Ask HN: Who's switched from Chrome to Firefox 57? - <AUTHOR> I haven't used FF in years but I've been so impressed with 57 that I've finally come home. I'm wondering if I'm alone. If you switched, please let us know why you decided to switch. <comment><USER3> I have switched to Firefox a long time ago. The main reason is privacy. I just trust Mozilla much more than Google (I actually don't trust Google at all).

From Google Chrome Privacy Notice [1]:

      [...] Chrome usage statistics include information about the web pages you visit and your usage of them.
      [...] We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners —
      like publishers, advertisers or web developers.

[1] [https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/index.html](https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/index.html)

<comment><USER4> >We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with partners — like publishers, advertisers or web developers.

I don't really understand the issue people have with aggregated information. All the companies I have worked for have been tracking how people use their product. It does not feel like I am invading somebody's privacy by tracking that 20% of our users clicked on the banner in order to see the screen 'xy' and among them, 67% clicked on 'ok' .

To be clear, I am only talking about aggregated information

<comment><USER3> I believe that no information about user actions and behaviors should be recorded by a browser. It does not benefit the user in any way, only Google and advertisers.

Also we should remember that data needs to be stored first before it is aggregated. What happens with information about each single event?

<comment><USER5> As a web developer, this claim is patently false.

Reviewing aggregated user behavior data is how good UIs get built. It helps us to identify pain points, confusing or misrepresented user paths, poor hierarchy or site structure, poorly indicated calls to action, and many other valuable metrics.

Every positive user experience you've ever had online has been derived from countless hours of studying user behavior, and the larger the source the better it gets.

Also note that aggregated user data is typically anonymous, but there is a lot to be said for keeping it identifiable. Some of the best tools for debugging customer support issues start by recording your clicks so a developer can see exactly what caused an issue, rather than guessing and hoping.

<comment><USER6> Those things are much more appropriately addressed by targeted usability testing (eg in lab studies) where participants are aware of, accept, and are compensated for being monitored.

Not by mass surveillance.

The perspective expressed, basically that anything is acceptable as a means to optimise "user experience" (most likely so more money can be extracted) verges on unethical and immoral, if the bigger issues of group and individual privacy rights are considered.

Nevertheless, as a web developer you are most likely only gathering stats from your particular web site, which is a different kettle of fish to browsers gathering and aggregating data across many sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used Chrome continuously ever since it was released, but today I switched to Firefox on both my work and personal laptops.

Both machines are Macbook Pros, one 2012 and the other 2017, and Chrome feels laggy on both. Scrolling is not smooth, and certain web applications are just downright unpleasant to use (notably, Jupyter notebooks and Facebook).

I gave Firefox Quantum a try, and it's an amazing improvement. This is more how I imagined computers to function in 2017 to be honest. There is no noticeable lag on either machine. So I'll be sticking with Firefox for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER8> This has just convinced me to try it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really like container tabs (you have to enable them in about:config - privacy.userContext.enabled and privacy.userContext.ui.enabled). It allows me to have multiple AWS accounts open at the same time without having 2 different browsers or one account open in private mode. I have 2 main containers I use: production and staging.

<comment><USER10> Chrome has this as a first-class feature, "People." I have one window open for personal, and another for each of the AWS accounts I have access to. Sounds from your description like FF can do this at the tab level?

<comment><USER11> Correct me if I'm wrong but I think "People" also saves the browser session to a third party server so that you could resume the session from another machine. That's definitely _not_ something I want.

<comment><USER12> Chrome has a sync feature that does that with or without using People, but AFAICT People doesn't require using that feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Nightly for about 2 months for personal browsing, and have recently switched to using it for my web development job using containers, and it's been great.

Biggest feature I'd like to see is a keyboard shortcut for opening a new tab in a particular container, as opposed to Cmd+T opening an uncontained tab.

The Developer Tools still have a ways to go before they beat the performance of Chrome (large source files lag), but it's perfectly usable and getting better all the time.

All in all, I've been very happy with my switch, especially when Quantum landed in Nightly: a noticeable increase in speed and snappiness!

<comment><USER14> When using the extension, you can use Ctrl+[dot] to open the container selector and then use arrows/tab and enter to select the container to open a new tab in. It's not as good as a dedicated shortcut, but it lets you open new container tabs without leaving your keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Me, far too many times.

Everytime there's a "Why you should use Firefox" or" Using FF is the right thing to do" post on hackernews, I gave FF a chance, only to be disappointed and go back to Chrome.

However, a few weeks ago, I decided to try out FF Quantum (aka FF 57, vanilla, non dev edition) after hearing it repeatedly in /r/rust and hackernews. I was immediately hooked with how fast it is at rendering pages.

Now, the reason I always switch back to Chrome was because of the dev tools. With FF Quantum, the dev tools have vastly improved and is on par with Chrome. Its a bit wonky in some parts, but I can see that their UI are already in place, getting ready to be fully implemented in future releases. I've been using it as my main browser, wrote an add-on using their new API.

For those considering to switch, I suggest you give it a few days to be familiar with the dev tools' UI/UX as it is not a direct copy of the Chrome UI/UX. Other than privacy, its a really great product. Its worth the switch.

<comment><USER16> Please let us know if you'd like to see the devtools improved!

Also, the devtools are actually a React app ([https://github.com/devtools- html/debugger.html](https://github.com/devtools-html/debugger.html)), and this means that you can hack on them using ... your devtools (and any other HTML/JS/React tooling you like)! And you can hack on them in any browser, and use them to debug any browser (however some browsers may not support the same debugger protocol features the Firefox devtools support). They're super easy to work on and it's really fun.

(Of course, there's also a devtools "server" on the firefox side that responds to the queries of the React devtools client, and hacking on that is harder, but a lot of the stuff can be done without needing to touch this)

<comment><USER17> I really wish I could create my own theme for the dev tools. I just can't get into the colors of the existing themes.

The dark theme is too dark/not enough contrast between background color and text colors (pastel fonts on dark bg).

The light and firebug themes are too light and don't have enough contrast between background color and text colors (pastel fonts on white bg).

The lack of bg/font contrast in the dev tools always drives me back to Chrome despite really wanting to be a Firefox user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Switched to Firefox on Macbook Pro.

It feels faster, but my two main complaints:

1\. While using the touchpad to go 'back', a page on Safari will show you the page you're going back to. Chrome will at least offer an arrow animation backwards. Firefox offers no such thing, often leaving me confused as to whether it's registered. A couple times so far it has instead scrolled me up the page a bit.

2\. I have nothing else open, yet certain actions (i.e. scrolling through Zillow pictures earlier) will result in it sporadically using so much memory that my computer's fans are audibly loud and the computer gets quite hot.

Nonetheless, I still would narrowly recommend it, though some of that is likely to do with wanting to support Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've switched to Firefox from Chrome a few months ago in order to reduce my reliance on Google's products (also switched to duckduckgo at that time). I can't say I've noticed a big difference with version 57 as it was already fast enough for my use previously.

</comment><comment><USER20> With the exception of casting things to my chromecast, I've switched to Firefox for everything. Performance isn't an issue, development tools are really good, I can be "that guy at work who catches firefox bugs," and I'd rather support Mozilla than Google at the end of the day.

</comment><comment><USER21> I never left FF so picked 57 up as a normal update. Love everything about it so far except the new theme which is taking me longer than I'd like to adjust to (not a big fan of the dark blue/cobalt menubar).

<comment><USER22> You know there's a light theme you can switch to in Customize mode, right?

<comment><USER21> I do now :) Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Switched yesterday, so far loving it! My objection to Chrome was mostly on principle (anti-Google), so it's nice that there's a performance-based reason to switch to Firefox as well.

Though I just ran into a problem that reminded me of why I stopped using Firefox in the first place: I used xdg-open a lot (in Emacs), and Firefox tries to supplant that whole functionality. It advertises itself as being able to open pretty much every file under the sun, and then prompts you to choose an application to _actually_ use to open the file.

I wasn't asking you, Firefox, I was asking xdg-open.

<comment><USER24> It's better than it used to -- until a couple of years ago, Firefox altogether had its own awful version of xdg-open; had all the logic to detect file associations, select apps etc.

In any event, you can edit ~/.config/mimeapps.list to fix it up. Hope that helps.

<comment><USER23> I believe it's better!

But it is still trying to handle application/octet-stream. Ie, it must have registered itself as a default fallback somewhere, and I can't find where...

<comment><USER24> Your DE may be at fault as some of them try to do "smart" defaults. xdg-open itself may also be at fault (it's an _atrociously bad_ shell script -- you can take a look at it if you want to debug it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I switched a few weeks ago when 57 hit the Nightly channel. The main incentive towards Firefox for me has always been the Tree Style Tab extension[1]; it's just that Chrome's better performance used to be a stronger incentive. Now they're more-or-less equal on that front.

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style- ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I switched recently because someone here said they switched due to privacy concerns AND that it was really good. It struck a chord with me, I'm tired of goog and all seeing corporations. And it really is good! I don't miss Chrome one bit. Well done, Mozilla!

By the way, I also defaulted to DuckDuckGo as the search engine, and so far I'm a happy camper.

</comment><comment><USER27> I usually have around 100+ tabs open in Chrome at any given time on my 2014 macbook pro. I have been testing out Firefox 57 for about a month now. I am very impressed by the devtools UI and the customization features. The speed is something I don't have to worry about at all, and makes it easier to compare Chrome to Firefox. I am fortunately not in a situation where any of my addons/extensions are unsupported on either browser. It has been fun to compare them and I think I will be switching completely to Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER28> Me! I have been running nightly for the past couple of months and it is really good. I use uBlock, Res, Ghostery and Imagus. I use Compact and Dark UI mode and it seems more compact than chrome. Also I noticed it consumes a lot less memory, but CPU is 50/50 I'd say. One thing that I find a bit weird is that I find that some Google services work worse, like YouTube eats more CPU than on chrome when it is not maximized and sometimes my connections to google time out for seemingly no reason.

<comment><USER29> Should I get out my tinfoil hat or is it more likely that Chrome is just taking advantage of optimizations that other browsers don't have access to or knowledge of.

<comment><USER30> They optimize for Chrome, since this is where their users mostly are and where they want them to be. No tinfoil hat required.

<comment><USER28> yes, I don't think its intentional, just a consequence of Chrome having so much market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I thought network speed was the limiting factor for web browsing. But then I tried Firefox Quantum.

I really don't have very many requirements for a browser except correctly rendering content, having bookmarks, and auto-filling as many forms and logins as possible. Since every browser more or less does these, I prefer Firefox for the speed, and because I want to support both Mozilla the organisation, as well as choice in the browser market.

</comment><comment><USER32> I never stopped using Firefox, but for years was only using it for an isolated development environment.

But I've been using Firefox 57 for a few month, and it's great. I still use Chrome, but I'm probably spending equal time in both now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Back when Firefox originally came out I was one of the first few adopters of it (primarily to escape Internet Explorer), but left it back in 2008 when Google Chrome came out because of it's speed. However, almost a decade later after having issues with Chrome on my new Linux rig and hearing all the fuss about Quantum I tried the Firefox Beta about a week ago (I'm not a patient man) and immediately fell in love with it. Not only was it faster, but it used half of the system resources that Chrome was using! I know some people are not thrilled with the loss of extensions, but having come to it at this time of transition I found all the extensions I had on Chrome and a few others that made my web browsing experience better than ever. I'm very excited about the new changes in Firefox and can't wait to see where they go from here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I guess I'll start it off. I've done a apples-to-apples compare on memory usage of 7 tabs with the same content and FF57 came in at 514 MG to chrome's 512 so that's basically a wash.

The speed has been the main factor along with being able to step away from Google, if only a little bit.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yes! I wanted to switch back once Electrolysis [1] was turned on, but didn't believe the speed was comparable enough. Now, it is though.

I stayed on Chrome for a while because Google Chrome became the best supported way to run flash for Linux users. Fortunately, these days I see flash less and less. So I'm not even going to bother installing it in Firefox (though I did think this plugin to run Google's flash plugin was interesting [2]).

There are a few things I'll miss from Chrome. I'm currently a Project Fi subscriber, so I get my texts over hangouts (despite it looking like the writing is on the wall for that service) and used the hangouts extension heavily. I'd like to have the ability to cast a tab to my Chromecast. I'll also miss the fact that Chrome has a setting that allows relaxed localhost SSL verification (via chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhost - am I missing a Firefox setting?) Lastly, this has been mentioned in a few other comments, but for some reason I really like to be able to scroll through my tabs via mousewheel.

Changing browsers has caused me to reevaluate my workflow. I never really looked into changing this in Chrome, but the tree style tab add-on really is a better way to handle lots of tabs. And I very much welcome the multi account containers add-on as well [3].

I'm repeating the blog of Mozilla when I say, this is just the beginning. I do believe that as more and more Rust is utilized, things will become even better. Super glad I'm able to enjoy using Firefox again!

[1] [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis) [2] [https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin](https://github.com/i-rinat/freshplayerplugin) [3] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi- account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account- containers/)

</comment><comment><USER35> I tried (again) to switch to FF yesterday when 57 was released, and unfortunately still ran into a known bug that makes it practically unusable for me: FF treats underscores as punctuation that breaks up a word, so given text "foo_bar", if you double click on "foo" or "bar", it doesn't select the entire word. This goes against all conventions of Chrome, other text editors, etc. It seems trivial, but as developers we deal with underscores a lot, and copy text out of our browsers frequently.

There's been a bug open about this for 15 years now: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196175](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196175)

<comment><USER36> That's possibly one of their strangest edge-cases I've seen for someone to dismiss a product. Or is this a case of HN-level trolling?

<comment><USER35> Haha. I can see how someone would think I'm trolling, but I assure you I'm not. It's a pretty deeply-ingrained behavior that I perform quite often, so yes, it does make a difference. FF57 is still not so much better than Chrome (to me, anyways) that it's worth dealing with re-learning this for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I switched long ago from chrome to Edge because chrome can't scroll smoothly, it just can't. Firefox also wasnt able untill I think about 2 months ago? Not sure. Either way, I switched from Edge to Firefox 2 months ago because 1) Edge is a really poor browser aside from 4k video and the scrolling experience and 2) Mozilla is a great comany with a great product with such an insane amount of fearures. I just like smooth scrolling so much that I wasn't able to use it till it finally offered that feature. Couldn't be happier with Firefox ATM. Thanks Mozilla

</comment><comment><USER38> I had switched to Chrome a few years back, and had more recently switched to Opera (Blink) before it was bought up by the Chinese. I switched to Firefox when Nightly 57 was released, and haven't looked back since. Couldn't be happier.

It's a pity so many long-time users of Firefox feel distraught about the Extensions kerfuffle, but fwiw if that allowed Firefox to get fast, then I was all for it.

For my use cases, the available Web Extensions are enough. And I have even started to use Tree Style Tabs, while I was more than fine with regular horizontal tabs before.

</comment><comment><USER39> I switched yesterday from Chrome to FF 57 on my MBP 2014. Chrome was faster, but now FF is the clear winner. On Windows, I have been using FF for the past 10 years. Also, Firefox Sync is just amazing.

</comment><comment><USER40> I already use container tabs for my dev. (Usually have to test an app using multiple test accounts). I have not figured out how to run a second copy of Firefox that is fixed into a different workspace -- but if I ever do, I will switch on my work laptop.

My personal laptop, an old 2011 Mac Air is definitely switching. Chrome just runs too poorly on that now, and container tabs is too useful.

It's really interesting, feel like coming to full circle. 10 years ago, I switched to Chrome because of the multi-process isolation -- Firefox leaks pretty badly then.

<comment><USER30> What you call workspace is likely called profiles. Try running Firefox --new- instance -p

<comment><USER40> What I call workspaces are an OSX-specific feature. I already knew about the `-p` flag.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I switched about a week ago to FF57-beta (and now stable).

The biggest thing I miss that doesn't seem possible to automatically add search urls to the tab completion like chrome does. E.g. if I go to e.g some- service.example.com/search?q=foo, in future, Chrome allows me to search that service again by typing `some<TAB>my-search-terms`. No massive setup needed. Firefox seems to only allow these from the extensions on the dev store.

<comment><USER42> You could use bookmark keywords in Firefox, which provide a similar function:

1\. Create a bookmark for some-service.example.com/search?q=foo

2\. Open the properties for the bookmark. Replace "foo" with "%s" (the universal string for bookmark keyword variables). In the keyword field, type some letter or string you'll remember; I'll use "q". Close the properties dialog.

3\. In the URL field, type "q my-search-terms".

(At least that worked in older versions of FF.) It requires more setup, but works permanently.

<comment><USER43> It appears that this process has been streamlined a bit. If you right-click in a search field on any site, the context menu has an option to "Add a keyword for this search." The new bookmark will then be created with the "%s" string in the appropriate position in the URL to make this work.

I've set it up for a number of sites since converting over to Firefox yesterday and have yet to find a site that this method doesn't work for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I did, because it just felt good to be back again. I also switched to Firefox on my Android now, because I can't life without the bookmark sync and stuff.

<comment><USER45> Is it on the Play Store yet? Whenever I look it up, the non-beta version is still at 56 on my Nexus phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can any Firefox pro here help me with the bookmark manager of FF? I can assign keywords to bookmarks (shortcuts), and I like that a lot. So if I assign the keyword `hn` to `[https://news.ycombinator.com`](https://news.ycombinator.com`) I just need to enter `hn` in the URL bar.

But assigning a keyword to a bookmark is too many clicks away: I need to open the bookmarks manager (`show all bookmarks`), select a bookmark, look at the bookmark properties in the bottom, expand two more fields: keyword and description.

Now is there a shorter way to get this? Or an add on that works with FF 57?

Also: Is there a way to filter all bookmarks with keywords assigned to them? This question has been asked in [1] several years ago, and back then it was possible to add a `keyword` column to the existing columns in `manage bookmarks`.

[1] [https://superuser.com/questions/479059/in-firefox-how-can- fi...](https://superuser.com/questions/479059/in-firefox-how-can-filter- bookmarks-with-non-empty-keywords)

Edit: Added an explanation for the `keyword` feature.

<comment><USER36> It appears they've removed the "Import" button, or hidden it away somewhere. In the meantime, if you're looking to make the switch and can't find it - <USER2> looks like you can drag and drop from Chrome bookmarks one at a time.

EDIT: It appears to be completely removed from 57. [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.places.importBookmarksHTML](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.places.importBookmarksHTML) no longer exists. It makes sense given they've heavily moved away from the HTML storage.

It was nice however, being able to quickly and easily share my workstation setup with new hires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Was considering switching, but didn't see a way to select multiple tabs at once to drag into a new window like you can in Chrome.

<comment><USER48> With this add-on you can select multiple tabs. Since before chrome existed.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multiple- tab-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I just switched. Long time chome user aswell. The new FF has adopted the same design as Chrome and that is what brought me over. I think Chrome will lose some market share soon. I am actually a loyal person but Google started abusing its power to dictate how developers should write code. Aswell as putting unecessary constraints on things. Pissed me off

</comment><comment><USER50> Firefox was my first choice ever since it came out, but I stopped using it when it got unstable a few years ago (even on a brand new macbook!). I've been using nightly for about a month with no crashes, so I'm mostly happy with it. Sometimes it goes crazy with CPU and I have to close a few tabs. I'm still using Chrome as well, for now.

</comment><comment><USER51> I switched on my work laptop a few months ago, with the knowledge that 57 was the one to look out for. Got the update yesterday and was impressed enough to switch at home as well.

I've also been using Firefox on my phone for a while now, specifically so that I can run ublock origin and video speed controller, since mobile chrome doesn't support extensions.

</comment><comment><USER52> I did a few weeks ago. (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.)

Chrome developed a weird habit of trying to render a semi-random URL as the default home page. Google's customer service folks asked for a couple of screen shots, then went radio silent.

I've switched & love the improvement - it's quite impressive. Unfortunately Chrome is on its way to being the iTunes of browsers.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've given it a decent shot - but it still has very average profile support, which I use daily. In Chrome, it's easy to see what profile I'm using (top right corner of the window), and very easy to switch.

In Firefox, you need to go to about:profiles to even see what profile you're currently using.

<comment><USER54> Check out Containers - it goes a long way towards solving this problem. I also used to rely heavily on Chrome profiles

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Project/Containers)

<comment><USER53> Containers seem like a compromise that I can live with to give FF57 a better shot.

They share history/bookmarks, which I'm not a fan of. I prefer my work profiles not to have reddit/hacker news etc. in the auto fill address bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Nobody else has a problem with new tab? Really? I used to have a (local) html page as new tab. Guess what? They disabled this option a year ago. Ok, a nice person created an addon to recreate this option. It's called "new tab override". There is a version of this addon for firefox 57. But firefox doesn't allow addons to access file: urls for security reasons. So the recomendation of "new tab override" is to install a local web server. Wait a moment. I need an addon + a local web server to run a html file in new tab? Seriously? By the way: mouse gestures don't work in new tab (nor on mozilla.org) because its a chrome-url and addons are not allowed to access chrome-urls.

Firefox 57 is really nice. But somehow it is a little pain.

</comment><comment><USER46> It's been years that I abandoned Chrome ;) Was using Safari mainly and Firefox for web dev purposes. But FF 57 impressed me so much that I switched a couple of days ago, moving all my bookmarks, history, plugins etc to FF. Goodbye Safari, hello FF. :)

</comment><comment><USER56> I switched to Firefox about 3 years ago (can't remember exactly), because it's a better browser for me.

Chrome was built for web apps, the other browsers were slow to adapt, so my initial use-case for Chrome was keeping stuff like Gmail and Slack active. But this slowly faded away. Slack has a desktop app and continues to be a piece of shit and for email I use MailMate ([https://freron.com/](https://freron.com/)) which is awesome btw.

This meant that keeping persistent tabs with apps around wasn't such a priority. And in terms of usability, Firefox has had the better browsing experience for quite some time.

Of course Firefox is now multi-process, stability and speed improved, I see it using less resources than Chrome and it's now good for web apps as well.

I love Firefox's Awesome Bar, I love its new "Multi-Account Containers" add-on [1]. I also used an add-on for vertical tabs which was cool, but now due to the migration the community has to rebuild those. But seeing what they delivered with Quantum, I don't mind.

From a technological, under the hood perspective, Chrome used to be the cool one. But now Firefox is slowly getting powered by Rust, which gets integrating for multi-core rendering algorithms. How freaking cool is that? Mozilla invented their own programming language in order to make Firefox better.

Firefox is the best browser right now, but even if it weren't, I would still use it because I've learned to trust it and Mozilla that they are protecting my interests — I don't want another Internet Explorer, which Chrome is becoming due to its huge market share.

Oh and I also use Pocket, now that Mozilla bought them. Could use some improvements, I'm still waiting on them to deliver the source code as promised, but it's a cool service and I'm happy to pay them some money.

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

</comment><comment><USER57> I just switched back on the latest release.

* Sadly I'm missing a single really important Add-on and there are some annoying and apparently long-standing bugs that have been ignored and I've had to work around, but otherwise it's a major improvement and it's good enough to work with.

* I'm glad that they've ditched the rounded tabs and cleaned up the interface.

* I'm still annoyed that Pocket is integrated into everything without an option to disable it.

* It is dramatically improved in speed and stability.

* The browser animations are very pleasant.

I'm giving it a chance to shine for the next week or so, if there are no blockers I'll probably end up sticking with it.

<comment><USER58> You can disable pocket.

Nav to about:config then search for extensions.pocket.enabled and do the obvious thing. :)

<comment><USER57> Nice, thanks for the heads up on that. A small thing makes a surprisingly big deal. I'm unsure as to why that isn't available in options other than the monetary reasons. Nothing against pocket personally, I just clutter it up enough on my own. :) Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> 2010 macbook, Chrome user. Things are generally slow, but felt like they got a bit snappier after the High Sierra upgrade. I tried FF57 but for me it feels a bit slower than Chrome on this older device.

</comment><comment><USER60> Switched back when Rust went alpha. It encouraged me to really look into some of the side projects that Mozilla had going on and it made me really want to support them and see those projects succeed.

</comment><comment><USER61> I have couldn't be more happier. The ability for Firefox nightly to modify requests and resend is a bonus. Also less sluggish and quicker. Ublock origin and last pass both supported with nightly.

</comment><comment><USER54> I've been on FF Nightly for the last couple of months but recently switched back to Safari. On a MacBook 12" (i5) Firefox did terrible things to the battery life and generated enough heat that I'd often find the CPU throttling.

Neither Safari or Chrome have the same issues. I haven't really tried FF since the nightly jumped to 59 but I keep it updated and occasionally check to see whether this has been fixed.

</comment><comment><USER4> I tried to yesterday.

Gave up after two minutes when I did not see any performance change. I have a recent machine where Chrome is already pretty fast, I am not sure in which conditions it slows down, but it looks like they don't apply to me.

Also, I would need a plugin in order to allow me to access my chrome tab history in Firefox.

That way I would keep the same multi device experience while switching to FF on desktop.

Otherwise, I lose a big feature I use extensively.

<comment><USER62> You should be able to import your history from chrome, and then use firefox sync.

Or am I misunderstanding what you're looking for?

<comment><USER4> I mean being able to :

\- use chrome on Android (with chrome tabs and autofill it is a pretty nice experience)

\- firefox on the desktop

And from any of these two, access a common list of opened tabs on all my devices. Actually, since Chrome on Android does not support extensions, no way to do this both ways, bummer.

<comment><USER63> You can use firefox mobile instead of chrome on your mobile device to get the bookmark/history syncing with desktop firefox.

<comment><USER4> yeah but that means moving all my usage (desktop and mobile) to firefox.

I feel it is harder for FF to compete on mobile.

How does it integrate/compete with Chrome tabs on Android ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Not switched default browser yet but I'm using FF57 as my main browser on my home PC and mac. On chromebook I'm stuck with chrome lol.

So far browsing websites seem to be faster in general but when I use complex webapps like Spotify, JIRA, Netflix, etc. chrome still seems faster. I'll probably use for 2 weeks before I commit on a full switch (and import my bookmarks and switch over my work PC).

</comment><comment><USER65> I switched a few weeks ago, and this week I've switched to Nightly. I haven't used FF in around 5 years, and it's much, much nicer now. Containers are great, the customizability is awesome too: I wanted the bookmarks toolbar to only show up on the new tab page, and it took a single CSS rule to make that happen. Not to mention I feel it's more privacy-friendly.

</comment><comment><USER66> I downloaded FF today, it's zippy. But I rely on dozens of Chrome extensions. That's one of the things I like about Chrome -- its extensibility. HOwever, Chrome is a memory hog, it routinely destroys the 16gb of memory and the battery of my MBPro.

When FF has sn equivalent set of extensions, I will happily dump Chrome. Until then, it appears I'm stuck with Chrome

<comment><USER16> Chrome extensions are now compatible with Firefox.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome- store-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store- foxified/) may help converting the format.

Extensions which are incompatible can usually be ported with minor changes; IIRC at this point Firefox has all the APIs chrome does (and more), however certain things slightly differ (e.g. the chrome.foo API is browser.foo in firefox).

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is making me really curious because while Chrome is buttery smooth on my Macbook Pro, Firefox 57 is really sluggish, especially when creating/closing tabs. You can literally see the animation stuttering. Other times when a page loads it won't paint for some seconds even if it appears that it has completed loading. Is anyone else having these issues?

<comment><USER68> I have some similar issues. Sometimes Firefox lags after loading the page (around 1 sec), but eventually works fluently afterwards. It feels like it needs to warm up the engine.

I noticed that disabling "smooth scrolling" in the settings helps with initial scrolling issues.

However, in general I have the feeling that FF57 is faster than before. Could also be that I now focus on the loading times more than usual. A restart of Firefox helped yesterday after the upgrade to 57.

I have a MacBook Pro 2015 and am Firefox user since 1.0 ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really, _really_ wanted to switch, but I saw that switching tabs with mousewheel (which can be done in Chrome and most other Linux apps) is still not possible, and the Tab Wheel Scroll extension, which I previously used to work around the issue, is no longer compatible.

So Firefox is unfortunately an unusable web browser for me :/

</comment><comment><USER69> I use Chrome as my secondary browser only when I need to inspect/develop, but I'm using Firefox more often now.

</comment><comment><USER70> I have been always using Firefox and also Chrome (and more recently Opera) as a side browser for various less important activities. 57 didn't surprise me at all. It was good before and is still good now, nothing dramatically changed from the user's perspective since the 56 or other versions before that.

</comment><comment><USER71> I try / use FF every once in a while again. Always for specific test cases.

But switching? NO. Why? Since currently only Google takes security serious and has the resources to actually do that. I understand and accept that "google knows thing via chrome" but they are not (a significant) part of my threatmodel.

</comment><comment><USER72> I switched already 2 months ago on mobile because I got tired by non blockable ads in Chrome and absence of any reading mode. To be in sync with the desktop I switched on the desktop too. Never looked back. And now with the new UI it even looks nicer than Safari imo. Looking forward to 57 on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER73> I have, temporarily. Some bugs and occasional slowness, coupled with more memory hogging, have me reconsidering.

<comment><USER74> FF57 still consumes more memory _than Chrome_? For the same tabs? Or are you maybe experiencing some [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation) — opening more tabs because they mostly "feel" lighter-weight?

<comment><USER73> I opened the same exact tabs in both FF57 and Chrome (7 each) and sorted by memory usage in Activity Monitor. When adding up the main task and helpers, FF57 used significantly more.

<comment><USER75> The pattern I noticed is that with small amount of tabs Firefox can consume more RAM, but the situation quickly changes in favor of Firefox when opening more of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I'm proudly using Firefox, for several months now. When they initially launched FF Developer edition I tried it out, but it was just too slow. Now Firefox is very fast, the developer tools are great. I love it and I'll never willingly use Chrome again (maybe for testing/ QA).

</comment><comment><USER77> Is there any way to disable alphabetical sorting of network monitor's HTTP response headers?

From 53.x (IIRC) to 56.x, Firefox keeps the original order set by the server (like the one you see in the _raw headers_ section or `curl -I`), and I like it that way.

</comment><comment><USER78> Yep. Like to see some competition and I'm a huge fan of rust, so like to support it any way I can.

I hit minor compatibility issues on some sites, but it's rare.

Main thing I miss is auto shrinking tabs. FF doesn't support the bajillion tabs methodology so well right now.

<comment><USER79> Ha! That's funny! I used to say the same thing about chrome because the tabs shrunk so much I found them unusable. Also, opening too many tabs always gave me out of memory errors.

But maybe you can get it more to your liking by tweaking browser.tabs.tab in about:config?

<comment><USER78> Yes! This helps a lot actually. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I tried to switch, but FF does not allow local files to be loaded. Since I use a bunch of Tampermonkey scripts (which I save and edit locally), it was a non- starter for me. Perhaps if they ever fix this issue, I might try again.

</comment><comment><USER81> I never stopped using FF.

I'm holding off on upgrading until I find a replacement for TabMixPlus. I need something that will ensure:

1\. middle-click to open links in new tabs. 2\. address bar, search bar, and bookmarks open in a new tab by default.

<comment><USER24> Your #1 is already the case by default. Mid-clicking bookmarks and items in the URL/search bar should also just work to open in new tab.

If you're talking about entering an url and having it open in a new tab, that I don't know.

Still looking for scroll wheel to switch tabs though... :|

<comment><USER81> yeah, i want whacking the enter key to basically be guaranteed to give me a new tab.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I switched on a trial basis, I am definitely liking the smooth UI, I can't stand the way it handles many tabs though, I find it even worse than chrome hiding the fav icons, for me Opera is doing it better.

</comment><comment><USER83> I switched. I really like the performance boost, and it just generally feels "snappier". I also had a long seeded desire to support FireFox, so now felt like a great time to jump ship.

</comment><comment><USER84> \- It feels a lot faster than Chrome \- It uses less memory (especially with many tabs open) \- multi-account containers are a game changer \- I think it also looks better than Chrome

</comment><comment><USER85> I've been running FF Nightly for weeks now, and I really like it. It feels snappier than Chrome, and I hope it can bring back a significant portion of developers as well.

</comment><comment><USER86> I want to uninstall chrome, but can't find a good replacement for chrome report desktop. It just works so seamlessly on all devices, including mobile. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER87> I use TeamViewer personally. I prefer it to Chrome Remote Desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> I have been wanting to switch to FF for a lot of time, but insufficient performance used to hold me back. With FF 57 there are no excuses anymore, it's fantastic!

</comment><comment><USER89> I switched to test it, not sure yet whether or not I will stay using it all the time. I definitely notice the speed and the built in screenshot support is pretty nice.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm switching over today. Performance was my only gripe with Firefox previously, and I really dislike the idea of feeding Google my usage information.

</comment><comment><USER90> I rely on Chrome and Google's integration. I'm pretty sure I would catch on fire if I try to change...

ps: I use both, chrome for personal stuff and FF for work.

</comment><comment><USER91> I did the switch. The only time I switch the Chrome back is using to debug some angular code. For an odd reason, Firefox shows stack traces too ugly.

</comment><comment><USER92> The interface still feels less streamlined compared to Chromium. Also sync was hit and miss, the same as 3-4 years ago when I last used Firefox.

<comment><USER87> Odd, sync works great for me. I keep a huge history (365 days) and it syncs perfectly between all of my many devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Hadn't opened FF for a while now, but started using it as my second browser along with chrome since yesterday and am pretty impressed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I switched from Opera to Firefox with Firefox 56. Firefox 57 is just amazing -- although I had to go and kill all of that pocket bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER94> Switched to Nightly about a month ago and haven't looked back. Orders of magnitude better since I ditched FF a few years back.

</comment><comment><USER95> I just tried to switch again. Felt slower than chrome for the sites I use and my computer fans were spinning faster.

</comment><comment><USER96> I can't, relying heavily on google docs and google keep lately.

I have been browsing with FF 57, Chrome still feels faster to me.

<comment><USER97> What's different in Google Docs in Chrome, that Google Docs in FF is missing?

<comment><USER96> It freezes in FF from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> I just switched too, seems very snappy, and honestly I just wanted a change in browsers (not sure why!)

</comment><comment><USER99> I switched about a month or so ago once Nightly hit 57. I have to say I love the speed and performance of it.

</comment><comment><USER100> I never could leave FF because only it supported the auto scrolling feature with the middle mouse click.

</comment><comment><USER101> Been using SeaMonkey since 2009. Never switched to anything else, and have no intentions to do so.

</comment><comment><USER102> I switched to Firefox Nightly about a month ago and have made it back into Chromium less and less.

</comment><comment><USER103> I tried it out and found lots of edge cases with super high cpu. Also lots of janky scrolling...

</comment><comment><USER104> I switched when the 57 Beta came out, it was impressive enough to push me back over to FF again.

</comment><comment><USER105> I switched for one reason and one reason only: you can disable autocomplete in the address bar.

</comment><comment><USER106> Switched after 9 years on chrome, three reasons. Speed, privacy and sync.

</comment><comment><USER107> I am. Really enjoying it!

</comment><comment><USER108> I switched to firefox yesterday. it is lag free and fast. great

</comment><comment><USER109> I have mainly because I am trying to use less Google stuff.

</comment><comment><USER110> does anyone know how to disable those annoying requests to send notifications? in chrome you can disable them but I have not found a way to do it firefox

</comment><comment><USER111> I have.

Now websites only need to support U2F with Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER112> Yes, for 3 words : Tree, Style, Tab.

</comment><comment><USER113> i use chromecast a lot and it doesn't work in firefox :\

<comment><USER87> That's the only real reason I have Chrome installed, and really the only thing I use it for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> I switched to a few weeks ago but it seems really laggy recently whenever I'm running Youtube in the background while on the private mode.

I don't trust Chrome at all, and I'd much rather use Firefox, but it's unusable for me.

<comment><USER114> Why are there downvotes for this?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any Dumb Email Client for iOS and Android? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I am searching for a dumb email client: one that simply connects to my IMAP and SMTP servers (even if they're Google's servers). The ones I've tried so far (Outlook, Spark, etc.) seem to all want OAUTH access to my Google account. I don't want their servers accessing my mail, I just want a dumb email client. Any suggestions?<p>What's really annoying to me is that Outlook and Spark on iOS both let me setup IMAP for Fastmail, but as soon I enter `imap.gmail.com` they prompt me for OAUTH access. <comment><USER2> They want OAuth because as far as I know, gmail (at least as a default) only allows IMAP access with an OAuth token. And just because it uses OAuth it doesn't go over any servers, Google added an OAuth extension to IMAP so that apps can get tokens and use those to authenticate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for that bit of info. I will search around for some documentation on that.

<comment><USER2> Here is Google's technical description: [https://developers.google.com/gmail/oauth_overview](https://developers.google.com/gmail/oauth_overview)

I couldn't find an actual announcement of the switch to only allowing this method, but plenty of complaints about it: seems to have happened in 2014.

<comment><USER3> See this earlier post of mine [3], reproduced here for clarity:

This changed sometime in 2014. You used to be able to use IMAP authtype 'simple', but in April 2014, Google released a rather vague blog post [1] about how they're going to deprecate something; please move to OAuth 2.0.

The Thunderbird team's bug tracker has some context [2] where they had to move quickly to add functionality to Thunderbird to support the SASL XOAUTH2 for IMAP so that Thunderbird would keep working with Gmail.

[1] [https://security.googleblog.com/2014/04/new-security- measure...](https://security.googleblog.com/2014/04/new-security-measure..).

[2] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1059100](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1059100)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12395631)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 6 Months in, first iPhone app into app store today - <AUTHOR> http://www.baylisslabs.com

<comment><AUTHOR> pps. the app didn't take 6 months to develop, but its been that long since I left a full time contract to start out on my own. Also been doing some consulting work and all the other things that come along with running your own business.

</comment><comment><USER2> Small point that I frequently bring up with posts like these: Put the price on the marketing page - thats generally a first/second qualifier in my decision to purchase the app or not.

Looks nice though, good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh great. We have already added many apps for iPhone. Contact us with your idea to convert into Apps supports any version of iPhone. - <http://www.kaushalam.com/iphone-application-development.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool. So, I don't know anything about music, but maybe you should consider stating explicitly what instruments you support?

<comment><USER5> It says this on the front page, under the Specifications tab:

 _Instrument Types: Any instrument capable of sustaining a tone in the detection range_

The pitch detection combined with the pitch pipe means that you can use it to tune almost anything tuneable. I've certainly tuned lots of weird things with Cleartune over the last couple of years. I'm not sure what this app brings to the tuner table, but I'd be interested to find out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes there is a lot of good competition already established in the tuner app area already, so its a daunting market to enter.

A lot of time was spent getting the pitch detection algorithm just right so you get a accurate and stable reading but get it quickly. This was more challenging that I first thought it would be.

Also I felt it would be good to be able to use the pitch pipe without having to keep shifting back and forth between the instrument and guitar for each string so I added an automatic mode where it plays the nearest note back based on the one you played.

So, hopefully this app will prove a worthy contender

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would adding metronome functionality make sense for this kind of app?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it could, but then a metronome is often a new app in itself.</comment></comment>


Cultured Beef financed by a.o. Sergey Brin - <AUTHOR> http://culturedbeef.net/ Cultured Beef is created by painlessly harvesting muscle cells from a living cow. Scientists then feed and nurture the cells so they multiply to create muscle tissue, which is the main component of the meat we eat. It is biologically exactly the same as the meat tissue that comes from a cow. <comment><USER2> What resources are required to grow meat in the lab?</comment>


Firefox 3.5.1 Released, fixes Windows load time issue - <AUTHOR> http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.5.1/releasenotes/#

<comment><USER2> Even more important in 3.5.1, that JIT vulnerability is fixed:

MFSA 2009-41 Corrupt JIT state after deep return from native function

[http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2009/mfsa2009-41.ht...](http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2009/mfsa2009-41.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> See the previous thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=696652>

From what I can tell, they didn't actually remove the hideously stupid tempdir-walking rng-seeding code in NSS -- they just fixed it so it's not called on XP (at least _most_ of the time), as they think XP's RNG is good enough for them.

They were planning to still use it intentionally on Win2k and WinCE.

Most of the stupid shit that Mozilla does has a freetard angle of some sort, and it's possible to understand their motivations. This is just plain baffling. WTF Mozilla?

<comment><USER4> How do _you_ suggest they gather good entropy on Win2k and WinCE, then? If you actually do have a better idea, I'd be willing to try my own hand at turning it into a patch, so let's hear it :)

<comment><USER3> A) Stop being such affected crypto-wankers, and realize that they don't need more entropy than the TCP stack.

B) Given that (A) is basically untenable for them, find entropy by _looking at the user's Mozilla profile_.

It's bizarre that they're looking in IE's messy cache directory when they have their own tidy one that they fully control! There's all kinds of lovely compact entropy to be found there, especially with the SQLite databases that it keeps.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a development team that only takes the most difficult projects? - <AUTHOR>

I have clients come to me with the craziest ideas for projects that require complex hardware setups...my company doesn't have the expertise to take on these kinds of projects. I was wondering if there are any teams that specifically do these kinds of very difficult projects? If this is not following HN guidelines I'm sorry, I'll take this down. <comment><USER2> I worked at a consulting firm previously which handled mostly these kind of projects. Their hourly rates were a notch higher than other local firms and so usually dealt with projects with needed delivery guarantee or projects which can't be just taken up by a run-of-the-mill consulting firm. What kind of crazy projects do you get?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently searching for a team to take on an augmented reality project giving realtime visualizations on a transparent screen for a driver on a racetrack...anyone can email me for details if this is something anyone would be interested in

<comment><USER3> You mean a head up display (HUD) for a racecar ?

I'd be interested in talking with you about the project, it might be something I could partner with you on.

You can find my contact info in the website linked from my HN profile, send me an email if you're interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> emailed</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bloom's 2 sigma problem - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem <comment><USER2> We have implemented this methodology at Lambda School (YC S17 - [https://lambdaschool.com](https://lambdaschool.com)) with _staggering_ results. We only get paid if our students are hired making more than $50k/yr as a software engineer or data scientist, so we're more motivated than most to try things like this, even if they're expensive.

First, mastery-based progression. At the end of every week we have a "sprint challenge," where a student builds a project using everything that was learned that week. If they didn't grasp the material, instead of pushing them forward, they stay back and repeat that week until they have mastered it.

Of course, this is very expensive to do, and therefore will never be done in most classroom environments (you erode economies of scale), but we find that it's worth it.

The results from that alone have been astounding. We don't have a scientifically-designed study that shows a standard deviation increase (too many other variables are simultaneously changing), but the difference in student competence and ability at graduation was jaw-dropping.

The next aspect is probably an order of magnitude more expensive to implement - individual tutoring. We obviously can't pair every student with a tutor all day (our instructors are experienced engineers and therefore very expensive), but we keep every student in a group of 8 students with 1 TA (a student who is at least 4 months ahead, performed well, and stays on for a short contract). Importantly those students are happy to be paid to review the material, and cost about 1/5 of what an experienced instructor does.

In such a small setting a TA can be there to individually work with a student (though for a little less than an hour a day).

Again, I don't have any good way to scientifically prove this, but the level of ability our students have now at the end of our 30-week curriculum (which can become longer due to mastery-based progression) is incredible.

If you're an engineering or hiring manager and want to try it out shoot an email to firstname.lastname@example.com and ask to interview a student who had never programmed before the 30 weeks to see what they can do.

I thoroughly believe Bloom's 2 Sigma Problem is the most important study done in education... ever.

<comment><USER3> How can you have great results but not be able to prove it? I see this perception coming up again and again, and it has, in my experience, always been due to 2 factors: the time has not been taken to determine a study design; or the improvement doesn't exist.

I'm not saying your method doesn't work, but surely if it is your business you could take the time and money to prove it (i'm in a similar situation with mine, although in the health space no-one trusts you unless you can publish, which raises a whole other set of problems - ie shitty studies)

<comment><USER2> We have had a huge swing in results, we can show that, but we're simultaneously improving and testing a lot of things across the entire company (we're 18 months old and are iterating in everything quickly), so it's not like we have a well-designed study that isolates this as the only cause.

We could do it now I suppose, but you begin to run into ethical questions that don't mesh with our vision: "let's give n students a subpar experience to prove a point" would be a tough sell.

<comment><USER3> have you thought of doing a crossover study and reducing fees for a portion of a cohort? If your method has results, then you should be able to catch them up, and then you can go to market with real numbers (alternatively, it might hint towards class sizes or other changes you can make to maximise efficiency)

<comment><USER2> I'm sure you could find a way to prove it's better; I'd rather just do a great job for everyone and let the results speak for themselves

<comment><USER3> Not to harp on about this too much, but that is exactly the problem: results that speak for themselves but don't have any rigour are sham results and leave you open to accusations that you are simply using marketing flash or selective statistics.

Now, a real study can open you to this as wel, but it is harder when you have some ostensibly objective results.

There is no such thing as achieving results unless you can prove it, it doesn't make sense

<comment><USER2> > there is no such thing as achieving results unless you can prove it

That's not true. Things happen regardless of whether or not they happen within the guidelines of a scientifically designed/valid study.

Students are getting better. Was that correlation or causation? I'm not going to force students to have a mediocre experience to prove it.

<comment><USER3> In other words, 'just trust me'. Your business is not self evident

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bloom's 2 sigma problem was a fascinating study. Regarding the tutoring aspect, at College Connections we want to take this a step further. We use our in-house-designed software MentorMatch to connect students and tutors based on the strength of their personality compatibility. It has been said that "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." This echoes anecdotal evidence that students enjoy their work more when they get on with their teacher. Furthermore, we will reduce the cost of private tutoring by targeting schools recent alumni who are happy to tutor students in their schools for a lower rate than professional private tutors. We are currently hoping to conduct a large scale study with few schools to see whether personality-based tutoring matching can actually yield results beyond two sigma! If you want to know more, check this out: [https://medium.com/@maxdunhill/matchtech-white- paper-4a6e4e0...](https://medium.com/@maxdunhill/matchtech-white- paper-4a6e4e05a93e)

</comment><comment><USER5> That rings true. At one point I came to the conclusion that high attrition rates are first and for most an indication for lacking training / teaching quality and not difficulty of the course or trainjng program. As one (former?) Pararescue instructor stated, 30% always drop out, 10% always pass and the rest is up to the instructor (unfortunately I lost the source for that...).

</comment><comment><USER6> The key thing that self studiers don't realize is that you don't know what you don't know. And frequently those things are very subtle but build up over time. Luckily with the internet, any motivated student can find great teachers to help them.

<comment><USER5> That's true, and the resulting basic mistakes can be extremely hard to get rid off. Like bad foot work in boxing, once you do it you have ahrd time correcting it later.

<comment><USER6> That's a good example. Piano is also a classic foundational problem

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a teacher. Before doing my teacher prep program, I tried to gain relevant experience tutoring after school. When I actually started teaching, I realized very quickly that it's a completely different ballgame.

Teaching isn't just a one way upload of knowledge. It's an interactive process and feedback from the learner is extremely important. Not just for correcting misconceptions, but also for motivation, partnership, and dialog. One-on-one, the loop is very tight.

That's one reason I'm skeptical about technology making a huge impact any time soon. Our technology is just really, really far away from being able to stimulate tutoring.

<comment><USER8> Technology as a replacement, no; as an augmentation, definitely. A computer could be a powerful tool in improving tutors effectiveness. I just saw a paper on using DNN for generating questions from text which could be used for interactive flash cards (spaced repetition, quizes, etc).

<comment><USER7> Even for augmentation, I'm bearish, short term. We'll eventually get it right, but not before any kids I have are through schooling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the more exciting takeaway from this is the Mastery Learning method causes a one sigma gain (from 50th to 84th percentile) _for free_ whereas private tutoring lets us gain another sigma (from 84th to 98th) for 10x-15x the tutoring cost.

There's also something else that's driving my skepticism further. We know that deliberate practice _works_ [1], and the possible effect size is much larger than two sigmas (think more like from a good chess player to grandmaster [2]). However, at this point the effects of both deliberate practice and tutoring start to blend in too much. The mastery learning aspect already seems like a methodology similar to deliberate practice. Does tutoring cause the additional sigma by letting more deliberate practice happen, or by some other vices? If we're stuck with a 30-pupil classroom as a tutor, is it possible to extract those vices from private tutoring to help our class succeed?

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102783/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102783/)

[2] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a- gen...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-genius/)

<comment><USER10> Mastery learning is not costless. The cost is time: time for the student and time for the teacher.</comment></comment>


Great article explaining the inner workings of Solid State Disks - <AUTHOR> http://anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

<comment><USER2> dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=522634></comment>


Building an Electric Bass - <AUTHOR> http://www.weescribble.com/building-an-electric-bass/

<comment><USER2> For the last 6 months or so, my life has been dominated by musical instruments, both playing them and modifying them. Ended up building a workshop for guitars because of it. Lately, I've been doing research into CNCing all the wooden parts of a guitar -- doing the whole body, the top, the neck, and the fretboard. I'm hoping to do a trial run in the next few months, if all goes to plan.

For those who aren't aware, renting time on a CNC is _cheap_. I found a nearby Shopbot that was being rented for about $30/hour. Estimating a total milling time of about 8 hours (to be very conservative), I'm looking at all of $240 to do the majority of the construction; pretty cheap, when you consider that a nice custom instrument can easily run $3k.

<comment><USER3> Good plan!

I made an electric tenor violin once (twice as big as a regular violin). The only difficult part of it was the fingerboard - very complex because it's curved in all three dimensions. It can take a luthier who knows what they're doing a couple of hours: certainly beyond my woodworking skills.

Ended up writing a python script that figured out the geometry and dumped out STL, which I then sent to a small CNC shop. Turned out perfectly, and left me with the impression that electric instruments are especially strong candidates for this kind of manufacturing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Building a bolt-neck solid body electric guitar/bass isn't all that difficult unless you make the neck & fretboard, which is the most complicated bit (also assuming you're not crazy enough to want to wind your own pickups).

Anyone interested in giving it a go would probably be best to start with something based on the classic Fender Strat/Tele, because compatible necks and other parts are available cheaply (search on eBay, esp. China). You can always upgrade it in the future too, if you decide you want a real US Fender birds- eye maple neck or something; start with something cheap in case it doesn't work out. You can of course, go wild with the body design, as that's the only part you really need to make yourself.

This is a good book that covers all the basic techniques:

[http://www.melvynhiscock.com/MYOEG.html](http://www.melvynhiscock.com/MYOEG.html)

It's also pretty good to read if you are just interested in knowing more about how a guitar _works_ and how to set it up correctly.

Just be aware that the main requirement other than patience is space, as you will get wood dust everywhere. You will also need somewhere dust-free to hang the guitar if you intend to paint/lacquer it. A shed would be ideal, although some people apparently just hang the guitar outside to paint - this won't work anywhere that it might rain, as it needs to hang for at least a couple of days per coat.

</comment><comment><USER5> My friend and I built a couple fretted basses and guitars many years ago. We built the necks ourselves.

Fretting is not as hard as you might imagine. The basic math for the fret positions is straightforward: each semitone lower in pitch is 1.059463

      2**(1.0/12)

farther from the bridge than the last. The fret wire is readily available. The nut may need to be a bit closer to the first fret than the math dictates, to account for its being a bit higher than the frets.

Building instruments by hand is very rewarding.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a bass player I find it fascinating but beyond my ability. In any case my Peavy is so heavy I can use it as a bullet shield which he can't :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> here's an extremely engrossing thread on building a clone of the coveted Gibson '59 Les Paul (strangely enough, on a forum about Fender Telecasters).

[http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-home- depot/194271-1959-les-p...](http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-home- depot/194271-1959-les-paul-build.html)

the mixture of meticulous attention to detail (he rolled his own bumblebee caps) and sometimes simple yet clever methods was a joy to read.

</comment><comment><USER8> I didn't read the article but I thought the electric bass was perfected years ago: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mouth_Billy_Bass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mouth_Billy_Bass)</comment>


France on the verge of Internet censorship - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/government-law/legislation/news/index.cfm?newsid=18899 <comment><USER2> The Internet is becoming the Police State's favorite bogeyman. The unprecedented volume of information freely available to all quickly turns into a vast number of potential crimes from which the Police State must protect the peeple.

It's no longer the camel's nose under the tent. It's the camels eyes, ears and tape recorder as well. Soon your webcam will be sending its pictures to various police agencies. Were he still alive and not in the throes of a nervous breakdown, Orwell would be proud.

<comment><USER2> _Soon your webcam will be sending its pictures to various police agencies_

Wow, that was quick:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134022></comment></comment>


Who Invented the iPhone? - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/who-invented-the-iphone/ <comment><USER2> I was hoping for some key engineers or product managers. I had a similar peak into the iPod, a key stepping stone to the iPhone.

There was a time when digital music players like the Creative Nomad were gaining adoption, but people were still absorbing the shift to digital music.

I worked at RealNetworks/Rhapsody music and there was a mysterious meeting where a guy pitched what would eventually come to market as the iPod. The deal didn't go through and he was latter employed by Apple.

I understand that sometimes inventions will be invented nearly simultaneously by several distinct groups... and Apple may have already had a prototype device for years in their labs waiting for the BOM to hit the right size, price, and capabilities... But who were these visionaries that Apple organized, packaged their visions, and helped delivered their wares?

Apple does an amazing job of marketing their myths and we've got the well known brands of Woz, Jobs, Ive... It's hard to pierce that veil.

<comment><USER3> For the ipod, I don't consider the device to be the invention.

There were many music players around at the time.

The invention was itunes -- an easy way to buy music. And that invention required cutting deals with all the music studios to put their catalog online.

That was new.

Of course it had to link up with a nice ecosystem, sound, software etc.

<comment><USER4> iTunes made the iPod huge, but the iPod itself was pretty remarkable. The UI was entirely new and more intuitive than similar devices, and it was the smallest large-capacity device thanks to Steve seizing on the idea of using the new tiny hard drives Toshiba(?) had created.

Firewire also made it _much_ faster to upload music.

<comment><USER5> Rio had, PMPs, I think. They had flash storage. UI was okay but managing files and transfers left a lot to be desired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I expect better from Scientific American, yes technology these days stands on the shoulders of many smaller innovations, but it is the sum of all these small components and the software that makes a tech product innovative.

Also, the article refers to lithium-ion/lithium polymer batteries as lithium batteries. This is wrong, as lithium batteries are what you call primary cells with lithium anodes (e.g. button cells), not secondary cells like are used in a cellphone.

<comment><USER7> Along the same lines, they're talking about the touch-screen as if that's what they were credited for. There were lots of okay touch-screens widespread before; the iPhone had afaik the first good quality widely available _multi_ -touch screen. There's a classic TED talk from 2004 where a guy introduces the technology and it seemed so amazing, the iPhones made direct use of that. (Albeit not being as amazing as the 2004 demo!)

<comment><USER8> Jeff Han: [https://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/](https://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't own one, but Apple invented the iPhone.

Innovation happens in small steps, building on work of others and adding a few new things and experiences. The iPhone is no different but this article is not really worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised that the premise that the iPhone is an "invention" is so quickly accepted. It wasn't like nobody was making any similar devices, and then this new idea came along. I know that invention can be as simple as gluing two existing things together, but the meaningful aspect has to be that there is an original idea there.

No doubt it popularised a lot of existing technology, and arguably combined some of that technology in a way that hadn't been done before. All the same, that reasoning could apply to the second version of the iPhone. Was that an "invention" too?

<comment><USER11> I followed PDAs pretty closely back then, and I'm unaware of any device where the OS was built around multi-touch, like the iPhone.[1] The iPhone was one of the few devices back then to render the "real web" and being able to swipe and pinch to navigate pages was a game-changer on the order of the first mouse- based UIs. It dramatically changes how much content you can easily access on a small screen (which is why even devices with styluses today have multi-touch screens to facilitate scroll/zoom). It also improves the quality of the on- screen keyboard, enabling you to ditch the physical one (or reliance on something like Graffiti).

[1] Apple didn't invent multi-touch: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t35HXAjNW6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t35HXAjNW6s). I believe it was the first to build a mobile UI entirely around it.

<comment><USER12> It's easy to forget how crazy the world was before the iPhone. Let me list the ways in which Apple blew the doors off of the industry with the iPhone:

1) battery: the iPhone was basically a giant battery strapped to a logic board. No one had designed a phone like this, ever.

2) capacitive multi-touch with inertia: capacitive touch screens existed, but the software for using them was really bad (see windows mobile 5 as the leading example).

3) non-WAP browser: all phones prior to the iPhone had a wap browser. The consensus knowledge in the industry was that doing full web on mobile was still years, maybe decades away. Apple came in and rendered the full New York Times on mobile and it changed the world.

4) App Store: before Apple, carriers had an App Store that was garbage or you sideloaded software. That was it. The App Store changed the world, not technically but politically. Finally users could get good software from their phones over the air.

I could go on for days. This doesn't even touch carrier distribution, call quality, or any part of the OS stack which was basically black magic at the time. The iPhone really changed the world.

<comment><USER13> > 3) non-WAP browser: all phones prior to the iPhone had a wap browser.

That's incorrect. Opera Mobile launched in 2000 and was a full HTML renderer. I had it on a succession of Nokia E-series smartphones in that era. Yes, you could run apps before appstores existed...

Then in 2005 Opera Mini was released which used server-side rendering for feature-phones that couldn't run Mobile.

<comment><USER14> Integrated browser on probably every Nokia phone of 2000's (ie. "Services") was perfectly capable of displaying HTML 4/XHTML, with one important caveat that it really truly demanded valid markup on input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" It all depends on what you mean by 'invented'"_

For practical application, the one that invented it is the one that first offered it to me for sale. Kind of like battery technology, as the industry iterates over various chemistries. Yeah, yeah, your new tech is going to blow storage wide open...just like the last folks whose names I now forget. But until I can buy one for my phone, my RV house battery, or a pack for my electric car, you might as well have invented unicorns.

Who invented the car? We had engines, we had wheels, we had drive trains. But Benz was the first to glue them all together into a mode of transportation. But wait, Copeland put a steam engine on a bicycle two years before Benz got his patent ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_steam_bicycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copeland_steam_bicycle)). And, frankly, all Benz did was glue an engine to an early tricycle design. So "invented" sometimes strikes me as not the best word to describe "who invented...?"

<comment><USER16> That definition of invention as marketed product is so demotivating to anyone who would put in the decades of personal focus and study necessary to advance a particular area of engineering or science.

<comment><USER15> Didn't really read my last sentence, eh? Who invented the iPhone? Apple. No, not even an individual (even if a name is on some patent), a corporation. Not all of the ideas that make an iPhone an iPhone came from one individual. Who invented the multitude of little parts that comprise an iPhone? People like you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had a Windows phone. The UI sucked, of course, but they all did because of the tiny form factor. They had to, right? Then my buddy and I went to lunch one day, and he showed me his new "I-phone".

The heavens opened up and the truth was shown to me. I immediately realized, they _didn 't_ have to suck, after all. What a revelation.

<comment><USER18> I disagree. I super enjoyed the UI of Windows Phone and only gave it up recently when MS formally dropped support.

<comment><USER15> In the time period to which parent refers, the Windows Mobile UI was nothing like what you're referring to: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile_6.0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile_6.0)

<comment><USER18> You're right—my bad. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The real invention is taking technology and packaging it in a human way that takes a baby seconds to learn. I didn't have to teach my one year old how to swipe photos.

Touch screens existed and confounded people for decades. Just watch the average person use a touch screen ATM. Still not great.

It all seems so obvious in retrospect because iPhones have defined so much of how everything works now.

The original iPhone was a product no one else had the vision or balls to build.

<comment><USER4> I hear people argue that someone would have invented it without Apple, but my counter-argument is that it would have still had a hardware keyboard tucked away, whoever built it wouldn't know how to market it, it would have been just one among dozens of devices at the carrier's stores, and it would have vanished after a few months of languishing there.

Apple moved the world to make it succeed. No one else would have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> No mention of Corning or gorilla glass:

[http://techland.time.com/2013/01/11/a-story-about-steve- jobs...](http://techland.time.com/2013/01/11/a-story-about-steve-jobs-steel- balls-and-gorilla-glass-you-with-the-cracked-phone-read-this/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a silly article. Most inventions come about when a person or group of people recognize an opportunity based on many things that are already known, or exist. The original iPhone of course relied on touch-screens, feasible batteries, wifi chips and a many, many other existing technologies. But remember that, at the time of its design, mobile phones all used keypads: either the standard telephone type, or the full (but small) keyboard of the Blackberry. Apple's big innovations (among many) were to eliminate the keypad, and to embed a full-fledged OS on a small device. The lack of keyboard was a huge risk, and it was mocked at the time. History proved Apple was right. Steve Jobs (or at least his team, with his input) did indeed invent the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe Im in the minority here, but I never attributed credit to Steve Jobs as the "inventor" of any of apples products. I saw him akin to a music producer. The team builds, and he guides their efforts according to his vision. This is very different than sitting down and "inventing" anything.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lame analysis. The iPhone wasn't great because it had a good touchscreen, battery and the web. I had "smart phones" before that with those. The real innovation was the software UI, pinch zoom and wall of all icons with high resolution pixels.

<comment><USER24> The article doesn't argue that the iphone was great because any of those things.

The article is arguing that technology is iterative, and that great inventions are often built on many other great inventions.

The article is focusing on the iphone as an example of breakthrough technology.. but the question implied by the article is whether or not it's great because of the inventors ability to build on a larger than average amount of previous work.. and ends with the conclusion that greater freedom of information allows for breakthroughs, not "genius" lone-wolf inventors.

<comment><USER25> But the fact remains that the iPhone is used as the example, and so the myth of Jobs as a lone-wolf who did it remains. Had to have that hook to focus the article, but still feeds into that narrative for all the people who read the title but not the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article ties well to the excellent book "The Entrepreneurial State" by Mariana Mazzucato.

Apple did an excellent job of bringing together a lot of existing technology into a viable consumer product, but it is still important to note that much of that tech was powered by state-funded initiatives, instead of Silicon Valley, VC-funded projects.

</comment><comment><USER27> I find it interesting that I know more about the team that developed the Mac in the early 1980s than I know about the iPhone team.

The iPhone was a watershed moment in tech that propelled Apple to be a trillion dollar company, yet the iPhone team is obscure to me. The Mac team has had how many books and articles about them?

<comment><USER28> The One Device details the people and history well.

[https://www.amazon.com/One-Device-Secret-History- iPhone/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/One-Device-Secret-History- iPhone/dp/031654616X)

It just came out a year ago.

You can also try my user-editable site ([https://theymadethat.com/things/k4z/iphone](https://theymadethat.com/things/k4z/iphone)) where I aim for the same goal but with a different approach. The iPhone entry still needs a lot of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Title should be "Who Innovated the iPhone?"

</comment><comment><USER30> What an utter waste of bits this article is?

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.xkcd.com/343/](https://www.xkcd.com/343/) RIOT PRRL

</comment><comment><USER3> There were also many key business innovations with the iphone:

\- convincing mobile providers to provide data plans

\- Wrapping up the price of the phone in the data plan (i.e. providing financing)

\- distribution with their own stores

\- eventually the app store

\- the itunes app also had to convince music studios to put their catalog online and price them uniformly

<comment><USER32> Um, almost all of these were done first by others.

<comment><USER3> In one sense, almost everything was done before.

But not in the reinforcing way. The cell plan lets you download songs over the air. That lines up the two business deals you made.

[http://theconversation.com/understanding-the-real- innovation...](http://theconversation.com/understanding-the-real-innovation- behind-the-iphone-79556)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As a long time palm user, nothing about the iPhone seemed particularly new to me. The interface was almost identical, the form factor was almost identical.

The only real upgrades were a cellular modem and a little bit prettier case.

Saying apple "invented" modern smartphones is a bit like saying Tesla invented electric cars. No they didn't, they just made a really good one that is very popular.

<comment><USER34> The capacitive multi-touch screen was definitely new.

<comment><USER35> honestly i think that was the biggest reason for its success. Blackberry was already a thing, but that big honking, clunky keyboard was just silly on a phone, and meant you had an exceptionally little amount of screen real estate. The developments in capacitive touch made a lot of room for other improvements to handheld devices.

<comment><USER34> I agree. I liked Palm OS back in the day and used to have two generations of Sony Clié PDAs with resistive touchscreens. The first one (an SL10) had a grayscale square touchscreen and a little "Graffiti" area below it where you could jot down simplified characters and some gestures. The second one (TG50) was really neat. It had a color screen (I remember watching videos and playing ScummVM Lucas Arts adventures on this in 2003 or 2004!) and it replaced the Graffiti area with an actual hardware keyboard. Text entry worked so much better than it used to with that pseudo-handwriting recognition.

Much later, when I saw Apple and Android smartphones, I could not understand how anybody could stand the onscreen keyboards. But the truth is that the multitouch hardware allowed to progress these systems far enough that they would surpass earlier tiny physical keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I doubt the idea of such a phone was ever very unique. I got laughed at in high school (2004) for saying something along the lines of "in 10 years all our phones will be one big screen and they will be powerful enough to fulfil most of our personal computing needs". I also believed they would be docked to become full featured PCs, but I guess that niche has been filled for many with the rise of tablets. (which I appalling, but I guess thats just because I don't understand their appeal at all).

TFA article claims something similar: it was apple that took a bunch of ideas and made it into something people wanted to actually use. I, and I doubt many people here, would have a good enough vision and understanding of what people actually wanted.

<comment><USER37> Don't forget, the lot of ideas that Apple took to make the iPhone where mostly built off a bunch of other ideas them self.

I find us in a strange new era of people using the past as a way to diminish the now. I grow tired of people pushing the notion that we today must pay for the sins and attribute success to past generations.

If we go far enough back I am sure if the wheel had never been invented we would have none of what we have today and would still be smashing rocks around in a cave.</comment></comment>


Improving Connect to enable more platforms - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/connect-updates <comment><USER2> Would love to play but Stripe banned my business for violating their TOS - then allows others in the exact same restricted space to use their platform. I asked Patrick about it, no reply.

<comment><USER3> Hm, could you email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and I can take a look into this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was the reply I got when I asked about lack of framework based examples

> Thanks for reaching out! We don't have an Angular 2 example for Managed > Accounts specifically, but that's a good idea!

Damn right it is a good idea, they absolutely don't make it developer friendly.</comment>


OOP Alternative to Utility Classes - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2014/05/05/oop-alternative-to-utility-classes.html?2014-18 <comment><USER2> What about performance? Replacing every static method call with a class instantiation looks like an overhead for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree, this may become a performance issue, but I strongly believe that a good design is a much more important feature of modern software than its performance (there could be exceptions, of course), see my post about it: [http://www.yegor256.com/2014/10/26/hacker-vs-programmer- ment...](http://www.yegor256.com/2014/10/26/hacker-vs-programmer- mentality.html)</comment></comment>


Philip Morris and the "Juicero" of Vapes - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/philip-morris-has-an-incredible-scheme-to-promote-the-j-1834268721 <comment><USER2> It may sound ridiculous but consider this: most cigarette users looking for harm reduction have already tried e-cigs and found them unfulfilling. This product, even if a hackjob, has already achieved success internationally.

<comment><USER3> I think most cigarette users looking for harm reduction are still vaping regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reynolds tobacco brought something like this out in the Eighties. It was a heated tocacco system called Premier that you could smoke indoors.

It famously flopped because the cigarettes tasted distinctly like farts.

The failed launch featured quite heavily in Barbarians at the Gate, which tells the story of Reynolds' leveraged buyout by KKR, the largest ever at the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Forget vaping and heated tobacco, and get Allen Carr's, The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently second hand on Abebooks for less than a pack of cigarettes. It makes sense and works.</comment>


Ask HN: Being a technical reviewer? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, I've received an interesting missive asking me to be a technical reviewer for a book. This is in a subject area where I am very strong, so I'd be comfortable technically. I am just curious about the general expectations of the experience.
Can anyone who has been a technical reviewer for a book describe their experience, whether positive or negative, and help set expectations?
Thanks so much! <comment><USER2> First of all, congrats! Whether you accept it or not, it's always an honor to be recognized.

I did a technical review for a small O'Reilly e-book, so my experience is probably a "lite" version of the process, but it mostly consisted of general fact checking and verifying the completeness of the content. The process was pretty straightforward: they sent me the book, I read it a few times, added relevant comments to the document, and sent it back.

Overall a positive and interesting experience that I would definitely do again.</comment>


Product Hunt Shop: Buy Products Through Product Hunt - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/shop <comment><AUTHOR> For more info: [https://medium.com/@rrhoover/the-product-hunt-shop-is-now- op...](https://medium.com/@rrhoover/the-product-hunt-shop-is-now- open-e792d26e9697#.23kd7gthv)</comment>


Container Orchestrator Shootout - <AUTHOR> https://netsil.com/blog/kubernetes-vs-docker-vs-mesosphere/ <comment><USER2> I think you shared this yesterday, and the day before, too. If you don't want your domain to be flagged as spam, you probably need to stop posting. :)

<comment><USER3> Small number of reposts are ok IMO.

<comment><USER2> I've learned my lesson about voting rings and reposting on HN the hard way. I wouldn't recommend it. If you continuously upvote the same OP's stories, you'll certainly end up in a voting ring and your votes will stop counting.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup stretchpay.com - <AUTHOR>

We need your feedback on our startup! Can you help us? <comment><USER2> Interesting service. Still hard to understand in under a minute.

Of the 5 pages on the landing page only the consumer video made really sense to me. I'd make some claims, then point to a FAQ or popup with more text because reader will have questions. The clause in the terms of service not to do charge backs is huge (and in my opinion unexpected).

The 'What out clients say' section is completely made up. I see no value in those generic claims.

As a consumer I can only use the service when the provider (video chat and similar) also uses it. Why would I sign up if I didn't need the service for a specific website I visited?</comment>