploy ui.rc files as Qt resource
• Move Flatpak CI to GitLab
• Add explicit moc includes to sources for moc-covered headers
• Use non-deprecated KDEInstallDirs variables
• Install translations
• Port away from deprecated KMessageBox::sorry
• Remove arcconfig
• Remove unused include
• Use imported target for KGraphViewerPart
• debug
• Add Gitlab CI
• Remove unused XmlPatterns
• Add some missing linkages
• Use KDE_INSTALL_MIMEDIR instead of custom XDG_MIME_INSTALL_DIR
• appdata.xml: Minor fixes for submission to Flathub
• Fix minor issues found by EBN
• fix xml
• update screenshot
• Set StartupWMClass in desktop file
• ui.rc files: use <gui> instead of deprecated <kpartgui>
• Do not duplicate work done by KAboutData::setupCommandLine()
• Use nullptr
• Use override
• Fix window icon for non-desktopfile WM to own icon "massif-visualizer"
• Properly support BUILD_TESTING
• Remove explicit enable_testing(), duplicated from KDECMakeSettings
• Bump min cmake version to 3.0
• Remove explicit use of ECM_KDE_MODULE_DIR, is part of ECM_MODULE_PATH
• Fix minor EBN issues

Humans are pattern-matching machines. As a species, it is our superpower. To summarize the core of my own epistemic philosophy, here is a brief list of the activities in the core main-loop of a human being:

1. stuff happens to us
2. we look for patterns in the stuff
3. we weave those patterns into narratives
4. we turn the narratives into models of the world
5. we predict what will happen based on those models
6. we do stuff based on those predictions
7. based on the stuff we did, more stuff happens to us; return to step 1

While this ability lets humans do lots of great stuff, like math and physics and agriculture and so on, we can just as easily build bad stories and bad models. We can easily trick ourselves into thinking that our predictive abilities are more powerful than they are.

The existence of magic-seeming levels of prediction in fields like chemistry and physics and statistics, in addition to the practical usefulness of rough estimates and heuristics in daily life, itself easily creates a misleading pattern. “I see all these patterns and make all these predictions and I’m right a lot of the time, so if I just kind of wing it and predict some more stuff, I’ll also be right about that stuff.”

This leaves us very vulnerable to things like mean world syndrome. Mean world syndrome itself is specifically about danger, but I believe it is a manifestation of an even broader phenomenon which I would term “the apophenia of despair”.

Confirmation bias is an inherent part of human cognition, but the internet has turbocharged it. Humans have immediate access to more information than we ever had in the past. In order to cope with that information, we have also built ways to filter that information. Even disregarding things like algorithmic engagement maximization and social media filter bubbles, the simple fact that when you search for things, you are a lot more likely to find the thing that you’re searching for than to find arguments refuting it, can provide a very strong sense that you’re right about whatever you’re researching.

All of this is to say: if you decide that something in the world is getting worse, you can very easily convince yourself that it is getting much, much worse, very rapidly. Especially because there are things which are, unambiguously, getting worse.

However, Pollyanna-ism is just the same phenomenon in reverse and I don’t want to engage in that. The ice sheets really are melting, globally, fascism really is on the rise. I am not here to deny reality or to cherry pick a bunch of statistics to lull people into complacency.

I believe that while dwelling on a negative reality is bad, I also believe that in the face of constant denial, it is sometimes necessary to simply emphasize those realities, however unpleasant they may be. Distinguishing between unhelpful rumination on negativity and repetition of an unfortunate but important truth to correct popular perception is subjective and subtle, but the difference is nevertheless important.

As our ability to acquire information about things getting worse has grown, our ability to affect those things has not. Knowledge is not power; power is power, and most of us don’t have a lot of it, so we need to be strategic in the way that we deploy our limited political capital and personal energy.

Overexposure to negative news can cause symptoms of depression; depressed people have reduced executive function and find it harder to do stuff. One of the most effective interventions against this general feeling of malaise? Hope.. Not “hope” in the sense of wishing. As this article in the American Psychological Association’s “Monitor on Psychology” puts it:

“We often use the word ‘hope’ in place of wishing, like you hope it rains today or you hope someone’s well,” said Chan Hellman, PhD, a professor of psychology and founding director of the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. “But wishing is passive toward a goal, and hope is about taking action toward it.”

Here, finally, I can get around to my point.

If you have an audience, and you have some negative thoughts about some social trend, talking about it in a way which is vague and non-actionable is potentially quite harmful. If you are doing this, you are engaged in the political project of robbing a large number of people of hope. You are saying that the best should have less conviction, while the worst will surely remain just as full of passionate intensity.

I do not mean to say that it is unacceptable to ever publicly share thoughts of sadness, or even hopelessness. If everyone in public is forced to always put on a plastic smile and pretend that everything is going to be okay if we have grit and determination, then we have an Instagram culture of fake highlight reels where anyone having their own struggles with hopelessness will just feel even worse in their isolation. I certainly posted my way through my fair share of pretty bleak mental health issues during the worst of the pandemic.

But we should recognize that while sadness is a feeling, hopelessness is a problem, a bad reaction to that feeling, one that needs to be addressed if we are going to collectively dig ourselves out of the problem that creates the sadness in the first place. We may not be able to conjure hope all the time, but we should always be trying.

When we try to address these feelings, as I said earlier, Pollyanna-ism doesn’t help. The antidote to hopelessness is not optimism, but curiosity. If you have a strong thought like “people these days just don’t care about other people1”, yelling “YES THEY DO” at yourself (or worse, your audience) is unlikely to make much of a change, and certainly not likely to be convincing to an audience. Instead, you could ask yourself some questions, and use them for a jumping-off point for some research:

1. Why do I think this — is the problem in my perception, or in the world?
2. If there is a problem in my perception, is this a common misperception? If it’s common, what is leading to it being common? If it’s unique to me, what sort of work do I need to do to correct it?
3. If the problem is real, what are its causes? Is there anything that I, or my audience, could do to address those causes?

The answers to these questions also inform step 6 of the process I outlined above: the doing stuff part of the process.

At some level, all communication is persuasive communication. Everything you say that another person might hear, everything you say that a person might hear, is part of a sprachspiel where you are attempting to achieve something. There is always an implied call to action; even “do nothing, accept the status quo” is itself an action. My call to action right now is to ask you to never make your call to action “you should feel bad, and you should feel bad about feeling bad”. When you communicate in public, your words have power.

Use that power for good.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my patrons who are supporting my writing on this blog. If you like what you’ve read here and you’d like to read more of it, or you’d like to support my various open-source endeavors, you can support my work as a sponsor! Special thanks also to Cassandra Granade, who provided some editorial feedback on this post; any errors, of course, remain my own.

1. I should also note that vague sentiments of this form, “things used to be better, now they’re getting worse”, are at their core a reactionary yearning for a prelapsarian past, which is both not a good look and also often wrong in a very common way. Complaining about how “people” are getting worse is a very short journey away from complaining about kids these days, which has a long and embarrassing history of being comprehensively incorrect in every era. ↩

I’ve been using E Ink-based ereaders for quite a number of years now. I’ve had my Kobo Libra 2 for a few years, and was looking forward to the Kobo Libra Colour — the first color E Ink display in a mainstream ereader line.

I found the display to be a mixed bag; contrast seemed a lot worse on B&W images, and the device “backlight” (it’s not technically a “back” light) seemed to cause a particular contrast reduction in dark mode. I went searching for information on this. I found a lot of videos on “Kobo Libra 2 vs Libra Colour” and so forth, but they were all pretty much useless. These were the mistakes they made:

• Being videos. Photos would show the differences in better detail.
• Shooting videos with cameras with automatic light levels. Since the thing we’re trying to evaluate here is how much darker the Kobo Libra Colour screen is than the Kobo Libra screen, having a camera that automatically adjusts for brighter or darker images defeats the purpose. Cell phone cameras (still and video) all do this by default and I saw evidence of it in all the videos.
• Placing the two devices side-by-side instead of in identical locations for subsequent shots. This led to different shadows on each device (because OF COURSE the people shooting videos had to have their phone and head between the light source and the device), again preventing a good comparison.

So I dug out my Canon DSLR, tripod, and set up shots. Every shot here is set at ISO 100. Every shot in the same setting has the same exposure settings, which I document. The one thing I forgot to shut off was automatic white balance; you can notice it is active if you look closely at the backgrounds, but WB isn’t really relevant to this comparison anyhow.

Because there has also been a lot of concern about how well fine B&W details will show up on the Kobo Libra Colour screen, I shot all photos using a PDF test image from the open source hplip package (testpage.ps.gz converted to PDF). This also rules out font differences between the devices. I ensured a full screen refresh before each shot.

This is all because color E Ink is effectively a filter called Kaleido over the B&W layer. This causes dimming and some other visual effects.

You can click on any image here to see a full-resolution view. The full-size images are the exact JPEG coming from the camera, with only two modifications: 1) metadata has been redacted for privacy reasons, and 2) some images were losslessly rotated after the shoot.

OK, onwards!

Outdoors, bright sun, shot from directly overhead

Bright sun is ideal lighting for an E Ink display. They need no lighting at all in this scenario, and in fact, if you turn on their internal display light, it will probably not be very noticeable. Of course, this is in contrast to phone LCD screens, for which bright sunlight is the worst.

Scene: Morning sunlight reaching the ereaders at an angle. The angle was sufficient so that no shadows were cast by the camera or tripod.

Device light: Off on both

Exposure: 1/160, f16, ISO 100

You can see how much darker the Libra Colour is here. Though in these bright conditions, it is still plenty bright. There may actually be situations in which the Libra 2 is too bright in direct sunlight, requiring a person to squint or whatnot.

Looking at the radial lines, it is a bit difficult to tell because the difference in brightness, but I don’t see a hugely obvious reduction in quality in the Libra 2. Later I have a shot where I try to match brightness, and we’ll check it out again there.

Outdoors, shade, shot from directly overhead

For the next shot, I set the ereaders in shade, but still well-lit with the diffuse sunlight from all around.

The first two have both device lights off. For the third, I set the device light on the Kobo Colour to 100%, full cool shade, to try to see how close I could get it to the Libra 2 brightness. (Sorry it looks like I forgot to close the toolbar on the Colour for this set, but it doesn’t modify the important bits of the underlying image.)

Device light: Initially off on both

Exposure: 1/60, f6.4, ISO 100

Here you can see the light on the Libra Colour was nearly able to match the brightness on the Libra 2.

Indoors, room lit with overhead and window light, device light off

We continue to move into dimmer light with this next shot.

Device light: Off on both

Exposure: 1/4, f5, ISO 100

Indoors, room lit with overhead and window light, device light on

Now we have the first head-to-head with the device light on. I set the Libra 2 to my favorite warmth setting, found a brightness that looked good, and then tried my best to match those settings on the Libra Colour. My camera’s light meter aided in matching brightness.

Device light: On (Libra 2 at 40%, Libra Colour at 59%)

Exposure: 1/8, f5, ISO 100

(Apparently I am terrible at remembering to dismiss menus, sigh.)

Indoors, dark room, dark mode, at an angle

The Kobo Libra Colour surprised me with its dark mode. When viewed at an oblique angle, the screen gets pretty washed out. I maintained the same brightness settings here as I did above. It is much more noticeable when the brightness is set down to my preferred nighttime level (4%), or with a more significant angle.

Since you can’t see my tags, the order of the photos here will be: Libra 2 (standard orientation), Colour (standard orientation), Colour (turned around.

Device light: On (as above)

Exposure: 1/4, f5.6, ISO 100

Notice how I said I maintained the same brightness settings as before, and yet the Libra Colour looks brighter than the Libra 2 here, whereas it looked the same in the prior non-dark mode photos. Here’s why. I set the exposure of each set of shots based on camera metering. As we have seen from the light-off photos, the brightness of a white pixel is a lot less on a Libra Colour than on the Libra 2. However, it is likely that the brightness of a black pixel is about that same. Therefore, contrast on the Libra Colour is lower than on the Libra 2. The traditional shot is majority white pixels, so to make the Libra Colour brightness match that of the Libra 2, I had to crank up the brightness on the Libra Colour to compensate for the darker “white” background. With me so far?

Now with the inverted image, you can see what that does. It doesn’t just raise the brightness of the white pixels, but it also raises the brightness of the black pixels. This is expected because we didn’t raise contrast, only brightness.

Also, in the last image, you can see it is brighter to the right. Again, other conditions that are more difficult to photograph make that much more pronounced. Viewing the Libra Colour from one side (but not the other), in dark mode, with the light on, produces noticeably worse contrast on one side.

Conclusions

This isn’t a slam dunk. Let’s walk through this:

I don’t think there is any noticeable loss of detail on the Libra Colour. The radial lines appeared as well defined on it as on the Libra 2. Oddly, with the backlight, some striations were apparent in the gray gradient test, but I wouldn’t be using an E Ink device for clear photographic reproduction anyhow.

If you read mostly black and white: If you had been using a Kobo Libra Colour and were handed a Libra 2, you would go, “Wow! What an upgrade! The screen is so much brighter!” There’s little reason to get a Libra Colour. The Libra 2 might be hard to find these days, but the new Clara BW (with a 6″ instead of the 7″ screen on the Libra series) might be just the thing for you. The Libra 2 is at home in any lighting, from direct sun to pitch black, and has all the usual E Ink benefits (eg, battery life measured in weeks) and drawbacks (slower refresh rate) that we’re all used to.

If you are interested in photographic color reproduction mostly indoors: Consider a small tablet. The Libra Colour’s 4096 colors are going to appear washed out compared to what you’re used to on a LCD screen.

If you are interested in color content indoors and out: The Libra Colour might be a good fit. It could work well for things where superb color rendition isn’t essential — for instance, news stories (the Pocket integration or Calibre’s news feature could be nice there), comics, etc.

In a moderately-lit indoor room, it looks like the Libra Colour’s light can lead it to results that approach Libra 2 quality. So if most of your reading is in those conditions, perhaps the Libra Colour is right for you.

As a final aside, I wrote in this article about the Kobo devices. I switched from Kindles to Kobos a couple of years ago due to the greater openness of the Kobo devices (you can add things like Nickel Menu and KOReader to them, and they have built-in support for more useful formats), their featureset, and their cost. The top-of-the-line Kindle devices will have a screen very similar if not identical to the Libra 2, so you can very easily consider this to be a comparison between the Oasis and the Libra Colour as well.

DrupalCon Portland (2024 edition) kicked off with a bang at the Oregon Convention Center yesterday. This is the third time the conference has been at this venue–and I’ve been fortunate enough to attend all three. And, this year’s iteration is shaping up to be a really significant entry in the DrupalCon codex. 

Today, we are excited to announce the general availability of the Data Wrangler extension for Visual Studio Code! Data Wrangler is a free extension that offers data viewing and cleaning that is directly integrated into VS Code and the Jupyter extension. It provides a rich user interface to view and analyze your data, show insightful column statistics and visualizations, and automatically generate Pandas code as you clean and transform the data. We want to thank all the early adopters who tried out the extension preview over the past year, as your valuable feedback has been crucial to this release.

With this general availability, we are also announcing that the data viewer feature in the Jupyter extension will be going away. In its place, you will be able to use the new and improved data viewing experience offered by Data Wrangler, which is also built by Microsoft. We understand that the data viewer was a beloved feature from our customers, and we see this as the next evolution to working with data in VS Code in an extensible manner and hope that you will love the Data Wrangler extension even more than the data viewer feature. Several of the improvements and features of Data Wrangler are highlighted below.

 

Previewing data

Once the Data Wrangler extension is installed, you can get to Data Wrangler in one of three ways from the Jupyter Notebook.

1. In the Jupyter > Variables panel, beside any supported data object, you can see a button to open it in Data Wrangler.
2. If you have a supported data object in your notebook (such as a Pandas DataFrame), you can now see an Open ‘df’ in Data Wrangler button (where ‘df’ is the variable name of your data frame) appear in bottom of the cell after running code that outputs the data frame. This includes df.head(), df.tail(), display(df), print(df), df.
3. In the notebook toolbar, selecting View data brings up a list of every supported data object in your notebook. You can then choose which variable in that list you want to open in Data Wrangler.

Alternatively, Data Wrangler can also be directly opened from a local file (such as CSV, Excel, or parquet files) by right clicking the file and selecting “Open in Data Wrangler”.

 

Filtering and sorting

Data Wrangler can be used to quickly filter and sort through your rows of data.

Transforming data

Switch from Viewing to Editing mode to unlock additional functionality and built-in data cleaning operations in Data Wrangler. For a full list of supported operations, see the documentation here.

 

Code generation

As you make changes to the data using the built-in operations, Data Wrangler automatically generates code using open-source Python libraries for the data transformation operations you perform.

When you are done wrangling your data, all the automatically generated code from your data cleaning session can then be exported either back into your Notebook, or into a new Python file.

 

Trying Data Wrangler today

To start using Data Wrangler today in Visual Studio Code, just download the Data Wrangler extension from the VS Code marketplace to try it out! You can then launch Data Wrangler from any supported data object in a Jupyter Notebook or direct from a data file.

This article only covered some of the high-level features of what Data Wrangler can do. To learn more about Data Wrangler in detail, please check out the Data Wrangler documentation.

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