Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

shilin.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 80 posts

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#31

Post by kookiburra »

Over2Chars wrote: post #18
preya2k wrote: post #11

Switching from Google to Proton sounds like picking the lesser of two evils. If you really want to “degoogle” you should probably go for self-hosting or getting a managed OSS product (e.g. managed Mailcow/Sogo Hosting). Otherwise you’re just switching from one crazy billionaire to another. https://mastodon.neat.computer/@jonah/113705526672291257

Do we really know which crazy billionaire is the lesser of two evils? We can merely choose between which is the seemingly better known evil. Self hosting is a way to go. It would be nice if one of those "no code" shops could make it a bit easier or something.

I agree, though self hosting can be too hard for everyday non tech users. I think the fact that Proton exists, regardless of all their issues, is still a good thing and a move in the right direction

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#32

Post by thih9 »

godelski wrote: post #25

A bit off topic but why are calendars so hard? I recently moved from android to apple and I'm just really impressed no one does a dedupe operation on calendars. Seriously, who works on these things? I'll write you the regex if you really really need it but damn, if you're going to push fancy AI on me to make my life easier at least take care of all the annoying trivial bullshit that makes my life harder.

It’s difficult to maintain basic features in a popular calendar, at least according to the ms exchange team blog:

> calendaring is particularly tricky. Why’s that? Well, consider time zones for a start – a meeting you set up isn’t necessarily in the same time as it is for me, and then you also invited people, from a whole bunch of other time zones (did you know some time zones are 30 mins off, not a full hour?) (…)

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/exchange/calendarin...

Then there is the “falsehoods programmers believe about time” list: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b... , with some counter examples: http://www.creativedeletion.com/2015/01/28/falsehoods-progra...

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#33

Post by ivan_gammel »

godelski wrote: post #25

A bit off topic but why are calendars so hard? I recently moved from android to apple and I'm just really impressed no one does a dedupe operation on calendars. Seriously, who works on these things? I'll write you the regex if you really really need it but damn, if you're going to push fancy AI on me to make my life easier at least take care of all the annoying trivial bullshit that makes my life harder.

This is really a good question. Progress with calendars has stopped 10-15 years ago, the only major innovation relevant to it was Calendly, but that’s it. I guess it’s hard to imagine new features or even incremental quality updates as a viable business idea.

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#34

Post by Over2Chars »

kookiburra wrote: post #31
Over2Chars wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really know which crazy billionaire is the lesser of two evils? We can merely choose between which is the seemingly better known evil. Self hosting is a way to go. It would be nice if one of those "no code" shops could make it a bit easier or something.

I agree, though self hosting can be too hard for everyday non tech users. I think the fact that Proton exists, regardless of all their issues, is still a good thing and a move in the right direction

I am a fan of proton, but we should always be ready for the bad news that forces us into another provider or self-hosting. Sooner or later it always happens.

Like lavabit or anon-penet.fi, cases where things go tits up for non-provider related reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penet_remailer

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#35

Post by karamanolev »

thih9 wrote: post #32
godelski wrote: post #25

A bit off topic but why are calendars so hard? I recently moved from android to apple and I'm just really impressed no one does a dedupe operation on calendars. Seriously, who works on these things? I'll write you the regex if you really really need it but damn, if you're going to push fancy AI on me to make my life easier at least take care of all the annoying trivial bullshit that makes my life harder.

It’s difficult to maintain basic features in a popular calendar, at least according to the ms exchange team blog: > calendaring is particularly tricky. Why’s that? Well, consider time zones for a start – a meeting you set up isn’t necessarily in the same time as it is for me, and then you also invited people, from a whole bunch of other time zones (did you know some time zones are 30 mins off, not a full hour?) (…) h…

Eh, I don't buy that. Storage in UTC and converting to a local timezone for display / notification purposes has been the standard practice for a looong time.

What I would believe, I don't know if true, is that different applications support subtly different feature sets, integration has varying levels of support and correctness and so on. Additionally, I feel like vendors are incentivized to offer good support within their ecosystem, but integration with the outside world is a second-class citizen.

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#36

Post by ivan_gammel »

thih9 wrote: post #32
godelski wrote: post #25

A bit off topic but why are calendars so hard? I recently moved from android to apple and I'm just really impressed no one does a dedupe operation on calendars. Seriously, who works on these things? I'll write you the regex if you really really need it but damn, if you're going to push fancy AI on me to make my life easier at least take care of all the annoying trivial bullshit that makes my life harder.

It’s difficult to maintain basic features in a popular calendar, at least according to the ms exchange team blog: > calendaring is particularly tricky. Why’s that? Well, consider time zones for a start – a meeting you set up isn’t necessarily in the same time as it is for me, and then you also invited people, from a whole bunch of other time zones (did you know some time zones are 30 mins off, not a full hour?) (…) h…

Timezone stuff is trivial with modern libraries like Java Time API. Event entity and event identity is hard.

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#37

Post by pluies »

karamanolev wrote: post #35
thih9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s difficult to maintain basic features in a popular calendar, at least according to the ms exchange team blog: > calendaring is particularly tricky. Why’s that? Well, consider time zones for a start – a meeting you set up isn’t necessarily in the same time as it is for me, and then you also invited people, from a whole bunch of other time zones (did you know some time zones are 30 mins off, not a full hour?) (…) h…

Eh, I don't buy that. Storage in UTC and converting to a local timezone for display / notification purposes has been the standard practice for a looong time. What I would believe, I don't know if true, is that different applications support subtly different feature sets, integration has varying levels of support and correctness and so on. Additionally, I feel like vendors are incentivized to offer good support within…

> Storage in UTC and converting to a local timezone for display / notification purposes has been the standard practice for a looong time.

All good until summer time kicks in and your recurring 9am meeting now starts at 8am, oops.

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#38

Post by ivan_gammel »

karamanolev wrote: post #35
thih9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s difficult to maintain basic features in a popular calendar, at least according to the ms exchange team blog: > calendaring is particularly tricky. Why’s that? Well, consider time zones for a start – a meeting you set up isn’t necessarily in the same time as it is for me, and then you also invited people, from a whole bunch of other time zones (did you know some time zones are 30 mins off, not a full hour?) (…) h…

Eh, I don't buy that. Storage in UTC and converting to a local timezone for display / notification purposes has been the standard practice for a looong time. What I would believe, I don't know if true, is that different applications support subtly different feature sets, integration has varying levels of support and correctness and so on. Additionally, I feel like vendors are incentivized to offer good support within…

Storage in UTC is generally wrong for future events and doesn’t make sense at all for unbounded sequences.

Edit: better approach will be to store event as it was defined and include processing hints, e.g. when next UTC time of occurrence can be reliably established.

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#39

Post by leshenka »

prmoustache wrote: post #22
egamirorrim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self hosting email sounds like it comes with a lot of dragons, what do you use for it?

Having said that, you can self host only calendars and contact, this is nowhere as complicated and maintenance intensive as emails. Or use one of the many nextcloud providers available, the free tier is usually enough for that.

I used to self-host email. I'm not a devops specialist, I'm not an email specialist, and I had to solve issues on a weekly basis.

I ended up moving to Fastmail, too. And if I'm moving email to FM, might as well move calendars.

Re: I failed moving my Google calendar to Proton

#40

Post by Over2Chars »

eptcyka wrote: post #24
Over2Chars wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really know which crazy billionaire is the lesser of two evils? We can merely choose between which is the seemingly better known evil. Self hosting is a way to go. It would be nice if one of those "no code" shops could make it a bit easier or something.

Self hosting is a pain and not sustainable. I self-host, it is cool, but this cannot be the solution. It’d be like everyone going back to farming because walmart can’t be trusted - they cannot but the world will go to hell if everyone has to do everything themselves.

I agree with you, or rather I think the barriers to farming are becoming lower, so maybe we should reconsider that homestead?

If this no-code stuff isn't a bunch of malarkey, it might be lowering the barrier to self-hosting that we've all been waiting for.

And self-hosting of email isn't quite "doing everything", it's doing one or two things.

It would be, to use your analogy, like growing your own tomatoes because Walmart's suck (and they do). Homegrown tomatoes don't have that "red leather" skin, a mysterious past, and may be quite inexpensive.

You can still get your Chinese made shirts, shoes, pants, and other inexpensive Chinese made goods at Walmart. But skip the Tomatoes.

Post reply on HN