Switching from Chrome to Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox <comment><USER5> Firefox is nice. But over time there are more and more things I need to configure to get a "good" browser experience.

Things I do:

\- about:preferences#general > Startup > restore previous session

\- about:preferences#general > Tabs > uncheck Ctrl+Tab cycle ...

\- about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save

\- about:preferences#home > Firefox Home Content > disable all except Top Sites

\- about:preferences#privacy > Permission > Notification Settings > Block new requests

\- about:preferences#privacy > Firefox Data Collection and Use > disable

\- Set in about:config extensions.pocket.enabled to false

\- Install the addons: uBlock Origin, Gesturefy, Firefox Multi-Account Containers

\- I remove the home button

\- I remove the sidebar button

\- I reject every Firefox pop-up that wants me to enable Sync or whatever

The result is a decent browser, which doesn't get in my way. But I can understand that those steps are too many for casual users and can understand why a lot of people don't like the Internet. I wouldn't like it too, if I had to use default browser settings without an ad-blocker.

<comment><USER6> > \- about:preferences#general > Downloads > always ask where to save

I hate the default behaviour so much. What's wrong with asking me where to save the file? I almost certainly have a place in mind where the file should go.

<comment><USER7> I think it's easier to drag-and-drop from the Downloads folder to where I want to save it, than to dig through a Save dialog to find the folder I want to save something in. So it's less work whether or not you want to put your download somewhere long-term.

<comment><USER6> The download folder can still be the default, and all you'd have to do is to press "save" if you're okay with the default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those new and old to Firefox, check out the new-ish privacy feature "multi-account containers"

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi- account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account- containers/)

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately NoScript is not able to allow/deny selectively for containers.

I block all Facebook domains with NoScript so I cant really use facebook in a container.

<comment><USER10> You might be interested in Facebook Container by Mozilla[1] then, as an alternative to your NoScript rules.

1: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook- cont...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks already using it, but this doesn't give me confindence, that all Facebook traffic on all other sites is blocked.

<comment><USER11> Its primary purpose was for blocking Facebook on other sites as you browse the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Firefox has indeed come a huge way in the last two years.

\- It's multi-process architecture redesign _really_ improved performance (it's like using a whole new browser, honestly. If you haven't at least tried it, it's worth a shot).

\- Mozilla's commitment to privacy (I know in the eyes of some, their current commitment isn't enough) is the best option you have outside of Safari / macOS.

\- In version 71, battery drain on macOS is indeed largely improved

\- The multi-account containers, anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting are a breath of fresh air (yes, I know they are not perfect). I am satisfied that each time I sign on to YouTube, my recommended videos are just a bunch of random things.

\- Firefox looks like it will remain one of the only browsers that fully supports current ad-blocking technology. (Yes, I know about Brave, but that's besides the point).

\- The devtools section has seen a lot of attention that easily brings the experience on par with Chrome (in my experience).

\- Firefox on Android with AdBlock drastically speeds up browsing the internet on mobile devices.

But, despite all of these good points, the browser still feels... clunky.

Sure, the UI performance drastically improved since Quantum, but really, open a fresh Firefox window, browse to your favorite site and click around a little. Then, try the same thing with Chrome / Chromium / Edge. I don't know exactly what it is, but these other browsers just feel that little bit "smoother" or more "modern".

Say what you will about Google and Chrome. But morals aside, in my opinion, there's no denying they built a world-leading software product that has vastly increased the perceived quality expectations of browser users.

Note: I still remain a primary Firefox user. The eye-candy is nice, but for me it's not worth sacrificing all of the other pros of Firefox.

EDIT: grammar

<comment><USER13> The difference is quite noticeable for me when using Atlassian's Cloud products. May their framework is simply optimised for Chrome.

I also really do hope Firefox gains hardware video acceleration on Linux some day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I switched to FF for my daily driver almost a year ago on my Windows machine and haven't looked back. Previously FF had too many performance issues but since each tab is run in a separate process, it's been just as good as Chrome (not so much on OSX however, I still use Chrome there).

The other advantage of FF for me, besides Pocket, is that I can share and send pages with FF on Android which has support for ad-blockers. Last time I checked, Chrome didn't support extensions on Android.

<comment><USER15> I wish Pocket didn't come enabled by default. It's intrusive spyware.

Edit: It's information leaks for advertisements. I switched from Chrome to Firefox to get away from advertisement empires. Having to manually disable Pocket to do that leaves a sour note.

<comment><USER16> Pocket is owned by Mozilla, so if Pocket is spyware, Mozilla is making spyware. Does not sound right.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, they would never do that.

[https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing- cliqz-i...](https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in- firefox/)

"Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit"

Ooops.

<comment><USER18> I think you're misleading in quoting a two-year old blog, then closing off with "ooops", implying that Mozilla was caught in a privacy-related oops.

When in fact, Mozilla was super duper clear in the blog about the privacy implications of this experiment. And in the past two years, they have been focusing more and more on the privacy angle.

At the moment, both Safari and Mozilla look to me to be leading in privacy.

<comment><USER19> Being super duper clear about having sent the full URL history of users to a third party doesn't excuse you from the fact that you, well, sent the full URL history of users to a third party.

And unless the entire leadership of the Mozilla Corporation has been replaced since then (a wet dream of mine) that blog entry is relevant, since they've done it and they could do it again.

<comment><USER18> Are you saying that nothing could ever excuse that fact?

Cliqz is building a European, independent privacy-oriented search engine. This seems a worthy reason to me, especially with the complete and total transparency here. And in any case, the experiment has ended.

I still maintain your comments are misleading, by leaving out the context.

<comment><USER19> Setting aside whether Cliqz could be trusted or not, just think of it: this is a decision that went through lots of managers in the Mozilla Corporation, and nobody ever stopped to think for a moment "sending the entire URL history of our users to a third party? well this is wrong". This is the kind of decision that should've led to lots of resignations inside the company, but nothing happened. To me this means there's something deeply rotten inside Mozilla. What kind of assurance do I have that they won't pull this off again in the future? And let's remember that they are strapped for cash, so it's not like they don't have an incentive to sell private user data again.

<comment><USER20> "nobody ever stopped to think" is used constantly, yet is almost never the truth. What is infinitely more likely is that many people raised eyebrows and were assured by someone way above their pay grade that "everything is fine". Calling Mozilla "deeply rotten" is an extreme leap that (imo) is not justified.

<comment><USER21> I agree, but in this case, hydgv might be right. Leaking full browsing history is pretty far beyond the line.

Mozilla burned a big chunk of reputation when they fucked that up, as evidenced by this thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I switched to Firefox from Chrome a couple of months ago. The sole motivation was the fiasco that ensued after Google decided to mingle Chrome Sync login with accounts.google.com cookies - there is simply no way to sign in to Chrome Sync without creating browser cookies for the same account. I wanted the benefit of saving and syncing bookmarks and extensions across my chrome installations, but I did not want to be tracked across the web with my logged in Google identity and the Chrome changes for "Identity consistency between browser and cookie jar" made it impossible. It was time to move on from Chrome.

And I have been very pleased with the new Firefox. Highly recommend it to everyone!

</comment><comment><USER23> Loyal firefox user here. Never touched chrome unless I had to.

The australis days were rough, but since quantum it's been feeling fast. It doesn't even feel obviously slower than chrome anymore.

</comment><comment><USER24> In addition to telling others on HN the benefits of using Firefox and its extensions, please evangelize Firefox with the people you know (online and offline). That will make a bigger impact for everyone.

<comment><USER25> Or evangelize Chromium, which is faster and less buggy. Also better supported on Linux.

<comment><USER24> Chromium dances to Google's tunes. I don't see any reason to use or support Chromium, especially with things like Manifest V3 coming in the future and disabling extensions like uBlock Origin. A fork of it that makes it very different from Chrome, perhaps. But not Chromium as is or Chrome.

<comment><USER25> Chrome never disabled uBlock Origin. They are making changes to an API and have been open to feedback to ensure adblockers continue to work. The whole propaganda campaign that Chrome was disabling ad-blockers was practically ran by Mozilla itself. I recall however, shortly after Mozilla forgot to renew their certificate and all my extensions in Firefox got disabled, and it took well over a day for a fix. Meanwhile, uBlock continued to work fine in Chromium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Having multiple small tutorials like these will make it easy for anyone who wants to move to Firefox. The more the merrier. That said, I still can't get used to Firefox.

It's fine on desktop, and using profiles is not too much of a big deal for me. But on mobile, Firefox is not as intuitive as chrome is to me. On my phone I have Chrome, which I only ever use if a website fails on all other browsers, I have Brave as my daily driver, and Firefox because I want to make it my default.

I just can't navigate as easily on Firefox as I can on Chromium browsers. An example, when I use HN, I open links on a new tab and I can swipe the header left or right to navigate from tab to tab. Easy breezy.

On Firefox, I have to click on the tab menu, figure out where I am, and read titles to know where I am going. Every single time I forget, I end up clicking on many tabs before I find where I am going.

Don't know if this feature in Firefox's pipeline, but that's the only thing stopping me from making the switch.

<comment><USER27> Firefox for android supports addons, though, so can be customized to do anything. I can't believe people use Chrome om Android when you can have Fx with ad blocking!

For your problem, I use an addon called "simple gesture" that allows me to add all kinds of gestures/actions.

<comment><USER28> Assuming it's [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple- gestur...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple-gesture/): any ideas why does it need to "access my data for all websites" and "access the clipboard"?

Curiously the blurb recommends "Quick Gestures" which presumably is a different gesture addon.

<comment><USER27> \- access data: probably because the gesture is actually done inside the page you're viewing, so it has to be able to capture that \- clipboard: it was a feature requested, for gestures to be able to work with the clip board: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple- gestur...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/simple- gesture/reviews/1449456/) So just recently added for that reason

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Migrated to Firefox on my work PC after Chrome removed protocol display in URL bar and all flags to revert this change - that was the last straw.

</comment><comment><USER30> I switched from Chrome to Firefox on my old Macbook pro and overall it really feels faster and more responsive.

<comment><USER31> Ah, I've been using firefox for web dev stuff on my old Macbook pro and I've noticed it's a lot faster than it was last year.

Definitely considering making the plunge as speed has been the only thing that's held me back from switching to FF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I am on FF but i miss having one profile for work and one profile for personal use that i used to have with chrome.

<comment><USER33> You need the containers extension. It's better than Chrome profiles.

<comment><USER8> Link: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi- account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account- containers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I use Safari full-time and am pretty happy with it. Pinned tabs, the keyboard shortcuts, developer options, ghostery extension, I find everything pretty neat.

Anyone else here feel the same?

<comment><USER35> I would use it since it's the native browser but last I checked it didn't have any proper ad blockers due to apple shenanigans. I would consider swapping back if I could use ublock origin.

<comment><USER36> I use Adguard with Safari 13, which has a bit of a clunky startup but doesn't seem to affect performance once everything is running & does a decent enough job of blocking trackers/ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I really want to use FireFox but it is simply too heavy on resources compared to chrome (running on Linux - both Fedora 31 and RHEL 8). In general I like FireFox more and prefer features like multi-account-containers so I'm quite sad to have to use chrome.

<comment><USER38> I'm back using firefox full time since about 3 months and don't notice that at all. In fact I now struggle to remember why I ever moved to chrome in the first place, I know there were reasons but I can't remember what they were. Moving back was surprisingly painless. If I could find a similarly easy and good path out of gmail I'd be gone tomorrow.

<comment><USER39> I recommend FastMail if you're willing to pay for your email services. They have an excellent import tool to help with migrating your email from Gmail.

<comment><USER40> There was some talk of privacy concerns with FastMail, due to Australian laws: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19242698) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18654434)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_Australia#Assistance_and_Access_Bill)

<comment><USER41> Went it comes to governments spying on people, I weigh Fastmail the same as Gmail. Considering I find everything else about Fastmail better than Gmail, I am slowly making the switch (using my own domain names though so I could potentially switch again in the future).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Firefox is great, and I've had an amazing experience on both mobile and desktop ever since I switched almost a year ago.

I only wish that their password manager allowed you to import passwords in standard formats from other password managers.

<comment><USER39> I find the Bitwarden extension is very good. The advantage of using an independent password store is that you can use it on other platforms. For example, Bitwarden provides iOS integration which provides autofill in both Safari and even within individual apps (which is a huge time-saver). In the future you may move to a different browser, and Bitwarden (or your independent password manager of choice) will most likely have an extension for that browser too so you can start using it straight away. I love Firefox but I honestly can't see any reason to lock myself into its password store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Switched to Firefox a ~year ago from Chrome. uBlock Origins + Privacy Badger + NoScript does wonders. And on Firefox I love private containers, such a joy to be able to do multiple logins for same service.

</comment><comment><USER44> I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago across all my devices. Got to say, I should have done it earlier.

<comment><USER45> Ditto. I waited a bit because I was afraid the change would be difficult, I'd be missing something, etc... in the end it was a super smooth transition.

Now every time I see some new disastrous Chrome-related news I just nod and move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I would like to switch to Firefox too, but it just lacks some of the most key features. It cannot effectively create large blob from chunks through the use of Filesystem & FileWriter API. Yes, I can use IndexedDB for blob storage, but the time required to copy and paste chunks in/out of IndexedDB will grow exponentially for large blob. There is simply no other effective ways to build a large blob from chunks that can work in Firefox. This is why Firefox will always be slow on some modern web app.

All other major browsers support Filesystem & FileWriter API: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem](https://caniuse.com/#feat=filesystem)

<comment><USER47> What sites need that to run efficiently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm using Firefox as primary browser since Chrome war on as blockers and it works fine for the most part but it's quite rough around the edges

my biggest grows come from the omnibar, it still has a heck of a trouble guessing what's a search and what's a domain, the sorting out partial matches feels weird because bookmarks aren't prominent and there's no promotion of URLs entered Vs useless navigated toward and three default click action (append to bottom of the URL) might be fine if you are a developer but it's not for the most part what I want as a user.

edit: thanks all for the suggestions

edit2: imagine being so committed into a browser religion to downvote facts

<comment><USER49> There are some ways to refine the results in the Firefox adress bar, in case you already know what you are looking for. I mainly use * + and % :

Add ^ to search for matches in your browsing history.

Add * to search for matches in your bookmarks.

Add + to search for matches in pages you've tagged.

Add % to search for matches in your currently open tabs.

Add ~ to search for matches in pages you've typed.

Add # to search for matches in page titles.

Add @ to search for matches in web addresses (URLs).

Edit: it looks as if one can search for the input by prepending a ? to it. This will hide any other (local) results from the omnibar, giving easy keyboard access (by direction keys) to the list of search engines at the end of the list.

<comment><USER50> Wow I didn't know about these, thanks for the info!

I found the complete list documented here:

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar- autocomplet...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplete- firefox#w_changing-results-on-the-fly)

<comment><USER49> Yes, this must be the source that I got the list from. I have not memorised the more obscure filters and have this list sitting on my desktop for easy access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I did that about a month ago, after more than 10 years with Chrome only.

So far so good, apart from battery usage on Android. I sometimes feel it spirals when too many tabs are left open. Desktop, no problem.

I have kept Chrome for my work stuff, because I want 100% efficiency / no delay due to my tech choices and I work on a SaaS tool primarily targeting Chrome. I still think Chrome is better when it comes to powering web apps, ahem, made by Google in particular.

The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox?

It seems that other browsers like Brave are also quite good at dealing with privacy, so why Firefox and not Brave?

<comment><USER52> > The real question for me is, besides privacy, what is the killer feature > that will / does make it obvious to switch to Firefox?

Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut.

Other than that, containers are a pretty useful tool that's so far Firefox only.

<comment><USER53> > Preventing the web from devolving into a closed garden. For this we need > alternative browser engines and hence Brave does not make the cut.

1\. all web engines are open source

2\. we had multiple engines. it didn't work out, at all. user experience was thrown out the window, technologies weren't implemented, the web was massively fragmented.

3\. we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone contributes to since it's better for everyone's experience.

<comment><USER52> > 2\. we had multiple engines

We _have_ multiple engines. This is a fact.

> 3\. we're now trying to have a single open source engine that everyone > contributes to since it's better for everyone's experience.

 _We_ are not trying that at all. The experience is perfectly fine with our currently existing multiple engines.

> 1\. all web engines are open source

This does not matter much if your goal is to maintain a single engine. What matters is control of software releases.

In order to maintain a web which is not exclusively controlled by a single entity, the releases need to be controlled by more than a single entity. This sounds like a tautology because it almost is one.

The only thing the free software aspect helps with is that it is easier to assume control of the releases, but as soon as you do this, you've forked the engine and there are now multiple engines. Hence, there is actually no way of maintaining a single engine while also decentralizing control. Short of Google relinquishing control of Chrome and forming some kind of international browser development committee, but that sounds like a creature from nightmares and is yet again a central point of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I found it interesting how Chrome and FF handle differently cpu-heavy code like this:

        arr = new ArrayBuffer(4)
        arrInt = new Uint32Array(arr)
        t0 = performance.now(); for (; arrInt[0] <= 1000000000; ++arrInt[0]) {} ;
        performance.now() - <USER3>

On Windows it takes 2.5 secs even on old chrome versions, while it never finishes on the latest FF. The latter's call stack says firefox.exe!TargetNtUnmapViewOfSection(), xul.dll!get_stored_pointer. I wonder if that happens on other platforms?

Update - on my Android: Chrome: 7.5 secs, forever on FF. Weird. If I say a var is typed it should work faster.

<comment><USER55> Are you running that in a web page, or in the devtools console?

I just tried running it in a web page, with the last line replaced by `console.log(performance.now() - t0);` and on my hardware it finishes in ~1.5 seconds in Firefox and ~2 seconds in Chrome.

Similar if I run it in a devtools console like so:

        (function() {
          var arr = new ArrayBuffer(4)
          var arrInt = new Uint32Array(arr)
          t0 = performance.now(); for (; arrInt[0] <= 1000000000; ++arrInt[0]) {} ;
        })();
        performance.now() - <USER3>

and hence avoid the undeclared global variable accesses. If I run the original code in the devtools console, it is in fact quite slow in Firefox, because global variable access is slower in the devtools console there. So each get of `arrInt` takes a quite long time. That's [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793345](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793345) and I suspect that's what you're running into here.

The main moral is to not do performance testing in the console, because it's a _very_ different execution environment from actual web pages.

<comment><USER54> > in the devtools console

Wow, you are right, thanks. Lesson learned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Not sure why, or if i'm the only one, but sometimes I have this problem with Firefox (latest) on Win10:

When I open a new tab, there is a ~50% chance that the URL i'm querying won't ever connect. As if there was no internet.

I tried to remove some open tabs (I have ~20 open tabs all the time) and it worked again.

When it happens, opening a new tab on Chrome always works, though. I wasn't using a proxy and my internet connexion is pretty stable and fast.

Restarting Firefox also helped, IIRC. But I never had such a problem with Chrome, when it was my main browser. Now, this happens every month or so with Firefox.

<comment><USER57> I have the same issue on openSUSE Leap 15 - it's not Windows specific. I've found that the number of tabs doesn't matter too much - if I copy the URL of the non-loading tab, close the tab, open a new one and paste the URL there, it will load around 9/10 times (if it doesn't, third time is always the charm).

Drove me nuts enough that I switched to Brave for a bit as my main driver, but I've been experiencing some crashing from it recently and I miss my bookmark keywords, so I might go back.

<comment><USER56> Thanks for sharing this. I will give other browsers a try as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> One day after enabling 2-factor auth for AdWords, all google services started to give the "this browser is insecure" error and I was unable to log into _any_ google services in Chrome. Things worked fine in Firefox, so I switched over 100%. It's something I'd been considering for a while as Google appears to be getting more evil over time. Hardly had to do any configuration except installing adblocker and password manager. The only annoyance is that scrolling behavior is slightly different and less easy to control than in Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER59> Question I can't find an answer for anywhere: are desktop PWAs supported by Firefox yet? As in, installing them as a desktop app with icon, notifications and everything that goes with it?

What about chromecast support?

<comment><USER25> Did you try it out? No they aren't supported by Firefox. Chromium is much more innovative in this field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I have been using Firefox for a few months and I've noticed browsers on Windows are far slower than on Mac (despite much faster hardware). Is that normal / happening to you as well? Firefox on Windows seems noticeably slower than Chrome. (Any page from entering address to seeing content feels ridiculously slow) I still use it for privacy, but I wonder if there is something I could do to speed it up.

<comment><USER61> What I find mind blowing is that it takes gigabytes (of RAM and/or other local storage) to load a couple of websites. Regardless of which browser is used.

<comment><USER62> What you call "a couple of websites" are actually full-blown applications. Your browser is more a virtual machine than a document reader.

Also, applications tend to use RAM when it's available. Think of all the cache, typically that's why back is snappy (it doesn't re-render the page from scratch). Maybe it would make you feel good to see a lot of unused RAM, but since it's there, it's better to use it than not.

<comment><USER61> Well, maybe the point I'm trying to make is that they shouldn't be applications.

Hackernews could take 100's of megabytes to load (like pretty much all of the other similar websites do). RAM, page file or otherwise. But it doesn't. It could be a complex application. But it isn't. And it shouldn't be.

Also, I don't think having "too much RAM" is the issue on my 16 GB machine. I routinely have to just shut down the browser entirely to be able to properly do CAD work. Party like it's 1995.

Even if these websites are "legit applications" for good reasons, putting the processing burden on the client is still a choice. There are efficient ways to leave most of the processing to the server. Example: [https://www.phoenixframework.org/](https://www.phoenixframework.org/)

Disclaimer: correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just an EE guy with shallow limited knowledge on web stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> The main reason I switched to Firefox was an extension where I can see all of my tabs on a sidebar. I don't think it's possible with Chrome until they introduce sidebar pane. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree- style-ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

</comment><comment><USER64> I tried to use Firefox on a new install of elementary OS with nvidia drivers installed. Full screen video was super choppy. I installed Chrome, and it was perfect.

I don't want to have to debug this.. I just want it to work, so yet again Firefox gets put on the back burner for me. Maybe one day...

</comment><comment><USER65> I have to use chrome on one device, and the only thing I like about it is that it will warn you when you try to download the same thing a second time - <USER4> would nice in firefox maybe.. saving web pages, or mp4 files - chrome will pop up with "again?" or something.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm using Firefox 71.0 (64-bit) on Ubuntu, and password fields are completely broken! I've tried disabling add-ons, and running in private mode, nothing helps. The only thing that works is if I run in a different profile where there is no account "Sync".

<comment><USER25> Firefox on Linux is considered a second-class citizen compared to Chromium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Switching saved passwords (with the built in password managers) between Firefox, Chrome and Safari is a pain.

I remember that in order to get my passwords from Chrome to Firefox on macOS, I needed to install a virtual machine with Windows, and log in to Chrome and Firefox there.

</comment><comment><USER68> I still try to get away from safari, so many things keep not working how I want them to. But I guess I'm just too locked in by using the keychain and nowadays apple pay.

</comment><comment><USER69> I tried to switch to Firefox, but it randomly freezes after my mac wakes up from sleep, so after a month or so I had to go back to Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER70> Firefox is great but not so great is asking users to automatically use Cloudflair's DoH service. Let me pick which DoH I want to use.

<comment><USER39> It hasn't asked me to, as you say, automatically use Cloudflare's DoH service. The default seems to have DoH disabled.

<comment><USER71> It's not rolled out everywhere yet. AFAIK they only activate it for US users, and it may only be activated for a subset of those (not sure about that part).

<comment><USER39> I am outside the US so that explains it, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> One of the reason why I haven't switch from Chrome to Firefox again is Join still don't have a Firefox extension: [https://joaoapps.com/join/firefox/](https://joaoapps.com/join/firefox/) Another reason is I had switched to Firefox just after Firefox Quantum came out, and eventually switched back to Chrome because it didn't give me a good experience at that time. (buggy devtool, many unfamiliarity)

<comment><USER73> The devtool is nice nowadays. It supports inspecting websocket messages, log events and has a multi-line support for console.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I like Firefox but I'm also a heavy tab user. Usually around 70-100 open with ~10-13GB RAM. Chrome is just better in that aspect, much better performance. Altho I use ungoogled-chromium not retail Chrome

[https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled- chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

<comment><USER75> I use an extension that automatically closes tabs after 30 minutes of inactivity. So my tab counts never get super high.

I think when people say they want a lot of tabs, they mean they want better bookmarking and history search. There's almost no reason to keep more than a few dozen tabs open in the background, wasting CPU and RAM.

<comment><USER76> Yes, what I want are two things:

1\. Work spaces so that I can return to the same set of tabs with the same scroll positions as last time I worked on a certain project (e.g. one for work, one for leisure and one for my open source projects).

2\. A better UI for bookmarks. The current bookmark UI is just too many clicks and too much manual management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Firefox has bad performance for my use cases. It crashes around 50% of the time I open Gmail, and the other 50% of the time it crashes with any old tab. I know Gmail is bloated and less performant now but it's been my address for 15 years. Does Mozilla want me to deal with the constant crashes or abandon Firefox or abandon Gmail?

<comment><USER78> Interesting, it has to be something specific to your use case or hardware. I have Firefox open 24/7, 150+ tabs (Panorama tab manager), 4 Gmail account tabs (2 personal, 2 work) always pinned open, and FF just never crashes for me. Since Quantum was released it has just been stable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Sorry for the stupid question. But can anyone paste a link about why chrome is bad?

<comment><USER80> It's a browser made by an advertising company. They've made a few decisions lately that have shown that fact (recent changes that have placed limits on third party ad blockers, for example). It's also gotten more bloated lately.

They've also forced the integration with google sync. If you sign into google anywhere (including using google to sign in to a third party website), it will sign chrome in as well.

<comment><USER79> Thanks. Yes automatic browser login when you login into gmail for example is very annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> If only they had built-in keyboard shortcut customization.

</comment><comment><USER82> Can someone EIL5 what's so wrong about Chrome?

</comment><comment><USER83> Switched when quantum came out and never looked back.

No complaints.

</comment><comment><USER84> 7\. Remove Chrome and never look back.

</comment><comment><USER85> Firefox user here too! Chrome is on not my side, it's only to make sure Google increases their revenue.

</comment><comment><USER86> I dunno why Brave doesn't get more airtime. All the good things about Chrome, none of the creepy

<comment><USER25> Built on Chrome. Encourages ads. Company built by homophobic CEO. Sounds more creepy to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Time for the weekly Chrome bash thread on HN. Cue the "I also switched to ddg and it's great!"

Seriously, why does this happen so much here? I'm not even talking about the merits of the argument (I switched to Firefox), I'm just talking about how much of an echo chamber this is.

<comment><USER88> Because we, as largely the more clued-in kind of IT users, know the importance of avoiding closed gardens and the dangers of the tracking ad-tech stuff Chrome has?

<comment><USER87> So we have to bring it up every few days?

Just look at this comment thread. All switch stories. At this point it's preaching to the choir.

<comment><USER89> Well the article is explicitly about switch stories so it's a good thing the comments have stayed in track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> the custom search engines and the banning of dissenter extension is why i am still on chrome. ff failed me on technical and personal level with these. at least with chrome/google ... the devil you know.

<comment><USER91> Your answer to ff refusing to host an extension and forcing you to sideload it is to move to a platform that has _continuous and proven_ censorship and surveillance track record? Doesn't make much sense to me.

<comment><USER17> Chrome has continuous and proven censorship? I think they are more or less on the same page than Firefox: they have their curated "app store" and they inconvenience you if you try to bypass it.

I would use Firefox if they actually were more open and free than Chrome. But if they are the same, just slower, then why would I want to support Mozilla?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> I am still missing chrome-like profiles

<comment><USER93> Have you tried Multi-Account Containers? It's not the same but for me it works (I want to be logged in with various accounts on the same website)

<comment><USER94> Multi-account containers is the reason why I'm using Firefox.

Too bad it is just an extension and not a first-class feature. The settings are not synced with other Firefox settings. Somewhat annoying as there is lot of work to setup the container settings if you happen loose then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Stop sending my data to Google ([https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480)) and make Firefox fast on Linux (minimum as Chrome) - reasons why I'm not use Fox anymore.

<comment><USER96> What does firefox say in the "decision log" for your pc in `about:support`? Is hardware acceleration enabled?

<comment><USER95> Yeah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER97> For people who are considering switching away from Chrome - give Brave a try, it's really good.

I was a bit reluctant for a while because their branding is weird and there's too much focus on their crypto ad model. But if you switch the crypto stuff off, you have a fork of Chrome that performs just as well and also has a few additional privacy features and isn't linked to your Google account. Highly recommend.

<comment><USER98> Brave blocks all ads and provides its own "ad platform" which basically means that they curate what ads you will see. I fail to see how their model could fix what is wrong with facebook or google.

<comment><USER97> Their ad model is what gets discussed every time Brave comes up and it's irrelevant to me - I block all ads myself regardless of the browser.

My point is that if you switch ads off in Brave, you end up with a really good browsing experience, better than Chrome + adblock or Firefox + adblock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> Am I the only one not able to switch from Chrome to Firefox because of performances issues (2yo laptop) ?

According to : [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=firefox-70-chrome-78&num=5) firefox still has some work to do....

<comment><USER89> I'm on an old laptop with a CPU graph on my top panel. It appears that Firefox uses more CPU than chromium and so I use Chromium when in battery power or when I forget my power cable!

The other thing I dislike with new Firefox is the removal of the ability to change the size of the tabs and alter the window decorations so that they still take up valuable screen estate on smaller netbooks. Chromium isn't any better but does have the option to remove the window title bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> if someone has more details: I remember years ago that when I was digging FF source code I saw it was using chromium source code (not everywhere but for the CSS engine and extensions i think),that was the time servo was in consideration, is it still the case? I personally dont mind that I use both chromium + FF with some firewall rules but it always gave me impression that while FF using chromium source it does an advertise like completely different, isolated secure platform. Here is quick search just on "chrome" keyword on source code repo. [https://github.com/mozilla/gecko- dev/search?q=chrome&unscope...](https://github.com/mozilla/gecko- dev/search?q=chrome&unscoped_q=chrome)

<comment><USER101> Chrome is Mozilla terminology pre existing the chrome browser There is even [https://support.mozilla.org/en- US/questions/1248747](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1248747) to explain it in depth

<comment><USER100> Thanks for the link and light for my ignorance! it was interesting read, I didnt know that chrome was a term</comment></comment></comment>


PHD Comics: Science News Cycle - <AUTHOR> http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 <comment><USER2> This was a funny comic. I'm curious if anyone here has had their work watered down by media coverage - any good stories?

I bet the security folks ought to have some experience here...</comment>


Ask HN: Know of any tests running of email obfuscation methods? - <AUTHOR>

Silvan Mühlemann ran a test between 2006 and 2008 http://techblog.tilllate.com/2008/07/20/ten-methods-to-obfuscate-e-mail-addresses-compared/.<p>Has anyone seen anything more recent?<p>(I haven't so am starting my own http://www.johnplummer.com/js-html-and-css/email-obfuscation.html.) <comment><USER2> I don't even bother obfuscating email addresses any more. My spam filter handles it all for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it may well be a moot point. I am using gmail for the test and have stopped anything being sent to the spam folder. Anything the filter would have caught should still be labeled as spam though so I should be able to include that figure in any results.</comment></comment>


What is a fair price for Internet service? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/gadgets-and-gear/hugh-thompson/what-is-a-fair-price-for-internet-service/article1890596/ <comment><USER2> One potential serious bug in the argument of "data transit prices have come down from $.12/GB to $.03/GB" is that it doesn't mention capacity issues. Namely, there is a big difference between "the network running at capacity ten years ago had costs of X and the network running at capacity now has costs of Y" and "the network running at 50% capacity had costs of X and running at 100% now has costs of Y".

Another serious flaw in this argument revolves around the question: where is the bottleneck? Is the problem in the routers/switches/etc in the switching/peering points? If so, a moderate capex would do some serious upgrading. Is it in the fiber, and is there still any dark-fiber? If so, again the capex is moderate to fix the problem. For both these the greedy is deplorable on the teleco's part. On the other hand, if the problem is "we need to run lots more fiber". Then the capex is large, and some more number crunching must be done, though at this point the cost of laying fiber should be considered much less risky than it used, as everyone will benefit from more capacity.</comment>


Beautify and enhance your scrollbar by Vuescroll - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wangyi7099/vuescroll <comment><USER2> Very impressive quality, but dear goodness I hope devs stick to using it in cases where native scrollbars are unsuitable for some sort of complicated UI. Styling a scrollbar "just because" is a terrible experience -- I expect all scrollbars I encounter to work in the consistent fashion my OS + web browser provides.</comment>


German Train Crash Leaves 10 Dead and Scores Injured - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/world/europe/germany-train-collision.html <comment><USER2> First newspaper reports claim that a train dispatcher disabled/overrode the safety system that should have stopped one of the trains, in order to let a locomotive behind schedule slip through.</comment>


Malaysia will return contaminated plastic waste to the countries that shipped it - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/asia/malaysia-plastic-waste-return-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> This is a good thing. I had no idea we weren't recycling our plastic and just shipping it across the world, only to get dumped in a forest or into the ocean.

We need to stop producing so much plastic. We need laws to standardize plastics so that only purely recyclable plastics exist and no more single-use plastics, or compostable containers. Anything else should be banned.

I don't care if it runs some companies out of business because the costs are too high. I would rather those companies fail than keep piling up with all this sickening useless and ultimately poisonous garbage from single-use plastics.

We should also make it illegal to ship our garbage outside of the country. That will force us to deal with our own problems.

<comment><USER3> Also it seems likely at this point that the danger has been wildly underestimated.

The rallying cry against plastic used to be that "it takes hundreds of years to break down".

But now we know that when it breaks down, it gets _worse_. Microplastics are suspected to be bioaccumulating, carrying poisons and bacteria, and possibly could get into cells like asbestos. And the only way to dispose of the stuff that won't eventually become microplastic is incineration - putting all that carbon into the atmosphere, along with other unpleasant combustion products.

<comment><USER2> Yes, as usual those of us that told us the risk was low or non-existent were wrong again. How often do we have to be duped by so-called experts before we realize that the "experts" have actually no idea how to calculate risk, and that we can't rely on their "assurances"? It goes both ways, where scientists told us that salt and high fat diets were causing heart disease and now both of those have been walked back.

<comment><USER3> The experts were working with the facts as they were known at the time. Microplastic wasn't obvious. Most things, when they break down, aren't harmful. This isn't a problem of experts. This is a problem of hubristically creating a never seen before material and assuming it would have no impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The president of the Philippines recently threw a tantrum, threatening to declare war on Canada if they didn't take back their garbage.

I dug into it and found that the president is completely justified in being pissed off. A Canadian company shipped "recycling" which turned out to be undisputable trash. Diapers and such.

What pisses me off is that I cannot find the name of this company anywhere. So Canada is taking all the blame for some company that shipped them trash and labeled it recycling.

<comment><USER5> If the agreement was Canada as a country ensures their recyclable exporters will only export things that conform to some standard, then the burden would be on Canada, yes.

But, what kind of bizarre world do we live in where we ship our trash to overseas places to be 'recycled' ? It just doesn't make any sense. We are exporting our waste and pollution to developing nations, those people are probably facing much worse environmental conditions than those in the developed world. It's truly despicable.

<comment><USER4> Yeah that's a good point. It's unusual that the articles keep mentioning "a Canadian company" but never names it. Maybe the agreement was at a national level.

And yeah, it's absurd. I just moved somewhere in Ontario where every garbage bag I put at the curbside costs $2. It's absolutely amazing to stand out on garbage day and see just how little people have set out. The system works.

The recycling is still "free" but I would love to see the same happen.

<comment><USER6> > And yeah, it's absurd. I just moved somewhere in Ontario where every garbage > bag I put at the curbside costs $2. It's absolutely amazing to stand out on > garbage day and see just how little people have set out. The system works.

And I'll continue to advocate that nobody except perhaps the 1% should have children in developed countries. A baby won't poop any less because trash costs $2 a bag. From what I understand diapers by nature don't break down for a long time.

<comment><USER7> Except there are re-usable diapers.

<comment><USER8> Tried those. They work, but require some work. The diapers must be washed, depending on the diaper type you might have to separate the fillings and the diaper before washing and put together again afterwards. You also need to insert a rice paper for the poop ...

It works, but it's more work with them than with disposable diapers. We tried reusable for our two first, but the last one we have only used disposable diapers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Malaysia's real estate is too valuable for them to be storing plastic trash on it. The entire place is being aggressively deforested to make room for more palm plantations and that's way more important than whatever they get for taking in garbage.

<comment><USER10> Palm oil produces 4x more per hectare than nearly all other types of vegetable oil.

There's no easy fix here, the developed world is basically saying don't cut down your forests not long after we did so ourselves to make way for agriculture. Not to mention lecturing a bunch of poor people to pay more for a cooking staple.

Malaysians get quite defensive about their palm crops.

<comment><USER11> It's also starting to look like palmitic acid has about the same cardiovascular health effects as trans fatty acids. So, yeah, in the long run, might as well leave the forests, because there's a good chance that the current fad for palm oil isn't going to last all that long.

That said, 100% agreed that it's ridiculous that developed nations are tut- tutting developing nations for economically exploiting their own resources, not only in a way that mirrors what developed nations have already done, but also in response to economic demand that largely originates from those same developed nations.

<comment><USER12> There is a growing movement in Malaysia to use healthier oils instead of palm oil.

I have been to several restaurants in KL recently that are openly advertising that they use no palm oil.

When traveling in Malaysia it is impossible to ignore the environmental impact of these plantations and the local population are becoming more aware every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really bad. Many are just dumping them into the ocean.

As long as it is cheaper to export waste, we are not going to build a better recycling system or even better stop producing so much plastic.

East Asian countries should stop taking plastic waste.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a lot of mixed feelings about this. I am happy that Malaysia is taking a stand and is refusing to be a dumping ground for trash. I am sad that all of this plastic is coming back to the US where I am honestly unsure on what they will do with it. I am mad that it has gotten this far and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

<comment><USER15> They'll just incinerate it, which is probably what they should have done in the first place. Companies in third world countries bidding unrealistically low for recycling contracts has made recycling seem more viable than it actually is.

<comment><USER16> Landfill is better then incinerating. Burning it releases toxic chemicals and is effectively dumping it in the air (vs dumping it in the ocean). Landfill (dumping in the ground) is the least worst of all the options. From what you may believe there is plenty of land available.

<comment><USER15> Incineration works well when modern technology is brought to bear. It also doesn't create later water/land pollution problems. In any cases, one solution might work better than the other depending on the context.

<comment><USER17> Burning, recycling or burial all could be OK if they were done right. But doing them right involves more costs than doing them wrong. The US and other countries hire companies and pay them to do the disposal. Sure, the companies get paid for the estimated cost of doing the disposal right but companies make all their extra profit from doing the disposal wrong. The entire approach of subcontracting is misguided but given vast vested interests behind the subcontracting approach, given you know this stuff is going to be done wrong, which wrong to do you do want? Pollution of the air, the earth or the water?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good. Dumping American trash in Malaysia isn't any better than emptying your kitchen trash can on your bedroom floor.

<comment><USER19> They don't dump it there. People from Malaysia are buying it.

<comment><USER20> They weren't buying used diapers, they were buying recyclable plastic.

You wanted a new TV in your living room? Let me throw some puke and used diapers instead.

<comment><USER19> You seem to be implying there's some kind of cheating happening in what is ultimately a business deal. I wouldn't buy a new TV with puke and diapers unless it was my business reselling the TV and disposing of the rest.

<comment><USER21> > _You seem to be implying there 's some kind of cheating happening in what is > ultimately a business deal._

In the article, it was revealed that the contracts were for recyclable materials not worthless toxic garbage, and Malaysia was actually being scammed. (That's why their president made such a big deal about it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> malaysian recyclers, as far as i know, were fairly profitable despite paying a much lower rate compared to chinese recyclers. there are companies out there squeezing a fortune out of rubbish. the visual impact on the landscape is notable, although not much more can be said about the sime-darby fields of palm trees and container housing that dominate the rest of the rural countryside.

while i feel bad for them, the reality of business in malaysia is that you are at the mercy of politicians and their policies. these change like the squalls at sea.

<comment><USER5> IMO, this is effectively the same thing as buying conflict diamonds or conflict oil. Too much of our economy relies on serf or outright slave labor by doing business with despotic governments.

Note: I'm not making comments about Malaysia specifically, I don't know anything about the place, and parent's comments might not apply to them, IDK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yesterday I was opening up yet another Amazon white bubble wrap envelope when I took a closer look at the recycling logo.

"Please remove paper label before recycling."

Mind somewhat blown. How often do you think that actually happens? But also, really shows you how hard this stuff is to process. Of course peeling off the label is nearly impossible.

I wish after tearing the perforation off, there was another flap in there waiting to be deployed to cleanly reuse the envelope (versus the tape monster which you end up with if you try to reuse it by folding it over on itself).

And then another row of perforation. And another flap. All the way from 8.5x11 or so, down to 8.5x5.

Some of the clothes mailers I get are designed like this, with an inner flap and adhesive strip designed for sending back what didn't fit.

Would that be worth it in the end at scale? I for one would definitely save the bubble envelopes if they were cleaner to reuse.

But then that label would also have to peel off easier too (different type of adhesive).

</comment><comment><USER24> According to [https://youtu.be/SnB6iRDoJ90](https://youtu.be/SnB6iRDoJ90) (7:45 onwards) even before China started refusing recyclable waste only 9% of what went into blue bins in the USA was actually being recycled, the other 91% was being incinerated or landfilled. what the stats are now I don't know but they're almost certainly worse not better.

<comment><USER25> Not the country's fault but Chinese companies definitely should take back the waste. They produced it in the first place. If not, they should not be allowed to sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My first thought is to wonder how this issue is related to this recent finding:

10 Rivers Contribute Most of the Plastic in the Oceans

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the- plas...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic- tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Do we have a solution for taking care of such waste in a clean way? I saw a company that claims to convert it to fuel.

<comment><USER25> Not that I know of. But there's a simple policy solution. Producers must take back waste as a condition to sell.

If they're brand new companies, then simply ask for a bond until they've been around a while.

All this is risk free but single use waste cost is priced in for consumers.

Countries that don't adopt this policy will have higher taxes to deal environment costs which is worse than prevention. Companies affected by this can bypass conditions by only using list of approved materials; recycable, biodegradable, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can the Scandinavia trash>energy plants handle "contaminants"?

<comment><USER8> They claim there's no pollution from our local plant at least, but we don't burn plastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If by dumped, you mean sold, sure. They will also have to sell it on if they don't want it.

<comment><USER30> The people who agreed to buy it did so illegally. It's just that now, Malaysia is implementing a more robust and wholistic police action to enforce their mandates in that regard.

Sucks for us, but entirely within the rights of the government of Malaysia. If we have a problem with the scammers who took our money, then we're free to take that up in court with the scammers. But that has nothing to do with the government of Malaysia.

<comment><USER19> I actually don't think it sucks for us. We're better equipped to recycle or properly dispose of the waste. It will definitely cost more but I think it's something that most people are willing to accept.

Even now I'm hesitant to put things like plastic bags and straws into the recycling rather than trash. Only by placing it in the trash can I be more sure it doesn't end up floating near some reef.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review our startup: Deniable Video - <AUTHOR> https://deniablevideo.com/

<comment><USER2> At most, this device seems trustworthy exactly to the extent that you trust that hardware hasn't been tampered with. Since there's very little information about how the tamper-proofing works, I tend towards skepticism.

At worst, they've implemented a cryptosystem that, having never been peer reviewed, is vulnerable to basic attacks. Since I can't find out who the authors are, and they use both AES and Serpent with listed key sizes instead of talking about how the design works, I tend towards skepticism.

Finally, I'm with everyone else wondering why deniability is something the market cares about.

</comment><comment><USER3> My first impression: I love the idea, but I'd never give $6,000 to a site that looks like yours. I generally don't like criticizing without some constructive advice on what to fix, but in this case you don't need tips from random commenters, you need professional graphic design talent. A lot of startups could forego that at first, but not if they're selling $6,000 of equipment to an audience that's pre-selected to be paranoid. You'll need to look _absurdly_ trustworthy just to get started, and that's going to be a tough hill to climb.

<comment><USER4> What exactly put you off? I mean, it's not _the_ best site I've ever seen, but I hardly had the visceral reaction against it you seem to have experienced.

There's a balance to be struck I think - you can't look too Netscape 4.0 but I'd, if anything, be made suspicious by an obvious focus on marketing bling. I would have thought this site is a little drab but serviceable enough, decently put together, certainly enough to avoid losing credibility.

<comment><USER5> I think his point was that you need to _gain_ credibility, and more than usual since the potential audience is already paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For most of the uses on your "Purposes" page, you don't need the deniability, only the encryption. So this is overkill.

For the journalism uses, the product does not seem to be enough. When the authorities ask you to show them what video you've taken, you need to be able to use a secondary key that reveals your interview with the Ministry of Information's Official Spokesman, but conceals your interview of an opposition leader and your video of an anti-government protest.

</comment><comment><USER7> Glad to see more companies doing hardware. It's pretty intimidating stuff, but it's also really fun.

Site Design: Needs lots of work. It seems like an infomercial product. I think branding is key here, especially if you're looking to charge 6k.

Price: 6k is a nonstarter. If the equipment were expensive and margins were tight, I'd understand. Everyone wants hardware to be cheap and it's hard when you don't have economies of scale yet.

Implementation: Lots of different devices and I'm sure there's a certain level of complexity to this. I think you're on to something with the security aspect. I would try to make it a lot easier and a lot simpler. The 100gb of space is also way too low. I haven't looked through the specs, but SATA 2.5s with 500 are readily available. If you can somehow cram a 3.5 inch, you can get up to 2 tb.

Could this be done via the cloud? IP camera, sheeva plug, and encrypted recording to an overseas server? Require the private usb key to be used in conjunction with any software system its loaded on. You could charge a small up front fee for the camera+sheeva plug and recurring fee for recording. Kind of a TiVo for personal security.

</end ramble>

</comment><comment><USER8> Forgive me for being a bit blunt - but is that picture not just a painted mac mini? The edge has the inset line where the case turns from metal to plastic and the port area is the white plastic. Is this a Mac Mini + software + camera?

<comment><USER9> That's not a unique form-factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah, I see. They've separated the storage of software and the storage of video into two separate devices. The unit arrives with its video storage area filled with "random" data, and then the encryption process for the video writes into the video storage area.

As long as the encryption methods used produce data which cannot be differentiated from pseudo-random data, then it's impossible to tell whether there's any video on there at all.

Pretty neat. :-)

<comment><USER2> You mean: unless there's some physical way to determine the recency and timing of writes to the storage media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Generally when I hear the term "deniable" used with something security related, I think of something like the hidden volumes in True Crypt: something that I can't be proved to have.

Does your product provide this level of deniability? I would venture a guess that the answer is no (after all, there is a box with a big "DV" on it). If not, what do you mean by the word deniable?

<comment><USER12> Ditto. I'm a grad student studying security, and I'm not convinced that this is deniable. How will you deny the DV box (or even unlabeled camera & microphone) in your meeting area when the feds suddenly raid the place? How will you deny the private key on that USB drive you are very very careful to store securely, lest _you_ lose the ability to view the video? I believe that history predicts that once the existing of these things have been proven to a court, you'll be either producing the passphrase or getting thrown in jail for contempt of court.

<http://xkcd.com/538/>

<comment><USER13> Regarding the "private key on the USB drive", I think the USB drive contains their software. Your private key is typed in at a password prompt.

Regarding the "contempt of court" threat, they need to implement hidden volumes, like TrueCrypt does, and that will be addressed.

<comment><USER12> The password prompt is for a passphrase to unlock the private key. It's standard to encrypt the private key using the passphrase to provide some protection against the loss of the key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> $6000 is quite a fair amount of money and for that I only get one year of warranty on the hardware and one year of software updates?

Not sure what the software updates include but for the hardware I would expect live-time warranty or at least something reasonable, like 5 to 10 years.

Other than that. Nice product.

</comment><comment><USER15> The layout is good, however, I have one suggestion:

Left align your text. Follow the advice of this book by Robin Williams:

"Find a strong alignment and stick to it."

"Avoid using more than one text alignment on the page (that is, don't center some text and right-align other text).

And please try very hard to break away from a centered alignment unless you are consciously trying to create a more formal, sedate presentation. Choose a centered alignment consciously, not by default."

\- The Non-Designer's Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice. [http://books.google.com/books?id=n1AuwXafMO8C&lpg=PT42&#....
Take a look at the chapter above she shows some good examples of how to integrate images into a layout.

<comment><USER16> neat advice. word up yo.

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR Reminds me of a cool idea I once thought of. It's more a nerd-fantasy than something practical. A surveillance system that not only encrypts the video, but also digitally signs it, so James Bond-style thieves can't switch cameras.

<comment><USER4> I thought the exact same thing! Can't remember if it's James Bond or what not, actually I think it was Ghost in the Shell, but it involved a heist whose detection was prevented by faking a video stream.

My first thought is why isn't there end-to-end digital signing from the camera to the monitor. Sure, you could probably still fake it out by getting into the camera and reading the key from ROM or whatever, but that's a hell of a lot harder than just tapping a cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was pretty interested in the site and product, until I saw the price

$6k is a lot for what on 1st impression 'looks' to be targeting the lower end of the security imaging market. You can buy three HD Axis IP cameras for that money. Speaking of cameras, you don't show or give any specs which is really strange when you're asking for 6k

the more I read your site the more I can somewhat understand the price, but if I was just a customer - you would have lost me in 30 seconds; your landing page doesn't convey your product's 6k of value

Still, kudos for not coming up with yet another web app

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems absurdly expensive and the site could use some polish.

I think a screencast would be good to explain what it does and how it works.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sounds like it solves the "Oh noes they stole our sex tape" concern most celebrities seem to have these days...

<comment> cool-RR More like giving them a new problem: Finding another excuse for how their sex tape got published...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Neat idea, but I think (certainly not) the _only_ way you'll ever see a substantial return is if you were you marketing this to the obviously most vile demographic of pornographer(s) out there.

<comment><USER13> I think pornography is definitely the main market here. However, it's doesn't have to be child porn, as you imply. I think there's a housewife market. I think a lot of normal people would record more (ahem) adventurous videos, if there was a guarantee that those videos couldn't possibly, EVER, be seen by other people.

If it takes $6K to convince the wife to break out the whips for the camera, I think there's plenty of guys that would do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the FAQ this question should be towards the top

Why would I need continuous audio/video recording?

</comment><comment><USER22> It sounds like this is going to revolutionize the child-porn industry. :P

</comment><comment><USER23> What happens to my video if the DV unit is stolen or destroyed?

<comment><USER10> Presumably, you lose access to it, but nobody else is able to access your video either.

<comment><USER23> Yeah I read a little more and realized that the video is actually stored on the device. For some reason I didn't get that immediately.

I would have concerns using something like this, if someone ransacked my place of business or whatever (and it looks like this is targeted towards people who might have that sort of problem), it would be problematic if I couldn't view the video it recorded just because I didn't have the USB key anymore.

It would also bug me that I couldn't store an encrypted version of my videos for backup (of course I could encrypt them myself, but that kind of defeats the purpose of this device). So if I wanted to have some redundancy I'd have to store un-encrypted backups of my data, or be at the mercy of someone stealing my device.

For $6,000, I'm afraid I'd pass on this.

<comment><USER10> Those are fair points.

It looks like there's no reason why the camera and the device have to be within a certain number of feet of each-other, other than limitations in cable and such. So, you could lock the device inside of a safe constructed specifically for it, or inside a wall, or something. (I actually have a client with a real "false bookcase", and that would be an idea storage area.)

I bet they could upgrade their software to allow you to download a copy of your encrypted video. They've yet to release their specific algorithms used, but I don't see anything that would prevent that based on their diagrams and text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> No 'about us' page. I was confused for a moment when the 'contact us' page started with 'to view our company's website, click here'. I thought I _was_ on the company website.

Having multiple languages seems a bit odd if large swaths of content aren't translated. "Cette page est disponible seulement en anglais" being followed by an entire page of English text doesn't help credibility.

Your logo seems like it'd fail pretty hard for individuals with red-weak color blindness.

The 'deniable video operation' flowchart is more complex than what I want, for understanding how it works.

If the thing is supposed to be deniable, I might prefer a plain black plastic, or aluminum enclosure to a giant DV logo'd one.

The targeting seems very broad... and some of it seems a bit misinformed. As an example, there are substantial SEC rules when it comes to communications and the records thereof, but you have two trading-related examples in commercial.

I'd like a clear example of how it is that:

a) if my wife asks me for my password, she will get the pictures of her and I... not of the woman I met on ashleymadison. (purely hypothetical, honey.)

b) if a government asks me for my password, they will get something plausible, but not everything...

I guess it's just not clear to me what it's really good at, except that it's a camera, and a hard drive, and it uses ogg vorbis and chunks to... do something.

edit: It also conflates what appear to be the two major features (encryption, and data hiding), and it's not obvious to me what quality the resulting video will be, nor what I'd have to do if I wanted to use it in broadcast.

Also, I felt like I had to read a _lot_ of the website to know what the product really did. I might've got the gist faster if the front page said something like: Deniable Video. * Records, Encrypts and Hides Your Video. I really didn't know what "personal video security that's loyal to you" meant.

</comment><comment><USER25> $5000 is a lot of money for this... isn't it?</comment>


New PSU standard to launch this year - <AUTHOR> https://custompc.raspberrypi.org/articles/new-psu-standard-to-launch-this-year <comment><USER2> Kinda unfortunate that they're proposing single-rail for everything from now on, you lose some over-current protection when everything is on a single rail with a higher current rating. Thankfully it's just for prebuilts, so it might not catch on into mainstream DIY PCs.

For anyone who doesn't want to read the official spec, shorting green to black should still turn on the PSU without a motherboard.

</comment><comment><USER3> Same goddamn molex... Please, no... I'm sure Molex today has far better designs with much lower insertion force. There should be no reason to stick to old stiff molex.

</comment><comment><USER4> Earlier discussion of the same article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22151564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22151564)

<comment><AUTHOR> Odd that HN didn't pick that up.</comment></comment>


Uber to transfer its electric bike and scooter business to Lime - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/07/uber-leads-170-million-lime-investment-offloads-jump-to-lime/ <comment><USER2> What will happen to uber's employees working on jump?

<comment><USER3> Probably layoffs</comment></comment>


Introducing d3-scale - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mbostock/introducing-d3-scale-61980c51545f#.9qmfpjj3d <comment><USER2> To dovetail off another HN thread (Free Springer math books)...after reading Bostock's piece, I suddenly realized that the classic Grammar of Graphics by Leland Wilkinson he quotes might be free...and it is! The 1999 version anyway:

[http://link.springer.com/search?query=grammar+of+graphics](http://link.springer.com/search?query=grammar+of+graphics)

On Amazon, the cheapest available price is ~$55. For the second edition, which was printed in 2005 (and should be due to be free soon on Springer), it costs $132+

<comment><USER3> Book "ggplot2 (grammer of graphics plot) - Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis" is hosted on github : [https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2-book](https://github.com/hadley/ggplot2-book)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author here, AMA.

<comment><USER5> I'd love for d3 to have great integration with React - whats your suggested approach?

[https://github.com/FormidableLabs/victory](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/victory) seems most promising, but isn't really d3, more "d3-like".

<comment><USER4> I haven't used React enough to form a strong opinion on right vs. wrong, but one of my objectives in decoupling D3 (see the new modules at [https://github.com/d3](https://github.com/d3)) is to make it easier for people to use just the parts of D3 they need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really feel Bostock et al. are creating art. I'm just learning D3 at the moment and I am consistently blown away by its elegance.

<comment><USER7> I read an article about the similarities and differences between data art and data visualisation a short while back (couple of weeks?), but I really can't seem to find it right now. Mike Bostock's visualisations, though very visually pleasing, always tend towards the functional side of the spectrum, serving a purpose of enhancing the comprehension of concepts or relationships that lie in the data, rather than being designed for purely æsthetic aspirations.

There's obviously a place for both visualisations and art, though, and the line between the two is not always clearly defined.

<comment><USER8> Think this might be the article you're looking for; figured I'd throw a link out in case it was: [http://lisacharlotterost.github.io/](http://lisacharlotterost.github.io/)

Was posted recently. Comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10737876](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10737876)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _To this end, D3 espouses abstractions that are useful for any visualization > application and rejects the tyranny of charts._

Hmm, a lot of projects floundered when they got that (meta/abstract)ambitious, and forgot the plainer beginnings that made them successful. Hope D3 can pull it off.

<comment><USER4> This is not a new ambition; it has been my goal since starting Protovis in 2009. It's working out okay so far, but I totally agree that things can go off the rails if you spend too much time thinking about abstraction and not about practical examples and real-world usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the idea to have the next version of d3 be completely modular? So that if we use a tool like webpack, we'll he able to pull in the parts that we need?

<comment><USER4> Yes. I wrote a little bit more about that here: [https://medium.com/@mbostock/let-s-make- a-d3-plugin-c8e69759...](https://medium.com/@mbostock/let-s-make- a-d3-plugin-c8e697599f48)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mike, I'm big fan of your work. Have been using it since early releases.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to make visualization more appealing for non-programming users who want to interact with data beyond the basic clicks and drops.

> D3 ... rejects the tyranny of charts

Let me share a couple of counter-examples that attempt to accomplish the opposite, albeit for the common good:

[http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/14cf1974/3/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/14cf1974/3/) \- Basic

[http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2111a2b7/2/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2111a2b7/2/) \- Inheritance and Iterator

[http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/10/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/e8635882/10/) \- Time series transformations

[http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2ef08f32/1/](http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2ef08f32/1/) \- Composite

What you see is a set of charts built with D3 under the hood and placed on grid layout with a mix of configuration settings and basic control structures. What's unusual in this approach is that it introduces end-users to programmable visualization through a simplified DSL. It helps users step outside of GUI editor sandbox and yet it doesn't expose them directly to JavaScript and SVG.

I'd appreciate your critique of this approach in general, not necessarily our implementation of it :) Is this level of "tyranny" acceptable in your view?

</comment><comment><USER12> I personally make the better part of my living off being able to do custom D3 visualizations with some degree of speed and flexibility, so thank you Mike for your continued contributions and making it free for the rest of us. I'm seriously looking forward to D3v4 ;)

<comment><USER13> That's very cool -- what kind of clients do you have? Any examples that can be shared?

Are people using D3 inside "enterprises" a lot for business intelligence stuff? I imagine that would be the kind of work that pays.

<comment><USER14> Lots of contract D3 work here - [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/data- vis-jobs](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/data-vis-jobs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Hey Mike, glad you're doing a AMA. I have a few questions:

1\. There is no great javascript library for manipulating data, like pandas for python. Are you interesting in starting one as part as a d3 module? This could benefit from d3 being a standard and from your experience in writing javascript code.

2\. Do you regret the original .enter() .exit() functions? These were powerful, but were a barrier for entry because they were hard to grasp. Do you wish you'd gone full functional from the start?

3\. How do you get paid? Are you sponsored? Are you looking for sponsors?

Thanks much for the great work!

<comment><USER4> 1\. There's room for improvement here. There's some useful stuff in d3-array ([https://github.com/d3/d3-array](https://github.com/d3/d3-array)), particularly the nest and histogram operators. There's also science.js ([https://github.com/jasondavies/science.js](https://github.com/jasondavies/science.js)). And UW's datalib ([https://vega.github.io/datalib/](https://vega.github.io/datalib/)), which is partly a wrapper of d3-request, d3-dsv, d3-array and d3-random. New D3 modules or contributions would be welcome.

2\. Not at all; I still think the data-join is a powerful concept for transforming the DOM based on data, and the new work on non-DOM D3 modules does not reflect a shift in my opinion. I'm simply decoupling D3 so that people can use the parts independently. I'm still developing the new d3-selection and d3-transition modules, and those will be released soon, but I'm saving them for last because I want to let the design "bake" to make sure I'm happy with it before release.

3\. I am not currently paid (other than a buck or two I make off stickers). My wife is currently my de facto sponsor. ;) I'd like to find a way to make this financially sustainable, but I don't know yet exactly what that will entail, and I'd like to get 4.0 released first.

<comment><USER15> D3 Stickers link: [https://www.stickermule.com/user/1070696243/stickers](https://www.stickermule.com/user/1070696243/stickers)

Mike, your work never fails to inspire. The cubism slides ([http://bost.ocks.org/mike/cubism/intro/#0](http://bost.ocks.org/mike/cubism/intro/#0)) read like a revelation. It astounded me how much data you manage to beautifully convey.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nomenclature is becoming confusing. In "R" (the statistical programming language), vector is analogous to column, and now in D3, vector is analogous to row.

<comment><USER17> Could just be the difference between storing arrays in memory using row-major order vs. column-major order. Not sure which ordering JavaScript uses, but R is definitely column-major.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> mbostock is a machines. The size and gravity of the work he does always impresses me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just want to say thank you very much for what you are doing. You should add Donate button so we can contribute towards your efforts.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would love to see a design surface like Webflow for D3. Then you would get high-fidelity 'create' mode while retaining fine control of SVG programmability.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great! I use D3 with blaze and it will be nice to be able to exclude all the data binding stuff I don't need.

</comment><comment><USER22> Mike

Have you toyed around with MathBox 2? It looks like it has a pretty interesting model.</comment>


Comparison of Matlab, R, and Julia for data analysis (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/10/matlab-r-julia-languages-for-data-analysis.html#

<comment><USER2> The author seems to have glazed over quite a bit of the rather mature Python ecosystem simply because it lives in a general purpose language.

<comment><USER3> I also have the impression that the research that went in this article is a quite light. R, ML, Python serve different purposes. Julia is cool but brand new and feel kind of out of place compared to the heavy weight that are the other three. The point the author makes about ML and R being black boxes is misleading. At least, R is open source and you can always look at the gut of the software, nothing is more easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just discovered "Julia" thanks to this article. It looks like a wonderfully thought out programming language. Unfortunately, I am having trouble installing the language on my dated OS. Apparently, I need Ubuntu 13 to run it!

<comment><USER5> I have had no trouble compiling from source. Are you trying to use a PPA?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone comment on the difficulty of porting Matlab code to Julia? It appears extremely straightforward, but I'm guessing that many toolbox functions aren't implemented in Julia yet?

In academia, there's tremendous momentum behind Matlab, but Julia would solve many problems with licensing, building more complex systems, etc.

<comment><USER7> There's a growing number of packages written in Julia (<http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/packages/packagelist/>) and using the PyCall package you can call any python package if you're missing functionality. Do have a look to see if what you need is implemented. Other than that porting existing MATLAB code is extremely easy since the syntax is similar in many cases.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the core devs.

<comment><USER8> One thing that is holding me back from porting my Matlab code to Julia is manual loop-unrolling. "It seems that, when using Julia, one needs to unlearn everything you've ever learned about vectorisation in MATLAB." [1]. Once the speed with Matlab-like syntax improves, I'll try again.

[1]: <http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?cat=59>

<comment><USER9> _> Once the speed with Matlab-like syntax improves, I'll try again._

The @devec macro should help, meanwhile:

        @devec r = a .* b + c .* d + a

... will devectorize the expression. It's not perfect, but it's definitely useful.

<https://github.com/lindahua/Devectorize.jl>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only reason I can see to use Matlab is that you have invested heavily in it in the past. If not, I'd always use python instead. I claim it's not less "tuned for numerics" (with numpy) than Matlab. If you really need a Matlab like IDE, you should either give Spyder² [1] (I don't use it myself, but I know some Matlab-switchers that are quite happy with it) or IPython notebook a try.

In my oppinion, the only thing Matlab has going for it are commercial extensions and (often exclusive) hardware support (and I don't mean computers).

[1] <http://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice to know there's a JVM-based library (<http://acs.lbl.gov/software/colt/>). I remember in HN somebody mentioned something like this but for Scala, anyone?

<comment><USER12> You may be referring to Scalala (now Breeze):

<https://github.com/scalanlp/breeze>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> this was on hn at least once before <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4660544></comment>


Should I tell an angel investor I'm doing due diligence on him? - <AUTHOR>

Due diligence being just talking to people who know him. He let me know before talking to people who knew me, should I return the favor?<p>EDIT: I'm hesitant because I want to talk to people that he is not introducing me to (ie. not references he would give me). I'd find them myself.  He asked me to make the introductions to my references, so I'm concerned about seeming overly paranoid and/or rude. <comment><USER2> I don't see why you wouldn't. He should know (and be happy) that you are looking for a good investor as much as he is looking for a good entrepreneur.

I suspect the best outcome is that he takes you very seriously. The worst outcome is he thinks you don't trust him, but you can say the same thing about him.

What did you think when he told you he was doing due diligence?

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes and ask for references. Shows you care.

You can't earn respect without self-respect.</comment>