drtse4 (u/drtse4) - Readit News

drtse4 commented on Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020) cloud.google.com/blog/pro... · Posted by u/hui-zheng

bitzun · 8 months ago

Unless you are doing bidirectional streaming (for which it seems pretty well suited, but I haven't used it, so it might be a fucking mess), grpc is usually a waste of time. Runtime transitive dependency hell, toolchain hell, and the teams inside Google that manage various implementations philosophically disagree on how basic features should work. Try exposing a grpc api to a team that doesn't use your language (particularly if they're using a language that isn't go, python or java, or is an old version of those.) Try exposing a grpc api to integrate with a cots product. Try exposing a grpc api to a browser. All will require a middleware layer.

drtse4 · 8 months ago

In my opinion, you shouldn't expose it to a browser, it's not what is good at, build something custom that converts to json. Like using REST to talk between backend services, makes no sense using a human readable protocol/api especially if there are performance requirements (not a call every now and then with a small amount of data returned).

drtse4 commented on Understanding gRPC, OpenAPI and REST and when to use them in API design (2020) cloud.google.com/blog/pro... · Posted by u/hui-zheng

jdwyah · 8 months ago

If I could go back in time I would stop myself from ever learning about gRPC. I was so into the dream, but years later way too many headaches. Don’t do it to yourself.

Saying gRPC hides the internals is a joke. You’ll get internals all right, when you’re blasting debug logging trying to figure out what the f is going on causing 1/10 requests to fail and fine tuning 10-20 different poorly named and timeout / retry settings.

Hours lost fighting with maven plugins. Hours lost debugging weird deadline exceeded. Hours lost with LBs that don’t like the esoteric http2. Firewall pain meaning we had to use Standard api anyway. Crappy docs. Hours lost trying to get error messages that don’t suck into observability.

I wish I’d never heard of it.

drtse4 · 8 months ago

As someone that used it for years with the same problems he describes... spot on analysis, the library does too much for you (e.g. reconnection handling) and handling even basic recovery is a bit a nuisance for newbies. And yes, when you get random failures good luck figuring out that maybe is just a router in the middle of the path dropping packets because their http2 filtering is full of bugs.

I like a lot of things about it and used it extensively instead of the inferior REST alternative, but I recommend to be aware of the limitations/nuisances. Not all issues will be simply solved looking at stackoverflow.

drtse4 commented on Grayscale on 1-bit LCDs (2022) zephray.me/post/grayscale... · Posted by u/_Microft

drtse4 · 3 years ago

AKA Bit banging PWM, never seen it working with this kind of displays, nice project, it can be done even with higher frequency signals too (requires an oscilloscope and a few tries to get a smooth signal).

drtse4 commented on Fuchsia overview fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/c... · Posted by u/farmerbb

drtse4 · 5 years ago

Haven't checked Fuchsia in a while, very glad to see that they have extended the documentation.

Did they improve the initial steps to get up and running too?

(I remember it took hours to clone all the subprojects and most of the times something failed along the way, even worse than downloading the Android sources)

drtse4 commented on NIST Handbook of Engineering Statistics (2012) itl.nist.gov/div898/handb... · Posted by u/tomrod

drtse4 · 5 years ago

PDF link: https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/toolaids/pff/E-Hand...

drtse4 commented on Show HN: Raspberry Pi garage door opener github.com/evzaboun/garag... · Posted by u/zaabis

paddlesteamer · 5 years ago

Very nice! I only have one question: I see there are pull-up resistors connected to push buttons. Aren't there built-in pullups on RPi GPIOs? Maybe you can enable them and use fewer elements on the breadboard.

drtse4 · 5 years ago

Can confirm that the internal pull up/down are there and most libraries can enable them (alternatively this can be done manually via terminal after each restart).

drtse4 commented on Ask HN: Mind bending books to read and never be the same as before? · Posted by u/behnamoh

bemmu · 5 years ago

"Permutation City" by Greg Egan is mind-bending in a way similar to The Matrix, except taken up a few notches.

Explores the consequences of consciousness being just a pattern. Would it continue if the pattern is paused? Seems yes, since we survive being unconscious. So we move in space and time, but still consciousness feels continuous.

What if you pause it, destroy it, recreate it somewhere else. Would it not continue then as well (the classic teleporter question). But it doesn't stop here.

What if you destroy it, but it just happens to continue somewhere else? Then it should continue there as well. So if you think that teleportation would not mean death, then you kind of have to accept that if anywhere in the universe at any time the same pattern exists when you die, then you can't really die because you'll just continue on from there instead.

Not sure I accept it, but it's certainly mind-bending to think about!

drtse4 · 5 years ago

After recommending it for years on every HN book thread I could find I'm happy to see it's not forgotten yet, really, Egan could have written at least 3 separate books with the content of Permutation City.

drtse4 commented on Zettelkästen? clerestory.netlify.com/zk... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

drtse4 · 6 years ago

The people from the blog he links (that I'm in the process of reading) wrote an application for macOS that reminds me of notational velocity in spirit but that has been made specifically for Zettelkasten and should be able to handle even huge amounts of notes (stored in plain text, the best format in my opinion, portable and all that): https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/

drtse4 commented on Rust, a Raspberry Pi and Addressable LEDs blog.tomarrell.com/post/r... · Posted by u/slicedbrandy

slicedbrandy · 6 years ago

So I finally got around to writing about a project using the Raspberry Pi to power a panel of WS2812b LED's.

Let me know what you guys think.

drtse4 · 6 years ago

Just FYI, since I've implemented something similar in Swift, using the PWM you would have had to implement more or less the same algorithm, i.e. changing the duty cycle of an high frequency signal to generate these "slot-based" patterns that identify the 0s and 1s of the WS281x (there are minimal timing differences between the variants) protocol.

Note: God bless the Oscilloscope, essential for these projects.

drtse4 commented on GitHub Sponsors github.com/sponsors... · Posted by u/Heliosmaster

drtse4 · 6 years ago

Finally, and they also allow to specify additional external funding platforms via .yaml file (no more wondering if a patreon account is legit or not).