Robert Vitonsky

Software engineer. Founder of a translation solution in browser. CEO at My posts mostly about Frontend and Code Quality management

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Ideally user must just think what they wish and the product must immediately make this wish come true.

We have no technologies to implement such good UX yet.

Nevertheless we should chase for that goal.

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

This week I tried to log in to Deezer.

They asked me to wait 20 seconds to prove I’m not a robot.

I’m genuinely impressed by how bad that UX feels. Deezer is so outrageously bad that it almost makes Spotify look decent.

Don’t build products like that.

#ux #ui #frontend

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Spam is usually treated as something to delete.

In my new blog post, I argue why that’s a mistake - how spam can reveal valuable insights, and how moderation enslave us.

https://t.co/AiwLaCfK0t

#blog #post #socialmedia #social #media #spam #dating #wellbeing

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

This week I’m releasing Transly — a CLI tool for incremental translation and localization of apps using any LLM or machine translation API, such as Google Translate.

Only changed keys are translated, so you don’t burn all money to release your app 🎉

https://t.co/kiCR4JJzgo

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

As I said a few years ago in my blog post, the problem is that browser extension developers are mostly incompetent in security, and will sell all their users to scammers for a few thousand dollars.

The scheme is trivial: scammers offer a collaboration/integration that requires code injection in a browser extension, then hackers run any code in end-user browsers.

Do not trust anonymous developers with no track record.

https://t.co/AQxxQBRV3M

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Over 100 malicious extensions in the Chrome Web Store are stealing Google OAuth2 bearer tokens by injecting backdoors and carrying out ad fraud.

Researchers at Socket concluded they’re all part of a coordinated campaign, operating under a MaaS model.

https://t.co/VMDTtpQZri

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

It would be nice if browser automatically load the WebAssembly modules, bind the native web APIs directly (without any JS glue code), and run the module.

We could write the code for web apps in any language and then compile it to a WASM.

https://t.co/SViq5INc03

#wasm #browsers

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

People at Anthropic say they’ve found over 500 high-severity vulnerabilities using Claude.

Looks like 0-day exploits might become widely accessible soon.

https://t.co/umcwM2sXlD

#security #research #llm

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

As @AllThingsSmitty noticed, the Iterator utils is widely available now (since ~2024).

So we may keep an arrays processing look like a pipeline, but do it lazy and reach significant performance win. A trivial change is needed.

Someone had to remind us.

https://t.co/In2AHp4UDe

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Don't shout at your drives!

I just found a video where a man shouts at an HDD array and its latency are noticeably increases because of vibrating.

https://t.co/vCVnne02vK

#devops #science #humor #funny

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Can somebody explain why it so difficult to LLMs to place a commas correctly?

The "villain," on my screenshot.

Such problems makes me feel the LLMs nowadays like a CGI in 2000s when people have called it a "photo realistic graphic".

#ai #llm

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

One weird thing I noticed is they recommend a Vue as a default frontend framework that makes me thing they are weak in a frontend things like those who have invent a HTMX.

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

I discovered https://t.co/rISIHtdErr recently. Do you have any feedback on it?

They define it as a framework to build cross platform apps based on web technologies like Electron does, but app will takes reasonable size like 600kb (not a 200mb unlike Electron).

#frontend

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

I just read email from NPM "New TOTP 2FA configurations disabled (existing TOTP still works)".

It looks NPM will disable TOTP and force package authors to use WebAuthn/passkeys.

Business as usual. Spot an opportunity to hype it up and cash in.

#opensource

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Just found a fun article where author uses cluster of 3 candles as a clock source.

https://t.co/WdQWGHhSY2

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

"$160M VC-backed company just killed my EU trademark for a small OSS project"

That's exactly I mean when I say it is pointless to sign up a trademark for your OSS.

Just use a name and fight for it later in case of great success.

The story:

https://t.co/6fMbggadx7

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

People who live on @firefox and use Linguist may notice bug with translation of dynamic content in some cases in new version 7.0.2

This bug was fixed a weeks ago and people on chrome already got update, but guys in @mozamo are not hurry to review a "hotfix"🙂

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Linguist is highly customizable.

In recent update has been added an option to control what elements must not be translated.

User now can describe elements to ignore as CSS selectors and Linguist will skip translation on anything that match the query.

[Robert Vitonsky @rvitonsky]

Linguist is now in the Top 3 Chrome Web Store extensions list in the Travel category.

It is the only in-browser translation solution that respects your privacy.

Install today, translate pages and learn new languages.

#opensource #browser #extension #FOSS