[FRIAM] edgelords

[glen]

The End of Localhost
https://dx.tips/the-end-of-localhost#heading-the-potential-of-edge-compute

On the tails of the Get off my lawn! AOL thread, that localhost article reminded me of Firefox's new tool:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-translations/

I don't yet understand how it works. But assuming it's true, I like the idea that the translator robot runs on localhost. But it also invokes 2 problems I currently have: 1) coworkers who won't share their premature/broken works in progress and 2) the opacity of computation that happens elsewhere. If you read the Hacker News thread <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31669762>, you see lots of yapping about "developers" and front-end stuff, not understanding back-end stuff, yaddayadda. And that's fine; gatekeepers are everywhere. But there are serious "openness" issues with relying on compute elsewhere. And it's not merely supply chain problems like what version are they running back there. One data portal my clients want/expect me to use prevents any traffic in or out, for data privacy reasons. But many of the workflows we use to knead data call out to online APIs, in my case so that you "don't have to worry about" what version of whatever lies on the other side. So, obviously, I have to convert all the outreach to localhost, either with simulated servers or installing large blocks into the container and refactoring network calls into local calls. That bloats my container, of course, slowing the development process. Well-simulated data becomes important so I can tighten the dev loop on localhost before sending the bloated container to the portal to test on real data.

I'm no longer sure where I'm going with this. Sorry. Were I intelligent, I'd delete my commentary and just send along the links. Maybe SteveS has finally infected me. 8^D

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