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Stop Whining About Google Reader

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Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#51

Post by emin_gun_sirer »

thebigshane wrote: post #50

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 o…

Here's some straight-up satire:

  Only a relatively small fraction of the population, mostly
  highly intelligent, and well informed, curious individuals
  used Reader.
Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391119

It's Lake Wobegon and all you need to enter is a Reader account and some outrage.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#52

Post by Samuel_Michon »

notaddicted wrote: post #29
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It can be done but it isn't pretty. My first resort when someone deletes their blog or whatever thing that was meaningful to me that I foolishly failed to mirror, is to go to archive.org and see if they have a good mirror. If they don't but they do have enough that you can find out the RSS URL, you can get google reader's archive of the feed like so: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/17484/archive-exp... Wha…

Here's a way to download the archive of all your starred items, 1000 at a time, straight to XML: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/reader/fMLNWm-s...

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#53

Post by michaelwww »

thebigshane wrote: post #50

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 o…

If it's satire, the professor is a very elaborate character creation which mostly lacks a sense of humor. The opposite case is more interesting. That he is for real, actually thinks and writes that way, and because he is from a different culture -- he says European, and I'm thinking the eastern part -- he comes across this way.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#54

Post by thebigshane »

emin_gun_sirer wrote: post #51
thebigshane wrote: post #50

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 o…

Here's some straight-up satire: Only a relatively small fraction of the population, mostly highly intelligent, and well informed, curious individuals used Reader. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391119 It's Lake Wobegon and all you need to enter is a Reader account and some outrage.

So give it me straight: not satire?

You wrote a post to HN about how those who are complaining about Google Reader (a group you admit is not all programmers) should stop complaining about Google Reader's shutdown because these people could just whip up their own alternative? And you see no other facet of this situation that is worthy of being upset about?

You very successfully just trolled HN. And that wasn't even your intention?

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#55

Post by emin_gun_sirer »

thebigshane wrote: post #54
emin_gun_sirer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some straight-up satire: Only a relatively small fraction of the population, mostly highly intelligent, and well informed, curious individuals used Reader. Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5391119 It's Lake Wobegon and all you need to enter is a Reader account and some outrage.

So give it me straight: not satire? You wrote a post to HN about how those who are complaining about Google Reader (a group you admit is not all programmers) should stop complaining about Google Reader's shutdown because these people could just whip up their own alternative? And you see no other facet of this situation that is worthy of being upset about? You very successfully just trolled HN. And that wasn't even yo…

My post ends on this note:

  Wouldn't it be much better to channel all this energy
  towards something more productive? Like, say, writing a
  few thousand lines of Rails or Django or Node JS or
  Clojure or whatever code you like to implement a
  replacement, either from scratch, or by contributing to 
  an existing OSS project. It's a big world out there, we
  have not "entered a darker timeline in the history of 
  the net," and it's always time to make it better, not 
  demand that someone else do that for you.
If that perspective sounds like trolling to anyone, they can just click on any of the other submissions and discuss the relative merits of the Google Reader population over ordinary people.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#56

Post by bobdvb »

emin_gun_sirer wrote: post #13
georgemcbay wrote: post #10

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?

I would suggest reading the blogs and information about NewsBlur, the demands on his system are huge. If one is just talking about having a single user RSS Reader these have been around for years, but in terms of a web app for thousands the scale of the database and requests is significant.

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#57

Post by motdiem »

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 pushed a small python script to allow you to export your read items as JSON here https://github.com/motdiem/GRARchiver - this can help

Re: Stop Whining About Google Reader

#58

Post by emin_gun_sirer »

samastur wrote: post #45
emin_gun_sirer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That kind of language will bring the discussion to an end.
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