Notices by Al Sweigart (alsweigart@mastodon.social)

Whew, just got done recording an interview with the Real Python Podcast about the 3rd edition of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. The book comes out in April, but you can get 25% off with code PREORDER at https://nostarch.com/automate-boring-stuff-python-3rd-edition

Huh. I got this email and it does seem to be sent by paypal, but the To field is not my email address or one I know. I checked my paypal account and there's nothing about this. Any idea how I got this email? I'm assuming it's a scam.

I figured out the scam and wrote it up here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1j9u5wp/legit_signed_email_from_paypal_but_833_6662587_is/?

Basically, they set up their merchant account with a merchant name that is literally, "If you do not recognize the seller, please contact.." hoping you don't notice all the other wrong details. But this does get them a legit email with a digital signature signed by the real paypal.com, which they forward to you.

"Open weight" is a bullshit term to sound like open source without being open source. The weights of the training model don't tell you how to create the model.

I release the compiled binary of an app: am I being "open binary"?

"Mastodon is confusing to use" is something I didn't quite get. I just got a mastodon.social account for lack of any alternative. When I'm on a different server, it presents me with the "enter your home server" if I want to interact. People can understand the difference between @gmail.com and @yahoo.com email addresses.

Is there a list of specific difficulties or speed bumps somewhere? All the articles I can find are just vague "it's too complicated" or list choosing a server as the main prob.

In the board game Secret Hitler, there are always more liberal players than fascist players. Only the fascists know who the other fascists are. Liberals can always win on votes. The fascists win by tricking liberals into voting for fascist policies and doubting other liberals.

Keep this in mind.

"Do not obey in advance."

Sabotage is the act of reducing efficiency.

There are several ways to reduce the efficiency of the machine you find yourself a part of. You don't need someone's permission to do them. You don't need to announce or brag about them. Definitely don't admit to them.

We never think we have an effect, until we look back and see our large changes were nothing but small actions.

The Onion really nails the morality we assign to "those who lost their homes" and "homeless people":

LAPD Arrests Everyone Who Lost Home In Fire

https://theonion.com/lapd-arrests-everyone-who-lost-home-in-fire/

@gvwilson Does it reduce a flame's glow to light another candle?

Does it really cost the authors anything to have a book read by someone who wouldn't have been able to pay anyway?

Does anyone else feel like 51 should really be a prime number?

The reason privacy policies use the wording they have is to obscure information, not convey it.

In his confused and poorly-written manifesto, the cybertruck bomber complains about wealth inequality, is against war, and wants socialist policies, but then voted for Trump because he's against "DEI".

If you ever needed to know how a charlatan can trick people into "national" socialism, this is it.

@pluralistic Required reading for those interested in this topic: Bullshit Jobs by the late, great David Graeber

A reminder that it's okay to ignore the news entirely. Being constantly up to date with corporate news is not the same thing as being well-informed. A lot of what "respectable" places publish is just tabloid gossip nonsense.

It doesn't surprise me that the UnitedHealthcare subreddit was banned: I assume people were mostly there posting death threats.

What surprised me was that it was banned nine years ago.

"If a millionaire spends millions, they're broke. If a billionaire spends millions, they're a billionaire."

Whenever they bring up politics today, just respond with "THEY'RE EATING THE DOGS. THEY'RE EATING THE CATS." and if they keep it up say, "That's your guy. You heard that and decided he's your guy."

They'll continue, but just cut them off by 1) repeating it and 2) laughing.

"The war on Christmas cannot end until Christmas ends its illegal occupation of November."

The fact that all these court cases against Trump are just self-evaporating right now shows that "checks and balances" was always a silly fairy tale.

Python question: I am writing MyLibrary which has a container MyClass. Should the __getitem__() method for MyClass raise KeyError or my own custom MyLibraryKeyError?