Firefox 4 is here - <AUTHOR> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/ <comment><USER2> I started using Firefox again the day I heard about the 4.0 Release Candidate, and thought I could give it a another try after it failed to convince me the few times I tried to use it in the past.

I was pleasently surprised. The browser's way faster; launching it doesn't take that much time; the UI is way more responsive; and all the add-ons I've been using in the past are compatible with 4.0 (Web Developer, Firebug, Colorzilla, etc.).

I'm currently using it as my primary browser _again_ , and it looks like it will stay on that podest for awhile.

It's awesome to see a browser _resurecting_ with that many improvements, despite the fact that some people have almost written it off due to some annoying issues in past versions, the most prominent one being performance.

I'd really recommend you to give it a try.

Disclaimer: I've been using Opera 11 as my primary browser before I decided to give FF 4.0 a try

<comment><USER3> Why is title bar there? I was hoping they'd push the tabs up into the title bar like Chrome and give us more screen space.

<comment><USER4> Maximize. It puts the tabs in the title bar when you maximize.

<comment><USER5> Where is this "maximize"? Is it an add-on? A button I'm not seeing?

edit: why the downvotes? I'm at work on my rickety WinXP corporate box, and FF4 definitely does not behave as described above. (Do really think I didn't try that?!)

<comment><USER6> Maximize as in what your OS allows you to do.

edit: Oh, Windows XP. You'll have to disable the menu bar to get it to work there, I think.

<comment><USER5> check. That works, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To everybody asking what Firefox has that Chrome lacks: The Awesomebar.

I haven't seen it mentioned here but it's by far the thing I miss the most from FF (along with FireBug and TreeStyle Tabs). It practically replaces bookmarks for me because because it searches through the history. In Chrome it feels like I have to re-google everything unless I remember the exact url.

<comment><USER8> Personally, I like Chrome's address bar better than Firefox 4's. In Chrome, I can type g-m-<enter> to go to Gmail. In Firefox, it's g-m-<down>-<enter>. It's a little thing, but it makes a difference to me.

Can't live without Tree Style Tabs though. Firefox is my "heavy lifting" browser.

<comment><USER9> I greatly prefer being able to hit enter on the first result too. Here is the addon I use to enable that: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/mozilla-labs-prospector-speak-/)

<comment><USER10> You don't need an addon -- the option is in about:config.

<comment><USER11> Specifically, browser.urlbar.autoFill. (Found that out just now.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have been using Chrome for 6 months now.

What I liked about Chrome: optimized usage of vertical space and speed. But what I really disliked about it -- Chrome add-ons are useless. Chrome would never allow something like Firebug without being built-in. And I couldn't find a plugin with proper Delicious integration either.

Also, searching the history in the address bar works a lot better in Firefox -- probably has something to do with the way Chrome encourages you to use Google. And speaking of History -- Chrome still doesn't let you search and delete items in the search results page. What's up with that?

Now Firefox 4 has it all -- the interface is still not as vertical-space efficient as in Chrome, but as I understand it on Windows tabs do move in the title bar, and that little change is coming for Linux too.

I love Firefox 4. They did an awesome job.

<comment><USER12> Why do you say that Firefox 4 is not as vertical-space efficient as Chrome?

Right click on your tabs, and select 'Tabs on top'. Right click on the Menu bar and uncheck 'Menu bar'. Done--looks like Chrome!

<comment><USER13> No, it doesn't look like Chrome. There's still a title bar that Chrome hides in the maximized mode.

<comment><USER14> It works without problems on WinXP, there is no difference; throughout the beta-versions Firefox incrementally used some minor tweaks of Chrome (for instance, where the link-bar on mouse-hover or the status-information on loading the web-page was displayed). Sad to hear that it does not work on all OSs -- for me it is one of the most important improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been on the FF4 beta for some time (the web app we work on is currently only supported on firefox). My honest assessment? FF4 is a huge improvement over FF3, specifically in terms of performance. It's still not Chrome though. Firebug works great in it (better than it does in FF3).

So yeah, if you've been using FF3 for web-dev or to browse, you're about to get a major upgrade. If you're a Chrome user I don't know of anything that would make FF4 especially attractive.

<comment><USER16> I don't know about you, but using Chrome has always given me this unsettling feeling that somewhere in Google's server farm, a machine is collecting everything I do and linking it to my other activity (gmail, gdocs, etc). It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's not. I just don't like giving a behemoth like Google access to my complete internet history, even though the most harmful thing it could collect on me is how many HN tabs I have open during the work day.

<comment><USER17> > It might now actually be going on, but it's hard for me to trust that it's > not.

Run Chromium. It's fully open source. You can see for yourself that nothing scary is being sent to Google. The same can't be said for Chrome since the source is closed, but there's basically zero difference between the two. The icon is a bit less colorful I guess.

<comment><USER18> Has anyone actually done any research into exactly what data is sent to Google when you use Chrome?

Not that it really matters anymore, FF4 is faster than Chrome in my experiments so don't think I'll be using Chrome at all anymore.

<comment><USER19> You want to talk to the SRWare Iron team.

<comment><USER20> Why would you trust the "SRWare Iron team", whoever they are, at all?

And why would you trust them more than you would trust Google?

<comment><USER19> I didn't say anything about trust.

It was merely a suggestion to look at Iron or talk to the developers as they promote their product as an alternative to Chrome along the lines of privacy. You'd think they'd be in a good position to point out the differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lets say I'm a chrome user (and loving it), is Firefox4 worth a try? What are the main differences from the last version?

<comment><USER22> * Faster startup, more responsive, faster JavaScript with the new Jaegermonkey JIT.

* New, less cluttered UI.

* Built-in sync of bookmarks/tabs/history/passwords, _fully encrypted on the client_ (unlike Chrome's sync which encrypts passwords only).

* Sync your bookmarks, tabs, history, passwords, and form data to Firefox for Android!

See also this thread for answers from various members of the Firefox team: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g197r/iama_were_on_the...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/g197r/iama_were_on_the_firefox_development_team_and/c1k6dex)

<comment><USER23> But aren't those all features of Chrome? Wouldn't a happy Chrome user want to know about something FF4 does that Chrome doesn't?

It's very clear that 4 > 3.6, the features you listed are awesome ... they just aren't very appealing to a current Chrome user.

<comment><USER22> I was answering the question from above "what are the differences from the current version?"

As for the differences from Chrome, those are mostly the same as they've always been: Deeper extensibility, more customization points, and made by a non-profit organization dedicated to openness.

<comment><USER24> Most customization points is the big win for me. I REALLY like to alter my browsers to fit my preferred layout and FF has done quite well at maintaining that capability for me. I get into Chrome and I find myself constantly going "Oh, there's no option for that... Oh, there's no option for that... Oh, there's no option for that... " to the point I close it in frustration yet again.

<comment><USER25> Absolutely. You would never be able to do something like <http://conkeror.org> in Chrome. At one point I tried to change some key bindings in Chrome, and I had to spend 2 hours recompiling the whole thing; it was an absolute nightmare.

<comment><USER26> In fairness, isn't Conkeror more of a fork of Firefox than an extension (though I believe it started as an extension)?

<comment><USER25> Not quite. Mozilla is a platform with which you can build apps. Firefox is by far the most popular app running on the Mozilla platform, but there are many others, including SongBird, Thunderbird, etc. The bare executable for the Mozilla platform is Xulrunner, and that's what Conkeror uses.

Anyway, the one thing that keeps Firefox competitive is that they built a platform in a fast yet very awkward language, then they built an application on top of that using a much more pleasant, flexible language. None of the other browser vendors understand this; Chrome devs parrot the "but Javascript is too slow to build our UI in" even though they have the fastest JS engine in the world. It boggles the mind and cripples them in the long term for anything other than your standard point-n-grunt interfaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The new "menu in the upper left" seems to be rather badly designed. It's missing the "View" menu entirely, which makes it impossible for me to view non-ASCII/Unicode websites. It took me about 5 minutes of searching and frantically right-clicking to re-enable the old menu, which of course still had the View menu.

On a positive note, 4 is so much faster than 3.6 it isn't even funny. It's like going from a 286 running off of an 8-inch floppy to a Core 2 on an SSD.

<comment><USER22> Character encoding options are now in the "Web Developer" sub-menu of the Firefox menu. (Weird, I know.)

 _UPDATE:_ This is different in localized builds - Japanese builds of Firefox should provide easier access to the encoding menu. In other locales, you can go to about:config and toggle "browser.menu.showCharacterEncoding" to see this.

You can also press Alt+V to quickly open the old View menu.

<comment><USER27> This may confuse the few hundred million users whose languages don't use Roman letters and weren't told about this move...

<comment><USER28> I'm a user of such a language (Arabic) and by now all websites I care about use utf8, so the character encoding is a problem from the past as far as I'm concerned.

I'd be really surprised if there are still sites that don't use utf8.

<comment><USER27> Japan still uses Shift-JIS for practically everything, much to the chagrin of anyone else in the world looking to use their applications.

<comment><USER28> I visit some Japanese websites from time to time (not that I can read or anything .. just clicking on links) and don't remember having many problems with weird characters.

<comment><USER29> This is because this is required if the site uses a legacy character encoding AND it is declared incorrectly or not at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI. There have been improvements in a couple extensions, as far as font colors using GTK themes go, but the menubar is still too tall and has the wrong font color (on basically every GTK theme and theme engine I can find) and keyboard shortcuts for several things (e.g. space to toggle menu items without closing the menu) are removed from GTK. Using RGBA with the murrine GTK engine, alpha transparency leaves "ghosts" on hovered menu options in Firefox, and buttons occasionally completely change their look pre- and post- hover (firebug had a drop-down that would "segment" itself when hovered, for example).

Add this to the completely non-native tabs and toolbar, and the lack of a status bar, and the UI is simply unusable imo. A native UI using an established toolkit, or a custom-built UI with usability in mind would both be preferable to the current halfway kludge.

<comment><USER31> _Firefox 4 still has a huge number of UI issues on linux due to reliance on XUL for the UI_

Does that mean that other platforms do not use XUL for UI?

<comment><USER30> The XUL "backends" for Windows and Mac OS seems to work much better in my experience. For one thing these platforms often have less variance in system theming so things like fixed font colors (though as I mentioned these are fixed in some areas, but not all) are harder to detect and aren't really problematic in most usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a web dev and need to keep 3.x around. Can I easily install these two side-by-side or is that going to cause trouble for me? I'd love to use FF4 as my main browser at work (well, in competition with Chrome anyway) but I can't risk messing up 3.

<comment><USER32> You may use the portable version of firefox from portableapps.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Am I the only one that does not understand why Firefox still has a 'Google search' field at the left? Why not use Chrome's approach and merge the two of them - at least give me the possibility to hide it. (And I am aware of the possibility so search in other sites than google, but I 'never' want to do that.)

<comment><USER34> Everything you type in Chrome's location bar is sent to Google, most likely unencrypted. Every single character.

If you want to turn this behavior on in Firefox, you can do so with a simple add-on:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/omnibar/>

but it's off by default because of the MASSIVE privacy implications.

<comment><USER35> Just because Chrome does that doesn't mean Firefox must do exactly the same.

Merging location bar and search bar doesn't mean you can't give URL higher priority or that you must query search suggestion every key stroke.

<comment><USER36> Well, Firefox basically does that already, then. You can enter search terms in the URL bar and hit Enter to search. If you then hide the search box, you've got what you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm a little conflicted about the Firefox Sync feature. On the one hand: yay! On the other... it's a lot more difficult to set up sync in Firefox than in Chrome. I got to work today and was dismayed to discover that I couldn't simply login to Mozilla's server and sync up my bookmarks from home, but that I needed the sync key from my computer at home to get this working. Boo. That, or you need to have the devices you want to sync in the same place and use a Netflix-like "Add Device" feature.

I get it. Encrypting locally is more secure, but they've made this system SO secure that it's actually irritating. I wish I at least had the option of foregoing this sync key business.

Anyway, now I know to put my sync key on Dropbox so this doesn't happen again.

<comment><USER34> Yes, it's a little more complex than Chrome's sync... but Chrome's sync keeps most of your data in cleartext on Google's servers, and even their optional encryption is relatively weak (low-entropy key derived from your password). I don't like that.

Mozilla can't see your data if we tried -- at that includes if we get a subpoena. Firefox Sync's 128-bit secret key has to be transferred somehow. I think that's worth the extra effort, and you only need to do the setup once.

(If you don't trust Mozilla, you can even run your own Sync server.)

Please don't _keep_ your sync key on Dropbox. It's important!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Meh. One of the smoothest features of Chrome (that won a lot of adherents) was how you could close lots of tabs quickly without moving the mouse (i.e. the tabs only re-size after you move the mouse away). Same for opening tabs. How did FF4 not copy this? It looks just like Chrome only crappier.

<comment><USER39> That small of a nicety overshadows all of the other great things about Firefox 4?

Also, the Firefox team is implementing that but it didn't make it into this release. You can find out all sorts of things they are working on at <http://wiki.mozilla.org>.

<comment><USER38> Down-vote, really? I was just giving my first impression, which was 'not better than Chrome' and 'looks clunky'.

Also, Chrome has had that feature for over a year and in that time it's won a lot of praise from a lot of places. Granted, it's just one little feature that doesn't matter that much... but that's what people refer to when they speak of "polish" and "user experience" and I think that stuff matters more to people than you might think.

<comment><USER40> It's probably for the "only crappier". Makes you sound like an annoying Digg refugee. Read the guidelines at the bottom of HN, it covers both tone/language and complaining about getting downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I find javascript refreshingly faster compared to 3.5 . I no longer even get the "unresponsive script" messages when using the usual lot of JS-abusing pages our "tools support" team has cooked up.

<comment><USER42> I've observed a major improvement along those lines as well. Sites like news.yahoo.com don't make the browser freak out anymore, hurrah!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Awesome timing. The latest version of chrome (10.0.648.15, Linux x86_64) hangs on Google Reader and doesn't work with Flash for me. That gives me an excuse to play with FF4 rather than futzing around downgrading chrome.

</comment><comment><USER44> For the devs, you can now run Firebug in FF 4. <http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/>

</comment><comment><USER45> Text rendering in Windows is significantly worse - sometimes it's blotchy (random characters seem to have more weight than others) - particularly here on HN, and inter-character spacing is inconsistent; at others, the anti- aliasing looks overdone, and text looks blurry and over-smoothed.

I had Firefox 3 configured such that the main menu, URL box, navigation buttons etc. were all on the same toolbar - the menu bar. In that same configuration, Firefox 4 looks somewhat ugly - there's little space between the bottom of the menu bar and the page content (I also use tree-style tabs).

Apart from how it looks, and how it renders text, it's nice. The resizable gripper on multi-line text boxes is nice - that works well here on HN.

Edit: after disabling hardware acceleration, the text at least is much nicer. I don't notice any loss in performance in simple scrolling etc. with it disabled either.

<comment><USER46> I also had issues with blurry text while hardware acceleration is enabled.

I assume it is due to the Direct Draw, but I don't see the same issue in IE9 w/ hardware acceleration enabled.

<comment><USER47> In IE9 h/w acceleration and Direct Write are controlled by the document's rendering mode. Hacker News renders in quirks modes and thus uses GDI. Try forcing the document to render in IE9 mode (open the F12 developer tools, hit Alt-9) and the text will look much closer to Firefox 4's. The page layout will also break a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> FF4 is really fast and responsive, as advertised! Awesome work guys!

Pardon me if this is a silly question, but I really love the tab UI feeling that I get in Chromium (the looks, the curves, etc.) Given that other projects like Kod.app already copy that feature, is it possible for Firefox to incorporate it as well?

</comment><comment><USER49> For those with old ppc Macs, there is a port of FF4 Final at <http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/>

Works great for me and is way faster than Safari 5.04 on a iMac G5 and a Powerbook G4 (10.5.8 in both).

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm hopeful for the speed improvements; I was having issues with 3.6.x in that and so far 4 seems good but I've not really stressed it.

Otherwise, confess first impressions are less happy. Moving the tab bar has left it stranded adjacent to neither the edge of the window nor the page which makes it less easy to quickly grab sight of for me, and I seem to have lost the shortcut for the search box which I actually _used_ - if this replicated the old suite's behaviour of location bar searching outside the history I'd mind less, but it doesn't. Having to grab the pointer every time I want to search instead of Ctrl-E doesn't seem a win to me :-(

<comment><USER51> Ctrl-K seems to work for selecting the search bar in the v.4.0.

<comment><USER50> Thanks; I wonder why they changed it but didn't put a tooltip on the component advertising the new shortcut? I'm sure that used to be there on at least some older versions of Firefox.

<comment><USER52> Ctrl+k has always worked, it is not new. (And as long as I can remember has been the "primary" short-cut.) They wanted Ctrl+e to be available for tab group functionality: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592183>

_We can kill old keyboard shortcuts. There are two for focusing the search box (ctrl/cmd + e, ctrl/cmd + k) and technically only one is needed. Many of these things are here for legacy reasons supporting users of IE5 and Netscape 3. That can, thankfully, go away._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm impressed with it.

Its UI is clear and responsive, and overall is seems quicker. Plus it uses up around 40% less RAM (in my experiences).

</comment><comment><USER54> I've been using the betas over chrome for a few months now. They've redone the UI, it's stabler, less memory intensive, and the UI is completely redone. It's definitely worth checking out even if you enjoy chrome.

</comment><comment><USER55> I really would like to see a built-in PDF viewer–that's one of my favorite features in Chrome because it keeps the download folder clean and lets me reference several PDFs/pages without leaving the window.

</comment><comment><USER56> Why is text aliased and ugly in Firefox 4?

<comment><USER22> This is usually a graphics driver problem. Try updating your drivers or disable hardware acceleration in the Firefox preferences (under Advanced: General: Browsing).

<comment><USER57> Disabling hardware acceleration worked for me.

I'm on Windows 7, and now, with it disabled, it looks like Cleartype is working as it should. With hardware acceleration enabled, it looks like Cleartype isn't working, but Firefox doing its own anti-aliasing, and doing a worse job of it. Does that sound reasonable?

<comment><USER56> I don't understand why getting anti-aliasing right is so hard. Just render text a few times bigger, use some kind of low-pass filter (box filter will do) and down-sample it. It's what every graphics program does. That would put an end to using Photoshop or Flash for headlines just to make them look decent.

<comment><USER57> Cleartype uses subpixel rendering as well, I'm not so sure you can achieve that by simply down-sampling a larger render.

<comment><USER58> Actually, while it will do that it also tries to shift edges to lie on pixel boundaries when possible. This distortion can make edges look clearer though it also looks brutal with certain type faces. Most people like whatever they are used to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> For anyone upgrading firefox on ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

</comment><comment><USER60> I am so glad they got rid of the link preview in the URL bar (like they had in the RCs) and instead put in on the bottom left.

Usually, I have tabs open that change their title when something happens (e.g. Gmail Inbox(1), or Facebook), and those catch my attention from the corner of my eye. However, having the URL preview when hovering over a link go into the URL bar on top also catches my attention, and distracts me from my current workflow.

</comment><comment><USER61> I was REALLY hopeful for FF to make a comeback with 4. I had been a convert in the 2.X days and watched as it got bloated and slower throughout 3. Switched to Chrome in version 9 and never looked back. Then IE9 came out and was so much faster than before so I had hope for FF.

Well, that hope has been quickly dashed. How? By mozilla's own demo page, the web'o'wonder. On my three year old machine it says my video drivers don't support WebGL and won't play nice with many things. What it does play nice with was not very wonderful. The "Letterheads" were choppy with a framerate probably approaching 8 or 9 fps. The 360 video refused to load. Same with Remixing Reality. IE9 wouldn't work with those and neither would Safari.

Then I tried them in Chrome. Huh. Go figure. They all worked marvelously. Yup... this new web era could be a Web o' Wonders... but it looks like it won't be featuring FF4 or IE9.

Now, can anyone tell me why FF4 has issues with WebGL but Chrome 11.0696 doesn't? And it's not just a webkit thing because Safari 5.04 isn't liking them either.

<comment><USER6> Old graphics drivers usually have severe stability issues, so Mozilla blacklists them. You need to update to more recent ones -- anything after around June 2010 should do. Check out about:support for more information. (Note that if you're on Linux Mozilla only whitelists the proprietary nvidia driver IIRC, since all the open source drivers have issues.)

I don't think chrome has blacklisted anything yet, but from what I hear Google's looking at doing it.

In general, the problem is with your computer, and not with your browser or the demos.

<comment><USER61> When one browser (in this case, Chrome) works beautifully and the other browser (in this case FF4) refuses to operate in some capacity then that is most certainly not a problem with my computer.

Do you know how many people out there have the Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family for their laptops... a staggering number, I'm sure.

<comment><USER6> All you need to do is update to newer drivers. You can also force enable stuff via about:config if you wish, and at your own risk.

The blacklisting is simply risk aversion -- I'm sure you're familiar with the concept. A slow browser's better than a crashing one, and old drivers were crashing too frequently. I repeat: the problem is not with Firefox -- the problem is with your drivers. Chrome might be taking more chances with the stability of your drivers, but that's Chrome's problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just installed it on my netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.04.

Motherfucking beautiful, guys, it feels like Christmas morning. Great work, keep it up. (And I'm so stoked the Vimperator plugin works on launch, kudos to that team too!).

Just working out the best way to install it side-by-side with 3.6 on my workstation, which I'll need to keep a while for web dev testing.

</comment><comment><USER62> I am surprised that they got rid of the padlock icon. I had to Google before I realized that they now use a colored section with the site name in the address bar to show a secure connection. Not very obvious when you first start using it.

I wonder if this change is going to be disruptive for users who are trained to look for a padlock icon.

<comment><USER22> This is an intentional change because we believe the padlock icon is misleading and potentially harmful. Users were being told to "look for the padlock" as a sign that a transaction was secure, when really it means no such thing.

It's important that users actually verify the identity of the site -- a "secure" (encrypted) transaction is no good if it's a secure connection to a malicious site. The new security UI in Firefox is designed to emphasize identity, rather than just encryption.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Feel free to watch our launch party here: <http://air.mozilla.com/>

<comment><USER63> Too bad you're using Flash.

<comment><USER22> air.mozilla.com normally uses HTML5 video, but the back-end that drives that was not ready for Firefox 4 launch day traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> And to mark the occasion FF4 RC2 just crashed on me twice in a row. Are there any crashing issues fixed in the production release compared to RC2?

Also, the IE-style _reload_ button (at the right end of the address field) is too small and awkwardly positioned. I never realized how often it is actually used.

<comment><USER22> RC2 is bit-for-bit identical to the final release - we did not make any changes after RC2.

You can right-click the reload button and choose "Customize" and drag it to a different location if you want. (It will become a full-sized button.) You can actually rearrange/remove/add any of the toolbar items this way.

<comment><USER64> Thanks for the hint.

FF3 had a problem with gradually slowing down to a crawl. Clicking on the link would take few seconds to register, switching between tabs or from another app to FF would also cause FF to appear frozen for several seconds, etc.

Submitted a ticket regarding this, got multiple follow-up comments from other users, but never from a dev. I realize you have a volume to deal with, but on my end it looks like noone cares.

FF4 still has a milder version of the problem, but in a sub-second range. It now crashes though, so not sure what's worse.

Also, unrelated to the above, for some reason Alt-PrtSc does not work, it's FF4 on XP. It is supposed to make a screenshot of a focused window and put it on a clipboard, and it worked with FF3... which is weird, because it's Windows' native function, not Firefox's.

<comment><USER22> You might want to try running in a fresh profile, to see if anything in your old profile is causing the problem: <http://limi.net/articles/firefox- preferences/>

Sorry about your unanswered bug - it's pretty hard for us to address general performance bugs that don't have specific steps to reproduce. We have to focus on fixing what we can see or measure, and hope that it fixes what users are seeing too.

<comment><USER64> Thanks for the response, Matt. Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Congrats to the team and thank you to everyone who contributed (even the smallest bugfix) to help us all.

</comment><comment><USER66> After having some serious problems with the beta, I'm actually very impressed with this release. Even on my parents' old ex-council computer (1ghz P4, 512mb RAM, integrated graphics) this release is lightning fast!

<comment><USER67> Neat! Seems like a leap in performance then.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Does anyone have JavaScript performance benchmarks yet against Chrome?

<comment><USER68> <http://arewefastyet.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Firefox user here since phoenix, switched to Chrome and never looked back. You can't come to par with Chrome to make me switch back, you have to make me shit my pants to do so, and Chrome did when they were the first to bring websockets to the browser. They kept bringing good stuff like web inspector, so no need to download firebug or any other extension. And joining the search bar with the address bar is just genius.

In short, I prefer my browser naked, and Chrome is the best without clothes.

</comment><comment><USER70> Damn them - damn them to hell. The thing that Firefox 3 did in Winidows (XP anyway) that was so useful was that when you deleted trash or spam, it automatically put the pointer on the OK button. Not the OS preference, but a Firefox feature. It didn't work in OS X, but it worked in XP. They took that feature away - I saw it in the beta, but was hoping they really hadn't deleted it. Damn them.

OK, other than that, I like FF4! Just had to vent.

<comment><USER71> Firefox is a browser; how do you delete spam from a browser?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Very nice, the UI is well designed, more screen estate.

Just 2 complaints:

\- The colors's arrows for previous/next are not really visible

\- When on a laptop, I used to open a link in a new tab by right click + open in a new tab. This option was the second one in the previous firefox's version, now it's the first, so I end up opening a lot of links in new window instead of new tab, guess it's only a matter of time till I get the habit :)

<comment><USER73> There's an extension called "Menu Editor" that allows you to edit the context menus in Firefox. It works, but it can be confusing to use, because the context menus are... so contextual.

In your case though, you could just swap the places of the "New Window" and "New Tab" menu items.

Edit: here's a link to the extension <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/menu-editor/>

<comment><USER72> Thanks for the info and the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I hope the addons also get updated for FF4. I upgraded to FF4, but I miss having the CS Lite addon.

'CS Lite' lets me manage cookie permissions for current site without having to go into the preference and go through the long process. Very useful since I usually block cookies and only turn on when needed. The reviews for CS Monster doesn't seem as good.

<comment><USER75> Sometimes you can work around this.

Find the _install.rdf_ file for the plugin, and change the _maxVersion_ variable to "4.*".

It doesn't always work, but I've had good luck with it.

<comment><USER74> Thanks. I'll give it a try later tonight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I just noticed that FF4 also has shiny new javascript confirm and alert popups, complete with a lightbox effect. Nice!

<comment><USER22> And not only are they shiny... they no longer prevent you from switching to other tabs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I still like Opera the most. Easily the most innovative browser and much more enjoyable to use.

</comment><comment><USER77> Will Firefox 3.x auto update to 4?

<comment><USER22> Yes, but not yet. We won't start pushing advertised updates to Firefox 3.x users until a bit after the launch, to give time for any late-breaking issues to shake out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> The new vimperator is out as well, and it's great. this is way better than crome now.

</comment><comment><USER41> Aw... i just wish they didnt swap "new tab" and "new window" in the right- click on link menu. I understand the decision, but im so used to the previous setup that I get owned every time :/

Apart from that, im really happy with this new version!

</comment><comment><USER79> I've been a Chrome user (OS X) for a while, but switched to FF4RC to see if it used less memory than Chrome (not a difficult feat).

It was mostly great, except the UI would stop responding at random for minutes at a time. So I'm back on Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER80> Is Flash not installed by default?

Downloaded FF4 and several sites won't display.

Ex: Youtube says "You need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player to watch this video."

Other sites just don't work.

Maybe I'm out of loop and need to update my desktop flash.

Man, chrome has ruined me with its auto-updating.

</comment><comment><USER81> FF4 add on collection selected by Mozilla [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/collections/mozilla...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/collections/mozilla/firefox-4/)

</comment><comment><USER82> I'd like to try to switch a browser, if I see a simple and cool sync-from- chrome (google account) feature. maybe I don't really need one, and maybe I can use some XML thingy for it, but I'm too lazy

</comment><comment><USER83> Here's a mirror, just in case there are others for whom the main download site is estimating nine hrs to go. (Mac OS X version)

      http://www.macupdate.com/download/10700/Firefox%204.0.dmg

</comment><comment><USER84> I couldn't find any PPAs or packages for Ubuntu, yet. Did anyone else?

<comment><USER85> It's in the firefox-stable PPA now for 10.04 and 10.10:

Instructions here: <http://askubuntu.com/q/6339/235>

<comment><USER86> Does anyone know if they're doing one for 9.10? Googled around, can't find anything on it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Firefox market share is going to continue to shrink as Chrome takes over. They've just been way too slow to respond. It is a shame since feature wise Firefox is a superior browser.

<comment><USER40> Not necessarily. The two are about at market share parity now, and FF4 allows Mozilla to push updates and version numbers more continuously, like Chrome/ium. From this point on it should be a neck-and-neck horse race, but frankly as long as they're both leaving IE in the dust I'm cheering for, and using/developing to/supporting both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Uhg. Had to roll back to 3.6

The new one looks great and seems to run fast, but my most important add-ons weren't supported. I hate being held back by my add-ons, but I have no choice.

</comment><comment><USER89> Please help and advice your friends and family to update :)

Lets help mozilla!

<comment><USER90> No, I will push that moment into the future as far as possible.

Developers underestimate the trouble of "normal people" to adjust to GUIs and then even more to drastic changes in those. At least half of my "customers" for pc support will be rendered helpless once this upgrade comes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> More importantly: Is FireBug available yet for FireFox 4?

<comment><USER34> Yes!

<http://blog.getfirebug.com/2011/03/21/firebug-1-7-0/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Using FF4 on Hacker News main page gives me a popup saying _TypeError: a.textContent is undefined_.

<comment><USER22> I'm not seeing that. Do you have any add-ons or Greasemonkey scripts installed? Try safe mode: <http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+mode>

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> Three finger scroll up and down for home/end in OS X is really nice... I wish this worked in chrome.

</comment><comment><USER94> Wow. Is it me, or do those 'monster characters' on the landing page so really, really amateurish?

</comment><comment><USER95> Has anyone else noticed that you can't drag the window from one space to another under OS X?

<comment><USER96> I thought so too, but it actually works (on 10.6 at least). You must only know where the other spaces are located: North, South,East or West.

Or you can type F8 (default) and drag windows between them that way . . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Have they improved the ability to manage Firefox settings in an enterprise environment?

</comment><comment><USER98> Hopefully we won't have to wait long for Firefox 5 cause Chrome is not sitting still :)

<comment><USER34> Three months.

<comment><USER43> We'll believe it when we see it, but we're definitely rooting for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> just ticked over 6,000,000 downloads (in < 22 hours). well done guys

Edit: USA has top spot at the moment with 1.2 million, followed by Germany with almost 550 thousand

</comment><comment><USER100> Great new browser...Heads off firefox guys..

</comment><comment><USER100> Its very fast compared to firefox 3.6.

</comment><comment><USER101> tab key in form elements is not working. or it's just for me ?

<comment><USER34> Probably just you. There could be a Flash embed in the page that's capturing the keystroke...

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> Doesn't work with my loved Quake Live plugin yet... uninstall :)

</comment><comment><USER103> Count me impressed. I use netbooks a lot and FF4 gave me the best browsing experience I've ever tried on a 10"-screen, Atom-CPU powered PC. Performance improvements and the amount of space it saves on a small screen for my usage are pretty amazing. Kudos Mozilla for another great release!

EDIT: Just noticed that FF4 allows me to resize text-fields that render quite small because of the small screen. Small, relative-sized text-fields can be easily resized to a convenient size.

<comment><USER104> I'm on a netbook too (old one: 901), and FF is my preferred desktop/dev browser, but Runfield is unplayably slow in FF4(2-3fps maybe) on my netbook, whereas Chrome (10.0.6b) feels like it's hitting 15-20fps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Two things:

1\. Sync is totally not up to par. It doesn't inform what it does in the background and there is no place to check on the web what it uploads. I am not sure why FF even bothered to release this feature when it is not even ready (there are several people complaining about many things of Sync at the Add-on review).

2\. The bookmark/history manager can use upgrade/better features. Ever since the Delicious fiasco, FF could possibly play a better role in adding modern bells and whistles to its bookmarks manager.

Other than above two, I'm not complaining.

<comment><USER34> Sync intentionally doesn't allow you to see your data on the web: _it's encrypted_. If you could view it through a webpage, it could be stolen or subpoenaed, and we're not willing to take that risk with your passwords and history.

If you want to see what Sync is doing, you can add the Sync icon to the Add-on toolbar. If you _really_ want to see what it's doing, turn on logging and look in about:sync-log!

<comment><USER105> Speaking of private data and encryption, do you know which FF file is responsible for History data? I know the Bookmarks json file but I'm looking to keep my history file as a backup too (which I believe FF doesn't backup like it does bookmarks). I hope it isn't places.sqlite file because it gets ridiculously huge even after you wipe your data clean.

I wish to rely on my own backup system for both bookmarks and history data as both of them are important on continuous basis and both of them should be user's own responsibility (unlike what delicious or many other bookmarks syncing services may tell you).

<comment><USER22> Yes, places.sqlite stores the history. The reason it grows by large increments (and does not shrink to very small sizes) is to prevent file fragmentation, which can have a big effect on the speed of the browser.

<comment><USER52> And, I'd assume that even if deleting history doesn't shrink places.squlite, someone who wants to create a backup will be compressing it. And a mostly empty but large file _should_ compress to a tiny file, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Addons manager looks nice and useful compared to previous one but still I know many people who would prefer to use package managers for managing addons

</comment><comment><USER107> Still my Pareto principle usage of FF: Firebug + Web dev. Toolbar.

If only those extentions functions exactly the same with webkit browsers.If only...Does anybody hearing me?

</comment><comment><USER108> You can download the Firefox 4 Final from here : [http://www.techsavys.info/2011/03/firefox-4-final- downloads-...](http://www.techsavys.info/2011/03/firefox-4-final-downloads- available-though-its-not-officially-launched-configure-your-latest-firefox-to- run-older-add-ons.html)

<comment><USER109> Or you could download it right from mozilla's own website, <http://firefox.com> and bypass the blogspam.</comment></comment>


Woot To AP: You Owe Us $17.50 For Copying Our Content - <AUTHOR> http://consumerist.com/2010/07/woot-to-ap-you-owe-us-1750-for-copying-our-content.html

<comment><USER2> This is already on the front page here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1490284>

And a follow-up here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1492344></comment>


The Legend of Abraham Wald – solving problem of armoring planes - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fc-2016-06 <comment><USER2> The key data:[1]

Probability of surviving a single hit:

        Entire aircraft .851
        Engine          .588
        Fuselage        .940
        Fuel system     .973
        Others          .939

That's pretty clear.

The A-10 Warthog, however, has most of its armor around the pilot, who sits in what's called a "titanium bathtub". This is very popular with pilots. So was armoring the back of the pilot's seat in WWII.

[1] [http://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf](http://people.ucsc.edu/~msmangel/Wald.pdf)

<comment><USER3> More of the British pilots parachuted into friendly hands because majority of the air battle in the "Battle for Britain" was over Britain. The Germans started to face a pilot shortage. Arguably the British should have focused on pilot and crew survival (vs. aircraft survival) at least for the fighters. The US rotated pilots back from front to train the next generation while the Germans continued to fly missions leading to more German aces but arguably better trained US pilots (on average).</comment></comment>


Windows Accessibility Tools, for Hackers Too? - <AUTHOR> https://www.honestrepair.net/index.php/2018/08/26/windows-accessibility-tools-for-hackers-too/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also on Github...

[https://github.com/zelon88/Accessibility-Tools-utilmon- Defen...](https://github.com/zelon88/Accessibility-Tools-utilmon-Defender)</comment>


Wildcard - <AUTHOR> http://www.trywildcard.com/

<comment><USER2> NB: This startup had raised $10M prior to launch: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/13/wildcard- raises-10-million-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/13/wildcard- raises-10-million-launches-a-browser-built-for-the-mobile-web/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Happy to talk about it if anybody is interested...

<comment><USER4> Looks pretty cool man, congrats on the launch!</comment></comment>


Canadian Prime Minister: $400M to Strengthen Canadian VC - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalnews.ca/harper+announces+400+million+plan+to+strengthen+venture+capital+investment/6442788205/story.html

<comment><USER3> I do not believe government should be in the business to fund VCs. Canada has several pension funds and mutual funds and most of then seem to be doing well; if American VCs can raise their funds from their pension funds, why do the Canadian VCs need a hand out from the government even while Canadian funds are actively participating in American Venture funds. Most likely the Canadian VCs who do receive government money under this program will do so because of their political connections and they will end up funding their cousins's start-ups.

<comment><USER4> It's true that long-term the government shouldn't be investing, but it can sometimes help to get things going. Israel was successful in this regard - <USER2> gave some funding in the 90's and then got out of the way. The questions is if Canada really needs that same boost.

<comment><USER5> Is having a boost the wrong thing to do? In any case, it strengthens the country's economy, if spent correctly.

<comment><USER6> That's the point, the government is completely clueless how to make good choices on the market. All this kind of government intervention in specific areas is the root of bubbles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This just takes money from taxpayers who won't see a dime of the upside and gives it to VCs so they won't have to risk a dime on the downside. Why is this a good idea?

<comment><USER8> Venture capital largely gets spent on employee salaries. At worse, the money while it lasts will create good jobs - think of it as a Keynesian stimulus, something the Conservative government's not usually known for. At best, it jumpstarts a lot of legitimate growth, like Israel's 1993 Yozma plan.

I suspect most of the people in this thread are just grousing because they don't like their government, and therefore don't like anything it does. But Canada's been starved for venture capital for a long time, which has resulted in a lot of unnecessary brain drain. No program is guaranteed to succeed, but here Harper's doing something quite smart.

<comment><USER6> A Keynesian stimulus hardly works. It's been tried many, many times, with always the same results: close to none, or ending up in worse situation in the mid-term, by modifying the market incentives and removing cash that would be invested somewhere else by private entities. It is not about not liking one's government, this kind of government intervention is opposed to democracy and free market.

<comment><USER9> Saying this is "opposed to democracy" is extremely hyperbolic. Your comment would be stronger without...

<comment><USER6> Well, spending tons of cash that does not belong to you (but to the taxpayers) to favor certain interests and not others can hardly be called democratic. Only free markets are democratic, hence you will see that stimulus are largely employed in authoritarian regims rather than actual democraties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stephen Gordon has a good take on this: [http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/14/stephen-harper-state- vent...](http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/14/stephen-harper-state-venture- capitalist/)

<comment><USER8> Stephen Gordon doesn't know what he's talking about. Take this, for example:

 _In a market economy, the excess demand for venture capital would be closed by a price adjustment: entrepreneurs would be obliged to accept smaller injections of capital, would have to offer more control of their firms, or some combination of the two._

This is only true if entrepreneurs _have_ to stay entrepreneurs, _have_ to stay in the Canadian market, and _have_ to take venture capital, no matter how crap the deal. Since none of these things are particularly true, Canada ends up with fewer entrepreneurs, emigrating entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs who simply do without and grow their companies more slowly - and none of those are particularly great for the Canadian economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I will believe it when they start making money available, being an Ontario based business in the GTA owned by a white male non minority not in the middle of the sticks.... youre gonna be out of luck.

I went through no less than 50 funds available for companies in Ontario and didnt qualify for a single one. Yet, if I was in North West Territories and native... I would have millions at my disposal.

<comment><USER12> Yeah they hand out million dollar bills to anyone who isn't white. It's happening everywhere and you're missing out. Boo hoo.

Get over your centre of the universe racism and make something of value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is that a stack of greenbacks they are flipping through? :)</comment>


Ask HN: How to sell an app making $350k a year? - <AUTHOR>

We've got a very high profile app (iOS + Mac) that we're potentially looking to sell but I'm at a total loss where we could find a potential buyer.
It's generating about $350k a year ($1k a day avg). How would we go about finding a buyer for an app generating this sort of money?
If you're interested in talking, feel free to email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and I can provide more information.
The app name is intentionally kept secret as it's quite well-known. <comment><USER2> Patrick McKenzie used a broker to sell Bingo Card Creator:

[https://twitter.com/patio11/status/585837620057350145](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/585837620057350145) [https://twitter.com/patio11/status/585837902883454977](https://twitter.com/patio11/status/585837902883454977)

</comment><comment><USER3> Website brokers and such would be your best bet. Example feinternational.com or anyone else that is reputable would be the best bet for you to sell your app.

</comment><comment><USER4> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9588901](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9588901) flippa.com is mentioned in there, for example.

</comment><comment><USER5> With that revenue, why sell it? Could you not hire someone to maintain? Just curious.</comment>


What Emacs Commands Do You Use Most and Find Most Useful? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8lfx7/what_emacs_commands_do_you_use_most_and_find_most/

<comment><USER2> Keyboard macros are great. C-x ( to start recording, C-x ) to finish, C-x e to execute. You can also do Meta-999 C-x e, which will execute your macro 999 times (or until it reaches the end of the file). It's great for turning, say, a CSV file into a sed script.

Or into a list of insert statements if you're too lazy to read up on how to use sqlldr.

</comment><comment><USER3> M-x todo-show for recoding what I'm doing :) I use the text commands quite equally. Really need to start using org-mode properly.

</comment><comment><USER4> M-x goto-line which I bind to C-x :

<comment><USER5> M-g M-g runs goto-line as well ( on my default installation ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> C-x z (z z z z z z ...)

Repeats the last command. Awesome "combinatoriality"!

</comment><comment><USER7> M-x indent-buffer

<comment><USER8> (defun iwb () "indent whole buffer" (interactive) (delete-trailing-whitespace) (indent-region (point-min) (point-max) nil) (untabify (point-min) (point- max)))

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> M-x indent-buffer

</comment><comment><USER9> M-x align !!!</comment>


Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> Norman Borlaug is truly a forgotten hero. As a kid growing up in India, the story about the Green Revolution went somewhat like this: "In the early 60's, India realised that we would face massive food shortages. So, a program of research was initiated and scientists came up with better quality crops. The man most responsible for this was Mr.M.S. Swaminathan (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._S._Swaminathan)>

Its true that Mr.Swaminathan was instrumental in leading the effort that adapted the foreign crops to Indian tastes (yes, the rice/wheat apparently tasted/looked unappealing). But the most significant breakthrough was by Mr.Borlaug, who I heard about only after reading this excellent article as an adult: [http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/09/13/norman-borlaug- th...](http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/09/13/norman-borlaug-the-man-who- saved-a-billion-people/)

Without Mr.Borlaug's initiative, progress in India would not have been possible. He has my sincerest gratitude for his work.

</comment><comment><USER3> He is well known and deservedly celebrated among groups where few people suffer from the naturalist fallacy, such as libertarians and futurists

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately such groups have very little power and are generally looked down on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Henry A Wallace did for America what Norman Borlaug did for the world; he's a lot more familiar, and his story is as tremendous.

Not very exciting but a summary: [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=w00...](http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=w000077)

As a child he walked the countryside around Iowa State University with Emeritus Professor George Washington Carver, learning to love biology.

As a scientist he determined canny American farmers wouldn't accept a handout, but would buy better seed stock, so formed Pioneer Hybrid seed company (in his back yard) and marketed better seed as a new American ideal.

As VP and Secty of Ag, he formed the US Agriculture Extension program to promote agriculture education across American and around the world via Research Stations.

For better or for worse, he's personally responsible for the use of corn as the standard crop. He changed the direction of the world, and can be credited with feeding billions.

</comment><comment><USER6> That article is more than a decade old! Much water has flown under the bridge since then. Fast forward to 2012, the "developed world" itself is conceding there are also many problems with this "green revolution" approach, that it is no longer appropriate to continue with this monocultural, faddish fixation of "technological, scientific solution always saves the world". For e.g:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1029447...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102944731)

/rant

Meanwhile all aspects of food and water, both of which are a fundamental human need, has been heavily commoditised and abstracted out of our view all the way to _reductio ad absurdum_ levels in modern discourse. It is going to take several unmitigated disasters before nuanced views around this topic will even gain traction.

/rant

<comment><USER7> From what I previously read on india:

Farmers often waste water because water is "free", and the majority of the food often rot. This exacerbate the problem of farming enough for everyone eat.

We'll need technological solution, in addition to taking a variety of non- technological measures in order to protect our harvest and the local environment, such as encouraging farmers to use only as much water necessary to grow their crops.

<comment><USER4> We already have that technology.

It is called capitalism and it has worked wonders in the west (how many people are starving in the UK?). Start by charging whatever the water cost to produce and see the changes that makes.

I keep being surprised by people who hate capitalism so much that they would rather see people starve.

<comment><USER8> You can't charge what the water 'cost', it was thousands of years of filtering into the underground aquifers. And it is too late, the water has been used. Same problem with any non- or slow replenishing natural resource that we've been boosting off of at accelerated rates. When they run out dependent systems have the potential for rapid failure, much more rapid than we are likely to come up with solutions for, and people will die. Supply and demand work, but people will die in the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Forgotten by whom?</comment>


Bad Code Offsets: An Update - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Bad-Code-Offsets-An-Update.aspx

<comment><USER2> Personally, I wouldn't write an essay for $500. Maybe some students with open source projects would consider doing this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet again, the underheight among us are discriminated against. The shirts only go up to 3XL.

</comment><comment><USER4> personally speaking, I owe jquery several beers.</comment>


Show HN: Hedphones – Track releases of the artists you follow on Spotify - <AUTHOR> https://hedphon.es <comment><AUTHOR> This is a project that I've been working on as a side project for the past 4 months. Hedphones is using Django and Bulma along with the Spotify API. It's been an idea rolling around in my head for a while now and I'm excited to finally get it out there. I've opened space for 50 beta testers.

I wrote a blog post to explain what Hedphones is all about: [https://hedphon.es/blog/1/say-hello-to- hedphones](https://hedphon.es/blog/1/say-hello-to-hedphones)

Or if you want a quick rundown, you can read the FAQ: [https://hedphon.es/faq/](https://hedphon.es/faq/)

Or you can skip all that and go straight to the beta signup form : [https://hedphon.es/beta-signup/](https://hedphon.es/beta-signup/)

Let me know what you think!

<comment><USER2> Awesome project! I will be signing up for the beta.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Hope you enjoy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks great, but it has the same name as this project: [https://github.com/rembo10/headphones](https://github.com/rembo10/headphones)

<comment><AUTHOR> You scared me for a minute. My project is missing the "a" in "head". So it's a little different.

<comment><USER3> Ah, you are completely right! My mind added an a on it own.

If I were using spotify I would sign up!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do we put up with such restrictive IP contracts? - <AUTHOR> I've been a professional software developer for only 5 years. However I've found that 2 of my employers, one being in the Forbes Top 10 Largest American Companies, have a clause in their employment contract stating anything planned, developed or created during the employment period (including outside of work, not using the employers tools) is the property of the employers.
I've read about this a lot over the years, have continued to work on side projects and develop things in my own time. However I'd be wary of the legal battle I'd find myself in if I ever succeeded.
I'm not in the US, and I know in many parts of the world this clause isn't enforceable. But it's always in the back of my mind when I release or begin new projects.
Why do we put up with these clauses?
I felt like I haven't fought against this because I've wanted these jobs. But it seems so nefarious, and considered "business as usual" to everyone. It feels so wrong. <comment><USER2> I just cross that stuff out or negotiate it to something reasonable.</comment>


H.I.V. Arrived in the U.S. Long Before 'Patient Zero' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/health/hiv-patient-zero-genetic-analysis.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> This isn't really news.

It didn't take people that long to realize Dugas wasn't some sort of Typhoid Mary of AIDS. But he was a psychopath that infected hundreds of people even after he was aware he had a contagious, fatal disease.</comment>


How to Change Your WhatsApp Settings Before Facebook Data Sharing Begins - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/how-keep-your-whatsapp-data-whatsapp <comment><USER2> It won't make a difference. Your data has been shared[1] ("Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us") and will be shared more aggressively as time passes.

Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19.3 billion[1]. That's $19,300,000,000. Among the companies that least respects user privacy, Facebook spent this money for a reason.

WhatsApp is just going through the expected process of amending their legal policies for clarity and to more closely mimic Facebook's business practices[1]: "We may amend or update our Privacy Policy. We will provide you notice of amendments to this Privacy Policy, as appropriate"

[1] [https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-our-global- op...](https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-our-global-operations)

[2] [http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/19/technology/social/facebook-w...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/19/technology/social/facebook- whatsapp/)</comment>


The Ultimate Productivity Blog - <AUTHOR> http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> Some blog. No updates in over a year! I need a lot more tips on how to be productive than that. Maybe a few productivity app reviews and a guest editorial by Leo Babauta.

Plus why were there no comments allowed? How am I supposed to write lengthy, carefully thought out responses?

And not even any funny videos like Merlin Mann has. I bet this is just a slacker, who thinks productivity means having a funny idea once and then ignoring it.

Anyway, I'm outta here. My Lifehacker RSS subscription has 346 unread items.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's great. I was doing work, checked google reader ("just for a minute"), followed the YC link, and then resolved to buckle down and get some work done.

After I post here of course...

</comment><comment><USER4> But thinking about doing work is easier than actually doing it - and as an added bonus I get to feel productive.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was disappointed to learn there was no RSS feed.

How will I add this to my reader to remind me to stop wasting time?</comment>


Sony reaches $2m Shenmue III game target on Kickstarter within hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33144515 <comment><USER2> They got a fair amount of time to promote this at Sony's E3 event, so I imagine that the value of the marketing already put into Shenmue III is worth more than those 2 million, which begs the question. If Sony is willing to promote this so much, why aren't they willing to invest?

Or to put it bluntly: it fucking sucks when studios use Kickstarter when they are in no need of crowdfunding.

<comment><USER3> Why does it suck that they use Kickstarter? It's validating the idea, and helps to confirm that the market exists.

Despite Shenmue's critical acclaim, it's not certain that the market exists. For comparison , Yakuza 1 and 2 (Yakuza is basically a spiritual successor to Shenmue in many ways) only sold 30k and 50k in the US market.

<comment><USER4> So this now reached it's funding goal with 30k bakers, why does that confirm the market exists when Yakuza selling 50k copies is considered a failure ?

<comment><USER5> 30,000 people are willing to "buy" this game 2+ years before it even gets released within just 10 hours of it's "announcement". There are still 31 days to go on the kickstarter campaign, and a lot of people who didn't watch Sony's E3 presentation yesterday are waking up to the news of this right now.

That means once the game is released, has an actual marketing/advertising budget, and word of mouth spreads, it's probably going to sell significantly more than that. They are also certainly going to port Shenmue 1 and 2, (since a lot of people will want to play the originals) so those should also sell reasonably well.

<comment><USER6> This is why, even as a very indie Kickstarter creator myself, I don't begrudge the big studio's use of Kickstarter this way.

I'd rather see a shift toward creators getting paid for the work they do, which they put in one way or another, and away from absolute dependence on the market for post-hoc validation. Not a 100% shift ("real artists ship"), but toward an economic model that doesn't leave creators so beholden to such narrow sources of capital as a single publisher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am beyond excited! I never thought Shenmue 3 would be released. I remember when Shenmue 1 came out, it was billed as Yu Suzuki's opus, and at the time the world's most expensive game at 70 million USD. To leave your opus unfinished must be hard, so I'm glad he's getting to finish it up properly (or, given the success, continue it).

For a certain generation of gamer, Shenmue isn't just a game, it's an event. It's a game I've often thought of over the years, to me it felt like a truly adult gaming experience. And to this day I still feel like it's one of the best examples of using gaming as a storytelling medium. I thought I would have to go my whole life not knowing if Ryo Hazuki would get revenge on Lan Di, and now, finally I'll get some closure.

<comment><USER8> Any idea of the English versions do it credit or if a lot is lost in translation?

<comment><USER7> I've actually never compared the two versions to see if one is much better than the other. At the time it was released, it was kind of a fact that the translations lost some/major nuance, however I played them in English and enjoyed them greatly nonetheless. I'd say treat it as translated literature: the translation perhaps isn't enough to do scholarly work on, but for enjoyment's sake it's probably just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can find it on Kickstarter here:

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3)

I didn't see the link in the article.

</comment><comment><USER10> Shenmue I was the most expensive game ever created at the time, costing around $70 million, on Dreamcast hardware. It took five years to develop.

Realistically, how is $2 million going to be enough to fund a PS4-era sequel, presumably with completely new technology (based on the trailer)?

<comment><USER11> Nobody said kickstarter is the only funding.

Sony is paying something for the exclusivity, I imagine. They might also be matching 2:1 or something. Who knows?

The kickstarter is only a day old, this amount of press will grow that $2M.

Plus they're using UE4, saving a lot vs the custom engine of Shenmue I.

We only have one piece of the financial puzzle, here.

<comment><USER12> This is from their kickstarter page:

"The real challenge now is to deliver a sequel that we will all be satisfied with after 14 years of waiting. After much research and planning, we set the funding goal at this level believing it will make possible a fulfilling Shenmue experience."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I never played any of the Shenmue games. I know a couple people that are big fans, though, so I'm happy for them.

As a devops guy, I was more entertained by the effect of Shenmue 3's announcement on the Kickstarter servers. Props to them for the quick recovery!

<comment><USER14> There was a lot of that going around yesterday. For me the most amusing was Twitch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does it bother anyone else when a company that does not need a kick starter uses it? That's not really what it was meant for you know :s

<comment><USER16> But then they simply wouldn't do it because the risk is too large. This gives them hard data on traction before they've even talked to distributors. So it works out well for people. Unlike a traditional pre-sale, these contributors _should_ understand that the game might not ever be released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What excited me most in that article is the line "The press event also saw Sony announce that long-awaited game The Last Guardian would soon be released."

</comment><comment><USER18> I played one of the original two games and really don't understand the appeal. All I remember is walking around slowly and tediously, talking to shopkeeps and playing pachinko or whatever. Pretty heady stuff.

</comment><comment><USER19> For those asking "Why was this announced at the Sony event?", note that according to the rewards, Shenmue 3 will be a PlayStation 4 exclusive for consoles: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ysnet/shenmue-3)

<comment><USER20> Could just be a timed exclusive because in the FAQ they said that they haven't decided on plans for other consoles.

I think it should be relatively trivial to port, at least to Xbox One and other PC platforms. The Wii U might take some extra effort to work within the constraints of the hardware, but I'm not sure.

<comment><USER19> It's _definitely_ not getting ported to the Wii U.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> why is a billion dollar company using kickstarter?

<comment><USER22> Because the BBC apparently stopped fact checking. It's a separate studio, not a part of Sony.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> $100k per language subtitules? Really?

<comment><USER24> 1\. stretch goals are just sales goals, there's no reason they have to correspond to actual costs.

2\. that's gross, not net. Subtract 5% for kickstarter, 3% for the credit cards, royalties for game shipments and reward costs, and you're probably looking at less than $50K

3\. good professional translation costs ~$30K per man-month if you use an agency. I wouldn't be surprised if Shenmue contains more than a novel's worth of text.

<comment><USER25> As per 2. I fail to see how number of supported languages directly increases cost of game shipments (per unit)?

I'd say that just put arbitrary numbers in there since the project will require much more than $2 mil. to complete.

You are right about points 1. and 3. though.

<comment><USER26> Point 2 is referring to fulfillment of Kickstarter costs, not translation. Backers on Kickstarter receive rewards with their pledges, which someone has to pay for, including shipping on not just games but also t-shirts, art books, and other novelties (most likely internationally). Part of the money earned will go towards that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Present or build your startup at Startup Riot and win $10k investment - <AUTHOR> http://startupriot.com/show/atlanta-2012

<comment><USER2> I've pitched at StartupRiot twice now and it gets better every year. Sanjay and his team put on an AMAZING event with great speakers. People like David Hauser, Andrew Warner, Robert Scoble etc have been there in the past.

It's a huge opportunity to meet people that can help you start or grow your company. DO IT.

</comment><comment><USER3> I presented at Startup Riot and it was a life-changing day. There are great presenters to learn from, the chance to get some exposure and make connections with like-minded people and investors. If you're running a startup, this is a great opportunity to move it ahead.</comment>


Engineering chat improvements at Twitch - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitch.tv/2014/04/technically-speaking-group-chat-and-general-chat-engineering/

<comment><USER2> My chat-bots keep breaking, I know they are working to make the service better overall but it's a tad frustrating :D</comment>


A Week on the Wrist: Apple Watch Series 4 - <AUTHOR> https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/apple-watch-series-4-review <comment><USER2> From the CDC:

More than 750,000 hospitalizations occur each year because of AFib. The condition contributes to an estimated 130,000 deaths each year. The death rate from AFib as the primary or a contributing cause of death has been rising for more than two decades.3,4

AFib costs the United States about $6 billion each year. Medical costs for people who have AFib are about $8,705 higher per year than for people who do not have AFib.

AFib Facts An estimated 2.7–6.1 million people in the United States have AFib. With the aging of the U.S. population, this number is expected to increase. Approximately 2% of people younger than age 65 have AFib, while about 9% of people aged 65 years or older have AFib. African Americans are less likely than those of European descent to have AFib. Because AFib cases increase with age and women generally live longer than men, more women than men experience AFib.[1]

I think the inclusion of a ECG and afib detection is going to make a huge difference in many people's lives.

Also consider that they may have raised the price, but not hugely significantly. I've had two ECGs done in the past year, and I'm sure each one cost my insurance more than the price difference of the watch.

One of my friends is highly skeptical of Apple's privacy and who will have access to this data, but as far as I can tell Apple does not have access to, or share health data with anyone. Although, maybe we should be concerned about people giving insurance access to this data without realizing the implications to their coverage/premiums.

[1]: [https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fs_atr...](https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fs_atrial_fibrillation.htm)

<comment><USER3> > One of my friends is highly skeptical of Apple's privacy and who will have > access to this data, but as far as I can tell Apple does not have access to, > or share health data with anyone.

By default, the data stays on your device or is encrypted end-to-end if you store it in iCloud. A while back you could share your heart data for a health study, but you had to opt in.

<comment><USER2> That's what I thought, I was trying to find information on their policies about metadata collection or anything like that, I didn't spend much time looking though.

But given Apple's stance and track record with privacy I'd be amazed if they violated that with health data.

<comment><USER4> Once it's in the cloud, the government (NSA) can read it on demand, encryption or not.

Edit: "No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information." Strong words, and AES-128, maybe I was wrong.

<comment><USER3> They can't if the only keys to access it are on your device, unless there's a fundamental flaw in how our cryptography is supposed to work.

<comment><USER4> > unless there's a fundamental flaw in our cryptography

They compromised elliptic curves. Otherwise it depends on what Apple uses for encryption.

<comment><USER5> If this is your argument, then nothing on this planet is secure or safe from the NSA. Take into account the speculative execution related flaws, like Spectre and Meltdown, found in all major CPUs (including ARM based ones), nothing is unbreakable.

<comment><USER4> There are many encryption methods safe from the NSA, but you are right, once they attack the CPU backbones almost nothing on the market is unbreakable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Haptic feedback is huge. I think it is one of the most important ui innovations in the last few years, and the occasional ridicule apple receives for putting so much effort into it is extremely misguided.

Haptic feedback removes the most crippling weakness of the touchscreen, the inability to use it without looking.

<comment><USER3> > Haptic feedback removes the most crippling weakness of the touchscreen, the > inability to use it without looking.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that. But it does make interacting with a touch screen feel a lot more "physical".

<comment><USER6> I am more thinking about going. There is no reason why we wont soon begin to see implementations where you can find interact-able elements without looking by simply dragging your finger around on the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > The most apparent size difference is actually the thickness – the 0.7mm > shaved off the back (mostly from the sensor array) makes a huge difference > in terms of comfort and you feel it the moment you put one of these new > models on.

Does it really? I think this is an exaggeration. I went from a 10.5mm first- generation Apple Watch (which is _thinner_ that this one!) to a 11.4mm Series 2, and I couldn't notice the difference. So I'm not optimistic on this being a perceivable difference–I guess I'll see on Friday.

<comment><USER7> I'll speak up and agree with the parent.

I don't really like the Apple Watch, so my bias is limited. But, I've had a S0 (returned), S1 (returned), and S2 (sits on night stand most of the time).

For whatever reason, the S2 is noticeably thinner and more comfortable for me. It may be because I have relatively small, bony wrists but YMMV.

Hell, I'm not sure how Apple measures the thinness, but eyeballing a borrowed S0 vs my S2, I can eyeball a thickness difference, albeit maybe just with the glass circle thing jutting out from the bottom?

In case anyone is curious why I don't care for the Apple Watch:

\- I care about truly few notifications (texts).

\- I expect to lift my wrist and look at the watch and see the date and time immediately, every time. The Apple Watch doesn't really do this. Sometimes it shows me an audio interface instead, which you can disable. But a lot of the time, the Watch doesn't even flip on when I turn my wrist unless I turn it a specific way and speed.

<comment><USER8> My S3 very reliably presents text notifications to me. I wonder why yours doesn't.

As an aside, I'm also curious why you keep buying them if you just keep returning them.

<comment><USER7> I didn't say anything about text notifications being unreliable. Sorry if my wording is confusing.

On your second point, I kept going back and forth on the Watch's usefulness and WatchOS was being frequently updated upon, delivering new features rapidly. I'm over that now, hence my low interest in the subsequent S3 and S4 releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really wish someone would step up to the plate with an Android or open platform smartwatch that even approaches the level of quality of the Apple watches. Their watches are slick but I'm very much opposed to "buying in" to the system. Correct me if I'm wrong, but an Apple watch without an iPhone to talk to (and subsequent iCloud account, apple text messages, Apple music etc) is just a very pretty watch with swappable faces, yea?

<comment><USER10> How do you define "quality"? There are smart watches from Samsung, Garmin, and other vendors which are superior in some ways but worse it others. It depends on what you want. All of those are open in the sense that you can write your own apps.

<comment><USER9> Wait, I wasn't sure if any of those have a cellular radio in them - that was the first thing that comes to mind. I do like the Galaxy Watch quite a bit though, though it requires "buy in" to Samsung's suite of things (Samsung Pay instead of Android Pay/Google Pay for example... which is just me preferring google stuff over samsung to be fair).

<comment><USER10> The Samsung Gear watch includes 4G LTE connectivity just like the Apple watch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article has all the elements of a sponsored review but it was done extremely well and the author provided many detail information which I have to give him credit for that. The ECG feature is the only reason I would ever buy an iWatch, if it works as advertised. Apple is smart to focus in the health niche as there are no other valid reasons an average person would ever need a smart watch in their life.

<comment><USER12> >no other valid reasons an average person would ever need a smart watch in their life.

I'm not a particular smart watch fanboy but here are a few reasons:

\- notifications (of which I use very few)

\- GPS tracking (hiking, running, etc.). That's partly health but not really.

\- Potentially do some phone-related things when your phone isn't handy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A couple of years ago I really wanted to get a smart watch. After reading and reading and reading about them, I realised: buying a smart watch is actually pretty dumb. For the same amount of money, I could buy an automatic watch which will never need a battery replaced, never spy on me, never require patches, never fall out of software support — and will be with me for years to come.

So I went out and bought a few nice automatic watches, and I've been incredibly happy since. Each of my watches tells time, each looks good, and each will still be running years after every smart watch sold in 2016 is powered off.

This particular Apple watch is IMHO too big, and mesh bracelets look very 1980s to me.

<comment><USER14> Years ago I wanted to buy a computer but then I realized that I could also buy a bike which is much better because a bike doesn't use electricity /s

<comment><USER15> Any operation you can do on a computer I can do on my abacus. It never needs to be charged and I enjoy the mechanical nature of its computations. Saved a bunch of money too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone have thoughts on if this is worthwhile?

Out of FAANG, I find Apple the closest to capitulation because they need to keep their luxury product audience buying their product instead of competitors who seem more willing to take risks.

Every Apple announcement seems more like an 'evolution than revolution' per the article, and this doesnt seem any different.

Is this the best watch on the market?

EDIT: whoops- PRAISE APPLE, thank you steve jobs for your sacrifice.

<comment><USER3> > Is this the best watch on the market?

Without a doubt. Google Wear lacks focus, Pebble is dead, and there's more offerings like Garmin or Fitbit that are nice but have a smaller scope. But yes, this is still an "evolutionary" release.

<comment><USER12> There are still a lot of tradeoffs in the space. The Garmin Fenix is arguably better for serious runners and backpackers in part because of better battery life and probably being more rugged.

But they're huge even for 6 ft. large-limbed me.

And I could never get my remanufactured Fenix 3 to consistently measure distance accurately on twisty turny trails no matter what settings I played with.

Battery life is definitely still an issue. In fact, I often travel with just a cheap Timex so it's one less thing I need to bother with.

<comment><USER17> The tracking issues have largely been cleaned up on the Fenix 5. It works well enough day to day for me, showing notifications from apps on my phone, allows me to blacklist apps, and has all of the features I need as a "serious" runner and backpacker/hunter. The Apple Watch isn't playing in that space though.

<comment><USER12> I was a bit on the fence between Apple and Garmin before a trip earlier this year where I really wanted a new GPS watch. I decided to spring for the Apple Watch but I wouldn't be surprised if there were another Fenix in my future at some point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61B18C20100212 <comment><USER2> These early tests are always declared to work FSVO "working".

Note it fired a "test laser" and instruments on the missile indicated the laser had a "hit". So they didn't actually disable/destroy the missile - basically it was a computer controlled Lazer Tag setup.

Mission accomplished = more funding.

<comment><USER3> They did, in fact, destroy the missile. The articles about this event are badly worded. From the original MDA Press Release:

At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low- energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.

However, the fact that they were able to do it from the ALTB during the boost phase of the missile launch (first two minutes!) is worthless. To do this during an actual ICBM attack would require /many/ ALTBs to be flying over enemy territory at the time of launch. This is because of simple physics. The earth is round. ICBM launches take place on the other side of the earth. The ICBM will no longer be in the super vulnerable boost phase when we can target them with the ALTB platform.

The immediate reaction is that satellites would solve this problem. But, there are two problems with that idea. First, to make a laser powerful enough to destroy/disable an ICBM requires a lot of space (there's a reason they use a 747 and it's not sex appeal). Satellites just aren't big enough or powerful enough or reliable enough to be effective platforms.... and we'd need /a lot/ of satellites. Second, there are treaties about weapons in space that no one wants to break. Modern society (particularly the United States) are too heavily invested in delicate satellites for communications, commerce, etc. Once weapons are allowed up there... back to the industrial era we go.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Against Russia or China, this kind of a system is worthless. I believe that the contractor is selling this as deterrent against Iran or North Korea.

... And even then it's worthless, because if either wanted to nuke the US, they wouldn't launch it on a missile, they'd pack it on a ship and sail it to New York.

<comment><USER4> From a certain perspective, it is actually good that this is worthless against China or Russia: namely, if they don't perceive it as a threat, then they won't fight its deployment or try to build up arms in response.

Consequently, it may prove useful in neutralizing the threat posed by medium- to-long-range weapons possessed by particular actors (Iran, North Korea) to allies in the region. (I say allies because I agree with you - if they wanted to attack the US, doing so via conventional means would be extraordinarily foolish.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> and for $10, nathan myrvolhd can user a laser to track and detect a mosquito, distinguish those carrying malaria from those who aren't, and then shoot down the ones carrying malaria.... nice [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/using-lasers-to- zap...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/using-lasers-to-zap..).

<comment><USER6> Of course, his firm is just a patent troll, so this will likely never see the light of day.

<comment><USER7> Patent trolls don't normally go out and _invent_ the product they've patented. I'd put this one fractional step above typical trolling.

PS: That video OWNS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This year's defense budget is the largest (as a share of GDP) since WWII. Right now, getting our economy and debt under control seem like they would do far more to ensure our future national security than incredibly expensive missile defense systems. It seems to me like you should only spend money on this stuff when you actually have money.

And really, lasers? What happens when they coat the missiles in something reflective? $200 worth of shiny metallic paint foils $200 million worth of laser.

</comment><comment><USER9> What happens when they start making mirror coated missiles?

</comment><comment><USER10> "...at a range of hundreds of kilometers (miles)."

<comment><USER11> Yeah, units schmunitz, who really cares. It's Friday, there are lasers in the air, and everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It looks more and more obvious to me that over the next forty years or so we are going to start seeing true laser and particle weapons.

And they're not going to be anything like they are in science-fiction and fantasy. With blindness, invisibility of attack, instantaneous hits, and extreme heat? Much more scary, actually.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Actually, that's pretty much how good sci-fi treats lasers. Try reading "Consider Phlebas" by Iain M. Banks, it has a rather good scene of liberal use of laser weapons. It's a good book in other ways too, at least as long as you can stand the blatant socialism. :)

In any case, I rather doubt laser weapons will get much use at ground level, if only because of rain/various kinds of active smoke you can use to defend yourself.

<comment><USER12> Yes. I should have said "pop sci-fi" but you are correct.

I'd imagine, because of the problems with atmospherics, before we see ground- level lasers we'll see shorter-range UAV-to-ground weapons. Perhaps satellites first. Silent invisible death from the sky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> WOOT. One step closer to my death star!

Can I get a "may the (us armed) force(s) be with you?"</comment>


Keylength – Cryptographic Key Length Recommendation - <AUTHOR> https://www.keylength.com/ <comment><USER2> You probably shouldn't even _entertain the notion_ of RSA or finite field Diffie Hellman anymore. In general...

Public key encryption: Use X25519 (RFC 7748) then 256-bit symmetric-key encryption in an AEAD mode. (When in doubt, ChaCha20-Poly1305 is a great choice with ephemeral keys.)

Public key signatures: Use Ed25519 (RFC 7748) or deterministic ECDSA (RFC 6979) over a 256-bit curve.

And obviously, the key sizes on that page have _no_ applicability to post- quantum cryptography key sizes.

<comment><USER3> A lot of us have to interoperate with systems that don't easily support Curve25519 or ChaCha20-Poly1305, let alone post-quantum algorithms. As RSA and finite-field DH aren't _broken_ , I'd rather use a well-tested implementation of one of those with sufficient key length than try to backport a newer algorithm. (For new protocols and new code, sure.)

What I find this page useful for is pointing out lower bounds on security levels. If you're building a system that, eventually, outputs a file format with 256-bit hashes of files, there isn't a point in using any stronger crypto than a 128-bit security level to sign and transmit the hashes. If you want to make the system more secure, first figure out how to make the hashes longer.

<comment><USER2> > As RSA and finite-field DH aren't _broken_

No, but their implementations often are. For a recent example (Zend Framework, just at the end of 2015): [http://framework.zend.com/security/advisory/ZF2015-10](http://framework.zend.com/security/advisory/ZF2015-10)

More famously: [http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70059600123/saltstack- rsa-e-...](http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70059600123/saltstack-rsa-e-d-1)

RSA has more knobs to turn than EdDSA, and leads greater room for implementor error.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused. Above you're arguing for the use of newer schemes which are available with newer code which has not been as time-tested, here you're suggesting that the reason to avoid older well-tested schemes is poor implementation?

Aren't these two points contradictory. Unless you have a reason why the new scheme's implementation is more likely to be flawless than older implementations which may have received bug fixes or reviews. Seems to me that implementation bugs are a good reason to stick to older heavily used code, rather than jumping to the latest new thing.

<comment><USER5> You're confused because you're unfamiliar with the concepts being discussed. That's not the same thing as being confused because the parent comment's argument is flawed.

RSA is dangerous for a bunch of reasons:

* It has selectable key sizes and performance parameters that beg people to deploy it insecurely. That's the concept you're probably roughly familiar with.

* It is subject to a far greater diversity of implementation faults (for instance: because of its padding requirements, or because of its relatively complicated key generation process) than alternative algorithms.

* It offers one primitive operation you actually want (signatures) along with one you almost never want (encryption), which results in cryptosystems like classical TLS or, worse, every system that ever directly encrypted a credit card number with RSA. Alternative algorithms don't offer this foot-gun.

* The underlying mathematics of RSA are weakening(/improving) faster than those of elliptic curve; we could lose RSA entirely within our lifetimes even if quantum doesn't come to pass.

You don't have to take my word for it. Survey modern cryptosystems. Note which ones depend on curves and which depend on RSA, and then investigate the reputations of each of those systems.

<comment><USER4> > You're confused because you're unfamiliar with the concepts being discussed. > That's not the same thing as being confused because the parent comment's > argument is flawed.

That's very unnecessarily condescending. You then go on to criticise RSA, which is fine, but fails to address the point I made which was that they criticised RSA's implementation, not its inherent design flaws, while promoting a newer scheme with a less time-tested implementation.

This is verbatim what I was responding to:

> As RSA and finite-field DH aren't broken

>> No, but their implementations often are.

PS - I strongly suspect your tone is a result of another thread of discussion we had in this topic[0]. I'd suggest you make snide remarks there rather than carrying it over into this thread.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11909436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11909436)

<comment><USER2> Let me clarify a bit then: My criticisms of RSA stem from studying how people implement it in cryptography libraries.

More people implement PKCS1v1.5 padding than implement RSAES-OAEP in their application-layer crypto, and that's a problem.

Conversely, most of the applications I've analyzed that wanted ECDSA/ECDH used OpenSSL or libsodium.

Guess which ones were broken with chosen-ciphertext attacks.

If you want a theoretical concern: Index calculus attacks.

If you want a practical concern: Look at the traps that cause implementations to be comically insecure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Key size does not matter. Algorithm selection and mode does.

<comment><USER6> I agree with this, but I think it could be phrased in a more nuanced way. I would state it thusly:

 _" Key size is a red herring. People fetishize key size because it's the most identifiable number and our monkey brains just want to make that number as large as possible. But key size is a not a dial you can tune in any context, and good cryptography depends on algorithms, not key sizes. A well-designed algorithm explicitly defines the key sizes you can select because it limits how much users can shoot themselves in the foot. The number of bits is not important, it's the way in which the algorithm creates a ciphertext using that number. Theoretically, a proven secure algorithm using an encryption function with a single bit key size would be perfectly fine to use."_

I think that would be interpreted more charitably :). Then again, that's typing a lot more.

Hey for anyone reading this, this is basically why companies that state they use "bank-grade" or "128 bit" encryption on their cool landing pages aren't really saying anything.

<comment><USER7> >Theoretically, a proven secure algorithm using an encryption function with a single bit key size would be perfectly fine to use

Can you elaborate? With a single bit key you can simply try both keys... right?

<comment><USER8> I believe what was meant was a single key size measured in bits, not just a 0 or 1.</comment></comment></comment></comment>