The beta version of TypeScript 4.3 is now available. Notable changes this new version comes with include:

• The ability to specify types for reading and writing to properties
• Template String Type improvements, making it possible to mix and match template strings with different substitutions easily as TypeScript can now figure out whether they’re compatible
• More elements in a class can be given #private #names. In addition, methods and accessors can also be given private names.
• Index signatures can now be declared as static.

For a full list of updates as well as installation instructions, click here.

Worldwide app spending grew 40% YoY to $32B in Q1’21, setting a new quarterly record. The growth comes after 2020 saw a record-setting 218 billion app downloads and $143B in consumer app spend.

More:

• Both the iOS and Android app stores saw 40% growth, though the former took the lion’s share of the total with $21B to Android’s $11B.
• Gaming accounted for $22B of total spend: $13B on iOS (up 30% YoY) and $9B on Android (up 35% YoY). Gamers downloaded around a billion titles per week, up 15% YoY from 2020.
• Game downloads outpaced overall downloads by 2.5x in 2020. The report predicts that mobile gaming spend will reach $120B in 2021, giving it a 1.5x boost over all other gaming formats combined.
• Games, Photo & Video, and Entertainment apps accounted for the strongest consumer spending growth in iOS, while Games, Finance, and Social Networking drove its download growth.
• Games, Social, and Entertainment saw the greatest increase of consumer spend on Android, and Social, Tools, and Finance brought in the most downloads.

A version of this story first appeared in Inside Venture Capital. Read the full issue here.

GCC's Steering Committee has removed Free Software Foundation (FSF) founder Richard Stallman, in what is the latest major act of protest against Stallman's controversial return to the free software world. Stallman is the original author of GCC and the founder of the GNU Project, which creates the GCC compiler that's used in Linux distributions. 

More:

• Stallman stepped down from the FSF as its president in late 2019 after he dismissed claims made by an underage victim of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and made controversial comments about laws surrounding the age of consent. Stallman announced his return to the foundation's board of directors two weeks ago, however, adding he is not "planning to resign a second time." 

Major recent developments since then:

• FSF's executive director John Sullivan resigned, as have FSF's management team members and Kat Walsh, a lawyer on the FSF board. FSF's board of directors also will be making a series of organizational governance updates and will change how it appoints board members. 
• These moves came in the wake of a petition signed by over 1,500, including big names like Mozilla, calling on the FSF to remove both Stallman and the entire FSF board for allegedly enabling him. 
• Red Hat left the Free Software Foundation. 

More about Stallman:

• In 2019, Stallman reportedly said the 17-year-old that AI pioneer Marvin Minsky had sexually assaulted likely "presented herself to [Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing." Stallman also wrote that he believed the distinction between a 17- or 18-year-old victim is a "minor" detail, arguing it was an "injustice" to refer to it as a "sexual assault."
• The incident sparked controversy, and Stallman resigned both from the Free Software Foundation and from his position at MIT. At the time, Stallman explained in a blog post, "I am doing this due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations."
• Many women have also accused Stallman of abusive and unpleasant behavior over the years, with female students reportedly avoiding walking near his office at MIT as a result.

Sexism in Free Software / Open Source:

• Both the free software and open-source community have been accused of sexism over the years. In a 2017 study examining three million pull requests from 330,000 GitHub users, code written by women (78.16%) was accepted more often than men's (74.6%). When the genders were identifiable by profile photo or username, and they were not project insiders, code by men was approved at a higher rate (click to tweet).
• A 2017 survey of 5,500 contributors to GitHub projects found 3% of contributors were women. In 2015, another survey revealed 6% of open source contributors were women. Analyzing why, Open Source Survey reveals women are more likely to encounter language or content making them feel unwelcome (25% vs. 15%), as well as stereotyping and unsolicited sexual advances.
• A new series on The ReadME Project celebrates and profiles the stories of women making an impact in development, as well as open-source projects and companies that are making a difference for women in the field. The project also examines how companies can retain female developers.

📅  Dev Calendar: 

Hackathons / Challenges:

• APRIL 2-4: The Online Veterans Hackathon. "Find a team, win great prizes, and do good by building something that will help other veterans."
• APRIL 3-5: OneHacks is a 48-hour virtual hackathon for high school students that will also feature workshops.
• NOW-APRIL 9: Pega Community Hackathon 2021. "We're asking for your help in building Pega applications that help bridge the gap between business and IT in the following categories: Bridge the gap between distributed people and systems; accelerate assistance and service to those in need; adapt quickly to new challenges and circumstances."
• APRIL 22-JULY 31: IBM launched the 2021 "Call for Code Global Challenge" calling on developers to submit solutions combatting climate change using open-source. Find out how to get started here.

Rails 7 will support application-level encryption in the Active Record model, the interface between the Rails database and your app.

More:

• Learn more about how to set up Active Record Encryption, migrate unencrypted data, and more with this recently published guide.
• The new feature also works with encrypted and unencrypted data simultaneously and supports old encryption schemes while moving current encrypted data to a new scheme.
• The Rails team has yet to announce the release date for Rails 7. The latest Rails version, Rails 6.1, was released in December 2020, a little over a year after Rails 6.0 was released in August 2019.
• Separate, but related: Rails 5.2.5, 6.0.3.6, and 6.1.3.1 have recently been released.

GitLab released versions 13.10.1, 13.9.5, and 13.8.7. These versions all contain important security fixes, including one addressing a critical issue. Users are encouraged to upgrade to one of these immediately. 

More:

• Issues addressed include an arbitrary file read during project import, which the GitLab team deemed "critical."  As a result, a specially crafted import file was able to read files on the server.
• The new versions also fix a high-severity issue wherein a specially crafted Wiki page allowed attackers to read arbitrary files on the server.
• You can learn more about each of the bugs fixed here.
• Separate, but related: GitLab recently open-sourced its fuzz testing engine, Protocol Fuzzer Community Edition.

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