fidzu : debian

A week ago, release 0.0.5 of the RcppFastAD package went to CRAN, and we noted that it provided a stop-gap measure against a gnarly segfault with g++-16 under heavier optimization / inlining. We are happy to now announce that a new and fixed version 0.0.6 of RcppFastAD is now on CRAN, and has been built for r2u as well as at r-universe.

RcppFastAD wraps the FastAD header-only C++ library by James which provides a C++ implementation of both forward and reverse mode of automatic differentiation. It offers an easy-to-use header library that is both lightweight and performant. With a little of bit of Rcpp glue, it is also easy to use from R in simple C++ applications.

This release takes advantage of some large-language model inference access I now get via Debian. The Deepseek v4 flash-0731 model, driven in a container via the pi.dev harness, took just about no time finding a small workaround for the issue described last week where we could see segfaults under heavier optimization and inlining. The fix was to prohibit inlining the local bind() reimplementation. We have also sent this upstream as a patch. It is nice to have an option of querying something a little more powerful than the local models I experimented with before. We suppress more compiler warnings in local builds via another option, and did some standard maintenance.

The NEWS file for this release follows.

Changes in version 0.0.6 (2026-10-01)

• The expression-template view rebinding is protected against g++ -O3 (which led to wrong Eigen::Map dimensions, an Eigen::Map resize assertion, and a segfault.

• The bind() helpers are marked non-inline and are also protected from operating on a nullptr.

• Both items co-written with DeepSeek V4 Flash, and have been sent upstream in a PR.

• Suppress another compiler warning when local build detected.

• Add r-universe badge to README.md.

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for the most recent release. More information is available at the repository or the package 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 now sponsor me at GitHub.

01 Oct 2026 5:05pm GMT

A new release of RcppFastFloat just arrived on CRAN, and has been built for r2u. The package wraps fast_float, another nice library by Daniel Lemire. For details, see the arXiv preprint or published paper showing that one can convert character representations of 'numbers' into floating point at rates at or exceeding one gigabyte per second.

This release updates the underlying fast_float library version to the current version 8.3.0, and also updates a number of the standard packaging details.

Changes in version 0.0.6 (2026-09-29)

• Update to upstream release 8.3.0 (Daniel Lemire in #6)

• Standard package maintenace adding README badge, updating URL, updating continuous integration, and adding an aspell dictionary

• Completed help page for as_double example with @return tag

Courtesy of my CRANberries, there is also a diffstat report for this release. For questions, suggestions, or issues please use the issue tracker at the GitHub repo.

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 now sponsor me at GitHub.

30 Sep 2026 9:17pm GMT

Thrilled to share that our new package myman reached CRAN a few days ago. The package offers sixteen hundred ninety four "My man …" posts by Kevin Kruse made on bsky during the summer of 2026. Each wave picked at one particular public persona. This package wrapse these up in the style of packages like fortunes or gaussfacts.

A sample usage illustration shows how to extract by pattern:

> library(myman)
> myman("maitre")
My man looks like he's inquiring with the maitre'd about the house curly fries.
     -- about Howard Lutnick on 2026-08-28

My man looks like a maitre'd who deeply doubts you have a reservation.
     -- about Scott Bessent on 2026-08-31

My man looks like he's asked the maitre'd to remove a party of four he finds visually
unpleasant.
     -- about Scott Bessent on 2026-08-31

My man looks like the maitre'd at a very exclusive restaurant called The Berghof.
     -- about JD Vance on 2026-09-13

> 

One can also subset by 'target', or simple sample randomly (which is the default).

As CRAN review for new package takes a little longer these days, the GitHub repo was updated once more with one (eighth !!) wave of posts since the submission was made. CRAN version 0.1.0 corresponds to the stock of messages from waves one to seven. We will update the CRAN version shortly but if you would like more posts right now consider installing from the repo.

We include the full NEWS file since the package was started, this also includes an entry for the eights wave we will bring to CRAN soon.

Changes in version 0.1.0 (2026-09-27)

• Initial CRAN version (minus the 0.0.8 changes which were made while CRAN reviewed the package)

• Add an aspell dictionary to aid DESCRIPTION text

Changes in version 0.0.8 (2026-09-18)

• Data set now comprises 1694 posts aiming at eight different 'men'

• The number of 'sample()' object returned can not be set with 'posts'

Changes in version 0.0.7 (2026-09-14)

• Data set now comprises 1494 posts aiming at seven different 'men'

Changes in version 0.0.6 (2026-09-07)

• Data set now comprises 1394 posts aiming at six different 'men'

Changes in version 0.0.5 (2026-09-01)

• Data set now comprises 1194 posts aiming at five different 'men'

• The myman() function can now now subset by target permitting more focussed randlom sampling

Changes in version 0.0.4 (2026-08-28)

• Data set now comprises 1040 posts aiming at four different 'men'

Changes in version 0.0.3 (2026-08-19)

• Data set now comprises 916 posts aiming at three different 'men'

• Csv file, processing and display extended to three columns also showing post creating date (in UTC) and 'man'

Changes in version 0.0.2 (2026-07-30)

• Updated with full week of posts leading to a corpus of 698 posts

• Added support for simple regular-expression lookup ability

Changes in version 0.0.1 (2026-07-19)

• Initial release

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.

30 Sep 2026 3:44pm GMT