31–40 of 58 posts
Instead of writing this, he should have made a Google Reader clone and got rich this weekend.
> they're attached to their Twitter feed but dontcha-know-it's-just-not-the-same thing as Google Reader I need to have a Twitter account to follow someone's feed. But I don't need to open account anywhere to subscribe to an RSS feed. The blog owner doesn't know who the subscribers to his RSS feed are. RSS anonymous and private. That is the difference. Twitter is like centralized VCS. RSS is like distributed VCS. Iron…
> A real hacker would not whine about missing code. Hackers see missing code as an opportunity to build. Hackers like to build. Fuck you and fuck your "no true Scotsman" bullshit. Who appointed you to be king of hackers?
>Fuck you Feel free to disregard my opinion and express your disagreement in whatever terms best reflect you as a person.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest transparency? They've announced the move quite clearly, and have even given a timeline for its shutdown. You can still access your data and export it through Google Takeout[1]. I don't see what's untrustworthy, dishonest, or non-transparent about this. I am disappointed they're discontinuing a service I enjoy immensely, but it's their prerogative - they're not required to continue to offer a service if it's no…
Google Reader co-creator Chris Wetherell: “When they replaced sharing with +1 on Google Reader, it was clear that this day was going to come,” he said. Wetherell, 43, is amazed that Reader has lasted this long. Even before the project saw the light of the day, Google executives were unsure about the service and it was through sheer perseverance that it squeaked out into the market. At one point, the management team t…
> they're attached to their Twitter feed but dontcha-know-it's-just-not-the-same thing as Google Reader I need to have a Twitter account to follow someone's feed. But I don't need to open account anywhere to subscribe to an RSS feed. The blog owner doesn't know who the subscribers to his RSS feed are. RSS anonymous and private. That is the difference. Twitter is like centralized VCS. RSS is like distributed VCS. Iron…
Maybe technically. For me the difference is much more practical: with RSS, I can subscribe to something that updates once every five months, and not miss that update , because it ends up as an unread item in my inbox forevermore. With Twitter (or Facebook, Tumblr, or any other "activity feed" site), by the time I check, that one update has long been washed away by the stream of more frequent updates from other things…
Just because there will be replacements for most of Google Reader's functionality, that doesn't make sunsetting GR with 3 months notice any less of a dick move. "There have been far too many HN articles on how evil Google is for canceling a free service, how this product cancellation is a symbol, how Google should never have given anything to anyone if they were going to cancel it later." If a large company starts gi…
If someone was leeching off my unsecured wifi and came to depend it, I'd laugh in their face if they complained when I put a password on it. I could understand people getting mad if they jacked prices after shutting out competition, but saying they have to maintain a product at their own cost for third parties who gave them nothing but more work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Reader co-creator Chris Wetherell: “When they replaced sharing with +1 on Google Reader, it was clear that this day was going to come,” he said. Wetherell, 43, is amazed that Reader has lasted this long. Even before the project saw the light of the day, Google executives were unsure about the service and it was through sheer perseverance that it squeaked out into the market. At one point, the management team t…
Which gives the local retailers a chance to come back, right? Or are they all gone forever?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe technically. For me the difference is much more practical: with RSS, I can subscribe to something that updates once every five months, and not miss that update , because it ends up as an unread item in my inbox forevermore. With Twitter (or Facebook, Tumblr, or any other "activity feed" site), by the time I check, that one update has long been washed away by the stream of more frequent updates from other things…
But what's the point? If you want to read RSS in your email, it's not particularly hard, so what would be the point of coming up with new formats and adapting newsletter software?
As a user of a web browser--an abstraction over HTTP messages--you don't care about each individual HTTP response; you only care about pages. Sometimes an HTTP response will deliver you new pages; sometimes it will modify a page already loaded. Web browsers only still really use HTTP at all because the verb set (GET, PUT, POST, etc.) so closely aligns with the things people want to do on the web. It's an excellent protocol for generic RPC between machines, that also happens to be usable directly by humans to GET web-pages. Now, why doesn't anyone see that SMTP+IMAP are an excellent protocol for doing publish/subscribe between machines, where real humans happen to also be able to (and already do!) PUBLISH and SUBSCRIBE?
The advantages of making a protocol an abstraction over email are manifold:
1. the messages are stored in the receiver's email inbox--a universal resource that everyone has [and understands the purpose of!];
2. all messages can be processed using the same "utilities" we use for email (backup utilities especially);
3. the ports for SMTP, POP3 and IMAP are almost always open inside corporate firewalls, just like the ports for HTTP;
4. and all messages you send through those protocols will get passed through email infrastructure (which is big and robust and reliable, and, most important, already exists)--and, in the process, can get forwarded, multiplexed across mailing lists, thrown out as spam, and all the other convenient things riding on email infrastructure gives you for free.
> A real hacker would not whine about missing code. Hackers see missing code as an opportunity to build. Hackers like to build. Fuck you and fuck your "no true Scotsman" bullshit. Who appointed you to be king of hackers?
I think he is vastly underestimating the amount of work required to make a true Google Reader replacement. Reader was a lot more than just an RSS reader, and much more than just the front-end bits. Reading this post makes me wonder if he ever even used it or had much direct interaction with the underlying feed API and all that it offers (historical feed data, etc). Re-read this blog post with every mention of "Google…
I was indeed a Reader user, but by no means a power-user, so I could very well be unaware of some difficult-to-duplicate parts of Reader that are hidden under the covers. Can you let me know what I could be missing?
Sure I could build my own (in fact, I plan to), but this is obviously completely non-realistic attitude to take for every service that can or does bugger you.
Much easier than building these new alternatives is for you to just not read the articles which bother you. Especially since in this case you mostly can know from the title if they will.