skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why not just say "Good Riddance?"

From a pragmatic perspective, the fewer browsers we as developers need to support, the better. There has never been any meaningful standardization between browsers. Even "modern" browsers are all different enough that you need to test and code specific paths for each of them unless you stick to trivial things.

Personally, I want the same thing I wanted back in 1996 when I started this ride: One browser to win, and the others to drop to such a tiny share that we don't need to support them anymore.

Firefox performed a service in convincing Microsoft to update IE6. But that was fifteen years ago. Since then, Chrome has arrived and demonstrated that it is far and away the best. In my opinion, Firefox would serve us best by simply stepping aside. All it does today is force us to code yet another path into everything we build.
"It is heavyweight. It requires constantly registering and unregistering processes from the file descriptors, potentially thousands of descriptors, thousands times per second."

Can someone clarify what this tries to say. Thanks.
But heavily used in other countries. Travelling through southeast Asia and India makes me believe that usage there could be even higher than in US or Europe, nearly everyone who has internet on their phone will use Facebook.
New to me, even as someone with a long standing interest in open source games.
Remind me to never climb an AM radio tower...
Firefox is going to need a large UI overhaul before I even consider laying my eyes on it. It looks terrible compared to Chrome. Maybe if Mozilla would employ me, I could fix that.
It's very hard to stop Chrome's brand at this point.
more likely going straight into the sea
Will artificial intelligence help to crack biology?
StumbleUpon is a nice service to find content like that
As a long term Firefox user, the number of times I have to fire up Chrome because a site will not display correctly in Firefox grows month by month. :(
People choose firefox over IE because firefox was better. People choose chrome over firefox and IE because chrome is better.
Want to beat google? create better. Not negativity.
What about Spreaker[1] ? Supports recording, hosting, publishing and searching. Has mobile application to accompany the app and it's been around more than 2 years.

[1] http://www.spreaker.com/
I personally use Chrome and I teach a class that involves some lessons on HTTP/web scraping/web app dev and I ask the class to use Chrome. For me, my bias is towards how much I like Chrome's dev tools, though I haven't used Firefox's in awhile. The ease of creating multiple browser profiles is great, too, though I hear FF has the same thing.

I'm not much of a plugin user, but I'll be using Chrome's Secure Shell [0] for the first time ever and will be advising Windows students to use it over PuTTY (at first, anyway). It's kind of a lifesaver for me because PuTTY, from my experience a couple years ago, is a much more stilted experience than OS X Terminal. I see Firefox has FireSSH [1] and will give that a try, but the high user base of Chrome's Secure Shell (600K+) gives me a little assurance about the reliability of the plugin.

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firessh/
Not sure most people even use bookmarks to be honest. Maybe my non-technical friends are atypical, though.

"Navigational searches" are a thing and they are very optimized by Google. But yes, auto-complete likey handles a lot as well.
(shill alert: former Google and Mozilla employee)

"They just want products that work" sounds like an explanation of why people buy iPhones, because I don't know anyone who's had that experience with Google products (other than Chrome, I suppose).

It's so bad that I've stopped even considering giving a Google product to family. They quickly get fed up with the Android phone or Chromebook and replace it with something else, like an iPhone or a macbook or a windows laptop.

Personally, I've owned about 6 different Android devices, and all of them either stopped getting essential firmware updates, or broke of their own volition. Most recently my Nexus 5X randomly stopped working, and then the warranty replacement spontaneously corrupted its internal flash a week after I got it. In my experience, buying from Google directly is worse than buying from third parties.

Still not gonna buy an iPhone though, because I like being able to actually run free and open software on my phone.

P.S. are you going to argue that Safari is the only good browser and the others all suck, just because tons of people use Safari? The real answer is that Safari's market dominance is in large part due to the iPhone and iPod banning third-party browsers, aside from whether Safari is a good browser at all (at most, it's a decent one).
Mostly past caring about Firefox. Just about every choice they've made since before Australis moves it further away from being what I'd like.

May as well just use Chrome at this point, rather than Chrome Lite.
'Truth' should go in scare quotes here. If they're going to dedicate an entire program to attacking someone, and they hold the reins in what goes in the archives and what does not, why would you expect the end result to be the full, unadulterated truth? Rather than out-of-context soundbites and a highlight reel of whatever makes Trump look bad?
The lights that I've looked at (look up liberty vt20 for example) have all suggested that eye contact with the light, peripheral or otherwise, is essential for results.
I always knew blue LEDs was bad for you. But its nice to have confirmation of this.

Blue LEDs can seem almost blinding.
OK Google is more powerful than ever before but eg. Google docs are not "winning" - docs are not forcing you to use blessed OSes (you can use docs from Firefox) and I'm still more afraid of Windows domination since it's still desktop where you create real content than Android which is basically dumb multimedia player and browser.
A viable Firefox-based Electron alternative would be very welcome.
Before There Was Project Valerie, There Was Slide N' Joy
AWS Business Builder
Facebook started in small social groups (Universities) and grew from there. I'm sure that if someone comes up with a better social network, it will quickly be adapted. Snapchat shows that you can become extremely popular with a simple idea that people like.

But Facebook is at the moment really good at capturing what users want. So they have this monopoly for a reason. But I'm very sure that at some point people will leave Facebook for something else, just because that's how it has always been. The question is just how long it takes until that happens.
In my experience a huge part of burnout also comes from deriving all your sense of identity from one source. If you only identity yourself as a developer then you will probably sooner or later start questioning whether what you do is all that meaningful. You will also be seriously exposed to criticism as questioning your abilities becomes questioning of your worth as a human being.

You are also someones child, maybe a father or mother and only one step away from being a pianist, boardgamer, hiker, traveller or whatever.

Identity diversification.
And what people don't know can't hurt them, right?

More seriously, there is a battlefield on the web. Since the demise of Opera, Firefox is the only mainstream browser left standing that actively attempts to not violate your privacy.

This doesn't mean that Firefox developers don't need to work on ways to make Firefox the best browser – incidentally, Firefox in January 2017 is orders of magnitude better than Firefox in January 2016. But it also means that some of the most important of Firefox are invisible, because they're all about what Firefox refuses to do.

Caveat: I'm a contributor to Firefox.
>In contrast practically every "practical" sweather that I have ever purchased balls up after just a few wearings

Really? I have some ~£20 sweaters that I've been wearing at least once a week for a few years, and yes they're starting to get holes in them now, but it's still a lot more than "a few wearings".
I'm sorry, but most of the good things that have happened with the browser are directly because there was competition. If one wins and the others disappear it's simply going to be too tempting for the winner to abuse it's position because nobody will have another choice.
Well the premise is that you would trust the company you choose do business with for this service.
A moment that changed me: learning people disliked me for my skin colour
As Facebook shows, most folks don't mind being locked in, even when they're aware of it, to varying extents. The reasons are complex, but basically can be boiled down to easy and seamless use for the "first world" and "cheap" or "free" for the rest of the world.

So, if Mozilla can make FF as fast and "hip" to use as Chrome AND they can make it as free (which in this sense means being bundled in everywhere), then yes, they stand a chance of overtaking Chrome...
Yeah, this is an unavoidable consequence of their (current) 1-process model for tabs. They have a system for running tabs in a process separate from the browser, but they don't currently split tabs out into multiple processes, so you can get lag on switching tabs.

IIRC they are working on expanding this so that tabs are split across multiple processes, without using Chrome's resource-hungry Process Per Tab approach.
The playback buffer size is usually much larger than the wi-fi latency. This should allow multi-channel and video to sync without issues.
> fa

You get as far as the 'a'?
> The deepest pain point of JavaScript development is undoubtedly build configuration i.e. webpack and babel.

Really? Perhaps I've been doing this too long, but once you get your head round the basics I really don't think it's that bad
And even more relevant today. Especially after yesterday's fiasco where Chrome doesn't allow installing self-made extensions permanently—forcing you to publish on the Chrome Web Store [0].

There were a few years (2010-2014) when Chrome was a clear industry leader: in design, web standards, resource consumption, and championing openness on the Internet. Not anymore, at least for me:

* Firefox has built-in Reader mode and RSS, while Chrome still doesn't.
* Firefox's ES-next compatibility is comparable to Chrome, and Safari Technology Preview is ahead [1].
* Chrome hasn't embraced the WebExtensions specification (I'd love to be wrong on this).
* Killing Chrome Apps [2].
* Chrome displays an ambiguous/dissuasive popup when you attempt to enable Do Not Track [3].

I hope once Servo is production-ready, it performs far better than Chrome that the browser performance enthusiasts are also willing to switch.

That said, Chrome's Web Inspector is top-notch, and it is the only thing I miss from switching to Firefox.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13325507

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13133135

[2] http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/19/google-will-kill-chrome-ap...

[3] http://imgur.com/a/fHAyx
> Since then, Chrome has arrived and demonstrated that it is far and away the best

I, for one, am happy to have the option of a browser that doesn't decimate my battery life
This is a pretty naive view that ignores market effects. You can get away with reasoning like this when you're talking about userbases on the order of 100000, but not when literally dozens or hundreds of millions of people use your software.
Google is the #1 source of knowledge for most internet users in the world (excluding China). In addition to that they provide a large share of communication (GMail), orientation (Maps) and are responsible for ads on many other pages.

Many companies (including Facebook) tried to beat Google's search algorithm, they all failed (except for Bing which seems to be used by some). Unless someone can make a search engine that is much better than Google, they will keep being successful.

Same for an ad network. If you have a website, using Google for ads seems to be the best option so far. No one is really happy with Google, but they still seem to be better than most competitors.
I agree the delay is annoying (especially for live events that you are watching - e.g. fireworks) but overall I've found DAB to be far preferable to FM. Admittedly I pretty much only listen to BBC Radio 4 which is mainly voice rather than music.
Not all the tracking is disabled unfortunately. You might be interested in Inox - https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/inox
I resisted Twitter (and most social media including Facebook) for various reasons.

There is a very real cost to this choice (especially depending on your lifestyle). For me as a huge introvert I could tolerate the cost of not having Facebook.

For Twitter I'm feeling the professional cost of not having an online identity or an outlet or following to once in a while be able to announce or promote something.

So I've been considering joining Twitter again after many many years.

Does anyone want to comment on that?

I have noticed all the time I'm hearing about people talking about deleting Facebook and Twitter and blah blah but I never ever see someone in real life who actually sticks to that.

I feel like I'm the only fool who has gone through and stuck with it and has paid the price.
Not sure this is necessarily the case - Google cross-promoted Chrome extremely heavily across all its web properties, ran massive ad campaigns, and contractually obligated Android vendors to preinstall and use Chrome as the default on their handsets. Mozilla, lacking the power or money to do any of these things, wouldn't be able to compete on these fronts, regardless of who built the better product.
I'd write in something ultralight. Either the tracking or the Js frameworks are slowing modern browsers down. Probably both and other things too.
I have been using Opera. It behave really like Chrome ( I guess it's based on Blink). With less memory consumption. VPN included, add blocker included, and most of all, the best stuff I'd really like to see ported to Chrome: extensions opening at the left Sidebar of the page. So now I can access Google Keep, Translation, 2048 ...on the same page while reading HN, or anything.
> My only complaint is trying to figure out how to properly work with 3rd party react modules within typescript's own namespace system

Could you be more specific about the issue you're having here? Might be able to help
What is the best way to prevent big companies (like Google, but not only), that have a de facto monopoly on certain and important parts of the internet, from applying vendor lock strategies to kill their competitors?
For what it's worth, agreeing on a strategy with phone vendors and OEMs is much harder than it looks. Decision-makers in this domain have very different processes and goals than in software development. Plus it's very much a shark-eats-shark world.

So I don't actually know who took the decisions, but I wouldn't be so sure that it's Mozilla.
If I understand correctly, all cell towers in the US are in fact supposed to have at least 8 hours of backup power.

Here's the FCC ruling: http://www.njslom.org/FCC-07-177A1.pdf (page 23)
On the bright side, anyone who dislikes Chrome's UI can wait 6 months for them to completely overhaul it again, like clockwork :-)

Agreed that it is much more polished, if only because they aggressively remove everything they can from the UI, including features. Definitely provides a visually relaxing look, even if they crammed it full of unnecessary margins and whitespace. Works pretty well on tablets, too.
I cannot describe how disappointed I was that the awards were not mentioned in the wikipedia article :(
I am so confused about this all the time. My solution is to go see what Go is using: https://golang.org/src/crypto/rand/rand.go
Trusting them to do the Right Thing.

Is there a good reason why /dev/random AND /dev/urandom exist?
Still, listen a lot to the radio on 4G and you will most likely hit you mobile data cap (1GB ~ 1h of 64kbit audio a day for a month)
This.

I think we've seen throughout societal history that if you want to affect change you have to do it through the path of least resistance for consumers; this means creating a better browser experience that people use not because they want to revolt, but because they gain utility from doing so.
I'm running Chromium instead of Chrome. I like to think of it as Chrome without the bad parts, even though google has influence in the Chromium project.

The main reason I would not switch to Firefox is because, at least when I last tried it, I did not like their dev tools as much.
The sad thing is Mozilla had a great Electron alternative way before Chrome even existed (apps like Songbird used it, and I shipped a mass-market product using it), but it was dropped due to complexity and lack of resources. Google has the resources to support scenarios like this more easily, and the community is happy to do the rest of the work for them. Market effects are tough :/
Orly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000
Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective?

Let me preface this by saying I am open to a new browser, especially one that is always in "incognito" and doesn't share sessions between tabs/windows. My favorite is Lynx but that doesn't always work .

Facebook & Messenger for Android is pretty much spyware and they have over 1B downloads each, so that takes spying out of the discussion.

The last time I checked Chrome performed best (even if it is only marginal) on all benchmarks.

I know there are lots of serious reasons not to trust Google aside from user tracking (changing search results for political reasons[1], Eric Schmidt being a little too friendly w State Dept.[2]) but they make damn fine products.

[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-think-tank-launch...

[2] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
I think the point being made is that this isn't "scarcity", it's just where supply and demand intersect for high quality products.
> Why not just say "Good Riddance?"

Because the less competition, the more stagnant the web will be. Then vendors like Microsoft will shove proprietary tech into their browsers and we'll be back to IE6 + Flash. Is it what you want?

Firefox is the only serious open source browser project out there. Chrome isn't, Google could drop Chromium development any day, it wouldn't be the first time they did something like that.

Of course, I believe Mozilla & Firefox shot themselves in the foot by refusing to implement specs like WebSQL,File System API and a few others, no matter what the reason was. I use these API to deliver complex offline applications, I had no choice but to tell my clients to use Chrome. And yes IndexedDB sucks.
Opera was and still is the best and most innovative browser.
Resume is written in Latex. So hard to copy, paste. Is there a better way to reach out to you?
The worst thing about DAB for me is that any signal interruption causes complete lack of sound, and then my car takes at least 5 seconds to tune back in. It's extremely infuriating - I much prefer FM radio which gets noisy, but at least you can continue listening, even when driving through poor signal area.
I always found the Delta arrangement very interesting. The refinery took a $10 million loss which saved DL $100 million. [1] But it also saved rivals money. When they make cheaper jet fuel it doesn't just go to Delta. They have to sell the fuel into the Jet-A for the region. That means they subsidize all the other airlines too.

So DL says, if we give each airline $90 million (# made up), our use and deployment of capital will be (is?) more efficient and therefore it's a net win for us.

Or possibly in another thought-experiment, it's better that each airline has the money to invest in their businesses and products, such that the entire Aviation industry benefits, rather than giving that profit to an O&G company.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-deltas-refinery-sacr...
Chromium is a better choice from a privacy standpoint, certainly. It unfortunately doesn't help prevent the vendor lock-in situation.

The ideal equilibrium for the open web right now would be 33% each for evergreen Chrome (or other Webkit/Blink browsers), Edge, and Firefox.

Bleeding edge prove-of-concepts aside; developing a website or web application that works in all modern browsers has never been so developer-friendly with all the wonderful tools and mature frameworks we have (e.g., Babel), and is trivial with just HTML and CSS. It's a shame to see a class of developers emerge that target Chrome exclusively.
Yeah, I looked and this and thought "well of course they can't handle as much light as humans, they're supposed to spend most of their time inside walls et al".

Not terribly scientific, but pretty relevant when transferring this knowledge to humans.
It depends on how things have shaped up over time. I have read before that pg is ok with the use of downvotes to indicate disagreement or annoyance without follow up comments. Here's that comment from nearly nine years ago: [1]

> pg 3246 days ago | on: PG on trolls

> I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

> It only becomes abuse when people resort to karma bombing: downvoting a lot of comments by one user without reading them in order to subtract maximum karma. Fortunately we now have several levels of software to protect against that.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
You end up doing a bit of explicit casting in places to ensure type safety, but it works. Little discussion I had about this with someone on Twitter which may or may not be relevant: https://twitter.com/tomduncalf/status/804002710878044160

I should write a blog post about Redux and Typescript - it would be good to know which bits you are struggling with.

HMR works fine with Typescript, you do need to use Babel as well though. This post I wrote should get you up and running: http://blog.tomduncalf.com/posts/setting-up-typescript-and-r..., it is a little outdated (1.9 vs 2.1) but I don't think any major changes should be needed to make it work with newer versions. Unfortunately, HMR (v3 beta) doesn't play nice with react-router as far as I can tell, so I have given up on it for now. I really miss it so I hope someone knowledgable finds time to focus on getting it working better soon!
http://passwordlive.github.io/
The thing is, no one can reasonably outcompete Google, because they leverage every inch of their monopoly power.

This is where regulation is supposed to come into play.
Firefox was always my default browser since ever but 2-3 years ago I switched to Chrome full time.

Every month or so, I try Firefox again with all the websites I care about, check how fast it feels, the JS performance, etc and, while it's pretty good, Chrome still is/feels faster. My tests are pretty subjective at times but I never find a huge reason to switch from Chrome (privacy issues aside). Each time I think I've spend too much time doing this dance and I take longer to do it again.

So I don't know about the 2016/2017 comparison you made and it being orders of magnitude better today. Maybe in some other area that is not performance?

To be clear, Firefox is not bad. It's actually pretty good... maybe browsers have matured enough that the low hanging fruits have all being addressed and it's hard to make Earth shaking progress (that would justify a switch).
Does anyone have a list of open source games such as this one? i.e. that are rewrites of older games

Popular-ish examples:

* https://freeablo.org/

* https://openmw.org/en/
To add to that, Google already abuses its position with Chrome (see the stuff surrounding AdNauseum in the past couple days). One company having as much power over the shape of the web as Google already has is scary enough, the notion of them "winning" the browser wars is even worse.