I was planning my future to first get great at Software development, then switch to game development once I got the skills.
During that time I visited a few indie game conferences. I realised quite quickly how underfunded and overworked everyone was, trying to bootstrap companies on subsidies. Not with the intention to become the next unicorn, but just for the love of games. Nothing wrong with that, but I didn't seem entirely healthy. At least most artists still understand the reality that they are doing it for themselves. most gamedevs make games for other to play, that naivety is quite toxic.
Perhaps once I'm retired Ill dust off Unity and start create games that I want to create. Perhaps other enjoy them but hopefully not.
Looking at this post-mortem, think the money and investment was worth it for the creator. 4k and 6 months is not that much for the reality check and experience he got from it. Better value then most art or game dev schools.
For the UI kit, I'm going to build a collaborative editor/IDE: no link yet, it's a thought experiment. The language makes the 'collaborative' super easy.
Then, I'll build out the distributed system for making this a platform.
THEN, after all of that, I'll ship a single game.
Being retired sounds like fun, and then I'll build a lifestyle business SaaS around generic state machine-documents as a service... Or something, no idea.
I don't know. This was an interesting read for me because I recently had an experience that was largely the opposite.
I made a game using free time after work that ended up being featured on most of the big mobile gaming sites, as well as within the App Store itself (on the top banner of the Games bit). It didn't make lifechanging amount of money by any stretch (per hour I think would have just about broken minimum wage by now), but a decent amount considering it was something I was doing for fun. The experience has made me very excited to a) continue to update this one and b) get started on my next game project, which I think has the potential to reach more people. Or at the very least, turn out to be more interesting.
If starting from nothing I think it's all down to either having a snappy and unique concept, and/or a snappy and unique visual style. The best bit is that neither of these things necessarily require lots of time to pull off, just luck (or whatever it is). I have no industry connections whatsoever and zero ad budget, but if you do something that hasn't quite been seen before, and that people/sites will have fun writing/talking about, it can get you a foot in the door. Maybe I'm being too optimistic and underestimating how lucky I got!
I think your postmortem would be more interesting to read about than ops, frankly. It reads like the writer not only was expecting a larger degree of success for a not-so-interesting and expensive-to-make game, it also seems like he never found a group of people which enjoyed playing it.
In your case, it sounds like you would've been fine without external validation, invested not a huge amount of money into the project, and we're focused primarily on fun.
While you could learn what the writer learned in a formal education setting, it very much seems like he could have learned everything he found out here from a few more chats or reddit posts with developers also in his situation.
Additionally, him launching the game seemingly without finding other people who really enjoyed playing the game feels like a major dissonance - I wish there was a concise way to put this without being harsh, but it reads like this was an expensive lapse in common sense and self awareness for someone who has the ability to build software for humans.
I think the mistake was a lack of marketing (well, and all the mistakes that led up to that). Even making the game primarily for himself wasn't a mistake, it was all he wanted to make so it was that or no game at all.
It's reasonable to build a product for a rare audience, even of just hundreds worldwide, but you can't expect a mass-market solution like the app store to find those people for you.
If I build a roguelike I'm going to advertise to 7drl people, not to the app store in general. The same with his thing, surely there's a forum or something where he hangs out with similar people who like insanely hard clickers? Approach them.
I graduated with a computer gaming and simulation degree and went to work in a factory doing tech support. I'm sure I was much happier doing that than I would have been doing game development.
This is such a painful situation for Japan. When I visited a couple a years ago the preparations were still going full force. They were so proud and looking forward to hosting it. Really think they are between a rock and a hard place with any decision.
This together with all the sub-human conditions the workers in Qatar for the football world championship make it seem like organising events like this not something I would feel comfortable with hosting in my own country. It seems like it's a combination of hot potato and ego projects for specific people in governments.
hell, couple of years ago my country "won" the rights to host eurovision song festival. I'm not against investing money in a broad set of cultural activities. But looking at the amount of money it costed to host it felt not something that was worth the tax payers money. Rather we just payed the artists then all the pseudo glamour surrounding it.
>> make it seem like organising events like this not something I would feel comfortable with hosting in my own country.
Vancouver Olympics 2010. No, it did not make a profit, and there was a fiasco involving how the athletes village was converted into condos, but the city did not go crazy over preparations. Most of the venues were already there. Whistler was already a winter sports mecca. Vancouver didn't need to build new airports or erect new mountains. Things like highway improvements and sports facilities were not left to rot after the event. They are all still there being used today. And it was canada. Canada knows how to do winter stuff. I think it was the first olymics where the ice doctors didn't hide the fact that every winter olymics has a Canadian coin buried under center ice.
The olympics isn't something that a city does to turn a profit, but that doesn't mean it has to bankrupt itself either.
We badly needed the highway and transit improvements, too. Almost none of the new construction went to waste.
There is/was a movement to make the winter olympics permanently fixed in a few northern cities, Vancouver being one of them, in order to prevent the wasteful fiascos that are witnessed from time to time.
Obviously that was a non-starter. The enormous expenditure (and wealth transfer) of public funds is sort of the point. ;)
>> We badly needed the highway and transit improvements, too
There is much debate about this, particularly in regards to the Sea to Sky highway improvements. The old highway wasn't great, it was rough in spots, but the improvements have had unwanted effects. Making the highway easier means more people are doing day trip to whistler from Vancouver. Rather than stay in whistler people are staying at cheaper hotels in Vancouver. That means less local revenue and increased highway traffic. And no effort was made to improve non-car traffic along the route. No rail improvements. No bus lanes. Nothing much other than making the existing 2/4-lane road straighter and faster.
Skiing by itself is very expensive (equipment and lift tickets). For Whistler there are cheaper options if you are staying not in the main village, basically price-wise it’s comparable to staying somewhere else and driving (and hotels in Vancouver are not that cheap in the first place).
It has become out of reach. In the 90s a seasons pass was expensive but reasonable. I had a "dual mountain" pass from back when it was two different mountains, back when harmony bowl was considered backcountry/out-of-bounds skiing. We were not wealthy and the mountain was a mix of different people. Now it is all uber-wealthy clients. The mountains seem to have more staff than customers. People who just want to ski on their own are being pushes aside for "mountain experience" clients who want guides and expensive food services. We used to bring a bagged lunch, sometimes eating out on the slopes in one of the secret spots. Good lunch doing that these days. There are no secret spots anymore.
I’m sure Whistler overall saw increase in business. And improvements to the road were long overdue. This “highway” was in disrepair with constant traffic jams.
This is because LA generally reuses existing venues when possible, and almost all facilities built for the Olympics are designed with plans for post-Olympic usage.
For example, the LA Memorial Coliseum was built in 1921 as WWI memorial and was expanded for the 1932 Olympics a decade later. The Coliseum was not upgraded for the 1984 Olympics (though the track and field were upgraded), and the only two venue custom-built for the 1984 Olympics were the velodrome and swimming stadium.
The 1984 Olympics was one of the most cost-conscious Olympics ever held, and is still the most profitable Olympics. Like today, few cities wanted to host the Olympics due to cost concerns. Indeed, LA was the only remaining bidder by the time the decision reached the IOC (similarly, for the 2024 Olympics, Paris and LA were the only two bidders remaining, and LA was the only city willing to bid for 2028). The 1984 Olympics were almost entirely privately funded (thanks to Hollywood and other corporate backers). LA made significant use of existing structures, low-cost decorations, and was the first Olympics to truly take advantage of corporate sponsorships and television contracts. For example, the velodrome was funded by 7-11, and the swimming stadium was funded by McDonalds.
The forthcoming 2028 Olympics follows the blueprint set by the 1984 Olympics: reusing existing venues and infrastructure, to the extent that the only venues that will be created solely for the Olympics are the viewer stands for some of the outdoor events like bmx and canoeing. Extensive use of corporate and private sponsorship. Pretty much the only thing that requires government funding is the security, and the US federal government will be providing the bulk of that.
The Winter Olympics is a different beast because, as you say, mountains are already there. But for a summer olympics you have to build a lot of facilities that will never be used again.
Are their any actual legit studies that have shown if hosting an olympics is worth it for the overall economy or not?
For example I think the olympics put Barcelona on the map for a lot of tourists and they’ve been reaping the rewards since, but it seems to me that’s more of an exception than the rule.
Are their any actual legit studies that have shown if hosting an olympics is worth it for the overall economy or not?
Lots, probably hundreds. Most of them conclude 'it depends, but basically not worth it'. But the gist is that if you are already a functioning city and popular tourist spot (like London) you'll get close to zero benefit (at massive costs). London actually significantly had less total tourists the year of the Olympics compared with the preceding and following years.
Some cities, like Barcelona, Seoul and possibly Rio de Janeiro saw some benefit in terms of raising awareness of the city as tourist destination and better infrastructure for handling tourism. Both led to increased tourism the years following the Olympics. Barcelona and Seoul where also however cheaper events than current Olympics so it is hard to compare.
Also only the Summer Olympics has shown any sign of positive benefits on tourism. Winter Olympics has basically no effect.
In this case, they would have receive X thousand/million of tourists, which they won't come. If you travel to Japan (e.g. from Europe) you don't just go for the events. You also say an extra 5-10 days. That is a big loss for the tourist industry, the millions of mouths eating in restaurants, drinking in bars, and on top of the costs/profits, imagien that the state takes a 5-10-20% on taxes, which would be reinvested to the country (education, infrastructure, health, etc.)
It is a worse case sceario for the country. All these expenses and not near enought he revenue..
In some cases that is true. But I've been to Tokyo twice as a tourist and didn't see much in desperate need of modernization.
And even if your city is in need of modernization, hosting an Olympics is a very inefficient way to go about it. The only argument that can be made is a political one where it is easier to convince the government to spend $10 billion on hosting the Olympics (and spending some of that on infrastructure renovation) rather than just spending $2 billion on infrastructure renovation. In fact the Mayor of London even said: “I bid for the Olympics because it’s the only way to get the billions of pounds out of the government to develop the East End – to clean the soil, put in the infrastructure and build the housing.”
However as many cities have found, the modernization done to host an Olympics aren't necessarily the modernizations a city needs the most long term,
In this case, they would have receive X thousand/million of tourists
Would they be getting more that they would otherwise though? As I mentioned elsewhere, London saw a clear drop in tourists visiting over the Olympic summer (with a matching decrease in restaurant and shop revenue), since it turns out many people who want to visit London would rather do so when there isn't a major sporting event causing massive chaos.
I mean yes. Spending all that money preparing for an Olympics and having no one show up is probably worse than having people show up. But not hosting the Olympics in the first place would obviously be the most financially prudent move
London normally[0] gets twice the number of international tourists as Tokyo, it's only $100 return flight from Europe and easily available for a weekend, and even flights from the US aren't extortionate, and are very frequent.
Tokyo is in the order of Seoul, Miami, Barcalona rather than London, Paris, Dubai, New York.
* Adoption of Credit card and NFC payment on real shop is growing.
* Smoking in restaurant/bar/road is well restricted
* Haneda airport add a runway, by plane flying over Tokyo
* Airbnb is allowed in some situation because of lack of hotels for audiences
* R-18 Porn books are removed from convenience store (IMO it's bad for people who not affordable to internet, it should be zoned but not banned)
* It is rumored that police forces print industry/digital content shop to strictly hide/put mosaic on that on porn content, due to the Olympic. (Why it matters??)
So we should pick cities in developing countries in need of modernization and have the global community fund it?
Instead of incremental improvements to wealthy nations, the Olympics is the opportunity to build up the developing world a as and highlight it for the world to see.
This was a massive benefit that came from the UK Olympics. Almost every facility that was used throughout the games continues to be used to this day.
"When the Park opens fully in spring 2014, it will provide a world-class hub for performance and community sport, offering a range of 25 indoor and outdoor activities every day, all year round. The iconic Aquatics Centre will offer two 50-metre pools and a diving pool, as well as seating for 2,500 spectators, while the Velodrome will be reopened as the Lee Valley VeloPark, providing state-of-the art cycling facilities. The Eton Manor hockey and tennis facilities, meanwhile, will operate as Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, offering two outdoor hockey pitches, six outdoor and four indoor tennis courts. In 2015, the venue will stage the European Hockey Championships – the first international sporting competition secured for the Park after the Games.
The centrepiece of the Park – the Olympic Stadium – will also host elite international sporting action, including five matches during the 2015 Rugby World Cup and the IAAF and IPC Athletics World Championships in 2017. From 2016, it will also be the home of English Premier League football club West Ham United, who will take residency as the Stadium’s long-term anchor tenant.
The Olympic Park’s Copper Box venue has already reopened for public use, offering courts for 20 different sports including basketball, boxing and badminton as well as a state-of-the-art gym. The venue will not only provide fantastic facilities for the community, it will also be a home for elite sport, with the London Lions basketball team set to play their home matches at the arena.
But the Games have not only provided London and its residents with new sporting facilities, they also led to major infrastructure improvements, with Transport for London investing GBP 6.5 billion in its transport network in preparation for the 2012 Games.
This investment included ten railway lines and 30 new bridges, which will continue to connect London communities after the Games, while at least 60 Games-related projects were initiated to promote greener travel, including a GBP 10 million investment to upgrade pedestrian and cycling routes across London.
The Olympic Village, meanwhile, will also provide a permanent legacy for the whole of London, creating a brand new residential quarter of the city, to be known as “East Village”.
The Athletes’ Village is being transformed into 2,818 new homes – including 1,379 affordable homes – providing essential new housing for more than 6,000 people in east London. New parklands, open space and community facilities will also support the communities that develop in the area following the Games."
From a logical point of view, we could have spent that money on those venues without the Olympics. There was nothing stopping us spending £6.5bn on transport, or building flats in Stratford, or building a velodrome, without the Olympics. In fact, you could argue it would be more cost effective - many of the Olympic venues aren't wholly suited to other uses (eg the stadium isn't the stadium a football team would build).
The only real argument for the Olympics from a legacy point of view is that it provides a fixed deadline and a potential for very public failure if you don't deliver - which probably stopped a lot of the graft and politicising that would normally accompany infrastructure investments of this size.
Hosting the Olympics costs somewhere between US$15-20 billion.
If the goal is really to put a city 'on the map' you could spend less than 5% of that money on an extensive cultural/tourism marketing campaign and have more of an effect. I've yet to meet anyone who's chosen Sochi as a vacation destination.
Sochi is hardly open for tourism - the closest international market, Europe, requires visas to visit, and not even visas on arrival like countries like Turkey.
Far less hassle for someone from Germany to visit Cairo, Dubai, Nairobi, New York, than to visit Sochi.
Same issue with holding the world cup in 2018.
Give a 30 day tourist visa on arrival and they'd get far more tourists
Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations. Summer Olympics have a better shot, and the stadiums can more often be useful long term. But, it’s still low odds of success.
The best bet seems to be a lesser known location which can use most of the infrastructure and has some non Olympics tourist destinations. Which isn’t a huge list, but there have been a few.
Not disagreeing, but they can evolve into training meccas for specific winter sports. Lake Placid is a good example - they hosted the winter olympics in 1932 and 1980 (the "Miracle on Ice" year). Currently the town subsists on winter sports athletes traveling there to train, with all the other services to support it.
> Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations.
I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.
The venues for Olympic Winter games are by definition where people go for ski trips, they may build varying amounts of infrastructure for non-skiing events but they will have an economy already geared around tourism.
Cortina d'Ampezzo is hosting the 2026 Winter ski events, and yes it’s a ski destination but only has a peak of 40k residents in the winter which is when the Olympic boom would hypothetically take place.
That’s not a huge economy to absorb a short term spike in tourism when it’s focused on a few months out of the year. Worse it’s not like there is a massive untapped surplus of people doing international ski vacations. But don’t take my word for it their are actual studies looking into this stuff that come to similar conclusions.
Cortina is surrounded by other ski resorts, there isn't a shortage of beds, the one time I skied there I stayed in another town. The Dolomites are also a summer tourist area.
Aside from financial gains through tourism etc. I have another observation from the 1972 Olympic Games here in Munich: Hosting the Olympic Games was a booster for infrastructure projects. Like some new roads, finally deciding to build an underground, building a suburban sub-surfsce rail line through the city center and convert it to pedestrian area, ...
Multiple of those projects where pushed off before, but Olympics gave the "let's do it" spirit for those huge projects.
Having those projects done is an important part of today's quality of life here (while since the late 90ies underground construction mostly stopped and we're seeing consequences as the city grows ...)
Living in Munich I have to say that the amazing park and infrastructures (widely used nowadays and close to the city center) left after the tragic 1972 Olympics are definitely worthy of the $1B spent over infrastructure
Barcelona Olympics happened in 1992. Back then, foreign tourists tended to go to the Balearic Islands almost exclusively, Barcelona was kind of an inside tip for the young backpackers.
Memories of an actually fascist government (which only disappeared some 15 years before) were still very present, and many foreigners thought the islands to be "safe tourist resorts", much like the tourist resorts of Cuba today (with few, mostly Boheme types ever leaving them during their stay).
Not sure if Barcelona as a tourist destination was caused by the Olympics, but in 1991, it certainly was not a major destination for Europeans.
I was in japan for the Rugby World Cup (late 2019) and i can say I am hugely relieved that Japan will not have to host olympic crowds.
Westerners looked at the lack of public trashcans and decided it was not their responsibility and simply leave trash everywhere. They smoked in non-smoking hotels. They turned public transit from a library into a pub. They ignored all queueing procedures. I even heard a scottish man brag that he never flushed a toilet the entire time in japan because he was "afraid of it spraying him if he pushed the wrong button"
I would imagine for most locals, they are extremely relieved to not have to put up with the same thing x 5
Well possibly such events should be not be awarded to countries with poor worker protection and H&S rule? do you think your country falls into this group.
Also you know that Ireland deliberately wanted to lose Eurovision at one point.
> This together with all the sub-human conditions the workers in Qatar for the football world championship
Are they not simply de factō slaves? deprived of a right to leave at their choosing?
That the world accepts this shows well the hypocrisy of man. — I suppose that for all of his theoretical abhorrence by slavery, a good football match weights heavier than that.
I don't think "the world accepts it", but they are resigned to the fact that the moneyed interests powering these events are unstoppable. Which may or may not be true. Some of the opposition is even tactically waiting for the best time to make a stand - which might well be when the country is most exposed. See for example how the Yemeni Houti rebels tried to hit a Formula E event in Saudi Arabia with missiles.
The worst thing, imho, is that Qatar is not even remotely the worst actor in the region. A World Cup in Saudi Arabia might well be inevitable over the next 20 years, and that will be even worse.
The world could easily pressure Qatar into abolishing this, but it does not do so.
We're speaking of countries that were willing to wage costly wars on flimsy evidence of w.m.d.'s, that are now not willing to pressure a nation over real evidence of slavery.
One of those countries refuses to enact a reasonable minimum wage to this day. That one in particular has no issue whatsoever with treating labor poorly.
The US could indeed pressure Quatar over slavery, or Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi and human rights, or China over Uighur Muslims and emissions, or Russia over Ukraine and corruption, or Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, or Israel and all its neighbours to get a move on with the peace process, or the UK about the Irish border and laundering Russian money, or Mexico about border security and the drugs trade, or Myanmar about restoring democratic rule, or Japan about whaling or Turkey about treatment of their Kurdish minority.
But pressuring them all at once, and hard enough to get results? That could leave the US in a lonely spot.
This reminds me how I used to write 20 years ago. Take a few classes in writing. couple of remarks about style, you make the reader work too much to understand whatever you are trying to say. A blog is not a twitter thread, post this on twitter if this is the style you like. Create a plan what you actually want to say with the post, because now it just seems like mudslide of your mind, wrapping up with some weird conclusion that doesn't really reflect the blog itself that well.
I cant' even understand what your arguments are for GCP to be bigger than AWS. It's no shame in being a good 3rd.
Kind of disappointing to read the comments here. The introduction talks about semantics of teaching. How phrasing can demotivate the students.
He goes over some rough edges and explains why they might be rough. He uses the word unfortunately here on purpose, to distinct it from bad, or weird or whatever.
Concluding he writes about how some of the unfortunate parts are needed to make typescript great.
That is confusing to me, he's talking about teaching, and using these examples for future teachers to think about in their field. Reading the comments here, they all seem to discuss the examples. I'm sitting here, thinking did I missing something, should I be discussing the examples? As someone that written many lines of code in different language. I can ignore the idiosyncrasies. But when you are new, it's really hard.
Similar that is why I'm always in awe of clojure/lisps. It's so minimal and predictable. you don't have to learn 100 million different syntaxes or exceptions. S-expressions, maps bools, data and go.
Indeed. Lots of "it makes sense in the context of JavaScript" reactions here. If the article had pointed to warts in another language, we would probably have had the same reaction from proponents of that language. I think the point of the article is actually being reinforced here, as it illustrates the mindset of people who know a language so well, that they think it worthless to spend time addressing such warts when teaching it. But a programming language is not in its own universe where it is exempted from data structure theory. A[-1] in the context of a list is a convenient alias for A[len(A)-1]. When you advertise your data structure as a List or Array, but it starts to display Hashmap properties, it is confusing, in any language.
Couldn't get through the whole article to be honest. Started kicking open doors. That made me scroll to the conclusion. Which was also underwhelming.
Reading the books he mentioned, I'm reading them not to know everything word by word. I'm reading them to get a map of that topic. One that would guide me to a narrower source if needed.
To even get more Meta, let's be honest. Blog like this are not really written for the readers. They are written because the author likes that topic. I remember writing my thesis, how I had to use the books in anger to create structure, internalise it and combine them to extract conclusions.
That is also why I like all those shitty blogs about "what is a monad" or "how to deploy a nodeJS app to Heroku". Not because they are the best reads written by the people who knows most about the subject. It's the opposite, I read it and I'm proud of the writers, because I know they are the people that learned something. I'm only there to check what command-line command I need, or what library combination they use.
Looking at books like "thinking fast and slow" I also couldn't get through that book. Needed to pay too much attention that I would rather put on something else. But I think I did learn something. I've learned about trying to be more conscious about instinct and reasoning. I think that still holds up, even though not everything in that book held up to scrutiny.
With this explosion of access to information, it's become very clear that Information is the not bottleneck. It is the balance between intention, grit, pain and pleasure. Go to any writing class, you will learn to think about the goals of the text and your audience.
I will never forget of an example of someone who did Jiu-Jitsu. He talked about the fact that if you play that sport, you'll end up finding the limits of your bones, how much they can take before breaking. Everyone that does Jiu-Jitsu will see it, but seeing is just seeing. You have to experience it. I think the HN readers like to go broad, but I don't think the amount of theoretical knowledge you'll get from your 10.000 cards thick anki Library. As diving deep and using something in anger day in and day out.
Gave Adam Curry's content (No agenda) a shot a couple of years ago. They created content that was at least flirting with creating their own dimension (figuratively). It seemed more like they were interested in their ego's then actually doing real research. To me it seemed fuel for unfounded conspiracies and provoking for provocation sake.
Not sure how people this disconnected with the rest of the world are able to create an "open podcast directory".
Pretty much seams like there is a platform wars going on when it comes to podcast. Looking what youtube did to video content as a platform I think companies like Spotify (Gimlit) smell blood when it comes to podcasting. Think that would be a shame for that industry, podcasting collectives like Radiotopia are awesome because of that, they have to lean on quality and content. Not on some fancy algorithm that tries to keep you engaged as long as possible. Looking at the content he creates, seems like the complete opposite.
What made podcasts awesome was that the platform was fairly neutral (rss feed). Yes you have Apple podcasts, but I don't know anyone that really likes podcasts and still uses that app.
The amount of sheer stupidity and science denial that emanates from the No Agenda podcast is mind blowing and terrifying as the podcast has a huge cult following. The amount of societal damage from media of this kind is real. Yes it's a niche market still but collectively the mongers of bullshit are overrunning the airwaves.
As someone here put it aptly, these days journalism is paywalled while bullshit is free.
I use Apple Podcasts for simplicity. Is there a better app that still enables Indie self hosted podcasts to proliferate? I’ve never run into any problems with Apple Podcasts, it’s a low tech solution for a low tech problem.
Overcast is my current choice. (For iOS, I don't have Android so can't comment.) I tried them all. I don't particularly like any of them.
I've requested a feature and reported a bug via their Slack. I'm hopeful they'll get added and fixed, respectively.
I still don't have a way to easily binge on some large archives. Like History of Philosophy without any Gaps. https://historyofphilosophy.net
And Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History doesn't sort correctly in any podcast client I've tried, making it even harder to binge.
What I really want is a NetNewsWire (RSS client) that can play audio (directly).
I also want client-side metrics and listening history. To help me remember when I heard something, better determine if I'm actually listening to misc content, etc.
Castro is another. I like its "Inbox" structure and switched to it from Overcast after subscribing to both for a year. The Inbox is where all subscribed podcasts go by default for you to decide whether to add to queue or skip. You can also have select podcasts go straight to queue. I subscribe to a few podcasts where I only listen to the occasional episode (Joe Rogan, e.g.). You can also drag episodes from the queue back to the Inbox if you want.
I could never quite master Overcast's playlists and smart playlists, but did love its exceptional polish and just how tiny and privacy focused the app is.
I wish I could get the best parts of both those apps.
Just chiming from the Android Side. I enjoy Castbox (castbox.fm). Although , the one scummy thing they did recently, is they look for silence gaps then insert their own ads. I still use it, because I haven't found a good alternative on the Android side of the world
I use an app called iCatcher which seems to have a directory of podcasts and will also let you enter rss/urls to download from host sites directly if the podcast creators distribute that way.
Been using it for years because it gives pretty fine grain controls over streaming vs downloading the entries, how many entries to maintain, how often to check, etc.
Launched a podcast recently ( https://thexyzpod.podbean.com/ ) and we were surprised to find most traffic by far coming from Spotify ( https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2oovdoty9hf0TI67ZYb1?si=D68k... ). What's nice on Spotify is the sharing episodes to Instagram stories works well - if you share from Spotify to Instagram you get a "play on Spotify" link at the top of the story - actually amazed Instagram gives that away for free given that linking to most things off-platform costs money. Anyway helps with the marketing to non-Podcast-nerds
"Unfounded conspiracy theories and provoking for provocation sake" comes pretty close to a description of the social environment of the whole internet.
Yes. there's some overlap with his audience and the audience of a couple other podcasts that I like that record live on twitch. I've tried No Agenda twice and it was full of conspiracies and borderline racist.
I've said this before on HN but No Agenda started off as a great podcast. It wasn't until Obama ran for president that it descended into a infowars knock off with their non stop talk about the Clintons are really lizard people, sarah palin is a rockstar and we gotta stop pizzagate.
Someone sent a link to a recent episode and I didn't hear any of that. Maybe I just got lucky? In fact I heard more mocking of those type conspiracies than promotion of them.
Biggest turnoff for me was the "private jokes" or terminology that seemed to intentionally create a barrier to understanding without investing a lot of time to learn their language. Like being the newcomer to a group of people who have been hanging out for years.
What I did appreciate was the podcast notes which were like a full-fledged bibliography of every article discussed. Including the text of the articles.
As an example of what I would call mocking conspiracy theories, they used a "rain stick" and claimed to have accidentally caused floods and storms. It was pretty clear they didn't actually believe in rain sticks, but were having fun and kind of mocking such beliefs because it was all so over the top. But I could see someone taking their words literally.
>Someone sent a link to a recent episode and I didn't hear any of that. Maybe I just got lucky? In fact I heard more mocking of those type conspiracies than promotion of them.
I haven't listened since Obama ran against McCain, it's entirely possible they've changed their MO since then. However much like the question if Dovak really thinks Apple should cancel the iPhone or if he's just seeking attention, I just fine constant bad takes uninteresting and annoying. It's one of the reasons why I stopped listening to Rogan.
While they mock some beliefs, they’ll subscribe to the dumbest conspiracy theory as long as it attacks the right people (hint: it’s not Republicans.) To give you an idea of how dumb: they used to promote the ‘joke’ that Michelle Obama was secretly male and would make fun of Biden’s many procedures.
