#217: Use your cloud SSD for fast, cross-process caching

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Special guest: Ogi Moore

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Michael #1: diskcache

• via Ian Maurer
• Python disk-backed cache (Django-compatible). Faster than Redis and Memcached. Pure-Python.
• The cloud-based computing of 2020 puts a premium on memory. Gigabytes of empty space is left on disks as processes vie for memory.
• Among these processes is Memcached (and sometimes Redis) which is used as a cache.
• Wouldn't it be nice to leverage empty disk space for caching?
• Features:
• Pure-Python
• Fully Documented
• Benchmark comparisons (alternatives, Django cache backends)
• 100% test coverage
• Hours of stress testing
• Performance matters
• Django compatible API
• Thread-safe and process-safe
• Supports multiple eviction policies (LRU and LFU included)
• Keys support "tag" metadata and eviction
• Developed on Python 3.8
• Tested on CPython 3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8
• Tested on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows
• Tested using Travis CI and AppVeyor CI

Brian #2: TOML is 1.0.0 now.

• What does that mean for Python?
  • Hopefully, some kind of toml parser will make it into Python core.
• Any Python access to 1.0.0? Mixed
  • Implementations and TOML version support page lists:
  • pytomlpp supports 1.0.0-rc.3, which is a wrapper around C++ tomlplusplus, which does support 1.0.0. Confusing
  • tomlkit supports 1.0.0-rc.1, so that’s promising
  • toml supports 0.5.0, great name. It’d be cool if it would support 1.0.0
• What’s different between 0.5.0 and 1.0.0?
  • Unless I’m mistaken, not much: CHANGELOG
  • 1.0.0-rc1
  • Leading zeroes in exponent parts of floats are permitted.
  • Allow raw tab characters in basic strings and multi-line basic strings.
  • Allow heterogenous values in arrays.
  • Other than that, lots of “Clarify …”, which I’m not sure how those all affect implementation.
• I’d love to hear more from people who know more about this

Ogi #3: pyqtgraph

• pyqtgraph - plotting library, for when you need fast/interactive plots
• Uses qt5 (and soon qt6) bindings to generate plots within Qt applications
• Fills a niche role, want easy mouse interactivity, running locally on a machine
• Often used in engineering/scientific applications when looking at a lot of data, and wanting interactivity

Michael #4: Parler + Python = Insurrection in public

• via Jim Kring and Mark Little
• According to Wikipedia: Parler (/ˈpɑːrlər/) is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service. Parler has a significant user base of Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing extremists.
• ArsTechnica article send in by Mark Little
• Ars: Parler’s amateur coding could come back to haunt Capitol Hill rioters
• Coding mess
  • A key reason for her success: Parler’s site was a mess. Its public API used no authentication.
  • When users deleted their posts, the site failed to remove the content and instead only added a delete flag to it.
  • Oh, and each post carried a numerical ID that was incremented from the ID of the most recently published one.
  • Another amateur mistake was Parler’s failure to scrub geolocations from images and videos posted online.
• Some 80 terabytes of posts, 1M videos, many already deleted, preserved for posterity.
• Catalog and Python pointed out by Shaun King.
• See the catalog (maybe, it’s the ugly side of people).
• The gist: https://gist.github.com/kylemcdonald/d8884da1a82ef50754ee49e0b6561071
• Partially back online with Russian hosting service?

Brian #5: Best-of Web Development with Python

• Suggested by Douglas Nichols
• Cool list with nice icons
• Covers
  • Frameworks, HTTP Clients, Servers
  • Auth tools, HTML Processing, URL utilities
  • OpenAPI, GraphQL, Websocket
  • RPC, Serverless, Content Management
  • Web Testing, Web Forms, Markdown
  • Third-party APIs
  • Email, Web Scraping & Crawling, Monitoring
  • Admin UI
  • API Proxies
  • Flask/FastAPI/Pyramid/Django Utilities
• Nice to see lots of FastAPI projects:
  • fastapi-sqlalchemy - Adds simple SQLAlchemy support to FastAPI.
  • fastapi-plugins - FastAPI framework plugins.
  • fastapi_contrib - Opinionated set of utilities on top of FastAPI.
  • starlette_exporter - Prometheus exporter for Starlette and FastAPI.
  • fastapi-utils - Reusable utilities for FastAPI.
  • fastapi-code-generator - This code generator creates FastAPI app from an..
  • slowapi - A rate limiter for Starlette and FastAPI.
  • fastapi-versioning - api versioning for fastapi web applications.
  • fastapi-react - Cookiecutter Template for FastAPI + React Projects. Using..
  • fastapi_cache - FastAPI simple cache.

Ogi #6: Assorted

• Pyjion - https://github.com/tonybaloney/Pyjion a JIT extension for CPython that compiles python code using .NET 5 CLR
• CuPy - NumPy compatible multi-dimensional array on CUDA, uses _``*array_function_* (enabled with numpy 1.17) code using numpy to operate directly on CuPy arrays
  • see NEP-18 and CuPy docs
  • compatible with other libraries as well

Extras:

Michael:

• Trying Firefox + Brave + VPN
• Python Web Conf 2021 call for talks, due Jan 29, I’ll be speaking!
• PyCon US 2021 launched call for proposals:
  • December 22, 2020 — Call for proposals opened
  • February 12, 2021 — Proposals are due
  • March 16, 2021 — Notifications will be sent to presenters
  • March 23, 2021 — Deadline for speakers to confirm participation
  • March 30, 2021 — Schedule is publicly released
  • April 28, 2021 — Deadline to submit pre-recorded presentation (tutorials will be live)
  • May 12-13, 2021 — Tutorial days
  • May 15-16, 2021 — Conference days
• Apple launching Racial Equity and Justice Initiatives with partners across a broad range of industries and backgrounds — from students to teachers, developers to entrepreneurs, and community organizers to justice advocates

Brian:

• PyCascades 2021 schedule https://2021.pycascades.com/program/schedule/

Ogi:

• Anthony Explains Video Series
• Learn X in Y minutes
• Reading Working in Public by Nadia Eghbal - provides some sanity checks for existing maintainers, might be a fantastic perspective for new contributors to open source

Joke

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