"We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the 2.6 release" - <AUTHOR> https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/firefox-os-connected-devices-announcement/6864 <comment><USER2> This is a good news.

Firefox OS was never a real product, but a PoC.

IMHO, Mozilla should absorb the Tor project and focus on Free Web technologies, e.g. a really Free email service and a Free cloud storage service.

Yes, I intentionally use capitol F for Free.

How to raise money? Freemium model.

A good email+cloud storage service, with the optional pay model for using a custom domain.

And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing them to create the Iceweasel fork) or including proprietary services (e.g. Pocket) forcing the creation of the Icecat fork.

Just be a Free and Open browser, with some good cloud services, and make money within a Freemium model (allowed by Free Software Foundation policies).

<comment><USER3> > _And stop attacking the Linux distros for the Firefox trademark (forcing > them to create the Iceweasel fork)_

Debian's rules don't allow things that aren't free-free, and blocked the copyright-encumbered logo. Mozilla was protecting it's trademark and branding. Debian calling it iceweasel basically replaced the branding so that it _could_ be used under Debian's rules. It turned out to be a fairly amicable result - debian still gets the software with full utility, and mozilla keeps their branding coherent (branding is important to making money with any model, but especially freemium).

Also, this licensing stoush was ten years ago; it's not like it's fresh wounds.

<comment><USER4> So which part of replacing the Firefox brand with Iceweasel is coherent branding?

<comment><USER5> Mozilla wants people to be able to trust the Firefox brand. They don't even use "Firefox" branding on their own nightly or dev builds. They only put it on software that's been through their own QA. So you're free to use the code, but they won't let you put the name or logo on any forks or even builds they haven't signed off on.

<comment><USER6> I think at this point that the Firefox brand has been tarnished, unfortunately.

For many average users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the slow browser they used to use before switching to Chrome.

For more advanced users, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the browser that includes ads (even if these are being removed), has unnecessary functionality built in (Pocket, Hello), and has undergone questionable UI changes (Australis).

For web developers, the term "Firefox" reminds them of the extra effort they still need to expend to test their creations in a browser that fewer and fewer people are using.

For others, the term "Firefox" will now remind them of this failed mobile OS project.

"Firefox" as a brand had a great reputation 5 years ago. But that reputation has eroded away since then.

<comment><USER7> I disagree.

Most "normal" users who used Firefox before Chrome came around are savvy enough to understand that software improves and evolves. There's no doubt that Chrome gave Firefox a much-needed shot in the arm.

Many developers/advanced users, including myself, see Firefox as a bastion of freedom in what is otherwise a land grab by major OS vendors, an attempt to further increase their lock-in. Users remember Firefox as the browser that was so flexible, Firebug was possible, which sent every browser vendor into a tizzy to try to clone the featureset natively. Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience, unlike Chrome which babysits and won't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data.

The first 2 years that Chrome was out, it trounced Firefox all around. I switched back to Fx around that time. These days, Firefox's JavaScript performance is comparable if not better than Chrome's [0] and its extension ecosystem and extreme configurability make it a much better option than Chrome for me. The only reason I use Chrome now is to take advantage of the proprietary extensions that allow me to use Netflix or Flash on Linux.

Mozilla has always and will always be a tinkerer's vendor. These people are not going to be offended when reasonable experiments are conducted, nor when reasonable experiments fail, as Firefox OS did.

The biggest grudge I hold against Mozilla is really more about the community than the company itself, and that's the Brendan Eich debacle.

[0] [http://arewefastyet.com/](http://arewefastyet.com/)

<comment><USER8> _Users remember Firefox as the browser that gives them control over their experience_

Power users, or users? Among the crowd here, sure. But in the rest of the world?

 _unlike Chrome which babysits and won 't let you interfere with Google's need to harvest data._

Firefox has been getting more and more nannyish and chromelike with every release.

* There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did it"

* There's the UI rework which sacrificed information density and usability for what I evaluate as a weak attempt to look more like Chrome.

* There's the "thou shalt not install plugins from places other than we say is okay" rule that was recently implemented - which Chrome did first.

* There's the upcoming "all your plugins are going to break, many permanently" when XUL gets thrown out and the new hotness won't have feature parity at release (in other words, Firefox plugins will be as limited as Chrome plugins)

<comment><USER9> > There's the "let's throw out semantic versioning since Chrome already did > it"

Firefox never followed semantic versioning. Versions 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 3.6, and 4.0 all had equally major changes to them. It's worse if you look at the internal version numbers: 1.8, 1.9, 1.9.1, 1.9.2, 4.0. The change to the rapid-release model was driven more by the pain of the protracted Firefox 4 release than by trying to ape Chrome.

> There's the UI rework which sacrificed information density and usability for > what I evaluate as a weak attempt to look more like Chrome.

Actually, Firefox started developing the design before Chrome did. They just took far, far, far longer.

<comment><USER10> As far as I can tell, the Australis work dates back roughly to 2012 (that's when their wiki meeting notes start, and when the Australis tracking bug in Bugzilla was opened).

You may be mixing Australis up with the theme work done for Firefox 4.0 (which moved tabs to the top by default and added the orange Firefox menu button). The early work on that would've been contemporaneous with the earliest public versions of Chrome (2/3/4)-- the design that would become Firefox 4 started being shown off in public around the fall of 2009.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones after the version 2.6 > release.

Meanwhile, most FxOS phones (all three of them, I guess) are still stuck on 1.3 because Mozilla's update policy for it has always been even more broken than Google's.

I won't miss it. My Fire E has been a paperweight for the past year because it was just useless – the base OS was never on par with even Android 2, and the fragmentation killed the app market before it even existed.

If Mozilla handles FxOS for IoT like it did on smartphones (or like it handles Thunderbird), it won't survive another year.

<comment><USER12> FWIW, Firefox OS 2.0 is actually pretty dang good. Update policy is still busted of course.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't know, my phone was supposed to get it 15 months ago and still hasn't.

<comment><USER13> You could... update it yourself?

I totally get that it's in a pretty shitty state if it can't update itself in 15 months, but for those of us that are technically able, it seems like an easy fix?

<comment><USER11> I could.

I could also just do the same with my beefier Android phone instead.

<comment><USER13> So what I did was bought a beefier android phone (not that beefy, just a Nexus 5), and flashed FirefoxOS on it :)

The default phones that FFOS comes with are pretty weak (except for the flame which wasn't that bad), but they have some pretty decent support for flashing popular phones.

I don't blame you if you don't do that, obviously -- android is definitely easier to use and update, and better supported than FirefoxOS. It's obviously completely OK to dislike FirefoxOS because of this, and choose to go with the more stable/simple option. Free up those brain cycles for something else.

<comment><USER14> > So what I did was bought a beefier android phone (not that beefy, just a > Nexus 5), and flashed FirefoxOS on it :)

Isn't going from Android to FFOS taking a few steps backwards?

<comment><USER13> No snark intended: In what way?

That's the obvious assumption (as in lots of friends have said that to me IRL), but I don't think it's completely true that I've taken a step backwards. Generally a modern smartphone has to do a few things "well":

\- Make calls

\- Text/message

\- Enable ecosystems of useful functionality through apps

The only ways I can see FFOS as a step backwards is because of the lack of availability of some apps -- some apps only support native clients for android/ios. However, a lot of the more interesting/important apps do also support web users (i.e. instagram, facebook).

As far as actual phone performance goes, a lot of android variants are so bogged down with vendor garbage, increasingly heavy android versions that FFOS doesn't actually lag too far behind. It is certainly not always as snappy as android, but I consider it good enough.

I can definitely concede that I took a step backwards in app availability, but I took a step forward in privacy, and the ability to debug/verify my mobile OS, and that's worth it for me -- I also managed to NOT drop all the actual important phone stuff (making calls/texting), which is nice.

Is driving a manual car a step backwards from an automatic one? Yes, but it's not so cut and dry as to "never step back into managing your transmission yourself, always let a computer do it". For some people, the tradeoff is worth it/compelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The headline omits the important "for smartphones" clause:

> _We will end development on Firefox OS for smartphones_

Other uses of the Firefox OS platform (at least the Gecko and Gonk layers) are still being developed, including for television:

> _We will continue to assess the stack to determine fit with new projects > coming through the innovation process [...] As of today, we have 3 projects > that have passed the first gate including SmartTV, and about a dozen more > projects are prepping for review._

</comment><comment><USER16> Some people seem gleeful about this, but Firefox OS is actually an excellent Smart TV OS, especially at a time where a lot of manufacturers feel comfortable inserting ads into people's TVs without their consent.

It's obviously ridiculous that this is something we need to deal with in the first place, but I'm definitely happy that I got one of the few TVs without a scummy OS.

The smartphone OS was always a vague idea that never materialized into anything. Part of that was probably a result of the frustration that we never really got that Nokia OS for lower-end devices. Instead we're left with Android.

I plan on making the TV OS a big parameter for the TVs I buy in the future. (Which feels about just as dumb as doing the same with future microwave ovens, but this is the world we live in.)

Fortunately I won't be buying a new TV within the next three years. I've genuinely been wondering whether I need to set up an intermediary Raspberry Pi ad-blocker to safeguard my Internet of nonsense at home.

<comment><USER17> I just buy plain old dumb TVs, no need to worry about anything.

As for FirefoxOS I never understood the point of it.

OpenMoko tried to be an open smartphone platform and failed.

Nokia did it for Symbian OS with web widgets and it failed.

Palm did it with WebOS, with the plus side of allowing C++ bindings for games, and it failed.

Android and iOS allow for web widgets and cordova like apps and there usually have bad feedback from users vs native apps.

Windows Phone allows for first class development with web based tech and few bother to use it, rather CoreCLR and WinRT.

OEM and network providers always have the final word, they learned not to let others follow Apple's footsteps.

That was a very far hard attempt from the begging.

I rather see Mozilla spending their efforts in Firefox, Thunderbird and Rust.

<comment><USER18> > I just buy plain old dumb TVs, no need to worry about anything.

This is a bit short sighted. In the near future, we will only have 'smart' TVs to chose from.

<comment><USER19> There's also the choice not to buy a TV. A large high quality monitor hooked up with a chromecast is far better, imo.

<comment><USER20> And where do you get those in sizes of 50"\+ with proper remotes, color reproduction (HDMI color range!) and other functionality expected from a TV?

<comment><USER17> A trip down to any consumer store here in Germany?

<comment><USER21> They have 50 inch computer monitors for $450 with built in TV tuners and speakers at any store in Germany?

Oh wait, if it has a built in TV tuner and speakers, it's just called a television. And we have those at Wal Mart in the US.

<comment><USER17> That was my point. A modern dumb flat TV is no different than a monitor.

<comment><USER21> But the original point was that dumb TVs are getting more and more rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl/dr: ffos is not dead, it's open source, and it's already a product, not a PoC.

I probably read like a broken record at this point:

Despite Mozilla dropping development on it, FirefoxOS is still not "dead". Open source things only die when no one has interest in them any more. AFAIK FirefoxOS is still the most open mobile operating system. If some other company decides to take up where mozilla left off, fork FirefoxOS, and do stuff with it, they can make a run at it (this is extremely unlikely).

The platform itself is pretty amazing already - It does all the actual "phone" stuff just great -- making calls, texting (minus a snafu with SMS group messaging on the version I'm on). The apps are web apps. The phone is almost literally one huge browser. There isn't that much more to add! Yeah it'd be nice if it had more "native" app support, but honestly, any site with a mobile website (or responsive design) has "native" app support. If you've used version 2.x, you're probably pretty satisfied with what your phone does now anyway. I know I am.

FirefoxOS will still be useful as long as people keep making apps for it (and again, apps are basically webpages, so even if it's not distributed on the marketplace, people can still webpages to homescreen), and it will be useful as long as people want to use it. It is already viable open source mobile OS. I am grateful to mozilla for taking the time to make it.

I'm excited to see what they do in connected devices, because despite the moves mozilla has made recently (hello, pocket, addon signing requirement), I still would much rather have them build software that was running on my toaster than anyone else.

[EDIT] - Also, check out the comments on the site. They're great.

<comment><USER22> So, are there anyone that are working on developing FFOS further? If not, it's dead for all practical purposes. Just like WebOS is dead even though that was open sourced as well.

I'm not excited at all to see what they do with connected devices, because I expect them (and their partners) to have a go at it for a couple of years and then shut it down when the next shiny new market opportunity appears.

I have no idea why Firefox would have an advantage in this space over Google/Android. I'd also trust them more, but I just don't see it.

<comment><USER13> Correct me if I'm wrong, but WebOS was open sourced after it started failing, and it was only parts of webos that were first "open sourced". I think the contexts are different, from day one b2g has been open source, and has had a contingent of supporters.

Plus, WebOS never actually got as far as FirefoxOS did on physical devices -- FFOS is powering phones for people all across the world right now. From what I remember WebOS got mostly relegated ot tablets.

I understand and share some of your frustration with their seemingly indecisiveness and willingess to drop certain projects to chase other ones. But can you blame them? They're trying to stay profitable.

So I think they'd have a little bit of an advantage becuase they've essentially ported the web model to run on embedded devices, and I think that could make it easier for manufacturers to integrate. Instead of learning to make some special kind of android app (+ ide support of course), manufacturers only have to worry about making webpages, and using some `window.mozFridge.changeTemperature` API, rather than something heavier.

My statement was more about trust than some implicit advantage in IoT (though I think the case could be made that they do have some advantages).

<comment><USER23> WebOS had the AWESOME phone: Palm Pre

I really wanted this phone, but I was skeptical as to whether it could make a big enough dent given Apple and Android.

The card system that Google now uses IIRC was because one of the designers left WebOS and joined Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The timing of this is terrible.

I feel that there is real evidence of Google influencing the regulatory landscape and we really need a viable alternative to google for people that can't afford an iPhone.

Google's data collection on android devices is so far past the creepy line (all under the dual use rationale of protecting users from bad things- cert abuse in chrome or malware prevention in verify apps).

</comment><comment><USER25> Boot to Gecko is an open source technology stack. Firefox OS is a product built on that stack. B2G can live on if there's interest from enough hackers and testers.

A decade ago, Mozilla abandoned the Mozilla Application Suite in favor of Firefox, both built on the Gecko technology stack. Because a product ends doesn't mean the open source technology ends too.

(BTW, volunteers picked up the Mozilla Application Suite, renamed it to Seamonkey, and it still runs today.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Related:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/the-fight-for-a- third...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/the-fight-for-a-third-best- smartphone-os-has-been-lost-by-everyone/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Firefox OS was dead the moment Mozilla decided that the first-generation developer phones will never get 2.x (or in most cases even 1.3).

Alienating the first wave of developers... Way to go, Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER28> What are 'Sony Z3C foxfooding devices'? Sony Z3 Compact smartphones? [1] They are my favorite smartphones of relatively current crop (powerful, compact, great battery life - as compact and great as it gets nowadays, anyway) but I haven't heard of them being used for Firefox OS.

[1] [http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z3_compact-6538.php](http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_z3_compact-6538.php)

<comment><USER29> They were distributed to several hundreds mozillians last year. I used one for a while. Excellent device, very responsive with FxOS on it. If it had enough apps, it could have been competitive...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's kind of striking that last Saturday Mozilla held this talk @FOSDEM: [https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/osd_firefox_os_why_we...](https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/osd_firefox_os_why_we_exist/)

<comment><USER31> Not quite, looking at the slides.

It finishes up with two slides of "tough lessons" basically explaining why it failed as a phone OS, and then "what's next?" containing connected device plans. So it's pretty well in line with the announcement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder whether they'll consider bringing it back to smartphones, if/when Servo starts to make inroads into the Firefox for Android codebase. FirefoxOS seemed way too late for any early mover advantage, and too early to present web apps as a credible replacement for native apps (they can replace relatively simple apps but not much further at the moment).

In some ways, it would have been better if Mozilla had just kept it chugging along as a proof of concept, which you could install voluntarily on rooted phones, and use it as a basis for developing the API's, and the parallel layout engine, which along with a few years of development in client-side javascript should improve the reach of web apps. It was in some ways too late, and in some ways too early for the grand launch.

</comment><comment><USER33> 1\. Pure web tech on phone OS is simply not a choice, Facebook did it and failed too. 2\. It's better to use new tech (pure web) in new market such as IoT. If using in existing market (iOS and Android), customers will ask: is the user experience better than the existing ones? And that's why they decide to end the development: "However, we weren't able to offer the best user experience possible and so we will stop offering Firefox OS smartphones..."

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a good news and kudos to them for trying to increase our options. FF OS might have taken off had it been a little bit earlier. It took a lot of time for Android to get to where it is right now. Even for Google, it took them a lot to get it right. It was a good project but lets face it, there was no way it would have been more than just an experiment. Firefox OS never had a chance to begin with. I hope they've learned their lesson. Now they can focus on their real projects.

</comment><comment><USER35> Mozilla/Firefox has a serious issue marketshare issue and it's not clear if they're aware. I'm beginning to see pages that break on Firefox or have warnings that Safari, Chrome, IE must be used. If Firefox doesn't find a way to gain or at least maintain marketshare, they risk becoming irrelevant. Since Firefox is their main revenue, this should be considered a company survival situation. But they're not acting like it.

</comment><comment><USER36> This worries me, and not because I'm a user of FirefoxOS.

Much of Mozilla's value is its influence; its ability to push for open standards that prioritize end user's needs. Before mobile, when ~20% of the world uses Firefox to access your service, you couldn't ignore them. But without a meaningful presence on any mobile platform, how much influence does Mozilla have?

IoT is another huge space and I hope they have success building influence there.

</comment><comment><USER37> The article always qualifies it as Firefox OS _for smartphones_. Is there a non-smartphone version that they're keeping?

<comment><USER38> Yes, that's what the "connected devices"/IoT story is about. AFAIK there is right now a push in direction of Smart TVs (at least they asked people that made apps for phones if they don't want to make TV apps)

<comment><USER39> Interesting how they make a distinction, I find that used android phones loaded with Cyanogenmod are great IoT devices, dirt cheap, equipped with GPS, camera, screens, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Everyone could see that coming from the day it launched I think. I had zero confidence it would survive long-term. A misguided and frankly confusing product, launched in direct competition with strong, strong competitors in the form of iOS and Android. Didn't stand a chance.

</comment><comment><USER41> I have a FxOS device, flame. But actually it was not so useful. and utilities on OS (meaning Gaia) were little bit cheap.

FirefoxOS is interesting I think. Browser is enough feature for OS in these days. but... it was not so enough in real life.

</comment><comment><USER42> i had the opportunity to work on the FF OS and it was very similar to building a chrome extension or phone-gap solution. This was back in 2013 and the interface, support was very sub par. I worked directly with FF on the deployment of our app! The devices / OS version mix played a big role in tuning, retuning nad detuning the app. I wondered how long would it take for FFto kill off the initiative! 2.5 years!!

</comment><comment><USER43> Instead of FirefoxOS, I'd rather see Mozilla pushing Web applications on Sailfish and Plasma Mobile.

</comment><comment><USER44> Wow, who could have ever imagined that a fake operating system that in reality was a mobile browser supporting "applications" written in html, css and javascript was going to miserably fail?

</comment><comment><USER45> It's sad

</comment><comment><USER46> The title is beyond editorializing into the factually incorrect territory, as they are not saying they're killing Firefox OS?

The pivot from phones to "connected devices" was already announced before[1] and this is just fleshing out that.

The language sounds a lot more like corporate-speak than what Mozilla's external communications usually are, I wonder if this is standard fare or if this team is coming from different cultures.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10716167)

<comment><USER13> Completely agree, please someone change the title.

Something like "Mozilla stops FirefoxOS development to focus on IoT"

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Can the mods edit the title? Mozilla officially stopped their development efforts of Firefox OS on smartphones, not the brand in general.

<comment><USER48> The title is accurate. People think of Firefox OS as a smartphone operating system; Mozilla is killing that off. They may be reusing the name on something else, but Firefox OS, (as we know it right now,) is being discontinued.

<comment><USER31> The title is not accurate. Regardless of whether "people" (excluding me, it seems) think of Firefox OS as a phone OS, Mozilla has been using the name in TV usage for two years [1].

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/01/06/mozilla-and- partner...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/01/06/mozilla-and-partners-to- bring-firefox-os-to-new-platforms-and-devices/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is anyone keeping track? In the last 7 days Parse was shut down, then a couple days ago Dropbox alternative Copy was shut down and now Firefox OS. Anyone else curious about what's next?

</comment><comment><USER50> I really hope they put some of the relieved workforce in the Thunderbird project. At the very least, this issue I've raised on their bugzilla since more than ten days ago can find some resolution!

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1242257](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1242257)

</comment><comment><USER51> I've always loved Mozilla products, having been a non-stop Firefox user since beta (if anyone reads this at Mozilla, never ever kill the toolbar RSS feed support!). Netscape prior, of course. I was hopeful for FirefoxOS and kept waiting for it to land in the US.

I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'. The Mozilla browser. Using their dinosaur logo as the mascot. It just sounds hipper, more catchy, marketing matters. Normals seem to consistently mangle Firefox as 'Foxfire' among other oddities. I think this would help progress the Mozilla foundation/corporation's efforts.

For interesting mobile initiatives, we still have Ubuntu Touch to keep an eye on. Their phone->PC docking idea is pretty good and makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER52> > I've always felt that Mozilla should rebrand Firefox as simply 'Mozilla'.

You're about ten years too late: [http://www- archive.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/](http://www- archive.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/)

<comment><USER51> That was Mozilla Navigator, as opposed to Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Suite was the package.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Earshot – open-source transcoder to livestream Higher-Order Ambisonics - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/EnvelopSound/Earshot <comment><AUTHOR> Introducing the Earshot project — a free and open-source transcoder for live streaming Higher-Order Ambisonics.

Using Earshot, spatial audio developers can build new and innovative immersive live experiences for the web.

Earshot solves the problem of getting audio or video content with non-standard audio channel configurations (i.e., beyond stereo or 5.1) from a source computer to the browser. It is based on nginx, MPEG-DASH, and the Opus codec which supports up to 255 audio channels (or 14th-order Ambisonics.)

Earshot comes with an intuitive web application that allows developers to debug and monitor their multichannel audio DASH streams, and easily test different dash.js client settings to optimize their end user experience. Earshot is fully containerized with Docker, and is designed to be easily deployed to AWS with pre-packaged CloudFormation templates.

Earshot is available here: [https://github.com/EnvelopSound/Earshot](https://github.com/EnvelopSound/Earshot)

\-----

About Envelop:

Envelop is a nonprofit organization that amplifies the connective power of music through immersive listening spaces and open source spatial audio software. Three-dimensional experiences of sound and music bring people together, catalyzing shared moments of inspiration, empathy and wonder.

We welcome support for this project through code contributions, or tax- deductible Envelop memberships and donations on our website: [https://www.envelop.us/membership- donations](https://www.envelop.us/membership-donations).</comment>


Daniel Kahneman on Cutting Through the Noise [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://cowenconvos.libsyn.com/daniel-kahneman-on-x-y-z <comment><USER2> Full Transcript here:

[https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen- dani...](https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/tyler-cowen-daniel- kahneman-economics-bias-noise-167275de691f)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is the host a machine?

<comment><USER4> Huh? He's having a conversation. I've heard much, much worse on other podcasts. As if the interviewer has recorded all the questions and sent them to the interviewee who then answers them. I.e. no back-and-forth. No probing, no pushing back.

This conversation is far from that.

<comment><USER5> I think the comment was a dig at the stiff enunciation, not necessarily the content. Anyways, enjoyed the conversation.</comment></comment></comment>


Google reward is $1337 for discovering critical bugs in Chromium - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/19/moz_bug_bounty/

<comment><USER2> Well, Mozilla just raised their reward from $500.00 to $3,000.00 ([http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Mozilla- offers-3-...](http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Mozilla- offers-3-000-for-bug-reports-1040238.html)). Also, while Google's offering up to $1,337 ([http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-invites- attack...](http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-invites-attacks-on- Chrome-918266.html)), they've actually awarded $2,000 on one occasion ([http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Google- pays-2-000...](http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Google- pays-2-000-for-report-of-a-vulnerability-in-Chrome-1018495.html))...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the original Google post:

[http://blog.chromium.org/2010/01/encouraging-more- chromium-s...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/01/encouraging-more-chromium- security.html)

Seems like $500 for normal security bugs and can be upgraded to $1,337 for severe bugs (judged by a panel)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ah, lame. I found a canvas rendering bug back when Chrome first came out. I blogged about it and they fixed it, referencing my blog entry in the steps-to- reproduce portion of the bug report.

I guess I should have held onto it for a couple years and cashed in!

<comment><USER5> Your canvas rendering bug is probably worth $0; this program is intended to incentivize people to search for security bugs, so that Google (and Mozilla) can win the race against organized criminals doing the same thing.

<comment><USER6> The article says Google is paying $500 for non-security bugs

<comment><USER5> They aren't. $500 is for non-severe security bugs.

<comment><USER6> "Google has also established a bug bounty program, offering $500 for run-of- the-mill flaws..."

So the article is wrong?

<comment><USER5> Your interpretation of what the Register says is overly optimistic, and is easily refuted by the FAQ on Google's own page. The Reg, when it says "flaws", is (clumsily) implying security flaws as well.

Either way, just to keep this crystal clear: the $500 bounty is for security flaws.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for clearing that up :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.mozilla.org/security/bug-bounty.html> Mozilla's bounty was raised to $3000 recently on security issues.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice amount. But I'd like it to be the full $31337(why shorten), although I don't plan to find any bugs in Chromium.

</comment><comment><USER9> W0w 7hi5 i5 nic3

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice, Hugh Hefner was only offering $800.85 for Playboy.com vulnerabilities.</comment>


iOS 11 Safari will automatically strip AMP links from shared URLs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/viticci/status/900396684844433409 <comment><USER2> TL of AMP here. Just wanted to clarify that we specifically requested Apple (and other browser vendors) to do this. AMP's policy states that platforms should share the canonical URL of an article whenever technically possible. This browser change makes it technically possible in Safari. We cannot wait for other vendors to implement.

It appears Safari implemented a special case. We'd prefer a more generic solution where browsers would share the canonical link by default, but this works for us.

<comment><USER3> > We'd prefer a more generic solution where browsers would share the canonical > link by default, but this works for us.

We had that solution it was called 'the web'.

I'd prefer a more generic solution too: get rid of AMP.

It really isn't about what 'works for you' it is about what is good for Google versus what is good for the web.

<comment><USER2> Happy to have a technical discussion, but not sure you are really interested.

TL;dr AMP is 100% build on web tech. Pre-rendering achieves the performance but relies on history.pushState and iframes, which doesn't allow presenting a URL that is not on the same origin as the search page.

We think that the UX trade off in the URL is OK given the performance benefits. Given that it is a trade off we now have a bunch of projects to mitigate those trade offs. More coming soon, including lots of improvements to Safari. My team works directly on WebKit to fix bugs that affect AMP (but also the web as a whole, since AMP is just web tech).

<comment><USER3> > Happy to have a technical discussion, but not sure you are reallty > interested.

This is not about technology. And whatever goal the AMP project states it has could have been achieved - and better - in other ways, such as the suggestion elsewhere in this thread to simply penalize page weight. If people wanted a consistent user interface across all websites they would have stuck with Videotext.

> TL;dr AMP is 100% build on web tech.

Yes, so was the search engine that put each result page in an iframe. Only difference was they didn't have a monopoly on search. And it does not make it right.

> Pre-rendering achieves the performance but relies on history.pushState and > iframes, which doesn't allow presenting a URL that is not on the same origin > as the search page.

Minor technical details, not relevant. If you feel the AMP discussion is going to be swayed by technical bits you're simply out of touch.

> We think that the UX trade off in the URL is OK given the performance > benefits.

Who made you the deciders of what the UX of the web should look like? Stick to generating the best search results rather than trying to co-opt the entire web one little bit at the time and leave the UX to the browsers, it would seem you have enough input there already.

> Given that it is a trade off we now have a bunch of projects to mitigate > those trade offs.

The only trade-off that will satisfy me is AMP dying off because websites will stop to support it. But as long as Google is strong-arming content providers to use AMP that won't happen. It is no longer fair play as far as Google is concerned. If it ever was.

> My team works directly on WebKit to fix bugs that affects AMP (but also the > web as a whole, since AMP is just web tech).

Consider doing something more useful with your talents. For instance, fix the long standing issue with the SERPs that makes it impossible to cut-and-paste URLs pointing to PDFs.

<comment><USER4> This post feels overly agressive and hyperbolic. There's no need to insult their job or bring out the accusations about the reasoning behind AMP.

<comment><USER5> The post is critical and frank but well within the bounds of civil discourse. Pleasant and understanding is not _always_ the appropriate tone (though it's a good default). Sometimes people or companies do harmful things. To respond with patience and respect is to normalize them.

<comment><USER6> > The post is critical and frank but well within the bounds of civil > discourse.

Yeah, this is _really_ within the bounds of "civil discourse":

> Consider doing something more useful with your talents.

<comment><USER7> If that sentence had been followed by something sarcastic, derogatory, or harmful, then I'd agree. However, since it's followed by "here's an actual problem I'm having that Google could fix", I choose to believe that jacquesm is honestly saying "you've got a lot of bright people there, but AMP is the wrong project to have them spend time on".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hope the next step is a way to strip AMP links from all URLs, backfilling the "Disable AMP" setting that Google ought to have provided.

AMP has always worked poorly on iOS: it has different scrolling, it breaks reader mode, and it breaks status bar autohide and jump-to-top. Perhaps Apple would be less hostile to AMP if the implementation were better.

<comment><USER9> _AMP has always worked poorly on iOS..._

This never made sense to me.

You can have natural scrolling, an accurate reader view, a working back button and other highly performant features in a mobile-optimized HTML and CSS standard like AMP. In fact, you practically have to go out of your way to break these things in the way that AMP does.

Why does AMP have to suck so much?

<comment><USER10> A significant portion of the time (more than 1/2) AMP URLs fail to load, forcing me to "Request Desktop Site" in order to load it.

When they do load, they fuckify the URL, so I can't copy/paste it normally. I know I can go in through the page's menus and get the real URL, but it makes it harder for no reason.

I consider the URL part of the page's UI, and commonly manually edit it. This makes it harder.

So far as I can see, there is no advantage to AMP pages, versus a fast and simple HTML page, with no external resource requests.

Sites can serve that themselves, rather than using Google.

In short, it breaks features I use, and doesn't provide advantages.

<comment><USER11> This is why I hate AMP.

People who like it can't seem to understand that it has a crappy user experience for some people and always assume you don't like it for "philosophical reasons".

I really don't care about AMP from that POV, I just wish it was a secondary link instead of the stealth replacement of where I wanted to go with a page that usually doesn't load and messes up my back button.

<comment><USER12> I'm with you. I expect in the coming days I will have to switch some of our elder's search engines to DuckDuckGo to avoid problems. I just hate technology that changes the user experience in a broken way. Browsers are supposed to act in a certain way. Don't break that. Breaking UI is why we had a hate on for Win 8. It really annoyed people with the changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thank heavens. Google's efforts to 'improve' the web have been disastrous. Like turning every list of facts into a pointless ramble because Google needs 1000 words of 'rich content'. And Amp being a push to hobble pages by making them into a proprietary cache format instead of encouraging simpler HTML.

<comment><USER14> > Thank heavens. Google's efforts to 'improve' the web have been disastrous.

This Apple action is done to honor the AMP teams design of how AMP URLs should be handled, so it's actually, in a sense, _part of_ Google's efforts to improve the web, not a counter to them.

<comment><USER15> It's also done to DECRAPIFY the links that people try and share with their friends, providing a non-crappy user experience.

In this case that HAPPENS to align with what Google wants.

Of course google could've decided not to screw up the web in the first place… but we're obviously way past that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't know much about the implementation details of AMP. But my perspective as an end user is that it's pretty great. Non-amp pages tend to take multiple seconds to get interactive, and then the content jumps around as images and ads and fonts load. AMP tends to be usable in under half a second.

<comment><USER17> Mostly because Google serves the page from their own servers and starts loading it before you even click a search result. It's great for Google search and bad for everyone else.

<comment><USER16> Then I guess "everyone else" should find a way to make a usable mobile content website without AMP, because apparently that's a nearly unsolvable problem. It's hard to be anti-AMP when the user experience is _that_ much better with AMP.

<comment><USER18> AMP is terrible for the open WWW and not necessarily any faster.

"Pinboard founder Maciej Cegłowski already recreated the Google AMP demo page without the Google AMP JavaScript and, unsurprisingly, it's faster than Google's version."

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/19/open_source_insider_google_amp_bad_bad_bad/)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, honestly, you can do just as good as an AMP site if all you did was cut back on the javascript and use a service worker to cache static assets/pages.

I wish AMP simply wasn't a thing, and they put more effort in promoting progressive web apps (PWA's) instead. There's too much tie-in to Google on the internet already.

AMP is basically "Hey, you suck at your job. Here's a subset of HTML/CSS that not even YOU can eff up."

PWA is "Hey, you suck at your job. Here's the industry's best practices for mobile-first development."

<comment><USER20> > Yeah, honestly, you can do just as good as an AMP site if all you did was > cut back on the javascript and use a service worker to cache static > assets/pages.

But people didn't, and here we are. Again, as a normal user, I'm relieved to see the AMP symbol. I click on those links first, to the exclusion of others given the chance, because multiple years of trust have been broken.

<comment><USER18> It's at the expense of the publishers and the future of the open WWW though.

<comment><USER20> I know that's the concern, but at the moment it feels like a slippery slope fallacy to me. Hypotheticals don't interest me because there's a million of them, and there's a thousand of them that can make sense if you look at the right way. Maybe the preponderance of AMP will create a shift back to the user experience, and AMP's success renders it unnecessary. Maybe maybe maybe.

 _Maybe_ I'll rue the day I wrote this, but we're going to have to see. This is a self-created problem, and now publishers of all stripes will have to work to earn back the trust they poisoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's my AMP experience on Reddit:

1) Click the AMP link in Google 2) See half the reddit thread comments, since AMP is a cached older version, I then need to click "View full comments" which gets me to the mobile reddit link I wanted in the first place

3) For some reason, links in AMP reddit dont let you open in a new window -- which I often want to do when reading comments inline and see someone post a link in a comment. Frustrating.

AMP cost me more time and effort than having just gone to the non-AMP link directly.

<comment><USER22> In what way is AMP a good idea for fucking Reddit? A _social_ platform.

<comment><USER23> Reddit can't figure out how to make their mobile site fast, so I guess AMP to the rescue.

<comment><USER24> Their desktop site works better than the mobile site on Chrome in Android.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just to make sure I'm following this myself: this isn't about disabling AMP, it's about making sure that URLs that you send to other applications or the clipboard from Safari will be the true URLs of the original web page, not AMP URLs. Right? That's the only way I can read "strip AMP links from shared URLs," but a lot of comments here are piling on to AMP itself. Which I understand (I don't like it for a lot of the reasons already brought up here, both in terms of philosophy and usability), but I don't think that's what we're actually talking about.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, the article completely misunderstands what this is about, and so do most people in this thread. I expected more from HN.

This is something Chrome has implemented, and they've asked other browser vendors to do too. You want AMP to load the page quickly on your first load, but for sharing, the canonical link is the best to give to people.

<comment><USER27> It's a single twitter thread, not an article. And how do you think it misunderstands what this is about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> People in this thread seem to be overreacting like my immune system on strawberries....

Apple isn't taking up the good fight against AMP. They're simply removing it from URLs when those are shared via the build-in "share" functionality.

99% of interactions with AMP pages will see no impact. It seems like it should be uncontroversial that it is preferable to use the canonical non-AMP URI when sharing, so as to invoke content-negotiation between that page and the devise of whoever clicks on the shared link.

<comment><USER15> I don't think anyone here thinks it's controversial to share the original URL instead of the AMP one. I don't think there's anyone here who is mad that Apple is doing this.

We are all mad that this is necessary in the first place. Apple is modifying their OS to fix something that Google shoved on people without any option to disable it or thought to the secondary effects of its existence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It might be simply because Safari respect [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element)

      <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/23/politics/trumps-ire-at-aides-advice/index.html">

EDIT: correct HTML element <link rel="canonical">

<comment><USER30> Later down he mentions it is specific for AMP.

[https://twitter.com/jan4843/status/900416144955363328](https://twitter.com/jan4843/status/900416144955363328)

<comment><USER31> The tweet you linked seems to be asking a question, and I don't see any replies on the twitter website. Can you link directly to the reply?

<comment><USER32> [https://twitter.com/viticci/status/900418370025246721](https://twitter.com/viticci/status/900418370025246721)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I detest AMP and everything it stands for. I'd like to see this in Firefox.

<comment><USER6> "AMP's policy states that platforms should share the canonical URL of an article whenever technically possible"

<comment><USER34> It's not clear why Google relies on demanding browsers change to provide the experience the users expect.

<comment><USER33> Apparently their matket position gives them this ability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish it had an option to simply strip AMP in all circumstances. I quite often copy & paste URLs into e-mails, for example. It's irksome to have to request the desktop version just to get the proper domain and URL.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, I'm also seeing a lot of AMP links accidentally shared on Twitter too. I just want a global 'don't ever show me AMP pages' setting, as well as to be able to turn it off in Google search results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I absolutely support this move, I've been trying to rid myself of AMP since it was released and this at least stops me from having to clean up URLs when sharing them.

<comment><USER6> "TL of AMP here. Just wanted to clarify that we specifically requested Apple (and other browser vendors) to do this. AMP's policy states that platforms should share the canonical URL of an article whenever technically possible."

Apple is just following AMP's request.

<comment><USER15> Why are you posting the exact same comment as a response to so many others?

<comment><USER6> Well, informing people? I actually do this in a lot of threads. Is that bad?

<comment><USER15> I don't know, it doesn't seem useful to me. Especially since the thing you're quoting is currently the #1 comment.

<comment><USER6> Valid point. I deleted some of them in less relevant threads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I guess I am the only person who appreciates AMP. I really love the abbreviated version of things, without all the extra crap that has to load over the wire to render what amounts to a few paragraphs I'd like to read.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hopefully Apple fighting AMP makes it a non-starter going forward now since it isn't reaching lucrative iOS users.

<comment><USER14> You get better placement for using it (and not just with Google), so if Apple were to redirects their users to your regular site, why wouldn't you still use it?

<comment><USER10> AFAIK, you do NOT get better placement for using AMP. You get better placement for having a fast site, which you can do easily without AMP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Anyone else think that the EU is going to file an antitrust suit against Google over AMP? Seems possible given their lack of hesitance in the past.

</comment><comment><USER41> Accelerated Mobile Pages, for those who are curious.

[https://www.ampproject.org](https://www.ampproject.org)

</comment><comment><USER42> I got so sick of AMP links I switched to Bing as default. Compared to google is sucks, but still better than dealing with AMP pages. When I have to, I use [https://encrypted.google.com](https://encrypted.google.com) which is currently AMP free.

I would switch back immediately, if I could disable AMP on my google account.

</comment><comment><USER43> Hopefully it'll fix some of the issues with getting redirected on desktops when people share links here/on reddit

</comment><comment><USER44> My understanding is that AMP pages load a cached version of the content inside a nested iframe. Doesn't this break browser extensions/bookmarklets that rely on processing the current HTML on the loaded page? Stuff like Instapaper or Pocket, for example?

</comment><comment><USER45> AMP reminds me of AOL's web browser back in the day and possibly Facebook today, directing everything through their network and controlling the experience.

AOL used to break lots of sites/graphics/scripts which noone would put up with today, AMP just makes you use and run everything through Google or else. This is a move to control more of the web through a walled garden and goes against the distributed nature of the web.

The one thing that AMP may be beneficial for is archival purposes, preserving content past when another source may keep it. However, knowing Google products and how they are killed off like George R.R. Martin characters, no hope for that.

</comment><comment><USER46> AMP is horrible and should just be buried.

</comment><comment><USER47> Here is how Safari could fix the mobile web in a matter of weeks:

1\. If a site downloads more than 100K, halt the page load or display a "too much data" error.

2\. If a site takes more than 1 second to render, halt the page load or display a "too long to load" error.

Do that for a few days and maybe these absurd sites would lose enough views that they might actually bother to figure out where their data is going.

I recently had to browse with "data roaming" at the low low price of $2.05 per MEGAbyte and had to disable pretty much everything on my phone within minutes.

<comment><USER48> So no pictures whatsoever for mobile web sites?

<comment><USER47> Frankly yes, at times I would love that option. A "tap to load/view" link is sufficient for many situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I only wish there was a way to automatically have those pesky t.co links resolved when sharing.

I don't use Twitter, but other people do, and when they share a link to me I'd like to be able to 1) see what I am clicking on, and 2) avoid sending analytics information to Twitter when I do so.

</comment><comment><USER50> I love Apple the most when they throw their weight around for the benefit of the end user. It's pretty clear that Google's main concern is ads ads ads.

Apple already has my money, they focus 110% on making my life easier and their products fantastic. Go Apple!

<comment><USER51> Being forced to instead load some (almost universally awful) publisher site w/ 72 MB of JavaScript & CSS, absurdly intrusive ads popping up as you try to read, etc.... is an improved experience?

<comment><USER52> So you think this very website you're using right now – HN – could be improved by AMP?

I doubt that.

The only pages that get improved by AMP are those that abuse AMP then again anyway.

<comment><USER51> HN itself? Nope. Many publisher sites do benefit however. Especially local news sites that likely can't attract the best tech talent and/or contract out pages to be shoveled out by contractors.

Re: Abuse of AMP. AMP places sane restrictions on pages [https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#html- tags](https://www.ampproject.org/docs/reference/spec#html-tags) including hard limits on CSS size, etc... Google enforces these restrictions for pages served through their servers.

This is a much much needed effort to take the publishers toys away given they've proven they cannot be trusted with the full feature set of the web without adult supervision.

<comment><USER15> > Especially local news sites

You mean TV channels? The ones that all look the same? The ones run by Sinclair broadcasting which will soon be able to control 76% of them?

There seem to be very few true local companies left, the ones around pretend to be local when in fact they're identical to every other one owned by their national parent company.

And that company can afford to do it right. They're rich. They don't need Google to do it for them

<comment><USER51> > And that company can afford to do it right. They're rich.

In that case not sure what their excuse is but my point still holds true: Their sites are almost universally godawful and they're demonstrably not able to be trusted with the full feature set of the web. AMP provides some sanity including things like hard limits on the size of CSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Would be great if it got rid of twitter shortened urls and other similar walled-garden cruft.

</comment><comment><USER54> Must've resulted from this: [https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/851111291229847552](https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/851111291229847552)

</comment><comment><USER55> Thank goodness

On a related note, anyone know an extension for desktop Chrome that converts AMP pages to non-AMP pages? Or is that not programmatically possible?

</comment><comment><USER56> Nice, I do this manually right now.

</comment><comment><USER57> Yes! Yes! 100 times yes! Thank you Apple!!

I hate that amp crap! It's the main reason for moving to ddg.

</comment><comment><USER58> Haha. Apple officially thinks Google is a nuisance with news sites, like Adobe with Flash.

</comment><comment><USER59> Hurray!!

</comment><comment><USER60> wtf is Amp?

</comment><comment><USER61> Don't think Apple will accept any amount of billions from Google to let AMP pass through.

<comment><USER62> The AMP team asked them to do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Good on Apple for standing up to Google. This is great for an open web.

<comment><USER2> This change was requested by the AMP team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> If your content is valuable, why would you convert it into a Google format, upload it to Google servers, and allow them to serve it wrapped in a Google page?

Google should appreciate the ad revenue from linking to your valuable content. Don't give Google more control over your content.

</comment><comment><USER65> A lot of people are going to "cheer" this move but this is yet another anti- web move that Apple has made without regard to standards or how it will affect other areas of tech. Apple has a clear record of flouting standardized technologies in Safari like breaking iframe sizing in iOS mobile and not supporting many common APIs and is very opaque about whether or not they even view the web as a first class citizen. The code I work on almost has as many Safari hacks as we have IE hacks.

If Apple would stick to just making great hardware and products and follow the standards like other vendors do then I feel like the whole tech world would be better off.

Edit: Apparently I need to spell out in more detail my arguments because if read at surface level people only focus on AMP. This isn't about AMP. This is about sharing a link to something you are viewing. You are currently viewing the AMP page and that might look a certain way or even contain a certain type of graph that looks a certain way because it's static and fast to load. If you click Share and send this to a friend they will receive an entirely different page that might look different than what you were seeing. I don't think it's a good thing that we can no longer trust sharing a page with someone else. Now the ultimate destination is being edited behind the scenes without you knowing. It's a slippery slope that, like other things Apple has done, have possibly bad consequences in the future. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions after all.

<comment><USER66> I don't understand how you see AMP pages representing a standard web? AMP represents the complete opposite of web standards and anything to remove it from the web leaves us all better off.

<comment><USER67> Opposite of web standards? It's HTTP+HTML+JS+CSS. What part of AMP isn't standards compliant?

<comment><USER17> The AMP client source is available but worthless. Google validates that you're running their blessed version of the framework and if you change a single bit in the files Google doesn't serve your AMP content anymore.

It's a classic walled garden, like the Android app store. You can develop Android apps that don't meet their guidelines but you can't distribute them through normal channels.

<comment><USER68> The Play Store is pretty liberal in what they allow, more so than the Apple App store atleast.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the easiest money you've made? - <AUTHOR>

Some people make a lot of money from a very small amount of work. Maybe by taking advantage of a market trend or just getting lucky. I'm sure plenty of people on here have done just that and I'd be really interested in hearing your stories. <comment><USER2> Arbitraging Blockbuster Video. At one location they were selling DVDs due to bankruptcy. At another location they were buying DVDs for more money. No limit on size.

What does that say about Blockbuster management?

</comment><comment><USER3> Easiest: Back when I was in school and not many had internet, and even fewer had a 2x CD Burner, I'd create playlist for people at school. They give me a paper with ~10songs, download them, burn them, sell the disk. -_-

Fastest: Invested ~10k in Apple stock during afterhours before they froze trading before announcing their earnings. 30minutes later, sold those with an 8% ROI. 800$ (-commission/tax) in 30minutes.

</comment><comment><USER4> "easy" for one person might be another's nightmare. Remember Tyson's knockouts? A few million dollars for less than a minute in the ring!!! Sounds so easy and lucrative, doesn't it? However, I'm all ears for biz models that are repeatable and "easy" in today's environment.

</comment><comment><USER5> Built a billing system for an employer, they let me go on Friday, hired me as a consultant on Monday for a recurring $1000 a month to maintain said system. Program ran for 27 months. Spent more time on billing (5 mins each month) than I ever did on any maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER6> In 1994-1995 I used to charge $180 to put a "contact us" form on a website. It was a simple HTML form and Perl script. I could bang one out in about 30 minutes and I couldn't keep up with the work. Those were the days!

<comment><USER4> wow! how did you get people to find you then? You wouldn't have been the only one.

<comment><USER6> I used to help a lot of new-to-html coders on usenet. A handful of them would recommend me or contract me for the more complicated stuff like shopping carts, contact forms and other data driven functions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I was 14 I bought certain magazines down in Chinatown and sold them to a bunch of my friends at Catholic Schools. I made over $9000 in 3 months. BUT then a little thing called the internet came along...

</comment><comment><USER8> Accidentally put an Amazon Associates affiliate link in a reddit comment. Thread made it to the front page, comment was near the top, I made about $100.

<comment><USER9> O... never know that this could work too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cleaning viruses off computers for a flat rate. People will pay any amount of money to have their computer cleaned and you will seem like a god.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've always entered a bunch of science competitions/fairs. Sometimes the prize is $1000 for a paper I spend 8 hours writing - not bad!

</comment><comment><USER12> > _or just getting lucky._

Not sure about "lucky", but death of a parent landed me with tens of thousands of £.

</comment><comment><USER13> In 2002 i made a SEO'd affiliate site. It took like an hour to make the site but it made me $500k over a year!

</comment><comment><USER14> £150 for what was essentially 10 minutes of googling, 5 minutes compiling into a document.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Stories about making continuous income are preferred.

<comment> why-el Continuous or not is not dependent on the amount of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few thousand trading on the stock market.</comment>


Ask HN: European Job Sites - <AUTHOR>

I'm specifically looking for IT Jobs in Europe, what sites do people find the most useful? <comment><USER2> Joining Special Interest Groups on LinkedIn and subscribing to a daily digest of activities is a very nice way for 'focussed' job-searching. Quite a few analytics jobs posted in the Business Intelligence group (which I'm a part of) were EU-based, at least over the last week or so. Give it a whirl.

<http://www.twitterjobsearch.com/> seemed interesting as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are also quite a number of jobsites in Belgium, but most of them are for one language, so dependent on witch part you live:

In dutch: <http://www.vacature.com> \- <http://www.vdab.be> \- <http://monster.be> \- <http://stepstone.be>

In french: <http://www.references.be> \- <http://www.leforem.be>

Hope they are usefull!

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.jobserve.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> The following site is focused on freelancers but there are also full-time jobs listed.

<http://www.gulp.de>

</comment><comment><USER6> Germany: www.monster.de <http://www.jobscout24.de/> <http://www.jobpilot.de/> <http://www.stepstone.de/jobs/jobs.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> I read somewhere that at least 30% of all jobs ads in UK is fake ... I don't know if it's true or not ... How do you tell the difference between fake job ad and real thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've experienced the same thing in New Zealand, and more recently in Prague .. 'Place holder' advertisements created by recruiters just to get you into their database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can try the EU job mobility site. <http://ec.europa.eu/eures/home.jsp?lang=en>

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.exposurejobs.com/> is quite good at breaking down jobs by language and country

<comment><USER10> Nice site. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Switzerland: jobs.ch

If you can get a visa, the pay is great.

<comment><USER12> Isn't Switzerland like the dullest, most boring country in the world?

<comment><USER13> Niccolò Machiavelli, who was a sort of Karl Rove of his day, though with more integrity, said of the Swiss that they were "the most free and most armed people" of Europe. Get it? The connection between arms and freedom? <http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese463.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> jobsite.co.uk used to be the best for graduates.

</comment><comment><USER15> for nl: <http://monsterboard.nl/>

<comment><USER16> you'll find others version of monster for other countries:

<http://www.monster.com>

Seems to have a few IT jobs for UK, France etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I should of mentioned I was aware of Monster, I am specifically looking for other less well known sites that people might use.

<comment><USER17> Job sites are more fragmented in europe meaning there usually is a site per country. You might want to be a bit mor precise from what country [countris] you are looking for a job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken. I'm mainly interested in the following:

Denmark Sweden Germany

It's a pity there's not a decent aggregator like Indeed.com for EU.

<comment><USER18> For Denmark:

<http://www.version2job.dk/jobs/default.asp>

<comment><USER19> And <http://www.it-jobbank.dk/> <http://jobindex.dk/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> gumtree.com: kind of a european craiglist

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/> for UK.</comment>


Hiring Content Writers, Cheap - <AUTHOR> http://www.leanmarketing.ca/how-to-hire-quality-content-writers-on-the-cheap/

<comment><USER2> An oldie (sort of) but a goodie! I never asked, what tool are you using to manage all these writers?</comment>


Velodyne's VLS-128 offers more resolution, smaller package, lower price - <AUTHOR> https://www.spar3d.com/news/lidar/velodynes-vls-128-offers-resolution-smaller-package-lower-price/ <comment><USER2> Where's the "buy" link?

Maybe I'm just missing it for this one in particular, but I really dislike it when companies hide the price, and don't offer an immediate way to purchase. I see _one_ of them has a price listed, and the other ones don't.

<comment><USER3> This isn't a consumer device.

<comment><USER2> Sure... but if I've got the money and really like building robots (pretend I'm on the Megabots team or something) why not enable me to buy 1-2 of them? Money is money right?

<comment><USER4> I used to sell something kind of similar...high cost, niche electronics. We didn't make it easier for hobbyists because they would often want to return the item after playing around. Then we couldn't sell it as a new item. The depreciation hit was significant.

The hobbyists were also a drain on support time, disproportionate to other customers.

Once the market settled, and the devices were closer to commodity prices, and our knowledge base was in better shape, we opened back up to them.

<comment><USER5> > _they would often want to return the item after playing around_

Then don't have a return policy.

> _The hobbyists were also a drain on support time_

Make them pay for support at a premium.

<comment><USER6> A company practicing your doctrine will get slammed for being user-hostile by everyone on hn and reddit. Probably sued in some countries, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the new price? What was the previous model price? How many of these does one need in a self-driving car?

<comment><USER8> > How many of these does one need in a self-driving car?

I think that definitely depends on the company you talk to. Tesla right now says 0. Other companies have been seen with 1-5.

<comment><USER9> This is intended to replace the 64, and I've never seen more than one of those on an autonomous test vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps my title was a bit sensational, but I was very surprised to see solid state LIDAR shipping already. Anyone care to speculate on their technology? I doubt it's an OPA (power output problem), so perhaps it's a MEMS?

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure it's still a spinning lidar.

Nowhere in the official press release [0] did it say it's solid state.

Moreover, a recent Verge article [1] says that Velodyne is shifting attention away from solid state lidar to focus on producing spinning ones.

Note that Velodyne called its spinning lidars "hybrid solid state" which is rather misleading.

[0] [http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171107005794/en/Velo...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171107005794/en/Velodyne- LiDAR-Launches-VLS-128%E2%84%A2-World%E2%80%99s-Highest-Resolution/)

[1] "Employees told The Verge that resources had been redirected to the production of high-end rotating LIDAR, and that the press release touting the solid state unit had been premature." [https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/18/16491052/velodyne- lidar-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/18/16491052/velodyne-lidar- mapping-self-driving-car-david-hall-interview)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, that makes sense, thanks for correcting me!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you willing to cut for an MVP/first version running on the web? - <AUTHOR>

Testing? CUT!
Security? CUT!
Anything but the barest bones features? CUT!
Backups? CUT!
Monitoring? CUT!
An attractive user interface? CUT!
Paid offerings? CUT!
User documentation? CUT!
What are you willing to cut to get the first version of your software up and running on the Internet? <comment><USER2> I take it these are things you choose to elect and not things you are saying someone should cut. What can and cannot be cut from an MVP/first version is going to depend greatly on the type of product you are launching in general.

Using your list here are my opinions on each item:

1\. Testing - in depth testing can be reduced greatly, but at least some minimal testing should be conducted. Especially if you have users signing up, taking user input, or processing payments.

2\. Security - again, this one is going to vary greatly on what the product is exactly.

3\. All but barest bone features - goes for any MVP

4\. Backups - backups are cheap and easy to setup. No reason you can't do at least a minimal back of your data.

5\. Monitoring - simple and basic setup, even using something like PagerDuty or Pingdom.

6\. An attractive user interface - agree with you here.

7\. Paid offerings - I used to be a strong believer in launch free plans to start and add paid offerings later. But if your eventual business model is to offer paid plans then you should start with something from the get go. Setting up Stripe is simple and you can be up and running within a day.

8\. User documentation - cut away and add later. A FAQ section is not frequently asked questions if you don't have any users frequently asking questions :)

So to answer your question, what I am willing to cut, or how much of something I willing to cut, all depends on the specific project.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how much you want to cut from each, but here are my reactions to some points:

Security: What do you mean? Full audit: not useful. Getting basic TLS cert, copying default-secure nginx config from previous service, not intentionally breaking things your framework provides with an on/off switch. Usually that takes less time than setting up your own solutions.

Backups: If you have any user-created data, "crontab; tar -zcf ...; s3cmd sync ..." \- this is literally 5 minutes of work to set up primitive backup that will save you when stuff is on firew.

Monitoring: Pingdom is free for a month - enough before you need actual monitoring.

Those 3 points can be done to an MVP level in ~20 minutes. Why cut them?

</comment><comment><USER4> > Paid offerings? CUT!

Whoa whoa whoa whoa. No. My MVPs are essentially a Bootstrap UI wrapped around user accounts and the Stripe SDK, plus as little extra code as I can write.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you launched many times on that formula?</comment></comment>


Full employment theorem - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment_theorem

<comment><USER2> On a meta-note: I deeply enjoy that linking to Wikipedia articles is part of HN culture. If that which is timely cannot be timeless, then it is of supreme importance that what is News to us, individually, consists of more than what is New at the time of posting.

</comment><comment><USER3> There isn't anything that sufficiently complex algorithms can't find out that humans can, so this doesn't seen to be a terribly useful conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's unclear what this has to do with A.I. Even humans are limited by the halting problem or other undecidable questions.

So why is this called a "theorem"? There is yet no proof that there are classes of problems inherently better solvable by the human mind. Or otherwise, that the human is something _extra_ , computationally-wise, than a Turing machine.

<comment><USER5> I think the point is that, for some problems, no computation can perform better than human beings. A strong AI would perform _equally as well_ as humans on these problems, but not better.

Of course, a "strong AI" in this usage would probably have to not only be computationally equivalent to the human mind, but also be provided with the same insanely complex and chaotic input that the human mind operates on.

To truly mimic human "creativity," this strong AI would probably need all the qualitative experience and memories that human beings have. It would probably need to undergo development in a dynamic social environment, or at least have the memory of doing so.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't seem like this is really an AI vs. Humans issue. Rather, it's saying, regardless if you have some optimal algorithm X for a class of "Full Employment" problems, it is always possible to have an algorithm that performs better for a specific case at the cost of worse performance for other cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The trick is that perfection is usually overrated. Just like human experts, you can be the best at what you do, but you don't need to be the best ever (especially considering future experts).

That's also the key difference between science and engineering. In engineering, you need a good-enough solution, but you are not so concerned with proving that there is possible better implementation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this like saying that AI is impossible?

<comment><USER9> Quite the opposite, it's saying there are some jobs which are AI-complete.

<comment><USER10> I agree, but the wording is poor. "no algorithm can optimally perform a particular task done by some class of professionals" implies that general intelligence is not an algorithm.

<comment><USER11> Go forth and improve that article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Computer/algorithms cannot tell who is hot, if the input is photo of Marilyn Monroe versus Scarlett Johansson

<comment><USER13> Whenever you claim no algorithm can do something that a human can, you must ask yourself: what does the computer lack that a human might posses?

In this case, there are indeed machine learning algorithms that can do this task.

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5533...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5533684)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Computer algorithm cannot tell who is hotter, Marilyn Monroe or Scarlett Johansson</comment>


Nextdoor's 'Karen Problem' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/21283993/nextdoor-app-racism-community-moderation-guidance-protests <comment><USER2> I just do not get the appeal of being on Nextdoor - I guess there's some value in actual important announcements (I found a lost dog once and my roommate who's on there found a post about it and got in touch with the owner, which was cool), but from what I've seen on my very brief time on there, those are drowned out by ridiculous nonsense. It seems like the people who are on there self-select to the ones in a given neighborhood who are the least informed but have the most time on their hands.

<comment><USER3> Is it anonymous ? I really don't see a point either. It's a snitch app and people of color are usually the ones facing the brunt of the abuse due to profiling, or other hate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yet another example of how companies that try to shy away from the responsibility of providing any sort of moderation will ultimately create a fertile ground for racists and worse.

<comment><USER5> In this case it's the moderation that's causing the problem. Get rid of the moderators. Get rid of the "real name" policy. Then people will be free to take the piss out of uptight idiots broadcasting nosiness/panic/hate. Having a small power structure creates a low stakes political game which allows these busybodies to dominate, similar to homeowners associations. Note how the examples mostly threaten to call the police and similar impotent crabbing, rather than actually doing anything themselves.

FWIW has anyone tried using NextDoor _before_ moving to an area, to gauge how problematic the neighbors would be?

<comment><USER6> Making people anonymous will solve the problem is one of the most confusingly backwards takes I've seen in a long, long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've found the opposite is true. and yes this is a personal anecdote.

Protestors are using nextdoor to organize.

Concerns about safety are automatically being blocked.

Anyone worried that the looters and red necks are going to get into it is attacked.

Police have had to shutdown the highway to our area several times due to many threatening statements online.

Somehow it's now not possible to be opposed to police brutality and looters.

Already had multiple buildings I used to work/eat/shop in burned.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for that.

I really appreciate the care you seem to have given to your choice-of-words while trying to convey your own experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you've ever spoken to a real estate agent or apartment manager, you realize that people who often come across as educated and progressive have a strong current of fear-based racism and bigotry. "Good schools" is usually, in my opinion, coded racism. Inevitably, the "good schools" are just white and Asian kids.

The classism component is pretty big too. My Nextdoor and Ring apps are filled with (sorry about this, but it's true) white moms complaining about "suspicious" men. Where I live these days, most of the working class and working poor are white, but you know, the "wrong kind of white people" as the joke goes. A lot of construction happens here, and usually it's just contractors knocking on the wrong door or something like that. Complaints about a neighbor down the street who has his rock climbing buddies show up and sleep in their vans in front of his house are super common from these folks as well. And man, if you commit the cardinal sin of having a work truck with signage on the side, well, watch out. We wouldn't want people who work with their hands living here, would we?

I'd really hate to see it where I used to live, which is in the South and is dramatically more diverse. My brother's now ex-wife, who despite voting for and advocating for left wing politicians CONSTANTLY, is deathly afraid of black men. She wouldn't ride the bus in affluent neighborhoods in the DC area, because they were "ghetto" (again a coded term for black people being present). In fact, I always noticed that buses in DC were absent white women in general.

If you are white and consider yourself progressive on racial issues, ask yourself if you've ever lived in a neighborhood where you were a racial minority. I'd strongly suggest trying it out if you are committed to becoming a better person. I spent my childhood in predominantly black neighborhoods, but I still benefited hugely as a human by living in a mostly Salvadoran neighborhood when I first moved to the DC area. It was affordable, the neighbors were wonderful to me and my kids, and I was constantly invited to parties. I even met former MS13 gang members who were now reformed, model citizens. That was an illuminating lesson on the human condition for me.

<comment><USER6> Is ghetto even coded language for black people anymore? I've always viewed that as an explicit reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I kind of want to see the baby name stats for Karen in a few years lol. Guessing it'll drop to almost nothing.

<comment><USER11> Karen as a name dropped out of common use in the mid 70's. It's a boomer name attached to a boomer stereotype.

[https://www.everything-birthday.com/name/f/karen](https://www.everything- birthday.com/name/f/karen)

<comment><USER6> That's not unique to the Boomers, lots of names spike in popularity for relatively short periods of time.

<comment><USER12> Stereotypes are generally not responsive to logical arguments that they're stereotyping. I dislike this particular stereotype as much as you seem to, but it regardless appears to fit the circumstances and criteria necessary for memetic propagation in US culture.</comment></comment></comment></comment>