Some time ago I reported that the check for updates process unnecessarily violates your privacy as a user. It stemmed from my annoyance with the plugin checking for updates incessantly every time I load a page in the admin. I’m on a local dev env, I don’t need GF checking 100% of the time if there’s a new version.
So here’s a video showing exactly that behavior: Dropbox - time-waste.mp4 - Simplify your life
This is obviously a plugin that caters to people who are afraid of css alone, so I’m expecting the development team to be as low quality as Carl herself is since she’s the “leader”. But in case I’m wrong about the developers - because I know I’m sure about Carl - maybe one of you can implement a sane timeout for the curl attempt, something like 1 second. Sites are not going to be hosted on a pentium III connected via 2G in 2007. If it didn’t get an answer in 1s, give up. It’s not connected.