How to save datetimes for future events - <AUTHOR> http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/03/19/persisting_future_datetimes.html

<comment><USER2> For future events, you expect to schedule a meeting / appointment at [Local Time] on [Date] at [Location]. If a time change happens between now and the future event (e.g. daylight savings time), it doesn't matter from the perspective of the meeting because you have a fixed time.

So, I would for future events record [Local Time], [Date], and [Location]. Then make sure I have a [Location] -> [Time Zone] table. [Local Time] and [Date] would probably be combined into one field. The crux of the problem is shifting rules on time zone (and location is my time zone determinant), so recalculation for other time zones is going to have to be dynamic. Storing UTC or UTC offset doesn't help the problem and actually creates a false solution.

<comment><USER3> Spot on. You don't need the UTC at all to be stored. What matters is the local time at the venue.

If its a virtual meeting (eg. over Skype) with participants from multiple time zones, it is safe to assume always one time zone will take precedence over others and time should be saved with respect to that.

If its a natural event like a solar eclipse, it can be saved in UTC.

There is always one time zone in which the event won't be adjusted. Just use that.

<comment><USER2> "There is always one time zone in which the event won't be adjusted. Just use that."

I agree with everything except I would modify that statement to be "There is always one location in the which the event won't be adjusted. Just use that."

It seems like people are assuming time zone is fixed when it can change. The fixed point is the location which is used to determine the time zone.

Natural events are trickier because they have different assumptions than human created events. UTC is probably best for those.

<comment> mark-r You're correct, the relation between time zones and locations isn't fixed. Unfortunately the time zone databases don't have enough granularity, you're forced to choose the nearest location that shares your current time zone.

<comment><USER2> I do love picking Minneapolis or Chicago when I want a ND location (look at North Dakota in the TZ database, we have some funky stuff going on). Looks like this question has some API for that [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16086962/how-to-get-a- tim...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16086962/how-to-get-a-time-zone- from-a-location-using-latitude-and-longitude-coordinates)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This comes from mismatched expectations of what users are storing. Often they think, or assume without thinking, that they are storing a localized time. For ease of implementation, or just because the developer doesn't know any better, we often store in absolute time (UTC) with an offset and call it done.

The problem is, nobody really thinks about this stuff. It's easy to pick out an error case and say "The users expect local (relative) time, we need to deliver that." That's not always right. There are plenty of cases where the user really wants absolute time. Fro example, when scheduling an international meeting where the other side is dictating the time. When timing a broadcast from another country. Really, any time when you need to deal with events scheduled outside your local time, or have components (or people) that run on times that are not local to you.

It gets trickier. What if you are tracking that international event, and that locality changes their time rules? For example, what if I'm in the US, and I wanted to schedule a time to watch a sporting event in Chile, and I scheduled it before the changed mentioned in the article? Whether I store it as a local time or an absolute time, it's wrong.

Really, you need three pieces of information. The UTC time representation, the timezone offset _it applies to_ , and whether it should be treated as an absolute or localized time.

Edit: Corrected what type of stored offset needs to be kept

<comment> mark-r If you stored it as _your_ local time, it would be wrong. If you stored it as _Chile 's_ local time, it would be correct. The trick is to simply record the appropriate time zone along with the timestamp.

<comment><USER5> There is still the problem of handling the effects of DST on repeating events. You have to know the base UTC offset _and_ any additional seasonal offset for the local zone. Then it becomes an issue if you travel to a different locality that doesn't observe DST.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another solution is "floating time" which disregards timezones entirely. This is an option in iCalendar datetime formats.

In floating time, 10:00 in Chile is "10:00 in Chile". No timezone offset.

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2445.txt)

[https://scottworldblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/how-to- miss-...](https://scottworldblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/how-to-miss-your- flight-and-other-important-life-events-courtesy-of-ical/)

</comment><comment><USER7> There is a great (humorous) Computerphile video about this topic: "The Problem with Time & Timezones" [0]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm- gesOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY)

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't most time zone databases store the date of rule changes? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#File_formats](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#File_formats)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. But in this case the timeline is something like this:

1) You arrange a meeting 2) Then, after you have arranged the meeting, politicians/bureaucrats decide to change the time zone rules 3) Your meeting takes place

At 1) the rules are different from at 2). At 1) you cannot see into the future and anticipate how the rules will be at 2), because you don't have a time machine. So you have to be ready for it by implementing in a way that is resistant to timezone rule changes. For instance like the described solution.

<comment><USER9> The prescribed solution does not solve for all use cases though.

Imagine if the meeting included a conference call to someone in Australia. A day before the meeting, the bureaucrats change the DST rule. The meeting invite for the Australian now has incorrect time. Storing as local time will work against events applicable across timezones.

The problem isn't with UTC, it is unexpected rule changes that the converting agent (software) did not predict. That logic will have to be coded in.

<comment> mark-r Why would the time for the Australian be incorrect? If the meeting organizer is in Chile, then the meeting time would be ruled by Chile's local clock. If the rule change affects the difference between Australia and Chile, then simply loading the updated rules on both sides should readjust things automatically - if the time was stored as Chile local, not UTC.

<comment><USER10> The fact that the meeting organizer in Chile does not imply that the key constraint for the meeting time was in Chile, rather than in the schedule of the Australian attendees.

(Of course, its actually possible that there were essential constraints on both sides, in which case, the problem is more difficult, or that the key constraint was that the call needed to immediately precede or follow an event in a timezone different from Australia or Chile.)

Really, determining the key intent here is hard, and there is no one rule that makes it painless in all cases. There are lots of different possible intents with timing, and there is no single general rule that handles all possible changes in local time rules between the time an event is scheduled and the time it occurs.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I enter "10:00 in Chile" in a calendar app I expect it to stay "10:00 in Chile". And not magically change to "11:00 in Chile". That is what the example was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would it be possible to avoid any ambiguity at all by saving the timezone rules themselves as separate most-previous and current versions within the application context itself?

Then when a new set of rules is detected (perhaps notification of updates at the OS level should be turned into a standardized publish-subscribe API to avoid too many applications polling for changes all the time, especially wasteful on battery-powered devices), move the current version to the previous version, scan for timezone rule differences, then scan your collection of records that use those timezones, parse them down to only those records affected by the new rules, and finally apply corrections to those records affected by the new rules.

Extending further, if this approach works, perhaps an OS-level, perhaps git- backed storage of versions of timezone rules could avoid duplication of effort. Combined with a publish-subscribe service, it can auto-prune itself based upon the list of subscribed applications and when the oldest subscriber last hit the version store.

<comment><AUTHOR> This post describes examples of ambiguity and non-existing times: [http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods- progra...](http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods-programmers- date-time-zones.html)

Note non-existing times mostly happen when you go from winter time to summer time. You set the clock ahead an hour at let's say 2:00 in the morning. So you go directly from 2:00 to 3:00. 2:30 does not exist.

So let's say that you plan a meeting at 2:30 in the morning in a country that does not use DST. Then they decide to use DST and set the clocks forward one hour at 2:00. Your meeting was supposed to take place at 2:30 local time, but that time no longer exists! As I see it, the right thing to do is to alert the user of the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I missing something, or does their solution not actually solve their specific example problem case at all?

Saving local time plus offset is _exactly_ the same information as saving GMT, isn't it?

You'd really need to save local datetime plus location... which they don't seem to actually be recommending?

Of course, for actually triggering an alarm or whatever, you'd still need to plot this on the actual timeline somehow, and deal with periodically checking to see if it should be changed because of a DST or timezone rule change or whatever.

<comment><AUTHOR> The important part is local time plus timezone.

The offset is there only for the very rare case that you save a time that you know is ambiguous when you save it. And when DST rules don't change. Usually it happens when you change from DST to non-DST in the autumn and a certain hour happens twice.

In the example, the offset will not be used. Only local time plus time zone.

edit: I have updated the article to explain this part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This doesn't really seem to solve the problem, just makes some of the error modes less surprising to the user.

Surely the right approach to handling scheduling like this is (sticking with the calender example) a) initiating calender event is canonical (but may or may not be in the calenders local timezone) , but b) metadata about when the schedule was made and last updated is stored, and c) every future computation takes this metadata and looks up canonical (i.e. IANA) timezone/change information every time it touches the event, and d) a warning is given to any user, at any time their localization has a change in rules that might affect their apparent wall time, plus e) any changes in the localization of the initiating/owning calender trigger a warning for everyone.

Am I missing something? [edit: besides the way to format this list...]

(added - I should have been more clear that the server is only responsible for keeping track of the canonical event and updating clients if and when that changes. The clients will always be responsible for resolving locally apparent changes)

<comment><USER4> Yes, whether the location/context of the event is relative to you or some other location. I.e. Someone outside Chile creates an event to track the start of a football game in Chile before the change mentioned in the article.

What you really want is an absolute time, and a localized timezone that applies to the event (which may not be your own).

<comment><USER13> Ah, I wasn't clear enough ... I was thinking in that case the canonical calender event would be encoded in time in Chile, even if the local calender was in Germany or whatever. Looking back that could have been written much better so I've added a parenthetical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What about saving the present time (the datetime when the information is recorded) and the time offset as calculated at that moment? In theory then it doesn't matter what happens, you're still able to adjust. The only ambiguity I can think of is if leap (seconds|hours|days) are introduced, but surely you just add them on to the delta too?

Of course, this system fails when you suddenly travel anything approaching relativistic speeds, but I guess you could save your time delta as a velocity- time delta :)

Edit: I'm not actually advocating this as a solution, I just found it an interesting thought experiment.

<comment> mark-r Time offset by itself isn't sufficient to know if the rules for calculating that time offset have changed. You need to know the rules themselves, and the easiest way to record that is with a time zone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems that the example provided is a poor example. Software systems compute based on some rules. If you change the rules, you must change the software. Are there other more meaningful examples?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. When the timezone rules change, the software updates its timezone database. This is how it should be. You don't have to change the software, the software should be able to handle the changes to the timezone database.

The updates are available here: [http://www.iana.org/time- zones](http://www.iana.org/time-zones) So far there has been two new releases of the database in 2015. Last year there were about 10 changes.

<comment><USER15> sorry, thats what I meant by the software (change its ability to understand the rules). IANA link is helpful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Instead of saving the time in UTC along with the time zone, developers can > save what the user expects us to save: the wall time. Ie. what the clock on > the wall will say.

That's not at all foolproof, although it works for the case the author describes and probably works for most people most of the time. It wouldn't work if, for some reason, I'm entering a calendar event for something I know will happen exactly _n_ hours from now.

<comment> mark-r In that case, go ahead and convert to UTC and save UTC as the relevant zone. In no case is timestamp+zone less flexible than UTC timestamp by itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately, there's an ambiguity here. Suppose that you're going to watch the Super Bowl with your friends in Chile. So you set the appointment for 1830 local time in Chile. Then Chile changes their timezone, and your local time is wrong since the actual event is based on Eastern time, and not Chile time.

<comment> mark-r You simply need to observe the rule that event times should be specified in the time zone of the event itself.

If the event is a meeting, then the meeting organizer will be in charge of setting the appropriate time zone.

<comment><USER18> That doesn't sound simple for the user at all. If I'm meeting _locally_ with friends to see the game/oscars/wtv, I don't know or care about the time in the original timezone. My local TV guide / newspaper shows it in local time, and that's what everyone in the meeting cares about, so why would I set it to a completely different TZ?

<comment> mark-r Admittedly setting a time zone different than your local zone is an edge case. 99% of the time your local zone is the correct default. It would come up if you're scheduling a meeting for your trip to a different zone, or setting your TV to record the football game being broadcast from Chile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just did a project that implemented the same solution that author mentioned.

For those who need a web fron-tend implementation, I would like to recommend Moment Timezone ([http://momentjs.com/timezone/](http://momentjs.com/timezone/)).

</comment><comment><USER20> If I understand the objection here the problem isn't that the computer has the time wrong, it's that our understanding of time is wrong.

The computer still has the calendar entry at the right instant in time identified when the user input the entry.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is that the meeting time is defined in terms of the "wall time" in Chile.

So if you store the time in terms of UTC, then you are going to have problems when the relation between UTC and the Santiago/Chile timezone changes.

The computer in the example has the time wrong because it stored the time in UTC.

<comment><USER9> Pegging against "wall time" in Chile causes it's own problems. What if the meeting is with a person in "Europe/Berlin" via Skype and the appointment is in a shared calendar. How would the new Berlin time be calculated for the unfortunate Berliner after the Chilean bureaucrats have had their fun?

<comment><USER21> The Berliners should have the meeting entered in their calendar as 10 AM Chilean time. At any given moment when the meeting time must be evaluated or displayed on their own calendars, it can be converted to European time using the current time zone conversion rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why not just use a unix timestamp and convert to the local time format of all users? Is that a poor solution for this? Most unix timestamp to Date converters already take DST into account.

This also fixes the "MM/DD/YYYY", "DD/MM/YYYY", and "YYYY/MM/DD" fiasco as you can rely that the users computer is configured to the correct timezone/localization settings.

<comment><USER23> Because the Unix timestamp is based on UTC and may not accurately capture the user's intent if the DST rules change in between when the timestamp is created and when the timestamp is read.

That is, suppose I schedule an event on 2016 April 1, at 10am in San Francisco, California. Under current DST rules, this translates into 2016 April 1, 5pm UTC or a Unix timestamp of 1459530000.

Now suppose DST is abolished in California between now and the event occurring. A Unix timestamp of 1459530000 would then correspond to 2016 April 1, at 9am in San Francisco, which is one hour too early.

Another way to think about this: You have to apply the DST conversion rules applicable at the time the event was created, NOT the (potentially different) rules at the time the event occurs. But maintaining different sets of conversion rules based on when an event is scheduled is a lot more cumbersome than simply recording the local time and location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> this assumes both users use calendar apps that work the same way.

so if google fixes gcal on mobile, but the other user puts it in (unfixed) outlook, they will still miss each other.

date/time is _hard_.

</comment><comment><USER25> This article is way overthinking it. It's better to simply store the UTC time of the event, and nothing else. Local time zone conversions can be done when displaying/editing. Presumably at the time you are reading your calendar, your local software knows the current rules to offset from GMT.

We have Skype meetings all the time involving parties in different US timezones and/or different countries. There's no "place" or local time zone for the meeting. We schedule in UTC and our local software or calendar program knows what time zone we are in to display the correct local time.

<comment><USER26> I think you're missing the point of the article.

What he's getting at is that timezone rules change, so the function to go from local to UTC when you save the meeting is not the same as the function to go from UTC back to local at the time of the meeting.

<comment><USER25> I do get the point, but simply preserving the local time isn't the right answer. I'd argue that when you change your local timezone offset, then your future schedule is indeterminate and all events have to be reverified. What if the event is for an international flight -- is it still leaving or arriving at the same local time? How about that standing 9AM meeting -- is at 9 because of the corporate office in a different time zone calls in, so your local time breaks their calendar?</comment></comment></comment>


What I've Learned From Sales, Part I: Don't Feed the Trolls - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/what-ive-learned-from-sales-part-i.html <comment><USER2> Initially, I was hesitant to click on this because of the title. However, it is an interesting submission about problem solving (not just sales). So for those of you on the fence, it's worth a look. Hence this comment here.</comment>


Back to the Future: How Facebook is challenging Google at the eyeball game - <AUTHOR> http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2013/06/back-to-the-future-how-facebook-is-challenging-google-at-the-eyeball-game/

<comment><USER2> Now I'm intrigued by the Flash-based phones the author mentioned. How did they get that kind of performance out of Flash on that class of devices?</comment>


Four Wikipedias to 'Black Out' over EU Copyright Directive - <AUTHOR> https://wikimediafoundation.org/2019/03/20/four-wikipedias-to-black-out-over-eu-copyright-directive/ <comment><USER2> Here are part of the lyrics of "Enter Sandman" of Metallica:

Exit light Enter night Take my hand We're off to Never—, Neverland Now I lay me down to sleep Pray the Lord my soul to keep If I die before I wake Pray the Lord my soul to take

YCombinator is now in violation of article 13. Some filter should have prevented me from posting this.

That is what article 13 is about.

<comment><USER3> Article 13 is bad enough without needing to make up absurd interpretations of it. EU law is enforced on the basis of proportionality, and the wording of the proposed directive already covers that.

There's never going to be some legal obligation to remove something like the quote you just posted.

Furthermore, since it's a directive each member state will need to implement it in a way that's compatible with both the directive and its own laws. The countries in the EU all have some sort of concept that's analogous to "fair use", even if that's not what they call it.

<comment><USER4> That might be true from the law perspective, but a major objection to copyright filters is that they go beyond the requirements of copyright law and ignores fair use. Youtube filter being a prime example.

If you include the above quoted snippet of the song in a youtube video, the probability that it will receive a copyright claim is close to 100%. Fair use is a legal defense that a person can use in court, but the purpose of copyright filters and thus the purpose of Article 13 is to resolve the issue in favor of the author before it end up in court. Article 13 in practice eliminates fair use.

Article 13 do not require copyright filters to consider fair use. If it did we would likely see a very nuanced discussion since it would force youtube to change their system in order to be compliant, but alas thats not the case.

If HN implemented a copyright filter we should expect from experience that such filter would not consider fair use, nor would it enforce copyright on the basis of proportionality. We could claim that this result is not the fault of article 13, but that is a naive perspective.

<comment><USER5> > Youtube filter being a prime example.

Youtube filter is there not only to follow the law, but also to please their advertisers/copyright holders.

Their latest change in the filter made Youtuber life so much worst and Youtube definitively know how they depends on theses Youtubers (and are lucky to have them). Thing is the cash come from advertisers/copyright holders and that's a much bigger issue for them right now.

To me that filter is beyond the requirements of the law, not for the law itself, but for the advertisers/copyright holders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The big websites participating in the blackout like Wikipedia or some porn sites do have vast access to eyeballs across europe, and would be affected directly and adversely by the new rules. As the lobbying fight has already been mostly won by the local publisher industry, they use their access to those eyeballs to fuel democratic protests of the rule.

I hope they win and that Article 11 and 13 will be removed.

I think this is an important moment in the birth of EU democracy, because it feels to me that one of the first times, there is a big public discussion about an issue and the people at the center aren't national politicians like Merkel or Macron but EU MEPs, namely Voss vs Reda. The EU has rightfully been criticized of not being democratic enough, and this discussion feels like it's very much democratic.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's democratic at all. In case of my small country, almost literally no one wants this law - but that doesn't matter, we're a small country. The whole thing feels terribly wrong - _10 million_ people, the 100% majority of this rather big geographical location that is even separated by mountains on all sides, are just overruled, while they don't even understand the language these politicians are talking in...? Why couldn't we have our own rules regarding copyright, like up until now? Democracy doesn't just mean that there is some voting, it means that the people rule. In my country, our people no longer rule, now the Germans and the French rule our country (because we have less than 2% of votes in the EU parliament) and there is absolutely nothing democratic about that, the polar opposite actually. We're no longer a country, we've been reduced to a lowly region, and you people praise the EU for that while my grandfathers died for us to be sovereign and have a say in our matters. It feels sickening. I truly hope this law passes and it significantly reduces everyone's high opinion of the EU so we can finally talk about fixing this.

The funny/sad thing is that my people had more say over our country during the communist regime than we have today. The Soviets at least accepted bribes.

BTW yes, most people here would rather be poor and sovereign than the EU alternative. And we had no idea this is what we're joining back in 2004, and no one asked us when it changed - in fact, significant pressure that I deem absolutely unethical was made on our politicians to not let our people decide in a referendum.

<comment><USER8> Obviously a political and economic union will impose laws on its member states. Your country, holding 2% of the votes, being able to overrule the entire union wouldn't be very democratic either.

It sounds like you want to have the cake and eat it too. Get the benefits of the union but be able to refuse the laws it imposes. If the EU decides on a law, that the majority of the union agrees on but your country doesn't, then your country has the option to leave the union.

Your country might not agree with these laws, other countries might not agree with laws regarding the environment, or human rights, etc. But the union as a whole agrees on them and if you want to benefit from the union then you have to follow.

<comment><USER7> I absolutely don't think an economic union (our citizens did not vote in a referendum to join a political union, that was forced on us) needs to impose such laws (environment, human rights) not regarding international trade between member states and third state policies. It should impose treaties regarding export and import between member states, and maybe provide a civil court.

Whatever the EU is, it's not an "economic union" for at least a decade. We don't want any of that cake, as you say - you forced that upon us, I was talking about that in my previous comment.

And no, our country doesn't have an option to leave. Germans bought key state corporations from the corrupt post-revolution government and they won't let us (the people) do it, on top of that it has been proved that the EU will try to take revenge by all means and not wanting to be in the EU means they will destroy you. So much for the "friendship among nations" goal - paid friendship is not friendship.

<comment><USER9> You can elect a government that can trigger article 50. There is no exception, any country can do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As an EU citizen, I hope large portions of the internet will just block us. A couple of days without YouTube, Wikipedia and other services would create sufficient outrage to put pressure on the EU for introducing these idiotic laws.

I mean, GDPR is bad enough for start ups, but Article 13?

<comment><USER11> GDPR and Article 13 (in The Directive on Copyright) are totally different and unrelated things.

I happen to be a small business owner in the EU and I have many customers who are the same. We all have registered with the ICO (UK) for something like £60 pa and filled in a short questionnaire. We have read the clear guidance on what records to keep and what to not keep - it's not rocket science. That is GDPR for most small businesses. Now, if your business is predicated on building profiles on people or pestering them on the phone or flogging ads etc then I can't help you there - it may be a pain.

Now Article 13: It is designed to try and make the likes of YouTube responsible for not carrying copyrighted works by putting the onus back on them. I believe they hide behind carrier status. I understand that A13 looks a bit like an anti-meme effort but it isn't because that is generally covered by parody or reasonable use regulations.

In the end, are you really sure you want the world to block us?

<comment><USER12> > In the end, are you really sure you want the world to block us?

Yes. Let's end the cycle of pretending that we can prevent information from being free.

Copyright is a dinosaur of an idea that belongs in the annals of history and out of the present.

<comment><USER13> > Copyright is a dinosaur of an idea that belongs in the annals of history and > out of the present.

Then don't copyright the content you make, just release it out into the public domain. Be the change you want to see.

But let's be honest, the people most vocal against Article 13 are those who want to leech other people's creations for free. Not those people actually creating the content.

<comment><USER14> > the people most vocal against Article 13 are those who want to leech other > people's creations for free.

Why would such people be at all concerned about Article 13? Torrent sites and swarms have been in flagrant disregard of the law since forever, one more law isn't going to change much. Likewise the other popular pirate mechanism, the old "upload an archive with the content to Mega or similar" technique, already frequently uses encrypted archives to make sure only people coming through the right channel (often an ad laden website + several even more ad laden URL shorteners) get access to the content, making a filter requirement ineffectual there as well.

<comment><USER15> Torrents aren't really good for small things that quickly change like news whereas websites like reddit are and I'm pretty sure the people who are pushing for articles 11 and 13 are news agencies. Here is my thought process:

News agencies know they are using dark patterns to skirt by GDPR while still using targeted advertising but since they know the fines will eventually start hitting, they want to move to paywalls. However, A paywall for a news company is practically useless as any major story one makes gets linked to and paraphrased by dozens of other news agencies within minutes. Users won't pay for a news website when they can get practically the same stories only slightly delayed at a free one that just paraphrases and links back to the original. Article 11 solves that problem and article 13 is to prevent 1 user who does pay for a website from copying the entire article and pasting it in a comment (I see that and archive/outline links all the time here and on reddit).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is interesting to me that only four of them are protesting—German, Czech, Danish, and Slovak—by blacking out their sites on 21 March 2019 in opposition to the proposed EU Copyright Directive.

Why is it that other EU Wikipedia language editions like French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish not joining in the protests? Did they come up with a different conclusion on the potential impact of the new copyright directive? Can people who know about the politics of other EU language Wikipedia comment whether they had discussed of joining this black out?

<comment><USER17> I support their point of view and agree with their protest, but one reason against this could be the potential politicizing and weaponisation of Wikipedia. Do you want one of the largest collectives of human information to take sides (in any debate) and selectively remove its service?

I think I would prefer a banner or a landing page more as it doesn't introduce any barrier to the information they provide.

<comment><USER18> > Do you want one of the largest collectives of human information to take > sides (in any debate) and selectively remove its service

When that debate is about access to that information, definitely, yes.

<comment><USER19> The point is well taken that doing such things should be rare and done very carefully.

<comment><USER7> You feel this isn't one of the cases when it's necessary?

<comment><USER20> The parent's implication being that this is one of the cases where people could reasonably believe it isn't necessary.

<comment><USER21> Yeah and I am asking explicitly because it seems unbelievable and I'd like to hear why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This law was strongly pushed by the "Axel Springer" company. This company is so evil that there are even browser extensions to just block their websites (see Axel Springer Blocker in chrome extension store)

</comment><comment><USER23> The interesting part was while not the whole EU does the protest? It would send a clearer message.

<comment><USER24> AFAIK my country's EU representatives are against, so Wikipedia in the Netherlands might not see a need as rallying citizens doesn't change a thing without a clear call to action.

<comment><USER23> Aha, I see, that makes sense, still 4 countries are not that many

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Shame that the CTA of e.g. the German Wikipedia is so weak: "Kontaktieren sie ihre Abgeordneten " (translted: contact your representative) which links to [https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/de/home](https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/de/home).

Besides the site being super slow right now, I couldn't even figure out how to actually find _my_ representative. Is my representative the one of the city where I live? How can I search by city? Is this even by city? Doesn't seem so. So now I have a list of 96 random people. Which ones can actually influence this? Or which one actually need their opinion changed?

I also wouldn't really know how to contact them - just send an email and write that I hate that the make so bad politics that Wikipedia had to shut down their site in protest?

Politics is hard :/

<comment><USER26> Julia Reda usually posts the good links, so go to her site and have a look around!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Fixing" the page (return to normal):

1\. In the style sheet, remove:

        color: #111 !important;
        background: #111 !important;
        border: 1px #111 solid !important;

2\. In the HTML, remove:

        background:#000;color:#000

That's all I could find on a few page visits.

<comment><USER27> alternatively: use reader mode on firefox. this may not enable everything but is at least you can read it...

(I'm somewhat conflicted on using and/or helping circumventing wikipedias efforts)

<comment><USER28> I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't remove the content completely, using 302-redirects. I'm using uBlock origin, and the whole website looks like a mess. It doesn't even show the "call-to-action" banner, which is required for Average Joe to understand why Wikipedia looks the way it looks.

They could have done better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Making content providers liable about the content they publish seems to me essential to have an healthy internet: I don't understand all the problem about censorship; Am I missing something?

<comment><USER2> You are missing the "user content" part.

If I anonymously upload copyrighted material to YouTube, I can sue YouTube. Same with Reddit, Facebook, Steam, Kongregate, Pinterest, Imgur, Instagram, ... .

I'm building a platform where anyone can make a game and share it. If someone names his game "Zelda" or "Tetris", I can get sued. If my competitor uploads his own material to my site, they can sue me.

Theses platforms should have "automated filters that detect copyrighted material, and make a distinction between original and parody". If you know of such system, please tell me.

Staying in Europe with a user content platform makes no sense.

<comment><USER29> If the user is anonymous, so as copyright holder, or target of harassment or whatever I can't know who is the creator of the content, it makes perfectly sense for me that you, as host of the content are liable of the content itself. I don't see anything strange about it.

<comment><USER30> You own small a grocery store, and as an altruistic service to the community you provide a public bulletin board at the store entrance. Town residents can use this to share public messages and advertisements. Someone with no relation to you anonymously pins a poster with copyrighted images to the bulletin board at the entrance.

You originally had no idea the images were not the property of the creator of the poster (how could you?), but as soon as you are made aware of the problem you remove the poster in a timely manner.

Does it make perfect sense to you that I (owner of the images) can now successfully sue you (the owner of the store and provider of the bulletin board service) for copyright infringement, and have you pay damages to me as compensation for the time the poster was visible at the bulletin board?

More importantly, do you think making the store owner vulnerable to litigation is 1. in line with how similar laws usually work? 2. a fair administration of justice? 3. a net benefit to the town and society at large?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Re Article 11 foundation states for-profit information aggregators will be restricted to snippets. This is good for liberating information as it will help increase the breadth of useful search results for original content.

Re Article 13 and placing increased pressure against the DCMA, you'll probably stop seeing so many 1080p movies on YouTube (hence NewPipe) when you search for "x264 YIFY". That sucks.

</comment><comment><USER32> For anyone in Denmark, here are contact details for the MEPs:

\- Margrete Auken - +4561625450 - firstname.lastname@example.com - [https://twitter.com/MargreteAuken](https://twitter.com/MargreteAuken)

\- Bendt Bendtsen - email@example.com - [https://twitter.com/BendtEU](https://twitter.com/BendtEU)

\- Ole Christensen - +4522200830 - email@example.com - [https://twitter.com/oleeu](https://twitter.com/oleeu)

\- Jørn Dohrmann - +4561623349 - email@example.com - [https://twitter.com/mepdohrmann](https://twitter.com/mepdohrmann)

\- Rina Ronja Kari - +4526701816 - email@example.com - [https://twitter.com/rinakari](https://twitter.com/rinakari)

\- Rikke-Louise Karlsson - firstname.lastname@example.com

\- Jeppe Kofod - +3222837463 - email@example.com - [https://twitter.com/jeppekofod](https://twitter.com/jeppekofod)

\- Morten Løkkegaard - +4521608001 - firstname.lastname@example.com - [https://twitter.com/loekkegaard_mep](https://twitter.com/loekkegaard_mep)

\- Morten Messerschmidt - +4561624232 - firstname.lastname@example.com - [https://twitter.com/MrMesserschmidt](https://twitter.com/MrMesserschmidt)

\- Morten Helveg Petersen - firstname.lastname@example.com - [https://twitter.com/mortenhelveg](https://twitter.com/mortenhelveg)

\- Jens Rohde - firstname.lastname@example.com - [https://twitter.com/rohde_jens](https://twitter.com/rohde_jens)

\- Christel Schaldemose - +4540768626 - email@example.com - [https://twitter.com/schaldemosemep](https://twitter.com/schaldemosemep)

\- Anders Primdahl Vistisen - +4553860080 - firstname.lastname@example.com - [https://twitter.com/AndersVistisen](https://twitter.com/AndersVistisen)

<comment><USER33> What specifically should one ask them to vote against? I'm sure they have a lot on their plate, so what's a good way to make it easy for them to understand which vote this is about?

<comment><USER32> The new EU copyright directive. Specifically article 11 (link tax) and article 13 (upload filter).

This site explains it well i think: [https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu- copyright-final-text/](https://juliareda.eu/2019/02/eu-copyright-final-text/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why only four? We need all of Wikipedia to black out. For everyone.

If you want to raise awareness, why do a half-assed job?

</comment><comment><USER35> I cannot scroll the white-on-black text at all in MobileSafari. Although I "should" be using the mobile site, this edge case should still be accounted for.

</comment><comment><USER36> Surprised not to see the Catalonian Wikipedia on that list.

</comment><comment><USER37> tldr; Subcommunities have the flexibility to take independent action regarding policy position.

No so interesting. I was hoping to get a deeper dive into why they disagree with the upcoming law.

<comment><USER38> Why they disagree with censorship? Its a great firewall with the enforcement being pushed to every last person running a website. Its a totalitarian grasp for the control of the internet as a whole. The protection fee for publishing houses is just an added bonus for a few corrupt institutions on their deathbed.

<comment><USER37> Is enforcing copyright censorship? I am not being antagonistic as I have actually no idea what is in this new law.

<comment><USER2> Let me give you a clear example. Look at this:

Exit light Enter night Take my hand We're off to Never—, Neverland Now I lay me down to sleep Pray the Lord my soul to keep If I die before I wake Pray the Lord my soul to take

These are the lyrics of Metallica "Enter Sandman".

YCombinator can now get sued because they didn't filter out my post. They unlawfully published copyrighted material.

Without this law, I would be liable. With this law, YCombinator is liable too.

<comment><USER39> This is false. A13 Chapter 5[1] explicitly allows posts like yours:

 _The cooperation between online content service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.

Member States shall ensure that users in all Member States are able to rely on the following existing exceptions and limitations when uploading and making available content generated by users on online content sharing services: a) quotation, criticism, review, b) use for the purpose of caricature, parody or pastiche._

It would however forbid you to post that lyrics without any commentary or some sort of relection.

[1]: [https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Art_13_unoff...](https://juliareda.eu/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Art_13_unofficial.pdf)

<comment><USER40> Here are the lyrics to Enter Sandman by Metallica:

Say your prayers, little one Don't forget, my son To include everyone I tuck you in, warm within Keep you free from sin Until the sandman he comes

[Pre-Chorus] Sleep with one eye open Gripping your pillow tight

[Chorus] Exit light Enter night Take my hand We're off to never never-land

[Verse 2] Something's wrong, shut the light Heavy thoughts tonight And they aren't of Snow White Dreams of war Dreams of liars Dreams of dragons fire And of things that will bite, yeah

[Pre-Chorus] Sleep with one eye open Gripping your pillow tight

[Chorus] Exit light Enter night Take my hand We're off to Never Never-land

[Guitar Solo]

[Interlude] Now I lay me down to sleep (Now I lay me down to sleep) Pray the lord my soul to keep (Pray the lord my soul to keep) And If I die before I wake (If I die before I wake) Pray the lord my soul to take (Pray the lord my soul to take)

[Bridge] Hush, little baby, don't say a word And never mind that noise you heard It's just the beast under your bed In your closet, in your head

[Chorus] Exit light Enter night Grain of sand Exit light Enter night Take my hand We're off to Never Never-land

[Interlude] Come on people Hey yeah, oh oh yeah

[Outro] We're off to never never-land Take my hand We're off to never never- land Take my hand We're off to never never-land

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's good big well known brands like Wikipedia are doing something but seeing the language list (German, Czech, Slovak, Danish) only German is in the top 3 of languages spoken in EU (except English, which will not count in near future anyway). There is missing Swedish and French, and given how French are into protesting, it's sad they didn't join this initiative.

<comment><USER42> "French are into protesting"{{refnec}}

</comment></comment><comment> black-tea It must have been ten years ago now that I first listened to Richard Stallman's talk called "Copyright vs Community". It's a really enlightening talk and makes it clear how much worse copyright has become over the years. It makes me incredibly sad to see it now regressing even further.

We're already at a point where copyright severely restricts our ability to share our own culture. A couple of years ago we lost what was, by far, the greatest music collection ever put together. Meticulously maintained by people who love music, but destroyed by people who love money. It pains me that people can't even put up YouTube videos with certain music in the background. People can't record their actual lives because parts of their life are owned by other people.

Copyright belongs in the day of the printing press. It has long out stayed its welcome.

</comment><comment><USER43> The EU started as a union to promote freedom of movement, peace and trade inside Europe. Since then, it has grown to be an oversized bureaucracy that restricts the freedoms of European citizens. Everyone who criticize it is immediately labelled as a right winger.

<comment><USER44> I am not sure why you are being down-voted. I know people have a distaste for political insights in general here, but it seems apt to have comments like these on an article about protesting a governing body. Why is German Wikipedia having to have a blackout? They are unhappy with the EU restricting their freedoms.

<comment><USER45> I downvoted it because the comment has no substance besides "EU bad". It adds nothing of value to the discussion.

Explain _why_ the EU is an "oversized bureaucracy".

<comment><USER46> I also don't see the link to the topic at hand: It's not the (debatable) "oversized bureaucracy" that has drafted and works on passing Article 13: It is national governments (see the French / German "deal" on this topic) and the European Parliament (and particularly the EPP) that are the source of Article 13 and the frustration that lead to this blackout.

<comment><USER47> " It's not the (debatable) "oversized bureaucracy" that has drafted and works on passing Article 13: "

Article 13 is 100% an EU law.

Pointing to the fact that maybe it's really just in the interest of specific French and German entities really only serves to highlight possible existential issues of legitimacy of that body politic.

Also, the fact that Wikipedia and other entities have to take such drastic action, never before seen, leaves no doubt as to how out of touch and unrealistic this legislation is.

Together with the $1.5B in fines today, and of course recent special French taxation legislation intended to get around the fact they view Ireland/Ducth systems as 'havens' ... well it would seem there are indeed some existential problems.

A 'winning' position would be to have something like Google based and operated on the Continent somewhere, generating real returns and exports as well.

All of this is good for discussion, but ultimately they're moves of players with a weak hand.

If long term conditions were set appropriately, the tables would be turned and the problem would be Trump threats on imports (as he does with Volkswagen). Those are 'good problems' to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think this is great, but I think it would be funnier to just replace all the words with Klingon. That way, things would look like they work, but upon closer inspection, not actually work. The effect would be frustration, and could be made worse if done for a random amount of time.

<comment><USER48> Whoever voted me down on this should understand the regulation and why my response was stated as it was. ( for reference, a good critique of the law is here [0]. )

My main issue is that the offenders are basically no longer really in trouble, but the networks (google, FB, reddit, et al) now are. (yes, that's a simplification, but bear with me).

This is akin to punishing the telephone company whenever someone makes a call on their network as part of a crime.

So, at first glance, everything is normal, until it isn't. Hence my comment about replacing the text on a page with Klingon instead - it looks fine, right up until it doesn't. This mirrors the effect of the law - something looks fine, right up until it's determined to be illegal, and then you are f'ed.

So if you disagree with me, then fine, but at least understand why my comment is there - it is supposed to be insidious, because the law is insidious.

[0] - [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/final-version-eus- copy...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/final-version-eus-copyright- directive-worst-one-yet)</comment></comment>


Theranos' president is leaving the company - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-coo-and-president-sunny-balwani-to-retire-2016-5 <comment><USER2> The WSJ article:

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-executive-sunny- balwani...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-executive-sunny-balwani-to- depart-amid-regulatory-probes-1463015943)</comment>


Pocket Casts Is Now Free - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pocketcasts.com/major-new-update/ <comment><USER2> It's not free, it's now a subscription for people who already paid. Tapatalk did the same thing recently. It is a trend that once "Premium" paid apps plateau in users they go subscription ("free"). No doubt we will start seeing ads etc.

The alternative is apps being sold to shady outfits that inject spyware. For example Cheetah Mobile bought QuickPic and when Chinafire sold SuperSU to a American-based shell company.

If app stores allowed paid version upgrades this trend might not have happened.

<comment><USER3> _If app stores allowed paid version upgrades this trend might not have happened._

This is a takeaway that I think is really important that a lot of people miss. The problem with the "new" model is that it's created a double-whammy of much lower prices in absolute dollars than we were paying ~15 years ago for software _and_ an expectation that once you've paid that low price, you should get upgrades for free forever. The plateau you mention is, of course, why that can't actually work: most apps don't grow their userbase at a steady rate, they get bursts of new users when new versions come out -- and usually fewer and fewer new users for each new version. If every customer represents one and only one point of revenue -- and that point is a third or a fourth what you'd have charged for the same amount of engineering work under the old model -- this is a death spiral.

Under the "old" model, PocketCasts could easily have been a $20–25 program with $12–15 upgrades when new versions came out every couple of years and it wouldn't have seemed unfairly priced at all. Under our glorious new model, the only way to match this is with subscriptions. And people _hate_ subscriptions. Nobody works out the math to see whether the subscription model actually costs them _less_ than the old upgrade model, they just have a visceral reaction to it.

I get the frustration with any company that charges that low one-time fee, implicitly (or even explicitly, as PocketCasts apparently did!) promises free lifetime upgrades, then goes back on that promise some years later when it proves unsustainable. At the same time, is going out of business or shutting down that product really preferable?

<comment><USER4> If you buy a software (eg office 2003) you can still use it after a year, after office 2007 comes out, and 2010, etc. and even today. It doesn't have all the new features, but if you just need it to do "one thing" it works. Buying a subscription plan might be cheaper than buying all those versions/upgrade, but why buy if the "first" version still does what you need?

This is of course from the users standpoint.

<comment><USER3> It's a reasonable question -- and I'd consider it another argument for the "paid upgrade" model not to have died. That makes it possible for users to hop off the bandwagon, while still providing some level of recurring revenue from existing customers for developers.

I'm not sure how to really address that in a subscription-based world, although PocketCasts seems to be pursuing a pretty good approach here: you can use the app for its core functionality without subscribing at all, and the subscription price is pretty reasonable. If you want Office 365, where the cheapest price is $70/yr, the calculation might well lead you to "let's see if Apple Pages or LibreOffice can do what I want instead."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I paid for Pocket Casts and also for the web player. But after the recent UI updates they went through, as well as the developers' underwhelming response to criticism, I switched to using AntennaPod ([https://antennapod.org/](https://antennapod.org/)). AntennaPod has its own UI problems but it's FOSS and with frequent updates it's constantly getting better.

<comment><USER6> What with FOSS Android apps looking like they're from the KitKat days?

<comment><USER7> Because most of them are, or haven't received updates visually since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an app I've used every day for almost 4 years (first on Android, then on iOS). I've paid them practically nothing for it. Probably less than $20 total, I don't even remember.

It's been a nearly perfect podcasting app for me. Syncs everything, subscriptions and episode progress, between devices and on desktop.

Am more than happy to pay $10/yr for it going forward. Actually surprised it's still so cheap.

<comment><USER9> I use it pretty often too. And bought iOS, Android and Web version due to it's previous marketing words, no subscription, no blah blah, one-time payment. Now it just discards those promise. But it's understandable. Syncing feature causes server cost.

<comment><USER10> Supporting them because features I used is exactly why I've bought 3 of the 4 versions they've released (never had any iOS devices).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have paid for both the app and the web client. There is a lot of hate going on in /r/Android about the changes. In my experience they've delivered an app which doesn't crash and has all the features I'd expect.

They also don't sell all the data they possibly could (like others do), which is definitely worth a non-zero amount.

One time payment means once an app isn't actively acquiring new users, the dev will need to be finding other sources of income. The predictability of income can certainly lead to better quality apps.

I have no problem with the changes they're implementing. Servers aren't free, so an ongoing income stream versus potentially shutting down because of a lack of new users makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER12> 10gb cloud storage, web/desktop app still has no feature parity with android app after years. It's been years since beta, no playlist, per podcast setting sync, chapters support etc.

Waiting for a bigger player to take podcast experience to the next level to TBH. Listenernotes posted the other day was a good start that I've been using for a while. But would be nice to have transcription support, searching within episodes (which youtube now has), commenting, recommendations to specific episodes of other podcasts based on current episode etc. I know Google has been working on podcast transcription but their podcast options including googleplay music are pretty anemic. It's still basically Google Listen circa 2009.

<comment><USER13> > transcription support

If I wanted to add transcription support to a podcasting app, which third party services or software packages I use to turn the audio into text?

A similar problem stumped a weekend project ~5 months ago for me. Transcription seems to be non-trival.

<comment><USER12> Google does it automatically, mostly used for better search indexing. I was mainly spitballing features that would be possible.

Listennotes which was featured in a thread here recently has transcribe support. I don't know what services it uses for computer speech to text. Maybe Amazon speech to text?

[https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/](https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/)

You can investigate their transcribe section near the bottom here, the example has timestamped transcription which generates useful chapter skip links. The price quote is generated from episode length I think.

[https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/london-real/dan- carlin-...](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/london-real/dan-carlin- hardcore-history-TuSVa9ciejz/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Alternate title: Pocket Cast will now have charge you a subscription fee if you want to continue using features that you already paid for

<comment><USER10> Incorrect unless you're one of the people who purchased the desktop or web app. If you're a mobile device user, you'll pay a subscription for features that have never existed before.

<comment><USER14> As a matter of fact, I am one of the people who previously purchased the desktop or web app.

In retrospect I was pretty gullible to believe their pitch: "No monthly subscriptions or freemium hoo-ha... If you like what you see, we'll ask you for $9. Just once."

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181030230424/https://play.pock...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181030230424/https://play.pocketcasts.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not. Free.

Another stupid subscription. $1 here, $5 there. Every dang month. There is no way any of these monthly services deserve that money.

<comment><USER16> Then don't use it. No one is forcing you to buy anything.

<comment><USER17> That would make sense if this app had always been a subscription. But they acquired the customers who hate subscriptions and then flipped. Not great.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, not great. I paid for Pocket Casts about a year ago and don't love that they're switching to subscriptions.

However, the parent commenter was complaining that the app wasn't free and that they don't deserve our money.

For pocket casts anyways, I'd have to say the money has been well spent. I personally enjoyed the app and will definitely look into whether a subscription makes sense assuming paid folks aren't grandfathered in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I used to love Pocket Casts, and still think its pretty good overall. It's really the only podcast app worth talking about on Android, and it can just about keep up with the likes of Overcast and Castro on iOS. Its also basically the only podcast client for the desktop besides iTunes.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm glad I paid for Pocket Casts ages ago. It's a brilliant app that's beautifully designed, and had features well before the competition caught up with support for the desktop as well. For my early support, they offered me 3 years of Plus for free. I'm happy.

</comment><comment><USER20> I really don't know how to feel about Pocket Casts. In the past I loved it, but recently it seems to have been getting worse (starting with the redesign), and now I'm suddenly not getting the full experience without a subscription?

</comment><comment><USER21> The decline of Shifty Jelly (Pocket Casts going offshore to a boring anonymous US outfit, then Pocket Weather being dumped) is one of the sadder little stories on the Aus tech scene. I'm not blaming them for moving on -- nothing stays the same and there's no reason why it should -- but it's still a bit sad. Everything about Shifty Jelly used to be _great_.

<comment><USER22> > Pocket Casts going offshore to a boring anonymous US outfit

Uh? NPR? WNYC Studios? This American Life? Not really a "boring anonymous US outfit".

<comment><USER21> NPR does for the most part strike me as boring and anonymous. It's a very pale shadow of the UK's BBC Radio 4 or Australia's RN (its nominal equivalents).

Fair point on This American Life though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For those who didn't catch it, NPR purchased Pocket Casts last year. A lot of us saw this pricing change coming, unfortunately.

[https://www.npr.org/about-npr/607823388/pocket-cast- acquired](https://www.npr.org/about-npr/607823388/pocket-cast-acquired)

</comment><comment><USER24> TL;DR:

\- The iOS and Android apps are now free

\- Web and desktop apps now require a Pocket Casts Plus subscription, for 0.99/mo or 9.99/yr

\- Current web and desktop users will be grandfathered into 3 free years of Pocket Casts Plus

Personally, this change worries me. I'm reminded of these snippets they had on their web player purchase page when I bought access a few years back:

>No monthly subscriptions or freemium hoo-ha.

>If you like what you see, we'll ask you for $9. Just once.

>We don't do freemium. No VC funding. No crazy. We love podcasts and we've built the web player that we want to use. We've priced it at a point where we'll stick around to keep it up to date. You can expect support, features and many more awesome things in the future.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150315000705/https://play.pock...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150315000705/https://play.pocketcasts.com/)

Additionally, they note that they "may introduce other ways to keep this whole thing sustainable in the future"... seems like it's only a matter of time until "free" turns into "free, but with ads."

<comment><USER17> >If you like what you see, we'll ask you for $9. Just once.

They promised something they shouldn't have promised. No excuses here. This isn't good news for people who bought the app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the URL:

>>I paid for this app in the past, will I still have access to all the features I paid for?

>>Most certainly! We aren't locking any existing features behind a paywall.

This is a blatant lie. They're locking the webapp behind the subscription. I paid $9 for the webapp, and (after the 3 year grace period) will be locked out. I don't want any of the plus features in the Android app. But I like being able to use my computer.

>>Before you freak out, we want to let you know that we want to do the right thing by everyone who has ever paid for the web and desktop apps. It doesn't matter if you paid 5 years ago, or just last month, we're going to gift each and every one of you with three years of Pocket Casts Plus.

As I was reading this I genuinely thought they were going to grandfather customers in. That would have been 'do the right thing'.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice !

A better title would be free basic tiers + subscription for advanced features.

I strongly believe that this is a good business model for such apps that are constantly in development and have a server side (so recurring costs for the dev).

I have been using pocketcasts for a while and it is one of my favorite Android apps. So now I just have to put my money where my mouth is and subscribe.

</comment><comment><USER26> My app shows me that I have 99 years of Pocket Casts Plus remaining. I did buy the app on Android aswell as the web version. Did anybody else get this many years?

<comment><USER12> They decided to grandfather web owners for lifetime Plus 6 hours ago. There's an update on the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This makes me more interested in using Plex for podcasts instead. It doesn't have some of the bells and whistles such as silence removal, but it has a web app and works on mobile.

<comment><USER28> I am in the same boat and am going to give plex a try. They do have silence removal in the iOS app at least, but plex lacks a lot of podcasts features otherwise. I hope they keep improving on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> "and the Web Player and Desktop Apps are part of Pocket Casts Plus, which is available as a paid subscription."

If only Google podcast had a webapp I could ditch Pocket Cast.

<comment><USER30> [https://play.google.com/music/listen#/tps](https://play.google.com/music/listen#/tps)

<comment><USER29> That doesn't sync with [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.podcasts) right?

But maybe google play is good enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If by "free" they mean a monthly subscription to access the web app that I already paid for, then sure, it's free.

<comment><USER31> Update: It looks like Pocket Casts is backpedaling and giving people who paid upfront for the web app lifetime access. I appreciate them changing their minds.

[https://blog.pocketcasts.com/we-heard-you/](https://blog.pocketcasts.com/we- heard-you/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> the is not free, its freeware

</comment><comment><USER33> The article linked from the title is full of lies. First, Pocket Casts is owned by NPR. Second, it is not free, but switching to a subscription model.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's NOT free. It now gives you annoying popups to upgrade to subscription paid version. Very shady marketing to call it free.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have been using Pocket Casts for about 3-4 years. It's a great app, hopefully their subscription fee helps development.

</comment><comment><USER36> Bought the app, well worth it! Currently using two phones and my progress syncing perfectly ... like one should expect!

</comment><comment><USER37> Glad Apple's Podcasts product has grown more compelling, with native apps for desktop coming soon. Pocket Casts has been great but few softwares are worthy of a monthly recurring charge. It's a shame as I've already paid for mobile and web apps and would happily have paid for updates. I just don't want to lose access to software if I needed to cut costs on a sudden basis.

</comment><comment><USER38> Mind if I ask why it is better than a regular included Podcast app came with the iPhone? Thanks

<comment><USER39> I use Overcast, but I assume Pocketcast has the same or similar features.

One is server side crawl, so your phone doesn't have to go update its RSS feeds itself. I can get a push notification when a new episode is released.

Another great feature is smart speed, it trims silence in podcasts so you can listen a little bit faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wish I had paid for pocket casts web/desktop player before.

</comment><comment><USER41> The title is indeed misleading. 3 years of pod desktop app is not that bad, I've seen way worse transitions to a subscription but still not great.

Will hope Marco moves Overcast to Mac, he has been open about the model.

</comment><comment><USER42> I just bought it a few days ago. Gah!</comment>


Cable companies cap data use for revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/10/01/internet-data-cap/1595683/

<comment><USER2> "That many consumers aren't aware of their data caps underscores the industry's generosity, industry executives say."

Fuck these assholes.</comment>


Ask HN: How Should I Spend My Summer? - <AUTHOR>

My summer officially starts in 9 hours (eff you finals). I'm a business major meaning I have 0 code experience. My thoughts took a 180 degree turn when the idea for my startup hit. Being a broke college student, I would be bootstrapping this to the fullest extent. Being only $20k away from having a team of hackers build my MVP, I am really considering the following two options (which is when you guys come in).
Do I spend the following 3 months building a strategic business/marketing/sales plan? And search for some startup cash?
or
Do I start teaching myself how to program (I believe Python/Django is the route I would need to go)? <comment><USER2> This content on being a Wantrepreneur is good too: <http://www.appsumo.com/wantrepreneurs-videos/> ... the main idea is to test if there is market for your idea before investing loads of time and money on a product.

</comment><comment><USER3> You should also read a book about selling and try to practice it in some way - I've learned that's much harder compared with the programming thing. "Everyone can create a copy of Facebook - but everyone can't get the users!"

</comment><comment><USER2> +1 to teaching yourself to program. Here's one perspective on this: [https://twitter.com/#!/FAKEGRIMLOCK/statuses/160523976773349...](https://twitter.com/#!/FAKEGRIMLOCK/statuses/160523976773349376)

</comment><comment><USER4> The fact you know about HN, and have even asked the question is I suspect the answer you need.

Yes, code something up. _what_ is now decided - _how_ you code it is a harder question.

Start small, rent a box from rackspace (10 dollars a month) and put a simple django site up. Get comfortable with git.

Just try. If you Show HN in a month, you might find someone interested to help. StackOverflow is your friend.

Good luck. (Also see Ncombinator)</comment>


Physicists detect whiff of new particle at the Large Hadron Collider - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/physicists-detect-whiff-new-particle-large-hadron-collider <comment><USER2> The article has too few details!!!

It's difficult to google this, but after some tries I found:

[In Spanish] "Crece la anomalía en mesones B de LHCb tras Moriond EW 2017" [http://francis.naukas.com/2017/04/02/una- anomalia-a-49-sigma...](http://francis.naukas.com/2017/04/02/una- anomalia-a-49-sigmas-en-los-mesones-b-tras-moriond-ew-2017/) Autotransation: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffrancis.naukas.com%2F2017%2F04%2F02%2Funa- anomalia-a-49-sigmas-en-los-mesones-b-tras-moriond-ew-2017%2F)

"B-meson b-s-μ-μ anomaly remains at 4.9 sigma after Moriond" [http://motls.blogspot.com.ar/2017/03/b-meson-b-s-mu-mu- anoma...](http://motls.blogspot.com.ar/2017/03/b-meson-b-s-mu-mu-anomaly- remains-at-49.html)

My takeaway: This is a 4.9 sigma anomaly. And it is a 2.9 sigma anomaly in an independent experiment in the other corner of the LHC. That's a lot and it would be very strange that it's caused by a statistical fluke. Anyway, they still don't have a good theory to explain this experiment. There are a few candidates theories that propose a new particle, but they don't have enough data. And usually this theories have a few parameters that can be adjusted to fit the data, so it's more difficult to distinguish between the real correct theory and a wrong theory with a astute election of parameters.

<comment><USER3> Maybe we're all just in a simulation and are reaching the holes in the programming?</comment></comment>


Internet Explorer 8 released, progress unmistakable - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/mix09-internet-explorer-8-released-progress-unmistakable.ars

<comment><USER2> IE8 no doubt has a lot of features packed in, both for the developer and the user.

Some of the front-end features are really impressive:

[http://ajaxian.com/archives/ie-8-better-ajax-css-dom-and- new...](http://ajaxian.com/archives/ie-8-better-ajax-css-dom-and-new-features)

In particular, the ability to make XDR calls without using flash or other hacks is impressive. they also increased the number of parallel connections to 6 up from 2. The web is going to get busier for sure</comment>


Getting back into the web dev – overwhelmed by framework choices - <AUTHOR> Long story short: I'm an experienced developer who's been 'out-of-the-game' for the past 5 years doing things other than web development.
I am making a mobile app and need to make its web-side counter part...but am overwhelmed by the sheer number of web frameworks out there.  Is Rails still the king?  I see a lot of love for Node.
Also...lots of PHP based stacks out there.  Spring boot?
Things I am looking for in a framework: -authentication plug-in -basic CRUD -basic NOSQL -ability to attache images -beautification (like Bootstrap...something other than stock controls) -an active community and/or documentation where I can go for help
Bonus:
I like the idea of single page web-apps like Angular or React.  Is there a back-end framework that works particularly well with these?
Thanks,
PS-yes I've googled this question but honestly it yielded more questions than answers! <comment><USER2> It really depends on the programming languages that you're comfortable with. The biggest one that I personally would suggest is the .net ecosystem. You can use Xamarin to build your mobile apps, asp.net/asp.net core to build your web application/rest api, and a lot of the things that you're looking for can easily be added using nugets (.nets package manager) all by knowing C#. If you like single page applications look into [https://blazor.net/](https://blazor.net/) which is a pretty new SPA framework (still in early testing/concept) using C#/Web assembly on the front end. Like I said personally .net is one of my favorite stacks. The other is Django which is also a great framework for building web apps/apis. Recently I've been playing around with a web ecosystem in golang called Buffalo which seems pretty promising if you like go.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any back end will work fine with those front-end frameworks. You just have to be able to build out an HTTP API. Rails is still perfectly viable, just less dominant than 5 years ago.

If you're building this thing to have it built, I'd say go with what you know - at least on the back end where what you know is still relevant. Learning new front end paradigms will be enough of a challenge in itself.

If you're building it primarily as a learning project, then go ahead and pick up something new for the back end too.</comment>


Redis Labs Raises a $60M Series E Round - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/redis-labs-raises-a-60m-series-e-round/ <comment><USER2> > Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal told me the company's isn't cash positive yet. He > also noted that the company didn't need to raise this round but that he > decided to do so in order to accelerate growth. "In this competitive > environment, you have to spend a lot and push hard on product development," > he said.

I'm always amazed how startups like this where R&D practically cost nothing are not profitable yet after years in the market and thousands of customers. C'mon guys 99% of the work is already done by antirez and the open source community.

<comment><USER3> 99% of the job building the core tech; the other 99% of the job is sales, support, account management, marketing, etc.

It's never just the product, no matter how much we builder types might like.

(No idea whether 60M is the right number for the rest though.)

<comment><USER4> Sometimes writing the code is, like, 10% or 20% of the work. Everything else-- marketing, hiring, lead gen, legal, accounting, billing, contract negotiation, compliance, on and on--while not creative work, absolutely and disappointingly cannot be ignored.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Again this bullshit:

"When we came out with this new license, there were many different views," he acknowledged. "Some people condemned that. But after the initial noise calmed down — and especially after some other companies came out with a similar concept — the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn't suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it."

Okay, so here's the thing, at FOSDEM this year there were multiple events around this issue, and I haven't seen a single person defend the stance of Redis and others. Also the original concept of open source is doing fine, thanks. The problem is a couple of overvalued, VC-backed companies that found out they don't have a business model that is compatible with the promises they made to their investor.

<comment><USER6> This is weird. I just came back from a gun rights rally in AZ, and haven't seen a single person defend the stance for gun control.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure there's people in the world that benefit from Redis's stance other than Redis.

<comment><USER8> If that means that RedisLabs stays in business and Redis stays maintained (which is not otherwise guaranteed), it means that the general public still benefits from it.

<comment><USER9> you know that you can have redis maintained, by just by hiring antirez? So instead of raising $60M you can just pay $500k per year.

<comment><USER8> Who says that antirez can be hired "that cheaply"? Assuming he also owns equity of RedisLabs, anything short of a good exit might not be worth the oportunity cost for him.

Of course that is baseless speculation, but so is assuming that Redis could be continued to be maintained "by just hiring antirez".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the license page: [https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/](https://redislabs.com/community/licenses/)

> Is Commons Clause open source?

> According to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), open source licensing cannot > limit the scope of a license – it only applies conditions to exercising it. > With this model, no one can stop you from doing whatever you want with the > software, whether commercial or non-commercial, or (famously) good or evil. > Therefore, the no-sale restriction imposed by Commons Clause means that any > software under this new license is non-open source by definition. However, > in practice, Commons Clause only adds a limitation concerning fair use, and > we believe that both licensing approaches share the same core value of > making software available for use by anyone.

That's a long way of saying the new license is not OSI-compliant. The new license is BSD with a common clause which according to the president of OSI, this clause instantly renders it non-approved.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-licensing-war- comm...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-licensing-war-commons- clause/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Redis, but I'm a bit skeptical of some of the changes that are currently in development. The respv3 protocol has some features that, while they sound neat, also could significantly complicate client library code. There's also a lot of work going into a granular acl. I can't imagine why this would be necessary, or a higher priority than other changes like multi-thread support, better persistence model, data-types, etc.

<comment><USER12> Thanks coleifer, I understand that the current development path may look odd, but it's definitely not the first time: the critiques for Lua scripting or Pub/Sub where much stronger AFAIK :-) However I want to really share what is the process behind and why certain features like ACLs are so important (for reasons very different than the ones you may guess I think, that is, no enterprise customers in need for security), and why RESP3 has out-of-band data channels support (even if they are not implemented by the server). I'll write a blog post today, and reply here with the address. Cheers!

P.S. I'll also address threading and persistence.

<comment><USER11> Thank you for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully to my comment. If I had been talking directly to you, I hope I would have written something less entitled and expressed more gratitude for the gifts you've given the community, and which you continue to improve.

Redis is _exactly_ the kind of software that gives me joy. Aesthetically and intellectually. Its pieces are orthogonal -- a word you used in your blog post. The code is small, tight, and well designed. It invites you to think more creatively. The lolwut command was also a very good innovation!

<comment><USER12> Your comment was already great. It was the comment of somebody that cares about Redis and is closely observing what direction it is headed. Also I went through your own set of questions exactly and decided to do certain things after some consideration: it's not obvious at all if this was the right decision but at least the process can be made transparent. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speaking to a room full of CEOs at a summit, the CEO of Chegg once said "If you are raising a series F, it means what you think it means."

<comment><USER14> What does it mean?

Tesla raised Series F in 2009, and it's still alive.

<comment><USER15> Workday also raised a series F.

They're presently worth $42 billion with $2.1b in sales, 172% sales growth over three years, and are likely set to be another enterprise software juggernaut.

It clearly doesn't inherently mean anything. What matters is whether the business is growing properly versus the capital being consumed. If more capital will reasonably accelerate growth further, feed the business more capital (depending on what the owners want to pursue of course).

<comment><USER7> And I've recently used it for the first time, and it's only marginally less horrible than the Oracle stuff. How does all enterprise HR software end up so horrible?

<comment><USER16> Sales people bending over to every single of their enterprise's customers demands to make a sale (and get their commission). And engineering wanting to kill themselves and just duct taping on all the nonsense sales forces on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a customer, this is unfortunate news.

Why is it so hard to just supply an honest service in exchange for money and take a nice profit?

<comment><USER18> You're getting downvoted but I too hate the world domination plans of every single successful start up.

<comment><USER19> Reminds me of being promoted until you fail. Growing and creeping until you fail to deliver the core service you were the best at. HN skews hard to the unicorn-or-bust mentality for some reason.

<comment><USER20> Probably because YC owns HN and they only make money if more people drink the VC Kool-Aid?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hmmm. The more money companies raise, the less honesty we tend to see from them.

</comment><comment><USER22> What is the longterm path for things like Redis Labs, Mongo, and Elastic, etc? They all seem to have an open source database which they in turn monetize by offering as a DBaaS. But can they really bet against AWS in the long run?

Elastic's own cloud ElasticSearch is better than AWS's notoriously bad implementation, but what if it wasn't? Elastic's cloud offering runs on AWS and other third party offerings, so all it would take would be AWS reaching relative parity in quality, and they would then surely have the upper-hand by being the cloud infrastructure their own offering is run off of. I feel like the same is true with AWS Elasticache vs Redis Labs. What if AWS reaches parity, but can additionally offer the ease of not managing 2 accounts, as well as the ease of co-locating the cache with the app server and putting it all in a VPC. What is the endgame for these DBaaS when they have AWS copying their work?

<comment><USER23> The longterm path is to relicense with [https://commonsclause.com/](https://commonsclause.com/) and prevent AWS from selling the software as a platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How many letters can you do? F, G, H?

<comment><USER12> The idea is to follow plain ASCII given that Redis handles strings as binary blobs. So after round Z we are going to do round [, followed by \ and ].

<comment><USER25> So Series A is already the 65th round, right?

<comment><USER26> 27th, blank-or-control characters don't make good labels, plus their phonetic version may confuse investors, e.g. "Series Escape" (033) just sounds bad

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if this raise is to continue scaling the existing product customers/add runway or to expand its's scope to something new.

<comment><USER12> Well from the POV of the open source Redis, also before this round, but even more now, Redis Labs is going to continue to sponsor me, Fabio Nicotra, and other folks around the OSS part doing community/patches/...

I think that part of the round will also serve to put more efforts in the Redis extensions provided as modules. Incidentally I need to extend the modules system a lot more, especially with "hooks" so that modules can capture any command execution, because yesterday I wanted to implement the Gopher protocol as a module and I could not do that easily without spawning a thread to listen to some other socket, and remained hardly disappointed.

<comment><USER28> I hoped you'd be beyond the need to be sponsored by now!

<comment><USER12> You optimist...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Redis Cloud is the very definition of a great cloud service. Cheap, easy, reliable, scalable up and down with no downtime. Can be placed in your same AWS region.

</comment><comment><USER30> I really hope they succeed. Redis has real solid tech that has helped tens of thousands (millions?) websites scaled.

</comment><comment><USER31> This looks like direct competition to Kafka. The technology behind Kafka Streams is solid and can probably give Kafka a run for their money (in fact Redis has more adoption than Kafka). However their product is not in the same quality range.

Hopefully this should fix it.

<comment><USER32> Surely you jest. Redis is less stable than kafka? I must have missed something.

<comment><USER31> I didn't say it was less stable - I said that the product has less features. And I mean product in the larger sense of things - management tools,etc etc. Similar to the Confluent Platform - for the streaming usecase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> what do they offer that the amazon version does not ?

<comment><USER34> I use the Redis service. It's way less expensive. around a 90% less expensive for me. It has all of the high end features. Fault tolerance, etc.

AWS does not compete on price or performance and the Redis servers are hosted directly in whatever cloud facility you'd like.

On final note. Since setting it up, I've never had to look at it again.

<comment><USER35> Do you use Redis on flash by chance? I'm guessing it could help reduce reliance on more expensive memory-heavy servers (and their higher cost), but I don't hear often about real experiences with the enterprise version of Redis.

<comment><USER34> I use the RedisLabs SaaS. No idea how it works and I don't want to know.

Regarding the speed difference between Flash and RAM etc, it's a very interesting topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would it still be fair to say that Redis typically is used for things like caching, messaging etc (and it's amazing for that), but not as a primary data store? Or did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone know how much redis enterprise costs?

<comment><USER38> Price transparency is not optional for SAAS products. Seems to be a well kept secret on their website. Instant turn off for me. It means there are hidden costs, special deals at the discretion of some sales person, and other sales BS you have to deal with. I see this as an anti pattern for a SAAS service. We pay for lots of SAAS stuff at the company I run; we don't talk to sales people for any of that stuff ever. We engage with their support when stuff is broken. But not sales.

Redis is a great product but I fail to see the valuation that comes with a 60M investment (a billion+?). Yes, the cloud offered variety could potentially be interesting but competing products are available and this seems to be a commodity product running on commodity hardware. AWS already offers it so do others, I believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> A wise man once said "you don't want to raise a series D and certainly nothing after that"</comment>


Facebook is putting up paywalls on its iOS app - <AUTHOR> https://www.jiffchat.com/m/7CqGtX5QycIC5o+0CNd8s+4Ca12Als36GSdqCa9KeQM= <comment><USER2> Something about this doesn't make sense to me. One would think they'd force open access and force ads. I can't imagine that the group willing to pay for content would end up being more profitable than the group that doesn't pay, but views ads. It's such an infinitely smaller group.</comment>


Speculation over back door in Skype - <AUTHOR> http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Speculation-over-back-door-in-Skype--/news/111170 <comment><USER2> I don't know if Skype has a back door, but I'll say this: If I worked for the NSA, I would write Skype. And it would have a back door.

Because really, what could possibly be better backdoorware than closed-source code with anti-debugging mechanisms, which millions of people have installed and running continuously, and which has a completely plausible excuse for sending and receiving large volumes of encrypted traffic?

As I see it, the only question we should be asking about Skype's security is this: Should we just assume that government(s) can listen in on Skype calls -- or should we assume that running Skype gives governments access to everything on our systems?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you write automated tests for your side projects? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Always.

A "side project" is a project, which by definition, doesn't have my full attention. I need to have confidence that I can tweak it and re-deploy it when I have a moment of inspiration or a bug-report.

The main way to be confident that you haven't broken things? Adding test- cases. I started out writing unit-tests for the APIs I present and consume, then later added more tests which run from "Signup, Use the service, Delete the account".

In all honesty I don't run the full suite very often, but when I do I'm glad I took the time to write it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This really depends on the size of the project and how many developers are involved for me. If it's just me and there are no external users then I almost never write them due to priority. If there are external users and/or at least two developers, then absolutely.

It's a great sign people are writing automated tests for their side projects because based on my experience there are still many teams that aren't bothering to do so for bigger production projects adequately. It's one of those things everyone knows they should do and talk about it but the resources and priorities are almost never in place. The test results need to be visible by more than just the testers too.

I have a particular interest in test automation due to my involvement at Tesults ([https://www.tesults.com](https://www.tesults.com)). This is a test results dashboard for teams of about 10-20 or more - it's not designed for tiny teams or side projects but if you're interested in trying it out for a small team send an email using the address on the site with the link to this page on HN and we can sort you out - only really worth it if you are doing continuous build/integration too, overkill for one or two person teams.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes always, I hate it, that's the worst part of every application, testing in general but it's also the foundation for a good night sleep.

</comment><comment><USER5> Depends on the size and use case of the project. If it's only a small hobby project that myself and a few others use, writing automated tests instead of manual testing is overkill. If you have paying customers or have made an implicit promise to keep the service up and running, then automated tests make sense.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, always. That way I can refactor much faster because I know the tests will catch me.

</comment><comment><USER7> Never. And then I change platforms, say from heroku to deis. It's is about this time that I wish I at least had some end-to-end tests on the big things like signup, password reset, and profile editing.

Call it post-facto regret I guess.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some. Not full coverage ever. Partially depends on the language. Statically typed languages come with many free tests called type checking.

</comment><comment><USER9> Always. If I'm trying to learn something new, I need to write automated tests to check my understanding or else I'll end up getting lost.</comment>


JavaScript and screen readers - <AUTHOR> http://northtemple.com/2008/10/07/javascript-and-screen-readers <comment><USER2> The biggest trick to screen readers is focus and blur as well mouse tracking events. With these you can generally get a screen reader to do what you want. Usually setting focus on an item will activate the screen reader and force it to parse and read the new item.</comment>


Ask HN: Did anyone get their myo and what do they think of it? - <AUTHOR>

I just got my myo (https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo/)  and was wondering what others have thought of it?  So far, general calibration has been frustrating and there seems to be limited app integration atm. <comment><USER2> There seems to be a lot of hype around this device, but I personally just could not get it to work very well, nor could the 3 or 4 people I showed it to. I understand that the gesture recognition is based on statistical data and there will be people with issues, so perhaps I am just one of the outliers. That being said, I have not tried their new firmware (I will in the next couple days), so maybe that will help.</comment>