Raph Levien
@raphlinus.bsky.social
Doing fundamental research in UI and 2D graphics
Reposted by Raph Levien
Our upcoming game The Hearth and Harbour is fully 2D, but with some neat tricks we’ve made it look 3D. Ethan, our environment artist, did this with a special type of texture called a Normal Map. (Thread! 1/7)
December 19, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Our upcoming game The Hearth and Harbour is fully 2D, but with some neat tricks we’ve made it look 3D. Ethan, our environment artist, did this with a special type of texture called a Normal Map. (Thread! 1/7)
Reposted by Raph Levien
My "No Graphics API" blog post is live! Please repost :)
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
No Graphics API — Sebastian Aaltonen
Graphics APIs and shader languages have significantly increased in complexity over the past decade. It’s time to start discussing how to strip down the abstractions to simplify development, improve pe...
www.sebastianaaltonen.com
December 16, 2025 at 6:52 PM
My "No Graphics API" blog post is live! Please repost :)
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
As we go into the holiday season, there's lots of progress in Linebender from the previous month: linebender.org/blog/tmil-23/. Among other things, blur filters in Vello CPU (with GPU acceleration on the roadmap), SIMD progress, and a new port of Runebender to Xilem.
Linebender in November 2025
Linebender in November 2025
linebender.org
December 15, 2025 at 4:45 PM
As we go into the holiday season, there's lots of progress in Linebender from the previous month: linebender.org/blog/tmil-23/. Among other things, blur filters in Vello CPU (with GPU acceleration on the roadmap), SIMD progress, and a new port of Runebender to Xilem.
This is indeed an excellent talk, and I think contains the seeds of a path forward through the AI thicket. When tested against only "vibes," AI can generate reams of slop. But when tested against hard ground truth, in this case rigorous mathematical formalism, possibilities abound.
#Math Professor Emily Riehl shows in her speciality that "vibe proving" with LLMs is consistently &insidiously wrong, and threatens to swamp a struggling peer review system:
youtu.be/fzxW2XJS6SE
But! "computer aided formalisation" building on GOFAI symbolic methods may revolutionise complex proofs
youtu.be/fzxW2XJS6SE
But! "computer aided formalisation" building on GOFAI symbolic methods may revolutionise complex proofs
Emily Riehl, A New Paradigm for Mathematical Proof? | Natural Philosophy Symposium 2025
YouTube video by Hopkins Natural Philosophy Forum
youtu.be
November 27, 2025 at 4:18 PM
This is indeed an excellent talk, and I think contains the seeds of a path forward through the AI thicket. When tested against only "vibes," AI can generate reams of slop. But when tested against hard ground truth, in this case rigorous mathematical formalism, possibilities abound.
Reposted by Raph Levien
“We adopted #rustlang for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density ... with Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one.”
security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust...
security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust...
Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
Posted by Jeff Vander Stoep, Android Last year, we wrote about why a memory safety strategy that focuses on vulnerability prevention in ...
security.googleblog.com
November 13, 2025 at 7:52 PM
“We adopted #rustlang for its security and are seeing a 1000x reduction in memory safety vulnerability density ... with Rust changes having a 4x lower rollback rate and spending 25% less time in code review, the safer path is now also the faster one.”
security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust...
security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust...
Reposted by Raph Levien
😎😎😎😎 GOOD THINGS CAN STILL HAPPEN 😎😎😎😎
November 5, 2025 at 5:22 AM
😎😎😎😎 GOOD THINGS CAN STILL HAPPEN 😎😎😎😎
My talk on "I want a good parallel language" is now up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-eV...
Slides here: docs.google.com/presentation...
Thanks Arthur Gleckler and BALISP for hosting the talk!
Slides here: docs.google.com/presentation...
Thanks Arthur Gleckler and BALISP for hosting the talk!
I Want a Good Parallel Language, by Raph Levien (BALISP)
YouTube video by Arthur Gleckler
www.youtube.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:51 AM
My talk on "I want a good parallel language" is now up: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-eV...
Slides here: docs.google.com/presentation...
Thanks Arthur Gleckler and BALISP for hosting the talk!
Slides here: docs.google.com/presentation...
Thanks Arthur Gleckler and BALISP for hosting the talk!
I'm thrilled that Laurenz Stampfl, a student at ETH Zurich, has completed his Masters degree, and has published the thesis: ethz.ch/content/dam/...
1/2
1/2
ethz.ch
November 3, 2025 at 5:57 PM
I'm thrilled that Laurenz Stampfl, a student at ETH Zurich, has completed his Masters degree, and has published the thesis: ethz.ch/content/dam/...
1/2
1/2
I'll be giving at talk tomorrow at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, entitled "I want a good parallel language." Meetup link is here: www.meetup.com/balisp/event...
I Want a Good Parallel Language, RetroAI, lightning talks, and socializing, Sat, Nov 1, 2025, 12:00 PM | Meetup
Hello, hacker ladies and gentlemen!
On Saturday, November 1st, we'll have a talk by [Raph Levien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raph_Levien), who is an expert in Rust and
www.meetup.com
October 31, 2025 at 7:23 PM
I'll be giving at talk tomorrow at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, entitled "I want a good parallel language." Meetup link is here: www.meetup.com/balisp/event...
Reposted by Raph Levien
There was already a *lot* going on with Bluesky, and now it's under even more pressure. I wrote about how I think about moderation, affordances, expectations, human needs, and powerful trolls for @techpolicypress.bsky.social
www.techpolicy.press/trump-admini...
www.techpolicy.press/trump-admini...
Trump Administration's Arrival on Bluesky Highlights Growing Pains for Open Networks | TechPolicy.Press
The administration’s antagonistic entry to the platform is best understood as a game of chicken, writes Erin Kissane.
www.techpolicy.press
October 22, 2025 at 6:08 PM
There was already a *lot* going on with Bluesky, and now it's under even more pressure. I wrote about how I think about moderation, affordances, expectations, human needs, and powerful trolls for @techpolicypress.bsky.social
www.techpolicy.press/trump-admini...
www.techpolicy.press/trump-admini...
Some updates from the Linebender ecosystem: we've published our monthly update blog (linebender.org/blog/tmil-21/), and also released fearless_simd 0.3.0 (github.com/linebender/f...). The train keeps rolling!
Linebender in September 2025
Linebender in September 2025
linebender.org
October 14, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Some updates from the Linebender ecosystem: we've published our monthly update blog (linebender.org/blog/tmil-21/), and also released fearless_simd 0.3.0 (github.com/linebender/f...). The train keeps rolling!
I gave a seminar entitled "How Rust won: The quest for performant, reliable software" at the Topos Institute on Jun 3, and the video (youtu.be/k_-6KI3m31M) is now published. I hope people enjoy it!
[Berkeley Seminar] Raph Levien | How Rust won: the quest for performant, reliable software
YouTube video by Topos Institute
youtu.be
September 3, 2025 at 6:21 PM
I gave a seminar entitled "How Rust won: The quest for performant, reliable software" at the Topos Institute on Jun 3, and the video (youtu.be/k_-6KI3m31M) is now published. I hope people enjoy it!
We have our usual monthly update for Linebender: linebender.org/blog/tmil-19/
A lot of good progress, especially on the renderer, and fearless_simd is coming along well. Also some personal news: I'm leaving Google and taking a new role at Canva, moving to Australia in January.
A lot of good progress, especially on the renderer, and fearless_simd is coming along well. Also some personal news: I'm leaving Google and taking a new role at Canva, moving to Australia in January.
Linebender in July 2025
Linebender in July 2025
linebender.org
August 7, 2025 at 2:08 PM
We have our usual monthly update for Linebender: linebender.org/blog/tmil-19/
A lot of good progress, especially on the renderer, and fearless_simd is coming along well. Also some personal news: I'm leaving Google and taking a new role at Canva, moving to Australia in January.
A lot of good progress, especially on the renderer, and fearless_simd is coming along well. Also some personal news: I'm leaving Google and taking a new role at Canva, moving to Australia in January.
Reposted by Raph Levien
With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.
July 27, 2025 at 9:01 PM
With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.
Reposted by Raph Levien
When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.
July 21, 2025 at 5:20 PM
When I was little, the U.S. military came to our home at gunpoint and took me and my family away. We were imprisoned for years in barbed wire camps simply because we were Japanese American. I have spent my life telling that story, hoping it would never be repeated.
Cool to see this work happening, and look forward to some nice GPU compute acceleration for path rendering!
Very cool stuff happening in Chrome graphics land.
(And bonus, Graphite is shipping on top of Dawn, Google's implementation of #WebGPU)
blog.chromium.org/2025/07/intr...
(And bonus, Graphite is shipping on top of Dawn, Google's implementation of #WebGPU)
blog.chromium.org/2025/07/intr...
Introducing Skia Graphite: Chrome's rasterization backend for the future
Today's The Fast and the Curious post covers the launch of Skia's new rasterization backend, Graphite, in Chrome on Apple Silicon Macs. Gr...
blog.chromium.org
July 10, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Cool to see this work happening, and look forward to some nice GPU compute acceleration for path rendering!
Topnotch reporting from Marisa Kabas on a very important topic. It's maddening that mainstream news sources are not meeting the moment. Support independent journalism by subscribing.
NEW from me — I wrote about FEMA Acting Administrator David Richardson, who has been completely silent and out of view since deadly floods devastated Texas last week, and spoke to staffers about what it's like to respond to a disaster with no leader.
Read here:
Read here:
Have you seen this man?
In the wake of deadly floods in Texas, FEMA Acting Administrator David Richardson is nowhere to be found.
www.thehandbasket.co
July 9, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Topnotch reporting from Marisa Kabas on a very important topic. It's maddening that mainstream news sources are not meeting the moment. Support independent journalism by subscribing.
Last week I did a research retreat on stroke expansion yielding a cubic Bézier approximation. It went well. I wrote a summary: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
That document requires a certain amount of context and background to understand fully, but hopefully some people will find it interesting.
That document requires a certain amount of context and background to understand fully, but hopefully some people will find it interesting.
Research retreat 2025-06-16 summary
Research retreat 2025-06-16 summary I did a research retreat week focused on cubic-to-cubic stroke expansion. Overall I made lots of progress on both practical and theoretical issues, but the problem ...
docs.google.com
June 22, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Last week I did a research retreat on stroke expansion yielding a cubic Bézier approximation. It went well. I wrote a summary: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
That document requires a certain amount of context and background to understand fully, but hopefully some people will find it interesting.
That document requires a certain amount of context and background to understand fully, but hopefully some people will find it interesting.
Reposted by Raph Levien
Faster, easier 2D vector rendering
by Raph Levien at RustWeek 2025!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sv8...
@raphlinus.bsky.social
#rustlang #RustWeek
by Raph Levien at RustWeek 2025!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sv8...
@raphlinus.bsky.social
#rustlang #RustWeek
Faster, easier 2D vector rendering - Raph Levien
This talk presents new work on high performance vector path and text rendering, to make it not only fast but easier to integrate with other code. Multiple mo...
www.youtube.com
June 11, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Faster, easier 2D vector rendering
by Raph Levien at RustWeek 2025!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sv8...
@raphlinus.bsky.social
#rustlang #RustWeek
by Raph Levien at RustWeek 2025!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sv8...
@raphlinus.bsky.social
#rustlang #RustWeek
June 10, 2025 at 1:15 PM
I wrote linebender.org/blog/a-plan-... and published it over the weekend. I'm excited about pushing Rust SIMD to be more usable, and open to feedback about the specifics of the proposal.
A plan for SIMD
A plan for SIMD
linebender.org
June 9, 2025 at 1:56 PM
I wrote linebender.org/blog/a-plan-... and published it over the weekend. I'm excited about pushing Rust SIMD to be more usable, and open to feedback about the specifics of the proposal.
Reposted by Raph Levien
Our data compression projects aim to offer best-in-class performance.
@tweedegolf.bsky.social's Folkert de Vries shows how SIMD helps us to speed up zlib-rs in compare256, a crucial part of the compression algorithm that finds repetitions in the input.
trifectatech.org/blog/simd-in...
#rustlang
@tweedegolf.bsky.social's Folkert de Vries shows how SIMD helps us to speed up zlib-rs in compare256, a crucial part of the compression algorithm that finds repetitions in the input.
trifectatech.org/blog/simd-in...
#rustlang
SIMD in zlib-rs (part 2): compare256 - Trifecta Tech Foundation
In part 1 of the "SIMD in zlib-rs" series, we've seen that, with a bit of nudging, autovectorization can produce optimal code for some problems.
trifectatech.org
May 27, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Our data compression projects aim to offer best-in-class performance.
@tweedegolf.bsky.social's Folkert de Vries shows how SIMD helps us to speed up zlib-rs in compare256, a crucial part of the compression algorithm that finds repetitions in the input.
trifectatech.org/blog/simd-in...
#rustlang
@tweedegolf.bsky.social's Folkert de Vries shows how SIMD helps us to speed up zlib-rs in compare256, a crucial part of the compression algorithm that finds repetitions in the input.
trifectatech.org/blog/simd-in...
#rustlang
This hits close to home. The PhET people are brilliant and dedicated, and we've shared ideas and some code on 2D rendering technology. One tiny facet of a great loss.
This is devastating. PhET is such a huge project for high school physics education.
1/7 💔 We are very disappointed to announce that on April 25, NSF terminated a $1.5M PhET grant – our Pathways to Open Source Ecosystems Phase II grant for advancing PhET’s SceneryStack project. Learn how this impacts our work and how you can help: bit.ly/PhETNSF2025
May 8, 2025 at 12:55 PM
This hits close to home. The PhET people are brilliant and dedicated, and we've shared ideas and some code on 2D rendering technology. One tiny facet of a great loss.
New blog post up on the state of SIMD in Rust: linebender.org/blog/towards...
It's an update on my previous blog post from 7 years ago, and also links to a podcast I recently recorded with Andre Popovitch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Wc.... I think it's a good intro to SIMD, and I had fun doing it.
It's an update on my previous blog post from 7 years ago, and also links to a podcast I recently recorded with Andre Popovitch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Wc.... I think it's a good intro to SIMD, and I had fun doing it.
Towards fearless SIMD, 7 years later
Towards fearless SIMD, 7 years later
linebender.org
March 29, 2025 at 11:56 PM
New blog post up on the state of SIMD in Rust: linebender.org/blog/towards...
It's an update on my previous blog post from 7 years ago, and also links to a podcast I recently recorded with Andre Popovitch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Wc.... I think it's a good intro to SIMD, and I had fun doing it.
It's an update on my previous blog post from 7 years ago, and also links to a podcast I recently recorded with Andre Popovitch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0Wc.... I think it's a good intro to SIMD, and I had fun doing it.
I've now published my blog post, "I want a good parallel computer." raphlinus.github.io/gpu/2025/03/... . Thanks much to all the feedback on the draft, I'd like to think I've clarified some things that might have been confusing.
I want a good parallel computer
The GPU in your computer is about 10 to 100 times more powerful than the CPU, depending on workload. For real-time graphics rendering and machine learning, you are enjoying that power, and doing those...
raphlinus.github.io
March 21, 2025 at 7:58 PM
I've now published my blog post, "I want a good parallel computer." raphlinus.github.io/gpu/2025/03/... . Thanks much to all the feedback on the draft, I'd like to think I've clarified some things that might have been confusing.