ZDNet: GitHub just buried a giant open-source archive in an Arctic vault for 1,000 years. “Microsoft-owned GitHub has finally moved its snapshot of all active public repositories on the site to a vault in Norway. GiHub announced the archiving plan last November and on February 20 followed through with the 21 terabyte snapshot written to 186 reels of film.”
GitHub
ZDNet: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references
ZDNet: GitHub to replace “master” with alternative term to avoid slavery references. “GitHub is working on replacing the term “master” on its service with a neutral term like ‘main’ to avoid any unnecessary references to slavery, its CEO said on Friday. The code-hosting portal is just the latest in a long line of tech companies and open source projects that have expressed support for removing terms that may be offensive to developers in the black community.”
VentureBeat: GitHub launches Codespaces for browser-based coding
VentureBeat: GitHub launches Codespaces for browser-based coding. “The biggest facet of today’s news is a new product called GitHub Codespaces, which is designed to make it easier for developers to join a project, launch a developer environment, and start coding with minimal configuration — all from a browser. Available in ‘limited public beta’ from this week, Codespaces is a cloud-hosted development environment with all the GitHub features, and it can be set up to load a developer’s code and dependencies, extensions, and dotfiles, and includes a built-in debugger.”
BetaNews: All core GitHub features are now free
BetaNews: All core GitHub features are now free. “When Microsoft acquired GitHub two years ago, it was clear that some things would change along the line. Microsoft lifted the private repository creation limit one year ago and worked for the last 18 months on making core GitHub features available for free for everyone, according to a new announcement.”
Reclaim the Net: Chinese citizens turn to GitHub to archive coronavirus outbreak events in a bit to avoid censorship
Reclaim the Net: Chinese citizens turn to GitHub to archive coronavirus outbreak events in a bit to avoid censorship. “As ever with any loss or grievance, we have on one hand the human desire to forget bad experiences in order to be able to move on with your life – and on the other, the urge to keep some memories, regardless of how traumatic they may be. In China, this is even more involved and difficult, as citizens are racing to preserve coronavirus memories against censors. And on GitHub, as it happens to operate both in China – and ‘beyond the Great Firewall.'”
TorrentFreak: DMCA Notices Took Down 14,320 Github Projects in 2019
TorrentFreak: DMCA Notices Took Down 14,320 Github Projects in 2019. “Github has revealed that throughout 2019, the coding hosting platform took down more than 14,300 projects following DMCA complaints. Of the total notices received, only a tiny proportion was contested via counter-notice. Interestingly, the Microsoft-owned platform also reveals that one copyright complaint cannot be detailed as it’s the subject of a gagging order.”
News .com .au: Microsoft storing world’s open source GitHub code in Norwegian archive vault for the next millennium
News .com .au: Microsoft storing world’s open source GitHub code in Norwegian archive vault for the next millennium. “The secrets of Australia’s unique biodiversity and the collected history of our national library are among the digital treasures being kept in a vault 250 metres underground in an abandoned Norwegian coal mine. The GitHub Arctic Vault program is part of the now Microsoft-owned code repository GitHub, where programmers can share code with others to check for bugs or for them to implement in their own programs.”
DevOps: GitLab Open Sources Monitoring Tools
DevOps: GitLab Open Sources Monitoring Tools . “GitLab has decided to make its monitoring and observability tools available as part of its core open source platform to help reduce the total cost of DevOps. Previously, the tools were available as part of the commercial tools in GitLab’s DevOps platform.”
Techdirt: Abbott Laboratories Sends Heavy-Handed Copyright Threat To Shut Down Diabetes Community Tool For Accessing Blood-Sugar Data
Techdirt: Abbott Laboratories Sends Heavy-Handed Copyright Threat To Shut Down Diabetes Community Tool For Accessing Blood-Sugar Data. “A few months back there was a post on Diabettech about some code posted to GitHub. A patch to Abbott Laboratories’ LibreLink app allowed data from the same company’s FreeStyle Libre continuous monitor to be accessed by other apps running on a smartphone. In particular, it enabled the blood-sugar data to be used by a program called xDrip, which provides ‘sophisticated charting, customization and data entry features as well as a predictive simulation model.’ Innocent enough, you might think. But not according to Abbott Laboratories, which sent in the legal heavies waving the DMCA.” Heaven forbid people get as much access to and use of their own personal medical information as possible. Pllbbt.
Computer Business Review: GitHub Urges “Critical” Updates After Nine Git Vulnerabilities Spotted
Computer Business Review: GitHub Urges “Critical” Updates After Nine Git Vulnerabilities Spotted. “GitHub has urged users to make ‘critical’ Git project code updates after nine security vulnerabilities were found in the open source version-control system. It is ‘especially critical’ that Git on Windows users patch fast, GitHub said, with the flaws potentially allowing attackers to ‘overwrite arbitrary paths, remotely execute code, and/or overwrite files in the .git/ directory’.”
GitHub Project: A Telegram Mass Surveillance Bot in Python
Interesting GitHub project that turned up in my RSS feeds: A Telegram Mass Surveillance Bot in Python. From the README.md page: “Informer (TGInformer) is a bot library that allows you to masquerade as multiple REAL users on telegram and spy on 500+ Telegram channels per account. Details are logged to a MySQL database, a private Google Sheet and your own private channel for analysis.”
Los Angeles Times: Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract
Los Angeles Times: Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract. “Since at least September, employees of GitHub have been pressuring the Microsoft-owned code repository to terminate its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, without success. Now they’re getting reinforcements from a constituency that could have more clout.”
TechCrunch: GitHub launches a mobile app, smarter notifications and improved code search
TechCrunch: GitHub launches a mobile app, smarter notifications and improved code search. ”
At its annual Universe conference today, Microsoft -owned GitHub announced a couple of new products, as well as the general availability of a number of tools that developers have been able to test for the last few months.”
Computer Business Review: GitHub Adds 10 Million New Users, Reveals 10 Most Popular Languages
Computer Business Review: GitHub Adds 10 Million New Users, Reveals 10 Most Popular Languages. “Over the past year, developers collaborated in a staggering 370 primary languages on GitHub. Among the top 10 programming languages, C#, Python and Shell climbed the list this year, while Ruby and Java fell in popularity. That’s according to the code repository’s annual Octoverse report, which also reveals a colossal 532 percent increase in the use of Google’s Dart language, as interest surges in the company’s Flutter SDK – built using Dart.”
Found on Reddit: Database of Black Metal Music Lyrics
My Reddit filter tipped me to this new database of black metal music lyrics. From the GitHub page: “Database of Black Metal lyrics in .JSON format to be used for computer-assisted lyric analysis projects, collected from https://lyrics.fandom.com with additional metadata from https://www.metal-archives.com/ for my sociological bachelor thesis on Ideology and Black Metal.” There are over 11,000 songs in this collection.
