GitHub launched a new native integration that scans code for security vulnerabilities before production. The new code scanning feature is free to enable on public repositories here, while it is a GitHub Advanced Security feature for GitHub Enterprise.

More:

• The new feature integrates with GitHub Actions or your existing CI/CD environment.
• Code scanning is powered by Semmle's code analysis engine CodeQL. The news comes one year after Semmle joined GitHub, and five months after GitHub released the first beta of the code scanning native integration during the GitHub Satellite conference.
• Other GitHub Satellite releases included a public beta of GitHub Codespaces, which provides a development environment within GitHub. Check out a sneak peek of the new feature here.

📅  Dev Calendar: October 2020 Virtual Events and Hackathons (with hackathons listed by upcoming deadlines)

WEEK 1: OCT 1-OCT. 3

Virtual Events:

• OCT. 2: Microsoft's MS Stage conference, wherein 16 sessions will be presented about the future of Microsoft's technology stack, including .NET, C#, F#, MS Azure, Cosmos DB, SQL Server, VS Code Spaces and..
• OCT. 3-4:

Hackathons:

• NOW-OCT. 4...

WEEK 2: OCT. 4-OCT.10

Virtual Events:

• OCT. 6-7: JavaScript conference with speakers including the founder of Vue.js, the founder of GitHub, and more.
• OCT. 6-8...

Hackathons:

• NOW-OCT. 5...

WEEK 3: OCT. 11-OCT. 17

Virtual Events:

• OCT. 15-16: React Summit XL conference with speakers like Kent C. Dodds and...

Hackathons:

• OCT. 9- OCT. 11: Hacks for Humanity hackathon. "This 3-day hacking event challenges participants to create and to innovate solutions to local and global issues. While this year’s participant team tracks are Aging, Safety, and Justice, all finished products in this team competition must embody these Humanity 101 principles: kindness, compassion, integrity, respect, empathy, forgiveness, and self-reflection."
• OCT. 12- OCT. 16...

WEEK 4: OCT. 18-OCT. 24

Virtual Events:

• OCT. 20-22...

WEEK 5: OCT. 25-OCT. 31

Virtual Events:

• OCT. 27...

Hackathons:

• NOW - OCT. 31: Hacktoberfest, dubbed a one-month long annual "celebration of open-source software," this is the program's seventh year inviting beginners and the experienced alike to contribute to open-source projects.
• NOW- OCT. 31: "We’ve developed technology that is able to authenticate people based on how they type on their keyboards. Show us what you’d build given that you CAN recognize people based on their typing."
• NOW-OCT. 31...

NOVEMBER HACKATHON DEADLINES:

• OCT. 16-NOV. 1: ElectionHackathon hosted by Minority Programmers Association. "Develop a platform for your own democratic system for the citizens of the world to vote on issues and/or candidates. This is not meant to be a digitization of current voting systems, but rather your own redesign on global electoral systems."
• OCT. 12-NOV. 20: Microsoft Azure Hack for Social Justice. "Microsoft invites you to use your creativity, passion, and cloud expertise to create solutions that empower communities and help address a timely and relevant social justice issue." Issues can include protecting democratic elections and voting rights, gender equality, criminal justice reform, accessibility, and more.
• NOW - NOV. 16...

TO READ THE FULL LIST OF 40 EVENTS AND HACKATHONS, START YOUR FREE 14-DAY TRIAL OF INSIDE DEV PREMIUM TODAY.

Element, the company created by the Matrix core team to finance its development, is purchasing developer community chat system Gitter from GitLab. As a result, Gitter will become a core part of the larger Matrix ecosystem, with the Matrix team saying it will be working on adding native Matrix connectivity.

More: 

• Matrix is an open-source project that provides an open protocol for secure, decentralized communication. Gitter offers developers chat rooms attached to code repositories, making it easy to message and collaborate.
• The Matrix and Gitter teams are answering questions about the news on #gitter:matrix.org, which is bridged with https://gitter.im/matrix-org/gitter. 
• The CEO at GitLab and technical co-founder of Matrix additionally discussed the acquisition further in a podcast interview published yesterday on The Changelog.
• GitLab bought Gitter in 2017 to promote the idea of chatops within GitLab. 
• In more GitLab news, scrolls to story #6 to learn about how GitLab’s CEO transformed GitLab into a billion-dollar open source success, read his management advice, and more. 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched the stable version of Amazon Timestream, a scalable and serverless time series database service. AWS says the new feature makes it easy to quickly collect, store, and process trillions of time series events without an upfront cost. It is available today in US East (N. Virginia), Europe (Ireland), US West (Oregon), and US East (Ohio).

More:

• Customers are charged based on the data they write, store, or query. Check out the pricing page for more details.
• The new service integrates with other popular data collection, visualization, and machine learning services.
• See sample applications in this repo, and the documentation to learn more.

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attackers focused on essential services in the first half of 2020 in attempts to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest stats from DDoS mitigation firm NETSCOUT. DDoS attacks jumped 15% year-over-year in the first half of 2020, totaling 4.83 million. Close to 1 million occurred in May, the single largest number of monthly attacks ever recorded by NETSCOUT.  

More: from NetScout:

• DDoS attacks refer to attempts to disrupt a targeted server's traffic through overwhelming the server or surrounding infrastructure with Internet traffic.
• DDoS attackers carried out shorter, faster, harder-hitting complex multi-vector attacks during the first half of 2020.
• Attack throughput increased 31% in the first half, topping out at 407 Mpps.
• The largest single DDoS attack reached 1.12 Tbps in the first half of 2020, a 77% increase from the first half of 2019.
• DDoS attack frequency increased 25% year-over-year during the pandemic lockdown months of March through June.

A version of this story first appeared in Inside Security. 

DEV MASTERCLASS:

In today's masterclass, GitLab’s CEO Sid Sijbrandij explains how GitLab became a billion-dollar open source while offering management advice and more. 

How GitLab reached $100M ARR in 2020, growing 50x in 4 years:

The company started off bootstrapped with 100,000 users, realizing early on that hosting – which it initially focused on – wasn't going to generate revenue in the way the...

On Management, as well as on Managing a Free and Paid Product:

• Dividing engineering resources and time is more tricky, so those who decide...

Things That Don't Work:

• “Service-based...

Start your FREE 14-day trial of Inside Dev Premium to read the rest of today's masterclass, as well as last week's masterclass with Kent C. Dodds, a former JavaScript engineer at PayPal, popular teacher, and a Google Developer Expert.

Quick Hits:

• Learn more about the content-visibility: feature, which is a relatively new CSS property in Chrome designed to improve rendering performance.
• Check out this tool, which compares site speed for the first page of Google search results.
• IBM revealed its five finalists for the Call for Code challenge, which includes projects that combine hybcrid cloud, AI, and open source tech to tackle COVID-19 and climate change.

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