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Do you deploy changes to production on Fridays?

Some people don't as they're worried about potential issues occuring over the weekend.

When's the last time you did a deployment which caused a issue 24 or 48 hours later?

In my experience, most issues are visible immediately or shortly after a deployment and not days later.

Deploying on a Friday may not be as risky as you think.

Like each month, have a look at the work funded by Freexian’s Debian LTS offering.

Debian LTS contributors

In August, 16 contributors have been paid to work on Debian LTS, their reports are available:

• Adrian Bunk did 44.5h (out of 46.5h assigned and 53.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 55.5h to the next month.
• Bastien Roucariès did 20.0h (out of 20.0h assigned).
• Ben Hutchings did 9.0h (out of 0.0h assigned and 21.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 12.0h to the next month.
• Chris Lamb did 18.0h (out of 18.0h assigned).
• Daniel Leidert did 12.0h (out of 7.0h assigned and 5.0h from previous period).
• Emilio Pozuelo Monfort did 22.25h (out of 6.5h assigned and 53.5h from previous period), thus carrying over 37.75h to the next month.
• Guilhem Moulin did 17.5h (out of 8.75h assigned and 11.25h from previous period), thus carrying over 2.5h to the next month.
• Lee Garrett did 11.5h (out of 58.0h assigned and 2.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 48.5h to the next month.
• Markus Koschany did 40.0h (out of 40.0h assigned).
• Ola Lundqvist did 14.5h (out of 4.0h assigned and 20.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 9.5h to the next month.
• Roberto C. Sánchez did 8.25h (out of 5.0h assigned and 7.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 3.75h to the next month.
• Santiago Ruano Rincón did 21.5h (out of 11.5h assigned and 10.0h from previous period).
• Sean Whitton did 4.0h (out of 2.25h assigned and 3.75h from previous period), thus carrying over 2.0h to the next month.
• Sylvain Beucler did 42.0h (out of 46.0h assigned and 14.0h from previous period), thus carrying over 18.0h to the next month.
• Thorsten Alteholz did 11.0h (out of 11.0h assigned).
• Tobias Frost did 2.5h (out of 7.75h assigned and 4.25h from previous period), thus carrying over 9.5h to the next month.

Evolution of the situation

In August, we have released 1 DLAs.

During the month of August Debian 11 "bullseye" officially transitioned to the responsibility of the LTS team (on 2024-08-15). However, because the final point release (11.11) was not made until 2024-08-31, LTS contributors were prevented from uploading packages to bullseye until after the point release had been made. That said, the team was not at all idle, and was busy at work on a variety of tasks which impacted both LTS and the broader Debian community, as well as preparing uploads which will be released during the month of September.

Of particular note, LTS contributor Bastien Roucariès prepared updates of the putty and cacti packages for bookworm (1 2) and bullseye (1 2), which were accepted by the old-stable release managers for the August point releases. He also analysed several security regressions in the apache2 package. LTS contributor Emilio Pozuelo Monfort worked on the Rust toolchain in bookworm and bullseye, which will be needed to support the upcoming Firefox ESR and Thunderbird ESR releases from the Mozilla project. Additionally, LTS contributor Thorsten Alteholz prepared bookworm and bullseye updates of the cups package (1 2), which were accepted by the old-stable release managers for the August point releases.

LTS contributor Markus Koschany collaborated with Emmanuel Bourg, co-maintainer of the tomcat packages in Debian. Regressions in a proposed security fix necessitated the updating of the tomcat10 package in Debian to the latest upstream release.

LTS contributors Bastien and Santiago Ruano Rincón collaborated with the upstream developers and the Debian maintainer (Bernhard Schmidt) of the FreeRADIUS project towards addressing the BlastRADIUS vulnerability in the bookworm and bullseye versions of the freeradius package. If you use FreeRADIUS in Debian bookworm or bullseye, we encourage you to test the packages following the instructions found in the call for testers to help identifying any possible regression that could be introduced with these updates.

Testing is an important part of the work the LTS Team does, and in that vein LTS contributor Sean Whitton worked on improving the documentation and tooling around creating test filesystems which can be used for testing a variety of package update scenarios.

Thanks to our sponsors

Sponsors that joined recently are in bold.

• Platinum sponsors:
  • TOSHIBA (for 107 months)
  • Civil Infrastructure Platform (CIP) (for 75 months)
  • VyOS Inc (for 39 months)
• Gold sponsors:
  • Roche Diagnostics International AG (for 117 months)
  • Akamai - Linode (for 111 months)
  • Babiel GmbH (for 101 months)
  • Plat’Home (for 100 months)
  • CINECA (for 75 months)
  • University of Oxford (for 57 months)
  • Deveryware (for 44 months)
  • EDF SA (for 29 months)
  • Dataport AöR (for 4 months)
• Silver sponsors:
  • Domeneshop AS (for 122 months)
  • Nantes Métropole (for 116 months)
  • Univention GmbH (for 108 months)
  • Université Jean Monnet de St Etienne (for 108 months)
  • Ribbon Communications, Inc. (for 102 months)
  • Exonet B.V. (for 91 months)
  • Leibniz Rechenzentrum (for 86 months)
  • Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères (for 69 months)
  • Cloudways by DigitalOcean (for 59 months)
  • Dinahosting SL (for 57 months)
  • Bauer Xcel Media Deutschland KG (for 51 months)
  • Platform.sh SAS (for 51 months)
  • Moxa Inc. (for 45 months)
  • sipgate GmbH (for 43 months)
  • OVH US LLC (for 41 months)
  • Tilburg University (for 41 months)
  • GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH (for 32 months)
  • Soliton Systems K.K. (for 29 months)
  • THINline s.r.o. (for 5 months)
  • Copenhagen Airports A/S
  • Protegrity USA, Inc.
• Bronze sponsors:
  • Evolix (for 122 months)
  • Seznam.cz, a.s. (for 122 months)
  • Intevation GmbH (for 119 months)
  • Linuxhotel GmbH (for 119 months)
  • Daevel SARL (for 118 months)
  • Bitfolk LTD (for 117 months)
  • Megaspace Internet Services GmbH (for 117 months)
  • Greenbone AG (for 116 months)
  • NUMLOG (for 116 months)
  • WinGo AG (for 115 months)
  • Entr’ouvert (for 106 months)
  • Adfinis AG (for 104 months)
  • Tesorion (for 99 months)
  • GNI MEDIA (for 98 months)
  • Laboratoire LEGI - UMR 5519 / CNRS (for 98 months)
  • Bearstech (for 90 months)
  • LiHAS (for 90 months)
  • Catalyst IT Ltd (for 85 months)
  • Supagro (for 80 months)
  • Demarcq SAS (for 79 months)
  • Université Grenoble Alpes (for 65 months)
  • TouchWeb SAS (for 57 months)
  • SPiN AG (for 54 months)
  • CoreFiling (for 50 months)
  • Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod (for 45 months)
  • Observatoire des Sciences de l’Univers de Grenoble (for 41 months)
  • Tem Innovations GmbH (for 36 months)
  • WordFinder.pro (for 35 months)
  • CNRS DT INSU Résif (for 34 months)
  • Alter Way (for 27 months)
  • Institut Camille Jordan (for 17 months)
  • SOBIS Software GmbH

Posted on September 11, 2024
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear

I’ve been influenced again into feeling the need for a garment.

It was again a case of multiple sources conspiring in the same direction for unrelated reasons, but I decided I absolutely needed a linen hood, made from the heavy white linen I knew I had in my stash.

Why? I don’t know. I do like the feeling of wearing a hood, and the white linen should give a decent protection from the sun, but I don’t know how often I’m going to wear these instead of just a hat. On the other hand the linen was already there and I needed something small to sew.

My first idea was to make a square hood: some time ago I had already made one out of some leftovers of duvet cover, vaguely inspired by the S , because I have a long-term plan of making one a bit more from scratch1.

I like the fact that this pattern is completely made out of squares and rectangles, and while the flannel one is quite fitting, as suitable for a warm garment, I felt that by making it just a cm or two wider it would have worked nicely for a warm weather one, and indeed it did.

Except, before I even started on the square hood, I started to think that the same square top would also be good for a hood-scarf, one of those long flowy garments that sit on the head, wrap around the neck and fall down, moving with the wind and the movements of the person.

Because, let’s be honest. worn in a way that look like a veil they feel nice, it’s true. But with the help of a couple of pins then you can do this.

And no, I’ve never played that game2, and I’m not even 100% sure what it is about, other than killing people, climbing buildings and petting cats3, but that’s not really an issue when making a bit of casual cosplay of something, right?

Anyway, should anybody feel the need to make themselves a hood or ten, the patterns have been released as usual as #FreeSoftWear: square hood and hood scarf.

1. I’m not going to raise the sheep :D I’m actually not even going to wash and comb the wool, I’ll start from the step just after those :D↩︎

2. because proprietary software, because somewhat underpowered computers and other related reasons that are somewhat incidental to the game itself.↩︎

3. at least two out of three things that make it look like a perfectly enjoyable activity.↩︎

#646 – SEPTEMBER 10, 2024
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Using Pydantic to Simplify Python Data Validation

Discover the power of Pydantic, Python’s most popular data parsing, validation, and serialization library. In this hands-on video course, you’ll learn how to make your code more robust, trustworthy, and easier to debug with Pydantic.
REAL PYTHON course

Introducing Monthly PSF Board Office Hours

The PSF is introducing monthly office hours on the PSF Discord discussion board. This is a chance to connect with the board members and learn more about what they do. The schedule for the next 12 sessions is in the post.
PYTHON SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

500 Devs, Deploying 200x a Day, While Maintaining 4 Million Lines of Code 😮‍💨

Sounds tricky right? Well that’s exactly what Kraken Technologies is doing. Learn how they manage 100s of deployments a day and how they handle errors when they crop up. Sneak peak: they use Sentry to reduce noise, prioritize issues, and maintain code quality–without relying on a dedicated QA team →
SENTRY sponsor

Why I’m Switching From pandas to Polars

Ari is switching from pandas to Polars and surprisingly (even to himself) it isn’t because of the better performance. Read on for the reasons why.
ARI LAMSTEIN

DjangoCon US Durham, NC Sept 22-27, Tickets Still Available

DJANGOCON.US

Announcing Djangonaut Space Session 3 Applications Open!

DJANGONAUT.SPACE

Django Security Releases Issued: 5.1.1, 5.0.9, and 4.2.16

DJANGO SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

Quiz: Asynchronous Iterators and Iterables in Python

REAL PYTHON

Quiz: Functional Programming in Python

REAL PYTHON

Articles & Tutorials How to Create a Pre-Commit Hook

Pre-commit hooks are a great way to help maintain code quality. However, some of your code quality standards may be specific to your project, and therefore, not covered by existing code linting and formatting tools. In this article, Stefanie shows you how to incorporate custom checks into your pre-commit setup.
STEFANIEMOLIN.COM • Shared by Stefanie Molin

Debugging With Trace and PYREPL_TRACE

Just how does one debug the tool one is using to find bugs? Python 3.13’s new REPL is implemented in Python and adding print statements means you get output in your output. This quick post talks about the environment variable PYREPL_TRACE and how to use it to capture debug information.
RODRIGO GIRÃO SERRÃO

Evolving Django’s auth.User

Carlton has some strong opinions on how Django manages usernames and custom users through auth.User and how the current solution is daunting to folks new to Django. This article dives into why the current approach might be problematic and what could be done.
CARLTON GIBSON

Please Don’t Hijack My Python Root Logger

Redowan keeps running into code that mucks with the root logger’s settings, which leaks into his own code. This post explains the problem and how to make sure you aren’t doing it in your own libraries.
REDOWAN DELOWAR

Polars Has a New Lightweight Plotting Backend

Polars 1.6 allows you to natively create beautiful plots without pandas, NumPy, or PyArrow. This is enabled by Narwhals, a lightweight compatibility layer between dataframe libraries.
POLA.RS • Shared by Marco Gorelli

Why I Still Use Python Virtual Environments in Docker

Hynek often gets challenged when he suggests the use of virtual environments within Docker containers, and this post explains why he still does.
HYNEK SCHLAWACK

Web Scraping With Scrapy and MongoDB

This tutorial covers how to write a Python web crawler using Scrapy to scrape and parse data, and then store the data in MongoDB.
REAL PYTHON

Escaping From Anaconda’s Stranglehold on macOS

Once you’ve got Anaconda on macOS, using any other Python can be problematic. This article walks you through escaping Anaconda.
PAUL ROMER

I Will F(l)ail at Your Tech Interviews

Frak talks about how technical interviews often have false negatives and how this impacts your organization.
FRAK LOPEZ

Projects & Code microrabbit: Lightweight, Asynch Framework for RabbitMQ

GITHUB.COM/TONNOBELLOSNELLO

csv_trimming: Remove Common Ugliness From CSV Files

GITHUB.COM/LUCACAPPELLETTI94

Ibis: Dataframe API That Executes on Any Query Engine

IBIS-PROJECT.ORG

PyRoboCOP: Control Robotics With Algebra

GITHUB.COM/MERLRESEARCH

django-tables2: Create HTML Tables in Django

GITHUB.COM/JIETER

Events Weekly Real Python Office Hours Q&A (Virtual)

September 11, 2024
REALPYTHON.COM

Python Atlanta

September 12 to September 13, 2024
MEETUP.COM

Python Sul 2024 (Brazil)

September 13 to September 16, 2024
PYTHON.ORG.BR

PyData Amsterdam 2024

September 18 to September 21, 2024
PYDATA.ORG

PyCon Latam 2024, Mazatlán, México

September 19 to September 22, 2024
PYLATAM.ORG • Shared by David Sol

PyCon India 2024

September 20 to September 24, 2024
PYCON.ORG

PyCon TW 2024

September 21 to September 23, 2024
PYCON.ORG

PythonCamp Rügen 2024

September 21 to September 23, 2024
BARCAMPS.EU

Happy Pythoning!
This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #646.
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The Drupal Forge business model

Drupal Forge is a non-profit project of the Drupal community. Our mission is to support vendors that devote a portion of their revenue to sustaining the software and infrastructure Drupal needs to be a great product. Our product launch buttons are part of a business module to sustain contribution. This is what makes them different from launch buttons that hosting vendors offer on their own.

Darren Oh Tue, 09/10/2024 - 15:13 Tags

• Drupal
• Drupal Forge

• Read more about The Drupal Forge business model
• Log in or register to post comments

10 September 2024

Unifont 16.0.01 is now available.  This is a major release.

From the NEWS file:

  * Updates to synchronize Unifont with Unicode 16.0.0 release.

  * Many new upper-plane Chinese ideographs added.

  * New "make" build dependency on ImageMagick's "convert" program
    to build thumbnail images of the Unicode plane bitmaps.

  * unifont-combining-$(VERSION).txt is now included in the
    distribution set to provide spacing information on all
    combining characters.

  * Many other minor updates; see ChangeLog for details.

Download this release from GNU server mirrors at:

     https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/unifont/unifont-16.0.01/

or if that fails,

     https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-16.0.01/

or, as a last resort,

     ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/unifont/unifont-16.0.01/

These files are also available on the unifoundry.com website:

     https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-16.0.01/

Font files are in the subdirectory

     https://unifoundry.com/pub/unifont/unifont-16.0.01/font-builds/

A more detailed description of font changes is available at

      https://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html

and of utility program changes at

      https://unifoundry.com/unifont/unifont-utilities.html

Enjoy!


Paul Hardy

https://openuk.uk/openuk-september-2024-newsletter-1/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7238138962253344769/

Our 5th annual Awards are open for nominations and our 2024 judges are waiting for your nominations! Hannah Foxwell, Jonathan Riddell, and Nicole Tandy will be selecting winners for 12 categories. ?

Nominations are now open until midnight UK, 8 September 2024. Our 5th Awards again celebrate the UK’s leadership and global collaboration in open technology!

Nominate now! https://openuk.uk/awards/openuk-awards-2024/

Up to 3 shortlisted nominees will be selected in each category by early October and each nominee will be given one place at the Oscars of Open Source, the black tie Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner for our 5th Awards held at the House of Lords on 28 November, thanks to the sponsorship of Lord Wei.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, September 13 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google's Gemini AI model through its API in Python.

Steps to Access Gemini API

Follow the steps below to access the Gemini API and then use it in python.

1. Visit Google AI Studio website.
2. Sign in using your Google account.
3. Create an API key.
4. Install the Google AI Python library for the Gemini API using the command below :
   pip install google-generativeai.

To read this article in full, please click hereThis post appeared first on ListenData

One of the most common tasks that a computer program performs is to display data. The program often displays this information to the program’s user. However, a program also needs to show information to the programmer developing and maintaining it. The information a programmer needs about an object differs from how the program should display the same object for the user, and that’s where .__repr__() vs .__str__() comes in.

A Python object has several special methods that provide specific behavior. There are two similar special methods that describe the object using a string representation. These methods are .__repr__() and .__str__(). The .__repr__() method returns a detailed description for a programmer who needs to maintain and debug the code. The .__str__() method returns a simpler description with information for the user of the program.

The .__repr__() and .__str__() methods are two of the special methods that you can define for any class. They allow you to control how a program displays an object in several common forms of output, such as what you get from the print() function, formatted strings, and interactive environments.

In this video course, you’ll learn how to differentiate .__repr__() vs .__str__() and how to use these special methods in the classes you define. Defining these methods effectively makes the classes that you write more readable and easier to debug and maintain. So, when should you choose Python’s .__repr__() vs .__str__?

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

Python code to remove pages from PDF files. How to delete pages from PDF files. Trim a PDF file. Pull a few pages from the PDF file and make a new one. Reduce PDF file size.

Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” Although she wouldn’t have understood this 2024 expression, we know “she nailed it.” It takes many of us working together to truly accomplish great things. That’s why the OSI staff is so excited to welcome Jordan Maris to our team.

As OSI’s European Policy Analyst, Jordan will work to build a bridge between European Union legislators, the OSI and the wider Open Source community. He will monitor upcoming EU policies and flag issues and opportunities, educate and inform EU lawmakers about Open Source and its benefits, represent the OSI at EU-level events and conferences, and provide analysis and support to the OSI’s board and members on EU policy issues. He will also work closely with other Open Source foundations and organizations to make sure the voice of the Open Source community is heard at an EU level.

Jordan comes well-equipped with the experience he needs to excel in this role. He worked for three years with members of the European Parliament. In his previous position as a senior parliamentary policy advisor, he fought for the Open Source community on laws such as the AI Act, European Digital Identity, Data Act, Product Liability Directive, and Cyber-Resilience Act. He is a strong advocate for the Public Money–Public Code principle and a long-time user of and occasional contributor to Open Source software. He speaks English, French and German.

When asked about his vision for the future of Open Source, Jordan replied, “A world where Open Source is the rule — not the exception, and where developers and communities are consistently supported, listened to and valued.” 

Jordan says, “I’m looking forward to being able to devote more time to raising awareness about Open Source among lawmakers and to bringing together the Open Source community and EU lawmakers so that new laws better reflect the needs of the Open Source community.”

Please join me in welcoming Jordan to the team.

Can Contact Forms Be Replaced by AI Chatbots on Drupal Websites? bhavinhjoshi Tue, 09/10/2024 - 17:52

Contact forms have been a staple on websites for years.

But, are they becoming outdated?

Say hello to AI chatbots.

Here’s why an AI chatbot might just be the better choice.

Real-time Engagement 

• Contact forms often mean waiting. Users type out their message, hit send, and then wait for a response. With AI chatbots, the response is instant, providing immediate support and answers.
• Example: A user needs information about your services. Instead of waiting hours (or days) for an email reply, the chatbot instantly provides the details they need.

Enhanced User Experience 

• Chatbots can guide users through their queries, step-by-step. This ensures visitors aren't left guessing, navigating through multiple pages to find answers.
• Example: Someone asks about your pricing. The chatbot not only shares the info but can also offer links to relevant pages, FAQs, and even schedule a meeting with a sales rep.

24/7 Availability 

• Unlike human staff, chatbots never sleep. They're available around the clock, ensuring your site visitors always get the support they need, no matter the time zone.
• Example: A potential client from another continent visits your site at 3 AM. The chatbot assists them in real-time rather than making them wait until your business hours.

Personalisation 

• Modern AI chatbots can personalise interactions based on user data. This means more relevant responses and recommendations tailored to each visitor.
• Example: The chatbot recognises a returning user and picks up the conversation where it left off, making the interaction feel continuous and personal.

But is it all sunshine and rainbows? Not quite.

There are challenges.

Some users may prefer human touch over automation. And, implementing a sophisticated AI chatbot can be resource-intensive.

So, should you replace your contact form with a chatbot?

Maybe not completely. A hybrid approach might work best. Let the chatbot handle routine inquiries and simple tasks, while the contact form can serve for more detailed and specific requests.

What do you think? Can AI chatbots replace traditional contact forms on Drupal websites?

Drupal Drupal 10 AI Drupal Planet Add new comment

Noah’s Page Builder offers Drupal users an intuitive way to create front-end pages quickly, without needing extra modules like Paragraphs. Developed by Julian Chabrillon, this tool provides real-time design changes, a variety of widgets, and CSS configuration options. In this interview, Julian discusses the inspiration, challenges, and future plans for Noah’s, including its impact on the Drupal community with both free and paid versions available for flexible usage.

Non-code contributions in open source communities attract considerable interest. Join a panel discussion with diverse experts who are actively involved in non-code contributions within the Drupal community to bridge a gap between experienced contributors and those considering their first step!

Discover together with Norman Kaemper-Leymann and Yannick Leyendecker a selection of Drupal contrib modules tailored to specific use cases, including Config Patch GitLab API, Content Templates, Frontend Editing, and more!

AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT integrate well with Drupal, but identifying the right use cases can be challenging. Explore together with Christoph Breidert the opportunities and limitations of LLMs and learn how to create impactful AI solutions!

Learn together with Artem and Bruno how to simplify content management using the Drupal modules “Content Templates” and “Frontend Editing.” Discover best practices for managing content at scale and improving the editor experience!

Explore the digital transformation of one of Europe’s oldest pharmaceutical companies together with Baddy Breidert, CEO of 1xINTERNET, and Alexander Reisenauer, Director of Global Digital Marketing at Schwabe Group. Discover how strategic decisions led to Drupal becoming a key component of Schwabe's digital ecosystem!

tl;dr

On Thursday 5 September 2024 we performed some system maintenance. It appeared to have gone well, and was completed at the scheduled time (06:20 UTC), but unfortunately there were unexpected knock-on effects that caused issues later on in the day, and further problems on Saturday 7 September. This post gives the details of why we needed to perform the maintenance, what happened, and what we will do to prevent a recurrence.