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

Stop Whining About Google Reader

hackingdistributed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 58 posts

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#41

Post by samastur »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #17
akkartik wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the part you curated you can export and take with you.

You can't export the content of the feeds (EDIT: using Google Takeout, that is.) Oftentimes, GR is the only one that still has a copy of an older article. What use is it to know I've starred an article if I can't read it anymore? (To remedy this, I've been using Reeder to export all my starred items to both Instapaper and Evernote. But no thanks to Google.)

I'm a day or two away from "finishing" a script that will allow you to do that (well, at least as far as Google will let me) and pushing it to Github. I'm likely not the only person working on this so I expect we'll be able to save most of our data.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#42

Post by hazov »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #15

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 it was a year or two people would still be whining, although with that people would have a couple of time to decide where to go. Having said that I disagree the company has any responsibility, their responsibility is to follow the contract (the one people do not read and just check "I agree" before moving on the form), as far as I can tell the contract says clearly they could just stop the service today, they did not.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#43

Post by Samuel_Michon »

Kylekramer wrote: post #36
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #15

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…

I really don't get this idea that Google owes people something cause they gave it away from free. Google never said it was staying around for any amount of time. The API wasn't even public. This "responsibility" is an entirely made up concept. At no point did Google say "Come one and all, build on our backend!". If someone was leeching off my unsecured wifi and came to depend it, I'd laugh in their face if they compl…

"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."

If you knew that your entire town had switched from dialup to using your unsecured wifi, and they installed dozens of extenders all over town at their own expense, and you knew about that but allowed it for years, and then you suddenly pull the plug, then yes, that'd be a dick move.

"I could understand people getting mad if they jacked prices after shutting out competition"

I would've been absolutely fine with that and I think many GR users would've been happy to pay.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#44

Post by jiggy2011 »

Kylekramer wrote: post #36
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #15

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…

I really don't get this idea that Google owes people something cause they gave it away from free. Google never said it was staying around for any amount of time. The API wasn't even public. This "responsibility" is an entirely made up concept. At no point did Google say "Come one and all, build on our backend!". If someone was leeching off my unsecured wifi and came to depend it, I'd laugh in their face if they compl…

It might be more like putting hotspots with big "free wifi" signs up all around your city, waiting for the local ISPs to discontinue service and then turning your wifi off.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#45

Post by samastur »

emin_gun_sirer wrote: post #23
TillE wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> historical feed data Google caches the entire history of an RSS feed from the moment it entered their database. This is in many cases unique, irreplaceable data that's going to have to be systematically extracted over the next few months, because I seriously doubt Google will release the entire data dump.

Thanks, I appreciate this. In your estimate, what percentage of Reader users have, or will, donate to the Internet Archive to perform this archival task? At what percentage level would it be wrong to call Reader users "entitled", given that the IA folks were hurting for disk space while these complainers chose to ignore its pleas?

At what point will you stop behaving like an asshole?

Not everyone who complains knows about IA or should necessarily care about it. We are not all the same person with same needs and things we miss from reader may not be the same, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a true loss/problem for each that is not easy to replace (I tried and none of the alternatives come close which is why I WILL write my own).

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#46

Post by shmago »

andrewmunsell wrote: post #27
bonzoesc wrote: post #8

> 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?

Yeah, I have to kind of agree here... Just because someone is considered a "hacker" doesn't mean he or she can't use someone else's product instead of building their own. Not everyone has time to build their own RSS parser and reading interface. It's kind of like taking away a mechanic's car--they'd still be annoyed you took it away. Just because someone can build something (and maybe not quite to the extent of an en…

And what is a "hacker" to begin with? I believe he meant the hacker which is defined here http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html, and not that you should invent the wheel avoiding other products (no problem should ever have to be solved twice), on the contrary, you should fill in the gaps when it's possible (the world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved). That's the true hacker attitude, not whining.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#47

Post by hlfcoding »

The point of a programmer is to save time by writing as little code as possible. You contribute to an existing project that's OSS, not roll your own bug-ridden p-o-s in the framework / language-of-the-year. You shouldn't be presumptive about 'hacker's and about Reader's users, especially when you're not heavily acquainted with the product yourself and its usefulness as a learning / info-gathering aid. Next time, don't write an article about a subject you don't know enough about, when you can just go hack yourself.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#48

Post by emin_gun_sirer »

hlfcoding wrote: post #47

The point of a programmer is to save time by writing as little code as possible. You contribute to an existing project that's OSS, not roll your own bug-ridden p-o-s in the framework / language-of-the-year. You shouldn't be presumptive about 'hacker's and about Reader's users, especially when you're not heavily acquainted with the product yourself and its usefulness as a learning / info-gathering aid. Next time, don'…

Agreed, contributing to OSS is much better than rolling one's own from scratch. From the vehemence of the "bring-back-Reader" posts, I assumed that there were absolutely no OSS projects that were suitable, and wrote the post for the worst case, building from scratch. But contributing to an existing project would clearly be a better idea. And if all these Reader users could pool their efforts constructively, the sky is the limit.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#49

Post by ktf »

Seriously, guys. Your favorite RSS reader has been deprecated. Not only is this not the end of the world, it is something that one-million-percent does not matter. Let it go!

Worst case scenario: you try a different RSS reader, and it works okay. You are in no danger of missing that all-important news article or blog post that all your friends are reading.

I take it back. Worst case scenario: RSS itself implodes, is obliterated from the face of the earth, and now you have to visit news websites and (manually!) click the refresh button to ensure that you're not missing that life-or-death article or blog post.

Wait, hang on -- I take it back. Here's the really-truly worst case scenario: instead of sitting impatiently with your lips wrapped around the proverbial firehose, desperately afraid that your content-thirst can never be sated without Google's help, you go out and actually create some content of your own.

(Or just buy a fucking newspaper. Jeez.)

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#50

Post by thebigshane »

The author appears to be playing along as if this is not satire, but I am pretty sure it is.

Here is my case for calling it satire:

It starts off with caricatures...

  every single one of these people do indeed have Twitter
  profiles, and they are entrepreneurs also, and they're 
  thinking about their next pivot, and they certainly have 
  an opinion on NodeJS versus Clojure even though they've 
  never gone past the tutorial on either platform [...]
Stating the obvious

  the only thing in between a hacker who misses Reader and a working 
  Reader implementation past-June is... nothing
Hyperbole...

  Reader's cancellation will have absolutely no impact on RSS. 
  Reader isn't RSS. It isn't anything but a consumer, one of many, 
  of the RSS standard.

  whoever is in possession of your RSS feeds probably knows
  you more intimately than Target, which supposedly knows 
  when a woman is pregnant before her father. It's an 
  intimate relationship, based on trust.
But I didn't really become convinced it was satire until this line...

   Entitlement without effort is like representation without taxation.
So, am I the only one who sees this as satire? A subtle poke at Hacker News for taking itself too seriously? Or am I the guy who mistakenly laughs "Ha! Yea that would be crazy, right?" even though the other guy was totally serious?
Post reply on HN