GitHub

GitHub teases new Copilot feature that lets developers code with their voice • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 10, 2022Posted in Copilot, Enterprise, GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Hey GitHub, Robotics & AINo Comments

GitHub is working on a new tool that will allow developers to code with their voice. Announced at the annual GitHub Universe conference yesterday, the experimental feature works in tandem with Copilot, GitHub’s controversial AI-powered pair-programmer that collaborates with software developers by suggesting functions or lines of code — a bit like Gmail’s Smart Compose. Copilot officially launched for everyone back in June, costing $10 per month or $100 per year after a free 60-day trial. GitHub is serving access to the new voice feature via a waitlist that’s open for interested developers now, but essentially it will allow developers to activate Copilot’s ears via the “Hey, GitHub” wake word. It is limited in scope for the time being, insofar as it only works with Microsoft’s source-code editor VS Code, but it’s apparently working to expand things in the future. According to GitHub, its new voice assistant can understand natural language requests for Copilot to suggest a code snippet, or summarize what a specific section of code does. But even if a developer doesn’t want any code suggestions, it can serve other practical use-cases such as helping them navigate a codebase by saying something like “Hey GitHub, go to line 34,” or even control the IDE by toggling to zen mode. GitHub copilot voice assistant in action Image Credits: GitHub While this is still an early stage experiment developed by an R&D team called GitHub Next, it could have significant ramifications from an accessibility perspective, as it reduces the amount of interaction that’s required with a mouse and keyboard. It’s also not clear whether Copilot is yet able to talk back to a developer, but based on the initial demonstrations GitHub has published, it would appear not. A two-way dialog could be useful though, for example if a developer wants a quick audio summary of what a piece of code does, or if Copilot needs clarification on a specific request the user has made. Elsewhere at GitHub Universe yesterday, the Microsoft-owned company also revealed that it would soon targeting Copilot at the enterprise, with a new plan that allows businesses to buy licenses at a seat level — this will also mean additional admin controls so companies can manage and control their Copilot deployment across the organization.

Four years after being acquired by Microsoft, GitHub keeps doing its thing • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in acquisition, Enterprise, GitHub, Microsoft, Thomas DohmkeNo Comments

It’s been four years to the day since Microsoft closed its acquisition of GitHub, which at the time was mostly a code repository. Today’s GitHub looks quite a bit different, now that it added CI/CD tools with GitHub Actions and Codespaces as an online editor and compute platform, as well as various security tools and more. But according to GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, who took over from Nat Friedman a year ago, Microsoft has very much allowed GitHub to do what it does best. “We kept GitHub GitHub and it remains this independent entity within Microsoft similar to LinkedIn,” he told me. “I think we did a fantastic job with doing this and kept GitHub in its original form. You don’t see more Microsoft in GitHub.com than you saw four years ago and that has helped us to continue to grow and we’re very excited where this is going.” He noted that GitHub has continued to receive the same support from Microsoft’s leadership team, including CEO Satya Nadella, over the years. “Microsoft has not forgotten why we did the deal in the first place and what the important pillars of the deal are. The first and foremost principle is to put developers first. And that is what we do every day,” Dohmke said. But, he also acknowledged that Microsoft is a big company and that people sometimes have their own ideas of what the Microsoft/GitHub relationship should be like. So far, though, it seems like the leadership on both sides has been able to keep those ideas at bay. Dohmke noted that GitHub has obviously benefited from Microsoft’s sales prowess, which helped it land a number of big accounts. That surely also helped the company get to the $1 billion annual recurrent revenue it announced yesterday. Dohmke said that he believes GitHub would’ve likely reached this milestone as an independent company, too. “I’m generally an optimistic person,” he said. “So any company can get there if they just stay focused on their mission. The biggest challenge that companies have once they get to a certain size is focus.” Today’s GitHub is obviously in a different position than the GitHub of four years ago. Its product portfolio, for one, has expanded quite a bit with projects like CodeSpaces and, most recently, Copilot. “I think I will have achieved my mission as CEO if we generate happy developers — happy developers who enjoy doing their job and that don’t see security, compliance and accessibility as a burden but as part of what makes them happy and what gets them to perform in their life,” Dohmke said. And projects like this are clearly a part of that. “I think, what we’re doing here is we’re disrupting ourselves with AI, with Copilot and with Codespaces, he added. “Those are all new investments that are away from the traditional GitHub — the old-school GitHub that had repos and issues and wikis — and keep pushing the boundary of what we believe is possible.” But, he also stressed, this isn’t just about big announcements and flashy events, but also focusing on the little fixes and features that may be just as important to keep developers happy. “I think that’s our superpower: that we can balance the tiny bits with big wins and the big disruptions to our own business.”

Microsoft says GitHub now has a $1B ARR, 90M active users • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in Enterprise, GitHub, MicrosoftNo Comments

As part of its earnings call, Microsoft today announced a number of new data points for GitHub, the massively popular code repository service it acquired for $7.5 billion in 2018. According to Microsoft, GitHub now has an annual recurring revenue of $1 billion, up from a reported $200 to $300 million at the time of the acquisition. The company also announced that the service now has over 90 million active users on the platform, up from 28 million when the acquisition closed and 73 million last November, when Thomas Dohmke replaced Nat Friedman as the service’s CEO. This marks the first time Microsoft has shared any financial data about the service the acquisition closed. “Since our acquisition, GitHub is now at $1 billion annual recurring revenue and GitHub’s developer-first ethos has never been stronger,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in today’s earnings call. “More than 90 million people now use the service to build software for any cloud, on any platform — up three times.” For the most part, Microsoft let GitHub be GitHub since the acquisition closed. Early on, a lot of developers — and especially open-source advocates — worried that Microsoft would change the way the service operated and reduce its free offerings in order to squeeze more money out of it. But instead, GitHub expanded its free service and has continued to embrace open source and open-source developers. Meanwhile, projects like GitHub Copilot probably wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Microsoft. And while some users defected to GitLab and other services, the new users numbers speak for themselves.

Toyota exposed 300,000 customer email addresses for 5 years • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 12, 2022Posted in cybersecurity, data leaks, GitHub, Security, ToyotaNo Comments

Automotive giant and car maker Toyota has warned that the personal information of roughly 300,000 customers may have been exposed for close to five years. The possible exposure relates to T-Connect, an official Toyota app that allows customers to connect their smartphone to their vehicle’s dashboard infotainment system. In a statement, Toyota admitted that a subcontractor developing the T-Connect website inadvertently uploaded part of the site’s source code to a public GitHub repository in December 2017, where it sat undiscovered until last month. This source code contained an access key to a server that stored customer email addresses and customer management numbers that it assigns to each customer. Toyota said that a total of 296,019 email addresses could have been accessed by anyone who found the access key until the access to the GitHub repository was closed on September 15, 2022. Toyota, which confirmed it has since changed the server’s access key on September 17, said that no other information, such as customer names, phone numbers and credit card information, was affected. But the company was forced to admit that it could not rule out the possibility of someone having accessed and stolen the data during the five-year span. “As a result of an investigation by security experts, although we cannot confirm access by a third party based on the access history of the data server where the customer’s email address and customer management number are stored, at the same time, we cannot completely deny it,” Toyota said in a statement. Toyota advised customers whose details may have been leaked to be on alert for phishing attempts and to avoid opening email attachments from unknown senders that claim to be from Toyota. A similar security lapse recently led to the leak of a huge amount of sensitive data from Shanghai’s police database, including the names, addresses, phone numbers, national identifications, birthplaces, and criminal records of more than 70 percent of the country’s population — approximately 1 billion Chinese residents.