Overcast @OvercastFM@mirrored.social

Sorry for the sync outage right now. @Cloudflare, which serves as Overcast’s front-end CDN for performance and protection, appears to be completely down for all websites that use it.

Fortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it again (), and they have people working on it.

No. But I’ll tell you one of the boring things!

I finally have the database columns needed to allow separate download and sorting preferences for each podcast. https://twitter.com/timstringer/status/1143687794843275265

(Of course, I ran some huge, badly needed ALTER TABLEs before the changeovers. Much easier to change a 300 GB table when it’s not being queried by anyone.)

Not my first rodeo.

This was a master-database changeover, my biggest and most stressful server change.

I tested and cherry-picked the fastest, most stable @linode instances over the last month, moved the replication slaves last week, and finally moved the master tonight. https://twitter.com/cpragman/status/1143682980503642112

Upgrade’s done. Thanks for your patience.

(This will enable some cool stuff down the road.)

Sync service and the website will be down shortly for an upgrade. I expect the outage to be brief.

RT @marcoarment
What happened this morning to Cloudflare, AWS, and lots of the internet: https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-verizon-and-a-bgp-optimizer-knocked-large-parts-of-the-internet-offline-today/

(Short version: it wasn't their fault)

A little over 1,898 years. https://twitter.com/MattWilcox/status/1143248145087913984

Sorry, the servers are having issues this morning due to problems at my CDN, @CloudflareHelp.

The bad news is that there’s nothing I can really do about it.

The good news is that there’s nothing I can really do about it.

(seriously, they have good people there, it’ll be OK)

Most VCs would call Overcast a “lifestyle business”, which condescendingly refers to the ability to “just” earn a good living for its owners (and employees, if any). Effectively, a business that doesn’t need their money.

It’s a GREAT lifestyle, and one that I prefer to theirs.

I tend to be ignored by VCs because I’m not in their world. I’ve taken no funding, declined all inquiries, partnered with nobody, launched no exclusive content, locked down nothing about the medium, and grown the way podcasts themselves did: slowly and steadily. https://twitter.com/jayacunzo/status/1133733109340549120

(although even if we’d made zero progress since then, there’s nothing wrong with a simple, standard, universally supported, patent-free, independently distributable audio format that allows for very little ad-tech or privacy invasion and has enabled the entire podcast medium)

“Same old MP3s”, my ass! https://twitter.com/akshay_moorthy/status/1133712499872677888

Today’s 2019.5 update improves clip sharing:

- More reliable, faster exporting
- Share directly to Instagram Stories
- Videos now include episode publication date
- Time selection is more precise
- Default time range starts 30 seconds before the current position instead of at it

RT @jamesdempsey
Thank you @OvercastFM for another year of support as a Gold Sponsor of the James Dempsey and the Breakpoints benefit concert for @AppCamp4Girls on Jun 5!

Definitely the official podcast app of LIVE near #WWDC 2019!

https://livenearwwdc.com  #JDBP #WWDC19

RT @johnsundell
I'm so happy to see people starting to share their favorite moments from my podcasts using @OvercastFM's awesome new clip sharing feature!

If you share a clip from one of my shows, feel free to mention me in the tweet, it's super motivating to see and it's great feedback

See, this is why Continuous Play is such a confusing feature.

There’s a clear “winner” in what it should do… but a THIRD of the votes think it should do the opposite.

I’m going to think for a while and NOT change the current behavior, but maybe change the way it’s labeled.

One reason why Overcast has so many settings with wordy explanations like this is that it’s really hard to communicate what something does with just a few words and a switch.

I think I might try this for the next beta.

Continuous Play becomes a 3-state option, labeled something like:

At Episode End:
- Stop
- Play Next in Podcast
- Play Next in All Podcasts

(Take a look in my mentions right now if you want a glimpse at how hard it is to design a podcast app that works the way a lot of people want and expect.)