November 2015 Summaries

The GitHub Shop is offering a limited edition Atom mug, humorously described as potentially "radioactive," that coffee enthusiasts can purchase as part of a promotional deal on Cyber Monday, November 30th. Customers can enjoy free shipping on orders over $30 and a 30% discount on the Atom Mug, Octocat Figurine, and other items using the code OCTOCYBER2015. To ensure delivery by Christmas, international orders using Priority Mail International must be placed by December 8th, while domestic orders have a deadline of December 18th. This promotional event is highlighted in a blog post written by Brandi Firestine, providing details on the sale and shipping timelines.

The upcoming Patchwork hack night on December 10 in Athens, Greece, co-hosted by GitHub and The Cube, offers a relaxed, hands-on workshop focused on learning Git and GitHub, catering to beginners without any coding experience. Participants will be guided by GitHub experts and local community mentors through the Hello World tutorial, creating their first open-source project, and achieving their first merged Pull Request. The event emphasizes a casual and informal atmosphere, allowing attendees to learn at their own pace, with support available from mentors. Participants can expect to leave with a better understanding of GitHub, a contribution to their graph, and increased confidence in engaging with the open-source community. Mentors are encouraged to assist newcomers and share their experience, and the event includes food and refreshments, with the venue being wheelchair-accessible.

Patchwork Paris, a hack night event co-hosted by GitHub and Ecole 42, is scheduled for December 3, 2015, in Paris, aiming to introduce beginners to Git and GitHub in a casual, hands-on workshop environment. The event, led by GitHubbers @helaili and @asseh along with local mentors, will guide participants through creating their first open-source project and achieving a merged Pull Request, with no prior coding experience required. Attendees will benefit from the informal atmosphere, working at their own pace with the support of mentors, and will leave the event more confident in their ability to contribute to the open-source community. It also invites experienced contributors to join as mentors to assist newcomers and share their expertise, while ensuring the event remains accessible and inclusive with provisions for food, refreshments, and wheelchair accessibility.

GitHub is introducing a redesigned interface for repositories that enhances navigation and page layout while improving underlying code and performance. Over the next two weeks, users can opt-in to this new design via a button in their repositories before it becomes the default. Key changes include a collapsing side menu replaced by a persistent top navigation bar, improving accessibility and coherence while allowing users to see tab labels without tooltips. The Code tab now highlights cloning with a redesigned protocol switcher, offering explicit menu items with descriptive text. The new layout provides additional horizontal space, making issues and pull requests easier to manage with a more readable sidebar. These updates aim to help users focus on their content and ensure a smooth transition by initially offering the design as optional before automatic implementation.

GitHub has introduced a smaller version of its popular Octocat figurine, now available in a 3-inch size. This new, charming collectible is offered in the GitHub Shop, following the success of the original 5-inch Octocat figurine. The announcement was made by Brandi Firestine.

The text discusses an issue encountered with a slow SQL query in a Ruby on Rails application, highlighting a potential performance problem related to unsanitized user input in LIKE clauses. The concern arose when a query with a user-provided term containing multiple percent signs led to slow query performance, prompting an investigation into the impact of wildcard placements on database indexing. To address the lack of built-in Rails helpers for escaping LIKE metacharacters, custom methods were developed to sanitize user inputs in SQL LIKE queries, thereby reducing the risk of Denial of Service (DoS) vulnerabilities. Although the risk was relatively low, the potential for application-level DoS was identified as a significant concern, emphasizing the need for mitigation strategies. The text concludes by noting that Rails 4.2 introduced a sanitize_sql_like helper to aid in resolving such issues.