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A single line of code cost $8000

pietrasiak.com

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Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#401

Post by n_ary »

Telemakhos wrote: post #185
HelloNurse wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App store updates are perfect: no unnecessary complications, no unnecessary work (assuming Screen Studio is published and properly updated in the app store), and the worst case scenario is notifications about a new Screen Studio version ending up in a Screen Studio recording in progress. Thinking of it, the discussed do-it-yourself update checking is so stupid that malice and/or other serious bugs should be assumed.

> malice and/or other serious bugs should be assumed Going back to the blog post and re-reading it with this possibility in mind is quite a trip. > It turns out thousands of our users had the app running in the background, even though they were not using it or checking it for weeks (!). It meant thousands of users had auto-updater constantly running and downloading the new version file (250MB) over and over again eve…

I find the misbehavior of indie/boutique MacOS apps always insisting on starting at login very irritating. Unless the app needs to run some heavy background preparation steps before becoming usable, there is literally no sense it starting at login. Also when dormant, check for update(once every 24h), and nag the user if they want to update, but please do not auto download! A lot of non-tech folks use 128/256GB versions of macbook with trillions of photos already clogging their device, an app downloading new updates to add to the pain unless the user asks to do so is outright malice.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#402

Post by n_ary »

Here is the example of why LLMs need to replace some douchbag SWE. But then again, unless there is a nutcase product owner involved, update check every 5min and downloading automatically is pure symptom of bad engineering practices and fear driven development(if anything breaks update is 5min away and we can laugh at the user when their app is updated and they are baffled).

Good thing, this was not shopify/Duolingo/Msft, else the news would be, how AI saved us $8k by fixing a dangerous code and why AI will improve software quality.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#403

Post by pjmlp »

ghurtado wrote: post #386
pjmlp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because how expensive they were in Portugal, I never done it, it was always on manual.

Right! The "send and receive" button is seared into my brain I was in Spain at the time, and at first you had to connect to the Internet through a phone number in France. Did you guys have something like that?

In the early days, it was a long distance call to either Lisbon or Porto, I only got a modem, when regional numbers were available to the district capitals.

However on BBS days was much worse, it was mostly long distace calls to someone around the country, and they usually only had a couple of connections available like five or so.

Ah another thing is that they adopted the same model as mobile phones, so at least we could pre-pay the calls, and went we run out of cash there was it, no surprise bills, even if frustated.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#404

Post by londons_explore »

thinkingemote wrote: post #398
londons_explore wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airplane mode and the scheduler disabled, yes (ie. So Apps don't wake up every 5 mins and attempt to contact the network). It's actually required by the qualification process for lots of carriers. The built in apps have pretty much no polling for this reason. During the qualification test, it's actually connected to both LTE and WiFi, but not actually transferring any data. They cheat a little - the phone is not sign…

How does a user disable the scheduler?

That's quite oem specific, but usually 'battery saver' does it.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#405

Post by latexr »

EasyMark wrote: post #377
latexr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, it’s an Electron app. I just checked and the current version of Google Chrome is 635 MB, with its DMG being 224 MB. So yes, it’s insane, but easy to see where the size comes from.

firefox is only about 200MB less.

“Only” is doing some heavy lifting there. 200 MB is a lot, both in absolute and relative terms. It means Firefox is a full third smaller.

Regardless, that’s absolutely irrelevant to the point that this app’s size is explained by Chromium’s (and thus Electron’s) size.

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#407

Post by [deleted] »

mieko wrote: post #114

For people finding this thread via web search in the future: screen.studio is macOS screen recording software that checks for updates every five minutes. Somehow, that alone is NOT the bug described in this post. The /other/ bug described in this blog is: their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes. The software developers there consider all of this normal except the actual download, which c…

[deleted]

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#408

Post by 999900000999 »

coip wrote: post #356
999900000999 wrote: post #140

Sloppy coding all around. If you don't want to program something right, why don't you just direct users to the website to manually update it? On one hand it's good that the author owns up to it, and they worked with their users to provide remedies. But so many things aren't adding up. Why does your screen recorder need to check for updates every 5 minutes? Once a day is more than enough. This screams "We don't do QA,…

sad how many places take the position of "prod is QA and users are the best testers" lol

No meaningful consequences exist.

So why not ?

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#409

Post by aidenn0 »

ljm wrote: post #223
mieko wrote: post #114

For people finding this thread via web search in the future: screen.studio is macOS screen recording software that checks for updates every five minutes. Somehow, that alone is NOT the bug described in this post. The /other/ bug described in this blog is: their software also downloaded a 250MB update file every five minutes. The software developers there consider all of this normal except the actual download, which c…

$8000 for 2 petabytes of traffic is pretty cheap for them also. There are plenty of shitty ISPs out there who would charge $$ per gigabyte after you hit a relatively small monthly cap. Even worse if you're using a mobile hotspot. I would be mortified if my bug cost someone a few hundred bucks in overages overnight.

It got one of their customers booted off of their ISP; they did cover that person's overage costs though (and hopefully that person could get their account back).

Re: A single line of code cost $8000

#410

Post by aidenn0 »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #153
Nition wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're listing complaints... 250MB for a screen recorder update?

Screen recorder under 100 bytes: ffmpeg -video_size 1024x768 -framerate 25 -f x11grab -i :0.0+100,200 output.mp4

Per [1] That would be 39MB (uncompressed; probably about half that compressed) to include ffmpeg-darwin-arm64, since OS X doesn't ship with ffmpeg installed.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43839120

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