Sr. Content Developer at Microsoft, working remotely in PA, TechBash conference organizer, former Microsoft MVP, Husband, Dad and Geek.
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GitHub Is Going To Start Charging You For Using Your Own Hardware

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GitHub will begin charging $0.002 per minute for self-hosted Actions runners used on private repositories starting in March. "At the same time, GitHub noted in a Tuesday blog post that it's lowering the prices of GitHub-hosted runners beginning January 1, under a scheme it calls 'simpler pricing and a better experience for GitHub Actions,'" reports The Register. "Self-hosted runner usage on public repositories will remain free." From the report: Regardless of the public repo distinction, enterprise-scale developers who rely on self-hosted runners were predictably not pleased about the announcement. "Github have just sent out an email announcing a $0.002/minute fee for self-hosted runners," Reddit user markmcw posted on the DevOps subreddit. "Just ran the numbers, and for us, that's close to $3.5k a month extra on our GitHub bill." [...] "Historically, self-hosted runner customers were able to leverage much of GitHub Actions' infrastructure and services at no cost," the repo host said in its blog FAQ. "This meant that the cost of maintaining and evolving these essential services was largely being subsidized by the prices set for GitHub-hosted runners." The move, GitHub said, will align costs more closely with usage. Like many similar changes to pricing models pushed by tech firms, GitHub says "the vast majority of users ... will see no price increase." GitHub claims that 96 percent of its customers will see no change to their bill, and that 85 percent of the 4 percent affected by the pricing update will actually see their Actions costs decrease. The company says the remaining 15 percent of impacted users will face a median increase of about $13 a month. For those using self-hosted runners and worried about increased costs, GitHub has updated its pricing calculator to include the cost of self-hosted runners.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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alvinashcraft
22 minutes ago
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Pennsylvania, USA
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Microsoft Quietly Kills IntelliCode as AI Strategy Shifts to Subscription Copilot

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Microsoft has begun decommissioning IntelliCode in VS Code, ending free local AI-assisted completions and shifting its developer AI strategy fully to subscription-based GitHub Copilot.
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alvinashcraft
22 minutes ago
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Pennsylvania, USA
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Will this Update from OpenAI Make AI Agents Work Better?

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From: AIDailyBrief
Views: 80

Anthropic's skill standard packages include instructions, scripts, and resources as folder-based Markdown modules for progressive disclosure and dynamic loading by agents. OpenAI's integration of skills into ChatGPT and Codex signals fast cross-platform standardization and a shift toward composable agent capabilities. Benefits include lower token costs, easier sharing and customization, deterministic code execution for reliability, and portable institutional knowledge.

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The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI.
Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: https://pod.link/1680633614
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Join our Discord: https://bit.ly/aibreakdown

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alvinashcraft
23 minutes ago
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Pennsylvania, USA
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The Role of AI in Software Development

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How is AI going to change software development? Live from the Philly.NET user group, Carl and Richard have Jeff Fritz and Bill Wolff chat about how AI technologies are impacting software development. The conversation opens with a listener concerned about the costs and controls around AI technology. There are a variety of approaches to using these tools; Jeff and Bill talk about the work they have done and some of the challenges. There is enormous potential here, but the paths forward aren't clear yet - more is to come!



Download audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/69108909/dotnetrocks_1981_roll_of_ai_in_development.mp3
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alvinashcraft
23 minutes ago
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Pennsylvania, USA
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SE Radio 699: Benjamin Brial on Internal Dev Platforms

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In this episode, Benjamin Brial, CEO and co-founder of Cycloid, speaks with host Sriram Panyam about internal developer platforms (IDPs) and internal developer portals. The conversation explores how these platforms address the growing challenges of DevOps scalability, multi-cloud complexity, and cloud waste, all of which organizations face as they grow.

Benjamin begins by framing the core problems that IDPs solve: DevOps struggling to scale beyond small teams, the complexity of managing hybrid environments across on-premises, public cloud, and private cloud infrastructure, and the significant issue of cloud waste (averaging 35-45% according to major analysts). IDPs can serve as a bridge between DevOps teams and developers, providing access to tools, cloud resources, and automation for users who aren't DevOps or cloud experts. The technical discussion covers essential IDP components including service catalogs, versioning engines, platform orchestration, asset inventory, and FinOps/GreenOps modules. The episode concludes with Benjamin's practical advice: organizations should focus on understanding their specific pain points rather than following market trends, starting with simple use cases such as landing zones before building complex solutions, and adopt a GitOps-first approach as the foundation for any IDP implementation.

Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.





Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/seradio/699-benjamin-brial-internal-dev-platforms.mp3?dest-id=23379
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alvinashcraft
23 minutes ago
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Becoming a Data Architect

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From: VisualStudio
Duration: 45:07
Views: 217

In this on-demand Live! 360 session, you’ll learn what it really means to be a data architect—far beyond just picking databases or tuning queries. Buck Woody walks through the mindset, frameworks, diagrams, and communication skills you need to design data systems that actually match how your business works.

You’ll see how to translate fuzzy business requests into clear requirements and constraints, use architecture frameworks (like TOGAF, NIST, and the Microsoft Data Architecture Guide) as guardrails, and design data pipelines that cover storage, compute, movement, security, and business continuity. Along the way, Buck shows how visual tools (BPMN, ER diagrams, UML, architecture diagrams) help you align executives, developers, and ops on the same picture.

Whether you’re a DBA, developer, or analytics engineer looking to level up, this session gives you a practical roadmap for growing into a data architect role.

🔑 What You’ll Learn
• How a data architect thinks about requirements, constraints, and business continuity
• Why defining business terms (like “inventory”) is critical before designing systems
• How to work with executives using T-charts (requirements vs. constraints) and clear recap docs
• The differences between IT, software, enterprise, cloud, solution, and data architects
• How to use architecture frameworks (ISO/NIST, TOGAF, Microsoft frameworks, Azure Well-Architected) as guides
• Visual “symbolics” every architect should know: ER diagrams, BPMN, UML, network and architecture diagrams
• How to design around storage, compute, and data pipelines (comes-out-of → goes-into → goes-out-of)
• Ways to reason about streaming vs. batch, and how to think in terms of data movement
• A simple three-step improvement loop: codify → standardize → optimize
• Practical career advice for aspiring data architects (from DBA or non-data backgrounds), including using LLMs to build a self-study syllabus

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Becoming a data architect: role, definition & business continuity
01:39 Core capabilities: requirements, communication & understanding the business
06:53 Constraints, T-charts & working with executives
09:16 Certifications, self-learning & motivation
10:04 Types of architects: IT, software, enterprise, cloud, solution & data
11:24 IT architects, frameworks & why frameworks matter
12:32 Architecture frameworks tour: ISO/NIST, MOF, TOGAF & more
17:31 Using LLMs to build your own data-architect learning plan
20:10 Symbolics & tools: ER diagrams, BPMN, UML & architecture views
25:59 House-building analogy: why architects start with pictures
29:23 Data architecture focus: storage, compute & data pipelines
33:40 Azure Architecture Center, Well-Architected & the Data Architecture Guide (DAG)
38:31 Thinking in pipelines: comes-out-of / goes-into / goes-out-of & security passes
42:24 How to grow into a data architect from DBA or other roles

🔗 Links
• Data Architecture Guide: aka.ms/DAG
• Explore more Live! 360 sessions: https://aka.ms/L360Orlando25
• Check out upcoming VS Live! events: https://aka.ms/VSLiveEvents

👤 Speaker: Buck Woody
Chief Data Officer, Straight Path Solutions

#dataarchitecture #dataarchitect #sqlserver #azuremachinelearning

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alvinashcraft
23 minutes ago
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