Last Update Improvements

You may have noticed that in 2017 we added a "Last Update:" feature to the bottom right of most web pages. When you hovered over it with your mouse a window would open displaying four or five recent changes to that page.

This is an important feature to us because it informs you of recent changes and it lets you know things are still being regularly updated. And it's not just great for seeing feature changes as we also use it on both our Privacy Policy and GDPR pages where we keep a record of policy changes.

Today we've updated the feature with a nicer appearance but most importantly we've made it better to see on smaller screens and added scrolling so we no longer need to restrict how many entries we place in the window. We've actually gone back and added many updates to the feature that were removed previously due to size constraints. Above is a screenshot showing the Dashboard's last update window which now displays 23 updates going back to October last year.

Backend Changes

Recently we've been focusing more on backend changes that aren't very visible to users. This includes a complete overhaul of our cluster management code. In-fact just this morning we went live with our new cluster control system which stops race conditions between different nodes. This improves the reliability of our dashboard API's and all other features that take input data from customers. Essentially it stops data collisions which are caused by two or more nodes receiving data at the same time that conflicts with each other.

We also recently rewrote our proxy Inference Engine to gain higher accuracy and improved speed. This has been live since late may with impressive results.

Finally just a few days ago we completed a significant rewrite to our node syncing system with the goal of decreasing sync times and lowering CPU usage. We were able to reach both of those goals.

So that's everything we wanted to share with you today. We're committed to improving every facet of the service, not just the flashy things users can tangibly see and use but also the backend nitty-gritty which ensures the service stays fast and reliable for years to come.

Thanks for reading and we hope everyone is having a great week.