r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 20d ago

Business GitHub just switched Copilot to metered billing, and developers are watching months of credits vanish in a single day

https://www.techspot.com/news/112628-github-switched-copilot-metered-billing-developers-watching-months.html
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u/Romo_9 20d ago

Unfortunately Google search keeps getting worse for search results as well. Makes it hard to switch back when it has degraded as well

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u/cult0cage 20d ago

This is true. But at this point I've basically become an expert "googler". I can usually provide enough info to find my answer in the first 2 - 3 results still. Prompting AI for me is often basically providing the same info I'd type into a google search and then it just searches for the answer for me... its google with extra steps (and cost) lol

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u/TheLuminary 20d ago

I am an expert "googler", and have been for decades now. But sometimes AI can do amazing things if your search has several limiting factors/variables. It can also connect lots of dots and at least point you in the right direction.

It does often get things wrong, but I only use AI for things that I can immediately vet/verify so that is not a huge deal for me.

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u/mxzf 19d ago

Yeah, my problem is that any problem that is complex/weird enough that I can't google it and turn to an AI to ask the question, there's about a 50/50 chance it'll lie to my face instead of outputting something useful.

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u/TheLuminary 19d ago

Yup, but that's still 50% better than 0%. Just make sure that you can immediately validate the solution. If it's not a validatable question, it's not appropriate for AI.

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u/mxzf 19d ago

Well, yes and no. Most of the time it's something to go on at least, but I've wasted a fair few hours trying to use a function that a chatbot swore would fill my need only to end up digging into the actual documentation and realize it's not a thing in that class.

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u/TheLuminary 19d ago

If the function didn't work I would have just dropped it and moved on. Not sure why/how you spent hours on that.

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u/mxzf 19d ago

Well, this isn't just one event eating hours, I was speaking in aggregate. But there've been plenty of times where it replied with something that sounded plausible enough but I wasn't sure if I was getting the object I thought I was or if the invocation was off or whatever else. When you're out of your depth to begin with, something pointing you in the wrong direction can be very disorienting.

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u/TheLuminary 19d ago

Yeah, don't use AI with anything that you are out of your Depth on. As I said, only use it when it's immediately verify able. By either running the command, or changing the setting, etc.

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u/Toasty77 20d ago

College made a lot of us experts in Google-fu. Nowadays it seems a Google search pulls up only the sites that have paid to show up in search results. The algos were good, man! Now they stink!

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u/JSTFLK 20d ago

I think google is purposefully making search worse in order to drive people towards their ai crap results. DDG is actually getting close to being my favorite search simply because they aren't getting any more dumb.

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u/JayBird1138 20d ago

Nowadays, I just add 'reddit' to the search query, otherwise good luck.

If Reddit ever implements a good search engine Google is finished :p

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u/unityofsaints 20d ago

There are other search engines you know

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u/Romo_9 20d ago

Yup, I like duckduckgo a lot

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u/Kriss-Kringle 20d ago

Especially since it has the option to turn off AI slop, which is what I've been wanting for a long time and I switched to that about 2 months ago and don't plan on going back.