- constant strings (defined as vars) as return values instead of the standard error type
- not formatted
- synthetic request's response body not closed - a memory leak
- log.Fatal (which results in os.Exit(1) immediately killing the program) for all the non-critical errors
- timestamp as a string instead of time.Time in the struct
- not re-using http.DefaultClient
- 3rd party package with a custom DSL instead of a simple time.Ticker
Sorry for the pedantry, but if such code examples live on the internet, newcomers to Go will learn from it (if not blindly copy-paste) and it will spread even further indirectly giving bad reputation to the language.
P.S. i do like this idea of continuous integration testing in production, will probably start using it at our company.
But you're right, re-posted my comment in a less aggressive form on the post itself.
This code example has not gone through gofmt or been compiled... it is pseudo-Go