#Cloud Nine Contrails

[ambyandony]

Naramis Week 2023 (Day 2)

ft implied fugio ik its not a 'double date' per se but it was the first thing to come to mind

when fugo was done with his shift he went over to join them he was like. 'fuck it. might as well'

@naramisweek

sorry about limbo shes nervous borderline afraid

btw if youre curious abt limbo you can find info about her main variant under the tag Cloud Nine Contrails. same character just this variant has a different story/background context

[galeythecutest]

Maybe Should i make a C9CMD Team for Limbo, Molly, & Stella? (Jojo ocs Belongs to: @ambyandony!)

Maybe Dream Or Cloud I guess?

[ambyandony]

the funny thing is i live in the USA and still did about 0 research when i started cloud nine contrails which is why.. theres a fucking forest in detroit

if i ever write something set in the united states im just going to do zero research whatsoever and make stuff up to sound cool it’s equality

[dontletmeontheinternet]

Apple's iPhone Cameras Accused of Being 'Too Smart'

The New Yorker argues that photos on newer iPhones are "coldly crisp and vaguely inhuman, caught in the uncanny valley where creative expression meets machine learning...." "[T]he truth is that iPhones are no longer cameras in the traditional sense. Instead, they are devices at the vanguard of 'computational photography,' a term that describes imagery formed from digital data and processing as much as from optical information. Each picture registered by the lens is altered to bring it closer to a pre-programmed ideal." In late 2020, Kimberly McCabe, an executive at a consulting firm in the Washington, D.C. area, upgraded from an iPhone 10 to an iPhone 12 Pro... But the 12 Pro has been a disappointment, she told me recently, adding, "I feel a little duped." Every image seems to come out far too bright, with warm colors desaturated into grays and yellows. Some of the photos that McCabe takes of her daughter at gymnastics practice turn out strangely blurry. In one image that she showed me, the girl's upraised feet smear together like a messy watercolor. McCabe said that, when she uses her older digital single-lens-reflex camera (D.S.L.R.), "what I see in real life is what I see on the camera and in the picture." The new iPhone promises "next level" photography with push-button ease. But the results look odd and uncanny. "Make it less smart — I'm serious," she said. Lately she's taken to carrying a Pixel, from Google's line of smartphones, for the sole purpose of taking pictures.... Gregory Gentert, a friend who is a fine-art photographer in Brooklyn, told me, "I've tried to photograph on the iPhone when light gets bluish around the end of the day, but the iPhone will try to correct that sort of thing." A dusky purple gets edited, and in the process erased, because the hue is evaluated as undesirable, as a flaw instead of a feature. The device "sees the things I'm trying to photograph as a problem to solve," he added. The image processing also eliminates digital noise, smoothing it into a soft blur, which might be the reason behind the smudginess that McCabe sees in photos of her daughter's gymnastics. The "fix" ends up creating a distortion more noticeable than whatever perceived mistake was in the original. Earlier this month, Apple's iPhone team agreed to provide me information, on background, about the camera's latest upgrades. A staff member explained that, when a user takes a photograph with the newest iPhones, the camera creates as many as nine frames with different levels of exposure. Then a "Deep Fusion" feature, which has existed in some form since 2019, merges the clearest parts of all those frames together, pixel by pixel, forming a single composite image. This process is an extreme version of high-dynamic range, or H.D.R., a technique that previously required some software savvy.... The iPhone camera also analyzes each image semantically, with the help of a graphics-processing unit, which picks out specific elements of a frame — faces, landscapes, skies — and exposes each one differently. On both the 12 Pro and 13 Pro, I've found that the image processing makes clouds and contrails stand out with more clarity than the human eye can perceive, creating skies that resemble the supersaturated horizons of an anime film or a video game. Andy Adams, a longtime photo blogger, told me, "H.D.R. is a technique that, like salt, should be applied very judiciously." Now every photo we take on our iPhones has had the salt applied generously, whether it is needed or not.... The average iPhone photo strains toward the appearance of professionalism and mimics artistry without ever getting there. We are all pro photographers now, at the tap of a finger, but that doesn't mean our photos are good.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

from Slashdot https://ift.tt/XxR8MKe

[stefanstravelblog]

Simon James (SiVideo)

SiVideo is an aviation photographer on Instagram, and he’s quite famous in the Australian Aviation community. SiVideo’s identity is kept private to his followers but is happy to talk to his friends (like me!). Whenever I go to the viewing platform there is a big possibility he will be there. Depending on what runway is being used, he takes a variety of photos and videos. The photo above of him was a cropped image of someone else’s picture

This photo is of the Qantas Retro Roo (VH-XZP). I’ve actually been on this plane, so that’s kinda cool. In this picture he used a fast shutter speed and quite obviously turned up the saturation. I like how he has the control tower in the background.

I also like this photo, same reason for the one above. This photo is of an Air Asia Airbus A330-300 in a special livery celebrating that they turned nine (could’ve waited an extra year). This also used a fast shutter speed and high saturation.

One of Simon’s biggest friends Caleb works at skippers and lets him go on trips in the Fokker 100, when allowed to. In this picture SiVideo notably used a fisheye lens on his camera. This picture is of A skippers Fokker 100 in Esperance.

This is a stunning picture. In this picture SiVideo used a zoom lens to zoom into an Etihad 787-900. The cloud effect would’ve been achieved with the right weather conditions and a lower shutter speed (possibly a low ISO too). It also looked like he used spot light metering so the white wouldn’t be over exposed. I like the contrails in the picture and the 787 is just a beautiful aircraft

[johanlouwers]

Userspace Networking with DPDK

Userspace Networking with DPDK

Image

Rami Rosen Mon, 04/23/2018 - 07:07

Networking

kernel

Virtualization

DPDK is a fully open-source project that operates in userspace. It's a multi-vendor and multi-architecture project, and it aims at achieving high I/O performance and reaching high packet processing rates, which are some of the most important features in the networking arena. It was created by Intel in 2010 and moved to the Linux Foundation in April 2017. This move positioned it as one of the most dominant and most important open-source Linux projects. DPDK was created for the telecom/datacom infrastructure, but today, it's used almost everywhere, including the cloud, data centers, appliances, containers and more. In this article, I present a high-level overview of the project and discuss features that were released in DPDK 17.08 (August 2017).

Undoubtedly, a lot of effort in many networking projects is geared toward achieving high speed and high performance. Several factors contribute to achieving this goal with DPDK. One is that DPDK is a userspace application that bypasses the heavy layers of the Linux kernel networking stack and talks directly to the network hardware. Another factor is usage of memory hugepages. By using hugepages (of 2MB or 1GB in size), a smaller number of memory pages is needed than when using standard memory pages (which in many platforms are 4k in size). As a result, the number of Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs) misses is reduced significantly, and performance is increased. Yet another factor is that low-level optimizations are done in the code, some of them related to memory cache line alignment, aiming at achieving optimal cache use, prefetching and so on. (Delving into the technical details of those optimizations is outside the scope of this article.)

DPDK has gained popularity in recent years, and it's used in many open-source projects. Many Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu and others) have included DPDK support in their packaging systems as well.

The core DPDK ingredients are libraries and drivers, also known as Poll Mode Drivers (PMDs). There are more than 35 libraries at the time of this writing. These libraries abstract away the low-level implementation details, which provides flexibility as each vendor implements its own low-level layers.

The DPDK Development Model

DPDK is written mostly in C, but the project also has a few tools that are written in Python. All code contributions to DPDK are done by patches sent and discussed over the dpdk-dev mailing list. Patches aiming at getting feedback first are usually titled RFCs (Request For Comments). In order to keep the code as stable as possible, the preference is to preserve the ABI (Application Binary Interface) whenever possible. When it seems that there's no other choice, developers should follow a strict ABI deprecation process, including announcement of the requested ABI changes over the dpdk-dev mailing list ahead of time. The ABI changes that are approved and merged are documented in the Release Notes. When acceptance of new features is in doubt, but the respective patches are merged into the master tree anyway, they are tagged as "EXPERIMENTAL". This means that those patches may be changed or even could be removed without prior notice. Thus, for example, new rte_bus experimental APIs were added in DPDK 17.08. I also should note that usually whenever patches for a new, generic API (which should support multiple hardware devices from different vendors) are sent over the mailing list, it's expected that at least one hardware device that supports the new feature is available on the market (if the device is merely announced and not available, developers can't test it).

There's a technical board of nine members from various companies (Intel, NXP, 6WIND, Cavium and others). Meetings typically are held every two weeks over IRC, and the minutes of those meetings are posted on the dpdk-dev mailing list.

As with other large open-source projects, there are community-driven DPDK events across the globe on a regular basis every year. First, there are various DPDK Summits. Among them, DPDK Summit Userspace is focused on being more interactive and on getting feedback from the community. There also are several DPDK meetups in different locations around the world. Moreover, from time to time there is an online community survey, announced over the dpdk-dev mailing list, in order to get feedback from the community, and everyone can participate in it.

The DPDK website hosts the master DPDK repo, but several other repos are dedicated for new features. Several tools and utilities exist in the DPDK tree, among them are the dpdk-devbind.py script, which is for associating a network device or a crypto device with DPDK, and testpmd, which is a CLI tool for various tasks, such as forwarding, monitoring statistics and more. There are almost 50 sample applications under the "examples" folder, bundled with full detailed documentation.

Apart from DPDK itself, the DPDK site hosts several other open-source projects. One is the DPDK Test Suite (DTS), which a Python-based framework for DPDK. It has more than 100 test modules for various features, including the most advanced and most recent features. It runs with IXIA and Scapy traffic generators. It includes both functional and benchmarking tests, and it's very easy to configure and run, as you need to set up only three or four configuration files. You also can set the DPDK version with which you want to run it. DTS development is handled over a dedicated mailing list, and it currently has support for Intel NICs and Mallanox NICs.

DPDK is released every three months. This release cadence is designed to allow DPDK to keep evolving in a rapid pace while giving enough opportunity to review, discuss and improve the contributions. There are usually 3–5 release candidates (RCs) before the final release. For the 17.08 release, there were 1,023 patches from 125 authors, including patches from Intel, Cavium, 6WIND, NXP and others. The release numbers follow the Ubuntu versions convention. A Long Term Stable (LTS) release is maintained for two years. Plans for future LTS releases currently are being discussed in the DPDK community. The plan is to make every .11 release in an even-numbered year (16.11, 18.11 and so forth ) an LTS release and to maintain it for two years.

Recent Features and New Ideas

Several interesting features were added last year. One of the most fascinating capabilities (added in DPDK 17.05, with new features enabled in 17.08 and 17.11) is "Dynamic Device Personalization" (DDP) for the Intel I40E driver (10Gb/25Gb/40Gb). This feature allows applying a per-device profile to the I40E firmware dynamically. You can load a profile by running a testpmd CLI command (ddp add), and you can remove it with ddp del. You also can apply or remove profiles when traffic is flowing, with a small number of packets dropped during handling a profile. These profiles are created by Intel and not by customers, as I40E firmware programming requires deep knowledge of the I40E device internals.

Other features to mention include Bruce Richardson's build system patch, which provides a more efficient build system for DPDK with meson and ninja, a new kernel module called Kernel Control Path (KCP), port representors and more.

DPDK and Networking Projects

DPDK is used in various important networking projects. The list is quite long, but I want to mention a few of them briefly:

Open vSwitch (OvS): the OvS project implements a virtual network switch. It was transitioned to the Linux Foundation in August 2016 and gained a lot of popularity in the industry. DPDK was first integrated into OvS 2.2 in 2015. Later, in OvS 2.4, support for vHost user, which is a virtual device, was added. Support for advanced features like multi-queues and numa awareness was added in subsequent releases.

Contrail vRouter: Contrail Systems was a startup that developed SDN controllers. Juniper Networks acquired it in 2012, and Juniper Networks released the Contrail vRouter later as an open-source project. It uses DPDK to achieve better network performance.

pktgen-dpdk: an open-source traffic generator based on DPDK (hosted on the DPDK site).

TREX: a stateful and stateless open-source traffic generator based on DPDK.

Vector Packet Processing (VPP): an FD.io project.

Getting Started with DPDK

For those who are newcomers to DPDK, both users and developers, there is excellent documentation hosted on DPDK site. It's recommended that you actually try run several of the sample applications (following the "Sample Applications User Guides"), starting with the "Hello World" application. It's also a good idea to follow the dpdk-users mailing list on a regular basis. For those who are interested in development, the Programmer's Guide is a good source of information about the architecture and development environment, and developers should follow the dpdk-dev mailing list as well.

DPDK and SR-IOV Example

I want to conclude this article with a very basic example (based on SR-IOV) of how to create a DPDK VF and how to attach it to a VM with qemu. I also show how to create a non-DPDK VF ("kernel VF"), attach it to a VM, run a DPDK app on that VF and communicate with it from the host.

As a preparation step, you need to enable IOMMU and virtualization on the host. To support this, add intel_iommu=on iommu=pt as kernel parameters to the kernel command line (in grub.cfg), and also to enable virtualization and VT-d in the BIOS (VT-d stands for "Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O"). You'll use the Intel I40E network interface card for this example. The I40E device driver supports up to 128 VFs per device, divided equally across ports, so if you have a quad-port I40E NIC, you can create up to 32 VFs on each port.

For this example, I also show a simple usage of the testpmd CLI, as mentioned earlier. This example is based on DPDK-17.08, the most recent release of DPDK at the time of this writing. In this example, you'll use Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), which is an extension of the PCI Express (PCIe) specification and allows sharing a single physical PCI Express resource across several virtual environments. This technology is very popular in data-center/cloud environments, and many network adapters support this feature, and likewise, their drivers support this feature. I should note that SRIOV is not limited to network devices, but is available for other PCI devices as well, such as graphic cards.

DPDK VF

You create DPDK VFs by writing the number of requested VFs into a DPDK sysfs entry called max_vfs. Say that eth8 is the PF on top of which you want to create a VF and its PCI address is 0000:07:00.0. (You can fetch the PCI address with ethtool -i | grep bus-info.) The following is the sequence you run on the host in order to create a VF and launch a VM. First, bind the PF to DPDK with usertools/dpdk-devbind.py, for example:

modprobe uio insmod /build/kmod/igb_uio.k ./usertools/dpdk-devbind.py -b igb_uio 0000:07:00.0

Then, create two DPDK VFs with:

echo 2 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:07:00.0/max_vfs

You can verify that the two VFs were created by this operation by checking whether two new entries were added when running: lspci | grep "Virtual Function", or by verifying that you have now two new symlinks under /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:07:00.0/ for the two newly created VFs: virtfn0 and virtfn1.

Next, launch the VMs via qemu using PCI Passthrough, for example:

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host \ -drive file=Ubuntu_1604.qcow2,index=0,media=disk,format=qcow2 \ -smp 5 -m 2048 -vga qxl \ -vnc :1 \ -device pci-assign,host=0000:07:02.0 \ -net nic,macaddr=00:00:00:99:99:01 \ -net tap,script=/etc/qemu-ifup.

Note: qemu-ifup is a shell script that's invoked when the VM is launched, usually for setting up networking.

Next, you can start a VNC client (such as RealVNC client) to access the VM, and from there, you can verify that the VF was indeed assigned to it, with lspci -n. You should see a single device, which has "8086 154c" as the vendor ID/device ID combination; "8086 154c" is the virtual function PCI ID of the I40E NIC. You can launch a DPDK application in the guest on top of that VF.

Kernel VF

To conclude this example, let's create a kernel VF on the host and run a DPDK on top of it in the VM, and then let's look at a simple interaction with the host PF.

First, create two kernel VFs with:

echo 2 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:07:00.0/sriov_numvfs

Here again you can verify that these two VFs were created by running lspci | grep "Virtual Function".

Next, run this sequence:

echo "8086 154c" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pci-stub/new_id echo 07:02.0 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/$VF_PCI_0/driver/unbind echo 07:02.0 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/pci-stub/bind

Then launch the VM the same way as before, with the same qemu-system-x86_64 command mentioned earlier. Again, in the guest, you should be able to see the I40E VF with lspci -n. On the host, doing ip link show will show the two VFs of eth8: vf 0 and vf 1. You can set the MAC addresses of a VF from the host with ip link set—for example:

ip link set eth8 vf 0 mac 00:11:22:33:44:55

Then, when you run a DPDK application like testpmd in the guest, and run, for example, show port info 0 from the testpmd CLI, you'll see that indeed the MAC address that you set in the host is reflected for that VF in DPDK.

Summary

This article provides a high-level overview of the DPDK project, which is growing dynamically and gaining popularity in the industry. The near future likely will bring support for more network interfaces from different vendors, as well as new features.

https://ift.tt/2HojRnd via @johanlouwers . follow me also on twitter

[galeythecutest]

I made a C9C Mystery Dungeon Logo For @ambyandony!

So in this world the players would be stand users instead of pokemon but it's set in Detroit

[ambyandony]

loosely based on actual rp lmaoooo

inside joke i thought the public would get a kick out of. believe it or not giorno has asked limbo this question multiple times

[Transcript:

Giorno: Limbo-sama. Giorno: Are you looking at Mista-sama in a God-honouring way?

Limbo: you know damn fucking well i'm a Buddhist, not a Catholic. Limbo: I don't have a God to honour with the way I am looking at that man's ass.

Giorno: ... Giorno: I see. Fugo: (WHEEZE) Giorno: I thought you were Shintō? Fugo: Limbo, the 貪 (राग) !! The 煩悩 (क्लेश)!!* Limbo: 煩悩について黙れ！！！煩悩について黙れ！！！**

* 貪 (Ton, Japanese equivalent of राग rāga: a Buddhist and Hindu term representing a character poison which encompasses any lust, greed and attachment to a sensory object); 煩悩 (bonnō, Japanese equivalent of क्लेश kleśa or Kleshas: Buddhist term for 'poisons' that afflict the soul and result in 'unwholesome actions', translated in many ways including 'worldly desires' and 'poisons'); * Sentence roughly translates to "Limbo, the craving!! The worldly desires!!"

** "SHUT UP ABOUT MY WORLDLY DESIRES! SHUT UP ABOUT MY WORLDLY DESIRES!!!"

End Transcript]

Giorno's like 'wait i thought you were shintō..?? you have a home shrine" (she's both) and Fugo's like "LUST IS A WORLDLY DESIRE LIMBO. BUDDHISTS ARE SUPPOSED TO LET GO OF WORLDLY DESIRES LIMBO."

fugo usually tries to keep a straight face but like imagine the shyest most modest girl u know is just outright like yeah i was looking at his ass. like half the time this girl wont even say "fuck" without apologising bc of her anxiety and she just goes and says this. that's fucking hilarious

[ambyandony]

Cloud Nine Contrails/Starlit Labyrinth: Stella Octangula Profilette

A casual profile post for Stella-- that is to say, a quick outline version so i don't have to go through the effort to make an official ref set before I talk about Stella.

Here is Stella Octangula and her Stand Labyrinth, as depicted in her debut during Cloud Nine Contrails and the early section of Starlit Labyrinth (the part that centres around Stella).

Stella Octangula ~ Female (she/her) ~ 11yo ~ User of Labyrinth

A peppy and outgoing child prodigy. She lives in Detroit with her supposed "foster father", Marvin.

As far as she's aware, she was born and raised in France, though her name and knowledge of the Italian language since childhood may indicate otherwise.

Has the incredible ability to gauge exact distances and dimensions from a mere glance, and knows where she is spatially at all times. Because of this, she has been shown to excel in maths, and is in incredibly advanced classes for her age. During school months, she prioritises schoolwork over anything else, including her own well-being.

She's an orphan, and had been passed from foster family to foster family, exploited by nearly every family using her for her intellect, then sending her back when she was no longer "perfect" enough to show off.

Has a star-shaped birthmark on her back and a refusal to die.

In fairly poor health.

In the summertime, without school to keep her occupied and her 'foster father' beginning to look for something to take his intoxicated frustration out on, Stella spent a significant amount of time away from home... either because she didn't want to be there as an option, or because he would lock her out. The only person she initially really had as a friend was a boy named Gregory Vecellio (profilette for him coming soon too), who would sometimes share food with her, though she tended to run off anytime she saw one of his fathers approach...

Her Stand, Labyrinth, takes the form of a very large purple mouse with wings, and is built mainly for defence (mice cant exactly punch). It has two abilities; its primary ability is exactly what you expect. When the stella octangula (shape) in its forehead is removed, it raises a large, mazelike structure around itself, to make it incredibly hard to reach itself and Stella. The walls of the maze build themselves around preexisting structures and objects, so things don't usually get damaged from the labyrinth rising. The labyrinth frequently changes to further complicate reaching the centre, but the downside is that no matter how complicated the ability makes it to reach the centre, there will always be at least one path that leads to the centre, so it's never airtight. The labyrinth will remain up until the stellated octahedron is returned to the slot in which it belongs on the Stand's forehead, or (purportedly) until Stella is knocked out.

Its secondary ability is essentially inflicting inverted controls upon someone like in a video game: if the affected tries to move forwards, they'll move backwards; north is south, up is down, left is right, etc. It seems unable to be called back, but it can be seen by non-Stand Users; it simply appears to anyone who can't see Stands as a normal - if quite large - mouse.

Now the most important thing I have to mention regarding RP, naturally avoiding major plot details, is that Stella arrived at the Skylands Hotel, where she would regularly show up as it was a safe place away from home during summer break. In being there, she met and befriended Narancia and Giorno, and subsequently Fugo, whom she eventually developed a sort of brother-sister relationship with. His familial-type feelings were partially fostered by empathy for her situation, in that he felt a kinship to the academic trauma.

So yeah that's p much the context you need to understand any comics with Stella in them!

[ambyandony]

just occurred to me that neither of my jjba fanpart main protagonists have a humanoid stand. these motherfuckers cant fight. it's a plane and a giant mouse. that must be why i made the protags so op. i say that jokingly but in all honesty limbos ability is op, kind of like the hand, except instead of being too stupid (affectionate) to use her full potential shes just too scared.

stella on the other hand beats the shit out of grown adults with their bare fucking hands because theyve been too nice for too long and theyve had enough. for those who don't know stella is 11 at the start of her part and she is also 11 (maybe 12) when she beats the absolute fuck out of a grown man whilst weakened. without the use of her stand. stella i love you. im sorry about your parents. go kill marvin kiddo

[ambyandony]

A girl who's pure of heart and says her prayers by night may still become a wolf when autumn moon is bright if you could only see the beast you've made of me i held it in but now it seems you've set it running free the saints can't help me now the ropes have been unbound i hunt for you with bloodied feet across the hallowed ground

[ambyandony]

Another oc. Roisin my beloved. You are so fucked in the head

[ambyandony]

Even though I love how this looks so much I can’t take any credit for it bc it’s like 95% traced off this

From bodyTACHI’s blog

I still wanna share it because i think it looks sick but I wanna be transparent to yall that it’s not really mine

[ambyandony]

Last years limbo picture… poor puppy :( she has anxiety

this years limbo pic for comparison:

fun fact! some lycanthropes tend to feel real fuckin sick after shifting back into human form, probably as a result of both the agony of transformation and the likely chance that they ate raw meat from god knows where. particularly troublesome for vegan lycanthropes.

[ambyandony]

And now here’s Inktober 2022.

Another trend for my inktobers is that day 1 seems to always be an oc. The first one was with Chitarra (that piece I mentioned I couldn’t find); this one is Tremolo (I’m not going to talk about him too much bc he’s also a major character in C9C. I might put him on my roster page though)

[ambyandony]

Limbo if she was a squid