Sad but true: Napster '99 still smokes Spotify 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/17/parker_fanning_on_napster/ <comment><USER2> It is really hard to compare Napster and Spotify as they are entirely different beasts. Let me just say that I built the Napster server, so I'm biased. I have also been a Spotify user for several years.

For me, Spotify is a sub par experience because I don't know what I want and I have different music tastes than my friends. The only thing that makes Spotify useful for me is sites like <http://sharemyplaylists.com/>. I imagine for people who know exactly what they want and just treat it like a giant jukebox, it is a fantastic service. I am not one of those people.

Napster for me, was about finding people as much as music. I was part of a community of people that were super stoked to talk about some new indie band. I would search, notice who had music I was looking for, send them a message and start talking.

I met a lot of people in real life through Napster often at shows. I know others did as well since we received thank you letters and in a couple cases, wedding announcements.

I think the community with its passion for music was what made Napster great, not the massive catalog. All I had to do was enter one of many indie channels and read for half a minute before I had three new things to listen to and a bunch of people to talk to them about.

Not to discount the catalog, I will say that the catalog at Napster will possibly never be duplicated. There were a lot of back catalog works, a lot of pre-release works and a ton of bootlegs. Sure, the quality was sometimes poor, but then I used Napster as a tasting service and then, you know, bought the originals when I could.

My hope is Spotify continues to improve and eventually becomes more community oriented or something else comes along and re-ignites the flame. Music is one of those things that is central to a lot of people's lives and you couldn't ask for a more passionate userbase.

<comment><USER3> Woah, you wrote the server for Napster?! That's awesome!

Can you talk about that a bit? What was the underlying algorithm, what was the stack and how much data were you pushing at your max?

<comment><USER2> Which underlying algorithm?

The search engine was built on a ternary tree with a custom merging algorithm. I honestly don't know if the merging algorithm has a name as it was something I came up with (literally) while sleeping one night. Because we mostly used ID3 tags and file names, it was completely unnecessary to use a stemming algorithm because if you typed in a misspelled search, given the size of our index, there was probably someone who tagged their file using the same misspelling.

The network biasing code used BGP data combined from a number of looking glass servers to build a map of ip/prefix -> ASN number and ASN->ASN distances. It was then used to reorder search results based on network distance to users so they would bias towards their own networks and save ISPs money and speed transfers on broadband connections.

Servers were linked through a fully meshed network. Each had presence information about every user on the network so that they could route IMs around. The chat system was semi-linked (fully linked on some servers, but we couldn't fully link the whole thing because the client had no administrative functions for chat). If we couldn't send the user back enough results for a search, the query was simply passed around the backend.

The whole thing was written in C++. At its peak, there were about 2.3 million users online at any given time (80 million total users growing by a million every 4 days). The system would be indexing about 17.6 million files per second (and de-indexing about the same amount). The whole system pushed out about 2 Gbps of bandwidth in search results (which were tiny).

Napster was one of the very first services to push past 10K connections on a Linux machine. At peak, I could get over 100K users on a single process (though I'd run out of memory indexing files on the tiny 2 GB machines and blow out the NIC sending search results). During normal operations, each server process had around 40K users on it and between 7-12 million files indexed.

There were a bunch of side infrastructure things no one saw. Court mandated copyright filtering systems, recommender systems (most for play), load balancing servers, bot detection and sequestration systems, analytics reporting jobs, etc.

Nowadays, I could probably fit all of Napster on one big machine. Heh.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's incredibly fascinating! Thanks for posting such a great reply! You built something that really changed the world, in my opinion, and you should be very proud.

I'm particularly pleased by the use of ASN/distancing weights in your results! None of the BT trackers I've hacked around on have had anything like that in them.

Where is the code now? It should be in a museum.

<comment><USER2> No problem! It occurred to me that I've never really talked about the Napster architecture or algorithms publicly.

I once hacked up Transmission to re-prioritize based on network distance. It worked rather well when it discovered over the DHT. It is a lot easier when you only have to calculate distance between you and other networks. Storing the graph of distances between two arbitrary users is harder.

The code was part of the assets that were bought out of bankruptcy by Roxio (who renamed themselves Napster). I doubt it is being used for anything.

<comment><USER4> you should definitely publish this kind of things somewhere. it was big way before the whole big data stuff around.

cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with this -- i was a very heavy Napster user in 99 and am a very heavy Spotify user (and, NB, they are a customer) today. Obviously it's a fun angle for a SXSW talk, but:

\- The "depth of catalog" is actually incorrect -- Spotify has far far more songs than Napster did (you can see in that screenshot even, most logins/servers hit less than 1m songs totally available, and of course those are just total indexed, in reality almost 50% of downloads would not be available.) Yes, you could find niche stuff on Napster-- as a musician in 1999 I would make sure all my stuff was available, pre-release, demos, etc. But we have Soundcloud for that now, so...

\- The discovery on Napster was non-existent. You could browse through a users' collection, the same way you can browse through playlists today. But the only entry into anything was a search box that only looked at ID3v1 data and filenames. There's been amazing leaps and bounds in discovery since then, and it's very clear by the #s that it's what people wanted -- a guided (radio, playlist) experience over a wild west single song retrieval thing.

\- Napster was stupid bad at search. There obviously was no catalog resolution and the quality of the results was abysmal. I am pretty sure it was a substring match, for one, and then there was the bad metadata, fake songs, later on a huge spam / "SEO" problem.

\- Not going to get into speed, because it wasn't Napster's fault, but even back then it was far easier to get music elsewhere other than Napster if possible. Ratio FTP sites, hotline, and of course bubblecruft startups building customer bases by selling new CDs for $4. It was very clear at the time even that the distributed nature of Napster was a liability, not a promise, as all the single-server solutions were far more convenient and reliable. But this was not their fault and of course their success inspired everything after it.

<comment><USER2> \- _most logins/servers hit less than 1m songs totally available_

The backend servers were linked. If your request couldn't be fulfilled on one, your search was forwarded to the next server. The total number of files on Napster at its peek was over half a billion files. Further, that picture must have been from a server that just started because the average server had significantly more users/files on it.

Further, Napster users were ripping everything in sight. There were mp3 encodings of old _wax cylinders_ uploaded for goodness sakes.

\- _The discovery on Napster was non-existent. You could browse through a users' collection, the same way you can browse through playlists today._

There was an entire curated music website dedicated to music discovery that loaded into the client.

The chat and instant message system allowed people to talk about music which created a massive music-focused community. It was wildly popular.

And don't underestimate browsing. People would search for the one song they were interested in, notice who they were downloading from, browse the other user and then start pulling down their music if they noticed several songs they liked in it. They then could send a message to that user and add them to a friend's list. That was not just music discovery, but friend discovery as well.

\- _I am pretty sure it was a substring match_

The very first versions were substring match when there were maybe 10,000 users. Later version were not and allowed basic boolean queries like term exclusion.

\- _Not going to get into speed, because it wasn't Napster's fault, but even back then it was far easier to get music elsewhere other than Napster if possible_

There was an algorithm on Napster that did network distance biasing. Basically, if you were an AOL user, you'd first get AOL users back when doing a search. If you were an Internet 2 or even @Home user however, your speeds were epic.

* Note: I built and ran the Napster server.

<comment><USER6> _Note: I built and ran the Napster server._

I just want to say: thank you for building one of the most important inventions of our time. (Napster kickstarted the information sharing revolution.)

<comment><USER7> Usenet might wish to contest that claim :)

<comment><USER8> BBS's also functioned in a similar way before Usenet did.

That said, Napster made it all _really_ easy. They also came along when CD drives were finally commonplace, and Winamp had seeded the ground by having people build up a library of MP3s beforehand.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, I remember Napster as being quite late to the party. Everyone I knew (geeks and some non geeks) had been happily using ratio FTPs for years (using usenet and irc to find them) and then later Audiogalaxy took care of the discovery problem. I also remember CD drives being fairly common by 1996/7 (it was CD burners that took a few years longer to hit sensible price points).

But its been a while so maybe my rose tinted glasses have munged things a bit! :)

And you're right, BBSes were doing similar things first (although I assume good ones were harder to find than usenet groups or irc chans - don't know because BBSes were before my time!) but of course the mp3 standard didn't exist back when they were at their zenith. MP3s only started appearing en-mass around 1997 I think (??). Before that, I remember every one used to share tiny wav and midi sound file clips on their homepages (my first ever homepage was made to share wav clips of simpsons and monty python dialogue - lol how embarassingly quaint!)

<comment><USER8> You know, you're probably right, I think I'm off about 2 years.

Yeah, in my BBS days I remember downloading MOD files and demo videos. I still remember being blown away by Future Crew.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Napster was cool because it had live music and bootlegs that are often times very tough to find. A lot of napster was sifting through crap songs to find the good versions.

Spotify and the others are cool because you can stream stuff while on your phone. And getting to the music you want to hear was more seamless and straightfoward.

So in summary, almost, but not quite.

Napster was also one of the first geek-tools to really hit mainstream, and boy was that weird.

<comment><USER10> You really nailed it with this comment. Napster is from another era when the thrill of discovery was much greater than it is now. Objectively maybe Napster isn't as great as all the nostalgia would have us believe. Maybe there are actually more songs on Spotify (probably not, but humor me). The thing is, back then, if you searched and didn't find today, it didn't mean you wouldn't find tomorrow. You never knew when you would find a gold mine of a collection that not only had what you were looking for but actually schooled you on a bunch of new stuff.

Napster was a magical moment where the underground went mainstream for a split second before being snuffed out. Of course these type of (smaller) communities still exist online, and music fans are better off than they ever were, but Napster embodied a sea change that could only happen once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _But the "evil" aspect of Napster wasn't that it was P2P: it was that it didn't return any money to the creators._

No, it's because it forfeited the control the labels had over the music. They've showed again and again that they don't mind losing money to maintain that control.

<comment><USER12> P2P is just technology. Making it work so that the right people are compensated is hard. My startup is trying - [http://www.gigaom.com/2012/03/05/audiogalaxy- personalized-p2...](http://www.gigaom.com/2012/03/05/audiogalaxy- personalized-p2p-radio/). This just launched a week or so ago - give it a shot!

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the suggestion and I hope you'll succeed, but frankly I can't; assuming you're giving a cut of your income to the big labels, I'd be contributing to companies that actively lobby to destroy things I hold dear.

Nowadays I only buy music that I'm reasonably sure it won't feed the RIAA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's interesting that it's more than a decade since Napster, and the music industry hasn't gone bust yet. It's almost like P2P cannot destroy the main music industry.

<comment><USER14> no but the music industry can destroy the music industry, and they're doing a bang-up job of it. maybe a different way to think of it is: it's been more than a decade since napster and the music industry is just now beginning to get a clue.

<comment><USER15> The iTunes Music Store has been around since 2003. It has been three years since all DRM has been removed and files are 256kbit/s AAC.

Granted, this happened _despite_ the music industry's efforts, it took a lot of pressure from Apple to get there. But still, I very much prefer the current situation over when Napster reigned. (Does noone remember the amount of garbage on Napster? The malware, the fake files, the low quality files? Not to speak of the terrible speeds -- many peers were still on dial-up...)

With iTunes, you can find new music easily, download high quality files, and get the album art and liner notes. Downloading and purchasing is fast and safe. You get to pay a fair price and know that the rights holders are being compensated.

<comment><USER2> Actually, SNOCAP started selling DRM-free music on MySpace exclusively back before DRM-free music was a glimmer in Apple's eye. We were mostly doing indie music when we had all the major labels come to us and ask how they could sell music on MySpace and eventually negotiated deals for it to all be DRM-free.

After that, it was relatively easy for Apple to go DRM-free (though oddly, they still refused to do it for some time after).

* Note: Shawn Fanning and I founded SNOCAP after Napster blew up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me the coolest thing about Napster was all the remixes people were making. You could search for "[anything] remix" (e.g. Tetris remix, Nintendo remix, Sesame Street remix, ...) and find something awesome that would never see the light of day in a label. Some of those remixes bled through into the later P2P systems.

Napster was one of the first services to give the mainstream world a glimpse at the digital information utopia made possible by the Internet. The paternalistic distribution systems we have now are a mere shadow of what could be without the strangling influence of the media industry.

<comment><USER17> they were excellent! but the remixes are still around (and new ones being made), they've just moved to YouTube now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The fatal flaw of Spotify, Rdio, and even Last.fm is that finding good music is just too much work. Too much social and too many clicks.

I wish Pandora could buy one of these services and combine their discovery engine with the catalogues of the subscription services.

Until then, I think I'll just keep buying music.

<comment><USER12> Hey, if you like discovery try Audiogalaxy Mixes - we just launched it a week or so ago [1]. We think it's better than Pandora (much larger catalog, smarter algos, more input types) - tell me if it's not. It's free on the web (no ads) with a free trial on mobile, after which we charge a small fee to cover licensing costs. If you email email@example.com with your account I'll comp you a free month. I'd love to know what you think.

Here's a Mix I've made, for example: <http://www.audiogalaxy.com/mix/87-Guitar%20Gods/>?

[1][http://www.geekwire.com/2012/audiogalaxy-music-service- rebor...](http://www.geekwire.com/2012/audiogalaxy-music-service-reborn- approach)

<comment><USER19> Ahhhh. Audiogalaxy. That brings back memories.

It was amazing back in it's (less legitimate) days. It took over from Napster but improved on it in many ways.

<comment><USER12> It's evolved and we're trying to re-create some of the same magic, with the same team. First step: [http://gigaom.com/2012/03/05/audiogalaxy- personalized-p2p-ra...](http://gigaom.com/2012/03/05/audiogalaxy- personalized-p2p-radio/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So just because Napster had built in chat and a wider illegal catalogue it becomes better than Spotify eh? Also, why would I want to know the personality of some ramdom guy on the other side of my p2p connection? This is mostly a fluff piece with absolutely nothing new or interesting being said.

<comment><USER21> I thought browsing other folks libraries was pretty cool. As an artist, I'd look myself up, and see what else those people listened to. Pretty neat and I've yet to come across anything similar. I haven't had to the time to investigate the other p2p music platforms since then, so probably others have that feature...

<comment><USER22> I like that aspect of Soulseek. When someone shows up in the search results for some obscure track, you can see what else they listen to. The browsing interface also keeps their music organization, so it can be a pretty interesting way to browse if you run across a collector-type person with an organized-into-genre filesystem. You can also chat with them, and there are in addition IRC-style chat rooms for various genres and interests.

<comment><USER23> yes, soulseek was created by a former napster developer. it is very similar to napster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The irony being that Spotify has a social strategy.

</comment><comment><USER25> > What a pity the large labels a decade ago didn't appreciate that Napster was > a social network – just one built around music. Who knows, today it might be > as big as you-know-who.

Ping?

</comment><comment><USER26> I like Spotify and find it infinitely more useful for music discovery than Napster ever was. Sure it would be nice if they had a more comprehensive catalog but finding complete high quality recordings on Napster was always impossible. I dug around for weeks trying to complete an album at a decent bitrate. By comparison Spotify has figured out how to serve complete high quality music legally at a very reasonable price.

</comment><comment><USER27> Absolutely a fluff piece. No mention of any other legal services that offer exactly what the author is writing about (namely Grooveshark).

<comment><USER28> Grooveshark's legality is questionable at best.

<comment><USER27> Legality is following the letter of the law (e.g. DMCA), to which Grooveshark does and exceeds. Being praised and loved by all labels is what Spotify is doing (by paying out the ass in investor money).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I find more awesome music, quicker, with Spotify than I ever did with any other music tool. I especially like the apps for this: Pitchfork, Guardian, RollingStone, etc. This combined with checking out what my "friends" are listening to really is a great way to find good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER30> The author didn't even clearly state how Napster '99 smokes Spotify. The only feature that I thought he stated was that Napster had a form of chat and how it could have potentially evolved into a social network.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it's a little unfair to make a comparison to something that is essentially illegal against something that is not. I know Spotify has it's flaws both in its business model and catalog but as someone who has used virtually every illegal filesharing method going in the past and has now been converted to Spotify I think they should be given a little more credit.

It's not the fault of Spotify that the collection is limited. At least they are trying to move the music industry into the future - whether it will work or not who knows but I'm sure we will all look back in hindsight and see Spotify as the pioneer of whatever comes.

<comment><USER11> I think you're reading too much into it. The article just gives you a fact - Napster was in many ways better than Spotify is now. It doesn't blame the Spotify devs for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My college used DC++ to internally share music, movies, tv shows, and porn. You could browse someones entire media collection. It gave you an overall sense for their taste in music and was a great way to find new bands. Reading about Napster reminded me how much I miss this feature.

The article glosses over how slow Napster '99 was. I remember waiting a couple hours to download an album. Fast downloads are more important than social features. I do not miss Napster.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, this was the age of dial-up, not broadband.

<comment><USER33> I disagree. 97-99 were the years of massive broadband cable rollout to suburban America. This was the time that broadband arrived, and you see it reflected in the software of that era particularly video games for example Quake, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Ultima Online, Everquest. It was the boom of real time multiplayer, which required a broadband connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I hadn't bothered to look at Spotify, in terms of using the service (I was familiar with the company et al). I've used iTunes with locally stored music for a really long time.

So I went to spotify.com, read over their product and information. Checked out their plans. Decided I'd see what they can do with the Unlimited $4.99 plan.

I went to sign up for Spotify. They required I use my Facebook account.

Nope.

</comment><comment><USER35> Cloud music services are too limited, and all they get you is not having to store your music on a device you carry around with you all the time anyway.</comment>


ChatWithTheBand—Like Airtime, But With Famous People - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5918242/chatwiththeband++its-airtime-but-with-semi+famous-people

<comment><USER2> This is one of those products that seems like an obvious compliment to the "digital album", in that additional content-- interactive communication, behind-the-scenes recordings, alternate takes, and all of that goodness can accompany the output of any release.</comment>


Microcontainers – Tiny, Portable Docker Containers - <AUTHOR> http://www.iron.io/blog/2016/01/microcontainers-tiny-portable-containers.html <comment><USER2> > Docker enables you to package up your application along with all of the > application's dependencies into a nice self-contained image. You can then > use use that image to run your application in containers.

Actually docker was created to enable easy scaling of web applications. If you want to package your application up take a look at some modern package managers. By using a modern package manager like nix you can work around the issues of containers while still keeping the "it just works" advantage of containers.

This does not mean that containers are bad, it's just that using a good package manager is usually a simpler solution.

Take a look at my blog post if you want to read more on this: [http://www.mpscholten.de/docker/2016/01/27/you-are-most- like...](http://www.mpscholten.de/docker/2016/01/27/you-are-most-likely- misusing-docker.html)

<comment><USER3> I mostly agree with what you're saying, but what caught my eye was:

> About the author > Hey! I'm Marc, an eighteen years old software engineer > located in Germany.

You're obviously quite knowledgeable and well spoken for such a young age, and presumably English isn't your first language either. I just wanted to say keep up the good work, you have a bright future ahead of you – kudos!

<comment><USER4> Surprised he advertises his age, I started working around that age and pretty deliberately avoided age as a topic of discussion. Age is something best left unmentioned in a professional context.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the advice. I've thought about it a little bit and decided to remove it with my next update to the web page.

<comment><USER3> I'd love to say it's not sage advice, but it is. Unfortunately, once people know your age they will – consciously or subconsciously – treat you differently. I rather quickly opted to never disclosing my age in any context, unless it is absolutely necessary (it almost never is.) It's just easier that way, leads to less discrimination. Unlike skin color or other highly visual traits, it's one aspect of your person you _can_ hide without any significantly negative consequence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Docker storage engines remember all the layers by storing incremental differences so it makes little sense to have a layer that only removes things (like the last RUN in [https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/blob/master/ruby/Dockerfi...](https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/blob/master/ruby/Dockerfile)). You can see with `docker history <image>` that this layer has 0 bytes and you can access anything that it removes by using the parent image (`docker run -it 88ae7e32865f ls /var/cache/apk`).

In this case it doesn't make much difference (a couple of MB perhaps) but often you'll see people chaining all the commands and ending it with a cleanup in a single RUN like here: [https://github.com/docker- library/ruby/blob/ccbf9e54f60ba245...](https://github.com/docker- library/ruby/blob/ccbf9e54f60ba2455f4f18e223c5745a14657bdb/2.0/Dockerfile)

<comment><USER6> Heh, looks like the author fixed this [1] and it now uses the technique you suggest, based on issue #22 [2] which restates the same thing as your comment, basically chaining everything together with `&&` in a single `RUN` entry.

[1] [https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/commit/71687edb849dcb9079...](https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/commit/71687edb849dcb9079572f1de251106f6e666ed9) [2] [https://github.com/iron-io/dockers/issues/22](https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/issues/22)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do we really need to brand using smaller containers as microcontainers? Why not submit these as pull requests to the official docker images rather than introducing more fragmentation?

Also worth noting that the official docker images are moving towards alpine. Of course if you have ruby or node apps your biggest space hog is still going to be your packages.

<comment><USER8> There's also a very good reason to _not_ move some things to alpine, including ruby and node applications. A significant number of ruby and nodejs apps depend on some c/c++ code hidden away in this module or that gem. Any time you're compiling c/c++ code, you run into a chance of musl vs libc causing differences.

These differences can range from building requiring different options to the application having strange performance characteristics to random crashes (rare!).

In addition, people who write these modules typically test against an ubuntu or debian system, so those are much safer bets. Alpine makes no serious attempt to match packages with those, either in breadth nor version.

It really isn't feasible to unilaterally move people, and for compatibility reasons Docker does not often change tags in such a drastic way.

The official docker images are _often_ offering alpine _alternatives_ in different tags, which is not the same as "moving towards" as you remarked.

<comment><USER9> We are in fact moving towards alpine, but can't just switch the default tags overnight in case some users depend on the properties of certain distros.

<comment><USER10> excited to see recently added support[1] of dns search domains in musl (and therefore Alpine).

[1] [http://git.musl- libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=3d6e2e477ced37...](http://git.musl- libc.org/cgit/musl/commit/?id=3d6e2e477ced37fd328870f018950b283cb7293c)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always felt that VMs are a sign that show that OSes have imperfectly abstracted the virtualization of their resources. A "design smell" if you will.

When you get right down to it a window is a virtualization of a screen, a packet switching network is a virtualization of a fixed line, a process is a virtualization of a CPU, etc. (I can't remember who I'm quoting).

The direction this is all heading (VMs, containers, unikernels, etc.) feels like confirmation of this to me. A series of corrections aligning our OSes with more ideal/virtual abstractions.

<comment><USER12> Plan 9 was a realization of this line of abstraction, in a lot of ways. Even though I never used the platform for anything serious, I still draw inspiration from it all these years later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Isn't it the same as using "alpine" as base ? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10782897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10782897)

<comment><USER14> It looks like their base image is based off of the alpine image[1].

[1]: [https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/blob/master/base/Dockerfi...](https://github.com/iron- io/dockers/blob/master/base/Dockerfile)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have to say I love the work iron.io does. Their "iron worker"[1] service is awesome (think Amazon Lambda for pretty much any common language).

[1] [http://www.iron.io/worker/](http://www.iron.io/worker/)

<comment><USER16> Interesting. How long does it take an "iron worker" to start code execution after a webhook (latency)?

<comment><USER17> Typically a couple seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems to solve one of my biggest issues with trying to use individual Dockers to run microservices.

Past experiments proved that it wasn't feasible to match one microservice request to one Docker instance. The size of each Docker required vertical scaling of the microservices per container, which was not ideal.

Good job Iron.io! Might trying playing with these at some point.

<comment><USER8> ... Why? The scalability difference (in terms of disk space) between having multiple services per container and many containers is, in practice, zero.

That's because of layered filesystems and most of the language runtimes and other images pulling from a small set of base images.

For example, if you have two node applications, the base "nodejs" image is 633MB in size. If both of your applications have "FROM node" at the top and proceed to add different applications (say 2MB each), you'll find the "node" portion is totally shared and only the diff, you copying in your application's files, is different. You'll only store a single copy of the 633MB node image + your two application image's diffs, for a total of 637MB.

That number is the same if you bundle the applications (vertically scale as you say it).

This is also sorta true across language runtimes too! With some creative diffing, I experimentally tested the difference between the ruby and nodejs images. It turns out there's just under 600MB in common. The ruby image has 116MB of data the node one doesn't, and the node one has ~40MB of data the ruby one doesn't.

Again, you'll end up using a very small amount of disk space.

These savings also apply to downloading images after the initial base layers are downloaded (e.g. docker pull ruby; docker pull node will only download roughly 750MB of data, even though that's two >600MB images).

In any case, it's strange that disk space on the order of a couple gigs is even a scaling concern at all; I'd imagine memory or your application's disk needs would far outweigh such concerns.

My main point, however, is that your discussion of one service per container vs multiple services per container being any different in terms of disk space is rubbish and utterly false.

<comment><USER18> I would assume the smaller images would also result in a smaller memory footprint for running the images and a general reduction in time of starting images. You seem to know a lot of about Docker, is that a wrong assumption?

The scale which I'm discussing is in the order of at least several hundred docker images per second. Previous attempts at making this work involved keep a warm elastic pool of Dockers. I'm working with at least 11 environments, ( which all have separate dependency requirements ).

Instead of trying to manage a very large pool of Dockers, I opted for a smaller pool with several larger servers to scale the microservices vertically ( using tools like chroot to help try to isolate each service per silo ).

My main issue with using Docker for this was the bulk of the containers. Startup time, RAM consumption, and the size of the images were all causing me issues.

<comment><USER19> Your assumptions are wrong. Glibc is faster (and better) than musl. Systemd is faster (and better) than SYSV init scripts.

Moreover, for example, I can update my running containers based on Fedora 23 without restarting container, by issuing "dnf update", which will download updated package from local server, which is much faster that to build container, publish it to hub, download it back, restart container (even when only static files are changed).

<comment><USER20> whoa - you have a container with working systemd ? I thought that was an unfixed bug - [https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/5773](https://github.com/docker/docker/pull/5773) and [https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/3629](https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/3629)

<comment><USER19> Yep. It have some quirks (hard to shutdown properly), but it works.

        [vlisivka@apollo5 docker-centos7-systemd-unpriv]$ ./enter.sh
        [root@e3c3dd7539ad /]# ps ax
        PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
            1 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd
           71 ?        Ss     0:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-journald
           74 ?        Ss     0:00 bash
           92 ?        R+     0:00 ps ax

[https://github.com/vlisivka/docker-centos7-systemd- unpriv](https://github.com/vlisivka/docker-centos7-systemd-unpriv)

<comment><USER20> Hmm.. It's not worth it for me right now. I am using supervisord which works brilliantly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I believe Alpine is GPL licensed. Curious what companies are using Alpine? What ramifications does this have on the licensing of a micro service running in Alpine.

<comment><USER22> The GPL only comes into effect when you redistribute software. Since most companies will probably use it to deploy their own software, GPL does not matter much in practice.

Besides that, for an application only the licenses of libraries that you link against are relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While it's nice to have small on-disk containers for some applications (e.g. deployment pipelines/CI), for production, I've found that Alpine doesn't save you much in RAM. I'd love to see this become something people look at as well when evaluating base images. To me at least, this was a far more important constraint when running Docker in production.

<comment><USER23> To be fair, the case I was testing was node, so the packages could be killing me. Could be much better for a standalone bundled application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I thought everyone was doing this already. The first thing I noticed when pushing my first test version of our Node server was that the images was way above what I thought it should be. It seems really odd that the "official" Docker images are this big. Perhaps to enable easy development within the VMs, and not meaning for these to be distributed?

</comment><comment><USER25> I predict that the term "micro" will be replaced by the term "modular", and that docker will create a replacement for the microcontainer named the modular loader/container.

</comment><comment><USER26> Related repo with micro containers for each language: [https://github.com/iron-io/dockers](https://github.com/iron-io/dockers)

</comment><comment><USER27> how are you guys using docker btw? I keep hearing about it, I like it but have almost to no reason to use it.

<comment><USER28> Amongst other things I use it to run Skype on my Linux laptop, cos I don't trust Microsoft.

[https://github.com/sameersbn/docker- skype](https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-skype)

<comment><USER29> What trust does docker give you? It seems less secure in this instance than properly permissioning skype or creating a true vm for it?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Meteor(JS framework) is dying slowly? - <AUTHOR> I am not trying to assume anything here, but I recently read a blog post about the Kadira's(meteor analytics platform) shut down claiming poor ROI, and it also seems like meteor developers are shifting their focus towards Apollo(GraphQl based) framework. Does it mean meteor may be eclipsed soon? Many people complain that meteor is too much magic and full of surprises to develop enterprise grade apps, and it seems like meteor depends mostly on Galaxy for ROI. Given that meteor is not used much by enterprises, will developers slowly shift to Apollo(since GraphQL is in trend right now)? <comment><USER2> Hi, Meteor cofounder and CEO here :)

Our Meteor business is thriving and we beat our 2016 revenue goal by almost 40%, driven by strong Galaxy growth. We expect that to continue into 2017 based on what we heard from a survey of Meteor/Galaxy users that we did recently – they are using Meteor for mission critical apps and most of them plan to write more Meteor apps in 2017. In line with this, we are growing our Meteor open source team while also continuing to ramp up our work on Apollo.

The big difference between Meteor and Apollo is that Meteor is about new app development (specifically in JavaScript), and Apollo is about a data system that you can add to already-existing apps that are running in production at meaningful scale. There's a place for both of these things and a lot of overlap between them.

Meteor isn't going to take over all JavaScript development the way Rails took over Ruby development, at least not anytime soon. That's just not how the JavaScript ecosystem works. However, I think it will be the #1 full stack JavaScript framework for a long time to come and will continue to be a really great option for teams that want to build JavaScript apps quickly, especially apps that have a realtime or collaborative element.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meteor is not dying, it's just evolving towards more openness and modularity, which is what people have been asking for all along.

This does mean _some_ pieces of Meteor (like its front-end framework Blaze, for example) might become obsolete, but overall it's a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> For reference (I had to look Apollo up) -

MeteorJS: [https://www.meteor.com](https://www.meteor.com)

Apollo Graph Client: [http://dev.apollodata.com](http://dev.apollodata.com)</comment>


Ask News.YC: Does anybody want a forums here? - <AUTHOR>

Maybe this has been asked before, but would there be any interest in having a Hacker News Forums, for general, casual discussion as opposed to just commenting on news posts? I think of HN as a community rather than just a place to read interesting stuff.<p>If there's enough interest, PG, maybe you could add that component to the site if you have time?

<comment><USER2> It's unnecessary. You can submit items without links. So if you want a discussion that isn't about a news item, just pick a topic and submit it.

</comment><comment><USER3> The hckrtrckr site (N.YC/Google Maps mashup) says location-based forums should be up within days.

<comment><USER4> HackrTrackr is almost done. I rewrote quite a bit of it in order to speed up load times, and the area based forums I'm hoping to complete in the next couple days.</comment></comment>


Bering Sea loses half its sea ice over two weeks - <AUTHOR> https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-02-22/bering-sea-loses-half-its-sea-ice-over-two-weeks <comment><USER2> The meaningful question is what you, the person reading these words, will do about it.

Most will think something like "I want to help, but if I act and no one else does it won't make a difference" or "they should pass laws to stop people from doing what causes this and after they do I'll act." To act against your values to follow others is the opposite of leadership.

Some will realize that their actions can make a difference, that they are responsible for the results of their actions -- flying, overheating or overcooling their homes, dietary choices, etc -- and they will choose to hurt others less.

One of my biggest discoveries is that making those choices _improved_ my life. I thought they would feel like sacrifice, and they did in the short term, but in the long term they improved my life. My diet is more delicious for avoiding packaged food and eating from local farms. My life has more adventure and cultural exchange for not flying.

It's not what you stop doing, but what you replace it with.

In other words, there is no dichotomy between polluting less and improving your life.

<comment><USER3> Yes, personal choices are important. I believe that many people around with world will need to make significant changes to their lifestyles, whether by choice to lessen their carbon footprint or by necessity to adapt to new realities in the coming decades. I'm wary of that common strain of techno- utopianism that takes the stance that we can maintain our current lifestyles if only we switch to electric cars, renewable energy, and compostable shopping bags.

But we also need to think about what choices are _available_ to people and what we can do on a larger scale to confront carbon pollution and global warming. Let's think critically about personal choices as they relate to climate change:

\- Does my family have access to quality, local food?

\- Do I have enough information about my the way my produce, grains, etc. were grown to make a purchase decision based on its climate impact?

\- What is the transportation infrastructure like where I live?

\- How does my local, state, or national government incentivize car or home ownership?

...and so on.

EDIT: Formatting.

<comment><USER2> > But we also need to think about what choices are available to people

As long as people act on what they can and not bog themselves down in analysis.

The main reason is that the more people act, the more they find more opportunities to act more, whereas the more they analyze, the less they act. In an entrepreneurial community like HN, it's like realizing that acting on your venture is the best way to progress. Of course, that doesn't mean to act thoughtlessly, but you don't have to think much for most low hanging fruit.

I would rephrase all your questions from passive analysis to active. For example, instead of

> Does my family have access to quality, local food?

I suggest

"What can I do to increase my family's access to quality, local food?"

Instead of

> Do I have enough information about my the way my produce, grains, etc. were > grown to make a purchase decision based on its climate impact?

I suggest

"What can I do to improve how food is produced around me..."

We're not passive recipients of what systems created based on no-longer- credible beliefs about the Earth. We are active participants and can influence these systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or, is it just alarmism?

[https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/noa...](https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/noaa- continue-to-pump-out-arctic-lies/#more-32408)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's really disappointing to see that this article has been upvoted. No, not because I have theories to share, I'm not an armchair scientist on any side of the debate. But because these kinds of politically and socially charged (if one thinks anything on climate change isn't at this point - wow) articles were the primary reason I stopped visiting Slashdot.

With so much quality content flowing through this site, the last thing we need is more like this article being upvoted.

<comment><USER3> Research about climate change may certainly be politically and socially charged, but we're not going to make progress in addressing it by burying articles that share recent findings. It's not the science that we need to debate -- at least not the general trends and forecasts -- but rather the political and social causes and implications of climate change.

Personally, I am always happy to see articles such as this posted here, because it at least means a community of smart, critical thinkers are aware of climate issues.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GoES – Easy to use event sourcing framework for Go (Postgres as store) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bloom42/goes <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I've ported the kickstarter's event sourcing framework ([https://kickstarter.engineering/event-sourcing-made- simple-4...](https://kickstarter.engineering/event-sourcing-made-simple-4...)) to Go. It's similar to the flux architecture in the backend.

Any feedback is welcome.</comment>


Ask HN: Web Startup versus Non-Web Startup - <AUTHOR>

Since I have started visiting HN, I have seen many great reasons/examples for web startups.
However, I have come across some interesting examples of really cheap businesses to start that have very high returns by comparison.
Case in point, a business that I heard about while working an on-site job. One of the technicians cousins had started a business affectionately named, "Scoopy Doo." The cousin paid some workers around $10 an hour to go around the local area and pickup dog excrement from customers yards. He worked approximatively two weeks a year, filling in for when people couldn't work. He has no marketing campaign, very little overhead, and stores the waste on his farm (does not use additional products).
His business nets him $100,000 a year (confirmed), and his market is only a series of small towns in Northern Michigan.
It seems that while there is great value in making a startup on the internet, old fashion entrepreneurship can be more hands on but is still amazing profitable.
Web based companies can grow fast, have huge markets and can be started for very little.
If you truly put your mind to it, you could make a business with very little overhead, very little startup cost and very little micro-management outside of the web.
At the end of the day it is about the percentage return on investment, correct?
So I ask HN, why do we focus on web startups? Why not pay attention on all types of startups?
What about the gray areas in between? For example, creating your own hardware but selling different software for it online. <comment><USER2> HN is build around the web startup community. So, almost all stuff you read here geared towards web stuff.

> At the end of the day it is about the percentage return on investment, > correct?

For me, at the end of the day it is about the satisfaction and happiness I get from my startup. Money certainly matters but it's not primary for me. That said, I'm not saying it's OK to do unprofitable startup. Put a balance to that.

The bottom line is to look for what you're passionate about & what is meaningful to you, whether it's web apps, software, selling stuff, etc and make a startup out of it.

Guy Kawasaki once said: "It's been my observation that most companies founded on this concept of making money pretty much fail. They attract the wrong kind of co-founders and early employees. Entrepreneurs should focus on making their product or service mean something beyond the sum of its components -- and the money may very well follow"

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://www.scoopydoo.com>

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is a "review my startup" type post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not so easy to earn money clean dog poop where you're not in the US.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hacker News is about web startups. PickDooUp News is about your friend's startup.

<comment><USER7> That doesn't mean that there aren't valuable lessons to learn from non-web startups. This is what I took away from the post:

1\. A small niche market can be profitable (maybe not Facebook-profitable, but a good living nontheless).

2\. There may be a lot of non-web startups out there that need online services of some kind - advertising/marketing, contact and booking management, whatever.

3\. There are always profitable opportunities if you are prepared to do things others are unwilling or unable to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> More variation in offline startups while the techniques for web startups probably apply mostly to other web startups as well.

But I agree, there are often good ideas where the web is just ancillary, or even enables the business but isn't the core.</comment>


Google cancels legacy Google Play Music subscriptions - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/38496877 <comment><AUTHOR> To make it clear: If you were google play music subscriber, which in 2014 offered plan with lifetime guarantee of price: You've been silently cancelled by Google :)

Upon contacting support, the only remedy they offer as for now is to subscribe to You Tube music (higher price and no lifetime guarantee) and are 'investigating' while of course they hadnt provided any solution.

Additional info:

* you did not get ANY information about this cancellation, up to the moment people starting flooging their support which was yesterday :)

* at that moment, you probably got two cancellation mails without any usefull info

* this is Google problem/action (not known atm), not your bank or CC

Additional info v2:

* Google did NOT try to do monhtly charges for the service on the usual date, bank/CC confirms NOT a single charge attempt until, YTM resubsbription on support request.

* The problem affects probably (?) subscribers with renewal dates between April 1st and 12th (incl.) as on 13th Google noticed problems and stopped "auto-cancel-feature".

Additional info v3:

* Looks like that only some subscribers (Europeans for sure) were affected by it, so smaller impact, maybe related to country of subscriber (unknown atm)

* It was probably part of the glitched (?) and multi-steps transition of google music to youtube music services (speculation atm)

<comment><USER2> Google maybe (?) had a better track record in 2014, but if there's one company I wouldn't buy anything with a lifetime guarantee from now it would have to be them.

<comment><USER3> Lifetime guarantees from companies are wishful thinking, IMHO. The company can get bought out, go bankrupt, etc., and your guarantee is worth nothing.

<comment><USER4> _The company can get bought out, go bankrupt, etc._

Unless I missed some big news, Google hasn't been bought out or gone bankrupt. Those aren't relevant here. If a company offers a lifetime guarantee then it should honor that for the lifetime of the company. Google have chosen not to bother honoring the promise they made in the past, and they should be held to account for that.

If you run a business and you choose to make a lifetime offer you don't get to take that back just because you don't want to do it any more.

<comment><USER5> _If you run a business and you choose to make a lifetime offer you don 't get to take that back just because you don't want to do it any more._

Tell that to Oregon Scientific, which cancelled the "lifetime" weather updates to my weather device.

Tell that Flightradar 24, which disabled the app I paid for, and the only way to get the functionality back is to download its new app and pay for a subscription. If it was disclosed at the time of purchase that I could be cut of at any time, I wouldn't have bought it.

Two stories. There are millions more on the internet.

I believe that XM radio did something similarly slimy to people who purchased a "lifetime" subscription when the service was starting up and it needed cash.

And didn't a bunch of people get their e-books deleted when Microsoft decided to shut down its e-book service? You think you're buying a lifetime of reading, only to find out you were just renting the books.

<comment><USER4> Google certainly aren't the first company to screw their users, and they won't be the last. That doesn't make it excusable though. That just means they're as bad as the other companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dark pattern to "erode" an unprofitable category of users...?

"Oops, we had a technical problem and now your lifetime option is gone. Unfortunately we have no way to create new lifetime subscriptions, because of technical changes. As a goodwill gesture, here's a free year on $some_other_yearly_service. Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao"

Repeat a few times until everyone _gets the memo_ or resource usage from that category goes under "acceptable" levels of waste.

<comment><USER7> > Whatchagonnado, sue us for a few pennies? lolmao

Are courts ever gonna learn how to deal with these huge corporations? They probably think it's cheaper to pay the fines than to obey the law and do the right thing.

<comment><USER8> This sounds like the perfect kind of thing for class actions. Another commenter mentioned that there's no arbitration clause so that shouldn't be an impediment.

<comment><USER9> Even with arbitration, the new pattern is to write a bot to mass file arbitration cases. DoorDash was arguing that the thousands of arbitration cases filed against them _in one day_ should've been converted into a class action lawsuit. They ended up paying millions in arbitration fees alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was affected by this as my plan was set to renew on the fourth. I was able to contact support and get my plan going again on the discounted rate. They ended up having to cancel my subscription and probably set some sort of flag for me to get the discounted pricing.

All in all while it was a bit of a pain I don't think any malice was meant in this. I'm betting they had just set the end of the renewals on the subscription to April 2020 and figured if the service is still going they would update the end date.

</comment><comment><USER11> A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently cancelling a lifetime price guarantee.

But there's nothing in the thread about any lifetime guarantee, and Googling I can't find any reference either.

Does anyone have actual evidence that Google explicitly made a lifetime price guarantee? It just seems... unusual, not something subscription services generally do.

Also, this seems like more of a bug affecting some users, as opposed to intended policy. I mean, when Google cancels things, it usually provides months/years of advance notice with lots of e-mails.

So I'm hesitant to jump in with my pitchfork here...

<comment><USER12> > A bunch of people here are commenting about how Google is silently > cancelling a lifetime price guarantee.

Early adopters were promised a fixed, _permanently rebated_ price for signing up.

I remember. I was one who took the offer (but later cancelled for other reasons).

<comment><USER11> Do you have the original e-mail or anything you could paste here?

I'm actually really curious to see the exact wording and fine print/TOS. Just because that's such a rare thing to do, above all by a large company, and I'm surprised it would have passed legal review, but the devil is often in the details.

<comment><USER12> I went looking, but I can't find it now. Sorry.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.androidpolice.com/2015/10/23/if-you-currently- ha...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2015/10/23/if-you-currently-have-the- discounted-play-music-plan-7-99-you-get-to-keep-that-rate-when-you-convert-to- youtube-red/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's ironic how short a "lifetime" can be on the Internet.

<comment><USER15> it was a lifetime subscription. it just wasn't _your_ lifetime.

<comment><USER16> It seems to be that they are looking to phase out Play Music in favor of Youtube Music. If that is the case, then those « lifetime » subscriptions meant that if was good for the lifetime of the service, and that is coming to an end soon.

If they shutdown Play Music, it might look similar to the end of Google Reader in 2013. They might be looking to get people off the service until they announce it.

<comment><USER17> That's not an "if" situation. They've been very public about migrating to the Youtube Music platform for a couple years now.

<comment><USER6> Why are these companies obsessed with unifying their brands and capabilities?

You can buy dozens of different shampoo brands (because you like the bottle of this or the smell of that) and in the end your money will end up flowing to the same company; but $deity forbid that I could get two same-but-different services from the same company if they can avoid it. I mean, I get the operational savings etc etc, but if they are both profitable, why go through the pain and suffering of killing one?

Then you turn to another niche (like IM) and it's the opposite attitude.

Google's commercial strategies are pretty nonsensical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Google Music is probably just following the typical path of a Google service:

1\. Create something new in a given category and hype it up.

2\. If it fails to catch on massively, neglect it. Make only minor changes, while competitors are continuously improving their offerings.

3\. Leave that old service to rot until you decide to shut it down. Meanwhile, start over from step 1 with different branding.

I can't say this is a poor strategy for a company like Google.

<comment><USER19> Seems like all the people in charge at Microsoft in the 2000s have moved over to Google, as the product strategy seems the same – create something, watch it fail, kill it, hastily rebrand the old thing as a new thing and repeat.

E.g. MSN Music/Zune Marketplace/XBox Music/Microsoft Store/Groove Music

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I will ditch Google Music for Youtube Music the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection. Any ETA on that or even plans to implement that?

If not, is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to, with an app for mobile which would sync the data between mobile devices?

On Youtube Google nags me since months (a year?) to switch to Youtube Music but I get less service there. I fear the moment I hastily tap to try and loose Google Music.

<comment><USER21> > the moment they allow me to upload my MP3-collection

I would not hold your breath for this. The holdover MP3 collector is such a small minority that no mainstream company is going to consider them from here on out.

> is there any other free service where I could upload my MP3 collection to

If there was, why would you waste your time? Either it's not going to be free or it's going to disappear.

<comment><USER22> The problem is that some bands were never signed to a label, broke up before spotify got big, or for some other reason don't exist on any of the popular streaming sites. The problem is getting smaller as time goes on, but it still exists. I can self-host something like Ampache or Plex or something, but then I don't get any sort of discovery features, and I have to go to a totally different platform to listen to new artists.

GPM was nice in that it merged the cloud music with your own collection, but I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I'm going to lose that functionality when they finally shut it down.

<comment><USER21> > The problem is that some bands were never signed to a label, broke up before > spotify got big, or for some other reason don't exist on any of the popular > streaming sites.

For Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. that's not a problem.

Are people going to cancel their accounts because they can't listen to a very small subset of music? Probably but it's going to be a tiny minority of users that's inconsequential to their bottom line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Google's payment options page is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. A simple task like removing and adding an expired CC will make you wish you were never born. Their support basically is a loop of templated responses with Zero attempt at solving any issues (My guess is all google support agents are just bots).

</comment><comment><USER24> My subscription is still active and is due to renew today. I will let everyone know what happens.

fyi nobody is complaining about this on the youtubemusic reddit which is the one of the first places I think we would hear about it if this issue was widespread BUT maybe its regional and hasn't hit the usa users yet.

<comment><USER25> Mine renews on the 14th and the payment was already made last night. Everything I look at shows my sub. is still active. I'm one of the original 7.99 subscribers.

The death of Google Music is long awaited and feared. Once it does die it'll be like the death of Google Reader 2.0. People are just getting twitchy with any little mistake Google makes.

<comment><USER24> Day 1 subscriber here as well. One thing that is interesting is that both youtube and youtube music show a price of $9.99 but once I click the manage button it displays the $7.99 price through google play music.

Honestly, I'll be pretty bummed if they increase the prices. I stopped using youtube music / google play music awhile back as they ruined the experience for me there but have kept it for the ad free youtube.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Google responded to our inquiry to confirm that they are aware of the issue > and working on fixing it.

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play- music-s...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music- subscriptions-are-failing-to-auto-renew-for-some/)

<comment><USER13> Is it weird that the same site published this on the same day? [https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play- music-t...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/09/google-play-music-to- youtube-music-making-the-switch/)

Very strangely authoritarian wording, too:

"It comes down to preference, but soon, you'll have no other choice but switching"

"Unfortunately, the equation isn't that simple here because YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music one day. You have to accept YouTube Music's quirks if you currently use and love Play Music, or you have to switch to another platform altogether."

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I subscribed in 2016 when they were doing a special - $7.99/mo lifetime including youtube premium. My subscription does not seem to be affected yet, although my renewal date is April 22nd, so I guess we'll see what happens on that day.

Honestly I've been thinking about moving to spotify, but the youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music because it's just not worth it to switch. But Google Play Music has not been updated in what feels like ages. And the iOS client is terrible (I only switched in the last 6 months).

Seems like they're getting ready to pull the plug. I subscribed in Oct 2016, and over that time I've saved $2/mo on equivalent music subscriptions and had youtube premium included (yeah yeah I know adblock or pihole or nextdns negates the value, but it's nice to be able to use the youtube client on my phone without needing to set up those solutions). Net value has been $83 though I've paid for it with a drastically sub par music experience (sharing is pointless, can't see what my friends listen to, playlist management is terrible).

<comment><USER28> > youtube ad-free premium has kept me on google play music

I've been a subscriber since 2016 as well and this is as well as music uploads is what has kept me on Google Play music. YouTube music has this functionality now, but it still lacks a proper library feature as well as a migration option for existing library's and uploads.

Spotify just does everything so much better, so I'm so close to moving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> SaaS and lifetime subscriptions don't play well together.

<comment><USER30> Of course, lifetime upgrades of licensed software didn't really either. They didn't go away immediately with a canceled service, but in most cases they still end up breaking with OS upgrades, new devices, etc.

<comment><USER31> The difference being, upgrading the OS was your decision. You still had a license for something that worked on a dated version of the OS, if you so chose.

This is out of your control.

<comment><USER30> Kinda sorta. Security patches. There's other software you want to upgrade that's only supported on newer OSs. Your hardware breaks and the replacement hardware needs a newer OS.

Yes, it's possible (and organizations with specialized needs do) keep running 15 year old software and hardware without changing anything. But, for ordinary people, that app you bought is going to break at some point in the absence of updates. Of course, it's a bigger problem with SaaS and you have less control over it but licensed software is not immune.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I personally never trust anything that says lifetime guarantee. It just can't happen except in very unusual circumstances.

I do have an anecdote that disproves my theory, however. My grandmother used to be an AT&T telephone operator, before they were broken up. As a retiree, she has "free lifetime AT&T", which they have been honoring even as the new company is not the company she retired from. She literally dials 0 and asks the person to connect her call for her. It costs her nothing.

<comment><USER33> My father bought a lifetime subscription to the uk magazine 'Private Eye' in, iirc, the 1970s, for £10 (they were being sued and on the verge of going bust).

He still gets his copy delivered every fortnight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone have an easy way of exporting playlists/ liked songs out of google play music into some generic format (is there even a generic format for this kind of data)?

Currently getting really tired of google play music but I really dislike what Spotify is doing with postcasts so it feels like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place on android.

<comment><USER35> Current plan is to write a Python script that takes screenshots every 1 second, and I'll tab through my huge playlist.

Then later I'll scrape those photos for text.

<comment><USER36> If you open your network tab in your browser's devtools, there may be JSON payloads to give you what you need (rather than farting around with OCR or reverse image searching your album art).

<comment><USER35> No luck.

But I did make that python program to take photos. 64 images to scrape one day. I'm not too concerned of the difficulty of OCR, there's gotta be some libraries for it, especially on black and white text from a web page.

(I did OCR with cellphone pictures and it worked)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Google is just following the law: Like in law, where a life-long sentence does not necessarily mean life-long, at Google lifetime guarantee does not mean lifetime. Perhaps guarantee, but not lifetime.

(Don't take this too seriously, especially not from me.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I know it's a bad trope at this point, but you really have to assume that Google will change anything on you. They're just not a consistent or good faith company to operate with, even compared to other companies in this space.

</comment><comment><USER38> I remember my friend complaining that the same happened with the GameMaker community few years back; there was a lifetime with all future major and minor version updates included, but then boom no longer applicable after few months:

Src: [https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i- have-...](https://forum.yoyogames.com/index.php?threads/why-do-i-have-to-pay- to-upgrade-my-license.24162/#post-152842)

</comment><comment><USER39> For as much as we rely on their services and look to Google for advice on best practices and guidelines, time and time again services are simply dropped.

On one hand, yes as a company I imagine you sneak some sneaky verbiage in the ToS so that you can't back yourself into a corner you can't get out of, but offering a lifetime subscription and it just being canceled - I just can't trust Google anymore to keep services up they "promise" will be there.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is the last drop. They ditched the google music in favor of half baked youtube music, with no playlist import, horrible offline support, tons of bugs that still there. I heard they are big somewhere in India. Well... good luck. I'm done and switching to Spotify. The only reason I was attracted by this terrible service was pricing. I subscribe from my country of origin at ~2 USD/mo subscription. For that price, I was ok with their quality.

</comment><comment><USER41> Again, never subscribe to a service assuming the terms won't change or be removed. Never assume that you 'own' anything that lives in, or relies on a company's cloud. This doesn't mean that services are bad, but they should be seen as ephemeral.

</comment><comment><USER42> Never buy anything from Google.

<comment><USER35> I've added Google to my Don't buy list.

It's - Apple, Samsung, Google

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Hmm. So I bought an album and a few songs there. They're apparently gone and I get some flow asking for credit card details. Apparently trying to sign me in for google music?

Well, I had moved on to Spotify anyway.

<comment><USER43> Seems also the few movies I bought are gone. But they still sell them? That's certainly an interesting way of doing business.

This is one of the movies I had bought. I could again "buy" it. Wonder who will fall for that for the second time... [https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Isla...](https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Kong_Skull_Island?id=qUD8xPGIbDQ)

<comment><USER43> Ok, all the movies are back there now! Might have been user error on them some temporary issue.

The music is also there but it just switches your user so you have to re-login with the correct user after going to the music menu...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does this mean we can get Songza back? Was pretty bummed out when google acquired them, really enjoyed that music app although Spotify basically has the same functionality now.

</comment><comment><USER45> Sort of like the lifetime guarantee that GCP claims to offer (until next year when it's shut down).

It's sort of nuts to think anything Google does is going to be around in 5 years.

</comment><comment><USER46> Reminds me how Google "upgraded" me to a better price when I moved from the Netherlands to Sweden. When I complained to them I got 3 months "free trial".

</comment><comment><USER47> I was not on legacy but canceled my family plan anyway in solidarity. I guess back to piracy for me

</comment><comment><USER48> If you use adblocker, music.youtube.com is free and without any ads. At least for me.

<comment><USER49> Especially for music, piracy has always been the easier route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Customer support, especially from Google, has been abysmal during Covid.

I called a co-worker, and the number looked like a normal US number... Nope, it was a Canadian number, and AT&T charged me like $60 for a 30 minute call. Fuck that, it's the same country code.

So I made the switch to Google Fi.

I called Google Fi in advance, and asked how it would work with my Google Voice number.

The support person said, "Yeah, you can't have the two kinds of Google numbers on the same email, but just make a new Google account and set you Google Fi number up under there, then forward your Google Voice number like you've been doing."

Cool, easy.

I do that.

Mind you my whole family is on the plan, Mom, Dad, sister... and it's a big deal to switch.

After the SIM cards were sent, I go to set my Google Voice number to forward. And it doesn't work. It tells me I can't forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone. WTF.

Then Covid hits.

All of my work and emergency contact numnbers are routed through my Google Voice number, which I can inexplicably no longer forward to my phone.

Google support lines are just playing recordings, "Not available."

Live chat... oof, 40 minutes to have what should have been a 2 minute conversation. And it's either a bot, or someone just copying a script. It was horrible. And I had to try like 4 times. Hours wasted.

Email support was worse. Nobody pays attention to context. Like they just go until they see a keyword they recognize and paste in a response template.

I've got Google Voice to forward to my emails... so all my calls and texts were still sort of coming in. But I wanted to get it sorted with Google.

I spell out a plan, email and ask them if it'll work.

They say over email it will.

I'm going to just drop my cell phone number and just use my Google Voice number on my cell. Easier than trying to update every place that had the old number. Oof. Then I'll switch the ownership from my Fake Google account to my Real Google account and turn off the Fake Google account line.

Plan was signed off on by Google staff. Cool, I feel like it'll work.

I get the new sim card, and it sort of works... except the fake Google account I used to set up the plan in the first place has to stay the owner. I can't change my real Google account to the owner on the family plan, I can't change anyone to the owner on the family plan. So I'm stuck paying for an extra line.

Google's solution... "Just drop the family plan." No joke. Just kick everyone off onto their own plan, problem solved. I got 3 email templates telling me to do this -- that's how they want me to change the owner of the family plan.

Oof. None of this will will kill me, and I'm glad they are keeping their employees safe... but none of this experience will ever put me in a spot to use Google again if I can avoid it. Their support is worse than any I've ever experienced.

Response times suck, lack of training for their staff, lack of intelligence around how to solve problems... it just feels like I'm talking to bots whose first language wasn't English.

Anyway totally frustrating experience, and it makes no sense. Why can't I forward a Google Voice number to a Google Fi phone? Shit like that is beyond me. And even with limiting product design, why wasn't Google Staff trained on that so they could give me proper advice when I first called?

I was a huge Google Fiber fan, and I wanted to like Google Fi... but man... it's been such a hassle. I've got a 100+ response email thread now and it's all just missing the context copy / paste talk, or them ignoring the question and answering something else, or contradicting advice one person to the next. Oof.

</comment><comment><USER51> The title does not seem to fit what's behind the link? I see people complaining about google canceling ongoing subscriptions after failing to collect the payments, presumably because of some fuckup on Google's payment processing end.

</comment><comment><USER35> Are they going to carry over my playlists?

I don't mind a price change, the government printed a lot of money. But I have hundreds of songs in a playlist.</comment>


A drug company hiked the price of a lifesaving opioid antidote by 500 percent - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2017/2/3/14490804/kaleo-evzio-price-hike-opioid-epidemic <comment><USER2> Another example of the failure of the free market when it comes to healthcare.</comment>