lost-theory

I also second what JNRowe says about trying the new popup feature. I recently used this to run a script that calculates something based on where my cursor is currently at in the file, then show the result at the cursor using a popup:

    fun! CalculateFoodCalories()
      let day = GetSectionName()
      let day = substitute(day, "\[", "", "g")
      let day = substitute(day, "\]", "", "g")
      let out = split(trim(system("food --date=" . day)), "\n")
      call popup_atcursor(out, #{ title: "Today's calories", highlight: 'Statement', border: [],  padding: [1,2,1,2]})
    endfun
    nnoremap <silent> <leader>m :call CalculateFoodCalories()<CR>

Comment · 8 years ago

That looks useful. Do you know if that works with gRPC-Web where the underlying gRPC port is behind a service proxy?

Comment · 8 years ago

Good points. I don't see anything wrong with these individual open source releases. See my other comments about the larger trend this represents.

"Releasing these things don't give them control over anything that negatively impacts users" and "undermining competitors such as AWS" contradict with each other if you believe competition is good for users. The decision to release something as open source doesn't happen in a vacuum. Open source doesn't automatically make corporate activity morally good or neutral.

Comment · 8 years ago

Again, I don't think this specific example is hugely significant, I'm looking at the larger trend.

Re: public endpoints. Say you're poking around a public web service, and it doesn't provide an API. Maybe you're writing a browser extension. Would you rather reverse engineer a JSON HTTP API with no documentation, or a gRPC-Web API with no .proto file?

Comment · 8 years ago

Many companies are "all-in on the web" but aren't in the same position as Google. Look at the recent Chrome profile / Google account auto-login issue. Isn't that an example of Google exercising "control" over how its users interact with the web?

If Google is effectively a monopoly, does it matter if you could theoretically replace all of its offerings? Think about other monopolies in history, I'm sure they had "replacements" too.

Comment · 8 years ago

"It's open source" isn't the full story. Something can be open source and also used in a harmful way. You're right that gRPC-Web alone isn't a huge issue, but it's part of a larger trend of Google wanting to Google-fy the web, technology, or even society as a whole (see the leaked Selfish Ledger and Good Censor presentations).

Specifically in the case of gRPC-Web, even though "it's open source", does every gRPC service exposed on the web provide a .proto file for you to build your own client? If not, that's a big step down in terms of power given to end-users compared to REST.

Comment · 8 years ago

It's interesting to watch Google's moves to control every part of the stack. Browser: Chrome. Frontend: Closure compiler -> obfuscated SPAs. Transport: gRPC. Backend: Proprietary Google software written in Golang. Orchestration: Kubernetes. Hosting: Google Cloud. Etc. You can imagine a future where Google services are no longer just web apps on the same footing as anything else in the web ecosystem, but where every step of the development, deployment, and end-use is managed by Google. Can't blame them for doing that, I'm sure it's more efficient, but it's definitely moving the web in a different direction, one where Google has more control at the expense of everyone else (end users, competitors).

Comment · 9 years ago

It looks like an anti-adblock measure:

https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer/pull/2502

> after the page finished loading. It removed the real page content and replaced it with a box asking me to whitelist the site.

The reason why they're using so many domains is to circumvent blacklisting, and then the DMCA takedowns are another layer of circumvention on top of that.

Comment · 11 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/watchpeoplecode

http://www.watchpeoplecode.com/

http://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Creative

Comment · 11 years ago

Watching tech talks on 2x speed makes this much more bearable for me. It's a lot easier to fit a talk into 15 minutes of free time vs. 30 minutes.

You can change the playback speed on YouTube videos by clicking the gear icon.

You can also use VLC to adjust the playback speed on MP3s and downloaded videos.

Comment · 11 years ago

Agreed. That's why it might make sense to fight NIH on the general problem of sending emails, but to give into NIH when deciding to use an "external service to handle email drip campaigns" vs. building it in-house. That type of problem is much more specific to your needs and attempting to outsource it could cost you more time and complexity than it saves.

Using an ESP for delivering email is a no brainer in most cases.