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Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

open.nytimes.com

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Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#21

Post by kuschku »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #15
Top19 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually double lock-in, so 2x worse. You used to have to just be afraid of lock-in, which I don’t think is as big an issue as it sometimes seems. But with Google, you’re not only locked in but might be LOCKED OUT when they kill your product.

Silly statement. Google is in the cloud business and this is very different than a free product they offer.

The Flights API they just killed? Custom searches, which many websites paid for, which they killed?

Google has a habit of killing things, no matter if you pay for it and your business relies on it, or not.

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#22

Post by jedberg »

Top19 wrote: post #3
marksomnian wrote: post #2

Doesn't this lead to vendor lock-in? All these Google proprietary services seem like they would be a big issue if they decide for whatever reason to migrate away from GCP.

It’s actually double lock-in, so 2x worse. You used to have to just be afraid of lock-in, which I don’t think is as big an issue as it sometimes seems. But with Google, you’re not only locked in but might be LOCKED OUT when they kill your product.

Usually when a large company relies heavily on a cloud provider, they have an additional contract that specifies, among other things, advanced warning of any pending shutdown, often measured in years, to give them enough time to adjust and also to appease their shareholders and auditors.

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#23

Post by sgolestane »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #18
chatmasta wrote: post #17

> We found that some web customers were unable to access the puzzle, and found the cause of the problem to be App Engine’s limit on the size of outbound request headers (16KB). Users with a large amount of third-party cookies had their identity stripped from the proxied request. We made a quick fix to proxy only the headers and cookies we needed and we were back in action. That’s pretty funny. Users of NYT are sendin…

If the website is free then you are the product. Not sure why it’s a surprise these companies aim to maximize the value they can derive from their product (aka our data).

I'm a paid subscriber to NYT (so it's not free) but I'm still to prone to this issue

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#24

Post by manno889 »

chatmasta wrote: post #17

> We found that some web customers were unable to access the puzzle, and found the cause of the problem to be App Engine’s limit on the size of outbound request headers (16KB). Users with a large amount of third-party cookies had their identity stripped from the proxied request. We made a quick fix to proxy only the headers and cookies we needed and we were back in action. That’s pretty funny. Users of NYT are sendin…

> Users of NYT are sending request headers with sixteen kilobytes of tracking data.

How do you see this? What tools in the browser?

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#25

Post by pixl97 »

manno889 wrote: post #24
chatmasta wrote: post #17

> We found that some web customers were unable to access the puzzle, and found the cause of the problem to be App Engine’s limit on the size of outbound request headers (16KB). Users with a large amount of third-party cookies had their identity stripped from the proxied request. We made a quick fix to proxy only the headers and cookies we needed and we were back in action. That’s pretty funny. Users of NYT are sendin…

> Users of NYT are sending request headers with sixteen kilobytes of tracking data. How do you see this? What tools in the browser?

If you use chrome just look at network under the developer tools.

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#26

Post by [deleted] »

manno889 wrote: post #24
chatmasta wrote: post #17

> We found that some web customers were unable to access the puzzle, and found the cause of the problem to be App Engine’s limit on the size of outbound request headers (16KB). Users with a large amount of third-party cookies had their identity stripped from the proxied request. We made a quick fix to proxy only the headers and cookies we needed and we were back in action. That’s pretty funny. Users of NYT are sendin…

> Users of NYT are sending request headers with sixteen kilobytes of tracking data. How do you see this? What tools in the browser?

[deleted]

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#27

Post by chatmasta »

manno889 wrote: post #24
chatmasta wrote: post #17

> We found that some web customers were unable to access the puzzle, and found the cause of the problem to be App Engine’s limit on the size of outbound request headers (16KB). Users with a large amount of third-party cookies had their identity stripped from the proxied request. We made a quick fix to proxy only the headers and cookies we needed and we were back in action. That’s pretty funny. Users of NYT are sendin…

> Users of NYT are sending request headers with sixteen kilobytes of tracking data. How do you see this? What tools in the browser?

Well nyt saw it by proxying user traffic. You could do the same with a chrome extension, similar to uBlock.

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#28

Post by jedmeyers »

kuschku wrote: post #21
jacksmith21006 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly statement. Google is in the cloud business and this is very different than a free product they offer.

The Flights API they just killed? Custom searches, which many websites paid for, which they killed? Google has a habit of killing things, no matter if you pay for it and your business relies on it, or not.

If I remember correctly, they were required to keep that API up for a specified amount of time after the acquisition and they have kept it longer than that.

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#29

Post by untog »

chatmasta wrote: post #19
godzillabrennus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the website is free then you are the product. Not sure why it’s a surprise these companies aim to maximize the value they can derive from their product (aka our data).

It’s not a surprise, but it is a certain kind of schadenfreude to see a bug caused purely by the sheer amount of trackers they’re forcing into their users’ browsers. It might have been a good time for them to do some internal reflection. And btw it’s not free; there is a paywall and you can subscribe to the NYT.

NYT isn't forcing these trackers into the user's browsers, ad banners are. You might say that's a distinction without a difference but I disagree, until you work with programmatic ad stuff it's difficult to fathom just how stupid it is, but also how unavoidable it is if you want to make money.

Re: Moving the NYT Games Platform to Google Cloud With Zero Downtime

#30

Post by jdavis703 »

sgolestane wrote: post #23
godzillabrennus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the website is free then you are the product. Not sure why it’s a surprise these companies aim to maximize the value they can derive from their product (aka our data).

I'm a paid subscriber to NYT (so it's not free) but I'm still to prone to this issue

If you're a paid subscriber then I think it's morally OK to use an ad blocker on them. You're paying for what you're consuming, and in all likelihood you're only earning them a few cents to maybe a dollar from ads anyways. What you spend on your subscription drives way more value.
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