Toby Dawes

Here is an admirably simple (and free) way host static Web sites via simple Dropbox folders: I found it incredibly simple to set up, though for my team there’s a major drawback in that we can’t share the Dropbox folder used to host the content. That’s not the end of the world, …

The lattice tries to steal the show, but the mac and cheese — made with brie, gruyere, and cheddar — is actually the best part.

Image by Macey Foronda/Buzzfeed

Image by Macey J. Foronda/Buzzfeed

Inspired by Breakfast for Dessert and chef Matt Jennings' Cheesemonger's Mac and Cheese:

INGREDIENTS
For the crust
3½ cups all-purpose flour (from the freezer if possible)
1 cup (2 sticks) very cold unsalted butter, cut into ½" cubes
¼ cup cold vegetable shortening
1 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp. kosher salt
1 Tbsp. scant apple cider vinegar + enough ice water to make ¾ cup liquid

For mac 'n' cheese filling
5 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
4 cups dried macaroni
4 Tbsp. of butter (½ a stick)
4 Tbsp. flour
2.5 cups heavy cream
2 tsp mustard powder
1 egg yolk
1 pound grated cheese — an equal parts mixture of gruyere, sharp cheddar, brie (no rind)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the bacon lattice
8 slices bacon
1 Tbsp. brown sugar

PREPARATION

For the crust
1. Measure out all of your ingredients for the crust and make sure your butter and shortening are very cold. (It helps to put them in the freezer after they're measured and cut into pieces. It also helps to keep the flour in the freezer.)

Image by Macey J. Foronda/Buzzfeed

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The beloved but doomed Google Reader is still a healthy source of traffic. Google+, on the other hand…

According to data from the BuzzFeed Network, a set of tracked partner sites that collectively have over 300 million users, Google Reader is still a significant source of traffic for news — and a much larger one than Google+. The above chart, created by BuzzFeed's data team, represents data collected from August 2012 to today. (Yesterday, Google announced that it would close Reader in July.)

We should add that this data isn't complete. Google Reader traffic became much harder to measure last year when Google began defaulting users to SSL encryption in such a way that masked referral data. And this doesn't include data from apps that use Google Reader as a sync service, such as Reeder. In other words, it's likely that we're actually missing some Reader traffic here.

The second graphic* shows measured Reader and Google+ referrals over time. This one, too, requires qualification: The changes in Reader's numbers can be explained mostly by the addition of new sites to BuzzFeed's partner network, not growth in Google Reader (the total number of visitors to partner sites increased, in other words).

But the relative numbers are still surprising: Despite claims that it has over 100m monthly active users, Google+ barely moves the needle for sites across the network, while Reader is a healthy source of readers.

*For reference: in August of 2012, according to the same data, Facebook drove over 70m visitors to sites in the network while Google Reader was well under 10m.

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Google's sudden decision to sunset Reader — perhaps the best-known RSS reader ever made — has been met with swift reaction from high-profile users across the web. Here's a sampling of people asking to save an RSS service on Google... all coming from the service that probably helped kill it in the first place: Twitter.

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