If I understand the comment chain correctly, they first tried a random "not hosted by Apple" podcast and could get the MP3, as expected. They were then directed to a "hosted by Apple" podcast and could not get an MP3. So the workaround does not work.
For sure, it's nice to know there's an out for people willing to work it out.
TBF, I'd assume the author knows there would be workarounds, like de-DRM the iTunes files. Or go full analog loophole style and rerecord the podcast audio etc.
The point was probably how shitty of an experience it stayed for people outside the Apple bubble (podcasts are really about convenience. I only started seriously listening to them once I got an iPhone, because of the sheer inconvenience of having to plug and drag files from my desktop for every new episode)
> The point was probably how shitty of an experience it stayed for people outside the Apple bubble
Could be, but they made it sound like those workarounds are required everywhere outside of Apple devices (which would include Windows as well). Which is painting a pretty different picture from what the reality is, as none of the workarounds are required on Windows, it is click and play just like on any Apple device.
These companies build for redundancy. Not in the sense of "we need 10 servers, let's have 10 more for redundancy" (that gets expensive when you have millions of hosts) but by scaling out across multiple regions/DCs/clusters/etc such that there is enough slack in the system to absorb failure of 1 or 2 resource units (DCs, fiber, whatever).
Also, widespread outages like this are seldom the result of insufficient capacity. They are almost always a perfect storm of several failures within systems that are individually build to handle adverse conditions. An example might be a bug within a task scheduling system that inadvertently scales down some critical service which in turn leads to something else failing to reach consensus or read configuration or who knows what. The point is that each of these components is designed and built to handle failure but something the holes in the cheese line up and the whole thing fails.
In this case since IG, WA and FB were affected it's reasonable to guess the failure was in some shared component like load balancing or task placement, though (as hinted at above) the origin of the fault is not necessarily in that component directly.
IIRC there was a situation where google built a circular dependency in their own cloud services and they had massive issues bootstrapping the systems again after they went haywire
It's not just about adding redundancies. Redundancies don't protect you against bugs, and they're itself very complex, so they introduce more opportunity for errors. Even with best redundancy, you'll have incidents from time to time.
It doesn't help either that Facebook made three separate services that should have nothing to do with each other, talk to each other and all route their traffic through the same infrastructure.
What they did was purposefully remove redundancy they had, in order to be able to track people more (in order to profit more) and possibly scale easier. Doing nothing would have been easier but yet they still did it.
If you think that maintaining 3 completely separate stacks for 3 different services within the same company is making all of them more reliable, I don't think you ever worked on a big scale services.
No, I'm hinting at that have one company running these three services in the first place is wrong. Should be three independent companies as they are really three different services, but lord knows governments does nothing to prevent monopolies these days.
> They can absolutely maintain 3 different services
Lol, I'd believe you when they did purchased the service but the countless amount of times it went down since then obviously proves that they cannot even maintain the services when they are folded together on the same infrastructure.
It was a long time ago Facebook employed the best of the best. Seems like it's mostly average developers and infrastructure people there now just trying to hold up the house of cards they built.
This is so heartbreaking, my heart stopped when reading this email. I was a HUGE fan of SQL Saturdays and I became a great pro with Power BI/SQL thanks to SQL Saturday and the outstanding network PASS provided...
If your talking about the First Step Act that was a bipartisan bill that passed in the Senate unanimously. Semi props for embracing it, but this gets into a bigger issue of whether an administration can take credit for the bills passed underneath them.
There's polarizing issues, but actually a lot of issues I find myself agreeing with lately. Anti-war sentiment is a big one (I love hearing about troop draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria).
And Trump accuses the IC community of unconstitutional spying on politicians and Americans, the same thing technorati have been saying (at least until 2016, when it became cool to trust the FBI and CIA).
How’s it ineffective? The previous administration spent 8 years coming up with a terrible agreement that all candidates wanted to quit. Meanwhile the high tariffs have forced companies to leave, and sure, Biden has said that he’d end Trump’s China tariffs, but at least the many companies that have already setup shop elsewhere are unlikely to return.
For years countries have also been forced to waste taxpayer money to deliver cheap junk from Aliexpress/Wish/etc. because Universal Postal Union wouldn’t allow countries to increase postal rates from China. The previous administration was unable to do anything about it, but Trump succeeded where they failed.
Huawei has also been significantly hurt. Being banned from using Android and chips with US tech has effectively destroyed their mobile products (as their stock runs out), and countries are abandoning their 5G deals (either as a result of USA paying them to drop Huawei, or simply because China/Huawei’s reputation has dropped so much in the last four years). Trump also dragged other countries into it by e.g. requesting Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, which resulted in China arbitrarily arresting Canadian citizens.
He’s also the first US President to speak directly with Taiwan’s President since 1979, and has made the largest arms sale to Taiwan in the past few decades.
TAIPEI Act and Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was signed under his administration, and Hong Kong lost its special status.
If judges hadn’t temporarily stopped Trump’s executive orders then TikTok and WeChat would also be banned now (it’s absurd that the west for decades have put up with China blocking western companies from their markets while freely allowing them into our markets).. hopefully the bans will go through, and hopefully TikTok/WeChat will just be the first of many.
Trump is also one of the few world leaders who continuously remind the world that China are responsible for the pandemic, and China still won’t allow WHO/others to investigate the origins in Wuhan.
Trump has also been pushing for China to lose WTO developing country status, which will surely happen if he’s re-elected.
As a liberal I disagree with most of Trump’s policies, but I could really go on-and-on about his effective/positive actions towards China.. you could make a solid case that Trump in four years has done more to stand up to China than the rest of the western world combined (including the previous administration) has done in the past decade.
