JIT and GIL removal are not even my most anticipated Python 3.13 features | Hacker News Reader

JIT and GIL removal are not even my most anticipated Python 3.13 features

blog.vslira.net

31 pointsfreediver21 comments

Raymond Hettinger is a treasure! In addition to shelve-sqlite, he's contributed a pile to the Python ecosystem:

- fleshed out modules: functools, itertools -- love them; also bisect, collections, decimal, math, random, and type aliases

- enhanced the dictionary and set types, used by 100% of programs

His talks are high-energy and very useful. I just found one on "Pro tips for writing Unit Tests" <3 -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSIsyMd2-RY

Shelve uses pickle, which executes untrusted code without asking.

These types of serialisation are a technical debt from day one. There are countless stories of ecosystems doing a very painful migration to get away from it. See java, or recently the ML model files trying to go to safetensors etc.

There is nothing stopping you from storing just strings or bytes having safe representations.

The same way that it's fine to use `eval()` to parse JSON I assume.

This thread has bastardized serialization with storage even though the two are orthogonal concepts. If you don't want shelve to unpickle a hazardous object, give it a string or byte representation.

And that's exactly why it's so dangerous to use pickle, because it doesn't prevent you from executing untrusted code. It doesn't matter if you only pickle strings and bytes, as long as you unpickle any data, an attacker can replace that data with something which results in arbitrary code execution.

If you only want to store bytes, the safe way to do so is to use the dbm module directly, which doesn't pickle/unpickle the data you provide.

I find pickle useful for trusted objects that I created myself. pkl.xz is for example a fast way to reproducibly store and read Pandas dataframes. I have also found pickle useful for custom serialization of some objects that needed it.

If you unpickle data someone else sends you, you’re playing with fire. I don’t see the risk in pickling your own data, say to cache it to disk, then reloading it later. An attacker could hack the store? If they have that access then all bets are already off.

I suppose if a remote store is involved then the attack would be easier: you don’t need to hack the server running my code, just the DB/KV-store/whatever storing the pickles. Is that a common use case though? It seems like JSON and other dedicated formats are vastly more common for serializing data across machine boundaries.

This is just flat out poor / lazy engineering. “Yeah, well, I’ve heard stories of people moving away from pickle” is no substitute for actually analysing your use case and determining what tool/s are a good fit. The fact that absolutist claims like “tech debt from day one” are so easy to prove wrong should make it obvious that the reality is more nuanced than this. And the correct response is not to lecture me about why untrusted code execution is bad. Threat models are not cookie cutter, either.

Mind that shelve, by utilizing pickle, is susceptible for arbitrary code execution when loading untrusted data.

Depending on the use case it might be better to just use the dbm module directly.

The shelve module is nice. Sqlite is nice. Having both of them combined and cross-platform will be brilliant.

SQLite is such a great project. Thanks Richard Hipp.

Cool to see it supported ootb as a dbm backend.

SQLite and Python are the peanut butter and chocolate of software.

I can't wait to see what political message the python team choses to run this time in the release notes. It'll be just a month before the election. Stunning and brave probably!

Is the person writing that doc on your payroll? If not, and you want to have a say in the contents of their work output, then you might consider fixing that.

I'm just impressed at the increasingly hyperpolitical messaging in my tech release notes. I can't get enough!

Most of your HN comments are political in nature. You obviously don’t mind mixing your tech and your politics. This is blatantly manufactured outrage, and you’re using sarcasm to give you an “I never said I was upset” escape hatch when someone inevitably points this out to you.

I am anti-political, big difference. And yes, sarcasm exists

If you we're anti-political, you wouldn't insert your political leanings in your comments. That makes them political.

It's not political leaning of any kind to complain about political messages in programming language release notes.

Ah, but you are mistaken, it is quite simple to praise people's immense bravery even when you aren't paying them!

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