Category Archives: Community

DevCentral’s Featured Member for April – Daniel Varela

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Our Featured Member series is a way for us to show appreciation and highlight active contributors in our community. Communities thrive on interaction and our Featured Series gives you some insight on some of our most active folks. Daniel Varela has bee… Continue reading DevCentral’s Featured Member for April – Daniel Varela→

Data.world introduces enterprise data collaboration platform

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Imagine a tool that’s a kind of Facebook for data inside large organizations. You could build data projects and teams, upload and share data sets, then discuss your raw data and findings with colleagues in a community setting. That’s precis… Continue reading Data.world introduces enterprise data collaboration platform→

DevCentral’s Featured Member for February – Lee Sutcliffe

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After a brief hiatus for the New Year, we’re kicking off the 2018 Featured Member series with a new DevCentral MVP: MrPlastic, Lee Sutcliffe. Like Kevin this past December, Lee does a great job with the opening question, so we’ll let him te… Continue reading DevCentral’s Featured Member for February – Lee Sutcliffe→

Google Adds Community Connectors Feature to Data Studio

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In a recent announcement, Google introduced Community Connectors to Data Studio, which is designed to make data collection, analysis, and visualization easier. What’s more is that users can also share their connectors with others.

The post Google Adds Community Connectors Feature to Data Studio appeared first on Petri.

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Ad Hoc MIDI to Music Box Project Shows Power of Hacker Community

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Fair warning: when you post a video of you doing an incredibly tedious process like manually punching holes in a paper tape to transfer a MIDI file to a music box, don’t be surprised when a bunch of hackers automates the process in less than a week.

The back story on this should be familiar to even casual Hackaday readers. [Martin] from the Swedish group “Wintergatan” is a prolific maker of unusual musical instruments. You’ll no doubt recall his magnificent marble music machine, a second version of which is currently in the works. But he’s also got a thing for …read more

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IT Is Hard, Takes Grit … and IT’s All About Amazing People

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Great work in IT is made possible by real people, with real talent, and with an ever-present grit. And today that’s where the BWW Media Group story intersects with Mary Jo Foley, our new Chief Community Magnate and a dear friend to many in our company and the tech community.

The post IT Is Hard, Takes Grit … and IT’s All About Amazing People appeared first on Petri.

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Open Source Art Encourages Society to Think Inclusively

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Kate Reed has a vision for elevating the less talked about parts of ourselves, and of society. Through her art, she wants people to think about a part of themselves that makes them feel invisible, and to anonymously share that with the community around them. The mechanism for this is Invisible, a campaign to place translucent sculptures in public places around the world. The approach that she has taken to the project is very interesting — she’s giving the art away to empower the campaign. Check out her talk from the Hackaday SuperConference.

Kate is studying as part of …read more

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Makerspace North, from Empty Warehouse to Maker Magnet

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Makerspace North is unique out of the 5 makerspaces in the Ottawa, Canada area in that it started life as an empty 10,000 square foot warehouse with adjoining office spaces and large open rooms, and has let the community fill it, resulting in it having become a major hub for makers to mix in all sorts of ways, some unexpected.

Many makerspaces are run by an organization that provides tools that groups or individuals use, along with qualification courses for select tools. Makerspace North, on the other hand, provides the space and lets the community provide the maker component. The …read more

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How To Set Up And Run A Makerspace

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A bunch of people who share a large workshop and meet on a regular basis to do projects and get some input. A place where kids can learn to build robots instead of becoming robots. A little community-driven factory, or just a lair for hackers. The world needs more of these spaces, and every hackerspace, makerspace or fab lab has its very own way of making it work. Nevertheless, when and if problems and challenges show up – they are always the same – almost stereotypically, so avoid some of the pitfalls and make use of the learnings from almost …read more

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Maintaining a healthy community

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VirusTotal was born 12 years ago as a collaborative service to promote the exchange of information and strengthen security on the internet. The initial idea was very basic: anyone could send a suspicious file and in return receive a report with multiple antivirus scanner results. In exchange, antivirus companies received new malware samples to improve protections for their users. The gears worked thanks to the collaboration of antivirus companies and the support of an amazing community. This is an ecosystem where everyone contributes, everyone benefits, and we work together to improve internet security.


For this ecosystem to work, everyone who benefits from the community also needs to give back to the community, so we are introducing a few new policies to make sure that our community continues to work for years into the future. First, a revised default policy to prevent possible cases of abuse and increase the health of our ecosystem: all scanning companies will now be required to integrate their detection scanner in the public VT interface, in order to be eligible to receive antivirus results as part of their VirusTotal API services. Additionally, new scanners joining the community will need to prove a certification and/or independent reviews from security testers according to best practices of Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO).


Finally, all VirusTotal users are fully accountable for and need to follow our existing Terms of Services and mandatory Best Practices. It’s frustrating to see abuses show up and it’s damaging for our community. Let’s remember some basics:


  • VirusTotal should not be used in any way that could directly or indirectly hinder the antivirus/URL scanner industries.
  • VirusTotal should not be used as a substitute of an antivirus solution.
  • The data generated by VirusTotal should not be used automatically as the primary indicator to blacklist/produce signatures for files. i.e. Antivirus vendors should not copy the signatures generated by other vendors without any other scrutinizing on their side.
  • VirusTotal should not be used to generate comparative metrics between different antivirus products. Antivirus engines can be sophisticated tools that have additional detection features that may not function within the VirusTotal scanning environment. Because of this, VirusTotal scan results aren’t intended to be used for the comparison of the effectiveness of antivirus products.
  • VirusTotal should not be used as deceptive means to discredit or to validate claims for or against a legitimate participant  in the anti-malware industry.
  • VirusTotal renders information generated by third party products (antivirus vendors, URL scanning engines, file characterization tools, etc.), those product names are exclusive property of their respective brands, hence, use of these names in third party products and services will be done at your sole discretion. You should ask the corresponding brands for their permission.
  • In no event shall you use VirusTotal’s logo, name or trademark on any customer list, public statement, press release, or in any other manner without our prior written consent in each instance.
There is a new specific email address (abuse@virustotal.com) for users and partners to report potential abuse of this new policy or our long-standing Terms of Services and mandatory Best Practices. When potential abuse is reported, we will investigate and work to adopt specific measures to combat any irregularities, if any uses can’t come into compliance we will terminate their service.

We are looking forward to working with new partners, as it will bring more value to the ecosystem. All collaborative efforts are based on the principles of benefiting the security industry as a whole and enabling the protection of end users. We also want to thank our current partners, and the entire VT community, for working with us as we pursue our mutual goal of a safer and more secure Internet for everyone.

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