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Armadillo is a powerful and expressive C++ template library for linear algebra and scientific computing. It aims towards a good balance between speed and ease of use, has a syntax deliberately close to Matlab, and is useful for algorithm development directly in C++, or quick conversion of research code into production environments. RcppArmadillo integrates this library with the R environment and languageβand is widely used by (currently) 1272 other packages on CRAN, downloaded 46.6 million times (per the partial logs from the cloud mirrors of CRAN), and the CSDA paper (preprint / vignette) by Conrad and myself has been cited 693 times according to Google Scholar.
This versions updates to the 15.2.7 upstream Armadillo release made today. The package has already been updated for Debian, and built for r2u. As the upstream was modest, we for once skipped reverse-dependency checks. That bet paid off as CRAN found no issues among the over 1270 reverse dependencies. However, one package referenced a package archived today, hence βinvisibleβ to CRAN and triggered a (false positive) NOTE of βreference to non-existing packageβ. We came close. Anyway, the package made it CRAN shortly thereafter following the standard brief email exchange explaining the false-positive nature of the NOTE.
All changes since the last CRAN release follow.
Changes in RcppArmadillo version 15.2.7-1 (2026-05-29)
Upgraded to Armadillo release 15.2.7 (Medium Roast Deluxe)
- More efficient checks for aliasing
Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is a diffstat report relative to previous release. More detailed information is on the RcppArmadillo page. Questions, comments etc should go to the rcpp-devel mailing list off the Rcpp R-Forge page.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can sponsor me at GitHub. You can also sponsor my Tour de Shore 2026 ride in support of the Maywood Fine Arts Center.
This month, we began rolling out more personalization for Taskbar and Start, two of the most used and most personal surfaces in Windows.
With these updates, you can move the taskbar to any edge of the screen, choose icon alignment based on its position, and use app labels across positions to make open windows easier to tell apart. Thereβs also a new smaller taskbar option to help reclaim screen space.
Weβre also making Start easier to shape around how you work. New controls let you independently show or hide sections like Pinned, Recommended, and All apps, adjust Start menu size, and hide your name and profile picture for more privacy. The Recommended section is also being updated to Recent, with better file relevancy, so surfaced content better reflects what youβre actually working on.
These updates have started to roll out in the Experimental Channel. Read more about the considerations and improvements weβre bringing to taskbar and Start in the recent blog post from Diego Baca.
Screenshot showing setup of voice isolation.[/caption]
Accessibility work in Windows often shows up across many different parts of the experience, because people use their PCs in different ways and in different environments.
For voice, one of the most common pieces of feedback we hear is sensitivity to background noise. With Voice Isolation in Voice Access, Windows can better focus on the speaker and reduce the impact of surrounding noise, helping commands come through more consistently without needing to change where or how youβre working.
Weβre also adding more ways to personalize how Windows looks and feels. New options like screen tint make it easier to adjust color and opacity based on preference or lighting conditions, giving people more control during longer sessions.
Weβre continuing to improve Magnifier as well, making it easier to set precise zoom levels and adjust zoom directly within the experience without needing to go into Settings.
Finally, we added new gesture-related controls for precision touchpads in Settings, including automatic scrolling, gesture speed controls, accelerated scrolling, and optional single-finger scrolling support.
These are areas we hear about regularly in feedback. The changes are gradual, but they help reduce friction and make Windows easier to use in more moments.
These updates began rolling out in the Experimental channel earlier this month.
Screenshot of the updated Start settings showing the new section-level toggles.[/caption]
Acer's Swift Air 14
Qualcomm's Snapdragon C processor
In September 2025, I attended the annual LibreOffice conference in Budapest, Hungary. This gave me an opportunity to explore the city, which I will cover in this post.
Letβs start with the currency. Although Hungary is a part of the European Union (EU), it doesnβt use the euro as its currency. Instead, it uses Hungarian forints (denoted by βFtβ). During my time in Hungary, 1 Indian rupee was equal to 4 Hungarian forints.
After reaching the Budapest airport, I bought a 15-day public transport pass. The public transport counter is after you pass customs and immigration. The pass allows unlimited use of public transport in the city. I had to show my passport and pay 5950 Ft to get the pass. The pass had my passport number mentioned on it. The public transport passes can also be bought at any of the tram stations as well.
This is the counter from where I bought my public transport pass.
My unlimited public transport pass for Budapest. I have redacted my passport number from it.
An automatic ticket machine at a tram station in Budapest.
Budapest is a union of two citiesβBuda and Pestβlying on opposite sides of the Danube River. My hotelβCorvin Hotelβwas on the Pest side.
Budapest had good public transport. The buses, metros, and trams complemented each other. For example, the airport didnβt have metro or tram connectivity, but it was served by the bus. Most of the metro was on the Pest side, with only a couple of stations falling in Buda. However, both sides had an extensive network of trams.
Furthermore, the information about the public transport was easily accessible. For instance, the map of tram stops inside the trams also included the bus routes one could get after alighting at those stops.
From the airport, I took a bus followed by taking a metro on the M3 line to reach within walking distance of my hotel.
An M3 line metro in Budapest.
During the conference I would take the tram to the conference venue. The trams were modern and fast. They also had a smiley face at the front, which gave them a friendly look. It seemed like the trams were happily doing their job. The city also had a good pedestrian infrastructure along with separate cycling tracks.
A tram in Budapest having a smiley face at the front.
Budapestβs tap water is officially safe to drink, which was mentioned on a sticker posted on the wall of the bathroom of my hotel room. So, I did not need to buy any water bottles while I was there.
On the 6th of September, I went on a sightseeing tour of Budapest with my Dione. Our friend Attila, who was a local (from Hungary), joined us. We went to the central market from our hotel by metro.
If you read my post on Vienna, I mentioned that the metro stations donβt have AFC gates but ticket validators instead. Budapestβs metro also has the same system. If you buy individual tickets, you need to validate them using the validators on the station before boarding the metro. If you are using a public transport pass like I was, then you do not need to validate, and you can board the metro directly.
A ticket validator at a metro station in Budapest.
In 10-15 minutes, we reached the central market. Attila showed us around. I bought a fridge magnet and paprika powder as souvenirs. Paprika powder is a signature spice of Hungary. It is mainly available in two formsβone is sweet and the other being spicy. I wanted the spicy one, but I didnβt get that in that market. Therefore, I had to contend with buying the sweet version. The sweet version isnβt sweet though, it is just not spicy. After bringing that paprika powder home, it is mainly used for food coloring. I like it though and use it frequently in my omelets and other dishes.
Central market.
The building right behind the tram is the central market building.
At some point, Atilla had to join the The Document Foundation (TDF) sightseeing group, so we parted ways at the central market. Dione and I continued our sightseeing and decided to start with visiting the Hungarian parliament, which is a tourist attraction. It was because we were on the Pest side and the parliament was also on the same side, while other tourist attractions were on the Buda side.
So, Dione and I hopped on a tram and went to the parliament. We got off at a tram station just outside the parliament. The parliament is the icon of Budapest. The building has a gothic architecture and colored brown and white. One can buy tickets and take an inside tour. However, we didnβt have a lot of time, so we stayed outside the building.
Hungarian Parliament building.
After spending some time outside the parliament building, we took a tram to the Chain Bridge. As I mentioned earlier, Budapest has two partsβBuda and Pestβseparated by the Danube River. To go from one of the sides to the other requires crossing a bridge. Although Budapest has many bridges linking the two sides, the main one is the Chain Bridge.
We walked on the chain bridge to get to the other side. The bridge gave a good view of the Danube River. It also had a statue of a lion. The Buda Castle (another major landmark of Budapest) was visible from the bridge.
A shot of Chain Bridge.
The lion statue on the Chain Bridge.
After reaching the other side of the bridge (the Buda side), we sat on a bench for some time and then planned on where to go next. We decided to go to Fishermanβs Bastion, which is another tourist attraction.
We used the OSMAnd~ app to figure out which bus to take and hopped on one. Soon we reached Fishermanβs Bastion, where we found a flight of stairs that led upwards. Upon climbing the stairs, we got a panoramic view of the city. It also gave us a good view of the Hungarian parliament across the river. Going further upstairs, we found a statue of Stephen I of Hungary. He was the first king of Hungary, getting the crown in the year 1900.
A view of Hungarian parliament from Fishermanβs bastion.
I found Fishermanβs Bastion to be the best tourist attraction in the city. As mentioned earlier, it offers a panoramic view of the city, which I liked. I liked the arhitecture and open space there. If you find yourself in Budapest, I would highly recommend that you visit Fishermanβs Bastion.
Fishermanβs Bastion.
Statue of Stephen I of Hungary at Fishermanβs Bastion.
Next, we went downstairs and returned to where the bus dropped us. From here on, we walked in random streets to see the residential and non-touristy side of Budapest. It was not so random as we walked towards BatthyΓ‘ny tΓ©r metro station. Upon reaching the metro station, we found a cafΓ© where we stopped for a while for some coffee. After injecting some caffeine into our blood, we proceeded to find a place to have lunch.
BatthyΓ‘ny tΓ©r metro station.
For lunch, we decided to go to RΓ‘kΓ³czi tΓ©r metro station after reading on the internet about the food options there. Upon exiting the metro station, we found a market inside a building that had a lot of shops, but most of them were closed.
After roaming around inside a bit, we found an Italian place open and decided to eat there. The name of this place was Matteos. We ordered an eggplant parmigiana, a lasagna artichoke, and a classic tiramisu. It wasnβt very tasty but filled us up for the day.
A picture of Matteos, where we had our lunch.
Budapest has four metro lines, and we had been to three of them, so we decided to try the remaining line, which was the M1 line. It is the oldest line in the city and has a different vibe than the modern lines. This line was opened in 1896, one of the oldest subway systems in the world.
The coaches were much smaller than the other metro lines, and the seating arrangement was something you would expect from a bus than a typical metro train. We rode all the way to the last stop, MexikΓ³i ΓΊt. Upon going outside, we found out there wasnβt much to do here.
At this point, I checked the map and realized that Heroesβ Square is just a couple of metro stations away. Heroesβ Square is a tourist attraction in Budapest. It is located in ZuglΓ³a and is a historically significant place in Budapest. It has a monument which features the Seven chieftains of the Magyars.
M1 line station and tracks. It is the oldest metro transit of Budapest and one of the oldest in the world. It started operations in 1896.
Here, our unlimited public transport pass was handy because if it was paid per trip, we would think of the stop as a βwastedβ one because we would have to buy a ticket again, but in this case we could just hop on again without any regrets.
An M1 line metro train entering the station.
So we took the M1 line again and deboarded at HΕsΓΆk tere station, followed by walking to the square. After roaming around for a while, we saw a trolleybus and decided to ride on that.
Heroesβ Square.
This is the trolleybus we took in Budapest.
A trolleybus is an electric bus that is powered by overhead electric cables. It is like a tram but runs on roads instead of tracks. We got down at DΓ³zsa GyΓΆrgy ΓΊt metro station. Then we took a metro to our hotel.
Before going to the hotel, we went to a place to eat something. We had coffee and lΓ‘ngos. LΓ‘ngos is a deep-fried Hungarian dish, which looks exactly like the Indian flatbread bhatura. I found it tasty, but since it was deep-fried, that was almost a given.
LΓ‘ngos β a dish which looks like the Indian flatbread bhatura.
The next day we went to Viennaβthe capital of Austriaβwhich I have already posted about. Check it out here.
I had a good time in Budapest, and it is a beautiful city with good public transport and some amazing sites to visit. Thatβs it for now, and see you next time!
Credits: Thanks Dione and Badri for proofreading.
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Last year I blogged about using Zram for VMs [1]. That setup is still working well for VMs and for phones and laptops with no swap device.
I have just read Chris Downβs insightful blog post about Zswap vs Zram [2] which convinced me to setup Zswap on some systems. I have had some of the problems that were described in his blog post when trying to run Zram on workstation and server systems.
One limitation of zswap is that it doesnβt allow specifying the compression level. For zram I can put the following in /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf to set the zstd compression level (this works well on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen6):
[zram0] compression-algorithm=zstd(level=10)
For the BTRFS filesystem I can put βcompress=zstd:13β in the mount options to specify the compression level. They really should support different compression levels in zswap. The ideal compression level depends on the speed of the CPU and new CPUs keep getting faster.
The documentation says to use something like the following on the kernel command-line to enable zswap:
zswap.enabled=1 zswap.compressor=zstd zswap.max_pool_percent=20 zswap.shrinker_enabled=1
The max_pool_percent=20 setting is the default which means to use up to 20% of system RAM for compressed data. Iβve seen documentation sugesting up to 50% which seems a little excessive.
Note that a lot of documentation says to use zswap.zpool=z3fold, but z3fold is going to be removed and zsmalloc (the default) is recommended [3].
There is documentation about changing the compression algorithm via command line parameters, on Debian only lzo is linked in to the kernel and zstd (my preferred option) is a module so the kernel command line canβt be used to set zstd, but the following command works:
echo zstd > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor
The shrinker_enabled option is to allow the kernel to evict cold pages without waiting for memory pressure.
You can enable zswap without rebooting by running commands like the following. You could even put them in /etc/rc.local or something, but I think putting it in the kernel command line is a good idea as it makes it obvious to the next sysadmin what is happening.
echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/enabled echo zstd > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor echo 1 > /sys/module/zswap/parameters/shrinker_enabled
The following command is documented as a way of finding out what zswap is doing:
# grep -r . /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/ /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/stored_pages:262541 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/pool_total_size:455266304 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/written_back_pages:384 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/reject_compress_poor:0 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/reject_compress_fail:160911 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/reject_kmemcache_fail:0 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/reject_alloc_fail:0 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/reject_reclaim_fail:0 /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/pool_limit_hit:0
The following command gives the zswap compression level which gives a result of 2.36 for this example:
echo "scale=2; " $(</sys/kernel/debug/zswap/stored_pages) " * $(getconf PAGESIZE) /" $(</sys/kernel/debug/zswap/pool_total_size) | bc
This table documents my current understanding of the debug values. The difference between reject_compress_fail and reject_compress_poor isnβt clear in a lot of the documentation, even reading the source didnβt make it easy to understand.
| File | Meaning (LC is lifetime count) |
|---|---|
| pool_limit_hit | LC pool limit hit and pages are forced to the swap partition |
| pool_total_size | RAM used for zswap data |
| reject_alloc_fail | LC canβt allocate memory because max_pool_percent has been reached |
| reject_compress_fail | LC of pages with a compression algorithm failure so go straight to swap partition |
| reject_compress_poor | LC of pages that canβt compress so go straight to swap partition |
| reject_kmemcache_fail | LC kernel malloc failure (serious problem?) |
| reject_reclaim_fail | LC failure to move a page from compressed RAM to disk β serious problem! |
| stored_pages | Swapped pages stored by zswap |
| written_back_pages | LC of pages written back to swap partition from zswap |
All of this is not nearly as easy to understand as the following command for zram:
# zramctl NAME ALGORITHM DISKSIZE DATA COMPR TOTAL STREAMS MOUNTPOINT /dev/zram0 zstd 7.7G 2.1G 375M 386M 4 [SWAP]
The Debian Wiki page about Zswap is very brief [4] and needs more description about this, I think a lot of Debian users will use zram instead of zswap because setting up zram is just a single apt command. Iβm not planning to immediately add to that wiki page because Iβm not an expert on this, I would appreciate comments on this blog post from others who have got zswap working. I will update the wiki if others report matching experiences to mine.
Iβm now using zswap on a few systems including my main home workstation which had performed poorly with zram and a swap device in the past. If that goes well Iβll put it on other systems.
I wrote the following shell script to display zswap stats, consider it GPL if you want to use it:
#!/bin/bash if [ ! -f /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/stored_pages ]; then echo "ZSwap not enabled" exit 0 fi PAGES=$(</sys/kernel/debug/zswap/stored_pages) PAGESIZE=$(getconf PAGESIZE) RAM=$(echo "$PAGESIZE * " $(getconf _PHYS_PAGES) | bc) POOL=$(</sys/kernel/debug/zswap/pool_total_size) if [ "$POOL" == "0" ]; then echo "ZSwap not used yet" exit 0 fi COMP=$(</sys/module/zswap/parameters/compressor) echo -n "$COMP compression ratio: " echo "scale=2; $PAGES * $PAGESIZE / $POOL" | bc echo -n "RAM%: " echo "100 * $POOL / $RAM" | bc
Related posts:
First look at iPhone 18 dummies in the new colors: Black, Silver, Dark Cherry and Light Blue. Cherry will probably be the next hit, orange did very well. pic.twitter.com/2qpZDA7oEK
β Sonny Dickson (@SonnyDickson) May 29, 2026
Early testers report that Opus 4.8 is more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims. This is borne out in our evaluations, which show that Opus 4.8 is around four times less likely than its predecessor to allow flaws in code it has written to pass unremarked.
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