Michael Kennedy

Things Michael Says on Podcasts

Python developer, PSF Fellow and founder of Talk Python Training, which offers courses for Python developers. Covers Python releases, free-threaded Python, packaging with uv, data tools and coding agents. Hosts Talk Python To Me and co-hosts Python Bytes, a weekly news show for Python developers. Has appeared as a guest on Real Python Podcast, The Changelog and Command Line Heroes.

Where to Find Them

Michael Kennedy hosts Python Bytes and hosts Talk Python To Me . They have also been a guest on Test & Code (4 times) , Real Python Podcast (2 times) , Legacy Code Rocks , The Changelog , Command Line Heroes and Vanishing Gradients .

Recently: “#504 Who turned the GIL back on?” on Python Bytes (November 2026); “#568: Cloudflare Python Workers” on Talk Python To Me (November 2026); “#503 It’s not 85% HTML” on Python Bytes (November 2026); “#567: Personal AI Agents for Pythonistas” on Talk Python To Me (October 2026); “#502 Introducing chameleon-rs” on Python Bytes (October 2026); “#501 A Nod to Sir-Mix-Alot” on Python Bytes (October 2026).

What They Said

“If you're thinking about a project, maybe just take the two minutes, copy the GitHub URL, go to your favorite AI and go, hey, I'm considering using this. Is there anything malicious in here? Don't do a security review. Just tell me, is it a supply chain thing? That's the new virus scanner. I think we've got to get to that.” — Michael Kennedy, Python Bytes

After a segment on honeypots and supply-chain attacks, Michael Kennedy suggests asking an AI model to vet any unfamiliar repository before using it. It's his advice, not a tested method.

Python Bytes · 2026-11-10 Permalink → Listen →
Python Bytes Around 23:57 into the episode
Michael Kennedy

I mean, not cool that it's happening, but I love the idea of honeypots and these canaries and type of things. They're really great.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker

Especially if it's your hobby and you want to see what's going on and experience it. If you can get one of them hitting your honeypot, then you'll gather data from the attackers.

Michael Kennedy

Yeah, absolutely. Now, before we move on to my extra, we were talking before the show, but it feels like maybe worth bringing it out to the audience now. As I go around and look at these different projects that people send me and so on, you never know what's out on the internet, right? There's all the supply chain stuff. So if you're thinking about a project, maybe just take the two minutes, copy the GitHub URL, go to your favorite AI and go, hey, I'm considering using this. Is there anything malicious in here? Don't do a security review. Just tell me, is it a supply chain thing? And just, you know, that's the new virus scanner. I think we got to get to.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker

These repositories have hooks potentially in them that could run code on your machines. And you clone it. And then if you change into another branch, there's a hook that can fire that can do whatever it wants.

Michael Kennedy

Isn't that nice? I get an extra little bit of execution that I didn't expect. It was convenient.

Calvin Hendryx-Parker

It was convenient as developers because we would use it for certain things, but it's also very convenient for attackers.

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