Seth Larson
Seth Larson — PSF Security Developer-in-Residence
Python security and open source infrastructure, plus retro gaming preservation and emulation.
sethmlarson.devI paid $50 plus shipping on eBay for this PNG. This is the closest I'll get to NFTs.
Seth Larson is the Python Software Foundation's first Security Developer-in-Residence, and his blog reflects exactly the kind of mind that job requires — someone who can write a serious PEP on software supply chain security one week and spend the next extracting hidden JPEG files from GameCube ROMs. His posts alternate between deep Python ecosystem work and delightfully nerdy side projects involving retro games, QR codes, and Unicode oddities.
Written by Seth Larson.
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Blogging for the Python Language Summit
Hey, did you miss me? I've only published two blog posts in the past two months because I was busy writing 10+ blog posts detailing the Python Language Summit in 2026. If you are interested in the Python programming languages' technical direction (or you just really miss my writing) go over to the Python Insider and read those write-ups. I've been the blogger for the Python Language Summit for the past three years (2024, 2025, 2026). Before me, Alex Waygood was the blogger (2022, 2023), and h...
Buying GameCube games from other regions
This blog post was inspired by discovering that Pokémon Box: Ruby & Sapphire, a legendarily rare and expensive GameCube game in the United States (>$2,500 USD), could be purchased complete-in-box (CIB) in Japan for $50 USD. That's a savings of $2450, or ~98% of the US price. This is a somewhat extreme example: in the US market Pokémon Box was only sold online and at a single store: the Pokémon Center in New York City. This big price difference between regions got me thinking: what other...
When str.lower() is a security vulnerability in Python
Some internet standards only support ASCII characters, but the world uses much more than the Latin alphabet. Thus, a mapping from Unicode to ASCII for use in domain names is required. NamePrep was part of that solution, defined in RFC 3491 as a profile of StringPrep, and is crucially a component of Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), also known as “IDNA 2003”. The StringPrep algorithm is defined in RFC 3454. IDNA 2003 has been obsoleted by IDNA 2008 defined in RFC 5890, 589...
Let’s Play “htmx 4: the game”
Moments ago I just finished playing “htmx 4: the game”, the first JavaScript library published exclusively for Game Boy and Game Boy Color. I've recorded my play session and published the video to YouTube: When I first saw this announcement it was pure blog bait for me. Game Boy, open source software, reverse-engineering, oh my. I purchased the cartridge within moments of seeing the announcement. The Game Boy cartridge arrived earlier today inside a custom cardboard box and plastic cas...
Extracting “Ocarina of Time: Master Quest” ROM from the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker bonus disc
Another day, another extracting ROMs from GameCube titles mini-tutorial. This time it’s the PAL Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker Bonus Disc that I recently purchased from Kraków, Poland. This disc contains two N64 games: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and the “Master Quest” version of Ocarina of Time. Let’s extract those ROMs from the GameCube ROM so we can play on other emulators. Going from a GameCube disc to an ISO ROM is the usual process, for me that means using the FlippyDrive Disc Backup...
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If you like your technical writing served with genuine curiosity and occasional retro gaming archaeology, Seth's blog delivers both.