[HN Gopher] End-of-life dates
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       End-of-life dates
        
       Author : chynkm
       Score  : 199 points
       Date   : 2022-02-28 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (endoflife.date)
 (TXT) w3m dump (endoflife.date)
        
       | mud_dauber wrote:
       | Not EXACTLY sure if applicable, but here goes:
       | 
       | * I used to manage EOL notifications for a semiconductor co.
       | There is an industry-std process for doing so.
       | 
       | * EOL announcements came with pre-warning timelines. 12 months'
       | warning, for example.
       | 
       | * EOL dates were usually shared only with verified customers to
       | keep the churn to a minimum. Alternative suppliers (with SKUs)
       | were encouraged.
       | 
       | * Product lines with EOL data was kept on a firewalled site for
       | sales & customer lookups.
       | 
       | * There were a couple of 3rd party & startup cos that tried to
       | aggregate EOL dates, with minimal success.
        
       | ck2 wrote:
       | Very very nice. Confirmed a few dates I knew and some I wasn't
       | aware of.
       | 
       | Maybe helpful note that Windows 7 is not technically EOL but ESU
       | 
       | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/faq/extended-secu...
       | 
       | January 10, 2023
        
         | ChrisSD wrote:
         | With the caveat that ESU (Extended security Updates) cost
         | companies increasing $$$ for every year after extended support
         | ended.
        
       | benknight87 wrote:
       | Small nitpick - the search form doesn't stand out as input, it
       | just looks like random header text.
        
       | mcemilg wrote:
       | It's cool; honestly, I didn't know Python 3.6 support ended two
       | months ago while I was still using it.
        
       | JohnTHaller wrote:
       | Related: I hate that Apple doesn't give end of life dates for
       | their OS releases. Especially since Safari is artificially tied
       | to them IE-style.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | The bricks my house is made of are now 119 years old. They
       | haven't received any updates or substantial maintenance. The guy
       | who made them is dead. His company is gone.
       | 
       | Yet they are still functional and secure. They still work with
       | the latest screws. If I had to switch out my bricks every 5
       | years, I don't think I'd have any time or money left for the rest
       | of life.
       | 
       | Can we make software that's a little more like my bricks?
        
         | fsflover wrote:
         | Perhaps if you follow Unix philosophy, you can write such
         | software.
        
         | tikkabhuna wrote:
         | A single brick is more like a line of code than an application
         | or library.
         | 
         | Applications are more like buildings which need to be
         | maintained. Perhaps you could consider it a multi-use building
         | with many tenants and sometimes under attack.
        
         | scrollaway wrote:
         | Everything has a lifetime. Individual bricks just have a pretty
         | long one. Your building overall probably has a much, much
         | shorter lifetime than you think, and likely has received
         | updates and substantial maintenance over the decades, if
         | anything at least to keep it up to code.
         | 
         | Maintenance is one way of extending the lifetime of things.
         | Otherwise, your building would regularly be torn down and
         | rebuilt. This is often the case, when maintenance is no longer
         | enough. That's the best case scenario, too, as the worst case
         | is it collapses of its own volition, potentially with you in
         | it.
         | 
         | Everything has a lifetime:
         | https://tildes.net/~talk/109v/thoughts_on_lifetimes_limits_a...
        
         | bluGill wrote:
         | Do you really want to? Your house probably didn't have electric
         | lights when it was made. Your house probably didn't have
         | telephone, much less cable TV wires, or ethernet. Note that
         | wired telephone is a technology that came and went during the
         | life of your house, today you may not care, but 50 years ago
         | that would have been an issue. I'm not sure if your house would
         | have had plumbing or not, even if it did the bathroom (singular
         | - today most families want several) and kitchen were at best
         | outdated. I have no doubt that your house has poor insulation.
         | I suspect that your house has had several major renovations
         | over the years, and the basic facts of the original structure
         | limit what you can do and so it is still dated (though maybe in
         | an endearing way)
         | 
         | I'm starting to think the Japanese have the right idea: build
         | the house to last 20 years and rebuild often. Some parts of
         | modern house design are fads that I hope to see die, but there
         | are a lot of parts about modern houses that make them much
         | better than old ones.
        
         | cestith wrote:
         | The bricks may be fine another couple of centuries or more.
         | Brick walls eventually become piles of bricks if they are not
         | maintained, though. How many times do you figure someone has
         | done tuck pointing on the mortar in 12 decades?
        
         | magicalhippo wrote:
         | While not 120 years old, we have code in production that was
         | written 30 years ago and runs just fine.
         | 
         | It will be replaced this year however, not because there's
         | anything wrong with it besides code quality, but because it
         | generates files for a system that'll be changed to something
         | entirely different this year.
         | 
         | If the ground around your house physically changed completely
         | every 5 years, then maybe you'd switch out bricks more often as
         | well...
        
         | coruja wrote:
         | A little more related in my opinion is enterprise hardware. I
         | recently started a new career managing software and hardware
         | acquisitions, including their maintenance, for a very large
         | organization. When OEM support and maintenance is required by
         | policy, the EOL renders that associated hardware useless unless
         | you're willing to maintain 3rd party maintenance. Which, from
         | my understanding, even patches for vulns such as the recent
         | log4 vuln would not be covered. One could argue that this
         | limitation is created by such organizational policies, I guess,
         | but it makes the whole industry look more like a leasing
         | structure with purchase prices to me.
        
         | o_m wrote:
         | That's easy. Just write software that doesn't do anything.
        
         | mbesto wrote:
         | > Can we make software that's a little more like my bricks?
         | 
         | Excellent. This is a great analogy!
         | 
         | - Did the weather in your area change? Maybe you live in Texas
         | and experienced an abnormally huge freeze in 2020 which cause
         | most people to have to replace plumbing and water heaters?
         | 
         | - Maybe you are experiencing more hurricanes than normal and so
         | flooding has become more likely. Now you need to put your house
         | up on stilts?
         | 
         | - What about that new Tesla you might have bought that needs a
         | 240v charger? Can you do this without ripping open the wall?
         | 
         | Software entropy is not just because the software changes, but
         | because the _environment_ changes.
        
           | theandrewbailey wrote:
           | - Did your neighborhood become a war zone?
        
       | jve wrote:
       | So, whos gonna find the longest concrete date right there? I have
       | one for 22 years...
       | 
       | 3.5 SP1 14 years ago (19 Nov 2007) Ends in 6 years and 10 months
       | (09 Jan 2029)
        
       | Taywee wrote:
       | The mobile version of this is unusable on Firefox for Android.
        
         | monkpit wrote:
         | Same on iPhone/safari.
        
         | TobTobXX wrote:
         | Workaround (FF/Android): Switch to Desktop mode.
        
       | WhyNotHugo wrote:
       | Very handy. Will keep it bookmarked for reference.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | That name. I clicked thinking it was about people in a hospice
       | dating. Glad it's nothing so morbid.
        
         | bko wrote:
         | I thought it was dates in which people prophesized end of the
         | world, including dates of actual end of world (e.g. heat death
         | of universe)
        
           | jraph wrote:
           | Me too.
           | 
           | Reading other comments, it appears once again that it's
           | unfortunate that date designates both a reference to a
           | particular day, and a romantic encounter.
        
         | code_duck wrote:
         | EOLdates may have been a more easily interpreted name to tech
         | people.
        
         | Vinnl wrote:
         | Me too, mostly because it's literally one of the projects on my
         | project idea list. I wouldn't call that morbid though; I think
         | it'd be beautiful to support terminally ill people finding love
         | with less worry about leaving the other party behind.
        
         | jaynetics wrote:
         | I expected this to be a form where I could put in some personal
         | data and it would calculate the date of my death. I'm slightly
         | disappointed.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | devoutsalsa wrote:
       | I don't know why I was expecting Hospice Tinder.
        
       | tacone wrote:
       | Would be nice for this to have some sort of iCal integration.
        
       | _dain_ wrote:
       | thought this was a dating app for hospice patients
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | travisgriggs wrote:
       | Ah, the joys of the English language. I read the headline and
       | thought
       | 
       | "Now that's a creative twist on marriage."
        
       | scrollaway wrote:
       | This is a super useful resource for anyone writing libraries that
       | need to be compatible with a range of "all currently-supported
       | versions" of something. I use it all the time.
        
       | avnigo wrote:
       | Meta: perhaps hyphenating 'end-of-life' or including 'EOL' in the
       | title might make it clearer to the reader on what this is about.
       | I don't know if it was just me trying to figure out what those
       | 'life dates' were from the title.
        
         | dbbk wrote:
         | I thought it was dating for people who were terminally ill...
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Hyphenated above. Thanks!
        
         | foo_barrio wrote:
         | Interesting that you read it as "end of life-dates". I read it
         | as "end-of-life dates" and thinking it was about very old
         | people or terminally ill people dating each other and
         | supporting themselves up through the end.
        
           | MonkeyIsNull wrote:
           | Exactly what I thought it was as well.
        
             | ianai wrote:
             | "Support cycles" or something would be more self
             | explanatory.
        
           | monocasa wrote:
           | Yeah I thought someone was capitalizing on the trope that old
           | folks homes are basically orgy shacks and making a Tinder
           | competitor for the space. You get a lot of people together
           | dormitory style that have lost their life partner already,
           | can't get pregnant, in a lot cases take a 'well it won't last
           | that much longer anyway' approach to STIs, and have modern
           | access to boner pills, and you have a recipe for a lot of
           | casual hookups.
        
       | jjice wrote:
       | Nice to have this as an aggregate of EOLs. Also didn't realize
       | AL2 was hitting EOL so soon. I hope they have a better upgrade
       | path for AL2022 than they did for AL2, which was "I don't know,
       | figure it out" if I recall.
        
       | jonhohle wrote:
       | I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see, but all there is is a
       | pitch for an end of life app and a link to GitHub and other
       | supporting sites that talk about a project vaguely but don't
       | provide any content or examples.
       | 
       | Is there an issue with a data store or does the site not work in
       | Safari (iOS)?
        
         | mark_and_sweep wrote:
         | Same for me, using Firefox on Android. The navigation is not
         | visible. Quick workaround: Enable desktop mode in your browser.
        
         | guessmyname wrote:
         | Here are some examples:
         | 
         | - https://endoflife.date/go
         | 
         | - https://endoflife.date/php
         | 
         | - https://endoflife.date/nodejs
        
         | Liquid_Fire wrote:
         | At least in Firefox (Android) if you tap in the top right
         | corner (there is nothing visible there, but just tap in the
         | very corner) a list of projects appears.
        
           | ghostly_s wrote:
           | what on eartg
        
             | thatguy0900 wrote:
             | Peak minimalism
        
           | notRobot wrote:
           | This works!
        
         | NBJack wrote:
         | Thought the same. Chrome mobile rendering doesn't have a menu
         | to browse by. Hopefully they will fix it soon.
        
       | asicsp wrote:
       | Past discussion:
       | 
       | "Show HN: Endoflife.date - Site with EOL dates of everything"
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20033728 _(248 points | May
       | 2019 | 80 comments)_
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-28 23:01 UTC)