Putting my deductive thinking to use on DLU:
Okay, so some weeks ago DLU made a tweet that led us to think that Closed Beta is coming within 2017. When I saw that, I figured that would probably be closer to December than the present. Our experience with Alpha 2 helped us understand that preparing for new testing phases takes time. So, it made sense we'd get an equally long gap from Alpha 2 to Closed Beta. Considering Alpha 2 hasn't even begun, yet, the safest predictions spoke about Beta on December.
However, some more tweets have come around that make me wonder if Beta could come even faster than that. On a tweet-respone on the 26th of July (and possibly other times), DLU stated "We'll open up donations when we hit Closed Beta". That's old news, but a new tweet-response today (or yesterday depending where you live) informed us of something new. When someone asked "When will you guys have an option for donations?", DLU replied "Hopefully shortly after Alpha 2". That seems to disprove my theory of a long gap between Alpha and Beta. Even that 'hopefully' is not enough to discourage me from making assumptions, because when it comes to DLU, a 'hopefully' is pretty good guarantee.
When will Alpha 2 be though? As I've said before, DLU's increased recent activity seems to be a hint at the approaching of Alpha 2, but now we've got more evidence in our hands. The recent minitests could mean two different things. Either they are a preparatory phase for Alpha 2 or they could mean that DLU will take more time to process the information they'll gather through these tests and fix the problems they find, that placing Alpha 2 later in time. A third tweet comes to shed light to this question. When faced with the minitest screenshot DLU uploaded, someone asked "ALPHA 2?! Wow!". DLU replied, "Not Alpha 2, but our minitests will lead into it". Although this interpretation of these words is questionable to a point, I am inclined to believe this supports the theory that Alpha 2 is almost upon us. In addition, one may add that since those minitests (a characterisation which isn't unimportant either) have been emphasised multiple times to be just stress tests, as opposed to content tests, meaning the feedback they get from them could be minimal (although I could be incorrect in that assumption).
Finally, there's one last question if all my earlier assumptions are considered correct. How long will Alpha 2 last? If Alpha 1 is any evidence, not too long. However, this is too little to rely upon and we shouldn't assume it'll just last a couple of weeks (Alpha 1 lasted only one).
All in all, we can't know how long Alpha 2 will last (unless the devs are willing to share an estimation), but there's what I think is a high chance that we are going to get Beta key giveaways soon enough.
On another note, I was looking back at older DLU tweets to confirm how long Alpha 1 lasted and I found this funny thing, posted on February 6th: "Yes; Alpha 1 ended, with Alpha 2 beginning on the 13th"! :P Though if you think about it, they didn't say which 13th... :P Today's the 13th! Could Alpha 2 beging today mayhap... Is my wishful thinking getting unrealistic now? :P It'd really be amazing if they actually do begin today.