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If you're using an older Python without the most secure TLS implementation, this is the year to get serious about upgrading. Otherwise next June you may not be able to "pip install" packages from PyPI. PyPI's maintainer Donald Stufft recently announced that python.org and related sites will begin disabling the old TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1. This change was imposed on us by our content delivery network, Fastly, in response to a change imposed on them by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council . In order to continue serving websites that take credit card payments, Fastly is required to disable the old, insecure versions of TLS. Since the PSF's servers, including PyPI, use Fastly, the old versions of TLS will be disabled as well. Fastly wrote in October 2015 , There have been serious and systemic security issues with earlier versions of TLS and its predecessor, SSL, including POODLE, Heartbleed, and LOGJAM. These threatened to break trust in fundamental ...

Shannon Turner has been fascinated with programming since she was a child, thanks in part to her grandmother, who loved video games. Watching her grandmother play, Turner would draw pictures on paper and ask, 'Wouldn't this be cool if this were part of the game?". “Yes,” her grandmother would agree, “so you’ll need to get very good with computers if you want to make games of your own someday.”  As an adult, Turner’s interest in programming grew. She taught herself to program and attended tech events but it didn't feel right. She grew frustrated at being one of the only women in the room, being talked down to, and not taken seriously. Then, after speaking with other women at the events, she would realize that it wasn’t just her, “...[that] we all had this shared experience of being talked down to and not taken seriously. That's when I decided to start teaching other women what I'd taught myself.” This is what motivated Turner to start Hear Me Code (HMC), a group...

There are two elements which make Open Source function: Technology An active community. The primary need for a successful community is a good contributor base. The contributors are our real heroes, who work persistently, on many (if not most) occasions without any financial benefits, just for the love of the community. The Python Community is blessed with many such heroes. The PSF's quarterly Community Service Award honors these heroes for their notable contributions and dedication to the Python ecosystem. The PSF is delighted to give the 2016 Third Quarter Community Service Award to Sheila Miguez and Will Kahn-Greene : Sheila Miguez  and  William Kahn-Greene  for their monumental work in creating and supporting PyVideo over the years. Community Service Award for 3rd Quarter Will Kahn-Greene Taken  by Erik Rose, June 2016 The PSF funds a variety of conferences and workshops throughout the year worldwide to educate people about Python. But, not everyone can attend a...

In a 1947 lecture on computing machinery, Alan Turing made a prediction: "The new machines will in no way replace thought, but rather they will increase the need for it." Someday, he said, machines would think for themselves, but the computers of the near future would require human supervision to prevent malfunctions: "The intention in constructing these machines in the first instance is to treat them as slaves, giving them only jobs which have been thought out in detail, jobs such that the user of the machine fully understands in principle what is going on all the time." 1 It is unclear now whether machines remain slaves, or if they are beginning to be masters. Machine-learning algorithms pervasively control the lives of Americans. We do not fully understand what they do, and when they malfunction they harm us, by reinforcing the unjust systems we already have. Usually unintentionally, they can make the lives of poor people and people of color worse. In "Weapo...