Actual protocol news: HTTP/2 was finalized this week. The first major HTTP version since 1997 — our interns were in kindergarten. Multiplexing (many requests, one connection), header compression, server push. All those hacks I learned as “best practices,” sprite sheets, domain sharding, file concatenation, are about to become anti-patterns. Best practices have expiration dates; nobody tells you the date. (Proverbs file, entry 74.)
The Apple car rumors have hit critical mass: “Project Titan,” hundreds of engineers hired from Detroit. Apple! A car! The same fortnight, Google’s self-driving pods are doing test laps. Every giant wants wheels now. My commute is a bus and a prayer, so godspeed.
Also filed: India-Pakistan at the Cricket World Cup on Sunday stopped the entire country — a scheduled thundering herd measured in hundreds of millions, and sure enough the streaming apps buckled while the TVs held. Legacy infrastructure has its moments.
Net neutrality’s big FCC vote is next week and the whole internet is holding its breath. Title II, the strong version, might actually happen. The four-million-comment campaign might actually have worked.
TIL: head-of-line blocking, the thing HTTP/2 fixes (mostly). One slow request in the queue stalls everything behind it. Also a perfect description of our sprint standup when the CEO attends.