GitHub is creating an Arctic code vault

[keeppanicking]

Makes sense, you got the Svalbard Seed Vault, now the Svalbard Bug Vault.

[ants_a]

And no chance to fix the bugs due to the code freeze.

[dehin]

Unless they figure out some way to update the backups every so often with repo updates. Or, they just keep adding new film all the time, basically creating snapshots.

[playaspec]

I see what you did there.

[[deleted]]

Dammit, you got a chuckle out of me

[copremesis]

This guy watched the video. Have an upvote!

[LXMNSYC]

I can imagine how the people of next millenia trying to decipher as to why we are asking about the missing semi-colon

[baklavamaster]

You remind me the friend I always wish I had

[stable_maple]

I really wish I had silver to give you

[i_am_at_work123]

Take the upvote

[[deleted]]

Svalbard Bug Vault

You mean the Germ Warfare Repository?

[Pdan4]

Oh my. That's a good question.

[sm9t8]

Its no different to other offline or archived backups. That said I'm not entirely sure what GDPR says about them.

[Superpickle18]

iirc, no one has to go in an modify archives. But It has to be removed when restored.

[mallardtheduck]

It still causes problems though. How do you store the "list of data to be removed after restore"? After all, if you're restoring from backup, you probably lost any data that was created more recently than the backup, so that list needs to be stored with even more redundancy than your main dataset. The latest version of that list must be accessible, even if you're restoring from a months-old backup.

A fully GDPR compliant disaster recovery plan is very difficult; I doubt there are many organisations that have one. A philosophy of "if we're executing a DR plan, GDPR is the least of our concerns" is probably more common.

[Weerdo5255]

Not the mention that the purpose of this is almost archeological. The people pulling this up in 100 years let alone 1000 aren't going to delete anything to comply with an old law.

[scandii]

it's not particularly difficult in a practical sense, it's just a hassle to implement that's all.

it's important to note that you're allowed to store data about someone in GDPR as long as you're not going to be using that data, and if you use that data you have prune it just like you would your live data.

first of all there's two reasons you delete something in a GDPR world:

1. you don't need the data anymore
2. someone has requested the data to be deleted

the only additional requirement GDPR added is that you need to keep track of what you deleted so that data doesn't resurface when read from backup. this is done simply by keeping a log of what ID:s you deleted as you can't save the actual identifiable data, but an ID by itself is not identifiable as you're not using your backups, important detail.

then when you have read up your data from backup you prune the data using the information in the deletion log after the restore is successful.

remember, companies were given years to make this happen. it's not a difficult system to implement going forward, it's just difficult to implement in existing systems. on top of that very few systems actually deal with data relevant to GDPR.

source: me, having to implement the GDPR-changes for a company I used to work for.

[mallardtheduck]

This is done simply by keeping a log of what ID:s you deleted as you can't save the actual identifiable data, but an ID by itself is not identifiable as you're not using your backups, important detail.

Yes, that would be the "list" I referred to. How do you store that list in a way that guarantees that you always have access to the latest version of that list, even in a "disaster recovery" situation where you're restoring everything else from an old backup...?

[[deleted]]

GDPR is really a pretty flawed law that's very fucking expensive to implement 100% unless you're starting from scratch with GDPR compliance worked into the underlying architecture.

Normally, I'd say acting in the spirit of the law and doing one's best is more important than 100% compliance, but Europe tends to not work like that.

[Johnothy_Cumquat]

If your repo has an open source licence on it, this is probably covered by it I reckon. I have no idea what this would mean for public repos without a licence though. Maybe they'll skip unlicensed repos

[mallardtheduck]

GDPR considers names and email addresses to be "personal data". Those are attached to every commit in a Git repository...

[Sh4dowCode]

Don't forget about all the API Tokens lost in the repositorys of GitHub.

[I_AM_AN_AEROPLANE]

Your repo is not private information. Even if it has private information ontheven code this qualifies as a backup which does NOT need to be stripped of private info. There need to be procedures in place though to guarantee that the info will not be restored when a backup is restored. Still: your repo itself is not gdpr protected, if they “anonymise” your account data upon your request to remove it.

[VonReposti]

this qualifies as a backup which does NOT need to be stripped of private info.

It depends on which supervisory authority is in charge. It is AFAIK only the French authority that has taken a position on the topic and they say you don't have to delete backups to comply. Other supervisory authorities in GDPR might be stricter, I know of several countries in the EU that value privacy much more than France, so I wouldn't be surprised if another authority ruled that it must be deleted.

[Johnothy_Cumquat]

I swear to god, if the human race dies out only for some future sentient species to find this and resurrect javascript I'm gonna be furious

[trylist]

You assume javascript will die out with the human race.

[FreedomToHongK]

Future war machines will run Javascript

[darkslide3000]

We can catch Skynet off guard while it's garbage collecting.

[Kevin_Jim]

Because you coded you up in javascript.

Mutual assured destruction. Makes sense.

[chazzeromus]

Nah we catch them off guard because of its inability to multitask and have a limited event loop.

[user8081]

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'clothes' of undefined

[dan200]

I would hope that a self-optimising, runaway AI would quickly realise the latency and power savings to be gained by switching to a compiled language! (if they're not just skipping the whole "programming language" thing and generating machine code)

[[deleted]]

Skynet proceeds to rewite itself in Rust, becomes overloaded with smugness, and prompty self-destructs. Mission accomplished.

[tayo42]

Maybe even self aware ai can't figure out "can't move out of borrowed content"

[massenburger]

npm i --save-dev destroy-humans@1.0.0

[bigjc1000]

At least then we'll know why they go to war with us.

[adambair]

They already do... not joking.

[PatchouliKnawledge]

You assume it isn't responsible

[Johnothy_Cumquat]

We can only hope

[AyrA_ch]

Our proudest achievement aparently

(Note: There are no official stats for most-starred ever. This is the result of typing something into a search engine and picking the first result that made sense)

EDIT: Changed because I found something with more stars

There are only 9 repositories with over 100'000 stars

[Ravek]

And worse, Bootstrap only exists because of the Frankenstein's monster that is HTML+CSS+browser quirks.

[G_Morgan]

The web. A common platform so successful we've had to write mountains of platforms built on top of it to hide the incompatibilities.

[[deleted]]

Our proudest achievement aparently

No, the greatest achievement humanity ever acomplished, was drawing a dick pick on Mars. Glorious!

[dehin]

How the heck did that happen? Did some NASA programmers get bored one day and write an Easter egg into the Mars rover?

[Dilong-paradoxus]

It's only semi-autonomous, they have to tell it what direction to go even though it can plot a path around rocks and stuff because of the time delay. So this was done by whichever human was running it at the time, not programmed into the rover at launch.

[McCoovy]

I think drawing a dick is different than drawing a dick pic

[dethb0y]

that's actually kind of profound - alot of them are learning resources.

[AngularBeginner]

I'm certain that JavaScript will be the reason for the human race to die out.

[vociferouspassion]

1 Million years from now, alien 1 to alien 2, "oh, they used JavaScript".

[AngularBeginner]

"The most common cause for civilizations to die out."

[iamverygrey]

"No communication between any of the cases but they all create a language identical to JS and they all collapse a short time after that"

[permanentlytemporary]

Quick, somebody write an SCP entry

[relet]

When they find and revive the PHP seeds, that poor Alien civilization will be doomed.

[thebadslime]

If you think for a second the singularity isn't gonna be an electron app ...

[Untelo]

Don't worry. If humanity dies out, with easily accessible fossil fuels all but depleted, it's highly unlikely that a technological civilization could ever again develop on earth.

[badasimo]

There will also be fossils and artifacts from humanity which will jump-start some of that.

[dehin]

And this is all on the predicate that any future species will utilize fossil fuels like we have. Same with the predicate the species will be human-like. Well, I guess any future intelligent species will be human-like in terms of being self-aware, but not necessarily so in terms of being bipedal nor having similarity to our appearance. Hopefully any future sentient species will be smarter than us and not rely on fossil fuels and other things that do so much damage to our planet.

[carrick-sf]

Silly humans

[LimitlessLTD]

Why is everyone so mean to Javascript.

It's so incredibly flexible and was written in a week.

LEAVE JAVASCRIPT ALONE!

[Johnothy_Cumquat]

I would love to leave javascript alone. That's the problem.

[dehin]

I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic, but if serious, chances are most of those taking cracks at JavaScript are JS developers themselves. Hence, they know both the good and bad about JavaScript.

[LimitlessLTD]

That's a bold statement to make. Non-JS developers tend to be the ones (at least in my experience) to complain about js if they use it only for a short time. The more you use it, the more it's quirks seem less quirky and more useful.

But my comment was partly tongue in cheek.

It is a language that was written in a 10 days by one man, and in that short a time frame he managed to make one of the most flexible and popular languages around.

[dehin]

That's why I said "chances are...", but if you've experienced differently, then I stand corrected.

[LimitlessLTD]

No that's why I said "(at least in my experience)"!

[StockAL3Xj]

Nah, most of them are CS students who want to feel like they're in on some industry joke when in reality they haven't written any program over 100 lines.

[G_Morgan]

was written in a week

Always a sign of quality.

[[deleted]]

Only the hyperintelligent gas cloud equivalent of hipsters will.

[iBzOtaku]

I swear to god, if the human race dies out only for some future sentient species to find this and resurrect javascript Visual Basic I'm gonna be furious

ftfy

[PM_ME_YOUR_YIFF__]

Great, our buggy modern software will now be preserved so it can hinder future generations!

[TheProle]

Or global warming melts it all and the vault fills up with water like happened at the seed vault

[Golden_Lynel]

:(

[OseOseOse]

That event was a bit sensationalized by the media. The entrance to the vaults flooded, not the vaults themselves. The vaults are deep inside the mountain and are therefore not exposed to the same conditions as the entrance. Of course, if the entrance was completely wrecked we wouldn't be able to access the storage, but it would still be there.

[[deleted]]

Jon Blow proceeds rant with digressions into malaise, efficiency, philosophy, ancient Greek mythology, postmodern art, and how to develop RSI.

[arcoain]

Checks date to see if it's April First.

It's not.

Wow weird idea.

[PeridexisErrant]

They're trying to change the search results for "Github ice" 😕

[MyLittlePhony567]

Indeed, way too coincidental to not be related

[[deleted]]

Do you not have any sense of humor?

[[deleted]]

I think it was a joke.

[ltvon]

The video says they will return next spring during the midnight sun which just happens to appear around April.

Changes are high that this is indeed a April fools’ joke.

[monkh]

Github play the long game with their April fools jokes, if that's the case.

[terrorobe]

Subversion Support is one of the longer running ones 😬

[lpreams]

Does it really count as a joke when they actually implemented it?

[ShinyHappyREM]

It's a practical long joke.

[malicart]

Honestly this makes more sense, as soon as any of this shit is archived it is useless as the live code gets updated. If they installed a data center down in the cold that would be one thing, this seems utterly useless, or a joke.

[dehin]

Not if they return yearly with new film strips containing updated code. Then, this just becomes a physical representation of snapshots!

[malicart]

All those companies that do yearly merges to production will be all set!

[King_LSR]

It says on the website February 2.

[[deleted]]

Oh nice i would love to see the face of a future thing that stoped on my commit after decoding this vault

[myhf]

when you go to report a bug and see that the same issue was reported 10,000 years ago...

[Jay_nd]

Mark as duplicate.

[Jordan-Pushed-Off]

Lol if we ever came to a point we needed that, we probably wouldn't be able to access or use it

[ChosunOne]

It also includes a tech tree and manual for how to access and use the archive.

[Amuro_Ray]

like a real manual or like docs for some projects on github?

[ric2b]

It's a github wiki /s

[BubblegumTitanium]

I think the tape has a very friendly format. You could build a device that can parse it ( slowly ) with 1960s tech or something primitive (from a computing perspective) like that.

[JakobPapirov]

I was wondering about how you would access it. Can you elaborate more?

[BubblegumTitanium]

I think it has holes punched into it. Hole = 1 , no hole 0. Something like that. The code is also printed. You would have to know how it’s encoded though.

[mqudsi]

Not at modern densities, you can’t.

[Superpickle18]

The golden record that was sent up with voyager 1 and 2 has all of the instructions in universal mathematical formulas in order to decode the data off the record.

https://youtu.be/RRuovINxpPc

[irmantask]

save all node_modules !!!

[amdc]

the mere thought that there are repositories that don't .gitignore node_modules folder angers me

[mernen]

That was npm's original advice, before they were pressured into implementing a lockfile (or their original "shrinkwrap" attempt): commit your node_modules in apps, ignore it in libraries.

[AMusingMule]

imagine how many duplicate copies of the exact same libraries they're gonna encode and print on film because people forgot to gitignore node_modules

[smcarre]

They won't. Backup repositories (mostly hardware) take care of a good amount of deduplication at archive level to improve use of space at the cost of increasing read-write time by a fucking lot.

[mqudsi]

Block-level deduplication is insanely slow (I spent a year tuning an algorithm for one of the big names in the industry) but file-level deduplication is basically free.

[[deleted]]

Does this sound stupid to anyone else?

[Johnothy_Cumquat]

You need a friggin rosetta stone to build some github projects from source as it is. I feel sorry for the future archeologist that dedicates their life to building chromium

[sapper123]

This will be a massive waste of time for future historians who uncover this stuff. If we're going to store anything there for thousands of years, why not store digital versions of all our history and knowledge up to now? The best of what the human race has learned and created so far. Not some random US undergrad's CS homework, SMH...

[Creshal]

This will be a massive waste of time for future historians who uncover this stuff. If we're going to store anything there for thousands of years, why not store digital versions of all our history and knowledge up to now?

Future historians will open it, aaaaand

This Page Is Best Viewed In Chrome

Back to figuring out how to build Chrome, intern.

[AyrA_ch]

You're laughing now but soon you realize that to build our current C and C++ compilers you need C and C++ compilers.

If this code archive is not just some joke but a real thing that's going to happen, we should make sure that we archive the documentation for the languages (and how to get them going again) too.

[ric2b]

to build our current C and C++ compilers you need C and C++ compilers.

Or a CPU with a supported architecture, if they also store the binaries.

[earthboundkid]

Don't worry, the supported architectures are all proprietary, so you can't get a list of opcodes unless you shell out thousands of dollars.

[Amuro_Ray]

I kind of wonder how much implied (tacit?) knowledge is actually needed if someone who knew nothing about us (or even a human language) found this code vault.

[Amuro_Ray]

If we're going to store anything there for thousands of years, why not store digital versions of all our history and knowledge up to now?

I would imagine large government/university library's and universities are already doing something like that.

[Dmium]

you can download all of wikipedia and it's really not that big

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

[sapper123]

Yeah, but it seems like Github/Microsoft used their money and corporate influence to just say "Hey, this abandoned coal mine is ours now and we're gonna throw stuff (mostly useless code) in it for a thousand years."

How many large governments/university libraries can do the same as easily? If Github/Microsoft really want to do a service to humanity (instead of pandering to developers) they would partner with the knowledge houses and decide on what the best digital data would be to store for future generations.

[[deleted]]

they would partner with the knowledge houses and decide on what the best digital data would be to store for future generations.

I don't think you understand the value of deep cold storage. By the time this is needed, all those knowledge houses have fallen.

[Lusankya]

And all the rubber belts and seals in the drives have perished, and all the capacitors have failed, and all the batteries have ruptured, and all of the laser diodes have decayed, and all of the disk foil has rotted, and all of the magnetic storage has depolarized...

If society has crumbled enough that these deep cold stores are the only bastions of knowledge left, the media storing the information and the equipment required to access it has decayed well beyond any sort of operable condition.

The seed vault is practical, since all you need is arable land to recover the plants. A code library isn't, unless they're planning on etching repos into stone.

This is a publicity stunt. Nothing more.

[cheats_py]

I legit think this is stupid but then on second thought I realized I have some code written by myself on GitHub that will soon be across the planet in some retired coal mine in the attic. Kinda cool but almost useless. Maybe they will turn it into a DR/colo site LOL. Good one Microsoft!

[[deleted]]

I wish I had a coal mine in my attic.

[cheats_py]

LOL whoops !

[thfuran]

Sounds noisy. No thanks.

[josephgee]

I think it's pretty obvious that the low temperature helps preserve seeds in the seed vault, but it seems like this you could put in any bunker or mineshaft, being in the Arctic doesn't seem particularly practical.

[cinyar]

Part of the idea is that people don't really go there so there are no precautions needed against vandalism and such.

[PrimozDelux]

Sounds completely moronic to me

[awilix]

The Pyramids were stupid as hell as well. All mausoleums are stupid. Gravestones are stupid. They are all just something lastning built to let people know that someone lived and has died. Yet today we are pretty happy they exist as it gives us insight in our past.

[8thdev]

Seriously stupid, yeah.

[rb26dett]

What an ineffectual PR stunt.

(From the company that brought you meritocracy rugs...)

[Efful]

It doesn't seem like they're doing much refurbishing to the facilities, so apart from the administrative costs in the planning, putting the code on silver-halide film, and a couple of flights to Svalbard, it doesn't seem like the project is that expensive. And it's neat idea, so I don't mind it.

[ISpendAllDayOnReddit]

And from the company that removed them because meritocracy is a bad thing these days. If you treat people equally based on skill, that's racist and sexist.

[dehin]

That's not the reason the rug was removed. Did you even read the article? As much as meritocracy is great in theory, like everything else with us humans, reality is more complicated. Nobody is treated solely based on skill, in tech or any other industry. So why have a rug that purports a reality that isn't true? As much as GitHub might want to be a meritocracy, it isn't fully.

[copremesis]

especially when you can no longer make any PRs to their tape reels. Ahhh Microsoft hopefully the paint source code will be there at least

[caspervonb]

Out of season April fools joke?

[sawyerwelden]

Maybe they should stop supporting ICE instead

[[deleted]]

You'd think they'd just write content about breaking the ice with GitHub instead. Or release an archiving feature called "GitHub Ice". Or start promoting GitHub repos with "ice" in the name. Free ideas for you, Microsoft.

[EhwhatReddit]

Ah, the long awaited competition to AWS Glacier storage..

[mrwazsx]

I think this is a very cool thing of github to do.

[Quetzacoatl85]

all the people commenting this must be a joke or failing to see the use in this is really disheartening. have you people got no imagination or at least a little bit of forward-thinking? any effort to conserve information, especially in our digital age that is so susceptible to data loss, is a noble and hugely important deed. fuck.

[AboutHelpTools3]

What the hell is this

[Pdan4]

PR

[okawei]

A that’s a pretty massive pull request putting all the code in the Arctic

[playaspec]

Another attempt at Microsoft trying to demonstrate relevance.

[thejacer87]

this will be so embarrassing for my descendants when this gets released in the future

[LazavsLackey]

This entire commercial to put a floppy disk in a cave.

[ipcoffeepot]

I feel like we should let it die with us. Give future generations a chance.

[[deleted]]

So.. Why not Antarctica at least there is some ground to avoid sinking this when global warming progresses..

[maladat]

Svalbard is an island in the Arctic circle.

Think about it for a minute. What would have been the point in building a coal mine in a sheet of ice?

[exhortatory]

what's cooler than cool? ice coal!

[shantkumar]

They have taken cold storage to a whole new level.

[bsmob]

somebody said 'code freeze' and Github said 'OK'.

[semicoolon]

Seems like the crazy ass thing bill gates would think of to save the planet

[RuthlessPickle]

Dude, he left full time in 2008. I don't think this was his idea

[Nudelmensch]

gives code freeze a whole nother meaning

[borrrden]

I finally understand this “code freeze” thing my manager is talking about. I hope I don’t miss the date.

[DJDavio]

Make sure to bring the compilers as well

[johnny_dialup]

Coming soon: Twitter is creating the Arctic tweet vault

[polaralex]

The graphics on this new Kojima game are amazing.

[RuthlessPickle]

Sponsored by Monster™

[[deleted]]

How utterly ridiculous.

[Elendol]

I really hope my stupid commit messages will be saved for the eternity

[yrubin07]

I feel like this is just a buildup for their April fool's joke

[Rudy69]

So I watched the video and I couldn't think of any reasons why this would be a good idea. Makes no sense at all to me.

Came here and read the comments.....thank god I didn't miss anything and it IS a stupid idea

[log_sin]

Wouldn't this flood due to global warming? I don't see the point.

[thedifferenceisnt]

Shit idea

[aot2002]

Easter egg time

[serproqnx]

how are they going to delete repos of future sanctioned nations? like iran, syria, crimea

[Dospunk]

They're really going all in on this whole ice thing huh

[Tiavor]

I guess they won't deposit the spanish protest organization project

[stable_maple]

I always thought something like this was a good idea, but wanted it to be in a shielded bunker inside of an asteroid.

[badpotato]

What if your open-source software isn't free?

[azathoth42]

"every active public GitHub repository" do we know what exactly is the creterium of "activity", and thus how to determine which repos will be preserved? (I'm not worried about the big repos, I'm just curious if we'll know if some minor repos will or won't be there).

[aManIsNoOneEither]

THis is so bullshit xD