Last month, whilst riding the attractions at Legoland Windsor with my family, my site was getting hammered by visitors from Hacker News and I had no clue at all. I probably should thank Github pages for serving all that traffic and handling it for me while I was blissfully unaware having fun. It ended up being more traffic in a day than I've had in some years on my blog which is a bit crazy. It's only when I arrived back a day or so later and dug into my traffic something very unusual was happening.

It turns out my post on the complexity of navigating Python installation hit home with a few other developers. So much so that I'd got a full years worth of site visits in a day. I'd posted it to HN before leaving and after a short spike assumed no-one cared. I even created an meme-worthy opengraph image for full effect in sharing which you can see below. The traffic has continued long into this week as it's been picked up by several Python newsletters.

One Does Not Simply ‘pip install’

Find your favourite package and turn to the readme to get it installed - it seems dead simple just a ‘pip install’ away. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?

In other news, my YouTube channel reached 1000 subscribers. This means that hopefully I can earn a few pennies now again from the ads they already display on the things I make.

As always, if you have any comments on them or suggestions for the future, please feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

Until next time, keep on shipping!

Ian

Articles

Bing: “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”

Simon Willison summarises the strange behaviour of Bing Chat and how it's had some very scary conversations with users in it's early days of release.

Python Package Manager Shootout

Interested in how quickly your favourite Python package manager performs tasks? This shootout from Lincolnloop compares the speeds for pdm, pip-tools, pipenv and poetry for common operations.

On replacing my MacBook Air M1 with a Thinkpad T480

Every developer wants the best Mac possible don't they? Max Rosen explains why he's downgraded his to a Thinkpad.

Code

GitHub - Nutlope/roomGPT: Upload a photo of your room to generate your dream room with AI.

Upload a photo of your room to generate your dream room with AI. - GitHub - Nutlope/roomGPT: Upload a photo of your room to generate your dream room with AI.

GitHubNutlope

GitHub - MichaelAquilina/zsh-you-should-use: 📎 ZSH plugin that reminds you to use existing aliases for commands you just typed

📎 ZSH plugin that reminds you to use existing aliases for commands you just typed - GitHub - MichaelAquilina/zsh-you-should-use: 📎 ZSH plugin that reminds you to use existing aliases for commands y...

GitHubMichaelAquilina

Introducing ChatGPT and Whisper APIs

Developers can now integrate ChatGPT and Whisper models into their apps and products through our API.

GitHub - NangoHQ/nango: Get OAuth tokens for APIs - fast & secure.

Get OAuth tokens for APIs - fast & secure. Contribute to NangoHQ/nango development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubNangoHQ

A Video I Made

A Favourite Tweet