Pessimist: The glass is half full. Optometrist: That's the letter H --Tess

Managed to accomplish quite a bit outside of my regular work this week.

PySAML2 Updates

A while back, I wrote a tutorial on setting up Django with SSO login using PySAML2's test IdP. Recently, a reader pointed out that the tutorial stopped working with Python 3.13. I filed a bug report with PySAML2 about this issue, and last week I created a pull request to make the test IdP server compatible with Python 3.13.

The main challenges were:

1. The old cgi module from the standard library was used, but it's been removed in 3.13
2. The test server uses shelve.open to store data on disk, which now has complications:
   • The dbm module (used by shelve) has switched its default backend from berkeleydb to sqlite in Python 3.13+
   • Cheroot (the HTTP server powering CherryPy) uses threads for concurrency but tries to access the same shelve database from all threads
   • This causes sqlite to complain about reading from a database created in a different thread

My solution is to use dbm.dumb as the backend for Python 3.13+, since performance isn't critical for a test server.

django-cast Progress

I released a new version with support for Wagtail 6.4. I'm happy to report that test coverage is back to 100%! Also made some minor fixes related to uv and tox.

django-resume Improvements

Released a new version with several improvements:

• Better documentation (how to run the example project)
• CV links are now visible to unauthenticated users when no token is required
• Added preview images to the README and included a link to my FOSDEM talk

Articles

• Why Blog If Nobody Reads It? | You might have already guessed, but for this blog too, the main audience is simply: me 😁
• Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji
• My FOSDEM'25 watchlist
• Frontend
  • Beware the faux bold (and how to fix it)
  • CSS Custom Functions are coming … and they are going to be a game changer!
  • The European Accessibility Act for websites and apps | It's near!
  • Accessibility Cheatsheet
  • How to Favicon in 2025: Three files that fit most needs
  • Replace your JavaScript Animation Library with View Transitions
• Python
  • TIL: How to force PyLance to use a current version of Django-stubs
  • I'm excited to join the Sovereign Tech Fellowship | Very Cool!
  • Django in government
  • How To Add An Object In Django Admin With A Bookmarklet
• Upcoming Aftermath
  • Pro-democracy Organizing against Autocracy in the United States: A Strategic Assessment & Recommendations | Might be the right time to re-read
  • DOGE Is Hacking America
  • Resignation Letter From Hagan Scotten

Fediverse

• A fun CSS-only experimentation using modern features (anchor positioning, @​property, :has(), and more!) | Bouncy radio buttons
• Your periodic #llm #llms #chatgpt programming rant.
• People above 40 in my timeline, how many hours of actual #sleep everyday do you need to feel normal in the day time?
• Django people who deploy to a VPS: What is your current setup?
• golf of what? | Argument settled.
• Lost | Webcomic

Software

• django-simple-deploy 1.0 is out | Hmm, should I move my deployment stuff to a plugin?
• Entity Mapping, Cloning, Disabling, and more | This Week in Bevy Engine

Videos

• Terence Tao on how we measure the cosmos | Distance ladder part 1 | Very cool, I had no idea how complicated this stuff is
• The Macroeconomics Of Privacy and Dignity - Mike Hoye | Framing Privacy as agency over your dignity is a strong move
• Neural networks (3Blue1Brown series) | Best visual explanation I've seen so far