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Kyle Barron

@kylebarron.dev
731 followers 335 following 95 posts

Creating the next generation of geospatial data tools for Python & the browser with GeoArrow, GeoParquet & GeoRust @developmentseed | he/him 🌈

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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 22/09/2026
Published deck.gl-raster v0.8! - Initial globe view support - New icechunk example - Improved request latency for MosaicLayer - Fixed reprojection for images extending beyond ±85° latitude - Improved rendering precision at high zooms - Improved performance developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 13/08/2026
Zarrista: a new, faster Python library for working with Zarr data! 1.9x to 2.7x faster than Zarr-Python for reading local data. developmentseed.org/zarrista/lat...
developmentseed.org
Zarrista: Faster Zarr for Python - zarrista
A low-level Zarr API for Python, powered from Rust by zarrs.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 15/05/2026
Big speedups in deck.gl-raster v0.7: Retina display support, faster GPU pixel filtering, minimized latency to render 200GB COGs, center-out tile loading developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast... Thanks to @developmentseed.org for supporting this work!
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 04/05/2026
New deck.gl-raster example that compares two image sources with a slider. developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 29/04/2026
New: Zarr support in deck.gl-raster! Here's a GPU-driven animation of Zarr temperature forecasts, fully client-side, no server involved. developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 02/04/2026
Native Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF support in Lonboard! - Stream massive COGs on demand - Full control over image rendering: apply colormaps, change band combinations, use ML models - Read COGs from anywhere, including local files and private data (via Obstore) developmentseed.org/lonboard/lat...
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
Hugh @hughagraham.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
An interactive geotiff viewer extension for #vscode / #positron powered by @kylebarron.dev's amazing deck.gl-raster. Just click on a tif file and take a peek. Early days but give it a spin and let me know if there are any issues. ✌️ github.com/belian-earth...
github.com
GitHub - belian-earth/rastereye: Quick GeoTIFF viewer for VS Code and Positron
Quick GeoTIFF viewer for VS Code and Positron. Contribute to belian-earth/rastereye development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 20/03/2026
Three updates in deck.gl-raster v0.4: 1. New example for NDVI filtering on the GPU 2. When zooming in, render coarser image data while higher-res data is still loading 3. Fixed reprojection and rendering at high latitudes developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 18/03/2026
𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐤.𝐠𝐥-𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐯0.3: fast GeoTIFF visualization in deck.gl - 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐓𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐓𝐈𝐅𝐅 𝐥𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲: high-level & fully-typed. We've fully migrated off of geotiff.js - 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐨 𝐍𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 - 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐄𝐏𝐒𝐆 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 to 309kb - 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 of Affine and Morecantile to TS developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 16/03/2026
Also in Lonboard, new logo! Designed by @gusbusdraws.bsky.social, who also designed the @developmentseed.org Cloud Native Zine developmentseed.org/blog/2025-02... zines.developmentseed.org/zines/cloud-...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 16/03/2026
Lonboard v0.15 now supports geocoding! Easily jump the map to locations, using any geocoder service of your choice. developmentseed.org/lonboard/lat... @developmentseed.org
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 12/02/2026
New Lonboard release makes the first step towards rich 𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 data visualization in Python, starting with PMTiles! developmentseed.org/lonboard/lat... - New RasterLayer, supporting PMTiles input via async-pmtiles github.com/developments... - New support for categorical data filtering on the GPU
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 10/02/2026
Building on Vincent Sarago's work, I updated and published 𝐚𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐜-𝐩𝐦𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬, an asynchronous PMTiles reader for Python: github.com/developments... This integrates with Obstore for efficiently reading remote files and Obspec for extensibility.
github.com
GitHub - developmentseed/async-pmtiles: Asynchronous PMTiles reader for Python
Asynchronous PMTiles reader for Python. Contribute to developmentseed/async-pmtiles development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 05/02/2026
Published a new version of async-geotiff: - Support for reading band-interleaved GeoTIFFs and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs - Initial support for decoding LERC, LERC_DEFLATE, LERC_ZSTD images - Fix computation of image bounds and resolution for rotated images github.com/developments...
github.com
Release v0.2.0 · developmentseed/async-geotiff
New Features feat: Support for band-interleaved data by @kylebarron in #80 feat: Add LERC decompression support by @kylebarron in #79 Fixes fix: Fix computation of bounds and res for rotated dat...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 03/02/2026
Introducing 𝐀𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐜-𝐆𝐞𝐨𝐓𝐈𝐅𝐅, a new library for reading GeoTIFFs and COGs. developmentseed.org/async-geotif... - Fast, with a Rust core - Uses a non-blocking thread pool for image decoding - Integrates with NumPy, PyProj, Affine & Morecantile - Remote data support with Obstore - No GDAL dependency
developmentseed.org
Introducing Async-GeoTIFF - async-geotiff
A fast, async GeoTIFF and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) reader for Python.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 26/01/2026
New version of async-tiff: Fast, async reading of TIFFs, GeoTIFFs & COGs in Rust and Python: developmentseed.org/async-tiff - New Array class for zero-copy data sharing between Rust/numpy - Separate CPU-bound and IO-bound work, decoding image data in a thread pool - Revamped metadata block caching
developmentseed.org
async-tiff
A fast, low-level async TIFF reader powered by Rust.
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 15/01/2026
Visualize a mosaic of NAIP imagery loaded from @microsoft.com Planetary Computer COGs, all in your browser, no server involved. Render true color, false color infrared, or NDVI. developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast... Built at @developmentseed.org with deck.gl-raster: github.com/developments...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 07/01/2026
Announcing deck.gl-raster: 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭-𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐂𝐎𝐆 𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠. No server required. 1.3 𝐠𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐛𝐲𝐭𝐞 COG, streamed directly into the browser: developmentseed.org/deck.gl-rast... - GPU-accelerated raster reprojection - GPU image processing for colormaps, nodata values - Efficient use of COG overviews
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 05/11/2025
Released Lonboard v0.13! - New layer types: H3, S2, Geohash, A5 and fixed HeatmapLayer - Render data layers beneath Maplibre text labels - Map UI controls: scale, fullscreen, navigation - Significant performance improvements: fixing earlier regressions developmentseed.org/lonboard/lat...
Rendering H3 data with H3HexagonLayerMaplibre text labels rendered above Lonboard layer
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 09/10/2025
I'm happy to announce I've been promoted to an Apache Arrow Committer, meaning I'm authorized to merge code patches into Arrow repositories! I join this list of amazing people: arrow.apache.org/committers/
arrow.apache.org
Committers
List of project-management committee (PMC) members and committers on the Apache Arrow project.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 07/10/2025
New blog post! kylebarron.dev/blog/fast-py... This dives into performance pitfalls of Python bindings, why projects like Lonboard are so fast, and why I care about Apache Arrow so much. The post is high level and you don't need to know C/C++/Rust to understand it!
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Andy Pavlo @andypavlo.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Our SIGMOD paper with our friends at Tsinghua + @wesmckinney.com + @pateljm.bsky.social on creating a next generation open-source data file format is out. F3 is a future-proof file format avoids the mistakes of Parquet. 📄 Paper: db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2025/... 📁 Code: github.com/future-file-...
F3: The Open-Source Data File Format for the Future
SIGMOD 2025
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
Dewey Dunnington @paleolimbot.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Last week Apache Sedona announced SedonaDB...and now I finally get to write about it! Here I use SedonaDB to demonstrate the explore/iterate/visualize cycle...SedonaDB's CRS support + @kylebarron.dev's `lonboard` is 👌 for exploring new data!) dewey.dunnington.ca/post/2025/st...
dewey.dunnington.ca
Stream network traversal with SedonaDB | Dewey Dunnington
Last Wednesday the Apache Sedona project announced SedonaDB. There’s also a great post on the Whereobots blog that has a bit more context, or if you’re like me and you just want to see the code you ca...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 18/09/2025
New Lonboard release and new demo! Integrating marimo and Apache DataFusion to visualize the NYC taxi dataset. developmentseed.org/lonboard/lat...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 17/09/2025
Published a new version of parquet-wasm: github.com/kylebarron/p... - Update to latest version of Rust parquet crate - Workaround to read Parquet data containing Arrow string view/binary view types - Streaming writes - Comparison between parquet-wasm and hyparquet, a pure-JavaScript Parquet reader
github.com
Release v0.7.0 · kylebarron/parquet-wasm
What's Changed Streaming Writes implementation by @H-Plus-Time in #305 Expose schema on ParquetFile by @H-Plus-Time in #599 Small doc fixes by @severo in #762 Bump to arrow/parquet 56 by @kylebarr...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 22/08/2025
Published arro3-core v0.6 with wider dtype support for converting numpy ndarrays to Arrow. It now additionally supports: - datetime64 - timedelta64 - fixed-width strings/bytes - variable-width strings - object arrays of str/bytes And the Python wheel is still just 2.5MB! github.com/kylebarron/a...
github.com
Release py-v0.6.0 · kylebarron/arro3
arro3-core Breaking Changes 🔧 No breaking changes. New features ✨ Expanded dtype support in Array.from_numpy. It now additionally supports datetime64, timedelta64, fixed-width strings and bytes, v...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 08/08/2025
New GeoArrow-Rust release (& Python bindings) with a dedicated FlatGeobuf reader and writer: - Fast bounding box queries, pushed down to the original file format - Sync/async data reading through obstore - Fully Rust with no GDAL means easy installation geoarrow.org/geoarrow-rs/...
geoarrow.org
FlatGeobuf - geoarrow-rust
Python bindings to Rust implementation of GeoArrow
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 04/08/2025
New blog post on Obstore, fast, multi-provider cloud storage access for Python: developmentseed.org/blog/2025-08...
developmentseed.org
We Needed Better Cloud Storage for Python so We Built Obstore — Development Seed
Obstore solves the friction we kept hitting in cloud-native workflows.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 22/07/2025
New example notebook on visualizing Spatially-Partitioned GeoParquet with Lonboard, Obstore, and GeoArrow-Rust, using Overture Maps Foundation data! developmentseed.org/lonboard/lat...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 12/07/2025
When the Delta Lake Python bindings take a required dependency on your library 😅. 2.6M downloads a month! 😱 Guess I'll never be making a breaking release now!! pypistats.org/packages/arr... arro3-core is 15x smaller in your environment than pyarrow! kylebarron.dev/arro3/latest/
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
Pete Gadomski @gadom.ski · 09/07/2025
not every decade-old tech post holds up, but this one does: macwright.com/2012/06/13/p...
macwright.com
Gravity Always Wins
On how software naturally degrades as time goes on, and maybe we should embrace that.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 10/07/2025
I'll be speaking at the NYC DataFusion meetup in September on geospatial support for DataFusion! lu.ma/qkcyycg0 DataFusion is a Rust-based query engine for building fast OLAP data processing systems. Compared to DuckDB, DataFusion is more modular and is designed to be embedded in larger systems.
lu.ma
New York City Apache DataFusion Meetup · Luma
Welcome to the New York City Apache DataFusion Meetup! Join us for an evening of talks, panel discussion, and community discussion celebrating 50 releases of…
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
CNG @cloudnativegeo.org · 08/07/2025
🆕 #CNG2025 session recording @kylebarron.dev from @developmentseed.org introduces Obstore, a python library he wrote to access data on the cloud. Watch his talk to hear about the motivations for writing Obstore & its details ▶️ youtu.be/Wxh1G2oCZiU
youtu.be
[CNG 2025] Fast Cloud Storage Operations with Obstore – Kyle Barron
YouTube video by Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 08/07/2025
Published v0.4 of the Rust GeoParquet crate: - Read all GeoParquet 1.1 files, including spatial filtering - Easier integration with upstream parquet crate read options - Support for adding bbox column when writing files - Sync and async for both reading and writing github.com/geoarrow/geo...
github.com
Release rust-v0.4.0-geoparquet · geoarrow/geoarrow-rs
This is the tag for the v0.4 release of the geoparquet crate, which was delayed compared to the 0.4 release of the other crates. 0.4.0 (geoparquet crate) - 2025-07-08 New standalone geoparquet crat...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 01/07/2025
✨New Python bindings to GeoArrow and GeoParquet in Rust! This wrapper exposes a *full rewrite* of the GeoArrow Rust library, including support for the new Geometry(Collection) array types. It also supports reading and writing GeoParquet files, with spatial filtering. geoarrow.org/geoarrow-rs/...
lnkd.in
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 25/06/2025
Obstore v0.7 is out! The simplest Python cloud storage interface, powered by Rust - Anonymous connections to GCS - Obspec compatibility - Improvements to NASA Earthdata credential provider - Fixed creation of AzureStore from HTTPS URL - Improved documentation developmentseed.org/obstore/late...
developmentseed.org
Releasing obstore 0.7! - obstore
The simplest, highest-throughput Python interface to S3, GCS & Azure Storage, powered by Rust.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 25/06/2025
Introducing Obspec: A Python protocol for interfacing with object storage Obspec is an alternative to fsspec. It defines a minimal Python interface to read, write, and modify data on object storage while acknowledging that object storage is *not* a filesystem. developmentseed.org/obspec/lates...
developmentseed.org
Introducing Obspec: A Python protocol for interfacing with object storage - obspec
Object storage interface definitions for Python.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 17/06/2025
Lonboard v0.11 is released! - Choose between a tooltip and side panel for inspecting data - Supports GeoArrow box arrays from 0.2 spec - fixes some DuckDB and CSS bugs - Ensures compatibility with geoarrow-pyarrow v0.2 See full changelog: github.com/developments...
github.com
Release v0.11.0 · developmentseed/lonboard
Breaking changes 🔨 Require Python 3.9 or higher by @kylebarron in #743 New features ✨ feat: Reinstate tooltip by @vgeorge in #736. You can now turn on the tooltip by passing show_tooltip=True to...
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 28/05/2025
Published version 0.4 of the GeoArrow Rust library! It's been fully rewritten from scratch, has a much more stable core, and supports all of the GeoArrow 0.2 specification. geoarrow.org/geoarrow-rs/...
geoarrow.org
GeoArrow Rust crates - geoarrow-rs
A Rust implementation of GeoArrow
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 27/05/2025
Really excited for version 0.2 of GeoArrow! This has been years in the making and adds: - Geometry, GeometryCollection, Box types. We can now represent mixed-type geometries in an array - New ways to represent CRS. See the release post for more information: geoarrow.org/news/release...
geoarrow.org
GeoArrow 0.2 Release – GeoArrow
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 09/05/2025
GDAL 3.11 released 🚀 github.com/OSGeo/gdal/r...
github.com
Release GDAL 3.11.0 "Eganville" · OSGeo/gdal
The 3.11.0 release is a new feature release with the following highlights: In a nutshell... RFC 104: Adding a "gdal" front-end command line interface. See the list of commands Includes new "gdal ...
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
Joe Hamman @jhamman.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
We found similar results when we first benchmarked #icechunk. Our conclusion: doing IO with a Rust backend is much faster than Python. 👇Really exciting to see @kylebarron.dev's Obstore backend for Zarr-Python ship today.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 21/04/2025
With today's Zarr Python release, switch to the new obstore-based backend for **3x faster** reading from S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure than the default fsspec backend. zarr.readthedocs.io/en/stable/us... developmentseed.org/obstore/late...
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Reposted by Kyle Barron
Joris Van den Bossche @jorisvandenbossche.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Finally a new #Shapely feature release! 🎉 Shapely 2.1.0 highlights include initial support for geometries with M or ZM values, functionality for coverage validation and simplification, and much more. For a full overview, see shapely.readthedocs.io/en/latest/re... #python #geopython #geospatial
Code snippet showing the initial support for M values, illustrating that with a POINT M.Image showing the functionality of `shapely.coverage_simplify`: on the left the countries of Africa, on the right the result of topologically simplifying those polygons preserving the coverage.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 31/03/2025
I'm looking forward to the Cloud Native Geo conference next month! I'll be presenting on Obstore and a growing ecosystem of Python libraries that enjoy faster, simpler access to cloud resources.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 24/03/2025
Obstore v0.6 brings simple, painless integration with Microsoft Planetary Computer! - *Automatic token refresh*. No need to manually fetch SAS tokens and never think about token expiration times again. - STAC API integration developmentseed.org/obstore/late...
developmentseed.org
Releasing obstore 0.6! - obstore
The simplest, highest-throughput Python interface to S3, GCS & Azure Storage, powered by Rust.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 18/03/2025
Published v0.1 of async-tiff, a Rust crate and Python library for low-level, async reading of TIFF and GeoTIFF files. There's high potential for improved performance when opening many TIFF files concurrently, esp in Python server environments github.com/developments...
github.com
GitHub - developmentseed/async-tiff: Async TIFF reader for Rust and Python
Async TIFF reader for Rust and Python. Contribute to developmentseed/async-tiff development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 17/03/2025
Published obstore 0.5, the fastest Python interface to S3, GCS & Azure - Benchmarks: *2.8x higher throughput* than aioboto3 for many small, concurrent requests - Custom credential providers, automatic token refresh - Improved docs, type hints, fsspec integration developmentseed.org/obstore/late...
developmentseed.org
Releasing obstore 0.5! - obstore
The simplest, highest-throughput Python interface to S3, GCS & Azure Storage, powered by Rust.
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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 24/02/2025
So awesome to see my amazing coworker @batpad.bsky.social having his work featured in the Museum of Modern Art here in NYC!!
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