Build failing due to Pylint 2.10

[movermeyer]

Pylint 2.10 added a linter that checks for open calls that don't explicitly specify an encoding.

Ref: https://github.com/PyCQA/pylint/issues/3826

Since we have not pinned the version of Pylint used in the CI, the build pipeline is failing.

Potential solution

• [ ] Fix the violations (PR here)