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xkcd Survey

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The xkcd Survey: Big Data for a Big Planet
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rtreborb
3364 days ago
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With what he's able to do, Randall is worth giving data to.
San Antonio, TX
Eldaria
3367 days ago
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Done
Lythimus
3367 days ago
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Fairly underwhelming, I'm positive the results are going to be biased in three directions: Data scientists, quiz lovers, 'witty' / 'silly' people.
Covarr
3367 days ago
It's like I always say, three biases is better than one.
mooglemoogle
3367 days ago
Maybe they'll average each other out
snm77
3361 days ago
The joys of self selection......
alt_text_bot
3367 days ago
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The xkcd Survey: Big Data for a Big Planet
llucax
3367 days ago
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Please fill it out!
Berlin
thebassman
3367 days ago
Done! Can't wait to see some of this stuff in comic form. ;)

Watches

6 Comments and 16 Shares
Old people used to write obnoxious thinkpieces about how people these days always wear watches and are slaves to the clock, but now they've switched to writing thinkpieces about how kids these days don't appreciate the benefits of an old-fashioned watch. My position is: The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.
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Dadster
3721 days ago
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Recently I bought my 1st (traditional) watch in years. Like it.
New Hampshire
Crowbeak
3721 days ago
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On watches.
Nakagawa, Hokkaido, Japan
orpheus17d
3722 days ago
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This is the main reason I don't want a smart watch yet
notadoctor
3719 days ago
watches are like, bronze age technology
Eldaria
3722 days ago
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Well I stopped using a watch sometime in end of 90's, right about the time I got a mobile phone. Did not start using one again until I got my Pebble from Kickstarter.
esm
3722 days ago
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Alt-text: Old people used to write obnoxious thinkpieces about how people these days always wear watches and are slaves to the clock, but now they've switched to writing thinkpieces about how kids these days don't appreciate the benefits of an old-fashioned watch. My position is: The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.
Berkeley, CA USA
llucax
3722 days ago
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Free wrists! I'm never going back to watches, smart or otherwise...
Berlin
Ironica
3722 days ago
Same here. I stopped wearing watches in the mid-1990s because I kept taking them off and leaving them in random locations. Never again!

WASP's can get away with anything

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WASP's can get away with anything
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Eldaria
3725 days ago
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What is a WASP in this context? I suppose it is an acronym, but could not find anything.
tante
3725 days ago
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

Comic for April 2, 2014

2 Comments and 4 Shares
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Eldaria
3884 days ago
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Do you guys still get this feed to work? I don't and I tracked it down to the feed linking to dilbert.com instead of www.dilbert.com. So I greated a new Pipe, that modifies the rss feed to include www. You can find it here: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=3cc47410530a73d04f9a748e42672c69&_render=rss
toastmonster
3884 days ago
The original feed still works just fine for me.
orsonj
3884 days ago
It was down for a while, but came back. I couldn't access the dilbert website during that peirod either.
minderella
3885 days ago
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Bit-ching!

Google Reader announced its shutdown exactly a year ago

32 Comments and 59 Shares

In this industry, you gotta be tough.

I’m just kidding. We’re a bunch of literates who enjoy reading so much that we built our own news readers. But when a behemoth like Google makes a call that places you at the business end of 100,000 frantic power users, reminding yourself how tough you are is one way of dealing with the madness.

Google announced Reader’s sunset at 4pm on March 13th, 2013. At that point I had spent three and a half years building my vision of a better news reader. I clearly wasn’t doing it for the money, since my paltry salary didn’t even cover my market rate rent in San Francisco. RSS was a decidedly stupid technology to piggyback off of to try and cover that financial disconnect.

Take a look at this graph. It shows NewsBlur’s income versus its expenses for the past 16 months. Just look at those few months before the Google Reader shutdown announcement in March 2013.

It was never hard to justify to others why I worked on a news reader for three-some years, partially because I’d been justifying it to myself for so long. I had the delusion that it would all work itself out in the end, so long as I kept pushing my hardest and shipping features users wanted. And, at the time, with 1,000 paying subscribers, it certainly felt like I was getting somewhere.

If you’re curious about why expenses are so high, think about what it takes to run a modern and popular news reader. This graph breaks down expenses for an average month from the past year.

Why spend all that money on subcontractors and new tools? Because I’m investing in building an even better news reader.

Fast forward a year and let hindsight tell you what’s what. I was irrational to think that I could make it on my own in a decaying market, what with all the air sucked out by Google. But that three year hallucination kept me persevering to build a better product, which positioned NewsBlur well as a strong candidate for a Reader replacement. When the sunset announcement dropped, it didn’t take long to fortify the servers and handle all the traffic. NewsBlur permanently ballooned up to 20X the number of paid users. People flocked to NewsBlur because it was among the furthest along in creating real competition. As we say on NewsBlur, the people have spoken.

The post-Google Reader landscape

I run a very opinionated news reader. If you think somewhat like I do, you couldn’t be more pleased with the direction NewsBlur goes. But this is still a power tool, and in a world of casual readers who don’t care where their news is coming from so long as it’s in their interests and matches their biases, NewsBlur is the coffee equivalent of the AeroPress. Most people want drip coffee and they don’t bother wasting mental energy on caring about the difference in taste or quality. It’s a binary to them: coffee or no coffee. There’s nothing wrong with that, they just choose to focus on other things more important to them than the sourcing or control they have of their coffee.

Many competing news readers are visual and offer a similar experience. When you want to give up control in exchange for the digested output of sophisticated and heartless algorithms, they’re your best bet. When you want to exert control and know what you want and from which sources, NewsBlur is the only option. No other reader gives you training, statistics, and sharing in one multi-platform app. Nobody else cares so much about RSS as to work on a news reader when it was still a financial inevitability of failure.

Future work on NewsBlur

If the past is any indication, NewsBlur is going to continue to see many more improvements. This graph of contributions from the past 365 days shows my level of unwavering dedication.

One way people speak is by committing code to NewsBlur’s GitHub repo. Try developing your own pet feature. I’ll even do some of the hard work for you, so long as you give it a good try and submit a pull request.

Meanwhile, I’m using the windfall to develop a secret project that will complement NewsBlur in a way that hasn’t been tried before with any reader. And if that fails, I’ll find an even better way to make my users happy with their purchase. If you thought I was relentless before March 13th, 2013, just wait until you see what I’m capable of with the finances to build all the big ticket features I’ve been imagining for years.

And while you’re here, do me a favor and tweet about NewsBlur. Tell your followers, who are probably looking for a better way to read news, about how much you rely on NewsBlur. Reading positive tweets about NewsBlur every morning (and afternoon and evening and before bed) make this the best job I’ve ever had.

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nb_test
3884 days ago
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Good story
windexx
3888 days ago
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Great newsreader. I haven't even touched all the features yet much less incorporate them into daily use. But it's nice to know they are there.
Bedford, Virginia
jantdm
3896 days ago
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Go NewsBlur!
Munich, Germany
rosskarchner
3900 days ago
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I'm glad to see that Newsblur seems to be on a sustainable path. Go, Samuel!

(I'm also testing out using iffft .com to turn my newsblur shares into blog posts)
kerray
3900 days ago
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This is how you do it :)
Brno, CZ
kyounger
3901 days ago
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Love this product.
tomm74
3901 days ago
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Newsblur is something worth paying for - I'm very much in the camp of "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" - and I for one prefer to pay for my services directly, rather than by having my data sold.

I like NB so much, I've been developing my own Windows 8 Metro UI for it!
Cardiff
romkyns
3901 days ago
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Well, it looks like renewals are about to start rolling in, right? So you're fine? I hope you are :)
redheadedfemme
3902 days ago
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I love NewsBlur. I'm happy to be a paying customer. It's a worthy replacement for Google Reader.
amaiman
3903 days ago
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Have been using @NewsBlur ever since and haven't looked back.
New Jersey
p4ul
3904 days ago
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Keep up the awesome work!
Wellington, New Zealand
zelig2
3904 days ago
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I was oblivious of other readers when I used Google but I'm honestly glad they shut down their service as I really enjoy NewsBlur.
BiG_E_DuB
3904 days ago
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Great post
Charlotte, NC, USA
boltonm
3904 days ago
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Very happy to have paid for the last year of Newsblur - Google Reader first replaced and since superseded. iOS app continues to improve. Looking forward to more great value in the coming year.
London, UK
alliepape
3904 days ago
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I came to NewsBlur for odd reasons, but I now use it every day and it makes my life actively better. It also allows me to share the writing that's important to me. Thanks, Sam.
San Francisco, CA
Eldaria
3904 days ago
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I switched to Newsblur from Google, and I'm certainly renewing my subscription. I will also head over to twitter and tell about you.
kimmo
3904 days ago
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I’m going to renew my subscription to NewsBlur in 11 days.
Espoo, Finland
acdha
3904 days ago
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I hope that there will be a corresponding spike as people renew those annual memberships which are all about to expire
Washington, DC
koffie
3904 days ago
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Gladly pay for this great RSS reader! Only hope it's healthy financially speaking, the graph does cause some concern...
Belgium
Brstrk
3904 days ago
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With the google reader apocalypse, I was infuriated, because most solutions, both online and offline, always lacked the general usability I needed, especially when it comes to having many feeds. Them Reddit suggested some replacement alternatives. Newsblur was among them. I'm glad I paid attention back them.
chriskayto
3904 days ago
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Just tweeted my support of NewsBlur! Thanks for creating such a great product.
Toronto
leilers
3904 days ago
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Very happy with my decision to move to NewsBlur, even though it was forced upon me by Google pulling Reader. Definitely worth the investment. #newsblur
Northern Virginia
jcherfas
3904 days ago
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I STILL like Newsblur. And I don't even use it on iOS.
tante
3904 days ago
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"NewsBlur is the coffee equivalent of the AeroPress"
Berlin/Germany
stsquad
3904 days ago
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happy to pay for this service.
Cambridge, UK
chrisrosa
3904 days ago
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For RSS "@NewsBlur is the coffee equivalent of the AeroPress." Great quote. Even better product.
San Francisco, CA
musictubes
3905 days ago
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Gotta say, Newsblur is my most used app on my iPad and iPhone. Happy to pay for it:)
Falls Church, Virginia
taglia
3905 days ago
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Since I found NewsBlur I have never once looked for another newsreader. Can't say this for many other services!

Also, I am kind of in awe when I see what a single person can do!
Singapore
lasombra
3904 days ago
Same here. There's no other newsreader that satisfy my needs so neatly.
leiter420
3905 days ago
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I love this news reader. It's so much better than Google Reader ever was, and that's saying something.
jimwise
3905 days ago
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Neat. There's this great rss reader called... Ok, you're using it.