
Google Releases Colaboratory - signa11
https://research.google.com/colaboratory/unregistered.html
======
rrggrr
I know its free. This is begging, not ranting. For those of us who
code/automate for our business and who are not data/ml scientists, can we
PLEASE have real world examples and an abstraction layer or two so we can
start using these tools as part of our workflows?

I have two classifiers running for my business with about 70% accuracy. Good
enough for my purposes. So grateful to the bloggers kind enough to provide
real world examples and sample code that helped me understand and apply this
stuff to my business.

Anything that makes ML less of a walled garden is most appreciated.

~~~
allenz
Colaboratory is just a collaborative version of Jupyter/iPython, which is just
a notebook-based editing environment. It's not specific to ML. Presumably, you
can run just about any Python code in Colaboratory, such as these examples:
[https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/A-gallery-of-
interes...](https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/A-gallery-of-interesting-
Jupyter-Notebooks),
[http://nb.bianp.net/sort/views/](http://nb.bianp.net/sort/views/)

~~~
carreau
IPython is uppercase I. We don't charge $999 for IPython X :-)

~~~
virgilp
Nobody would pay that price because IPython X doesn't have animoji.

------
jordibunster
While you're on the waiting list:
[https://notebooks.azure.com/](https://notebooks.azure.com/)

Supports more than Python 2.7: [https://notebooks.azure.com/help/jupyter-
notebooks/available...](https://notebooks.azure.com/help/jupyter-
notebooks/available-kernels)

(disclaimer: work for Microsoft (though not Azure)).

~~~
eVeechu7
I really like the Azure notebooks, and its hard to see what extra Google are
bringing here.

------
paulgb
The implications of this for education are huge! I've often wanted a way to
write and share tutorials in Python.

If anyone else has access already, here's a tutorial I wrote on generating
L-system fractals:

[https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#fileId=1pftvKmXYN...](https://colab.research.google.com/notebook#fileId=1pftvKmXYNtAd6FTdfFNkZRuOoyAp3ZL_)

(This is the first time I've used colab outside of Google so let me know if it
doesn't work!)

~~~
Plough_Jogger
You have head of Jupyter Notebook / Jupyter hub, right?

~~~
cromulen
Those don't have Google docs style collaborative editting.

~~~
carreau
Well actually... [https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-google-
drive](https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-google-drive)

~~~
halflings
This is not new. Check:
[https://github.com/jupyter/colaboratory](https://github.com/jupyter/colaboratory)

Colab is the "mature" verison of Jupyter Colaboratory, which was previously
only used internally at Google.

------
minimaxir
The VM used for Colaboratory appears to have 13GB RAM and 2 vCPU when checking
using psutil (so a n1-highmem-2 instance). Not bad for a free product.

However, the VM uses Python 2.7. (Per the FAQ, Python 3 support has no ETA)

~~~
bduerst
What's wrong with Python 2.7? (real question, not flamebait)

~~~
minimaxir
See similar thread made yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15647727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15647727)

~~~
bduerst
That didn't say anything about what's wrong with 2.7

------
Xorlev
We use Colaboratory internally and it’s wonderful. It especially makes
teaching and learning ML quite a bit easier. :)

I’m excited to see others getting access to this tool.

------
afandian
Wikimedia PAWS is similar, from what I gather.

[https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/PAWS](https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/PAWS)

I don't think it's a production service, but I've talked to a couple of people
involved and it sounds like it's getting a good response when it's been
introduced in educational environments.

------
danso
As u/halflings pointed out, the current version of Colaboratory offered was
spun off some time ago (3+ years ago?) from this jupyter-associated repo:
[https://github.com/jupyter/colaboratory](https://github.com/jupyter/colaboratory)

In another begging-not-ranting, I was surprised that Colaboratory currently
only supports 2.7x. It looks like it began around 2014. IIRC most of Google's
projects were 2.x upon public release (Tensorflow, the API client) but have
since ported over. Jupyter notebooks and iPython, too. Anything particular
about Colaboratory that makes a 3.x-port a time-intensive feature, or just
something that was not needed during internal development?

(Asking as a casual Jupyter user with no knowledge about what code/features is
specifically 2.x bound)

------
mplewis
This is huge! This is now the easiest way to show someone how powerful Jupyter
Notebook is for data analysis.

------
Lramseyer
This is pretty cool! I know it's new and all, so maybe I'm getting ahead of
myself when saying that it would be nice if it supported other languages aside
from Python. I know that iPython supports Ruby, Perl and Javascript, and
there's a plugin for Julia, but it doesn't appear to be supported right now. I
am still on the waiting list to play around with this however.

Also, integration with Google docs for the purposes of data processing and
data handling would be incredible! But that's just me dreaming.

------
iandanforth
Anyone know if we can beg/pay our way into a GPU backed instance?

------
alex-
Looks like it defaults to providing a python2 2.7.12 environment.

I don't see anyway of selecting python3, any one found the option? Or are they
only supporting Python2?

~~~
alex-
Looks like it is in the works

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46941308/python-3-suppor...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46941308/python-3-support-
in-googles-colab)

------
interdrift
Microsoft release Azure Notebooks. It works and it's available now. (I'm not
MS assoc).

------
me22
IBM kinda has similar service called "Data Science Experience" and it's more
than just a Jupyter environment.

[https://datascience.ibm.com/](https://datascience.ibm.com/)

------
wodenokoto
A chrome-only jupyther notebook environment. Seriously? Did they put extra
effort into making a browser agnostic html-app chrome only?

Just use Azures jupyter notebook environment if you need a no-setup in the
cloud notebooks.

------
rcarmo
I quite like the theme. Even though Anaconda 5 has finally upgraded Jupyter's
look for me and I need Python 3, the visuals and look are... cute. I hope they
get open sourced.

------
acosmism
nice. same as gryd ([https://gryd.us](https://gryd.us)) which is free for
students and has a tight autograding integration + sharing etc. would like to
see if colab will be maintained and expanded going forward or if this is it.

------
aeoost
Very old version of Tensorflow there (1.0). Even Azure Notebooks is more up to
date (1.1).

------
SILLYMO88
They still haven't said anything about the issues with Python 2.7?

------
kharms
Doesn't work in Safari. Very disappointed.

~~~
itomato
Requires third-party cookies in Chrome. Also disappointed.

------
adamnemecek
lol google and their releases with waitlists.

------
dfee
The first thing I saw was:

    
    
      [ ] print 'Hello, Colaboratory!'
    

Ah, so this is apparently a Python 2 Jupyter notebook system. The lack of
parentheses tells us so much about the service and the product's vision.

