2023.10.13: bk.cyb/ai/edu/
Noah Johnson Ed.D., Vivian Mitchell MPH 2023`Educators Blueprint:
. a brief review of the book:
Noah Johnson Ed.D., Vivian Mitchell MPH 2023`
The AI for Educators Blueprint:
81 Ways to Skyrocket Student Success, Reclaim Hours in Your Day,
& Revolutionize Your Classroom Safely and Equitably
(ChatGPT Prompt Guide + AI Integration Framework)
2023.4.24: news.cyb/ai/
Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell on AI Accountability
. late 2020 and early 2021, two researchers
— Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell —
were given special attention
after they authored a research paper
addressing flaws in today's AI systems.
[James Vincent Apr 19, 2023]
2023.4.20: news.cyb/dev.net/WebGPU/
introducing a significant web technology:
. this is a revision of WebGPU news from
François Beaufort, Corentin Wallez April 6, 2023
'20.11.3: co.quora/adds/cyb/sec/total formal verification is not possible in 2020:
current efforts at formal verification
cannot yet find all unknown vulnerabilities in software:
. as pointed out by the SeL4 team, in
“What is Proved and What is Assumed”
who used formal verification to debug a microkernel,
they are still vulnerable to inaccuracies of the hardware model;
ie, assuming the hardware acts a particular way
when under special conditions it actually does something else.
. some CPU chip instructions are reprogrammable by the manufacturer
with on-chip microcode; eg Intel Microcode
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Microcode);
this could either make the CPU more correct
or make it vulnerable to malicious modification?
. also, there was some of the SeL4 software
that was not practically verifiable yet:
"there may still be faults remaining in
specific low-level parts of the kernel
(TLB, cache handling, handwritten assembly, boot code)."
. some C library functions are often used incorrectly,. here's the safe C library
and that consequently result in
remote code execution vulnerabilities:
strcpy, sprintf, memcpy, CopyMemory,
RtlCopyMemory, strcat, alloca
and many more Win32 specific stuff.
. much of the legacy software that is
still critical to many enterprises
contains code that calls these vulnerable library functions.
Despite modern memory protections
like ASLR and DEP
the vulnerabilities these functions introduce
are still exploitable under the right conditions .
The Software Assurance Forum for
Excellence in Code (SAFECode),
a nonprofit seeking to advance software assurance,
released an updated guidance document .
The free report includes verification methods and tools
that can be used to confirm whether
development teams have followed prescribed practices.
4.20: adds/lib/free books listiProgrammer news is written9.6: web:
for programmers by same .
iProgrammer news also doesn't aim to be
the first or up-to-the-minute.
Our news does cover the latest releases,
intentions and developments
but in depth and with a
commentary that aims to explain
the significance of the event.
It also marks significant anniversaries
with links to relevant articles.
(a cross-platform, BSD-licensedcompared to pygame 2010:
windowing and multimedia Python library ):
. provides an oop interface for developing
games and other visually-rich applications
for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
The major 1.2alpha1 release
brings pyglet to Python 3.
Pyglet now also runs on 64-bit
Linux, Windows and OS X.
The OS X layer switched to using Cocoa.
There's also a load of bug fixes,
updates to the OpenGL wrappers
and other minor new improvements.
Some of the features of pyglet are:
# No external dependencies
or installation requirements.
# For most application and game requirements,
# pyglet needs nothing else besides Python,
# simplifying distribution and installation.
# Takes advantage of multiple windows
and multi-monitor desktops.
# Load images, sound, music and video
# in almost any format:
# pyglet can optionally use AVbin to playback
audio formats such as MP3, OGG/Vorbis and WMA,
and video formats such as
DivX, MPEG-2, H.264, WMV and Xvid.
. if you want it done quickly, use pygame.daniweb 2009:
but in a serious project, go for Pyglet,
which is nicely designed and implemented.
Pyglet is not a full GUI toolkit,sparkyb 2008`not a traditional gui kit:
[ it's a kit for making gui kits ]
but has its strength in audio and video presentations.
using GL and FFmpeg .
a graphics/game library like Pygame or Pygletwikibooks python gui kits 2011:
is not the right kind of thing for a [ desktop app ].
You're better off with a GUI toolkit that already has
things like text fields, buttons, lists, task tray icons, etc
than trying to build your own with a graphics library.
(the question for a desktop app then
is pyqt vs wxPython).
2D Game Programming[ also listed under 2D Game are Pygame (wraps SDL)
... Pyglet is avaible[sic] under a BSD-Style license ...
"( High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles!) but at wikipedia,
Pyglet is an OpenGL-based software library
used in developing games
and other visually rich applications
using the object-oriented language Python.
This book was created using
print-on-demand technology.
> I've just upgraded to OSX 10.8Adam Griffiths Sep 5, 11:55 pm
and installed Pyglet 1.2alpha.
> Pyglet is now unable to create any windows.
I've been using Python 2.7 with PyObjc 2.202/21 installing-pyglet-in-mac-os-x/
with Pyglet from head (or 1.2 alpha).
It's the only combination that's ever worked for me.
I'm able to run Pyglet on 10.7 and 10.8 without any problems.
I wrote about this here:
I installed pythonbrew, virtualenv
into the system python.
Then install 2.7 with pythonbrew
and install Pyglet from the repository.
If I remember correctly,
the problem people are having with 10.8
is the system python uses certain libs.
Avoid using it and you shouldn't have any problems.
. Pyglet 1.1 uses the Carbon framework,Travis Griggs Aug 28, 4:23 pm:
but this is not compatible with 64-bit Python installs.
The Pyglet 1.2 branch has been modified to use Quartz, ...
We must instead install Pyglet from the Mercurial repository.
The Quartz bindings require the use of PyObjc ...
1) Download mercurial and install it.Tristam MacDonald's pyglet blogging .
2) Clone the pyglet repository by opening up a terminal and running:
hg clone https://pyglet.googlecode.com/hg/ pyglet
3) Go into the pyglet directory and install it
(type in your password when prompted and press enter):
cd pyglet && sudo python setup.py install
simplui provides a lightweight and flexible GUI toolkitother openwares by same author:
for Python/OpenGL applications using pyglet.
Primarily intended as an aid in debugging and development,
simplui is generally overkill for in-game GUIs.
"( Port of the Objective-C runtime to Python using ctypes== pyglet should interface xcb not just xlib ==
with the goal of being able to
use the Cocoa API on Mac OS X without PyObjC.
... so that pyglet could run without depending on PyObjC.)
"( samurai-x is written entirely in python using ctypes.== Pyglet wasn't flexible and pyopengl too slow ==
The xlib module is from http://pyglet.org
but project was halted to write an
xcb-based window manager.
. XCB (X protocol C-language Binding)
is a C language binding for the X Window System.
It is implemented as free software
and aims to replace Xlib.
Xlib/XCB provides application binary interface
compatibility with both Xlib and XCB,
providing an incremental porting path.
Xlib/XCB uses the protocol layer of Xlib,
but replaces the Xlib transport layer with XCB,
and provides access to the underlying XCB connection
for direct use of XCB.)
"( Pocket watch is an OpenGL graphics library for python,py-open-gl ?
write simple 3d programs.
why!? what about pyglet?
Pyglet is awesome, and pocketwatch uses pyglet
to do some specific things
like window management, rendering text,
and opening images.
Pyglet now supports some features that
may have been useful to solving the problems
I had when I started writing pocketwatch.
But even then,
said features didn't seem flexible enough
to do what I wanted.
Maybe this is different now, maybe not. )
"( using ctypes to do lots of opengl calls== libraries that help you use Pyglet ==
is actually very SLOW.
So instead, I took all of the code that I could,
and wrote a simple C++ library
to do all the nitty gritty stuff,
and wrote a python state-sorter which could
render all of the objects with a single ctypes call.
. uses Python Imaging Library (PIL)
. PIL adds image processing capabilities
to your Python interpreter.
This library supports many file formats,
and provides powerful image processing
and graphics capabilities.)
"( No more boilerplate coding!pyglons, the module:
pyglons takes the ideas from Pylons
( a lightweight web framework emphasizing
flexibility and rapid development )
and uses them to create a framework for Pyglet
( a cross-platform windowing and
multimedia library for Python) .... )
"( a module containing an application base class,pyglons, the templates:
a state class and some predefined states
that you may or may not require depending on your needs.)
"( templates for the paster commandlayer
that creates your application directory and initial layout.
The default templates create a small working application
with splash screen, menu, help and
very basic application state
ready for you to add your code.
The templates also create all the required files
to use your application with distutils/setuptools.
The default pyglons app depends on pyglet and pyglons.)
"( Layer is a set of somewhat disjoint modulespgedraw -- Simple library that
on top of pyglet, YAML, and other Python libraries
designed to smooth over strangeness
and allow for rapid iteration in game design and development.)
"( the goal of this very simple librarypython-pyknic -- A boilerplate library for
is to cover up the lack of a decent
drawing system in pyglet.
. pgedraw helps to draw 2d
geometrical shapes with pyglet.
A simple way to clear the screen
and to enable alpha channel is provided, too.
Drawing are made using pyglet's OpenGl api,
but knowledge of OpenGl is not required to use pgedraw.
Pgedraw offers also a collision detection system
that can be used to check if the user is
clicking inside a drawn shape.)
"( cocos2d is a framework for building 2D games, demos,== libraries that use Pyglet ==
and other graphical/interactive applications.
It is built over pyglet.
. helps you structure a "scene based application".
Cocos simplifies the game development in these areas:
Flow control: Manage the flow control
between different scenes in an easy way .
Sprites: Fast and easy sprites .
Actions: Just tell sprites what you want them to do.
Composable actions like move, rotate, scale, etc .
Effects: Effects like waves, twirl, lens and much more .
Tiled Maps:
Support for rectangular and hexagonal tiled maps .
Collision: Basic pure python support for collisions .
Transitions: Move from scene to scene with style .
Menus: Built in classes to create menus .
Text Rendering:
Label and HTMLLabel with action support .
Built-in Python Interpreter: For debugging purposes .
Access to OpenGL functionality .)
"( It uses pyglet to display via OpenGLpyglet-twisted -- Twisted reactor for Pyglet
and handle multi-head
(the most common presentation setup)
so you can have the presentation displayed on a projector
while your laptop displays the original presentation source .)
"( . develops a Twisted reactor for Pyglet.skyseam -- Utilities for 2.5D graphics in python
The aim is to enable Twisted's networking capabilities
to be fully integrated within the Pyglet event loop,
introduced in version 1.1.)
"( . a utility to orient a spherical projectionpyevocomm -- a simple open Framework for Accesibility
to suit a list of camera views.
pyglet based ui for visualization and testing.)
"( Designed with the MVC pattern,py-lepton -- High-performance, pluggable particle engine
adds to the view beyond,
the voice properties suitable for
people with low vision .)
"( make complex and beautiful particle effects;roller-ball -- A Python/OpenGL Game
Two pluggable OpenGL renderers,
and two pygame renderers
Modular architecture:
easily configure and customize the engine .)
"( PyODE engine with OpenGL callsflashy-screen
using Pyglet framework .)
"( Flashes / strobes your screen with random solid colors.pynewt -- Pure python rigid body dynamics library
Intended to try and fix stuck pixels on LCD TVs and monitors.
All you need to run this is python and pyglet ).
"( Uses pyglet for rendering,news.cyb/dev.py/ui frameworks:
needs pyeuclid for all vector/quaternion maths.)
PyGame -- graphics and sound by SDL. for more see list of game engines (python):
pyglet -- minimalistic;
tends to be basis of game engines .
Panda3D -- game engine
PyOpenGL -- graphics library
OGRE -- scene-oriented, flexible 3D
rendering engine (as opposed to a game engine)
TurboGears, Django -- web apps
urwid -- console user interface library for Python.
PyQT -- cross-platform GUI toolkit
wxPython -- a widget toolkit and tools library for gui's;
blender -- listed under ray tracers too .-- for lesser game engines and media kits
cocos2d
Ignifuga Game Engine
Panda3D
. a system designed for the creation and
development of video games.
The leading game engines provide a software framework
that developers use to create games for
video game consoles and personal computers.
The core functionality typically provided by a game engine
includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D or 3D graphics,
a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response),
sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence,
networking, streaming, memory management, threading,
localization support, and a scene graph.
The process of game development is often economized,
in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine
to create different games,
or to make it easier to "port" games to multiple platforms.
Recent Trends
. As game engine technology matures and becomes more user-friendly,
the application of game engines has broadened in scope.
They are now being used for serious games:
visualization, training, medical, and military simulation applications.
To facilitate this accessibility,
new hardware platforms are now being targeted,
including mobile phones (e.g. Android phones, iPhone)
and web browsers (e.g. WebGL, Shockwave, Flash, Trinigy's WebVision,
Silverlight, Unity Web Player, O3D and pure dhtml).
Additionally, more game engines are being built upon
higher level languages such as Python (Panda3D).
As most 3D rich games are now mostly GPU-limited
(i.e. limited by the power of the graphics card),
the language's impact on speed becomes negligible,
while the productivity gains offered by these languages
work to the game engine developers' benefit .
Game Middleware
. In the broader sense of the term,
game engines themselves can be described as middleware.
In the context of video games, however,
the term "middleware" is often used to refer to
subsystems of functionality within a game engine.
Some game middleware does only one thing
but does it more convincingly or more efficiently
than general purpose middleware.
For example, SpeedTree renders the realistic vegetation
and, Fork Particle simulate real time Particle Systems .
Python Knowledge Base. here is the archive of the defunct site:
[defunct]: www.faqts.com has a lot of
example code using dictionaries.
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge-base/index.phtml/fid/541
http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/index.phtml/fid/199
# the directory of the currently executing program:7.21: news.cyb/dev.py/style guide has some pragma too:
import sys, os
if __name__ == '__main__':
_thisDir = sys.argv[0]
else:
_thisDir = sys.modules[__name__].__file__
_thisDir = os.path.split(_thisDir)[0]
print _thisDir
Code should be written in a way that does not disadvantage7.14: bk.cyb/dev.py/lists:
other implementations of Python
(PyPy, Jython, IronPython, Cython, Psyco, and such).
For example,
do not rely on CPython's efficient implementation of
in-place string concatenation for
statements in the form a += b or a = a + b.
Those statements run more slowly in Jython.
In performance sensitive parts of the library,
the ''.join() form should be used instead.
This will ensure that concatenation occurs in
linear time across various implementations.
Comparisons to singletons like None
should always be done with is or is not,
never the equality operators.
Also,
beware of writing if x
when you really mean if x is not None
-- e.g. when testing whether a variable or
argument that defaults to None
was set to some other value.
The other value might have a type (such as a container)
that could be false in a boolean context!
. see the usage of __all__ (a list)7.16: news.cyb/dev.py/testing/windmill:
in the __init__.py for packages .
If __all__ is defined in __init__.py,
and you use "from my_package import *"
then only the modules/variables defined in __all__
will be loaded.
>>> import os
>>> os.getcwd()
'/home/user'
>>> os.chdir("/tmp/")
>>> os.getcwd()
'/tmp'
# Linux:
export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/my/library:$PYTHONPATH
# Windows:
set PYTHONPATH=%PYTHONPATH%;C:\My_python_lib
. Windmill is a Selenium competitorWindmill`intro:
written entirely in Python & JavaScript
with test-writing support for both.
. Windmill is a web testing tool. more encouragement 2011:
designed to let you painlessly automate
and debug your web application.
Originating at the Open Source Applications Foundation
Windmill was built to help QA
keep up with the rapid release cycles
of the Chandler Server Web UI (Cosmo) project.
As the Cosmo client is heavy in
JavaScript and AJAX functionality,
Windmill makes the communication
between the service and the client code
a priority.
Windmill Test Framework:
. Cross-browser test recorder
Record, edit, playback and interact with your tests
from one simple interface.
. Also check out the DOM Explorer, Assertion Explorer
and fully integrated Firebug-Lite.
Interact from a python shell with the
browser and the windmill service .
. install ipython and automatically get
an even more usable shell.
"( Selenium 2 and Python
- ok so Windmill is my new favorite:
This looks interesting!:
http://readthedocs.org/docs/selenium-python/en/latest/
Update: Windmill is more fun now .)
"( PyQt is the Python binding of the popular QtBoudewijn Rempt & David Mertz @ ibm's comparison to tkinter.
cross-platform UI and application framework.
For unit testing, PyQt clients are expected to use
the standard Python unittest module,
with just a little help from the PyQt QtTest module.
It is not immediately apparent how to blend these two frameworks
into a unified unit testing strategy.
In this article, I show you how to unit test a PyQt GUI dialog
using only modules included in PyQt and Python. )
"( This release, closed 1115 issues Githubpyqt-based browser:
and comes with major improvements to the
notebook and parallel computing APIs,
a new cell magic system,
unified interactive and parallel kernels ).
"( A graphical ocr solution for GNU/Linuxtext editor:
based on Python, Qt4 and tessaract OCR.
Lector can help you to scan your tons of paper
and create text document!
Lector lets you select areas on which you want to
do OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
Then you can run tesseract-ocr
simply clicking a button.
The resulting text can be proofread, formatted and edited
directly in Lector.
. see the OCRopus project,
for which Tesseract is one of the pluggable OCR engines;
OCRopus also provides layout analysis
and statistical language modeling.)
"( Marave doesn't just have minimalism and simplicity,PyQt:creating GUIs with Python’s QT bindings
it has that combined with beauty
and a palpable design ethic. Marave has soul.
Inspired by ommwriter and other similar projects,
aims to be a simple, clean text editor
that doesn't distract you from your writing.)
"( to develop KDE applications using Python,###
you need both PyQt and PyKDE.
. PyQt provides Python support for the Qt library
which KDE is built on.)
"(. Riverbank Computing has a lot of good documentation
about how to use PyQt to create pure Qt applications.
If you are new to KDE / Python development,
then learning how to use PyQt is the best first step.
PyKDE builds on top of PyQt and adds
Python support for KDE's libraries and technologies.
PyKDE is distributed as part of the kdebindings module.
Stable releases can be downloaded from
the normal KDE download page,
although it is usually easier to
install pre-built packages from your
operating system distribution.
You can also obtain PyKDE from
KDE's subversion repository .
Or from KDE's git repository:
git clone git://anongit.kde.org/pykde4 ).
. most PCs have not been into sandboxing
[because backward compatability was an issue;
smartphone platforms are more recent inventions,
so sandboxing is an obvious good .]
. to access resources within a sandbox,
apps must request “entitlements” [aka, capabilities.]
Android apps must ask the user for permissions
and then the OS constrains the app
to the allowed permissions .
[ but Android apps may be all-or-nothing:
either the user accepts all the requests,
or else the app fails to be usable at all .]
Apple’s iOS sandboxing doesn’t involve the user,
as all permissions are handled by
Apple's App Store evaluators .
[7.25:. in order to be accepted into the app store,
developers must divide their app into modules
so as to more easily explain why each part
needs a particular set of entitlements .][7.20:
Apple decides for the user,
what entitlements are appropriate,
not only for the whole app,
but more smartly, for each of its modules .]
. iOS users can still control certain entitlements:[7.20:
(eg, opening a list of recent files
or saving documents elsewhere in the file system).
Concerns from Developers:
# no more AppleScript:
# no more file system management: [7.20:
. Apple sandboxing asks the usernevertheless, sandboxing of the file system
for each and every file access;
so, apps that need access to many files
or that need to work in the background
are not considered sandboxable;
. see Jonathan Zittrain's Chapter 7 of
The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It .
