25 Aug 2021, 10:46 a.m.

COVID-19: The Delta Variant, Better Masks, and Free Testing

I am concerned about COVID-19 trends; particularly if you are in the United States, you should be aware and make/modify plans accordingly. Some of this post is New York City-specific. Background: The COVID case numbers …

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15 Jul 2021, 0:55 a.m.

Low Availability

FYI: I have some obligations, starting this week and going through mid-September, that will take me offline a lot and otherwise occupy me; I will have low and intermittent availability. Please email if you want …

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03 Jul 2021, 17:32 p.m.

Some Novel Python Packaging/Distribution/Inspection/Installation Projects

People who program in Python have an easier time hearing about package-related tools that have been around for a while and that are under the banner of the Python Packaging Authority, or that are commercially …

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03 Jul 2021, 16:45 p.m.

Researching The Leadership Gap for Legacy Projects

I've given a lot of conference talks recently. As part of the PyCon US Maintainers' Summit in May, I delivered an eight-minute talk, "Researching the leadership gap for legacy projects". The video is now available, …

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02 Jul 2021, 12:56 p.m.

A Comedy Memory

I'm having trouble getting started on things I ought to do today, so here's a story I think I've never told here before. In early 2011, I travelled to San Francisco for work, and one …

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01 Jul 2021, 12:58 p.m.

Software Bill of Materials & the US Federal Government

In February, the United States's President Biden signed an executive order on the US's supply chains; he followed this up with an EO in May specifically concentrating on improving cybersecurity. To quote Tidelift's summary, "in …

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18 Jun 2021, 22:05 p.m.

Monday Will Be Volunteer Responsibility Amnesty Day

A few months ago, in my talk "What Would Open Source Look Like If It Were Healthy?", I told a story of an overwhelmed open source software maintainer. Every solstice is a Responsibility Amnesty Day, …

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07 Jun 2021, 17:28 p.m.

Sidestepping the PR Bottleneck: Four Non-Dev Ways To Support Your Upstreams

This is the textual version of my June 7 2021 online talk at Upstream Live: "Sidestepping the PR Bottleneck: Four Non-Dev Ways To Support Your Upstreams", 23 minutes. Video is now up. Intro Hi, I’m …

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06 Jun 2021, 16:30 p.m.

New History of AIDS Activism

I'm looking forward to reading Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman for the same reason I love Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the …

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22 May 2021, 19:25 p.m.

If You Give A Speech You Care About, Post A Transcript

When I give a keynote address at a conference, I sometimes commission* and post a transcript or a near-transcript afterwards (example). And sometimes I do this for non-keynote speeches (example); this year I decided to …

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