Dirk Eddelbuettel: RcppCNPy 0.2.12 on CRAN: More Maintenance
A new (and again somewhat minor) maintenance release of the RcppCNPy
package arrived on CRAN earlier
today.
RcppCNPy
provides R with read and write access to NumPy files thanks to the cnpy library by Carl Rogers
along with Rcpp for the glue to R.
Recent changes in r-devel hone in on issues concerning
printf format string inaccuracies the compiler can detect
via the -Wformat -Wformat-security flags. Two fairly
simplye ones were present here and have been addressed. In the time
since the last release about twenty months ago two or three other minor
packaging and setup details have also been taken care of, details are
below.
CRANberries also provides a diffstat report for the latest release. As always, feedback is welcome and the best place to start a discussion may be the GitHub issue tickets page. If you like this or other open-source work I do, you can now sponsor me at GitHub.Changes in version 0.2.12 (2022-11-27)
- The continuous integration workflow received a trivial update, twice.
- The C++ compilation standard is now implicit per CRAN and R preference.
- The CITATION file format has been updated for the current usage.
- Two print format string issues reported by current R-devel have been addressed.
This post by Dirk Eddelbuettel originated on his Thinking inside the box blog. Please report excessive re-aggregation in third-party for-profit settings.
A new minor release of the 
Daniel Knowles Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to
Do About It is an entertaining, lucid, and well-written manifesto
(to borrow a term from the author) aiming to get us all thinking a bit
more about what cars do to society, and how to move on to a better
outcome for all.
The book alternates between historical context and background, lived
experience (as the author is a foreign correspondent who had the
opportunity to travel), and researched content. It is refreshingly free
of formalities (no endless footnotes or endnotes with references, though
I would have liked occassional references but hey we all went to school
long enough to do a bit of research given a pointer or two). I learned
or relearned a few things as I was for example somewhat unaware of the
air pollution (micro-particle) impact stemming from tires and brake
abrasions for which electronic vehicles do zilch, and for which the
auto-obesity of ever larger and heavier cars is making things
much worse. And some terms (even when re-used by Knowles) are clever
such bionic duckweed. But now you need to read the book to
catch up on it.
Overall, the book argues its case rather well. The author brings
sufficient evidence to make the formal guilty charge quite convincing.
It is also recent having come out just months ago, making current
figures even more relevant.
I forget the exact circumstance but I think I came across the author
in the context of our joint obsession with both Chicago and cycling (as
there may have been a link from a related social media post) and/or the
fact that I followed some of his colleagues at The Economist on
social media. Either way, the number of Chicago and MidWest references
made for some additional fun when reading the book over a the last few
days. And for me another highlight was the ode to Tokyo which I
wholeheartedly agree with: on my second trip to Japan I spent a spare
day cycling across the city as the AirBnB host kindly gave me access to
his bicycles. Great weather, polite drivers, moderate traffic, and just
wicked good infrastructure made me wonder why I did not see more
cyclists.
I have little to criticize beyond the lack of any references. The
repeated insistence on reminding us that Knowles comes from Birmingham
gets a little old by the fifth or sixth repetition. It is all a wee bit
anglo- or UK-centric. It obviously has a bit on France, Paris,
and all the recent success of Anne Hidalgo (who, when I was in graduate
school in France, was still a TV person rather than the very successful
mayor she is now) but then does not mention the immense (and well known)
success of the French train system which lead to a recent dictum to no
longer allow intra-Frace air travel if train rides of under 2 1/2 hours
are available which is rather remarkable. (Though in fairness that may
have been enacted once the book was finished.)
Lastly, the book appears to have 
CRAN processed the package fully automatically as it has no issues, and
nothing popped up in reverse-dependency checking.
The set of changes for the last two RcppArmadillo releases
follows.
Turns out maybe not so much (yet ?). As the 
Now, this is of course entirely possibly that not all possible venues
for speedups were exploited in how the action setup was setup. If so,
please file an issue at the 
The first time you do this, it will open up a new browser tab where
your Codespace is being instantiated. This first-time instantiation
will take a few minutes (feel free to click View logs to see how
things are progressing) so please be patient. Once built, your Codespace
will deploy almost immediately when you use it again in the future.
After the VS Code editor opens up in your browser, feel free to open
up the 
(Both example screenshots reflect the initial 