DJ August 2019 about decred-news

[xaur]

Dev

dcrd

Too many PRs to dump here. Have put closed PR notes in this gist. Below is a stab at summary copy.

Turns out it's trivial to query all merged commits via the merged:2019-08-01..2019-08-31 query (I just figured it out today), so there's no more need to copy all PRs into the draft or the gist or GH comment. When unsure about PR's notability, just leave it as a plain URL (with optional one-liner) in a bullet list after the written up text.

Also please always use {} to distinguish meta from regular text.

Wrap "code identifiers" such as Go module names in `backtics` to distinguish them from regular text.

The Hash method of bus filters

trying to imagine bus filters now :D

A benchmark function was added to measure performance of the BenchmarkHash function. Tests have been added for bit reader/writer. A fix has been made so that filters properly match search items which happen to hash to zero and adds a test for the condition. While here, it also rewrites the MatchAny function to make it easier to reason about.

Nice write up but this is too low level, removed. A good rule of thumb - if the text contains code identifiers (function names in this case), it is very likely to be too low level / too technical.

gcs module

Removed a lot of low level details from this para. They are all important and gcs is important but we need to use the space carefully. When there's a ton of work in area X, zoom out one step and aggregate. At the same time, leave a bit of tech goodness:

Support has been added for independent false positive rate and Golomb coding bin size.

I like this. Most will skip this pretty technical bit, but a few that can read this might get interested.

The v2 test database names have been updated to avoid conflicts when multiple database modules are being tested concurrently.

and

In the connmgr module, support has been added for TorLookupIPContext, deprecating TorLookupIP.

Very small internal changes. The latter one is too cryptic, don't use mention identifiers (TorLookupIP) unless there is a very good reason to.

The chaincfg module defines several new functions on the Params struct which return some subsidy-related parameters. This will allow the parameters to be used directly as input to an interface in the future.

Again good write up but it's too low level / internal refactoring.

Typo fixes, improved error messages and other code cleanup {SB: mention new contributor aarcamp which found a bunch of these?}

We almost never highlighted new contributors in Dev so I would not mention him here, and also because he's mentioned in People. Open to opinions though.

dcrwallet

A direct dependency on the secp256k1 package was removed. A bolt release adds support for RISC-V.

First looks like a small internal fix, second is not notable IMO. If the whole dcrwallet became buildable for RISC-V or at least such an effort started, that would be notable.

Decrediton

Closed:

Responsive views: Onboarding slides (responsive design bug fix/tweak)

Remove deprecated code (cleanup)

Upgrade lint, fixes linter errors
...

Most of these are either written up earlier or are too small and can be covered by more general statements.

dcrstakepool

A number of changes to disconnect dcrwallet and dcrstakepool.

People are likely to read "disconnect" differently and doesn't convey the multi month rearchitecting effort.

Google’s reCAPTCHA has been replaced with a self-hosted client-side solution The front-end now executes no external Javascript at all, granting a significant boost to user security and privacy.

I think recaptcha was removed several months ago. Not all VSPs have upgraded so we can't confidently say "no external javascript at all". Heck, some even added their own changes to hit Twitter and CoinMarketCap! https://github.com/decred/dcrstakepool/issues/326

dcrlnd

New parameters added to the faucet, which will enable invoice generation and payment, among other features.

I don't see how that change enables invoice generation, which was already possible and reported in Jul 2019 DJ. I guess the confusing bit was "Also add parameters to enable invoice generation and payment." from the linked issue, which should mean adding config knobs to enable/disable existing features.

45750K added and 24002K

"K" means thousand, so 46K and 24K

Please don't duplicate stories in the draft/commit message/commit comment/gist, it requires me to scan the same things multiple times to check if I didn't miss anything. Skip non notable PRs, and place all "maybe" raw links as bullets at the end of each sub-section (but not those that are already written up in text).

I would go as far as to suggest to not use GH commit comments at all because they link to our DJ commit from a ton of PRs, which is an unnecessary distraction for the devs.

[xaur]

Got the image: decred/dcrdesign#169

[s-ben]

Please don't duplicate stories in the draft/commit message/commit comment/gist, it requires me to scan the same things multiple times to check if I didn't miss anything. Skip non notable PRs, and place all "maybe" raw links as bullets at the end of each sub-section (but not those that are already written up in text).

Makes sense. I generally just copy all the PRs that don't seem totally trivial to a text editor, then go through through them one by one, creating short summaries for each. Usually just copying from the description, but sometimes creating summaries, little notes for myself. But I think what you suggest makes more sense with just putting the "maybe" links in. For some repos it's really not clear, so I try to err on the side of too much rather than too little. But can definitely filter more out with reasonable confidence.

Good notes on the dev edits as well. Slowly gaining the domain knowledge to filter more/better.

[xaur]

Governance

One succint paragraph per topic. Reads very smooth.

I keep thinking about our overlap with Pi Digest and it appears that Governance is 1-2 steps "zoomed out" and covers a whole month, making for a nice historic chronicle and faster to read for those that don't follow Pi closely.

I only changed the thousand k to uppercase K to be consistent with the rest of the document. And made the Pi Digest links a bit wider:

Politeia Digest issues 20 (Aug 1-12) and 21 (Aug 13-31).

to

Politeia Digest issue 20 (Aug 1-12) and issue 21 (Aug 13-31)

[xaur]

Network

Pool hashrate distribution as of Sep 5: F2Pool 23.29%, UUPool 16.30%, Poolin 16.26%, lab.antpool.com 4.10%, BTC.com 2.32%, Luxor 1.76%, BeePool 0.10%, Coinmine 0.10%, suprnova 0.01% and others 35.77%

Use less decimals for two digit numbers https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/docs/guidelines.md#typography

Roughly 92.13% run dcrd v1.4.0, and 7.86 are v1.5.0(pre) dev builds.

Looks like it combines dcrd and dcrwallet in SPV mode. It is interesting to consider them separately. Also append % to all percentages.

[xaur]

Integrations

The popular Exodus wallet has added support for decred on their mobile wallet.

I always use capitalized Decred (as a network) or the DCR ticker for consistency, but open to opinions. Is lowercase decred a thing?

"ELLIPAL" a cold wallet had announced that their upcoming device "ELLIPAL Titan" will support decred.

No need to wrap vendor and product names in quotes.

Also I think we should use Title Case regardless of vendor's case styling.

[xaur]

Outreach

Names vs nicks still bugging me #20

Changed Ditto list to single-level to avoid Medium problems: https://github.com/xaur/decred-news/blob/docs/guidelines.md#markdown

[xaur]

Media

DJ docs writeup captured the vibe nicely, thank you.

[xaur]

Relevant External

Formatted some numbers with standard K/M for thousand/million. I know there is no single planetary standard, and manuals of style vary (e.g. k/K, m/mm/M, b/bn/B, etc) but trying to at least be internally consistent within DJ, hence writing it up in Guidelines.

Again, liking the paragraph per topic separation very much.

[xaur]

Misc

Names:

• Funnily we had two instances of GhostWridah and both were spelled wrong (GhostRhidah and Ghoistwridah)
• Akin Sawyerr has two 'r'

Please put all chat-like messages in chat or in issue's issue like this. Put all unresolved concerns in TODOs. It's easy to miss them in commit message or commit comments. Examples: f1a3f9c, 149e93d5, e8881df

Overall, everybody is improving! Thanks all for your great work.

[xaur]

Deleted the commit comment, previously here 149e93d#commitcomment-34975349