Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org
Programmer working at Google. Python core developer and general FOSS contributor. I also post some parenting content.
Joined Nov 2019
Paul Ganssle
boosted
We’re looking for a conference venue to host PackagingCon in spring 2023 in Berlin, does anyone have a lead to host 100-200 people for a day or two?
@brainwane The library is great, but Null Island is so inconveniently located 😉
I was thinking about this because I was thinking about how I might optimize the resource consumption of a program where I'm ~the only user, and then I thought, "Hmmm.. If I spend that same time working on an open source project currently used by millions of people, with even a modest improvement I could probably save more energy than my homebrew project will consume in its entire lifetime."
Fun stuff.
It would be interesting to live in a world where most people used this or something like it in production: https://www.sciagraph.com/
I'm kinda curious to know stuff like, "How much electricity would it save if time zone conversions in pandas were 20% more efficient?"
Paul Ganssle
boosted
I have been using Git a long, long time. I have worked on Git clients and libraries. At some places I've worked, I am the person folks go to when they need Git help.
And yet, only today I learned you can pass -m to commit twice (or more) and it will do the right thing of making each successive message a new paragraph (which is useful for the convention of a short summary as a single first line and following paragraphs as a more detailed message).
@hugovk Either way it's a huge footgun. The thing everyone is going to think to do causes this problem.
@hugovk I am not sure if you are supposed to use it that way, and that makes it so you have to choose between including the license file and having a meaningful short description of the license.
I'll probably just fall back to the setuptools config options.
Hm... PEP 621 deliberately doesn't have a replacement for `setuptools`'s `license`, but they do have a `license` key that is equivalent to `license_files`. Unfortunately, this is what PyPI does with the data in that field:
Not great.
Discussing the latest Jeopardy happenings with my family over Thanksgiving is the closest I've ever felt to knowing what it's like to be a sports fan.
@kevin Do you do any automation to snatch the latest image to seed?
I usually indefinitely seed images after I download them, but I download fresh images pretty rarely.
Paul Ganssle
boosted
#askfedi Expanding on my earlier laptop query: I'd love to find a site with a comprehensive database of laptops from say the past ten years that lets you search by filtering on specs like:
* Weight
* Ports
* Screen size, resolution
* Screen brightness
* Claimed battery life
Know of anything like this? It would be a much more direct and efficient way for me to build up my shortlist of machines I look for in the used market. TIA.
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Well, here I am on Mastadon.
Intro in order, I suppose. That's how it works, right?
Me:
- That datetime guy. Ask me about time zones, DST, leap year bugs, etc.
- Been doing .NET/C# longer than I can remember. 20+ years. These days I code mostly on a Mac.
- I work at Sentry, and used to work at Microsoft.
- I live in the forests of Woodinville WA, with wife Maggie, my son, and our three dogs.
- I like Star Trek, home improvement, and playing stupid pop music on the piano.
HI! 👋🙂
Paul Ganssle
boosted
This is an old project, but by some miracle it's still working and I woke up this morning wanting to celebrate the things I love more.
This Inkplate e-ink screen shows Conway's Game of Life, seeded from tarpits I have on the Internet. The tarpits are programs on my computer that superficially look like insecure Telnet and Remote Desktop services, but actually exist to respond super slowly and make bots scanning the Internet 'get stuck'.
When a bot connects to the tarpit, the data it sends gets squished into a 5x5 grid and 'stamped' onto a Game of Life board. Data from a bot at the IP address 1.1.x.x will get stamped on the top left corner, data from a bot at 254.254.x.x will get stamped on the bottom right corner.
Conway's Game of Life, a set of simple rules that govern whether cells should turn on or off, updates the display once per second. The result is that bot attacks end up appearing as distinct 'creatures', that get bigger and more angry looking over time (as their centre is updated with new data). After the attack finishes, the 'creature' eventually burns itself out.
Despite that description, it's a really chill piece of art that doesn't draw too much attention but I can happily watch for a long time.
Credit for the idea goes to @_mattata, I had been wanting to make a real-life version of XKCD #350 for years before seeing his Botnet Fishbowl project.
#projects #inkplate #esp32 #eink #infosec #tarpit
This Inkplate e-ink screen shows Conway's Game of Life, seeded from tarpits I have on the Internet. The tarpits are programs on my computer that superficially look like insecure Telnet and Remote Desktop services, but actually exist to respond super slowly and make bots scanning the Internet 'get stuck'.
When a bot connects to the tarpit, the data it sends gets squished into a 5x5 grid and 'stamped' onto a Game of Life board. Data from a bot at the IP address 1.1.x.x will get stamped on the top left corner, data from a bot at 254.254.x.x will get stamped on the bottom right corner.
Conway's Game of Life, a set of simple rules that govern whether cells should turn on or off, updates the display once per second. The result is that bot attacks end up appearing as distinct 'creatures', that get bigger and more angry looking over time (as their centre is updated with new data). After the attack finishes, the 'creature' eventually burns itself out.
Despite that description, it's a really chill piece of art that doesn't draw too much attention but I can happily watch for a long time.
Credit for the idea goes to @_mattata, I had been wanting to make a real-life version of XKCD #350 for years before seeing his Botnet Fishbowl project.
#projects #inkplate #esp32 #eink #infosec #tarpit
Paul Ganssle
boosted
📣 #Python News:
Let's welcome the newest Python core developer: @hugovk. Hugo has been contributing to Python for years, improving our docs, devguide, toolings, and infrastructure. He's also one of the PEP editors and an active member of the Python docs community.
Hugo's promotion to become core dev was approved by Python Steering Council yesterday. 👏🥳 
https://discuss.python.org/t/vote-to-promote-hugo-van-kemenade/20990
Paul Ganssle
boosted
How can a music notation data format encode the music of a concert-pitch score along with individual transposed-instrument parts, without duplicating information? What's the right level of abstraction?
If that question makes any sense to you, check out my proposal and the current discussion in this GitHub issue:
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Office hours are going to be starting in about 10 minutes at YouTube.com/jayofdoom
@JulianWasTaken Everyone needs to feel seen sometimes.
Nice: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03783-5
I hope this half-solution to a non-problem is actually gone for good 🙂.
I don't think I've ever met anyone who needed or wanted leap seconds. And I've spent some time looking!
Paul Ganssle
boosted
Why did nobody tell me that in #Python 3.11, datetime.fromisotimestamp() can parse arbitrary ISO timestamps!? #gameChanger
(Before it could only parse the output from datetime.isoformat(); e.g. choking on timestamps ending with a Z for UTC.)
Programmer working at Google. Python core developer and general FOSS contributor. I also post some parenting content.
Joined Nov 2019
