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  GitHub's new code search. [credit: GitHub ]

GitHub has announced the general availability of a ground-up rework of code search that has been in development for years.

The changes include substantial new functionality that is significantly more aware of context. The company says its new code search is "about twice as fast" as the old code search and that it "understands code, putting the most relevant results first."

That's on top of redesigned search and code view interfaces. The new search interface offers suggestions and completions, and categorizes and formats the results more intelligently.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

In 2019, Volkswagen Group had a bold plan. After proving that it made sense to use a few common architectures to design a varied range of vehicles across multiple different brands, it decided to apply that same approach to software. It set up a new division and moved the entire VW Group's software development under that roof, with a mandate to create a new unified automotive operating system for future VW Group EVs.

In fact, the division had to work on three different systems simultaneously. Called E ³ for end-to-end architecture, E ³ 1.1 would be the software to run on VW Group's MEB platform for mass-market EVs. Cars using this software are now on the road, including the VW ID.4, Audi Q4 e-tron, and of course, everyone's favorite, ID. Buzz. E ³ 1.2 is destined for more upmarket EVs from Audi and Porsche, using the upcoming PPE platform. And that unified OS, called E ³ 2.0, would show up mid-decade in a new, unified platform across the entire VW Group .

It hasn't exactly gone smoothly. In 2020 VW replaced Christian Senger as the head of the division—called Car.Software.Org, now called CARIAD—with Dirk Hilgenberg. By 2022, problems with CARIAD's development and buggy software for the launch of the ID.3 and ID.4 EVs saw VW Group fire its chairman , Herbert Diess, along with multiple reports of delays to future group vehicles , including the electric Porsche Macan . The division cost VW Group more than $2 billion last year in the process.

Enlarge / A GitHub-made image accompanying all the company's communications about 2FA. (credit: GitHub )

Software development tool GitHub will require more accounts to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) starting on March 13 . That mandate will extend to all user accounts by the end of 2023.

GitHub announced its plan to roll out a 2FA requirement in a blog post last May. At that time, the company's chief security officer said that it was making the move because GitHub (which is used by millions of software developers around the world across myriad industries) is a vital part of the software supply chain. Said supply chain has been subject to several attacks in recent years and months, and 2FA is a strong defense against social engineering and other particularly common methods of attack.

When that blog post was written, GitHub revealed that only around 16.5 percent of active GitHub users used 2FA—far lower than you'd expect from technologists who ought to know the value of it.