new_contents: import sys
      
  data = []
  
  # use different import based on python version number:
  if (sys.version_info > (3, 0)):
      # python 3:
      import urllib.request
      with urllib.request.urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hchiam/cognateLanguage/master/output_shortlist.txt') as response:
          line = response.readline().decode('utf-8').replace('\n','')
          while line != '':
              data.append(line)
              line = response.readline().decode('utf-8').replace('\n','')
  else: 
      # python 2:
      import urllib2
      response = urllib2.urlopen('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hchiam/cognateLanguage/master/output_shortlist.txt')
      data = response.read().split('\n')
  
  # debug print out:
  print ('test: data[0] = ' + data[0])
subject: add code to get data remotely