help() function, RAG techniques, Transcription With Local AI and more
with some more interesting news, articles, packages and projects
News
SQLObject 3.13.0 Released
PyCon UK 2025 Call for Proposals is Open
Articles
The features of Python's help() function
If you ever need to check what functions are available for a list or what the pop function does, you'd probably Google it or ask ChatGPT. But what if you don’t have an internet connection (say, on a flight)? Python has a built-in help function that lets you access documentation offline. In this article, Trey Hunner explained how to use it and what kind of information you can get.
# Trey Hunner
Implementation of all RAG techniques in a simpler way
Various RAG techniques are available and choosing the right one based on your requirements can significantly impact accuracy and efficiency. If you want to explore these techniques with example code, check out Fareed Khan’s GitHub repo.
# Fareed Khan
Python Discord 2024 Survey Report
The Python Discord server is an amazing community! If you haven’t joined yet, I highly recommend it - you can use this link to join if you didn’t. Every year, they conduct a survey, and the 2024 results are now out. In this post/notebook, Joe Banks presented the findings clearly and concisely, with code.
# Joe Banks
How I Automated My Podcast Transcript Production With Local AI
Producing transcripts can be a tedious task - not because it’s overly complex, but because it requires a lot of cleanup, like removing filler words, repetitions, etc. Den Delimarsky tackled this challenge for his podcast transcription using a local Large Language Model (LLM). In this article, he shared his entire journey along with the code.
# Den Delimarsky
Exploiting Python pickles
Python has a built-in mechanism for serializing and deserializing objects called “pickling.” However, unpickling untrusted data can be dangerous. Want to know why? Check out this article by David Hamann, where he explained what pickle is, how to use it and how it can be exploited.
# David Hamann
Interesting Packages and Projects to explore
pikepdf - Read and write PDFs with Python, powered by qpdf
Posting - The modern API client that lives in your terminal
compress_json - The missing Python utility to read and write large compressed JSONs
skforecast - Time series forecasting using machine learning models
CyToolz - Cython implementation of Toolz: High performance functional utilities
About Upcoming Python Events
Inland Empire Python Users Group monthly meeting
March 18, 2025
Grand Nord Cameroon - Creating Python Communities and outreach
March 20, 2025
PyCamp Argentina 2025
March 21 – 24, 2025
PyWeek Game Jam 39
March 23 – 30, 2025