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I find it ludicrous that the developers of an app as insignificant as a screen recorder would think it's necessary to check for updates every 5 minutes. Once a
by abstractspoon 2y ago
I find it ludicrous that the developers of an app as insignificant as a screen recorder would think it's necessary to check for updates every 5 minutes.
Once a day would surely be sufficient.
- Yeri 2y agoa thousand times this.
- amelius 2y agoone time should be sufficient
- EvanAnderson 2y ago> Once a day would surely be sufficient. Weekly or monthly would be sufficient. I'd also like "able to be disabled manually, permanently" as an option, too.
- ryandrake 2y agoHow about never? If I want to update my software, I'll update it. I don't need the application itself to hound me about it, at any frequency.
- mgkimsal 2y agoHrm... might depend on the purpose of the update. "New feature X" announcements every few days... I hate and disable. "Warning - update now - security bug"... I want to be notified of those pretty quickly.
- pixl97 2y agoBecause historically your average user will not update the software and then some worm is going about causing massive damage all over the internet.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoThis is overblown fear mongering, especially for desktop apps. There are only a few applications with exposed attack surface (i.e. accept incoming requests from the network) and a large enough install base to cause "massive damage all of the Internet". A desktop screen recorder app has no business being constructed in a manner that's "wormable", nor an install base that would result in significant replication. The software that we need the "average user" to update is stuff like operating systems. OS "manufacturers" have that mostly covered for desktop OS's now. Microsoft, even though their Customers were hit with the "SQL Slammer" worm, doesn't force automatic updates for the SQL Server. Likewise, they restrict forcing updates only to mainstream desktop OS SKUs. Their server, embedded, and "Enterprise" OS SKUs can be configured to never update.
- dist-epoch 2y agoYou can use that as a hidden way of tracking how many active users you have at any time. Good way of showing adoption and growth.
- mystified5016 2y agoYou can still do that with daily, weekly, or monthly checks. Nobody under any circumstances needs usage stats with 5 minute resolution. And certainly not a screen recorder.
- panki27 2y agoThat's stretching my definition of "good" quite a bit.
- closewith 2y agoYou definitely can, although it would be unlawful under the GDPR without user consent, so you could never release the figures publicly.
- ahtihn 2y agoIt wouldn't if you're not tracking user identity. Websites get this data pretty much by default and they don't need consent for it.
- smallpipe 2y agoI make CPUs for a living. I'm happy these people exists, we'll always need faster CPUs.
- VWWHFSfQ 2y agoThe big clouds love these people too. So much of the software industry is just an outrageous combination of inexperience and "YOLO". Every problem can be solved by just giving AWS another $100,000 this month because we don't have time (and don't know how) to make even basically optimized software. So just burn the gas and electricity and give more money to the YAML merchants at Amazon.
- 999900000999 2y agoThat was the promise of "The Cloud". Data centers are big and scary, no body wanted to run their own. The hypothetical cost savings of firing half the IT department was too good to pass up. AWS even offered some credits to get started, first hit's free. Next thing you know your AWS spend is out if control. It just keeps growing and growing and growing. Instead of writing better software, which might slow down development, just spend more money. Ultimately in most cases it's cheaper in the short term to give AWS more money. Apart of me wants to do a 5$ VPS challenge. How many users can you serve with 5$ per month. Maybe you actually need to understand what your server is doing ? I'm talking non sense, I know.
- skull723 2y agoNot really. I run several web applications on one 15$ VPS. Although the user count is <5. But I think it would need quite a lot of users for the resource usage to go up to a critical level.
- sombrero_john 2y ago> Instead of writing better software, which might slow down development, just spend more money. Except this is unironically a great value proposition.
- VladVladikoff 2y agoI honestly lost so much respect for the author after reading this that I completely bailed on the article. Every 5 minutes update check is entirely unhinged behaviour.
- ljm 2y agoWhy pay for your own runners when you can do CI/CD on your users’ machines?
- chris_va 2y agoI generally find that these things are put in during development, and then people forget to take them out.
- hennell 2y agoIronically the only real call for an update check every 5 mins would be so you can quickly fix a problem like everyone downloading the update every 5 mins.
- pcthrowaway 2y ago> Once a day would surely be sufficient. Well they might need to rush out a fix to a bug that could be harmful for the user if they don't get it faster. For example, a bug that causes them to download 250MB every 5 minutes.
- ryukoposting 2y agoIt's a fucking screen recorder. Why does it need to check for updates more than once a month? Why does it need to check for updates at all? It's an appliance. It either records your screen, or it doesn't.