Ask YC: Open source platform for a social network with lots of UGC(structured) - <AUTHOR>

I want to put up a quick prototype of a community based site with lots of structured user generated content. Support for multi-media content is preferred. Please suggest.
I need an open source solution rather than a hosted platform.
I am considering Insoshi - http://portal.insoshi.com/. Drupal with specific templates might work too.
Anything more robust and cleanly designed ?
PS: I would essentially build on top of the platform. I expect to have lot of changes in layout and interactions. As long as I cut down the development effort on the common things - sign up, profile page, connections, feeds etc i am good. <comment><USER2> Rails

<http://www.actsascommunity.com/>

<http://www.missingmethod.com/projects/community_engine/>

<http://beonebody.org/>

[http://www.missingmethod.com/2007/01/08/how-to-build-a- socia...](http://www.missingmethod.com/2007/01/08/how-to-build-a-social- network-with-ruby-on-rails/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unless you aren't interested in using Ruby on Rails, you might want to check out LovdByLess:

<http://lovdbyless.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the link. Seems to have a bunch of features I am interested in. I see that it has had close to 17K downloads and a quick search didn't result in many reviews or fan following.

How mature is this? Would you have a first hand experience using this platform by any chance ?

<comment><USER3> It's only about 6 months old. My only experience was getting it up and running locally and testing out the functionality. It took a couple of hours to get going (mostly due to updating gem versions). From my standpoint I was happy with how it looked. I had considered Wordpress and Drupal, but I liked the smaller, more manageable codebase - even if it meant I may be fixing bugs in the project code as I went.

I hadn't checked in on the project in awhile. I'm surprised it's not more active. FYI it looks like there was a fork recently and Luvfoo is being more actively developed (but no existing community)

<http://www.justinball.com/projects/>

<comment><USER4> Nice find with _luvdfoo_ . . . somehow, I missed this before!

<comment><USER5> We're currently working on building a community around Luvfoo. So far we have a few guys from around the world helping us out. I estimate that we are about a month away from having something that is easy for 3rd parties to deploy. Right now the project is centered around Teachers Without Borders as they are providing funding for the project. However, there is a need to make it easy to deploy the same system for other groups and so that is a focus. Now to be fair I have met the guys behind Elgg. Both of them are very smart and great guys. I think that project is still in development. Wordpress is working on a social networking project called buddypress which looks very promising. If you want something fast it is hard to beat Ning (but it is a hosted service). In the Rails world Acts as Community looks like a great project. Best of luck in your choice. There is a lot of really great open source software out there.

<comment><USER4> You guys are doing an outstanding job -- kudos on the steady stream of solid commits.

On a related note, I've actually documented a few of the steps I took in order to deploy . . . I'll send over a pull request for my README.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> May I ask why you need an open source solution? My company does exactly what you are looking for, but it is a hosted solution.

Email me if you're interested in discussing further.

email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER7> You also might check out www.elgg.org as they just released version 1. I played with it but the project never took off so I don't have a great deal of experience with it.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://wiki.ringsidenetworks.org/> is a reverse engineered Facebook with an application platform.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hope you know that there is nothing that Drupal can't do.

<comment><AUTHOR> To an extent I agree. Drupal is probably the most matured platform with tons of templates and plugins.

But I felt its a bit too heavy and it is php. Last resort I would use that. Just wondering if there is anything new more suitable and lighter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wordpress? It's really extensible. And you'd get a lot of help from the open source community for any plugins that you might write.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pinax <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J91Ownq-7g>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah python. I am more comfortable with php, ruby, java and perl. But can hack anyway if its going to be a huge plus using pinax in terms of features etc.

But what I infer from the video and James Tauber blog is that it is far from being mature and not ahead of drupal either. Your thoughts ?

<comment><USER11> I mean the advantage to other options mentioned here is building on top would be easier than a CMS. But if you're more comfortable with ruby, go with something on rails, not Django. I'm sure there's an equivalent project.</comment></comment></comment>


Readability API contest underway ($5000 grand prize; blue-ribbon jury) - <AUTHOR> https://www.readability.com/contest Join judges Anil Dash, Jeffrey Zeldman and Sarah Chubb and compete for cash prizes up to $5,000 in the Invent Something Great with Readability API Contest. Entries due May 15th; apply for an API key today! <comment><USER2> Associated blog post with a bit more detail is here: [http://blog.readability.com/2011/04/the-readability-api- cont...](http://blog.readability.com/2011/04/the-readability-api-contest/)</comment>


A Small Colorado Town Ran Out of Water - <AUTHOR> https://www.kunc.org/post/one-small-colorado-town-ran-out-water-how-did-it-happen#stream/0 <comment><USER2> That was just lack of maintenance in a small town. Chennai, India, with over four million people, is out of water.[1] 200 days of no rain on top of overpopulation and limited water resources. Some water is being brought in by train and in tank trucks. "Local gangs taking control of public water taps and dominating supply from street-corner tanks is too common." There are some desalination plants, but not enough.

[1] [https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-chennais- water...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-chennais-water-crisis- should-worry-you/articleshow/69884460.cms)

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw articles years ago suggesting water would be the root cause of future wars. Water is currently a serious issue globally.

In the US, the waters of the Colorado River are over promised to several Southwestern states. California is very dependent on imported water.

Small towns have trouble getting adequately competent people for their needs. Critical professional positions can take ages to fill because they pay less and qualified people often don't want to live in the middle of nowhere.

Some bright spots:

There are underutilized technologies and techniques available today that can solve or mitigate a lot of these issues. But widespread adoption is a challenge.

In California, Fresno County is quietly a shining example of good water management in some respects. It is being largely overlooked, but has a history of actually increasing ground water levels at times while most of the rest of the world is seeing them steadily drop.

The internet, remote work and new technology offer hope of better solutions for small towns in the US, if only by making them more appealing to the types of professionals whose skills are so desperately needed in some places.

<comment><USER4> > Critical professional positions can take ages to fill because they pay less > and qualified people often don't want to live in the middle of nowhere.

On the plus side I'd hope there's good job security

<comment><USER5> You would think so, but these days the people running those small rural towns call long term knowledgeable professionals the "deep state"

<comment><USER6> Citation needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TLDR; Small town didn't detect multiple leaks in their water system until it was too late and they had to turn water off until the springs could re-fill their tanks. It happens.

<comment><USER8> You'd think people (edit: the water consumers) would want laws that prevent this kind of thing from happening (edit: having a leak that goes unfixed long enough for that much water to get away).

<comment><USER9> What sort of law would help with a situation like this?

<comment><USER10> We have laws requiring smog checks, requiring odometers not be tampered. Those apply to cars.

Why not laws requiring leakage check meters (or whatever would be the corresponding tech) to be installed for every mile of pipes? Pay it up one time and reap the benefits long term. You do not want to be wasting water for 3 months before finding out there is a problem.

<comment><USER8> I was trying to do a quick check on US law for water utilities, but there doesn't seem to be a single source of truth on that one.

Edit: the EPA seems to have a federal act on file for drinking water, but even with all the rules described it leaves a lot of holes where you would want guarantees instead of 'fix-after-the-fact' rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seen from an IT perspective, they ran a complex network without enough monitoring. So they didn't detect multiple leaks in time, and ended up wasting a lot (too much) water in dry season.

With enough sensors on the pipelines they could have at least found the leaks in time before all the waste. How practical that is I don't know.

<comment><USER12> It's completely practical and deployed globally. But knowing there's a leak (akin to "knowing there's a bug") is not enough to find and fix it. And the cost-effectiveness drops to likely negative for a small place.

<comment><USER13> A few dozen sensors can go a long way, for example a municipality can find that a particular pipe is consistently pushing 100gpm, despite serving residential customers that don't normally have that kind of even usage. This implys a leak on that section of pipe, making a root cause analysis (and shutting off just the worst leaks in the system, rather than the whole town) much easier to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Steps Towards an Acceptable Lisp - <AUTHOR> http://pwpwp.blogspot.com/2009/09/steps-towards-acceptable-lisp.html

<comment><USER2> Much of this looks good; however, I _really_ hope that "unfriendly" stuff isn't taken to heart. (Or maybe everyone can take it to heart, except for one language community, and then _that_ becomes the "acceptable Lisp".)

On the other hand, I'm interested in a different set of issues. Consider Haskell. As a language, it's not doing too badly. Why? Well, one reason is that it is very well designed. But another is Hugs. Hugs was available a decade ago, it ran anywhere, was lightweight, let you use your favorite editor, implemented almost the complete standard, let you write and run Haskell code easily immediately after installation (which was fast), and, while it's a bit short on tools, it does let you write and run "real" programs.

I would say that Lisp desperately needs a Hugs.

If I look into getting a Lisp implementation, I see that they want me to learn Emacs, or mess with the JVM, or are not available on all platforms, etc. None of these things have much to do with the language itself, and they are all barriers to adoption.

I just want to click a box in my package manager, hit the button to download, run the program, and be in a REPL, or maybe say "edit" (or whatever) and be typing in a source file, which I can easily compile and execute.

Again, Lisp needs a Hugs. But Hugs was designed years ago, and things have changed. What does "a Hugs" for today look like? I'm not completely sure, but the above is a start toward describing it, I think.

<comment><USER3> It's called DrScheme (I don't think there's an equivalent for CL)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the pointer. I'll look into that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I think an unfriendly community is a great feature, because it keeps idiots > out, and there's no place for idiots in the world of Lisp.

It also keeps a lot of smart people out though.

<comment><USER5> It especially keeps out the people who pay smart people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clojure seems to have most of what he wants- I wonder if he's aware of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> For my tastes, Clojure strays too far from proven ground.

It's nice to experiment with stuff like persistent data structures and STM, but I don't think the next big Lisp, if there is one, will be based around that model.

It's simply too far removed from the (object-oriented, semi-functional) Lisp programming model of the last decades.

<comment><USER7> "It's simply too far removed from the (object-oriented, semi-functional) _Common_ Lisp programming model of the last decades"

~ahem~ Common Lisp and Lisp are not equal. Well, maybe in a sense, but they're definitely not eql.

Anyway, I'm still unsure about Clojure myself (not really had the chance to dive in), but a lot of the 'unproven' ideas you mention (persistent data, STM, also lazy functions etc. etc.) have been doing the rounds in PL circles for quite a while now. It's interesting to see them taking root in lispsville, if nothing else.

I like Lisp and I like Haskell - Clojure seems to take cues (very well proven ones, I might add) from both but, like I say, I've yet to really see how well they've been married.

<comment><USER8> As an avid Clojurian, I can recommend taking the plunge. The seq abstraction goes a long way to reducing library sizes. This is going to be as big a deal as the STM.

My $.02</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My first year as a developer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@leportella/my-first-year-as-a-developer-2376317be109#.eb6lnt2gj <comment><USER2> What I don't understand from this article is why the author didn't reach out to his team members in his first job. Maybe she did and just didn't write about it. I've never seen a team or been part of a team though that would not offer help to a new team member. Especially one that needed coaching or even teaching if need be. If the team was that not accepting of a new member, it's an issue with the team and not the new team member and should be addressed.</comment>


Ask HN: What remote work setup do you use while traveling? - <AUTHOR>

I'm about to begin working fully remote -- 100% away from an office -- and am curious to what hardware setup has worked for people before.
I have a laptop and monitor with a docking station for my home office, but I'm interested in how to take a similar setup with me on the road.
I generally prefer(need) another screen since I routinely deal with geospatial data alongside database tables.
My team pretty much has the software side of the remote work down well, so I'm mostly concerned with the hardware setup side of things and how to make my work station super mobile without sacrificing too much connection speed or screen space. <comment><USER2> FWIW: I used to use 3 screens (main one in the middle, and an extra desktop to the right and left)... and could have never envisioned going without _at least_ one external monitor. Then I went fully remote for a few years, and switched entirely to to a Macbook (first the Air, then the Pro Retina).

I never looked back. Instead of many screens I just make generous use of OSX's multiple-desktops feature (which they call "spaces" [http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14155](http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14155)). Instead of turning my head to look at the screen to my right, I 3-finger-swipe to the right. Instead of looking to my left, I 3-finger-swipe to the left. Etc. It's not exactly _the same_ of course, but it works well. Surprisingly well actually.

I say that all to say, you might want to give minimal a try at first. You can always add on more gear later. But who knows, you might like it!

Oh, and I use a Tmobile hotspot, but they're all good.

<comment><USER3> Good idea about using Spaces. For me, using that and creating multiple tabs within Terminal really helps. When I use my iPad as a second monitor, however, I use it for displaying a Dotcom-Monitor dashboard I created, so that it is always visible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> MacBook Air 13", power adapter, Personal Router (NEC Aterm WM3600R, for WiMAX), short USB cable to charge my personal router, iPhone 5, Sony CP-EL Li- Ion battery to charge my iPhone when necessary, short USB cable (with iPhone connector), OTP password generator, notebook, and pen. Sometimes, I use a Wi- Fi spot (Starbucks is especially good for that), and don't need my personal router, but I always have the latter, just-in-case. Power becomes an issue after a few hours because my MacBook Air is old. It isn't as easy as you might think working on-the-road. Will you be leaving your laptop out in the open when you need to go to the bathroom? Noise can be a distraction when working in, say, a Starbucks that is near a residential neighborhood, as opposed to one that is near a corporate setting. Telephone / WebEx meetings are impossible in public settings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Environment for working is something I research before traveling (making sure there's ethernet in the hotel room or finding a spot beforehand where I can take scheduled calls).

I guess I'm really more concerned about the screen setup. Are there any foldable or portable monitors (~13") that work well when traveling?

Anyone ever tried using an Android tablet as a second screen for desktop?

Added: The personal router is a good idea, but usually just tether my Android to my MacBook if I need to supply my own data.

<comment><USER3> Whenever I need a second screen, I use an iPad connected to my laptop using Avatron's Air Display software. It works well for my needs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping not to invest in an iPad (considering the price and way over qualified) just to use as a second monitor on-the-go. I'll look into an Android tablet while using a similar application since you've had luck working off a tablet as a 2nd screen.

<comment><USER3> Being able to hang a tablet off of your laptop's screen (like the way that kickstarter project mentioned by someone else does) would be nice. By the way, my laptop bag has a convenient pouch for a tablet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find I can work quite well with a wifi hotspot (mine is ATT and I'm very, very surprised that latency and transfer speeds are non-issues) and my laptop.

However, that's basically my home setup as well, just with normal home internet service.

I have a power adapter to give me a power plug in the car for the laptop. The hotspot can usually go over a day and charges with the same cord as my phone, if I need to charge it up.

Maybe you can use virtual desktops instead of multiple monitors. They come standard in Ubuntu linux, which I run, but there's a good program for windows that does the same thing.

Edit: I'm a web developer, if that matters.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find that when coding, one display works fine (just my MacBook). But much of my day is comprised of moving between ArcGIS and Excel, so two screens work MUCH better when comparing tables within Arc and Excel.

What are the benefits of using a personal wifi hotspot over tethering your phone to you laptop (other than, I guess, going cordless)?

<comment><USER3> When I talk on my phone, I usually step outside and leave my laptop where it is. As an additional note, public wi-fi spots sometimes require going through a proxy. I use ssh a lot, and even using software like corkscrew doesn't always get me through the proxy. Having my personal router lets me forgo that obstacle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should check out this Kickstarter: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/753230753/packed- pixels...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/753230753/packed-pixels-an- extra-monitor-for-your-laptop?ref=nav_search)

They're making a portable high res multi-monitor setup that looks like it might suit you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! So I guess there aren't any other tablets that support miniDisplay as the method of screen extension for Macs?

<comment><USER6> None that we're aware of and certainly none with our mounting system.</comment></comment></comment>


Mozilla lays off 70 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for-subscription-products-to-generate-revenue <comment><USER2> I'm one of the 70. There were no signs that this was imminent, although Mozilla has been struggling financially for many years. I expected that it would happen eventually; I'm relatively well-prepared for it; and it's not too shocking. I did however expect that there would be some warning signs in the lead-up, but that was not the case.

I was working on Cranelift, the WebAssembly compiler that is also a plausible future backend for Rust debug mode. Before that, I worked on the SpiderMonkey JITs for 9 years. If anyone has need for a senior compiler engineer with 10 years of experience writing fast, parallel code, please do let me know.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a pretty clueless layoff, I guess I expected better from Mozilla than usual corporate derp. If there was truly no dead weight, surely the management could have scaled back their own comp for misdirecting the company? Very few people understand what it means to be a leader in corporate world.

<comment><USER4> > for misdirecting the company?

As someone who has been using Netscape before even Internet Explorer exists, and followed all of its development through to Firefox till recent few years. I am not surprised.

At first you give them benefits of doubt, because their ideal were good. Then it happened again, again, and again.

>Mozilla Corporation (as opposed to the much smaller Mozilla Foundation) said it had about 1,000 employees worldwide.

Yes, you do need lots of people for making something as complex as browser, But 1000? Out of the 70 employees, they decided to lay off more than a few senior engineers with a decade of experience.

I dont know if this will change HN's perspective on Firefox and Mozilla. Every time I pointed something negative on Mozilla there are someone quick to defend it. As someone who used to religiously defend Netscape and Mozilla when I was much younger. I get it. I could understand the appeal, the ideal. Until you grow older and realise, You didn't have that ideal, the ideal had you.

<comment><USER5> What's the alternative? Google? Not really better even if this disappoints about Mozilla.

<comment><USER6> Edge or Brave. Different business models than Google's and to some extent Mozilla's.

<comment><USER7> Still 100% depending on Google, still supporting a near monopolistic position for the browser. Every Chromium fork is part of the problem, not the solution.

<comment><USER8> Engine consolidation happened, the fight now is over privacy. When and if Brave is big enough we will chart our own engine course.

<comment><USER9> You know better than anybody the size of the task of rolling a homemade engine. Is this some vaporware promise or does Brave already started something around this idea?

<comment><USER10> May be in the future web will be simpler?

My theory: browser of the future will need to support wasm and webgl (well, not webgl, but something similar, providing fast and safe interface for GPU). Of course along with smaller standards like fetch api, but that's manageable.

Most of the useful websites will utilize those tech to build their UI from scratch without using of HTML, CSS or JS.

And HTML, CSS and JS engines could be just another wasm blob. For example parts of chromium engine adapted and compiled for wasm. So it's like jQuery.

<comment><USER11> That just sounds terrible for both SEO and accessibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, it's been a truly amazing place to work, and I've enjoyed it so much, right up until being laid off today. Really the smartest and coolest engineers I've ever known and the best community! I have had my hand in shipping every version of Firefox since around version 30 and it's been great. Especially working in such an open environment. Onward to the next adventure.

<comment><USER13> As someone who jumped from chrome since quantum came out, I can't appreciate Mozilla enough, sadly things are not made to last...

I'm guilty too having used such great tool but haven't directly contributed anything.

But from what I hear, it seem the layoffs are directed not by technical reasons, and amazing people were let go. In this case, I fear for the future of firefox, which are not well protected or funded like the open sourced titan Linux.

<comment><USER14> Mozilla gets $$$$ from Google, they seem pretty well funded?

<comment><USER15> Getting funding from your biggest rival isn't exactly the most stable strat long term...

Mismanagement of funds/personnel not withstanding.

<comment><USER16> to be fair it worked for like 2 decades, it feels long termish. but i don't really disagree.

the current model really is: Google needs Mozilla to survive so that they have less chances to get split due to monopoly in the browser market

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was at Mozilla for a while and it was a two-class system. The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures. This is not even included in comp. One time, the CFO sent out a missive urging everyone to stay in AirBnB to save money and the execs (literally the following week) booked $500/night rooms at a hotel in NYC. I think the moment that made it clear as day was during a trip to Hawaii for the company all hands. The plane was a 737 so you had to walk past first class. These all hands are a huge deal for families - many were struggling down the aisle, carrying booster seats, etc. And they were passing two of the C-levels sitting in giant first-class seats sipping tropical cocktails. The rule in the military is that men eat first, officers last. Mozilla has always reversed that rule and the result was a pretty toxic culture, all around.

<comment><USER18> Two days back I wrote this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22034293)

I doubt if this is just with Mozilla. Things like these are come as job perks when you enter management. And this one of the reasons why you must aspire to be a manager and not a programmer on the longer run.

>>The execs flew first class, stayed in fancy hotels, and had very expensive dinners and retreats - sometimes in the high five-figures.

They will always come up with reasons why they need to do this. The most common one is they need to be fresh with brains in clouds so that they can to talk to clients etc well. And they are doing this for the employees good.

 _"Comrades! ' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples."_

\- George Orwell.

>>This is not even included in comp.

Things like this generally go in some top level budget and the are approvals are not even audited at item level spending. Like no asks if you had a $100 dinner. It just goes into a group by statement in some dashboard. This is also why so many managers spend lavishly. It's almost anonymous spending. And money once given is never asked back.

If you think this is saying something. Wait till you discover how comp works in those roles. Pretty much anything given is never audited and its given fairly unchecked. Big bonuses and stock grants are just every day activities.

As in Indian who worked in the US for a while, I've even seen Green cards handed to manager's pets like candies. Again no asks questions, no audits done. Its just how awesome managerial jobs are.

>>The rule in the military is that men eat first, officers last.

I doubt if military or any people structure works this way.

Don't fall for these pep talk like speeches.

<comment><USER19> I used to work at Stanford, once upon a time. Our boss got us training for a week around Hollywood with a Jag as a rental. Our boss'es boss seriously put in to have helicopter rides to work, and they definitely had $100+ per diem and expense accounts. What's interesting is when your boss has self-approval over their own budget and expenses. They're not really big on accountability so much as expanding prestige and pyramids on their sides of the org charts.

Similarly, Big 4 and MBB tend to have healthy expense accounts and fringe benefits.

PS: One of my coworkers kept a counter for all-hands meetings because previous said entitled boss'es boss tended to go full mission statement by overusing a particular "motivational" word during their carefully-choreographed, dog-and- pony PowerPoint. Dilbert and Dogbert would've both doubled hand/pawpalmed.

<comment><USER18> >>What's interesting is when your boss has self-approval over their own budget and expenses.

As you go up, its hard to say no to your friends. Because you might need a bailout from them someday, so you don't go cheap on them. Some one asks for money they don't say no.

>>They're not really big on accountability so much as expanding prestige and pyramids on their sides of the org charts.

There is also this thing that if you look rich and affluent you tend to command respect. That is from where the "Dress for the job" kind of saying comes from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure of Mozilla's financial or organizational structure but it seems to be part of a larger trend of de-emphasizing QA departments at software shops large and small over the past 10 or so years.

In many ways test automation tooling has become much easier to use, develop, and manage.

But I suspect the larger driving force is that it's (arguably) a cost center for an org. The burden of ensuring software quality can be shifted to devs and PMs, though usually with mixed results.

For Mozilla, axing quality and security first is a bad look when those are crucial aspects of a privacy-first company value.

<comment><USER21> If there's anything they need to axe, it's the Gecko team. Just replace it with V8. The whole layout engine too--replace it with Blink. It is inevitable, so might as well get over with it now and save the wasted human effort and $$$.

I tried to use Firefox recently. It leaked 28 GiB of RAM on x86_64 GNU/Linux with no extensions except uBlock Origin. Happened a few times over the month whenever I visited JS-heavy websites. Never had that happen with Chromium, which runs through megs of JS like butter.

Wouldn't it be nice if an experienced browser dev team maintained a privacy- oriented libre version of Chrome (without manifest v3, sync, and all that trash). Or should they keep doing what they've doing and make the best pro- privacy browser that no one ever uses except indirectly through Tor Browser.

<comment><USER22> Could you clarify "recently" a bit more? Clearly it's after the release of uBlock Origin, but I'm pretty sure that there was a big effort to clean up memory use a few years ago.

Maybe it's poor Linux support, I have a distressingly high 4 digit number of tabs open on a Windows box and I don't think I've seen it go past 8gb with multiple weeks of runtime.

Edit: Win10 Pro on a Xeon with 48gb ram available

<comment><USER23> What do you with a 4 digit number of tabs? How can you even find what you are looking for? (Honest question, no attack)

I hardly ever have more than 10 tabs open, and aggressively close everything I am not working with. I also shut down my browser twice a day (2 working locations) and never restore the previous session. I do bookmark some pages, but as a matter of fact I notice that I hardly ever refer to my bookmarks. I don't have the feeling that I am missing out on anything.

<comment><USER22> _What do you with a 4 digit number of tabs?_

Fail to go back and clear them out, mostly. Most were left open because of something relevant at the time, so I mostly need to spend a little time going through and nuking or nothing. There's been little friction due to leaving them open so it hasn't been a priority.

Pretty much the same thing that leaves some people with tens of thousands of messages in their inboxes (I deal with someone who does that and it makes my teeth itch, so my inbox isn't so bad).

<comment><USER23> Right, my private Gmail inbox has more than 70,000 conversations (no clue how many messages). Using search I typically find quickly what I want.

As a programmer who has spent significant time with performance work, having useless tabs in a browser would hurt me. But that Google has to search through a bit longer list of messages I can accept as the typical wastefulness of computing these days. (I am old enough to have done time-sharing on 4 MB with 11 other students on their VT100)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Brendan Eich tweeted that they laid off about 70 people: [https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217517703914643456)

This is about 7% of all their employees.

People report that a lot of QA, security, and release management folks were sacked.

A lot more details in the TechCrunch article: [https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as- it-...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for- subscription-products-to-generate-revenue/)

> In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker > specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization's new revenue- > generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this decision

edit: fixed the numbers, added some more details.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure why they don't largely sack half their marketing budget and concentrate on community outreach from the developer side... that's how they grew in the first place.

I'm also surprised they haven't tried to create commercial mail and communications products. Thunderbird used to be one of the best options out there, and they could easily spin this off into a SaaS and self-host product on the server component. As much as I hated Lotus Notes, something between Lotus Notes, Outlook and MS Teams could be something great and that the Mozilla org would be in a good position to create.

I know they may have good reach with the VPN service as well... I'm unsure how they can reduce security, qa and release management people when orchestration, automation and verification are such huge needs.

They get enough income from search (for now) that they could concentrate on best of breed tech, build mindshare from that, then re-introduce marketing for critical mass.

<comment><USER25> The world today is different. Can't skimp on marketing any more, as the competition is extremely heavy on marketing.

<comment><USER26> Mozilla's competition is default apps and chrome which I've only seen advertise on google and youtube, on the random day I use a computer without an ad blocker. Not like Safari is putting out any ads, or that Edge has any fans outside of geriatrics who don't know any better.

The competition (chrome) is just enjoying the runaway success of being the household name for over 10 years, simply by being a better product than firefox was 10 years ago when the market shares were much closer.

If firefox wants to enjoy this runaway success that chrome has, mozilla should steal the playbook of being the contrarian option for tech minded people just like how chrome was the foil to IE and Safari a decade ago before it became the dominant web browser. The focus should therefore be on dev tooling, not marketing, and the rest of the user base will follow the devs.

<comment><USER27> Firefox got where it was by being faster and less bloated than the current alternatives at the time. Then it lost its way completely and Chrome was that and took all the market share. There's a theme here. People like fast browsers that just work and don't do a lot of extra crap. If Firefox ever wants to take market share this is a great time to do that with how bloated Chrome is becoming and how much privacy it constantly encroaches on. If Mozilla is smart it will figure this out and go for the kill. Is Mozilla smart? I keep trying to use Firefox and every time I go back to Chrome (or Brave or Safari on my phone) because Firefox is too slow, it changes radically every version, and things just don't work right in it that do work on other browsers. I don't need marketing, I just need them to make the browser better. I'm the target audience; I want to switch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Look at the changes to the executive team at Mozilla in 2017 and 2018 if you want to see the root of the problem.

Look at the changes Chief People Office Michael D'Angelo introduced (after leaving Pinterest), especially the multi-tier bonus system that crystallized the executive hierarchy and made ironclad the gap between Mozilla leaders and the Mozilla proletariat. How much does he make?

Ask yourself- what value or improvement did Chris Lin, VP of Mozilla's horrid IT, hired from Facebook, bring to the company? And look at his overpaid group of Directors, who do not have a single win between them that improved Mozilla's bottom line. Why did they hire a leader from Facebook? Were they trying to sink the ship?

Ask yourself- with all of Mozilla's failed marketing initiatives, why has the CMO never been held to account?

There was great hope that Mitchell Baker would return and clean house where it was needed, starting with many of the execs. This layoff, with so far no indication of leaders being held to account, is a sign that things are not going to improve.

It's a shame, because the people of Mozilla are the finest people you could ever work with. They don't deserve this leadership. The rank and file at Mozilla are amazing, though some of the best were let go today.

<comment><USER29> As an outsider there are constantly small details that are off in product and marketing that hint to this. Its really sad to see, I keep using firefox and get a little sad every time I see these signs that this company does not know what it wants to do. In many ways it behaves like a public company without long term direction

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This feels really bad. I feel she seems to be hinting that they are cutting people in case they lose revenue.

As others have posted their financials: [https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla- fdn-201...](https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla- fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf)

They seem to be very dependent on search engine revenue: 91% and 93% for their revenue. Once again, I feel she is worried Mozilla will be cut off very soon.

Still feels like really bad news for Firefox. Microsoft cut their QA people for Windows. Windows 10 to this day still has update issues.

I do agree that Mozilla needs more products to stay competitive. Especially when the Google docs team doesn't fix issues that make Google sheets very frustrating to enter data into with Firefox. Just listen to Linus(TechTips) complain about Google Calendar issues when he pays for the commercial version of GSuite.

I wonder if Mozilla gets cut off from search engine revenue means they will start to develop products/fund OSS competitors to GSuite?

Still, when you introduce new products, that is when you need Q/A the most.

However, Pocket is not one these products. I disable the pocket button on every new Firefox install I do. They have an entire page on it in their financial statement.

And I don't feel the CEO should be increasing her pay when the workforce suffers (from $2.3m to $2.5m). Nintendo's management took a pay cut during their Wii U years before the Switch. And that is what management in general should be doing well before a layout.

The Mozilla steering committee certainly didn't consider this when "we plan to eliminate about 70 roles from across MoCo... ...(were) considered as part of our 2020 planning and budgeting exercise only after all other avenues were explored."

<comment><USER31> > I wonder if Mozilla gets cut off from search engine revenue means they will > start to develop products/fund OSS competitors to GSuite?

How would Mozilla fund this?

> And I don't feel the CEO should be increasing her pay when the workforce > suffers (from $2.3m to $2.5m).

Where do you find this? At the moment, Mozilla doesn't have a CEO, only an interim CEO, are you sure that's her?

<comment><USER32> > Where do you find this?

[https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584)

<comment><USER33> Mitchell Baker is the executive chair and interim CEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't understand Mozilla. How did the go from a lightweight Mozilla Browser alternative to a company that spends $450m annually and dedicates $43m just for future endeavors? Why couldn't they just focus on making the best browser possible with a small dedicated team?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nowadays, a small team is simply not enough to develop a browser and keep up with the competition. Unless you fork Chrome, of course.

<comment><USER34> They made $450m in revenue in 2018. What fraction of that is actually needed to keep a productive browser team afloat?

<comment><USER35> How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be?

How big do you think the Chromium team is?

<comment><USER36> > _How big do you think a "productive browser team" needs to be?_

I'd say 50 or so people would be fine.

> _How big do you think the Chromium team is?_

Around 60-80 people judging from the names listed under the various Blink teams (Rendering, DOM, Memory, Style, etc).

<comment><USER31> > I'd say 50 or so people would be fine.

With 50 or so devs (let's forget for this example about managers, UX researchers and designers, HR, etc.) you'll get maybe a JavaScript VM and a small UX.

Not nearly a browser :(

> Around 60-80 people judging from the names listed under the various Blink > teams (Rendering, DOM, Memory, Style, etc).

That sounds like a really, really vast underestimation. To the best of my recollection Chromium _embedding_ teams inside Google that are 30+ developers (again, let's forget managers, UX researchers, etc.). I know that there are at least 4 such teams at Google.

I would be very surprised if Google didn't have at least 1000 developers working on Chromium.

<comment><USER37> > With 50 or so devs (let's forget for this example about managers, UX > researchers and designers, HR, etc.) you'll get maybe a JavaScript VM and a > small UX.

Safari does those two specific things with a quarter of the number you mentioned. The entire team is nowhere near a thousand people.

<comment><USER38> Safari runs on 1.5 operating systems and a limited set of hardware.

<comment><USER39> Apple is known for how small their teams are.

WebKit runs on macOS, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS across Intel and ARM architectures.

WebKit provides the web views for countless 3rd party apps, including Mail, Calendar, iTunes, etc.

Apple certainly has fewer people who get paid to write code for Safari/WebKit than Google has on Chrome/Blink. I wouldn't be surprised if Mozilla has more people too, especially since they're rewriting pieces of the browser engine at the same time.

<comment><USER37> A number of other companies also contribute support for a variety of other platforms too. Scrolling through a platform header gives a good idea of who's adapted WebKit for their needs: [https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/WTF/wtf/...](https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/master/Source/WTF/wtf/Platform.h)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Mitchell Baker should be ashamed of her performance at Mozilla. Serious missteps in the development of Firefox led to the rise of Google Chrome, and only recently (and arguably too little, too late) have they seen the light and prioritized the re-development of Firefox.

Nearly all of the other projects at Mozilla that aren't related to the browser itself have been abject failures. They have not only failed in their core product against Google, but have shown that they are completely incapable of innovation in other areas of tech.

Her letter reads like someone who is completely clueless. Getting rid of people while earmarking $40 million for a so-called "innovation fund" with no real strategy?

They are hoping some half-baked VPN product generates enough revenue to make them independent of Google's search deal? Please remember this post when that product fails to deliver. It's not a matter of time, it just makes no sense in any kind of timeline and at this point Mitchell Baker is grasping at straws.

<comment><USER41> Firefox did become horribly slow compared to Chrome and lost a lot of market share in the tech savvy community because of it. I also don't understand how they could fall so far behind with their primary product.

(they finally caught up again now, I switched back to Firefox about 2 years ago)

But:

Google pushed Chrome on desktop _very aggressively_ via Google Search and bundling Chrome with every software download imaginable.

Then came the rise of mobile and tablets, with forced Safari on iOS and Chrome by default on Android/Chrome OS, with little incentive to switch...

The bulk of market share loss was inevitable.

<comment><USER42> I think you're assuming Chrome's very existence was inevitable, but it wasn't.

Chrome was created partly because Page just wanted to do a browser, but that wasn't enough by itself. Schmidt blocked a browser project for years on the grounds that it was a low priority and there wasn't much reason because Firefox was doing fine.

What changed things was Google trying to work with Mozilla to contribute resources, push the web forward faster and running into huge problems again and again. Political, corporate, technical. The Firefox architecture was over- engineered but also the Firefox guys thought they were top dog and kept dropping or ignoring Google's contributions for what looked like spurious reasons. Frustration grew amongst engineers who cared about improving HTML and with Page having always wanted to do a browser, now there was pressure from the top and the grassroots. When they got a few key hires who showed they could do a new browser with a much better architecture, and move way faster than cooperating with Mozilla, events were set in motion.

But there's a parallel universe in which Mozilla welcomed the Google contributions with open arms, in which Gecko had been written in normal C++, was easier to work on/better documented, where the app architecture was more conventional and thus more amenable to sandboxing etc. And in that world maybe Firefox would be even more dominant than Chrome. I don't think Mozilla realised back then they either could learn how to work with the Google engineering teams, even to the extent of giving up some architectural control, or Google would wipe them out.

<comment><USER43> > When they got a few key hires who showed they could do a new browser with a > much better architecture, and move way faster than cooperating with Mozilla, > events were set in motion.

They also bought up a significant fraction of the Firefox core devs -- there's a lot of "crushing the competition" you can do when your money pit is basically bottomless.

<comment><USER42> Mozilla was a firehose of money back then. Financially they were and still are Google: literally they get a fraction of Google's own revenue stream. That was more than sufficient to reward their developers in whatever way they liked.

Those devs weren't leaving Mozilla because of money. They left because they were being given a nearly blank slate on which to create a browser they felt would be much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> 70 employees, at a grossly over-estimated cost of $200,000 a year each (QA "leads" would probably cost a fraction of that), would cost Mozilla about $14M to retain. They are retaining their $43M budget for blue sky research intact (per TFA).

It feels like a better compromise could have been made.

<comment><AUTHOR> This might be a sign for other employees that they need to focus on the things that can help Mozilla actually earn more and not just be a good guy. It may sound horrible, but considering their market share dynamics it makes sense.

<comment><USER45> Remember the PR disaster they had when they bundled Pocket?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, yeah, but focusing on earning does not mean they should start doing stupid things like that or adding a banner place to the start page.

For instance, I would have considered paying for some premium features like additional privacy-related functionality or a VPN.

<comment><USER31> Well, Mozilla is selling VPN services (in some countries). Are you a user?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > "You may recall that we expected to be earning revenue in 2019 and 2020 from > new subscription products as well as higher revenue from sources outside of > search. This did not happen

I don't want subscription garbage, and I don't want Firefox advertising stuff to me.

However, I have no idea how I'd try to fund Mozilla when most of their work is on a product that they give away for free.

I can't imagine that grants from foundations or the government could cover their budget, and I can't really see them being amazingly successful with apps (although I would pay for a bulletproof, high quality ad blocker for iPhone) or hardware (although Purism's phones and laptops seem kind of in Mozilla's ballpark, I doubt they are making much money.) Nobody wants to pay for web services, and it's hard to compete with the many cloud incumbents, so those don't really seem like a good options either. Running a consulting business to fund the browser doesn't seem like a winning idea. Development tools seem to be free from the likes of {Microsoft, Apple, Google} as well, so that doesn't seem like a great business. I can't imagine many people paying for Rust or webasm tools either. Perhaps web game development tools or platforms? Anyway, it's a hard problem.

So HN, does anyone have any actual, serious, good ideas on how Mozilla can make money and keep delivering a good Firefox browser (and Rust, webasm, etc.) for free?

<comment><USER47> Why not something like the Linux Foundation?

Stop all the marketing and the nonsense advocacy, focus on developing a browser, get other companies to fund development. It's in the interest of quite a few vendors to have a good, neutral browser.

<comment><USER48> The linux foundation gets money because quite a lot of products, companies depend on it. Their servers, their iot devices, etc, etc A lot of the code contributions come from the industries that depend on it not just volunteers or people payed with donations by small time linux lovers.

Nobody directly depends on Mozilla and or features in their product and so nobody will give them money because of that. (you can argue rust trough kubernetes and such is an example of the opposite but despite their big influence and contribution it's not really a mozilla product) Electron has chromium at it's core, CEF apps have chromium at their core, all the other popular alternatives have chromium at their core and google has nice control. Despite that this dominance is ultimately bad for everyone. Google gets too much control over internet standards and their implementation. It is trash. and Mozzila depends on them too for their funding.

I'd say we even risk that they wouldn't get hit with monopoly rulings if Mozilla and firefox dies despite their competition being utterly dependant on and at the mercy of the direction of their product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm looking forward to some paid products from Mozilla (including the vpn).

Privacy focused personal zeroknowledge cloud things are needed.

I'd love to have a more elaborate version of Firefox Sync that worked across chromium (and I'd pay for it).

The obvious calendar, mail, etc.

I'd pay for a zeroknowledge hosted Berners Lee Solid service.

Do this stuff and I'll pay well for it.

<comment><USER50> Why do you want sync with chromium?

Firefox syncs just fine with Firefox on any platform, including mobile. Just use it everywhere, no?

<comment><USER49> Because, to me, even lockin to Firefox isn't a good thing.

I still use Chromium for garbage web time _cough_ hackernews*cough for example.

All my actual work and projects are Firefox (tons of vertical tabs) and I don't want them polluted with my trash reading but would still like to see history/tabs etc at least browseable across browsers.

Containers are getting a bit more viable to combine work and consumption but not quite there.

edit - and yes I'm actually just about 100% Firefox mobile already

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > All of this is part of the organization's plans to become less reliant on > income from search partnerships and to create more revenue channels. In > 2018, the latest year for which Mozilla has published its financial records, > about 91 percent of its royalty revenues came from search contracts.

This raises the question of what products Mozilla plans to make that will generate revenue. The article doesn't address this.

I found these after a quick search, all of which appear to depend on Firefox to some extent:

\- VPN/password manager called Lockvise

\- Pocket recommendations and sponsored content

\- Firefox Monitor, "a free service which allows people to check whether their email address has been a part of a recent security breach"

\- "DNS over HTTPS" and "Encrypted Server Name Indication", "... both of which we've partnered with Cloudflare to test in the U.S. market."

[https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/foundation/annualreport/2017/](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/foundation/annualreport/2017/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Statement from Mozilla: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying- for-the-fu...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the- future-at-mozilla/)

</comment><comment><USER53> TechCrunch has more info:

"Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue"

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as- it-...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for- subscription-products-to-generate-revenue/)

<comment><USER54> Ok, we changed to that from [https://twitter.com/KingstonTime/status/1217498737397903363](https://twitter.com/KingstonTime/status/1217498737397903363). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> To the 70: Thank you for contributing to such incredible software for all these years. Your contribution to my life is not insignificant. Good luck on your next chapter.

To Mozilla: Let's figure out this monetization thing. Heck, I'd pay for Firefox to keep it as great as it is and independent.

</comment><comment><USER56> Besides donating and the as-yet-to-be-released VPN service, how else can we support Mozilla? I don't see anything they're actually selling and I hate for stuff like this to happen.

<comment><USER57> From what I heard from other HN comments, donations don't actually go to the browser's development, instead they go to auxiliary projects of (IMO) dubious value like community outreach, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> If you are a Mozilla product user, this is the link to donate to a great nonprofit. [https://donate.mozilla.org/en- US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount...](https://donate.mozilla.org/en- US/?presets=50,30,20,10&amount=30&utm_source=support.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=footer&currency=usd)

</comment><comment><USER59> I would have expected in that email from the CEO something like, "I will myself take a massive salary reduction and divide my salary by 2". But strangely, it's never something we see during mass layoffs... I mean her salary is pretty much the salary 15 to 20 software engineers.

</comment><comment><USER60> I diligently donate to Mozilla, Wikimedia, and openbsd. After reading about executives and their largesse on various threads today, I do want to know: do donations to the Mozilla Foundation go towards paying the salaries and various expenses of the executives at Mozilla the corporate?

</comment><comment><USER61> Mozilla should provide products and services that are one level above the cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GC) since it doesn't have the scale and datacenter resources to compete. Mozilla should provide at the product level that's consumer facing.

Mozilla can focus on online related communication and collaboration products. Some examples: email, messenger & audio/video conference, online identity, and security.

Email - make a web-based and an offline version.

Messenger & audio/video conference - can be easily tied in with the browser.

Online identity - people and company pay to have verified online identities and brands.

Security - encrypted communication/email/message, anonymous services, vpn, etc. SSL, domain name, DNS.

</comment><comment><USER62> This article and thread has put a baad taste in my mouth regarding Firefox.

But like Tesla, I still want Firefox to succeed. I'm not sure I'll donate again however. They seem to be just fine on their own.

</comment><comment><USER63> If Google moved to more in-house development of Chromium, there wouldn't be many scraps soon left for proponents of the open web to browse with... It's sad to see Microsoft as well as Opera and Brave picking Chromium for their engine when at least I think Gecko is still very much on par with web standards support. It feels like a more sensible choice, including for their own business safety in case Google does some sneaky move to "streamline their development" and "focus on the next generation of smartphones and Fuchsia OS" or something like that. That would be a power move we used to attribute to Microsoft in the past.

I wish Mozilla good luck although I'm shaken by these news and how far reaching the restructuring seems to be. I hope it's not the beginning of a negative spiral where they end up lacking manpower in development and QA to deliver a stable browser supporting the latest web standards and lagging behind, because then they're truly out. We should see already in a couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER64> Something I noticed about Firefox today, when I was trying to troubleshoot something:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1601925](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1601925)

There are quite a few places where the browser makes requests and they are not logged in the Network section of the Inspector.

</comment><comment><USER65> Interesting announcement not two weeks after announcing that the MoFo board would be expanded: [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/08/expanding- mozillas-...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/08/expanding-mozillas- boards-in-2020/)

</comment><comment><USER66> This is sad. I don't really have any interest in whatever 'services' Firefox has in mind but I'd actually pay for a good browser - maybe a monthly fee. I really use no local apps these days - everything is IN my browser so whatever I was paying for apps I'd be happy to chuck towards a secure, updated browser...

</comment><comment><USER67> Mozilla blog update: "Readying for the Future at Mozilla" [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the- fu...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/01/15/readying-for-the-future-at- mozilla/)

</comment><comment><USER68> Some of my friends are affected; does anyone have advice from experience that could help?

<comment><USER31> 1\. Don't panic.

2\. Your worst enemy at this stage is depression/exhaustion. Sport and social life are important to keep this at bay.

3\. Brush up your CV, your interview skills.

4\. Organize cross-reading of CVs, simulate interviews for each other.

5\. You may need to go through numerous interviews. It sucks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Too many chiefs, and they can the good braves. Top heavy org chart is going to commence years of random re-orgs to dance around the real problem: management. Firefox is of course even more likely to founder going forward.

</comment><comment><USER69> I don't think they've had any vision ever since Eich left.

</comment><comment><USER70> My friend used to work for Mozilla. She said she has never had a more boring job. She said there was no work to be done, her boss was remote and never asked her for deliverables. She was well paid with a 40% cash bonus and she would go on yearly boondoggles. I told her she should stay but she couldn't bear it so she left after 2 years.

She said part of it was that they couldn't save money because they were a non profit so all the money they got they had to spend, which caused over hiring.

<comment><USER71> This would be the Mozilla Foundation (not Corp), right? And I don't think it's _literally_ true that a charitable foundation has to spend everything it gets - they can still save for a rainy day or even build up an endowment over time. They can't disburse profits obviously, but AIUI that's not the same thing as saving money internally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I had Mozilla hr straight up tell me they wanted me to hire someone based on color regardless of performance difference even if somewhat large and obvious. For you ladies, they indicated clearly that "we have enough women in engineering".

This wasn't exactly a fun moment. I left Mozilla after this. Most of the reason i post all this here now.

</comment><comment><USER73> I wonder if they got less (if anything) from the settlement from the Yahoo (Oath) lawsuit than they'd been planning on.

</comment><comment><USER74> Mr. Corbet is predicting 'perturbations in the job market' for this year. I wonder if he will turn out to be right (also interesting that this news item did get this huge amount of comments)

[https://lwn.net/Articles/807748/](https://lwn.net/Articles/807748/)

</comment><comment><USER75> What was Mozilla thinking?!?

I'm hiring a WebAssembly compiler expert. We're an all Rust shop, too. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER76> Mozilla lays off people, yet it still doesn't accept donations. I don't understand it - there are tons of people (including me) would gladly donate to Mozilla to keep it afloat. Yet, you can only donate to the Mozilla foundation, but not to Mozilla Corporation (that develops the browser).

<comment><USER77> Afaik companies can't ask for donations in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I guess, in addition to Chrome, Microsoft just _Edged_ Mozilla out a little more.

I use Linux as desktop and for me Chrome has been the choice for the last few years. The only thing I use most often from Mozilla is its MDN site, which is absolutely great.

</comment><comment><USER79> If any of the ones laid off is interested in working for a startup developing a browser extension with WASM (from C#), poke me via email: andrew.forsure at gmail (remote working is welcome; part-time ok too)

</comment><comment><USER39> Apparently Brenden Eich, who helped develop Firefox when he was at Mozilla, seems to be innovating with monetizing a browser, first with cryptocurrency and now with sponsored images: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061348)

</comment><comment><USER80> What's this mean? Do their jobs get automatized or is this the beginning of the end for Mozilla?

</comment><comment><USER81> Sad they for these people, for Mozilla and for the whole web. Hope Mozilla's fortune turns.

</comment><comment><USER82> As someone who looks up to Mozilla as a "dream job company", this is disheartening.

</comment><comment><USER83> "firstname.lastname@example.com", aka Mitchell, has a number grammar issues with their email. It's surprising that someone in such a high leadership position, who communicates for a living doesn't have an intuitive sense of basic grammar—especially for such an important announcement…

</comment><comment><USER84> Why does Mozilla Corporation have 1,000 employees? Just an honest question.

<comment><USER35> Because browsers are hard. See my comment at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22059393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22059393) for some comparative numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> What did Mitchell mean by "Most will not join us in Berlin"?

<comment><USER86> They are meeting for an all-hands meeting in Berlin soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> They should have fired some of the designers and managers instead.

</comment><comment><USER88> Wouldn't have happened if they hadn't forced Brendan Eich out. Just saying. I know as a patron I trust him and followed him over to brave especially for its privacy offering. Removing founders is hardly ever a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER89> man, the chromium-based MS Edge browser launched today....hm

</comment><comment><USER90> I am starting to see a lot of tech layoffs. Bubble popping?

</comment><comment><USER91> I find it interesting they are laying off 7% of their staff while hiring new developers. I say this as they had a job post in DC recently saying we could join their growing company. Are they growing or retracting?

<comment><USER92> Maybe it's like a controlled burn. Get rid of a bunch of low performers or those who they don't really need currently, hire quickly into what they do need.

<comment><USER93> remember you're talking about people who just lost their job...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> A reminder that you can donate to Mozilla [1]. I think it's very important for a free web.

[1]: [https://give.mozilla.org/](https://give.mozilla.org/)

</comment><comment><USER95> Any word about whether this affects Thunberbird?

<comment><USER52> AFAIK no Mozilla Corporation employees have been paid to work on Thunderbird for years now, so there's nothing to cut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Mismanagement.

Let me have Rome for but a single eight-hour workday.

</comment><comment><USER97> Sad

</comment><comment><USER98> in 2018, mozilla had 368 million USD in assets:

2018 financials: [https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla- fdn-201...](https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla- fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf)

wow, 2.5 million for the executive chair of Mozilla in 2018. is that person really bringing 2.5 millions dollar worth of value to the company. this is in addition to the 2.x million from the year before. 10s of million exfiltrated out of a non-profit by one person over the last few years. nice job if you can get it.

edit: 1 million USD in 2016 and before.jumped to 2.3 million in 2017! pg8 of form 990 available at [https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public- records/](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/about/public-records/)

<comment><USER99> The person we're talking about is Mitchell Baker, who has spent over 20 years contributing to Mozilla, including years as a volunteer. She has been on Time's 100 most influential people list. She has directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet. She is the founding CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, which pays her paycheck from its ~$500M in revenue. Mozilla Corp is the highly-profitable source of the $368 million in Foundation assets that parent cited.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Baker)

I understand why people are generally peeved about executive compensation, but this conversation is very rote and this is a particularly flamebait-y framing of it.

<comment><USER100> She also wrote this incredibly rude and grotesque obituary for Gervase Markham after he died of cancer (working for Mozilla until the end). You are welcome to disagree, but Gerv contributed just as much to Mozilla as Mitchell did.

[https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam- gerva...](https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2018/08/07/in-memoriam-gervase- markham/)

<comment><USER101> That's appalling. How did that make people still working at Mozilla feel? I can't imagine working under somebody like that.

<comment><USER102> This will sound outrageous to US technology workers in 2020, but some people are able to separate their professional lives from the religious and political beliefs of their co-workers.

About 15 years ago it was perfectly normal for this exchange to take place: _Your view of marriage is a faith-based promise to your deity based on millennia of tradition and completely different from my view of it as a legalistic civil affair that is even less serious than renewing a recreational boating licence? Not a problem, let 's go back to work now._

<comment><USER103> There are still tech companies like this. I have no detailed idea about my boss and coworkers' political beliefs, but I suspect they're different from mine. No problem, we keep things professional and respectful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Brendan Eich has a helpful chart of Compensation of Highest paid executive at Mozilla vs Firefox market share over time.

[https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584/p...](https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1217512049716035584/photo/1)

<comment><USER105> It's crazy how much FF's marketshare has dropped. It's such a great browser.

<comment><USER106> Hmm I don't know. I switched to FF 4 months ago and while the engine and dev tools are great, it's simply not as polished as the competition.

For example just look at the alert popups[0], or the non native contextual menus, or the video pop icon. The UI is full of little quirks like that. The tab bar is by far the ugliest one of all current browsers, at least on macOS.

It also misses important features such as multilingual spell checking. For people writing in multiple languages it's a real PITA. I know this functionality can be added with an extension but it slows down FF too much IMO.

[0] [https://imgur.com/lODjWSm](https://imgur.com/lODjWSm)

<comment><USER107> > It also misses important features such as multilingual spell checking. For > people writing in multiple languages it's a real PITA. I know this > functionality can be added with an extension but it slows down FF too much > IMO.

Really? Do you learn a new language every day? I installed languages that I am interested years ago and forgot about it until you mentioned it.

<comment><USER108> A lot of us are bi-lingual. English is not my first language, so being able to use spell checking for my native language and English without things breaking is important to me.

<comment><USER107> well, I'm bi-lingual as well, I only needed to install languages once. I don't want to have installed dictionary for every language under the sun. They do take space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Only in fairy tale land does CEO/Executive compensation reflect performance.

<comment><USER110> Many CEOs derive a significant portion - often even the majority - of their compensation from performance-based bonuses. Compensation not only reflects performance, it is directly tied to it.

<comment><USER109> Millions/Billions were paid out in bailout money, to the very same people responsible for collapsing the housing market in 2009. Compensation for that level is complete bullshit.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31pay.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31pay.html)

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/16b-of-bank-bailout-went-to- exe...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/16b-of-bank-bailout-went-to-execs/)

[https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/banks- paid...](https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/banks- paid-326-billion-in-bonuses-amid-us-bailout-bloomberg)

<comment><USER111> Didn't that bailout earn American taxpayers money in the end?

<comment><USER109> Sure, the ones that actually paid back with interest. But that doesn't help the 'performance bonus' discussion. These people destroyed the housing market, then got bailed out by the people they destroyed, THEN got paid millions/billions in bonuses for doing it.

<comment><USER111> Housing market got destroyed by people not paying back their loans. Assigning this to be a moral responsibility of banks and regulators is simplistic and naive.

I had to search for this excellent clip from Margin Call, which explains this better than I could: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2kGHcdJYU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2kGHcdJYU)

<comment><USER109> It was much deeper than that. While you're partially correct, that people not paying back their loans is what ultimate set off the collapse, the reason for it was the straight greed, and manipulation of the repackaged junk sub-prime mortgages by the banks. Collateralized Debt Obligations, and even worse CDO- Squared, bundled up complete crap, and sold them off with triple-A ratings. When the mortgagor failed to pay, those CDOs were finally downgraded and became worthless, losing banks hundreds of billions. Predatory practices on homeowners, and bank greed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Well I dunno.,. maybe it was good.. ever since Windows 8 came out (which was a pile of fucking shit) I would say things have gotten worse.. Windows is complete garbage as far as actual desktop improvements.

From Win98>Win2000>WinXP>Win7 it has been a slow but steady improvement in stability and features.. sure could have been better, but compared to Linux desktop distro's which none of them can barely even fucking match WinXp in terms desktop features and stability.. nvm the power shell extensions and eco system which don't exist. Because that only comes from good API's documentation and community that isn't completely stupid ... I would say that MS had a fairly good team of people up until the release of Win7, after that they seemed to have got a retarded shit for brains CEO Satyan noob tard, and replaced all the skilled people with fellow idiots.

And now Win10 is a stinking pile of broken and bug infested noob trash... it's built on the work that proceeded it, but they sure have done as much as possible to ruin that while doing fuck useful as an improvement in the underlying system let alone the UX/UI which hasn't improved at all its at best worse, they've just tacked on crap everywhere.

<comment><USER113> Sadly, I have to agree. There have been just a few of really good features in Windows after 7: app sandboxing, first party VR support (if not for that, we'd only have locked down VR platforms like PS VR and Oculus), the new Mail client, and using voice to set reminders and alarms (when it works). Maybe better support for tablet mode in Mail, browser and the Start Menu, and the dark mode lately.

Outside of that list, I'd struggle to name a single thing in Windows, that became better. Number of bugs certainly increased. Specifically, search and language switching are the worst offenders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> i submit a bug report to the ff bugzilla and their reply to me was, "can you fix it"? i thought, uh oh..

</comment><comment><USER115> I thought Mozilla was a foundation not a company.

<comment><USER116> Mozilla Foundation owns Mozilla Corp.

<comment><USER117> It's not quite clear to me -- were the laid-off employees working for the foundation, or for the corporation?

<comment><USER31> Corp

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> Mozilla doesn't need employees when it has so many people white-knighting it on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER119> If MSFT bought Mozilla to counter Google, that will be hilariously glorious to fulfill a cycle, but makes logical sense.

<comment><USER120> Come to think of it, did Microsoft ever consider replacing their rendering engine with Gecko, rather than Blink? I'm surprised they ceded such control over the future direction of the web to Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> Hacker news, please block topics from techcrunch- and verison media-articles. They use a lot of third party cookies, ad banners, fingerprinting and other evil stuff.

<comment><USER122> You should email this to the mods using the Contact link in the footer, as they'll be able to see your comment and respond to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Mozilla should just ship Chromium with privacy oriented features. There's no reason to reinvent the wheel and keep iterating on Gecko when its obvious there's less and less demand for it, especially when it costs them so much money.

If Firefox was actually gaining share I'd feel differently, but I'd rather see Mozilla switch tech stacks than fizzle out and die.

<comment><USER50> Firefox is our last bastion of hope against the browser monoculture.

If you think that the new browser monoculture would be any better than the previous one (IE5-6), you are horribly, horribly wrong.

<comment><USER123> I don't understand that argument, IE was a closed source browser, Chromium is BSD-licensed. If anything the closest comparison is probably the widespread use of Linux.

<comment><USER50> BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand waive.

Imagine this: Chrome has 80% share and introduces a new feature that works only in chrome (let's say, some DRM to watch YouTube videos), and cites this as an excuse to close sources. Then, it starts updating it's own websites with specific code that can run properly only in new (proprietary) versions of Chrome.

Of course, outcry in tech press, but average Joe User does not care, he just needs stuff to work. Then, developers say, screw it, we just need stuff to work for users. Just like they did in 2004. This is a very crude model, reality will likely be more subtle, but I hope you get the idea

<comment><USER123> > BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand > waive.

So can a Mozilla licensed browser, the licenses are very similar.

> Chrome has 80% share and introduces a new feature that works only in chrome > (let's say, some DRM to watch YouTube videos)

This already exists, it's called Widevine and browsers download it as a binary blob.

This is also a different argument, Chrome vs Chromium. If there was a healthy ecosystem of Chromium-based browsers then one vendor not playing by the rules would have limited impact.

<comment><USER124> > So can a Mozilla licensed browser, the licenses are very similar.

So, you were talking about not understanding why a mono-culture is bad. So your license argument here means you don't understand the parent.

"BSD licensed browser can become a closed source browser with just a hand waive."

This means that once FF is no more, what's stopping Google from slowing closing off even more parts of the browser to just Chrome? They can start forcing their will with their control over Chromium. They make the rules. And the BSD license can't do anything to stop it. That's the point.

And because these other browsers invested into Chromium, simply forking and continuing work on their Chromium version becomes more and more challenging without massive financial support. Only a few companies can do that.

Look at Apple and Safari. Safari lags behind Chrome in many areas. And this is Apple, not some small startup.

<comment><USER50> > once FF is no more, what's stopping Google from slowing closing off even > more parts of the browser to just Chrome?

Nothing is stopping. In fact, they already do that with Android. Starting with version 5, AOSP barely improves, but they add more and more and more proprietary APIs like Firebase, severely limit background apps, pushing developers to use proprietary push notifications, with each release more and more functions are tied to Google Play Services. [0]

[0]: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip- on...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android- controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


200 years for ending dwarf fortress - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/what-will-happen-to-gamings-most-ambitious-experiment-when-its-creators-die?utm_source=mbfb <comment><USER2> I'd sure love to get my hands on that source code.</comment>


Lumitrack: Low Cost, Precise, High Speed Tracking with Projected m-Sequences - <AUTHOR> http://chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/Lumitrack

<comment><USER2> Impressive, but if I think back to some old examples of this kind of stuff, like Johnny Chan (also of CMU)'s headtracking/motion tracking with Wii-motes it had remarkably less data (IR Led points) but seemed to handle the type of usecases presented in the video just fine. Admittedly it uses camera technology rather than just photodiodes, so lumitrack seems to have an edge for things that need high speed/fidelity at very low cost, but I don't know what those applications are.

<comment><USER3> Head tracking would definitely be one. Although rough position tracking with accelerometer rotation tracking might work just as well. Still these are much lower cost than all the hardware that went into the wiimote head tracker.

<comment><USER4> you'd think that this setup would be much lower cost, but from a quick lookup, these linear sensors (TSL202R) cost more than $8 each in 1k quantity, while you can get a wii controller for about $20. On the other hand, this setup allows for 1000 fps while the wii controller's camera works at 100 fps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an absolutely brilliant use of LFSRs.

</comment><comment><USER6> From what I could imagine, this is using De Bruijn sequence, and only tracking 2D, right?

<comment><USER4> it can also do 6DOF, but yes, it is a variation on De Bruijn sequences (as these sequences don't wrap around)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most of the other novel computer interaction peripherals (like Leap Motion) are in the $100s price range. The $10 price point could really make this popular, especially with the hacker and maker community.</comment>


Real-Time Messaging in a Distributed Architecture Using SingalR and RabbitMQ,ABP - <AUTHOR> https://volosoft.com/blog/RealTime-Messaging-Distributed-Architecture-Abp-SingalR-RabbitMQ <comment><AUTHOR> We will build a basic real-time messaging application in a distributed architecture. We will use Abp Framework for infrastructure and tiered startup template, SignalR for real-time server-client communication, and RabbitMQ as the distributed event bus.</comment>


I Got Hacked by Hacker News Readers - <AUTHOR> http://bbrennan.info/blog/hacked-by-hacker-news <comment><USER2> I think a lot of people probably get burned not realizing that the Markdown spec includes all valid HTML by default.

Still, I don't think building a Markdown parser that doesn't sanitize or whitelist allowed tags by default is really excusable, even if it would be slower.

And i've seen several mvp projects posted here that crash if you so much as post an empty form. It seems to be an easy thing to forget.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least they did something cute/funny rather than fullscreen a liveleak gore video or worse. :)

 _> This has also made me a more fervent believer in security-by-default._

I've yet to understand why anyone would be against security-by-default. How many users would rather have set of [x] features that for whatever reason require an insecure setup compared to those who would prefer a secure setup?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Angular is a good example where security-by-default can get annoying.

Angular provides ng-bind-html to inject strings of HTML into the dom, but in order to use it you have to add the ngSanitize module, add $sce to your controller, and run your string through $sce.trustAsHtml().

The first time I did this it probably took me half an hour, even though the HTML was just a string constant.

I think a lot of libraries/frameworks choose functionality-by-default over security-by-default to make the onboarding process easier and to promote cool features. If Marked sanitized input by default, how many people would have assumed it simply wasn't capable of handling embedded HTML?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, the good old days.</comment>