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Welcome back, tech enthusiasts! 👋

Apologies for skipping last week—I took a short holiday break. But this week, I’ve got a jam-packed edition full of updates worth diving into.

Inside you’ll find:

• 🧠 Choosing the right Copilot model for your workflow

• 🔐 Securing GitHub Actions with workflow analysis via CodeQL

• 💬 Sharing Copilot Chat conversations with a simple link

• 💻 New Windows Arm64 runners for GitHub Actions

• 📈 New data trends from the GitHub Innovation Graph

• 🧰 JetBrains launches its own AI coding model

• 🗝️ OAuth client assertions in .NET

• 🌍 Microsoft’s major European digital commitments

• 💸 Cost Management updates

• 🚢 What deployment might look like for .NET Aspire apps

Let’s dive in and explore what’s new!

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GitHub Digest

Did you know that when you reference an issue in a pull request description, it can close this issue for you when the PR is merged? Just use something like closes #123 and if will set up this relationship and action.

If you did know and actually just want to reference, but not auto-close, then you are in luck; with this new option, you can disable the auto-close functionality.

So many models nowadays to pick from; do I need to use 4.5, 3o, 4.1o? The mini variants? Or Gemini? What if you can use GitHub Copilot itself to help you with this choice?

The next article provides insights into the different models and options as well:

The ARM processors are very efficient CPUs, so no wonder that these machines are now also requested more and more. They are also now available as a GitHub Actions Runner, making it a very affordable and interesting solution for CICD.

Security not only is a concern of your code, but also your pipelines. Vulnerabilities in your CICD workflows can impact the security of your application. CodeQL will now scan and analyse your workflow files as well. Helping you to set the minimal required permissions for example.

The Innovation Graph shows you all kinds of data about public software development based on the data collected by GitHub.

The Copilot is now also updated in the JetBrains IDEs, giving you the ability to use the Edits feature.

Coding Corner

A couple of issues ago I mentioned that yet another major .net open-source maintainer decided to go commercial, in this case the author of AutoMapper and Mediatr, Jimmy Bogard. He is sharing some more implementation details how he thinks this commercial model should work.

JetBrains takes its own approach to creating an AI code model. This one, called Mellum, is a self-trained model primarily focused on coding tasks. It is not yet production-ready as it still needs fine-tuning, but it is interesting to see how a company like JetBrains is exploring this as well.

A series of articles about security, particularly in a microservices architecture.

Azure Updates & Insights

It is hard to deny that the world and the relations between countries have changed since the new president took over in the USA. Contracts and agreements that were taken for granted are now questioned and might not be so secure anymore.

One large example is the use of cloud systems which, when used in e.g. Europe, are being reconsidered since the USA can potentially get access over the data as the cloud like Azure or AWS is run by an American company.

Microsoft is recognizing this issue and responds with a set of commitments. Including building more European datacenters, adding AI capabilities in Europe, allowing European companies to offer MS services in their datacenters, to setting up legal entities in Europe.

A big step up by Microsoft, recognizing the sentiment and fear that is spreading through Europe.

Did you know that you can ask the Azure Copilot about the largest spending in your subscriptions? That and more is described in the latest Cost Management updates for the month of April:

Are you offering AI features to your users? Then you need to securely host them behind an API Gateway. With the AI Gateway enhancements, you can easily extend the capabilities to do limiting, metrics, caching and content safety.

.NET Nook

A topic that pops up while working with Aspire; it works great for local development, but how do I get this to production? David Fowler took that same question and wrote down what the user story around deployment is about.

Closing Thoughts

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