Why Do So Many Egyptian Statues Have Broken Noses? - <AUTHOR> https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-egyptian-statues-broken-noses <comment><USER2> > Such a practice seems especially outrageous to modern viewers, considering > our appreciation of Egyptian artifacts as masterful works of fine art, but > Bleiberg is quick to point out that "ancient Egyptians didn't have a word > for 'art.' They would have referred to these objects as 'equipment.'" When > we talk about these artifacts as works of art, he said, we de-contextualize > them.

this is very interesting and I have never thought about it in this way. One could really think of it as equipment, serving a real purpose (or having served and now makes a nice peace of a wall somewhere else).

I wonder what the acient egyptions would think of our appreciation of their statues?

<comment><USER3> We kind of don't have a word for "art" either.

Historically/etymologically, art means "skilled work" or just "stuff made by people" (as in artifact). The word/concept seems to have evolved gradually to its current meaning with all its complex connotations of beauty, metaphorical depth and existing for its own sake.

Even early modern and Renaissance art was probably seen differently to how we see it. A lot of the best statues and paintings had religious purposes, kind of like Egyptians.

<comment><USER4> > _A lot of the best statues and paintings had religious purposes, kind of > like Egyptians._

I think it's worth distinguishing religious _works_ from religious _tools_.

As I understand it, religious works were generally made to glorify God in a cultural sense - mostly as commissioned works to make churches and cathedrals more impressive. That's substantially different than pieces with intrinsic religious significance, whether as a literal idol, a vessel for a soul, or an offering to a divinity. For instance, a relief of a Pharaoh might be considered significant while placed in a sealed tomb, even worth opening the tomb to deface, but a pietà shut up in a basement is largely irrelevant.

It's an interesting point, though, because the distinction can definitely get fuzzy. The Stations of the Cross can be performed by simply carrying a blessed cross, but it's hard to deny that the construction of actual stations is the creation of an artistic religious _tool_. (And of course, an archaeologist would find the stations, but not necessarily have a way to know about the practice without implements.) Rosaries and reliquaries are clearly functional art, and even devotional paintings become ambiguous when literacy and ownership of a Bible aren't standard.

I think there's still a worthwhile distinction here between artistic/instructional and instrumental works, but I'm not sure it would hold across faiths or larger time spans.

<comment><USER5> If you think it from a non-abrahmic perspective, most of the religious works were actually practical tools or stages to perform worship or sacrifices. Most of the statues were actively used for worship (albeit vanity must have played a role)

<comment><USER3> Also Abrahamic. The religion described in the bible is one centered around temple sacrifice, with very specific tools described (including the temple itself) for performing these "works," as they're referred too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was going to mention about Napoleon's troops shooting the nose off the Sphinx, but did a search to confirm:

> ...he face of the Sphinx was vandalized in 1378 A.D. by Mohammed Sa'im al- > Dahr, a "fanatical sufi of the oldest and most highly respected sufi convent > of Cairo." [0]

[0] [https://www.napoleon-series.org/faq/c_sphinx.html](https://www.napoleon- series.org/faq/c_sphinx.html)

<comment><USER7> Obelix inaccurately gets the blame too sometimes. [http://domenglishcorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-sphinxs- nos...](http://domenglishcorner.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-sphinxs- nose.html?m=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You see this in India at every temple that was raided by Muslims. The logic being that breaking the nose would make the "idol" unfit for worship.

There probably are a lot of examples in the North (they are now part of some "secular" Mosque complex), but it's very apparent in some of the Hoysala temples that were partially/fully destroyed (esp. Halebidu), and in Vijayanagara. It's really quite sad. Then again, I suppose this adequately reflects India's state as a civilization... so SNAFU.

<comment><USER9> Well the other side of the coin is, Indian civilization survives. The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today. Those aspects of culture have somehow weathered invasion, natural disasters, famine, and drought. You can't say the same about Egyptian civilization.

<comment><USER10> > The same language, rituals, stories, music, food, imagery used, are all > pretty much alive outside and inside thousands of temple even today.

Technically, it's not the same language, culture, etc. The living culture has changed considerably over the centuries both organically and via outside influences, including Islam.

The surprising thing about India is that it has kept around so much of the really ancient stuff while also adding a huge amount of new stuff along the way. Cultural hoarding, if you will.

It's like the cultural change process is sedimentary, with previous layers being preserved below, while the newer layers get added above, giving a kind of continuity, whereas in other parts of the world, it has often tended to be a more volcanic process, with the destruction of what preceded.

Also, Indian culture long ago accepted what to Western thinking seems like a contradiction of polytheistic icon based religious worship and the belief in a more abstract deity, or even atheism.

In the West, this resulted in the complete disposal of the previous pantheons, but in India, it was rationalized through a "many perspectives" lens where all the viewpoints could be accommodated.

<comment><USER11> How it was described by my Indian friends was that, at least in their households, the religious stories were treated more like 'campfire stories'; not practically real, but entertaining, and good for teaching morality (that's not to say that there aren't Hindus that take it very seriously). This is as opposed to how most westerners treat religion, in a very literal sense - Moses/Muhammed/Jesus DID exists and their teachings ARE the word of God, and they must be strictly adhered to.

<comment><USER10> Yes, that description represents my experience also. Even religious rituals were treated that way - as a means to develop focus and self-discipline.

That said, in the same households, people can still be very superstitious, because practically, sometimes being that way helps you explain otherwise difficult things that happen in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had the question, after visiting Rome, of why so many Roman statues lacked a penis. Found this. But I'm sure that in many cases it was just due to the fact that appendages on statues are more easily damaged - whether nose or penis.

[http://ourromanadventure.blogspot.com/2009/10/where-are- all-...](http://ourromanadventure.blogspot.com/2009/10/where-are-all- penises.html)

<comment><USER13> I remember reading Da Vinci Code (awful book) and he (the protagonist) made this claim, that there was a "Great Demasculation" to remove penises from statues.

I tried looking it up but couldn't find anything to support that this was true. But this was 2003 so information on the web wasn't as plentiful or easy to find.

A simpler explanation is, as you say, that they are just more easily broken.

<comment><USER4> On one hand, it's well-established that the Catholic Church was uncomfortable with nude art, not only in Christian works but in Roman-era 'heroic nudity'. On the other hand, the reason that's well-documented is that we know a great deal of art, including statuary, was altered by adding fig leaves and other concealments to hide nudity.

I guess it's possible that lesser works were simply defaced instead of being altered, but given how much hand-wringing was devoted to altering statues, it's the sort of practice I'd expect to be well-documented, and I've never seen any evidence to that effect. I'd guess you're right: it's yet another case of Brown grabbing a random pattern and inserting meaning for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not having a nose is ok compared to having a half of the head attached from another sculpture. This was the case in imperial Rome when the sculptors had to quickly retrofit works in progress to fit the new emperor. In some periods you had three emperors succeed each other, most certainly involuntarily, within a period of three years.

<comment><USER15> You don't need to go that far back in time, changing statues heads was a thing in USSR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure the hypothesis stands up to scrutiny (apart from being based solely off of conjecture, that is).

In the article, they link to the MOMA exhibit captioned "Yuny and his wife" [0], which depicts a male with a smashed-off nose seated next to, presumably, his wife with her nose very much intact.

If robbers smashed the noses off of statues so their likenesses would not live in the afterlife to seek revenge, why would only one of the two people depicted in the same carving have their nose smashed off?

[0]: [https://www.artsy.net/artwork/unknown-egyptian-yuny-and- his-...](https://www.artsy.net/artwork/unknown-egyptian-yuny-and-his-wife- renenutet)

<comment><USER17> Edit: Apparently Egypt was more progressive than I thought. Women did have more rights than most ancient societies.

Women were considered property of their husbands. If the husband is dead the wife can't do anything because she is masterless.

<comment><USER18> This is dead wrong. Property passed matrilineally and women had many rights in ancient Egypt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot of ancient statues, not only Egyptian, have broken noses. Henry Fielding has a joke about it in _A Journey From This World to the Next_. The narrator, as is customary, pays his first visit in the next world to the disorder that killed him. Seeing the statues of famous victims, he imagines them antiques, but learns that, no, they are quite recent.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds like a lot of guessing. Apparently nothing is written in stone as to why they did this. The explanation reminds me of english teachers trying to interpret poems.

It's also odd they mention removing the left arm has significance, but show pictures of statues with the right arms removed...

My guess is it is related to some common speech, like a saying, or a gesture of some sort. Like flicking of the nose is a 'fuck you', and so people chop off the noses of things to insult or show objection to the subject. But, like the article, just a guess.

<comment> Digit-Al From the article:

> In statues intended to show human beings making offerings to gods, the left > arm—most commonly used to make offerings—is cut off so the statue's function > can't be performed (the right hand is often found axed in statues receiving > offerings).

So they do actually mention the right arm as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> ""The damaged part of the body is no longer able to do its job," Bleiberg explained. Without a nose, the statue-spirit ceases to breathe, so that the vandal is effectively "killing" it. To hammer the ears off a statue of a god would make it unable to hear a prayer. In statues intended to show human beings making offerings to gods, the left arm—most commonly used to make offerings—is cut off so the statue's function can't be performed (the right hand is often found axed in statues receiving offerings)."

</comment><comment><USER22> Just couldn't read because Page down, or down arrow doesn't scroll on firefox. Very weird behavior.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the movie Skins:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_(2002_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_\(2002_film\))

Statues (and sculpture generally) still have power and not always in a good way.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wish I could read this. Unfortunately artsy.net shows a cookie consent popup on mobile with the label "Agree" next to the popup close icon, and on desktop it just straight out writes the cookies without asking.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, this not what I learned as a kid: [https://youtu.be/Ea_9yGV61Dg?t=24](https://youtu.be/Ea_9yGV61Dg?t=24)

</comment><comment><USER26> To stop the Goa'uld from getting in?

<comment><USER27> Hahahaha!

I wish Hacker News had a way to flag this post funny.

(Parent is a Stargate reference)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'd always understood that particular ritual mutilation to be an ersatz penis. Noses protrude, too, after all.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nose cut is a sign of being mocked

</comment><comment><USER30> asked myself the same question few days ago.

Statues in general.

First guess, face hit during civil unrest.

</comment><comment><USER31> The computer geniuses here at Hacker News have decided the main argument of this article are wrong. But among archaeologists ritual defacement is understood to be a regular thing that happens to art all over the world.

Roman coins defaced: [https://www.coinsweekly.com/en/Defacing-the-past- damnation-a...](https://www.coinsweekly.com/en/Defacing-the-past-damnation- and-desecration-in-imperial-Rome/4?&id=4384)

Teotihuacan icons demolished and destroyed by fire: [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/sep/24/teotihu...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/sep/24/teotihuacan- pyramids-treasures-secret-de-young-museum-san-francisco)

<comment><USER32> I had to collapse about 8 threads to find the first comment of someone doubting the argument (in a polite way).

Your comment is popular because you are fighting a "easy-to-hate" minority that is only relevant because you made it so.

You make fun of a kind of HN commenter that you find typical. But if your comment is the most popular (#1 now), and assuming that people are upvoting you because they agree that it is indeed typicial, it means that this type of commenter is not typical at all. It is an outlier, properly undervoted by the real typical commenter.

So your comment being upvoted disproves itself. Quite a paradox (or just irony?).

<comment><USER33> It's quite common that the top comment asks "why is everybody saying X", as if X was a widespread opinion. But then you have to scroll three pages down to find the comments being referred too, and they are usually heavily downvoted.

<comment><USER34> Check the comments on stories related to diet. You'll see all sorts of crazy pseudoscience being peddled. There are a lot of smart people here, but even smart people can be led astray.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm surprised that the article didn't mention another popular theory: that many of the Egyptian statues taken by Europeans had their noses deliberately broken to obscure their blackness.

As the theory goes, in order to make the statues seem like high art, it was necessary to make the culture seem more like the ancient Greeks and Romans. Removing their noses made it so the viewer could more easily read the statues as "like us," rather than the "primitive" countries of black people that Europe was busy exploiting.

<comment><USER10> This theory doesn't hold up not the least because the surviving representations of noses in statuary don't look particularly "black" (interpreted very narrowly as the west sub-saharan facial phenotype), which is the image of Africans around which most Eurocentric racism is built.

Look the statue in the article with an intact nose, and also the statues of the seated pharoahs at Abu Simbel. To my eyes, they just look a lot like egyptian people today, stylized for artistic purposes.

<comment><USER36> > the surviving representations of noses in statuary don't look particularly > "black"

I think this says the exact opposite of what you want it to say. The fact that they survived, may be that they were sufficiently non-"black" looking to leave them alone. Phenotypes come in ranges especially for black people, so a "black" nose is anything from the nose of a random Scandinavian to that of a Sudanese persons.

<comment><USER10> Sure, that's another interpretation, and I agree that the notion of a single "black" phenotype is fundamentally incorrect, which is why I qualified it.

Anyways, the theory would be easily tested by finding examples of statues with the supposedly unacceptable noses that survive today, and see if they can be correlated with the ones Europeans took.

The other thing that doesn't make sense about the theory is that if the Europeans actually respected the Ancient Egyptian culture enough to want the statues, why would they deliberately damage the presumably very valuable artifacts?

It would would be like someone buying a Van Gogh painting only to destroy it.

<comment><USER36> The only reason there is any confusion about this is because the modern day Egyptian looks non African. And the only reason for this is because the indigenous population was displaced by Arab people during the spread of Islam.

Whether or not the noses were intentionally destroyed or not it is most parsimonious to believe that the indigenous people of Egypt were African people. Thinking they werent would be like looking at the population of The United States today and believing the Native Americans were white (and if we didn't have photographic evidence of the natives we can be sure that would have been suggested, and if anyone suggested otherwise they would have been met with "what a crackpot theory!").

In either case, the Europeans revered ancient Egypt for sure. But this is only because of their mention in the Bible and their interaction with the Ancient Greeks. But when Western Europeans got there, the people who lived in Egypt looked more like them than Africans. But this is only because of the displacement of the indigenous population serval centuries earlier.

<comment><USER10> > Whether or not the noses were intentionally destroyed or not it is most > parsimonious to believe that the indigenous people of Egypt were African > people.

Of course, Egypt is part of the African continent. But I suspect that what you mean by African here is a set of physical phenotypical features that we sometimes pin on that term today.

There no evidence to suggest that was the only phenotype in ancient Egypt. If anything, artifacts seem to suggest that the population was multiethnic, comprised of a variety of phenotypes. That shouldn't be surprising - it was the central metropolis and power of the ancient western world, like NYC or London today, so it attracted people from everywhere.

> But this is only because of the displacement of the indigenous population > serval centuries earlier.

As referenced in another comment, recent genetic analysis of ancient egyptian remains have disproved this, and demonstrated that they weren't so different from other modern middle eastern populations, and were also related to sub- saharan populations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> A conjecture that I entertain, allowing a bit of validity to Julian Jaynes' "bicameral mind" theory:

Egyptians back then could literally hear commands from statues as representations of the gods. Maybe breaking off the noses muted the voices (not sure why noses and not mouths). Warring factions might have wanted to mute opposing gods and install their own.

<comment><USER38> "Egyptians back then could literally hear commands from statues as representations of the gods"

What?

<comment><USER39> It's an entertaining (though certainly wrong) theory that states that ancient peoples' minds were divided into a "conscious" part that executed commands given by the other part, which it perceived as "gods speaking to it". More (and better) explanations on wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_\(psychology\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Because they were built by Africans with wide noses. When they were conquered, they were altered to look more like the new king/god. See: Sphinx's tiny head</comment>


Donate your skills to enhance human rights - <AUTHOR>

Looking to do something different, meaningful and help build a product from the ground up which will save lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world every day? Perhaps your looking for an interesting side-project or just a break from the commercial treadmill?
An early stage human rights start-up (the founder has just spent five years at another human rights startup which he helped setup and is now a market leader) in East London (still in the fun garage shed stage!), is looking for a mobile app developer or CTO. (Also people with associated skills such as LAMP, UI/UX, HTML5, etc would be great)
The start-up focuses on addressing a significant gap in the security of human rights organisations, journalists and activists - through the use of a web and mobile application. It builds on years of cutting-edge security operations in this field.
With the product features and business plan nearly complete we are looking for the right person to bring us to the next technical stage. Ideally you will be in London but remote working is also a possibility.
Interested? Drop a mail to email@example.com <comment><USER2> Not so much a mobile app developer, but more a mobile web app developer. Emailing...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I got your mail! I will drop you a reply tomorrow.</comment></comment>


How Justine Sacco Took A Bullet For John Mayer - <AUTHOR> http://jackbaruth.com/?p=1064

<comment><USER2> Too bad about the bizarre title, it's actually a pretty interesting post. And lest you might think it off-topic, do recall a certain pull request from a few weeks back...</comment>


Firefox 76 - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/76.0/releasenotes/ <comment><USER2> i just want to say, Firefox is seriously fast now, while Chrome continues to get slower [1].

my 10M datapoint uPlot benchmark runs in half the time, for both pure js (fake data gen) and canvas workloads (chart rendering). check out the console in [2].

however, i'm still waiting for the performance assessment in devtools to improve so i can get an easy summary as i can in Chrome.

also, better default form input styling would be nice. it's so...Windows 98....but i'm on Windows 10. :\

[1] [https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/issues/68...](https://github.com/krausest/js-framework- benchmark/issues/683#issuecomment-616080615)

[2] [https://leeoniya.github.io/uPlot/bench/uPlot-10M.html](https://leeoniya.github.io/uPlot/bench/uPlot-10M.html)

<comment><USER3> It seems that it's faster on every website I use except Gmail, Google Voice, and Youtube. I wonder whether Google is using some sort of Chrome-specific javascript to make those sites run faster in their own browser?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if this is still the case, but Youtube used to use WebComponents v0 which has to be emulated in JS in non-Webkit browsers, since only Google ever implemented v0, while everyone else agreed it required a bit more work, and other engines run v1 instead, which is not compatible.

<comment><USER5> Youtube was updated to the v1 quite some time ago with a fresh Polymer version

>Polymer.version

3.4.0

Polymer uses v1 WCs since Polymer v2

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I had no idea how to check if it was still the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thank you to the Firefox team, this seems like a really nice release. I am very happy about the "If you don't have a master password set up for Firefox, Windows and macOS now requires a login to your operating system account before showing your saved passwords." change. It might seem like a small change, but it's one of those friction points (another password to remember!) that will lead to (hopefully) more people using the built-in password autofill. Thank you again!

Anyone with a security background or someone who has thought through this more: what are the implications of making the OS level authentication the default, and then only ask to make a master pwd if there are no OS level login pwds? Is one or the other more secure?

<comment><USER7> Personally, I don't like operating systems that train users to enter login credentials while using the system as this increases the chance of someone capturing those credentials via spoofing.

I used to think Firefox trying to protect the entered passwords made some sense, but I've been convinced it isn't really such a good idea. Better would be a full profile being protected (with all files encrypted), or just rely on an OS level lock screen for inactivity lockout.

I'm not sure if the current system actually prevents recovering the passwords. Do they require this authorization even to use a show password option on a website or the equivalent effect via bookmarklet-style javascript? I suspect they don't and it doesn't try to protect from intentional theft only casual viewing of passwords. This might still be valuable for some people, but it would be more valuable to fully protect the profile. I worry that people will think they are more protected than they actually are and that this effect will be increased by the use of system login credentials.

Also, IMO the list of sites that you have passwords for should be treated as just as sensitive as the passwords themselves. I think as is you can often see the sites with accounts, visit them, and have the current password autofilled into the old password field of the change password dialog.

The "generate password" option is great, even though personally I would make it 21 characters rather than 15 (there might be an option for that?). IMO, no one should ever choose a password.

<comment><USER8> If an adversary can get user access, they generally are able to also get root access (via social engineering or a local vulnerability). They'd also be able to read the memory of the web browser, or file contents. This is because on an average desktop, all the programs running as user have read/write access to each other.

On mobile OSes, capabilities are enabled by default. Even Symbian already had such. OpenBSD utilizes pledge to minimize impact.

<comment><USER9> > all the programs running as user have read/write access to each other.

On many linux distributions this is not the case as yama ptrace_scope is enabled by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The shadow around the address bar field is reduced in width when a new tab > is opened;

I mean, at least they're trying, I guess. Still seems to me like lipstick on a pig.

I'm still trying to figure out what UX problem the expanding bar was intended to address.

<comment><USER11> In the last update (75) I had this bizarre problem that any amazon.co.uk links in my history weren't showing up in the "most used links" that the url bar is usually populated with if you click the down arrow (or in this update where the down arrow used to be)

I have a browser profile that is used almost exclusively for amazon content as well. The most visited links in that profile are amazon.co.uk and prime video but the only "most frequent" links it would show were on twitch and the occasional youtube page I visited to find trailers for amazon hosted videos.

When I went to about:config and toggled the four "update1" bools to false, amazon came back in my "most frequent" links.

Pretty strange, eh?

Edit: so I just installed 76, and switched the four "browser.urlbar.update1" bools that enable this back to "true", and again, any amazon.co.uk links are removed from the list I get when clicking on the empty urlbar.

I don't really care about the ugly styling, but since this is a navigation feature I use extensively, I'm turning the whole thing off again. Hope they fix (or document) this before the choice disappears!

<comment><USER12> Wow that's sad. Firefox's URL bar completion behaviour was one of its biggest advantages over Chrome. I wonder what the logic behind changing it is, and if it will lose that edge.

<comment><USER11> Well, not strictly the completion - it's the behaviour when you click on the urlbar before typing anything.

Normally (in my setup) it shows a list of "most visited" urls.

The new behaviour is to still show this list but omit any amazon.co.uk (and maybe other, I have no idea) urls.

Completion works as expected as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Firefox now supports Audio Worklets that will allow more complex audio processing like VR and gaming on the web; and is being adopted by some of your favorite software programs.

> With this change, you can now join Zoom calls on Firefox without the need > for any additional downloads.

<comment><USER14> Does anyone know if this is something that will benefit Jitsi too?

<comment><USER15> Jitsi doesn't use AudioWorklet as of now (and doesn't need to).

We're continuing the work so that jitsi works well in Firefox, there are a few things remaining, but less so than a few weeks back (I'm more on the audio side, and those issues are mostly signaling or networking related).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In the security bug fixes:

>>> CVE-2020-12387: Use-after-free during worker shutdown

>>> Impact: critical

>>> A race condition when running shutdown code for Web Worker led to a use- after-free vulnerability. This resulted in a potentially exploitable crash.

And:

>>> CVE-2020-12388: Sandbox escape with improperly guarded Access Tokens

>>> Impact: critical

>>> The Firefox content processes did not sufficiently lockdown access control which could result in a sandbox escape. [On Windows]

So a sandbox escape and a way to be in a position to need a sandbox escape.

<comment><USER17> > CVE-2020-12388: Sandbox escape with improperly guarded Access Tokens

Perhaps it's the same as the Chromium one reported here recently? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22945630)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Firefox made a huge mistake following in Chrome's trail with the version numbering scheme. I just don't care about Firefox 76, is it a big change? Is there some new feature I would want to try? Who knows, I'm sure Firefox 77 will be out soon though!

<comment><USER19> I want to figure out who to talk to on both Firefox and Chrome sides to _beg_ that they adopt a scheme like YYYY.MM.minor for their version numbering. I believe that would be superior for basically _everyone_ —web developers, users, _& c._ (In the case of Firefox, it works especially well since they're releasing approximately monthly now. I could imagine people on Chrome puzzling over why some month numbers got skipped—not that people actually look at those numbers often.)

<comment><USER20> Releases are almost always date-based, but once in a while a release is delayed. I guess that's a bit easier if the release number is not a date.

<comment><USER21> There's also the fact that Firefox is now on a 4 weeks release cycle, which means there will be months with two releases. (and that's ignoring chemspill releases)

<comment><USER22> Then if not year.month they can use year.counter where counter goes from 1 to 14 = ceil(366/28)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Firefox displays critical alerts in the Lockwise password manager when a > website is breached;

>If one of your accounts is involved in a website breach and you've used the same password on other websites, you will now be prompted to update your password. A key icon identifies which accounts use that vulnerable password.

this is great! thanks :)

<comment><USER24> How exactly does this work?

<comment><USER25> They check against a database similar to [https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

<comment><USER26> They check against the HIBP database itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I love Firefox and use it as my primary browser for years but few things which annoy me:

\- Sending tabs between devices does not work. It sometimes arrives 12 hours!!! later

\- Google Cloud Console has some UI issues on Firefox

\- Twitter input field behaves extremely strangely when you enter an emoji and try to edit text afterwards

\- I don't understand why some html elements have a different appearance and default css attributes on Firefox mobile vs desktop

<comment><USER28> Sending tabs works fine for me

<comment><USER22> which systems do you use? I generally see more delay from android to linux than from linux to android for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really want to use Firefox, but they're just stuck with so many issues, then suddenly out of nowhere they make the address bar massive.

My personal annoyance, on macOS:

Cmd+Click a link: \- Safari, opens in tab in background \- Chrome, opens in tab in background \- Firefox, opens in tab in background

Shift+Cmd+Click a link: \- Safari, opens in tab in foreground \- Chrome, opens in tab in foreground \- Firefox, opens in tab in foreground

Cmd+Click a bookmark: \- Safari, opens in tab in background \- Chrome, opens in tab in background \- Firefox, opens in tab in foreground

Shift+Cmd+Click a link: \- Safari, opens in tab in foreground \- Chrome, opens in tab in foreground \- Firefox, opens in tab in background

For some reason it's different for the bookmarks. I opened an issue [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1597910](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1597910), because really there is no actual reason to make them different, but it was closed on the basis that it might disturb the muscle memory of some users. But changing the entire menu bar is completely fine?

</comment><comment><USER30> Hearing good things about firefox performance vs. chrome in this thread, I thought I would have a look at firefox use of rust - I found this informative page which provides a lot of rationale for where rust has been used: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Oxidation)

Here is a cut of what was introduced in Firefox 76 (copy&paste)

Integrate fluent-rs, a localization system: bug 1560038 (shipped in Firefox 76)

Why Rust? Performance and memory wins are substantial over previous JS implementation. It brings zero-copy parsing, and memory savvy resolving of localization strings. It also paves the way for migrating the rest of the Fluent APIs away from JS which is required for Fission.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wish there were more options to control tab priority and UI latency in firefox.

I have a respectable (2x8 core xeon, 164gb ram) workstation running linux and I have many tabs/windows open with various references spread across virtual desktops optimised for tasks (work project 1, 2, education, personal project,... etc).

I've experimented with various extensions that pause tabs and currently use tab wrangler to auto-close tabs but it still gets slower to respond with ~50 tabs open across all windows. Sometimes I check the firefox & system task managers to see some basic reference tab (i.e. blog post) taking most of the CPU...

It would be great to be able to aggressively throttle inactive tabs or even pause them completely so only ram is used.

Some options around this use case would be much appreciated. Responsiveness under (almost) all conditions is much more important than raw benchmark throughput. Near instant tab resuming would be a huge help towards this goal as well.

</comment><comment><USER32> Anybody using Firefox password manager that can comment on it? Is it considered safe enough?

Are the passwords stored remotely if you have multi-device profiles?

Edit: I asked because I see that some of the updats are related.

<comment><USER33> Maybe it sounds silly but make sure you have access to the email associated with your Mozilla account. I learnt the hard way after reinstalling Windows that Mozilla sends a confirmation email to this address when you set up Sync on a new system. It turned out that I had no access to this email anymore since the provider went out of business. I was told it's impossible to access my sync data. Thankfully I did not use it to store any passwords (I use KeePass for that) because otherwise it would have been a catastrophe.

<comment><USER34> There is a "Secondary email" option in Firefox Accounts. You can also set a "Recovery Key".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Audio playback is currently not working when running the 32-bit Windows > version of Firefox from a network drive.

This is a very intriguing bug. How could it be affected by running on a network drive?

<comment><USER36> Smells like a sandboxing issue to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There are 2 things I miss from switching to FF:

Right click on a picture -> search google for image Right click -> Translate page

Everything else seems smooth enough.

<comment><USER38> I sorely miss the ability to make my homepage a layout of the sites I visit daily. On Chrome I had this grid of most frequented sites that I set up myself, fine-tuned so I could launch Chrome and immediately open up any mail, read the news, check some of the blogs I read, etc. On Firefox, I've been using bookmarks but that's not as effective.

<comment><USER39> I could be missing something but in case I'm not. You can enable Top Sites and customize them to your liking by removing ones you don't want and pinning the ones you do.

<comment><USER38> Ohh, that's what I was missing. Thank you, this is a huge quality of life improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So far my only gripe for picture-in-picture is no closed captioning from sites like YouTube. Otherwise, fantastic as has been usual for Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is the simulcast feature added in yet? I want to ditch Chromium that I only ever use for Jitsi already.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have been loving Firefox for the last year. The only shortcoming for me is that video playback and animation playback (svg/js) is highly CPU intensive in comparison to Safari/Chrome. I basically open Chrome to watch any videos.

</comment><comment><USER43> Looking forward to WebRender starting using Vulkan instead of OpenGL on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER44> And yet they still haven't added the feature to globally zoom, instead of per website. This is the only thing that keeps me using chrome

<comment><USER45> It exists since the very first Firefox version (and probably even before)

After Firefox 3 (which introduced site specific zoom feature) you can set the below config option for old behavior

[http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.zoom.siteSpecific](http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.zoom.siteSpecific)

<comment><USER44> I've tried that in the past but it never seems to take effect. I don't know if there's some other config overruling it

Edit: That doesn't look like the config I'm thinking of. That appears to change to zoom for the current active tab, rather than per site. The config I'm thinking of changes zoom for every site

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can I abuse an Audio Worklet to get around timeout throttling? What's stopping me to do so?

</comment><comment><USER47> Scrolling is still choppy compared to safari and even chrome

</comment><comment><USER48> Address bar had been screwed in the version 75. I hope it has been fixed in this one.

</comment><comment><USER49> Lol. On first glance I read "Fallout 76".

</comment><comment><USER50> I just switched to Safari - to be able to set time limits to websites on my mac, as I am consuming too much news these days. This is not possible with Firefox as far as I know.

<comment><USER51> There are numerous Firefox add-ons that provide this feature, e.g. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock- ng...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng/). IMHO, the main benefit of using Safari/Screen Time for this is that it automatically syncs the same limits across all of your iCloud-connected devices, which is great. I know Firefox has a Sync feature but I'm not sure if any of the add- ons leverage it to provide a similar seamless cross-device experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've literally just installed 75...

</comment><comment><USER53> Whenever I start up Firefox it tells me to wait a few moments while it updates. The browser obviously doesn't care about me. It has its own agenda. This is why I won't use it.

<comment><USER54> Have you heard of "Check for updates but let me choose when to install them" option under about:preferences > Firefox Updates? I assume you did not.

<comment><USER55> To be completely fair, reading every option under about:preferences is not part of the average user's workflow.

<comment><USER54> True, it's probably much easier to search for "disable firefox auto update" using your fav search engine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Monitor application bandwidth with Linux QoS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/firehol/netdata/wiki/Monitor-application-bandwidth-with-Linux-QoS <comment><USER2> Previous discussion (two weeks ago) of Netdata: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388196)

</comment><comment><USER3> One nit to pick is that applying traffic shaping to incoming traffic is usually called "traffic policing" in docs that go into more detail - for those looking for more info. Many docs just flatly say "QoS on incoming traffic isn't possible", which is partly true in that you have a choice of dropping traffic or accepting it, but with egress traffic you can buffer it for later.

The LARTC docs are a good read for those interested in Linux networking internals, though it is falling more and more out of date (nftables) IIRC.

This looks like a very neat tool, I love that it makes TC easier to work with, thank you!

<comment><USER4> Is it still called "traffic policing" if it's using IFB to shape incoming traffic on a virtual output?

[https://github.com/firehol/firehol/wiki/FireQOS- Tutorial#con...](https://github.com/firehol/firehol/wiki/FireQOS- Tutorial#controlling-incoming-traffic)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For Windows, Glasswire has been pretty good, but eventually I'll move to monitoring it all at the router level. I do like the idea of being able to monitor individual applications though.</comment>


The Revolution Yet to Happen - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.GL/9809010

<comment><USER2> How do you convert a base two byte to information in neurons?</comment>


Ask HN: How do I (and others) get involved with FLOSS projects? - <AUTHOR> I've want to be more involved in the OSS world. I'm not the most experienced coder (self-taught, tinkerer, not my primary work role), so would be looking to do more grunt-work type contributions to learn and grow. <comment><USER2> Documentation PRs are a great way to get started, as is answering people's questions in repo issues and on Stack Overflow.

(Plug: both the React and Redux repos have a bunch of open issues tagged "documentation" that are waiting for someone to volunteer to work on them.)</comment>


A Son's Race to Give His Dying Father Artificial Immortality - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/a-sons-race-to-give-his-dying-father-artificial-immortality/ <comment><USER2> This title is a very strong exaggeration. It's actually feasible for someone to start working on Artificial Immortality right now, but this article is just talking about making a chatbot that sounds like his dad.</comment>


South Africa: Science Must Fall [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPYbw452ucc <comment><USER2> Well, in the US they got the flat earth movement and intelligent design. If even they got such nut-jobs, why shouldn't they be around in South Africa?

<comment><USER3> And you can trust in one thing - they are everywhere. Always, always will and always have been...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I mean, wow.</comment>


Blissful Ignorance: Less information makes for happier users - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/business/15shortcuts.html?ex=1363233600&en=74aad5d9df16847b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I would say simplicity makes users happy and it is hard to be simple and have lots of information. If a product says "healthy", that is simple. If a product says "10% lower carbs and calories" it is no longer as simple and therefore people no longer care as much.

</comment><comment><USER3> Barry Schwartz has a great book on this subject called _The Paradox of Choice_.</comment>


Show HN: Freeter is out of Beta - <AUTHOR> https://freeter.io/?hn=true <comment><USER2> I really don't understand what this is at all. The home page doesn't really say and the examples listed in the guide are so different from each other that I can't find the common thread.

The examples seem cool, but I would really like 1-2 "killer app" features that your app can do, rather than a list of minor time saving shortcuts.

(I usually hate reading comments like this because I feel the commenter is just being pedantic and didn't take 5 seconds to read the page. In this case, I really have no clue.)

<comment><USER3> If you've ever used Grafana, Geckoboard, etc it feels similar to that but with additional desktop (clickable/interactive) functionality.

You set up your widgets for a project - buttons for "git commit", "gulp watch", "Open project in Sublime". Add in some browser windows for the project management - Trello, Harvest, Slack channel. It then serves as a main hub for the project you're working on. To me that sounded a little cumbersome but after seeing the cmd-shift-f global keyboard shortcut (Open/Switch to Freeter) I think I might try to use this on a couple of projects I have going.

Seems you can also set keyboard shortcuts for projects within the app too e.g. ctrl+f1 could be a dashboard for Website A development, ctrl+f2 could be Website B dev, etc.

Edit: Highly recommend taking a moment to read/skim through the guide. The feature that sold me on it was being able to use Dropbox or similar to sync projects between machines

<comment><USER4> Grafana & Geckoboard are for displaying charts as a dashboard. Freeter looks more like a mini window manager in an app... Even though you could just open up your project-related applications in a workspace and lay them out on a grid with i3.

<comment><USER3> I was saying the way you lay out the charts as a dashboard in Grafana is similar to how you lay out the windows/buttons in Freeter. Not that the apps are similar, just the interface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Taking it for a test drive after thinking "nope." I predictable wanted a terminal.. my solution was grabbing a copy of wetty ([https://github.com/krishnasrinivas/wetty](https://github.com/krishnasrinivas/wetty)), and adding a commander button to run wetty and browser set to the wetty url, and now I've got a terminal.

pop one off the yak stack..

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish we'd stop using:

The $X for ... (a list of things but enumerated by an animation to type them out and delete them a character at a time)

The animation is so obtrusive that it makes it really hard to use the page and I see this on so many sites that it doesn't even feel novel anymore.

EDIT: Ctrl-Shift-F is a terrible choice for hotkey, used for "find but a bit different" in lots of apps.

<comment><USER3> You can change the hotkey[1]. A little odd it's a selection of choices rather than having the ability to record a combo but there's enough choice for my liking.

[1] [https://i.imgsir.com/qRQZ.png](https://i.imgsir.com/qRQZ.png)

Edit: Just realised I'm commenting all over this comment section. Not affiliated with the product at all, just refreshing HN each time I come back from reading more of the guide

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Exactly the app I was looking for, purchased within 15min of playing with it. When context switching between multiple projects, it's amazing to be able to create a "space" for each one.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi Alex, I like the idea but you need a couple of minutes to figure it out maybe it would be awesome to start off with an demo dashboard that people can use and get used to the app and maybe a guide on how to change things (sort of like an on boarding in web apps). I am going to send you an email. Cheers and keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Didn't think I would see Linux only desktop software! Can you comment on how big this market is? Obviously many people use Linux on desktop but I am curious what is your experience non getting these people to pay for desktop software.

<comment><USER10> >Didn't think I would see Linux only desktop software!

I think you've misinterpreted what you saw: the contents of the web page varies depending on which OS you use to access it.

When I visit the web page on a Mac, I see a big green "Download for Mac" button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get it. Your landing page doesn't make it clear what it does or what value it would provide. I'm confused, and that might affect your conversations.

</comment><comment><USER12> Took me a while to figure out what this was — seems to be a way to organize a lot of disparate pieces and shortcuts into a project dashboard?

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds pretty good actually. However, it took me for a while to realize what it really did.

<comment><USER14> What is it that it does?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Congratulations! Are there plans on integrating some time tracking solution? It could be integrated with the invoice generation, but even a simple timer with play/pause button per project would be useful.

<comment><USER3> This was going to be my original comment but having given it some more thought this might be a bit of a big ask when you consider you would want to be able to export all of that data, generate reports from it and so on.

You could use something like Harvest, Toggl, etc inside a web widget

<comment><USER5> Toggl has an API, so a neat trick would to hook the built in timers to an API, beit Toggl or taskwarrior or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a very cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did this formerly have a different name? I remember trying something like this out a while back.

</comment><comment><USER18> The Home page says it's an organiser. It looks like it's a task switcher-type- thingy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does it only embed webapps? Can I put a desktop app, say MS Word, inside it?

</comment><comment><USER20> which technologies stack did you use to build this?

<comment><USER3> I found it on the privacy[1] page

> Freeter is built on top of Electron[2] which uses Chromium[3] for embedding > web browsers into the app.

[1] [https://freeter.io/privacy](https://freeter.io/privacy)

[2] [https://electron.atom.io/](https://electron.atom.io/)

[3] [https://www.chromium.org/Home](https://www.chromium.org/Home)</comment></comment>


Introducing HyperDev: A developer playground for building full-stack web-apps - <AUTHOR> http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2016/05/30.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11808911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11808911)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems to have succumbed to the HackerNews ddos...</comment>


Show HN: Want to learn C? Join this class on my website as we work through K&R - <AUTHOR> http://curiousreef.com/class/programming-in-c/

<comment><AUTHOR> I launched this site last January, and there was a great response for the SICP class. This year I was feeling like learning C, so I started this class based on the K&R book.

I'd be interested in any thoughts you have on this class or the website as a whole.

<comment><USER2> UI issue: Why do I need to come up with yet another username? I've never understood why websites don't just let username == email with an optional alias. I understand that OpenID or ClickPass might not be worth implementing but in my view, this username thing has got to stop. To this end, I refuse to sign up for any service that requires me to login via username (other than email). It's too bad too, because this looks very cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to hear that you don't want to register. I agree that usernames are frequently unnecessary, and for other sites that I've created I avoid them.

However, I think it's useful for this website because you get a profile page with a URL that uses that username. For instance, here is mine:

<http://curiousreef.com/kday>

Sure, and email + alias could work also, but I really wanted people to have their own vanity URL, and this seemed to be the easiest way to do that.

<comment><USER2> A unique alias is fine in circumstances such as the one you've given--my point is about account creation and logins. There is no reason you can't use an email as a login and then require the user to give a unique alias to use in their URL. FogBugz (On Demand), to cite one example, does things this way. You login with an email but when you sign up, you have to give a unique corporation name and the app generates a subdomain of fogbuz.com; e.g., mycorp.fogbugz.com.

Anyway, I really like the idea of what you're doing, but as time marches on I am becoming increasingly zealous over this issue. Retooling your app at this point is probably too much work given that most users don't have the same conviction as I do but since you asked for feedback, I'm giving you my 2¢.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good example. Thanks for the feedback. Overall, I wasn't aware that this was a big issue for some people, and now I'll spend more time considering aliases for future projects. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice, I signed up for a class. Is there a way to mark other classes in a queue of sorts to be taken when you are done with the one(s) you are currently taking?

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> No, there isn't, but that sounds like a good idea. I'll try to add a way to do something like that. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Microsoft: the bold, yet timid, giant (misplaced innovation at MS) - <AUTHOR> http://surkanstance.blogspot.com/2009/08/microsoft-bold-yet-timid-giant.html

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting and insightful article, but I absolutely have to disagree that "too much innovation" is our problem. Unfocused and inconsistent innovation? Maybe. Too much? No such thing.

Searching for a root cause, however, I would point to the leadership. Lack of focus and and consistency is directly derived from poor leadership, which is only partly due to poor leaders. I'd say that the absolute root cause of our problems is antiquated value-systems in use by leadership.

In order to get a mass of talented people doing amazing things, you need leadership to provide one thing effectively: alignment. Not mandated directives; you need clarity of purpose. I think Sinofski has proved this works in how he lead the most customer-focused, high quality versions of Office (2007) and Windows (7) ever.

When you have two different teams arguing over whose brand gets to go on the product, such that you get Microsoft Diet Cherry Dr Pepper with Lime 2008 Edition, just to settle a turf war, that is a failure of alignment. Each team is looking out for themselves, but the people who are supposed to be looking out for Microsoft as a whole, aren't. They have 9 Profit and Loss charts and look at them separately. When the CEO sets prescient for micro-optimization, how can you expect anyone to be aligned for macro-optimization?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry, but "I am proud to say that the end result was the world's first operating system that is nearly 100% IPv6 compatible (with only a couple unavoidable exceptions), and able to run on a network that has absolutely no IPv4 service." is not exactly innovation. Yes, it is something that they did not have before, but is certainly not a new idea. But beating say BSD at thoroughness, I am not so sure.

And I would like to see citations for that being the first such effort--didn't Open BSD and possibly others have that way back?

But when you are deep within the belly of the beast it can be hard to get a perspective on what is truly happening elsewhere.

When I hear innovation, I think of the C compiler company that MS bought (lattice), the invention of C# after market pressure generated by the innovative invention of Java, buying their first OS, hiring Cutler to do NT after he had done three (and later paying $60 million USD to settle intellectual property issues), and in repeated scenarios being behind the pack on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Another of Microsoft's chief vices is to over-engineer things. Engineers are always looking for ways to overhaul old sub-systems with monster functionality, and breath-taking designs. This is akin to building a rocket powered scooter with fuel cells when all a kid wants is a skateboard to get across the street."

...

"The details for why these failures occur are numerous, but the result is the same: a technology gets built that just collects dust but never gets removed, and still requires constant maintenance."

This doesn't sound like innovation to me -- it sounds more like my first few programming projects.

YAGNI and KISS are first principles in building excellent, long-lived software. The Microsoft portrayed in this article hasn't yet learned this, and is excitedly building the next great Rube Goldberg abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Which software developer wants to adopt a technology that can only be used on the latest operating system?" may be Microsoft's Achilles heel. Microsoft wants to sell the latest version of Windows, but third-party Windows developers want their software to work on all versions of Windows, not just the latest one.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if more permissive licensing for libraries, allowing them to be redistributed more easily, would have an impact. (This is pure, uninformed speculation.)

MS tried making DirectX 10 a Vista exclusive in order to draw in gamers, but I AFAIK the response was lukewarm at best. I think they could've sped up the adoption with an XP version, but this might've been too difficult to backport.

<comment><USER7> I was working as a reviewer when DX10 was announced, and I was heavily into the gamer scene at a higher level (actually talking with some of the big indie developers, talking with some of the pro-gamers and such). From what I saw the response to DX10 as a Vista exclusive wasn't lukewarm, it was positively insulted.

The situation got even worse when Vista was released and it came out that Vista was actively stopping some games from working, removing the *.exe's as trojans.

IMO MS rushed DX10 onto Vista way too fast, it should have been released when the OS was actually stable for gaming. They didn't appease the hardcore gamers, developers and especially the pro-gamers (who earn their money from games and don't want them screwing up) with the giant fumble start for gaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft, when it's operating right, can be an explosive game player. Project Natal is the perfect example of this, they saw what the competition offered (Wii motion controller) and took a move potentially ten steps better. Sony saw the competition and took a move to mimic (playstation motion controller, AKA the Sony Nun-chuck clone), which is staying a step behind the game.

Microsoft's main problem, from what I can see, is that it rarely gets itself into the proper gear to actively compete. Perhaps with Project Natal, seeing a true threat helped, which is something they haven't seen in a _long_ time in the OS market.

<comment><USER8> Microsoft bought Natal. It was developed by 3DV systems.

And personally, I'm unconvinced that they've grasped what has made the Wii successful.

Case in point: the Wii remote, custom designed to be non-threatening, modelled after the familiar tv remote, allowing you to control the Wii with a few simple gestures and an on screen pointer. Natal, a mysterious camera that allows you to page through onscreen lists using some kind of semaphore system.

Microsoft thinks (or at least talks) like it's out Nintendo'd Nintendo with Natal but it all looks like cargo cult style mimicry to me. No different from offering family friendly card games that you need to control with something designed for Halo, just on the other side of the spectrum. Like goldilocks' and the three bears' porridge you can have both too much, and too little controller. The Wii seems to have got it just right.

<comment><USER7> Actually, Natal's AI is believed to have come from Peter Molyneux's Dimitri Project, which then turned into the full Milo project. Its motion capture, facial recognition and voice recognition, not to mention the microphone array helps perform acoustic source localization and ambient noise suppression, all of which was developed in-house at microsoft.

3DV was bought out in March 2009, Natal was shown fully functional and shipped to developers at E3 in June (actually 2nd-4th). So you're telling us in the space of maybe 2-3 months work Microsoft managed to make a fully functional Natal. Not to mention the system is _entirely_ different. ZCam's sensing was an 8-bit 1/4-VGA , where as Natal's uses an infrared projector, tied with a monochrome CMOS sensor to allow it to work under any lighting condition (including no lighting) and allows it to sense at different ranges.

The differences are so huge in design it is impossible it was bought and demonstrated in the space of a couple of months.

I'm sorry, I don't buy it that microsoft bought Natal, there was simply too much work required to say they only had access to the ZCam _after_ March 2009 and allowed people to actually play with Natal's demonstrations at E3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Compare Microsoft's grasping for the "big idea" critiqued above with Miguel de Icaza's [Gnome,Mono] 2000 OSL lecture: Let's Make Unix Not Suck (<http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/bongo-bong.html>). Wherein Miguel in part wants more integration and consistency across the platform.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Much of the hostility, and consternation, towards Microsoft results from the simple fact that it is difficult for outsiders to comprehend the truly Herculean problems the company faces with creating and maintaining the most widely used software products in the world."

No, trying to kill everybody in tech, intent to derail any initiative against their core business, using unethical and monopolist tactics, holding the web back, etc.

These are the real reasons we "outsiders" hate M$ to death, nothing to do with hercules, research, competition, too many employees or any other fallacy seeded in the minds of softies.</comment>


Why I Don't Care If Microsoft Can Listen In On My Skype Calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/07/27/why-i-dont-care-if-microsoft-can-listen-in-on-my-skype-calls/ Anyway, back to Skype: Here's my question … what are you doing on Skype that would make someone want to pick your conversation out of the roughly 25 million Skype calls that are made each day? I suppose that anyone wearing a tin foil hat might assume that everyone's calls are getting siphoned off to the likes of the NSA's Utah "Data Center" where supercomputers using advanced voice recognition technology slice and dice every single utterance looking for anything and everything that could be used against anyone. That is, of course, utter bul … er, nonsense. <comment><USER2> There are lots of other ways to wiretap people, but most require a warrant, as they should. Microsoft can just comply with their request. Time to move to a SIP client that supports encryption (Jitsi.org).

</comment><comment><USER3> "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

The same, tired old argument. And the answer to that argument remains the same: [http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even- if/127...](http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Why I should be writing for MSDN Magazine (If at all) would be a better title.

I expected better from Forbes.</comment>


Why does my program run faster if I click and hold the caption bar? (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/20/535440.aspx

<comment><USER2> Problem solved by obscure action resulting in a desired side effect. Where have I seen this represented before?

Oh, right... [http://xkcd.com/1479/](http://xkcd.com/1479/)</comment>


The Three Hour Hackathon to Cure Facebook Addiction - <AUTHOR> http://faisalabid.com/posts/509-the-three-hour-hackathon-to-cure-facebook-addiction Just something my friend and I did this weekend. A stupid idea, but has the elements of what a real site could consist of. Payments, Datastorage, a pretty decent design. <comment><USER2> \- Change your password to something random, store it in 1Password

\- Don't remember password in your web browser

\- Log out, only login if you really need to

\- Delete mobile app. Being bored on the bus is a great excuse to check Facebook. Also, you won't have to face their idiotic ads

\- Keep the Messenger app, enable push notifications. "I have to read my messages" won't be an excuse anymore, because you would have gotten a notification.

\- Email people at firstname.lastname@example.com. You will get the response back in your inbox. (If you're using Mountain Lion, you can set up contacts sync and have Facebook emails of your friends in your Contacts.)

\- If you need IM, use Jabber protocol. Log in with email@example.com

\- If you're a member of some important groups, create an account with no friends with only purpose to be member of those groups

I have this acquaintance that only uses Facebook for messaging. She never posts anything, never comments, she is just somehow resilient to its charm. I admire her endlessly for that, and I wish I had never succumbed to that notifications icon.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> _Being bored on the bus is a great excuse to check Facebook._

If you don't waste time checking FB when you're bored on the bus, you'll waste time checking twitter, news, pinstagram, etc. Instead, _plan to use_ that time by reading something you enjoy. If it's FB then why is that bad? It's moot from a productivity perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yikes, on an hour-adjusted basis you've shown us up brutally. We've put over 10,000 person-hours into <http://Beeminder.com>

But, especially now that we have RescueTime integration, I think our solution is better! Here's what RescueTime generously said about using Beeminder + RescueTime for this kind of thing: [http://blog.rescuetime.com/2012/11/27/give-your- productivity...](http://blog.rescuetime.com/2012/11/27/give-your-productivity- goals-some-teeth-with-beeminder/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The noble thing would be to donate the money to charity. It doesn't feel right to monetize on people's addictions, even if they themselves make the conscious decision to accept the challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup and thats what we plan to do. Were going to donate the money to the center for mental health and addiction in Toronto.

We didn't write it on the website because we felt it would be too cheesy.

<comment><USER6> I suggest you make a note of it somewhere. I went on the site and was thinking "Where is my money going? If they just pocket it then I'm getting swindled." It may be cheesy, but I think it's worth mentioning that you _aren't_ pocketing it =].

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you have a point. Will make the change.

EDIT: Change made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like how they talk about it as if not using Facebook is some extraordinary privation. I havn't used it for two years, and I officially closed my account a year ago.

<comment><USER8> I closed my account over two years ago, and it really can be a hardship for some people. If you're a non-smoker, it's hard to understand how being without a cigarette can be an extraordinary privation.

<comment><USER9> It's not like going without cigarettes, but it's like refusing to have a cellphone or voicemail.

Social events? Nearly every event I attend, I'm invited to via Facebook.

Family announcements? If there's a new baby in the family, I know about it because of Facebook. (My wife's third cousins twice removed will not call her to let her know, nor would I expect them to.)

<comment><USER8> I think it's more like going without cigarettes, in that it's an enormous amount of useless crap information, some of it downright deceptive (i.e. applications posting as your friends), randomly sprinkled with tidbits that are slightly interesting, somewhat important, and rarely, downright vital. You have no idea what's going to come out the next time you hit F5, so you keep hitting it over and over again, although the vast majority of the output is garbage.

It's a trained addiction, rather than a targeted means of communication like cellphones, voicemails, or emails.

Caring that your wife's third cousins twice removed have had a baby, and feeling like you have to know about it right after it has happened - that's a symptom of facebook, not a problem that facebook is solving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doing it in 3 hours is cool, but not really sold on the concept. A better model would be to monitor rate of facebook activity (logins, posting, messaging). There's a difference between using Facebook as a service and being addicted to it...sometimes FB is the best way to reach people (who for some reason don't want to use email anymore). The addiction part comes when you are constantly posting and "liking" and responding, at random intervals throughout the day (i.e. when you have a spare moment with your phone).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a great idea. We were originally going to let the user use Facebook authentication and do something there, but we didn't have time to implement all that.

But going forward, if we actually want to keep the website up, then your idea would make sense to implement and see how fast we can do it.

Thanks Danso for the advice.

<comment><USER11> Haha yeah, I think that's a great suggestion. I liked your original concept too, but I'm a little too hesitant to actually close the account..

<comment><AUTHOR> Come'on just 30 days. The world wont change :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > We also obviously built this on Node.js, anything else and it would take to > much time to configure or setup.

really? node.js is the only way to deploy a web app quickly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, I knew someone would bring that up. No, obviously not. But my expertise are in ColdFusion, and now Node.js for the past year, so compared to ColdFusion Node.js is a breeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://www.jetstrap.com/> Can you mock widgets using this tool or is it mostly pages,layouts, navs?

<comment><USER14> (Jetstrap creator here) - it's pages, layouts, and navs all with Bootstrap. Think being able to drag and drop bootstrap components to a page and export the HTML code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >when someone loses a pledge, we will be donating it to <http://www.camh.ca/en/hospital/Pages/home.aspx> Center for mental health and addiction.

Give me a choice of charities (or open source projects) that my money goes to (or is shared amongst), and take a cut for yourself. I'll be into you for thousands in no time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Heh, I found this amusing "We also obviously built this on Node.js, anything else and it would take to much time to configure or setup." Couldn't you just use a lightweight Ruby or Python framework (e.g. Sinatra)? And wouldn't any simple data-store do? I'm surprised you even considered MongoDB...

<comment><AUTHOR> For me, when doing Node development, usually my first instinct is to go for MongoDB. I guess my post conveys that thought. But sure we could have used any simple data store, and we did (parse).

As for Node.js, as I previously said in another comment, I am a former ColdFusion developer, so again I bring many biases from that platform and found Node.js to be super simple to use.

I'm not a Ruby or Python developer but I'm sure it would have taken someone with those skill sets equally as fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems like poor form to post publicly the names of people who are using your app because they admit they've lost a bit of control over some part of their lives. I'd make that optional.

If it is optional already, make it obvious that it is optional so that you don't lose conversions on the front page.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a point I agree, we did have an option before but opted to take it off at the last minute. Reason for that was we thought, hey its a name, were not linking it to their page or anything. Lots of people have the same name.

But I see where you are coming from. Time to make some changes :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool idea, I'd up the stakes, and say that if you complete the challenge, you get a share of the money from the people who didn't complete the challenge

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL hilarious. Well right now we want the money to go to charity, but maybe for our next weekend hack Twitaddict.io

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really awesome, and thanks for introducing me to Postmark, it looks like exactly what I need for my current project.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! PostMark is really slick, great interface too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats on getting this out there and getting on the front page :) I'm flattered you picked Jetstrap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Jetstrap was really core to this. We just dragged and dropped a few things, and boom we have a decent looking website. The only HTML I did touch on this website was when adding handlebars to do the dynamic stuff. Jetstrap just made everything so easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You use stripe, so your market is US-only. You're missing out a huge chunk of Facebook's user base.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think stripe accepts credit cards from around the world?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You want to cure Facebook addiction?

Then delete your Facebook! I did it a year ago and I've never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just curious, is there a reason why you used Parse and not something like Cloudant?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, good question. So we ended up using Parse really because thats the first one that came to mind.

I didn't want to evaluate which is the better choice given our time. I knew about Parse through word of mouth but never used it, so we just decided to give it a try.

But thanks for introducing me to Cloudant, seems very cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Care to do one for social media in general(Google+,Youtube,Twitter,etc)?

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL our next idea was Twitaddict.io. Sure we will do something next weekend!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nicely done. But I feel I'd lose too many fivers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha! Thats what were hoping for :). The people who've signed up, were going to start randomly checking their accounts from tonight so fingers crossed!</comment></comment>