github just removed git: urls from their web ui so it no longer tells you how to make a clone you can push from using standard git

it's been replaced with instructions for using their own gh cli tool (which, however, is also free software)

for example on any github project page, https://github.com/username/projectname, click on the "code ↓" button in the top right; the "local" tab on the left has a "clone" tab with 'https' and 'github cli' subtabs. the [email protected]: url you can use with standard git has been removed

i think this is a change within the last month

embrace, extend, and extinguish is alive and well

I don't think this is true

see correction in other subthread

You have to be logged into github for the SSH clone tab to appear-- if they don't know your pubkey you can't connect using the SSH protocol.

Git can push over HTTPS, too.

aha, that wasn't previously the case, thanks for the correction

whether i'm logged in in my browser has nothing to do with whether my ssh client has access to an authorized private key

Given the number of users who are novices to both git and ssh and all the rest, and also given that the UI doesn't really have room for "teaching" (it's already a popup, so adding another popup would be pretty ugly), I think it is a fairly reasonable change.

Clearly, more people were confused by the original than outraged about the current implementation... I don't even recall the change being made.

The heuristic for Github though is that the vast majority of people visiting a repository page who aren't logged in to Github on that browser don't have an authorized private key. It makes complete sense to present only options for anonymous checkouts to anonymous users.

Long ago they used to push SSH as the "right" way to pull repositories (I still almost exclusively use SSH), but their change to recommending HTTPS instead by default is by now quite old: it's been the case for many years.

Other related things have changed more recently: Github doesn't allow git:// urls anymore (but HTTPS still allows anonymous checkouts), and when doing authenticated HTTPS, you now need to provide a token instead of your password.

The git:// protocol, to my recollection, doesn't support authentication at all. If you've ever been able to push to git:// URLs on Github, it's news to me.

i wasn't talking about git:// urls and i think that removing them was probably a good idea, for the reasons you describe, but also because they didn't have any way to stymie mitm attacks

but it seems like my original comment was incorrect in a couple of different important ways, and i appreciate people having pointed that out

This may have something to do with one of my other pet hates - projects with submodules using git:// urls. If you don't use SSH keys for github you can't do a "git submodule update --init" without first changing the submodule urls in .git/config to https:// style.

FYI if you don't want to manually convert to a SSH URL, you can use a insteadOf setting in your gitconfig to make git do it automatically: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config...

It seems that this has been the case for years, at least going from the (obviously logged-out) archive.org saves of the Linux repo:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180115003453/https://github.co...

i appreciate the additional correction; perhaps i was looking at github mostly while logged in previously

> embrace, extend, and extinguish is alive and well

???

you can clone Github projects and move them on every other git repository you want

if Github removed the support for git, Github would be dead in a week.

Not only because git is literally in their name, but because every programmer tool that deals with code (editors, IDEs, etc.) has embedded support for git, the protocol, not git the Github version of the protocol.

Remove interoperability and you killed the golden goose.

At MS are not that stupid.

if www browsers had removed support for ftp, browsers would have been dead in a week, in 01998

but because they waited until last year, removing that interoperability did not significantly affect their dominance as a way of accessing the internet

> but because they waited until last year

FTP died long ago as a protocol, it wasn't killed by some corporations trying to embrace and extend, but by better protocols (SFTP, SCP, HTTP(S) etc.)

also FTP created a lot of issues behind NAT

there are still ftp servers and there is still a substantial information that is only accessible through ftp, however lame the protocol design is

wrt nat i would say that nat created a lot of issues with ftp

> wrt nat i would say that nat created a lot of issues with ftp

let me rephrase it.

FTP behind NAT had a lot of issues.

But the protocol was never designed to be accessed by a WEB browser, that were limited to read only access.

The best way to access FTP is through an FTP client.

I don't necessarily agree with the new wave of browser security at all costs, like HTTPS everywhere, but FTP clients are far from being hard to find.

> there is still a substantial information that is only accessible through ftp

can you point me to an example?

I haven't encountered that problem since the end of the 90s. The only instance I can recall is upgrading the firmware of home routers/modems using TFTP.

If Microsoft hadn't existed, everyone would be bitching about whichever tech titan would have formed in their absence just the same and erecting tombstones of their founders. It's not as if any of the other wannabes jockeying for power in that era would have had any hesitation in using their dominance anti-competitively either if they had gotten it. Even a certain scrappy don't-be-evil business that hackers were cheerleading at the time didn't manage to resist the lure of leveraging their market dominance.

The question is whether an omnidominant platform like Microsoft's would have arisen in the first place. While the current Android/Apple situation isn't ideal, it's certainly better than only one of the two. I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that would have happened.

For as bad as Microsoft was/is, imagine if Oracle filled that role.

For whatever it worths, oracle has been spectacularly and surprisingly good at shepherding Java since the takeover, they held onto almost the whole core team from Sun (which is not a common thing with takeovers) and the platform is advancing faster then ever (and not in a haphazard way).

Mercifully, I don't have to worry about Larry Ellison every day of the week. He's not a 'oh god what has he done now' sort.

The good thing about Larry is as shitty as his bag of tricks is, it doesn't change much. What people hated about Microsoft is that they innovated on fucking other companies over and putting them out of business.

There would not have been 'a different Microsoft'. It was Gates and Ballmer and friends that did that. Paul Allen got sick and then split with Microsoft to do pretty much completely different things for the rest of his life. Not that people have good things to say in Seattle about his behavior as landlord.

> Today’s microsoft is forced to play nice.

And looking at the success of Visual Studio Code and GitHub, people actually fall for it.

Every big enough company is a paperclip optimizer. So just look at the incentives.

It turns out that playing good citizen and profiting off an easy to use cloud is better business today than desktop is.

Plenty of old Microsoft in the Xbox/gaming division, we just aren’t seeing it all yet.

Funny how all my "nerdy" friends love Gates now. I guess 100B$+ is enough to afford PR team that can convince public you are no longer "more evil than satan himself".

Well, Gates is absolutely terrible at PR and doesn't tick any of the boxes of being chic, unless it's some kind of so uncool that he's cool kind of thing.

Despite this and more importantly despite his reputation in business and the often laughable products MS produced, his tremendous philanthropy really changed my perspective on him.

In a world where there are mega-billionaires, he's my least unfavourite. He's doing good things with his money like eradicating malaria and funding bleeding edge climate tech. He's pretty outstanding wrt how he spends his money.

Eh, I would say he puts a lot of effort intro creating image of benevolent nerd philantropist. Point in case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hnZJIRd6Qw There must have been a team of people dedicated to carefully crafting this video, creating props, there's even a dozen or so actors there (each in the background for just a few seconds). It looks like someone put a lot of effort into this and it surely consumed thousands of dollars (my uneducated guess is somewhere in 10-100k$ range). To what end other than working on his personal brand?

Speaking of malaria, after googling for 3 minutes it seems he spent around 2B$ on it. Does it really matter? Yes and no. Maybe it had impact on people's lives, but given Gates' net value is 100B$+, giving away a billion or two does not matter. It will not affect his quality of life in any significant way. He could give away a few dozen billions more and still will spend rest of his life living in luxury that I could only dream off. Sure, better to fight malaria than buy another yacht, but still, it's easy decision to make when you have that much money.

Can't fault him on hiring a crew to craft his videos. He has better things to do with his time. Wouldn't you outsource that if you were in his position?

My 2 mins of googling came up with more like 3.6B$ on malaria, but even 2B$ is a shit-ton of money. I certainly haven't donated 2% of my net value to malaria (and it's only on the order of 1/10000 of his!).

Malaria rates are down around 30% since 2010, thanks in part to Gates. He's likely saved thousands to hundreds of thousands of lives.

Malaria is just one part of his philanthropy. I'd love to see the numbers for Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. It would be great to all billionaires follow suit with this kind of "easy decision".

2, 3 or 5 billion don't matter if you still have tens of billions left.

I'm not saying he shouldn't outsource his videos. What I'm saying is that this looks more like a professionally made commercial (advertising his personal brand). I'm pretty sure it cost O(hours) of his time (consider even getting to the set - you can see this is a professional set, so probably in some studio; I also doubt this was done in one take given how there are other actors around including the skating Santa Clauses). All in all, it really feels artificial and dishonest. What kind of person would even come up with idea of creating such a video in the first place?

What does it matter how much he has left?

There are somewhat diminishing returns spending money on philanthropic causes: if he were to spend 30 rather than 3 billion the result wouldn't be ten times better. I'm happy he's trying to make the world a better place while still keeping an eye on the money being used efficiently.

Why does the 100k matter if the 3 billion don't?

> Maybe it had impact on people's lives, but given Gates' net value is 100B$+, giving away a billion or two does not matter.

Is it not enough for you that he went out of his way to improve other people's lives? Would it only satisfy you if his lifestyle suffered?

> it's easy decision to make when you have that much money

How do you know? Have you ever been in that position?

> Is it not enough for you that he went out of his way to improve other people's lives?

How did he went out of his way?

> How do you know? Have you ever been in that position?

I don't think snark is necessary here; probably there are no 100B$+ users on HN.

But it's not hard to extrapolate from where am I. I have comfortable tech job, I could easily give away few thousands bucks to some charitable cause just to show off (and my quality of life wouldn't change). Would that automatically make me a good and trustworthy person? I think the answer here is no. I also guess if for some reason my net worth went up a few orders of magnitude, I could also give few orders of magnitude more. Would then I be a good and trustworthy person?

> How did he went out of his way?

He spent a considerable amount of his free time.

> I have comfortable tech job, I could easily give away few thousands bucks to some charitable cause just to show off (and my quality of life wouldn't change).

Yes, you could. Do you?

> Would that automatically make me a good and trustworthy person? I think the answer here is no.

It wouldn't. But also because there are no good and bad people. There are good and bad actions. I use Linux and absolutely hate what Bill Gates was doing wrt the whole free software ecosystem. I still commend him for his charity work.

> I also guess if for some reason my net worth went up a few orders of magnitude, I could also give few orders of magnitude more.

Yes, you could. Would you though?

Strong disagree. I started software dev in the late 90's and among everyone I knew in tech MS was uniformly hated, even the DOJ sued them. They did everything they could to stomp out open internet standards. Untold amounts of money, business, etc. were lost by all of us fighting this scourge. The fact that anyone alive thinks anything remotely positive of him could only be due to PR. IMO even if he gave away every cent, I'd just consider that restitution for all of the damage he's done to the world. Then he'd still owe us.

I didn't work in the industry at that time but I did hear the stories. I might have a different perspective if I was on the ground.

We have a pretty open internet today, or at least MS is no longer the biggest threat to it so maybe this was just another MS-bungled project lol.

Jokes aside, utmost respect to the people who have fought for an open internet over the years.

No, we've just realized that they're just less evil than all the other current behemoths.

Sun tried to be "cool" but was really just a money loss machine and now Java and MySQL is the property of we-will-audit-you-Oracle and Mr I-will-sue-people-when-I-need-another-yacht-Ellison.

G had a motto of "do no evil", that motto is long gone. I've always disliked their handling of the Android platform (the handset manufucaturer/carrier dominance over application stores back in the J2ME days was horrible, Google's quest for marketshare let that go on for a few more years and allowed for some bad fragmentation for developers).

And this was just the start, their "AI-handles-support-so-we-don't-need-to-talk-to-humans" combined with accounts being suspended willy-nilly just leaves people stranded (anybody remember how an indie guy making an Stadia exclusive game was shut out of his Google account?) and speaking of stadia, what's Googles cancelled product body-count up to now?

Apple has had some pros on the privacy side but they've stumbled even there, and apart from that they've been quite a heavy-handed player with a clear my-way-or-the-highway attitude (vs Epic,Spotify,etc).

Amazon busting unions, fleecing people on AWS and copying popular products on the marketplace needs no more mentions.

The Ubers, Spotifys,etc of the world might've made things cheaper and more streamlined but there's been at a cost of distinct monetary pressure on drivers,musicians,etc.

Facebook facilitating genocides (Rohynga), election fraud (US/UK) and general lax privacy (Cambridge Analytica).

MS might have gotten worse in terms of privacy and ads(start menu ads,wtf?), but in general they've mostly kept to making money and actually supporting developers and opensource. NPM/Github costs might be fractional for MS but would've probably landed the rest of us another SourceForge (remember the spyware they added to make money? That was probably what got GH off the ground more than anything) because we've not yet sorted a way for developers and distribution to get paid for our "free" contributions.

You get what you measure and if you work in a C Corp long enough, especially a big one, you spend a lot of time measuring revenue and "cost centers".

Honestly I think this all is Melinda's doing. If he hadn't got married to her he'd still be a raging piece of shit.