So, you don't like a web platform proposal, a response

July 23, 2023

Introduction I regret to inform you that I am once again, mad on the internet. There is a new Chromium proposal that’s officially designed to cut out click fraud on the web by allowing the server to automatically inspect and validate the hardware, OS, and browser state of the client. Given Chrome’s market dominance, it’s expected that this feature would rapidly become an industry norm if released. The community freaked out.…

Telemetry and Trust

February 25, 2023

I recently read an article about Go opt in tracking being a mistake. The author was very earnest about the pros of compiler tool chain telemetry, how it was very common among Google and Go’s competitors, and how opt in tracking would skew the data set. Their general argument was that anonymized telemetry is extremely useful for compiler writers, and that shifting Go to opt in rather than opt out doesn’t help user safety and reduces the ability of the Go team to correctly steer their important project…

Lets Talk About Trains

October 17, 2022

Last week1 Casey had a blog about High Speed Rail (HSR), and it triggered my worst impulse: my need to argue on the Internet. Casey suggested that I write my own post rather than just being cranky in his comments, and while my initial instinct was to continue to be cranky, I must admit that he was right and I should be more contstructive. The starting point for all of this discussion is the continued boondoggle of trying to create a HSR between San Francisco and Los Angeles.…

Parler, AWS, and the ACLU

January 12, 2021

Parler, AWS, and the ACLU Parler was recently kicked off AWS, and as of this writing is currently offline. I would be fairly surprised if we see it come back online anytime soon. I was only mildly surprised to see the ACLU step in to make arguments on Parler’s behalf, but not that surprised. Free Speech law and general advocacy almost universally involves defending speech that is either unpopular or said by repulsive people; popular speech is rarely first up to be banned.…

Two Open Source Models

April 10, 2020

Two Open Source Models I have repeatedly seen clashes between users and maintainers of open source projects over who “owes” whom what, and I believe that these clashes come from a difference in mental models that are not explicitly stated. These clashes result in hurt feelings and the occasional accusation of entitlement or elitism, exacerbating the problem. The heart of this disagreement can be simplified as such: are open source maintainers giving a free gift to the community, or are they fulfilling a role that comes with privileges and expectations?…

False Novelty

December 19, 2018

Introduction The internet is starting to worry me. This is a problem for me. I make my money on the internet, and I also spend a lot of time on it for entertainment. Beginning to worry about the internet is a bit like looking at your pet kitten and realizing that those tiger stripes are real and not merely an adorable coloration. It’s a slow growing fear that you might be living with something much more dangerous than you thought.…

No You Probably Don't Need a Blockchain

February 21, 2018

On Bitcoins and Blockchains Oh Bitcoin, the darling of everyone’s economic dreams. Some think it’ll destroy the fed, others hope it’ll kill off the big banks. Some just think it’s going to make them rich, others go as far as hoping it’ll kill off governments completely. Whatever you happen to hate, Bitcoin is coming to destroy it! All of this is complete nonsense, of course. There are enough mutually exclusive dreams about Bitcoin that it’s clear that not all of them can come true, possibly even the hopes of easy riches given its unpredictable volatility.…

MDC and Threadpools

September 1, 2017

Well written web services must have clear and easy to follow logs. Without good logs a programmer will be unable to diagnose or reproduce problems that might arise. And while many systems will keep logs in their reverse proxy like Nginx, a well written system will also have application/domain specific logs written within the application itself. A common goal of application logs is to tie a given log line to a specific request.…

Java Without If

January 26, 2017

Over the past year my team has been doing something shocking to a lot of engineers: we’re favoring pure Java over Clojure. We aren’t rewriting all our Clojure code, but we definitely prefer Java for green field projects. This post is not going to be a compare and contrast between the two, nor am I going to bash Clojure. Language compare and contrast posts always descend into flame wars, and it’s very easy to confuse the result of hard lessons learned with the benefits of a new language.…

My Increasing Frustration With Clojure

June 11, 2016

Edit: TL;DR: This is about how bugs in Clojure are handled by the Clojure Team, not just complaints about specific bugs I’ve seen. First off, this is not a “I’m quiting in disgust” post. Those are childish and a waste of everyone’s time. But this is a post of frustration as I watch something I really like being slowly allowed to get worse. First off, some history. My first job out of College was in Common Lisp, and I love/hated it.…