11 ms·

There are some alternatives like https://grep.app https://grep.app or https://sourcegraph.com/search https://sourcegraph.com/search if you want fast live search

by aseipp 2y ago

There are some alternatives like https://grep.app https://grep.app or https://sourcegraph.com/search https://sourcegraph.com/search if you want fast live search, but at the end of the day these are services offered by companies, and rather expensive ones especially for free anonymous users, so you should probably at least accept that service providers can and do change things like this. You can also run something like your own copy of Zoekt and then ingest repositories on demand though it isn't quite as instant. But if it's code you're already using extensively, it seems like it might be worth it. Maybe you can write some boondoggle to automatically ingest repos based on dependency metadata, even.

amiga386 2y ago
Github managed to provided search to free anonymous users since its inception in 2007, to mid-2023 when they introduced this new code search. I would submit that this change is entirely business-related: it's a power-play to make people create accounts and stay logged in so they can track you better. It is not that they cannot afford it, it is that they are enshittifying the service to further their interests. If they were really worried about money, they could lock it down completely so only paying customers could use the service at all... and then they'd lose a huge chunk of customers and lose all the prestige they build in convincing a huge pile of the world's free/open source software to use them as their hosting. So they don't do that - they keep all the prestige and the network effects by seeming _quite_ open, but they'll lock down _parts_ of the experience to try and force specific behaviour. > you should probably at least accept that service providers can and do change things like this. Indeed, you should. It should serve as a wake-up call that other people's services/platforms aren't under your control, and you can't rely on them to meet your needs.
- ZoomerCretin 2y ago
  > it's a power-play to make people create accounts and stay logged in so they can track you better Github doesn't even serve ads. What exactly are you worried about? Your throwaway email being primary key #78,000,000 and having your visited repositories stored in another table?
  - jen20 2y ago
    Microsoft serves ads though. I haven't looked through the terms and conditions, but I'd be amazed if it wasn't permitted for GitHub to give whatever they can glean from your data to their corporate overlord.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Yes, they send personal data to Microsoft for advertising purposes. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith... > Affiliates: Personal Data may be shared with GitHub affiliates, including Microsoft, to facilitate customer service, marketing and advertising, order fulfillment, billing, technical support, and legal and compliance obligations. Our affiliates may only use the Personal Data in a manner consistent with this Privacy Statement.
  - authorfly 2y ago
    It's a change in direction, one by one these things change, one day, there are Ads, or your github repo search journey is being used to train the AI programmer to replace you in those very libraries and repos you develop expertise in. There's no good to come of requiring people to log in for the consumer. Online Tracking is never good for the consumer.
  - fph 2y ago
    Yes. Microsoft is already siphoning data everywhere they can, why should I give them more? Most people have their real name and e-mail there because they use it to sign code in trusted repositories, so it's easy to combine these data with other sources.
  - VancouverMan 2y ago
    I've never had any success creating a GitHub account with a throwaway email address. The last time I tried, I'm pretty sure the email address was rejected right away, and the account couldn't be created. Not being able to reasonably create an account there is certainly annoying when it comes to performing simple searches. It has also prevented me from submitting new bug reports and adding information to existing bug reports for a number of open source projects over the years. I'm always disappointed when I see an open source project using GitHub, because it makes contributing to that project more or less impossible.
- HellzStormer 2y ago
  Personally, I don't think this is a valid case of enshittifying. Products that you pay for that loses features or break or become more painful to use are enshittifying. A free feature that stays free but requires you to make a free account (no credit card needed), I can see at least one very valid reason: if the feature heavier than a simple page (which is the case here), then it's an open door for DDOS attacks. Being able to track and ban/block the users that appear to participate in such an attack is totally valid. The alternative is having to do captchas and the like to use those features anonymously, which is a pain both for user and for the devs/UI, and does feel more like the overall enshittification you are mentionning (even if it's a valid reason)
  - amiga386 2y ago
    > The alternative is having to do captchas and the like to use those features anonymously This is not the case. You may have noticed that Google Search, Bing, etc. don't require login or captcha to do a search. Billions of people use this search daily. And yet, they will throw a captcha at you, or even just say "you're a bot, stop bothering us" whether you're logged in or not, if their signals have detected what they consider abuse. Clearly, their signals are not as naive as "anonymous user, require captcha / logged-in user, no checks required". Preventing DDOS != requiring login. They like you logged in because they can add more data to their verified user identity and activity datasets and sell them for more money. They already make enough money to run the service despite all the anonymous usage, but they'd like more money, you see. Github managed to offer anonymous search for 16 years before one day Microsoft took it away. Do you think it was due to DDOS attacks, or do you think it was a power-play to attract more sign-ups and logins?
    - Alupis 2y ago
      > They already make enough money to run the service despite all the anonymous usage, but they'd like more money, you see. How mighty of you, a freeloading user in this specific situation, to assert Github has made "enough" money and therefore should offer you services at their own expense... you know, because you want it and therefore are entitled to it. > Github managed to offer anonymous search for 16 years before one day Microsoft took it away. Do you think it was due to DDOS attacks, or do you think it was a power-play to attract more sign-ups and logins? So what's the issue here, really? Make a free account and move on with life. Or clone the repo and search it locally if you need to. Or decide to take some principled stance and refuse to work with projects hosted on Github. It's your choice.
- arp242 2y ago
  > I would submit that this change is entirely business-related Developers working on it have said it's due to performance reasons. I don't have a link handy, but it's in some HN thread.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    They claimed the new search requires logins due to performance reasons... they have no reason, other than they want to use both the carrot and the stick in driving signups and logins, to take away their existing search, the one they didn't have a problem offering for 16 years, completely.
    - arp242 2y ago
      So those people are outright lying through their teeth? Got it. You're just reasoning from negativity and cynicism. No evidence for anything. Other than "zomg they're bad".
      - amiga386 2y ago
        I didn't say they were lying. It can be true that their new search is better but costlier to run. They can focus on that in their PR, along with how shiny and new the shiny new search is, to distract you that they are removing anonymous search and making the site worse. Nobody made them turn off the old search, they chose that, and they bundled the two together in one PR push. Fancy new search = carrot. Remove anonymous search = stick. Carrot and stick work together to drive more signups, more logins, more data tracked, more data sales, more money.
        pcl 2y ago
        I completely understand where they're coming from. Maintaining two separate search stacks for different user groups sounds like a nightmare. Multiply that by every feature that increases in complexity enough to bubble up on the cost-center metrics, and it for sure makes sense to prune complexity at the cost of secondary-feature functionality for anonymous requests.
- sjshn 2y ago
  As a fairly recently departed GitHub employee, I know with certainty that this change is primarily related to abuse. The search infrastructure (both old and new) is complicated and expensive to run, and anonymous search was abused at a remarkably large scale. DDoS against the anonymous search service was a big problem, but another was the presence of many very large search botnets that constantly scraped the site for secrets and other confidential data inadvertently made public. Long time users might remember that anonymous search was aggressively rate-limited on a per-IP basis, but the size of the search botnets grew to a scale that made this ineffective. My personal opinion is that most enshittifying changes on GitHub are due to the proliferation of middle managers who are evaluated almost exclusively on speed-shipping net-new features at the expense of maintenance and incremental improvement of existing features.

by aseipp 2y ago

amiga386 2y ago

Github managed to provided search to free anonymous users since its inception in 2007, to mid-2023 when they introduced this new code search. I would submit that this change is entirely business-related: it's a power-play to make people create accounts and stay logged in so they can track you better. It is not that they cannot afford it, it is that they are enshittifying the service to further their interests. If they were really worried about money, they could lock it down completely so only paying customers could use the service at all... and then they'd lose a huge chunk of customers and lose all the prestige they build in convincing a huge pile of the world's free/open source software to use them as their hosting. So they don't do that - they keep all the prestige and the network effects by seeming _quite_ open, but they'll lock down _parts_ of the experience to try and force specific behaviour. > you should probably at least accept that service providers can and do change things like this. Indeed, you should. It should serve as a wake-up call that other people's services/platforms aren't under your control, and you can't rely on them to meet your needs.

ZoomerCretin 2y ago
> it's a power-play to make people create accounts and stay logged in so they can track you better Github doesn't even serve ads. What exactly are you worried about? Your throwaway email being primary key #78,000,000 and having your visited repositories stored in another table?
- jen20 2y ago
  Microsoft serves ads though. I haven't looked through the terms and conditions, but I'd be amazed if it wasn't permitted for GitHub to give whatever they can glean from your data to their corporate overlord.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Yes, they send personal data to Microsoft for advertising purposes. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-general-privacy-statement https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith... > Affiliates: Personal Data may be shared with GitHub affiliates, including Microsoft, to facilitate customer service, marketing and advertising, order fulfillment, billing, technical support, and legal and compliance obligations. Our affiliates may only use the Personal Data in a manner consistent with this Privacy Statement.
- authorfly 2y ago
  It's a change in direction, one by one these things change, one day, there are Ads, or your github repo search journey is being used to train the AI programmer to replace you in those very libraries and repos you develop expertise in. There's no good to come of requiring people to log in for the consumer. Online Tracking is never good for the consumer.
- fph 2y ago
  Yes. Microsoft is already siphoning data everywhere they can, why should I give them more? Most people have their real name and e-mail there because they use it to sign code in trusted repositories, so it's easy to combine these data with other sources.
- VancouverMan 2y ago
  I've never had any success creating a GitHub account with a throwaway email address. The last time I tried, I'm pretty sure the email address was rejected right away, and the account couldn't be created. Not being able to reasonably create an account there is certainly annoying when it comes to performing simple searches. It has also prevented me from submitting new bug reports and adding information to existing bug reports for a number of open source projects over the years. I'm always disappointed when I see an open source project using GitHub, because it makes contributing to that project more or less impossible.
HellzStormer 2y ago
Personally, I don't think this is a valid case of enshittifying. Products that you pay for that loses features or break or become more painful to use are enshittifying. A free feature that stays free but requires you to make a free account (no credit card needed), I can see at least one very valid reason: if the feature heavier than a simple page (which is the case here), then it's an open door for DDOS attacks. Being able to track and ban/block the users that appear to participate in such an attack is totally valid. The alternative is having to do captchas and the like to use those features anonymously, which is a pain both for user and for the devs/UI, and does feel more like the overall enshittification you are mentionning (even if it's a valid reason)
- amiga386 2y ago
  > The alternative is having to do captchas and the like to use those features anonymously This is not the case. You may have noticed that Google Search, Bing, etc. don't require login or captcha to do a search. Billions of people use this search daily. And yet, they will throw a captcha at you, or even just say "you're a bot, stop bothering us" whether you're logged in or not, if their signals have detected what they consider abuse. Clearly, their signals are not as naive as "anonymous user, require captcha / logged-in user, no checks required". Preventing DDOS != requiring login. They like you logged in because they can add more data to their verified user identity and activity datasets and sell them for more money. They already make enough money to run the service despite all the anonymous usage, but they'd like more money, you see. Github managed to offer anonymous search for 16 years before one day Microsoft took it away. Do you think it was due to DDOS attacks, or do you think it was a power-play to attract more sign-ups and logins?
  - Alupis 2y ago
    > They already make enough money to run the service despite all the anonymous usage, but they'd like more money, you see. How mighty of you, a freeloading user in this specific situation, to assert Github has made "enough" money and therefore should offer you services at their own expense... you know, because you want it and therefore are entitled to it. > Github managed to offer anonymous search for 16 years before one day Microsoft took it away. Do you think it was due to DDOS attacks, or do you think it was a power-play to attract more sign-ups and logins? So what's the issue here, really? Make a free account and move on with life. Or clone the repo and search it locally if you need to. Or decide to take some principled stance and refuse to work with projects hosted on Github. It's your choice.
arp242 2y ago
> I would submit that this change is entirely business-related Developers working on it have said it's due to performance reasons. I don't have a link handy, but it's in some HN thread.
- amiga386 2y ago
  They claimed the new search requires logins due to performance reasons... they have no reason, other than they want to use both the carrot and the stick in driving signups and logins, to take away their existing search, the one they didn't have a problem offering for 16 years, completely.
  - arp242 2y ago
    So those people are outright lying through their teeth? Got it. You're just reasoning from negativity and cynicism. No evidence for anything. Other than "zomg they're bad".
    - amiga386 2y ago
      I didn't say they were lying. It can be true that their new search is better but costlier to run. They can focus on that in their PR, along with how shiny and new the shiny new search is, to distract you that they are removing anonymous search and making the site worse. Nobody made them turn off the old search, they chose that, and they bundled the two together in one PR push. Fancy new search = carrot. Remove anonymous search = stick. Carrot and stick work together to drive more signups, more logins, more data tracked, more data sales, more money.
      - pcl 2y ago
        I completely understand where they're coming from. Maintaining two separate search stacks for different user groups sounds like a nightmare. Multiply that by every feature that increases in complexity enough to bubble up on the cost-center metrics, and it for sure makes sense to prune complexity at the cost of secondary-feature functionality for anonymous requests.
sjshn 2y ago
As a fairly recently departed GitHub employee, I know with certainty that this change is primarily related to abuse. The search infrastructure (both old and new) is complicated and expensive to run, and anonymous search was abused at a remarkably large scale. DDoS against the anonymous search service was a big problem, but another was the presence of many very large search botnets that constantly scraped the site for secrets and other confidential data inadvertently made public. Long time users might remember that anonymous search was aggressively rate-limited on a per-IP basis, but the size of the search botnets grew to a scale that made this ineffective. My personal opinion is that most enshittifying changes on GitHub are due to the proliferation of middle managers who are evaluated almost exclusively on speed-shipping net-new features at the expense of maintenance and incremental improvement of existing features.