> My first troubling discovery was in 2025, when I made several errors then did a push -f to GitHub and blew away the git history for a half decade old repo. No data was lost, but the log of changes was.
I know this is besides the point somewhat, but: Learn your tools people. The commit history could probably have been easily restored without involving any backup. The commits are not just instantly gone.
> The commits are not just instantly gone.
Indeed, the commits and blobs might even have still been available on the GitHub remote, I'm not sure they clean them on some interval or something, but bunch of stuff you "delete" from git still stays in the remote regardless of what you push.