GitHub launches Innovation Graph for interactive development insights

GitHub has unveiled its Innovation Graph, an open data and insights platform for measuring and understanding the global impact of developers.

The ambitious initiative aims to address a longstanding challenge faced by policymakers and researchers: the lack of reliable and comprehensive data on trends in software development.

Understanding the Innovation Graph

The Innovation Graph is a repository of longitudinal metrics that track software development across economies...

GitHub opens Copilot Chat to all developers

GitHub has announced that Copilot Chat is now available to all developers, ushering in a new era of AI-powered software development.

Copilot Chat was launched for ‘Business’ users in July. The AI assistant is capable of assisting developers in their preferred natural language and promises to reduce repetitive tasks.

Developers can use the assistant to explore new languages or frameworks, troubleshoot bugs, and/or seek answers to coding questions, all while remaining...

Mathew Payne, GitHub: Protecting code while nurturing user experience

Developer caught up with Mathew Payne, Principal Field Security Specialist at GitHub, to discuss the platform’s security strategies and how they aim to strike a balance between robustness and a seamless user experience.

At the heart of GitHub's security philosophy lies a commitment to safeguarding user code. Payne emphasised that a major focus is on securing the code created by both users and developers.

“The first thing that we focus on at GitHub is the security...

GitHub introduces passwordless authentication

GitHub is introducing passwordless authentication to enhance account security and provide a more seamless user experience.

Passkeys are touted as offering a secure and easy-to-use method of protecting user accounts, with the aim of eliminating password-based breaches altogether. Unlike conventional security measures, passkeys offer improved security by combining two-factor authentication (2FA) with enhanced user verification.

Passkeys require something the user is or...

GitHub research highlights the impact of AI on developers

To gain deeper insights into how new AI tools and existing workflows impact the overall developer experience, GitHub partnered with Wakefield Research to survey 500 developers from enterprise companies across the US.

GitHub’s goal was to identify the barriers developers face. For example, the survey found that developers spend most of their time waiting for code reviews, builds, and tests, which negatively impacts their productivity and overall developer...

GitHub releases Blackbird code search engine

GitHub has released its reworked code search engine, Blackbird, which is built on Rust and promises faster and more comprehensive software repository exploration.

This revision, which has been in development for three years, is part of GitHub's efforts to enhance text-based search techniques for code queries.

With Blackbird, developers can quickly search, navigate, and comprehend their code, contextualize critical information and ultimately increase productivity. Colin...

OpenAI threatens GPT4Free project with lawsuit 

OpenAI has reportedly sent a letter to a European computer science student who runs the GPT4Free project on GitHub, demanding that he takes the project down within five days or face a lawsuit.

GPT4Free provides free access to the GPT4 and GPT3.5 models by funnelling the queries through sites like You.com, Quora, and CoCalc, and giving back the answers.

All of the sites GPT4Free uses pay OpenAI fees to use its large language models, and the scripts mean that those sites...

Copilot X heralds a new era of AI-powered coding

GitHub has unveiled Copilot X, an upgraded version of its AI-powered coding assistance tool.

Copilot X adopts OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 model and now features chat and voice interfaces, support for pull requests, command-line support, and can generate answer questions from documentation:

https://twitter.com/marktenenholtz/status/1638549603753795584

Unlike traditional coding assistance tools that rely on simple code templates or pre-defined snippets, Copilot X uses...

GitHub now serves over 100M developers

GitHub has achieved its goal to serve 100 million developers with two years to spare.

In 2019, GitHub set a goal to have 100 million developers using the service by 2025. In a blog post, GitHub announced that it’s already reached that historic milestone.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke wrote:

“Today, I’m excited to share that there are now officially more than 100 million developers using GitHub to build, maintain, and contribute to software...

GitHub is ending Sponsors payments via PayPal

GitHub has announced that it’s ending the ability for Sponsors to make payments via PayPal.

In a statement, GitHub wrote:

“Starting on February 23, 2023, GitHub Sponsors will no longer support PayPal as a payments processor. As such, it will no longer be possible to sponsor individuals or organizations using PayPal.

If you are sponsoring anyone on GitHub using PayPal, please update your GitHub payment method to pay by credit or debit...