100 million dollars to reshape the economics of the web - <AUTHOR> https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/100-million-investment-reshape-economics-web/ <comment><USER3> None of these web monetization efforts address the fact that the pool of [all consumers' discretionary income they'd be willing to spend] is likely a small fraction of the size of [all commercial companies' marketing budgets]. No matter how much you reduce the friction for having people make small tips to websites, there's just significantly less money to go around, so it can never replace advertising revenue. The only way that would change is if online advertising went away overnight, and instead of companies redirecting that to other forms of advertising, the prices of all consumer goods went down so it stayed in our collective pockets.

<comment><USER4> Alternatively if advertising became significantly less effective companies would spend less money on it. That's the upside of Ad-blocking which could theoretically make a huge impact.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure where you got this idea.

Ad-blocking might hurt in some future with hypothetically high enough percentages of traffic.

Right now they make ads more effective (marginally). By self selection, a population with relatively low click-rates has removed themselves from having any money spent on them. This helps Google and Advertisers since right now, the volume of available impressions is plenty high, the name of the game is targeting better.

If anything, ad blockers just hurt select publishers who can potentially see a large volume of their potential ad traffic blocked.

<comment><USER6> This sounds completely reasonable to me, and I don't know where it's wrong, but it doesn't square with my experience and I think it's wrong.

If this were true, nobody would be getting mad about ad blockers. But both advertisers and publishers (big and small) regularly complain about ad blockers, and even with a relatively small portion of users installing a blocker, multiple journalism sites have started adding paywalls. This paranoia isn't restricted to small sites either -- Google's even listed ad blockers as a potential revenue problem in investor disclosures.

A couple of potential causes: maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion rates, or that most publishers are engaged in fraud and ad- blockers make it harder to do that. It might even just be that publishers/advertisers are all stupid and haven't realized that ad blockers don't matter, but I think that's unlikely.

What seems plausible to me is that most of the people who block ads are not as immune to advertising as they claim. If they didn't block ads, they would occasionally click on an ad and provide a conversion. I would not be surprised to see that exposure to advertising increased overall spending, and didn't just redirect it to specific companies. I could be wrong though, maybe it's something else. I'd be interested to see research on that kind of thing.

Regardless, it is very difficult for me to square the world you describe with a world where a huge fraction of news sites I visit are including banners that tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright, or are just giving up and switching to subscription models. I can't think of an explanation for that other than, "ad blockers decrease revenue", and I think that having an explanation for that behavior is a prerequisite to making a believable claim that ad blockers aren't hurting revenue right now.

I mean, Google's not dumb. They would not have wasted time on the acceptable ads initiative if they didn't feel like they needed to.

<comment><USER5> Publishers definitely get hurt hardest because volume and quality of traffic is more important for them, less so for exchanges. They're the ones who are the "huge fraction of news sites [you] visit [that are] including banners that tell people to whitelist ads, or anti-adblocking technology outright".

> maybe it's that impressions actually do matter to revenue in some cases and > we haven't completely moved over to conversions yet, or maybe it's that > advertising increases consumer spending even without direct conversion > rates,

I mean you're right. Branding campaign spend just wants to eat up impressions and don't care much for click or actions. They're a large amount of $$ spent, but they also benefit the least from tracking so they can basically be shown to anyone. Tons of available inventory for them. But there's tons of money in more targeted CPA, CPC ads too.

Disclaimer: I mostly knew things from the RTB angle maybe 3 years ago. I may be out of date with where things are at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's crazy, that we still do not have something like "Cash" on the internet.

A simple, anonymous way to pay 10 cent or so. To use a website or read an article.

That would make the world so much better for indie developers.

Currently, an indie dev makes orders of magnitude less money per pageview then Google, Facebook and Co. Because those have all that advertising technology and ecosystem that indie devs don't have. If users would pay directly, that would change.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately the service that is free will always be more popular and ultimately win over more users. People have decided that paying with their privacy is better for them. I really wish paying 10 cents to use the service was the norm, but alas I doubt it will ever happen.

<comment><USER9> I suspect you're right that people will strongly prefer free over paid, but it's hard to know how many people would pay ten cents for something, because it's not feasible to charge that little. Paypal has a micropayment rate of 5% + five cents (USD), which means if you charge ten cents, you get maybe $0.0045. Plus, you have to do all the billing infrastructure etc.

The economics would be better with a stored balance system, but those are sketchy --- you'd need the balance holder to be someone you trust already; or a credit system where you pay once you've accrued enough content debt to make billing worthwhile, but that's going to be totally scammed.

<comment><USER10> "Free" is also a very psychologically special price. Micropayments would make it easier to get over the energy barrier to paying for something, but it's still there. Laboratory experiments (and real-world experience) show that people value the difference between a price of 1 cent and 0 cents much more than the difference between 1 cent and 2 cents.

<comment><USER11> Which is why spreading £10 over thousands of websites is much easier to sell than £0.01 per article. With the later model people become paralised with choice, and the former model has been successful as the backbone for SMS/data infrastructure almost everywhere.

<comment><USER12> It would be nice if there were a reciprocal subscription model. All subscribers to the NYT can also view articles of the LA Times or some other site, but reciprocal logins are tracked and funds are divided accordingly. That way, with some limits, each site could set their price, offer the bonus of visiting other sites, and there would not be the huge barrier to entry of requiring a massive player to aggregate things and wield power over publishers they don't want to accept. It's basically the model of reciprocal agreements used by the postal services around the world.

<comment><USER13> It's also the model of internet peering, but it requires an even exchange otherwise the imbalances lead to failure.

As an example, the current dispute where the US is leaving the Universal Postal Union (a month from today) because the exchange is unbalanced due to e-commerce from/to China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Halfway through reading this, the site suddenly covered half the screen with a "donate to Mozilla" banner. The case for "reshaping the economics of the web" would have been a bit more compelling without that...

(My problem isn't about asking for donations. It's about asking for them in a particularly user-hostile way. If the call to action at the bottom isn't enough, work it into the text.)

<comment><USER15> Super ironic too, considering they are working on blocking in-page JS popups like this and there's an addon to report them. [https://github.com/ehsan/popup-reporter](https://github.com/ehsan/popup- reporter)

<comment><USER16> Also ironic asking for donations on a post about giving away $100,000,000.

<comment><USER17> The funding comes from Coil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's nothing new here. Micropayments have been tried countless times. We did it ourselves and came to the same conclusions that people just don't value content highly nor want to pay for it at any sustainable rate. [1]

Advertising is faster, easier, more passive, and more egalitarian than direct payments. Many people you might not consider (like billions around the world) are happy to view ads in exchange for free content and services they couldn't otherwise afford. Also payments just means you work, earn cash, then pay. Ads are on-demand cash generation that uses your attention in real-time to pay exactly when and where you need it.

Privacy is also much more nuanced than these extremes. Most people are clearly comfortable sharing a lot about themselves on social media. Transparency and control is a far more important and productive goal than fighting over whether anyone or noone can use data.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038820)

<comment><USER19> Why wouldn't these two approached work in parallel ? An ad-free experience for those willing to pay and an ad supported one for those who don't.

I'm sure there are nuances like the politics you mention in your linked comment. Just curious why.

<comment><USER20> Companies don't want to advertise to the people with no money.

<comment><USER19> That's an astute observation, however I doubt it's valid. Not paying a monthly subscription wouldn't indicate poverty. It might just be these people are subscription averse... or they are used to ad supported free content and don't want to pay...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Forget micro-payments. Ban web advertising at the browser level. Create a browser that thoroughly and intentionally integrates ad blocking and has a statements of how it renders HTML with UX constraints (think Google AMP but actually good).

What happens?

Most content sources dry-up and stop. I no longer see that as a bad thing.

Out every every 100 content mills that are re-aggregating and summarizing someone else's original reporting you can wipe off 90 of them and still be fine.

Those that have a foot-hold, brand, or better reach survive through affiliate marketing (see WireCutter), donations, or subscriptions (NYT, WaPo, etc.)

I'm not saying there won't be casualties in this approach but you lose the alt-right and other reality-bending publishers pretty quickly.

<comment><USER22> > What happens?

What happens if you do that without enough market share is that the browser gets detected and banned/redirected with a message about it being hostile to the people making the content. To some degree, they would be correct.

If chrome, Firefox and Safari all did that all at once, many web properties would go under before the dust settled. It would probably cause a recession with how many people it affected, if not an outright depression, as it reverberated throughout the economy.

There's a reason some things happen slowly, and why puahback against the better future isn't always a bad thing. Too much change all at once is far more destructive overall than if spread out over time (for the exact same reason having two cars need major repairs the same month can put a family in dire straits).

<comment><USER21> All very good points and you could have a detailed discussion on many of them.

I still think that this is a situation where the bandaid/knife needs to be pulled off quickly. Chrome will never go that path voluntarily but you could push Safari and Firefox to do so (unlikely).

I've worked with publishers big and small and I know where this would hurt the most with smaller sites shuttering.

That said, after working in advertising for over a decade its clear to me that it is manipulative, abused, and ultimately harmful and directly/indirectly funding several hateful voices that have influence on the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I dont really know how to change the economics of the web without changing the laws around financial transactions. The various anti money laundering laws and anti terrorism laws make it basically impossible to transact money without significant compliance costs. And if the transactions are to be small and decentralized those compliance costs become prohibitive.

<comment><USER18> The current answer is to bundle. Use a subscription for content that is then split across sites/content by time/attention/some other measure.

However the problem then becomes which bundles you subscribe to, and that can easily cause fatigue and a race to the bottom as seen by all the current video streaming services now. Even worse, none of it has proven completely profitable or sustainable either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I used to use flattr and thought the concept was sound. Until I saw that most of the creators I wanted to sponsor never bothered to sign up and collect their money.

Anyone else have experience with flattr or similar alternatives?

I figure with all the "block chain" interest we'd have seen something built on a cryptocurrency allowing "direct" microdonations to a website's "wallet"

EDIT: looks like coil is kinda of like flattr

<comment><USER15> Readability tried something like this. Readers liked it a lot more than publishers did. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120702145822/http://blog.reada...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120702145822/http://blog.readability.com/2012/06/announcement) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105891](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105891)

<comment><USER25> this comment was telling:

Keith Calder June 13, 2012 • 10:41 am

I considered signing up for the Readability Publisher Program. Then I read the Terms of Service (amusingly I just read it yesterday, so this is all fresh in my mind). There is no way in hell I could agree to those terms. It basically gives Readability the right to do whatever they want with my content (which they were already doing, even without my permission) and I would have to limit any liability Readability might have for doing whatever they want with my content.

Some gems from the Readability Publisher Program Terms of Service.

You shall not "modify, translate, or otherwise create derivative works of any part of the Readability Service"

You know, the exact thing Readability does with my content. Or are we pretending that Readlists aren't a derivative work?

"You agree to hold Readability, its directors, officers and employees, harmless, including costs and attorneys' fees, from any claim of copyright infringement or intellectual property misappropriation related to ANY WEB pages or articles sent THROUGH or processed through the Readability Service, the Readability website (readability.com) or through the Readability API."

So basically if I sign up to collect money from Readability, I have to hold them harmless for ANY copyright infringement on ANY web page or article I have authored that is sent through the Readability Service. So if I wrote an article that is behind a pay-wall, and someone figures out a way to add that to a ReadList… Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, unless Readability decides to be nice to me and remove the article. But they're under no obligation to do that. They could just choose to let people freely redistribute my content against my wishes because I signed up for their Publisher Program to collect money they decided to collect on my behalf.

And just to add insult to injury…

"The Readability Service are protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws of both the United States and foreign countries. Nothing in the Terms gives you a right to use the Readability name or any of the Readability trademarks, logos, domain names, and other distinctive brand features."

Nice to know that Readability is protected by copyright and trademark laws that apparently don't protect any of my content.

So yeah. Good riddance to the Readability "publisher payment plan." I look forward to the other exciting ways Readability will help great content flourish online.

<comment><USER26> Remember when people thought that selling unprotected mp3 files is crazy, and everyone woulDD just pirate them?

Well, yes, some do, and will do.

But in most cases buying is much less hassle, and costs very little, so there is no point to pirate just from the _convenience_ point of view.

We need Spotify and Bandcamp for texts, with fast and frictionless payment, cheaply operated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I liked Coinhive but despised that 99% used it for malevolent things. I do like the idea of letting my computer do some proof of work for a few seconds to unlock an article. It's like doing a micro payment with your electricity bill, anonymously and without any setup.

<comment><USER28> In any world in which work that a browser can do in a few seconds will make any appreciable amount of money, someone can make _more_ money by throwing a server or GPU or dedicated hardware at it, and the browser's few seconds of work stops having value.

<comment><USER27> Coinhive mined Monero, which is ASIC resistant and where GPUs are only twice as efficient than CPUs. It's suited for browser mining. The browser shot the calculated hashes into a pool so it's not really about one browser vs. dedicated hardware. It's about a large quantity of browsers doing the work in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here I thought Mozilla had made it possible to do micro transactions in the browser. That Mozilla had started a bank backed by 100 million in Bitcoin, allowing zero-fee off-chain transactions between content creators and consumers.

<comment><USER30> Imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand why Mozilla doesn't implement a native web3 wallet directly in Firefox. This would help onboard people more easily to Ethereum & EVM- compatible decentralized networks. People wouldn't have to install MetaMask or download another desktop wallet/browser app.

<comment><USER32> And then the lightning crowd would ask why did you not implement their wallet... Or say I want to do payments on the web using my creditcard,paypal. You need to have something built into the browser that allows transfer of value be agnostic to underlying ledger

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Congrats Stefan & team!!!

Very curious to see how this will shape up.

Would you say this directly competes with Brendan Eich's BAT token in Brave? Yes/no? How so?

I've also been working on figuring out some mathematical models for economically evaluating digital goods (intro here [https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics- ce8acd7...](https://hackernoon.com/wealth-a-new-era-of-economics-ce8acd785441) ), would love to discuss various web/open-source centric economics ideas with people!

</comment><comment><USER34> So, if I read this right, they want privacy-focused tech hipsters to vie for $20M a year to create open source fintech startups that will beat global banks and payment companies on transfer fees while simultaneously improving all social classes' access to the internet.

Here's my solution: chargebacks. You surf a site, and see a preview of some content. To get the full content, you click "buy", and the site communicates with your own preferred online payment processor (OPP) to confirm a payment. The OPP checks your balance and replies if you have the balance requested, and the site then serves up your content. At the end of the month the OPP settles up with each site for what's owed. If you want to get fancy you can implement a whole rules engine so each site can set up subscriptions for users so users can limit how much each site can charge them. You support multiple subscription models so users can pay by a monthly contract or per-click. If everyone keeps their money in the OPPs (ala Paypal) the OPPs end up making tons of money by investing the balance that hasn't been transferred out yet.

Once this is implemented, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft will become the default OPP, because they still control all the platforms. Hooray open standards.

</comment><comment><USER35> To all the people saying some variant of "there's nothing new here", I think you are missing it: Tipping has always been an effort. If it all happened behind the scenes, with no action required on your part (beyond just browsing to a site), then "tipping" can viably compete with ads.

</comment><comment><USER36> They would do better if they spent 100M on ads to promote Firefox downloads.

Privacy is a lost cause. Sure, you'll probably get anonymity ie. your PII are gonna be scrambled, but all our activities are gonna be streamed to AI engines for commercial and entertainment purpose.

And people are generally okay with that because said engines are producing a lot of value in terms of targeted ads, better suggestions etc.

What's going on at the moment is that governments are feeling left out because they wouldn't mind running their own AI engines to shape public discourse and opinions.

But the trouble is - they don't have data. The big tech has data so I believe fight for data access is underlying reason for anti big tech momentum building up over the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER37> Instead of having payment systems that seem to go out of their way to make it inconvenient to pay, there should be a small number of very well defined friction points (such as: "maximum daily expenditure") with literally zero friction _anywhere else_.

By now for instance we should really have a security technology that allows anyone to spend $5 a day _any way they want_ , in any denomination (e.g. literally 2 cents here and 2 cents there), without having to go through ridiculous virtual-cash systems, cards and other hoops. The money should simply be there, and it should be able to go anywhere. If it's a relatively small amount, it doesn't require a lot of gate-keeping, e.g. you do _not_ need a customer-refunds infrastructure or fraud protection scheme for pennies. The money can then either reset automatically, e.g. each day, or after some explicit more-secure action, e.g. you log in to something with your face.

I know that it would personally make me spend a lot more if a lot of transactions could "just happen". Once I got a tap-here-and-pay watch, I spent more. Once I could shop online with a fingerprint, I actually did shop online. When I had to type in credit card details though, I hardly ever wanted to. When "fees" would appear as part of seemingly-small transactions, I hardly ever wanted to continue. Some things just sound like scams (don't get me started on subscriptions), making me more likely to find an exit.

</comment><comment><USER38> Having worked in ad-tech for much of the past decade, I don't really like the idea of ads, but the reality is that advertising is much too effective to simply "go away." The article also conflates "advertising" with "data mining" \-- the former is relatively benign; the latter not so much. The effectiveness of Facebook and Google ads are mainly due to (for the most part) information that was voluntarily handed over (likes, search history, etc.), not some evil rootkit.

And even though it sounds like a lot, 100 million dollars is a drop in the bucket. Consider that the top YouTubers make around ~$20M a year (this money comes largely via advertising). So your fund would barely cover the top 5. Also, the idea of lowering "the administrative costs of receiving payment for web content" seems kind at odds with a bureaucratic "Advisory Council initially made up of representatives from Coil, Mozilla, and Creative Commons."

I dunno', to me it just seems like posturing. No real solution offered, just some wishy-washy "feel good" proposals. At least Brave (which is my daily driver) took a hard stance against ads and blocks just about everything, while Mozilla just _talks_ a good game[1].

[1] [https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...](https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/1165858896176660480?lang=en)

<comment><USER39> It seems like a good chunk of money to help startups get started?

If a payment system can't make money or raise more funds, they're probably not getting anywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Advertising is opt-out. Every idea centered around tipping, micro- transactions, cryptocurrency are opt-in. I don't think most content creators are willing to make that jump.

</comment><comment><USER41> I know credit card processors are hostile to "adult content", but as a human being with a sexuality that's part of who I am, I'm saddened that even "literature" related to sexuality is banned.

The grant says it's seeking "makers of all stripes: webdevs, game developers, bloggers, photographers, musicians, journalists, filmmakers, writers, podcasters, software developers, and more"[1]

But Coil forbids "Pornography and other obscene materials (including literature, imagery and other media) depicting nudity or explicitly sexual acts; sites offering any sexually-related services such as prostitution, escorts, adult pay-per view, adult live chat features; sexually oriented items (e.g., adult toys); adult video stores and sexually oriented massage parlors; gentleman's clubs, topless bars, and strip clubs; and sexually oriented dating services."[2]

[1] [https://www.grantfortheweb.org/](https://www.grantfortheweb.org/) [2] [https://coil.com/terms](https://coil.com/terms)

</comment><comment><USER42> They could help also to build/improve the OpenCollective[1] that is a completely free and open-source[2] alternative to Patreon, aiming mostly for the open-source projects.

[1] [https://opencollective.com/](https://opencollective.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/opencollective/](https://github.com/opencollective/)

<comment><USER43> Perhaps this project will receive a grant then to help it improve?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Interesting that Ripple affiliates are sponsoring this.

<comment><USER45> Ripple is sponsoring this.

They gave ~$250m (in XRP) to Coil[0]. Coil is now giving $100m to people to monetize the web.

Gotta do something with that sweet, sweet ICO money.

[0] [https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-is-giving-away-1-billion- xrp...](https://www.coindesk.com/ripple-is-giving-away-1-billion-xrp-in- massive-bid-to-fund-online-content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The FAQ: [https://www.grantfortheweb.org/faq](https://www.grantfortheweb.org/faq)

</comment><comment><USER47> Is this right?

[https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/)

It lists Coil as a provider.

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's an idea that just came to me. Feel free to shoot holes in it. It's based on my assumption that users do prefer things without ads, and might want to pay for it.

So how about a search engine where, if you pay for it, it ranks sites without ads at the top. And if you click a link to an ad-less site, that site gets some of the money you paid to the search engine.

Maybe combine it with a social network that works a similar way, though that's harder to do because you don't control what people share.

The major downside is that there would be a central place (the search engine) where the money gets distributed. It would be better to have something non- centralised. Still, I might use a search engine like that.

<comment><USER49> A major question, for me, is: how does it get started? What would motivate someone to create a website without ads, for the purposes of what you're suggesting, when the scheme is in its infancy? What would motivate a website to remove ads, when the scheme is in its infancy?

<comment><USER48> Plenty of websites already have no ads. Wikipedia, for example. Many blogs too.

But even with ads, you'll still be listed. But ad-free sites get a higher ranking, making that a more viable decision for some.

<comment><USER49> That doesn't matter unless the existing pool of ad-free sites can supply good results for a reasonable proportion of the actual web searches being performed. I doubt very much it can.

For the idea to work it'd mean that there'd b incentive to have a website on a particular topic be ad-free vs ad-based competitors. How does _that incentive_ start in the first place?

<comment><USER48> It probably shouldn't put all ad-free sites above all ad-laden sites, but some preferential treatment would be nice. But there are already plenty of ad-free sites that have tons of useful information. I wouldn't mind seeing them ranked higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I can't help but think that this is an example of jumping to the wrong solution too quickly. Is the problem that the web doesn't contain as much high-quality content anymore as before; or that independent content providers are having a hard time making a living. I don't enjoy the web as much as I used to, but I am pretty sure that in the early days almost nobody was making money off the content they created. So maybe the problem is discoverability rather than compensation. It would be helpful to see a little more of the analysis that Mozilla has done to define the problem.

</comment><comment><USER51> Want to help publishers? Fund a competitor to google that either doesnt track users, or does it in an ethical way. With monopolistic google disappointing both advertisers and publishers by raising prices and keeping most of the profit, there is an opportunity in the market that wasn't there 10 years ago when most of their competitors gave up.

Non-ad monetization models are not hindered by lack of investment or ideas, they are hindered by REGULATION. The best ideas are impossible to do with today's regulatory and fee structures, and publishers in particular cannot escape that.

<comment><USER52> Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that?

Bing, with all the money and power of MS behind it, has about 5% market share. Yahoo has about 2% market share. Baidu has about 15% but also total assets of 40 Billion US Dollars.

> The best ideas

What are those?

<comment><USER51> > Would 100 million be anywhere remotely close to enough for that?

I think money is not the biggest hurdle. The problem with most ad networks is they copy google: most of the adsense alternatives for example are simply googles's ad partners that use google's ad exchanges. I think the ad space instead needs a "stripe for ads", a company that will quickly catch up with what publishers want, create solutions and push advertisers to use them.

The alternative ideas include anonymous micropauyments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I wonder if a Spotify for the Internet would work.

Pay a monthly access fee and have micro payments go to the creators based on usage.

Mozilla would be in a good position to introduce that type of service and track consumption.

<comment><USER54> > Pay a monthly access fee and have micro payments go to the creators based on > usage.

That's exactly how Brave Browser works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I see the following models of monetizing content on the web:

1\. Gift economy (you give it away, take likes) 2\. Goods and Service economy (you charge for it, sufficiently to make a living) 3\. Advertising economy (many people want it but not many willing to pay for it) 4\. Tipping (not a viable economic model, unless it's made compulsory and a minimum is set in which case it's not tipping)

1 & 2 have been with us since the dawn of human civilization.

3 is a modern invention and to many it is a failed experiment.

Just observations, no answers

<comment><USER18> What makes advertising a failed experiment exactly?

It's currently the only sustaining model for 95% of digital content and has created at least one trillion dollar corporation. That's the opposite of failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> One good thing about advertising is that it allows the poorest free access to most content. Hopefully these initiatives will keep that.

</comment><comment><USER57> Trying to divorce publishing from advertising is like trying to divorce brewing from yeast. The only people who don't understand this are people who have never been in the publishing business.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you think about this as a marketing campaign for Coil then it seems to me to be brilliantly enlightened. I mean that sincerely, no sarcasm.

</comment><comment><USER58> Here's how Coil ended up with $100 million to fund this grant ([https://fortune.com/2019/09/16/grant-for-the-web-mozilla- coi...](https://fortune.com/2019/09/16/grant-for-the-web-mozilla-coil)):

> As for the source of the $100 million that will fund the project, Thomas > said it came via a grant to Coil from Ripple, and that in some cases, the > project will use XRP—the cryptocurrency that is an integral part of Ripple's > operations—to settle financial transactions.

… and here's why Ripple made the original (~$265 million USD) grant to Coil ([https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ripples-xpring- make...](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ripples-xpring- makes-1-billion-xrp-grant-to-drive-xrp-adoption-and-advance-coils-monetized- platform-for-creators-300902194.html)) in August 2019:

> Coil, a platform dedicated to reimagining monetization on the web for > creators and their fans, today announced a 1 billion XRP grant from Ripple's > Xpring. The money will be deployed towards driving adoption of XRP and the > Interledger Protocol (ILP) by growing Coil's monetization platform through > mainstream adoption of Web Monetization, an open web standard built on > Interledger that enables streaming micropayments in any currency, including > XRP.

> …

> The platform enables creators to post public and exclusive content on Coil, > which is automatically enabled for streaming payments. Creators can web- > monetize their own websites by adding a simple tag. Those who want to > support creators using Coil can join the community with a $5 monthly > subscription. There are no membership fees for creators.

In May 2018, the first of several lawsuits was filed that allege XRP is a security: [https://www.coindesk.com/investors-suing-ripple-cite-sec- gui...](https://www.coindesk.com/investors-suing-ripple-cite-sec-guidance-to- argue-xrp-is-a-security). They're seeking class-action status to represent everyone who bought XRP. Matt Levine briefly mentioned Ripple while covering the broader question of how the SEC would classify coins: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-15/the- se...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-15/the-sec-will- leave-good-icos-alone).

Obviously Ripple is inherently motivated to see XRP adopted, but also, an active micropayment/content payment ecosystem might strengthen their claim that XRP is a utility coin and that their ICO wasn't an unregistered securities offering. Some background on this question: [https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement- clayton-...](https://www.sec.gov/news/public-statement/statement- clayton-2017-12-11)

Here's what that lawsuit alleges ([http://static.coindesk.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/08/716bee...](http://static.coindesk.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/08/716bee37-e45e-41d2-a4e1-2d966015a277.pdf), as amended Aug 2019):

> Ripple claims that XRP has utility—like currency—in its use as a "bridge > currency" for international payments. But, as discussed above, more than 60 > percent of XRP is owned by Ripple and none of that XRP is used for anything > at all, other than to be sold in the future to investors. Moreover, as for > the XRP that was already sold or otherwise distributed by Defendants, the > vast majority of it is not used for bridging international transactions, but > for investment purpose. Accordingly, Defendants' claim that XRP has a > utilitarian purpose is nothing but a red herring attempt to avoid the > application of securities laws.

<comment><USER59> Ripple never had an ICO - check your facts

Ripple doesn't hold 60% they hold 50%

The purpose of the 50% they still hold is public know since the very first days. They SHOULD use it to push the adoption of the XRP Ledger. Period. People hate Ripple for selling/donating their XRPs, funding great stuff like Coil with it that obviously somehow uses XRP but that is exactly what they HAVE to do. Heck the whole company was made for that. The XRPL devs made a better Bitcoin and wanted it to be used. How evil from them. /s

The whole security thing is nonsense. Someone bought XRP high and sold low got made and sued. Pathetic. He didn't even bought them from Ripple.

<comment><USER58> I'm not and don't claim to be an expert. That's one reason I don't have (and didn't give) an opinion about the lawsuit.

Regarding the lack of an ICO, you're correct. Others have called XRP a perpetual coin offering[1] since Ripple clearly raised money from investors, but you're correct that's not an ICO by name.

The rest of my comment was just direct citations, so direct your sarcasm at them.

[1]: "Ripple Hit With Class-Action Suit Over 'Never Ending ICO'": [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-04/ripple- hi...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-04/ripple-hit-with- class-action-suit-over-never-ending-ico)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Couldn't have they used that money to make Firefox consume less battery on mobile? At least on par with Chrome?

<comment><USER61> Funded by coil

<comment><USER60> It's true that the money is not coming from the Mozilla Foundation, but as Coil is trusting the foundation with 100 M$ to make good use, the foundation could have asked 'hey, how about some money (from the 100 M$ or not) for our software, since it's what we are primarily known for?'

<comment><USER60> > since it's what we are primarily known for?

'And because without the browser, we'd just be an advocacy group'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Great program, I hope it will help overcome the huge problems we know the current "centralized" model has.

</comment><comment><USER63> Teach parents to teach their kids to foster connections across the globe outside official channels like school which are heavily curated.

Changing economics for us, in our lifetime is a lost cause. Our limbic systems are wired with the emotional bindings of our childhood. It's hard to let go.

Teach kids to work together directly from as early as possible. Cut out Wall Street middle men and political grifters.

</comment><comment><USER64> Coil is a company that has raised 269M. And they're spending 100M of this on a grant?

</comment><comment><USER65> This feels like spending a hundred million dollars to recreate Beenz.

</comment><comment> m-i-l Back in the early days of the internet I used to believe that monetization, or micropayments, was one of the key unsolved problems. Now I'm starting to wonder if it _is_ the problem, that monetization is the root of all evil on the internet, such as advertising and limbic capitalism, social media and surveillance capitalism, the spammers and scammers and cryptocurrency pyramid schemes, the re-intermediation of new monopolies, and so on. Maybe it would be better if people were still working on free content for love not for money, and/or working on sites and apps that provide a useful service in return for a simple subscription or fee.

</comment><comment><USER66> Isn't Mozilla already a non-profit to build a better browser? Shouldn't they focus on that or reduce in-browser ads if they have too much cash?

<comment><USER67> > _Isn 't Mozilla already a non-profit to build a better browser_

No. Building a browser is one of the things they do to work for their goals, but is not their mission statement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Mozilla is master of content marketing, PR and creating buzz. If they just spent their energy into building the best browser.

</comment><comment><USER69> Some seriously over-engineered solutions being offered in this thread, which I guess is understandable considering the cohort. And I'm glad that people smarter than me are looking at this from every angle. But here are the things that I know/feel to be true:

1) Back when advertising subsidised content was a straight up proposition nobody really minded about ads outside of finding them mildly annoying. It's how the most popular pre-internet content (privately owned free to air TV and newspapers/magazines) survived and flourished.

2) What most irks people about the current ad-tech based business model isn't the advertising, it's the data mining behind it.

3) Lots of people don't even care about data mining as long as they get what they need instantly, easily and for free.

4) The big ad-tech players' emergence and dominance after the bursting of the early 2000s dotcom bubble is widely attributed to their mastery of ad-tech whereas it seems to be that consolidation and concentration were much larger factors.

5) Ad-tech enabled targeted advertising isn't that much more effective than traditional- or content-based advertising (I wish I had the source for this but it seemed legit when I read it... Surveillance Capitalism, maybe?)

What feeds the ad-tech industry really is advertisers' FOMO on the algorithms touted by the ad-tech vendors. "Why buy a traditional mass-spray ad when you can have one delivered with surgical precision?" goes the sales pitch. And considering the old saw about 50% of advertising being useless but nobody knows which 50% it is, having numbers and measurable insights dangled in front of you must be compelling.

My suggestion is that we try to steer things back to content-based advertising. Of course the web needs to make money. Money is a great incentive for innovation, etc. Of course users aren't going to pay for it except in exceptional circumstances. We've been spoiled with too much free content to turn that ship around now. But if I'm on a site about skiing for example and I see an ad for a ski store that has a sale, that's a good and useful piece of advertising. I'm happy to see that, as long as it doesn't follow me around the web for the next 6 months.

And how do we steer companies to do the right thing? The only way that has proven to be effective over the years - by naming and shaming, boycotting the bad actors and supporting the good ones. Basically making the costs of behaving badly outweigh the benefits.

How do we get there? I haven't figured that bit out yet. The big problem is that it's kind of axiomatic that the likelihood of change is inversely proportional to the amount of money being generated by the status quo, and hundreds of billions of dollars is a lot of weight to throw behind keeping the current system humming along as is.

<comment><USER70> I agree with many things except point 2)

> 2) What most irks people about the current ad-tech based business model > isn't the advertising, it's the data mining behind it.

I think most people are not even aware of some bigger implications of data mining except some banners following them for months. After being irked with generation of popup ads that you have to chase buttons to close it now most are irked with ads that autoplay video, sound and you cannot easily stop it. We are also irked with all those ads tracking technology eating lots of your ram and cpu power - modern websites are excessively fat and bloated mostly because of all those tracking scripts.

There is also another problem that ads business model generates - <USER2> quality content, fake news, clickbait headlines, articles that stimulate flame wars, youtubers talking taking about something for 15 minutes even though you could summarize it in 1 min, game devs designing addictive games for kids. Basically fighting for your eyeballs time, keeping you glued to the screen as long as possible. This is not scalable because time you have during the day (24h) is fixed and wastes lots of people time that they could be use to make something more productive with their life.

<comment><USER69> Sure, those things are a problem and my post was in no way meant to be an exhaustive list of all the problems of the modern internet.

But coming from a "traditional" publishing background, I look at the internet as just another publishing, and low-quality attention-grabbing content is nothing new in this context - just have a look at your local tabloid newspaper.

The problems that you talk about in your 2nd paragraph really stem from what I hesitantly call human nature, and no tech solution is ever going to "fix" that.</comment></comment></comment>


Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/europe-says-737-max-won-t-fly-until-its-design-review-complete <comment><USER2> Good. Hold them accountable and make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again. Although a 'same plane' cert was a good goal, they should have made sure it was truly accurate instead of bending the case to make it so.

This may be as close to an 'open and shut' case for corporate gross negligence as we will find in quite a while (at least I hope so).

I would hate to see them go under but it should be clear that this type of corner cutting is unacceptable and future manufacturers of all kinds should think twice before stretching to put a round peg in a square hole.... especially with lives on the line.

<comment><USER3> And how are they going to be held accountable?

They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the company. Maybe not everyone signed, but then it's about how much they can pay their lawyers.

<comment><USER4> > They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the > company

Contracts with whom? A member country EU court with a dead passenger could presumably make life very very uncomfortable for senior Boeing management.

<comment><USER3> I wrote victim and not dead passenger as you falsely implied.

The contracts are with the surviving familing members. If you don't consider them as victims then give me another word for it.

edit: If you downvote me at least give me a chance to defend why I chose the word victim. The reply gizmo is there.

<comment><USER5> The definition of victim implies the same as "dead passenger". The families of dead passengers would be stretching the definition, at the very least it's not the most obvious definition in this case

>a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action

"Victim's family" is how people would normally refer to them.

<comment><USER3> Ok fine "victim's family". I stand corrected. It's not like when we change the words to describe it, is going to change how they feel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone else extremely reluctant to fly on a Boeing plane after this?

A lot of people say _" It's no big deal, they just need to update the MCAS software"_, but I see this entire situation as a sign of much deeper issues at Boeing, issues that can't be fixed with a simple software update and could affect every plane they make.

<comment><USER7> The MCAS will likely be fixed in a way that makes it reliable and dependable. Boeing wouldn't dare anything else since there are a lot of eyes on them and how they handle this now.

What worries me is not the MCAS (now), but what else might be lurking under the surface that Boeing pretends is not a problem.

I don't feel confident that Boeing would accept the cost of grounding the fleet the next time something serious-but-not-yet-crashing shows up. It's clear that to Boeing, their numbers are more important than lives.

<comment><USER8> Unless you start putting Boeing executives in jail, there is literally ZERO incentive for them not to repeat all this. In fact, the CEO and senior executives have probably already received their massive bonuses for the MAX sales. It's not like they're going to be asked to return those bonuses now with all this fiasco.

<comment><USER9> There are financial incentives if their customers choose competing products because of safety concerns.

<comment><USER10> I dont think people will all of a sudden start ditching cheap flights just to avoid the max or Boeing. Airline industry is extremely price sensitive from a consumer perspective, and for people to potentially sacrifice hundreds of dollars of savings would be a non sequitur.

For example, if airline A flies MAX and has a ticket for 200 and another airline B has the same route for 400 on A320, most people I know would still fly the MAX because they cant afford to be picky.

I think talking with your wallet works only when the price is relatively inelastic

<comment><USER11> Here is one data point for you: no matter the price of alternatives, I will not step on a 737. Ever.

<comment> munk-a If you purchase a plane ticket for a flight that appears to be carried by a bombardier model, would you refuse to board the plane at the gate if the bombardier plane ended up requiring maintenance and they swapped it out for a 737?

How many vacation days would you sacrifice out of your week in Cancun to stand by that belief?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A slap in the face to the comments that were dismissing concerns as overreactions and stating that 737-MAX would return to operation shortly. Not in EU at least.

<comment><USER13> As far as I know this is one of the rare few, read I can't recall one, occasions in which EASA didn't accept FAA certification. Usually it is cross- certification between the two. Things are getting interesting and not necessarily in a good way as cooperation is reduced. That it makes sense in this special case is only further proof.

<comment><USER14> I think EASA doesn't trust the FAA here because the FAA had less involvement in the original certification than some are comfortable with. So rather that asking the FAA to certify the entire plane and maybe risk a similar procedure (Boeing self-certifies most of it), they'll do it themselves.

What I'm curious is whether EASA has similar certification shortcu... optimizations for Airbus.

<comment><USER15> I hope they don't. But Boeing not being trustworthy does not mean that Airbus isn't.

<comment><USER16> Just over a year ago Airbus paid a fine to Germany for bribery. So it appears they have their own corruption problems.

<comment><USER17> Wasn't that for sales though?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I'm willing to narrow the goalposts that much just so I can absolve Airbus from misbehaving. And that's just the most recent example easy to find with a quick Google search.

<comment><USER15> Of course Airbus misbehaved and is probably still misbehaving in some manner. The question is whether they are misbehaving when it comes to safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good. Which it should have done and should from now on do for all 'self- certified' Boeing airplanes.

<comment><USER19> It still kills me that they let Boeing 'self-certify' their own airplanes.

I had a diagnostic medical imaging startup. You can't even imagine the pain the FDA inflicted on our bottom line before they would give an OK on anything. But the FAA is out there just taking the word of some company's engineers that "Yeah. We're good."?

I guess I just thought that all of the regulation, was like it was in the healthcare field. Guess not.

<comment><USER20> On the other hand, if you can submit a "new" medical device through the 510k process, it is the device manufacturer that certifies that the new equipment is equivalent to an existing product. That is mostly comparable to what Boeing did.

<comment><USER19> You can say that it is equivalent, but the FDA will still make you prove it with the relevant tests and documentation.

And look, I'm not saying it's wrong that Boeing has it a lot easier than I did. I'm just asking what's the justification? In my case I get it. Imagine you're submitting a device that shoots high levels of radiation, at extremely high power, into the human body to kill cancer cells?

Well yeah. I understand. The FDA doesn't care that you believe this device is the same as the last one.

You're shooting high yield radiation...

At levels fatal to humans...

In the middle of a hospital...

Which itself is potentially in the middle of a population center?

OK, yeah, I get it. They're gonna check the new device as thoroughly as they checked the old one. No one wants the equivalent of a dirty bomb going off in some small town. I'm not complaining about that.

I even understand that Boeing doesn't shoot radiation all over the place, so maybe things can be a bit more lenient? I get that maybe that was the justification? But here's the thing, Boeing can still kill people, as is plainly evident. Why is the government being so lax on them, while at the same time giving my RTP product the equivalent of a regulatory colonoscopy?

I mean, if anything, both products should get the regulatory colonoscopy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm curious to see how passengers will react to flying via 737-max. Will ticket prices be lowered to reflect the inevitable wariness of flying in one again?

<comment><USER22> I will not fly the 737 MAX unless and until it has its own type certificate... and even then not for at least 3-4 years of commercial service under that condition.

It is easy to see the scheduled type of aircraft when you book tickets.

<comment><USER23> > It is easy to see the scheduled type of aircraft when you book tickets.

is it? I've never noticed it.

I guess it's possible to infer it by the seat configuration when you get to choose it, but I never saw "you'll be flying XYZ" when I booked tickets in the past.

<comment><USER24> seatguru.com is your friend.

Note, though, that planes can be swaped on short notice, or no notice at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like the EASA finally figured out that the FAA can't be trusted with matters regarding Boeing.

<comment><USER3> A diplomat would say we could trust the FAA but now they need to be verified.

<comment><USER15> A diplomat would say that while the FAA tests planes to the highest standards, there's no harm in testing to the highest standards twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> BTW, 3 major China airlines formally demand compensation for 737max from Boeing ([https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48362283](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48362283))

</comment><comment><USER27> Let's hope this debacle will finally convince Boeing it can't keep reusing the same airframe - with small adjustments - for half a century.

Edit: Don't forget the 737 airframe was already a modified 727 airframe...

Also, I wonder how this will affect the Boeing-Embraer partnership. It would certainly be cheaper to spec-up an E-Jet to have the capacity of a 737 than to design a new airframe from scratch.

<comment><USER16> The 737 was not a modified 727. They reused some pieces. In particular they chose the same fuselage cross-section. This is pretty normal and I prefer it over offering all-new designs.

Also, the E195 has less than half the capacity of the largest 737. That would be a hell of an extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Booked a flight for later this summer (US). United apparently thinks the Max is going back in service sooner than later, at least the MAX-9. I decided to take a less desirable iternary and more expensive flights to avoid that aircraft. Clearly the FAA is signaling to someone that this is all going to blow over. Does anyone actually expected the Boeing's to fail the investigation? I don't. Business as usual: "We identified what happend, won't happen again, promises"

I won't be flying on one anytime soon if I can help it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I flied to Cyprus from Stockholm with Norwegian last week. On the plane it was written 737-800 or 737 Max. I wonder how you can tell them apart and if Norwegian uses the Max line!?

<comment><USER30> EDIT: Lol, nevermind. Go read the child comments. I failed.

There are two features you can look for:

[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/48929/is- this-a...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/48929/is- this-a-737-800-or-737-max-8)

tl;dr on the MAX the wing tips split into two (above and below the main wing), on all previous 737s, the wingtips only curve up. Also the engine cowling has some cool looky jaggies on the trailing edge.

<comment><USER31> That winglet design is not specific to the MAX aircraft. That CFM engine is also used on Airbus NEO.

<comment><USER30> I had not seen the split winglet on non-MAX 737s. I stand corrected. I did mean the CFM engine as a distinguisher between 737 models, not as a identifying feature for 737 MAX vs all other 2 engine smallish jets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And I won't fly on one until Europe completes its own design review.

</comment><comment><USER33> IMHO anytime an airline releases a statement that says "we have updated our software", its basically the same thing as saying, "Im sorry, but our plane was unstable because of buggy code, hopefully this patch will make sure our planes dont go down." That is scary, software developers make errors, and when your plane is going down because of software related issue, THAT IS A HUGE PROBLEM.

<comment><USER16> If we on HN are being consistent, we should appreciate an airline that offers frequent over-the-air software updates. We love it when Tesla does it...

<comment><USER34> We do?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19443925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19443925) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17991905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17991905) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16808171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16808171)

<comment><USER16> Exceptions proving the rule? It gets a lot more love than hate.

<comment><USER34> You're probably right. People tend to post more negative than positive anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The dent the reputation of Boeing got after this is nothing compared to the drop in reputation of the FAA.

<comment><USER36> Agreed on this. It's the FAA that's taking the fall and the US with it.

</comment></comment><comment> munk-a People need to be jailed over this, start at the top and work your way down.

</comment><comment><USER37> As they should - but hopefully they fast-track their design review and make it transparent to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER38> What the FAA should have done, too.

</comment><comment><USER39> Jail time for execs is the only solution that matters.

</comment><comment><USER40> Europe has an interest in promoting their state-sponsored airplane manufacturer, Airbus.

</comment><comment><USER41> I mean while I'm all for continuing to punish Boeing for their blatant disregard for human lives, you could also say it's in the best interest of the EU to attack Boeing in a way that doesn't seem hostile on a political level since it indirectly benefits Airbus.

<comment><USER42> It is perfectly clear that the US is at economical war against Europe.

However, Europe is not obviously at war against the US.</comment></comment>


Trove of stories and drawings reveals life growing up in 19th-century America - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/05/nelson_archive_at_amherst_a_one_of_a_kind_trove_reveals_what_rural_19th.single.html

<comment><AUTHOR> see also the main website with the archive: [https://www.ats.amherst.edu/childhood/](https://www.ats.amherst.edu/childhood/)</comment>


Chrome is not the new IE - <AUTHOR> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299136717027336192 <comment><USER2> The article is just an opinion and some claims, supported by zero evidence. Yes, Google is interested that Web continues to live. But article omits that Google only wants the Web that exists on Google's terms. That's why they practically rebuilt the web themselves, on all levels, from protocol to the client (spdy, webp, amp, dart, chromeos & android, chromium).

<comment><USER3> They make changes to web standards and force it's adoption. Innovation is one thing but this is far from a democractic internet.

<comment><USER4> But that is also progress. If it wasn't for Google's investment we would still maybe running Flash. People have had a lot of time to advance the web before Google came along.

The standard is open, the code is open - I don't understand how "is Chrome the new IE?" even a question. It's not like they're bundling it only on ChromeOS and Android , it's not like they have the equivalent of VbScript /ActiveX and plenty of people are making browsers based on Chromium.

<comment><USER3> I do think google innovated a lot but I think htlm5 killed flash not google. Html5 is a web standard. Chrome is very much the new IE, it use to be I was forced to run IE for some b.s. legacy corporate webapp now I am forced to run Chrome. Why? Because devs have to prioritize a browser and the amount of non standard supposed engineering by google means they can't support other browsers.

Google is playing a winner takes all game of dominance. Imagine if Ford became so popular that mechanics can't be bothered to fix other cars because Ford does everything differently.

People are being forced to base browsers on Chromium because no one will use anything else due to sites depending on Chromium only features! This is very anti-innovation.

You came up with a cool new feature in firefox (like containers) and you want to standardize it? Well if uncle google says no you're out of luck. Standards exist for a reason and engineers(even at google) use to have enough professionalism to respect the concept and process of having an internet where everyone participates democratically.

I hate to keep on coming to similar conclusions but Browsers need to be regulated if the browser industry is always being overrun by some monopoly.

<comment><USER5> Apple killed Flash.

HTML5 just provided a suitable replacement for Flash, but suddenly having a large browser (Mobile Safari) that just couldn't play Flash content at all provided the incentive for web devs to actually invest the effort to switch to HTML5.

<comment><USER6> This is the correct answer. To add historical perspective, I had friends who would go into Apple stores and point all the demo machines at newgrounds.com to show people that they shouldn't waste their money on devices that couldn't even play flash animations as well as a low end laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I kind of like seeing articles like this, where you get to see the mental gymnastics (sometimes a simple somersault, sometimes a double twisting triple backflip) that employees use to justify to themselves "why I am not as evil as those people in that other company."

Sure, I don't believe Chrome has the same problems that IE did either, but I definitely do believe Chrome uses its dominant position primarily in service to extending Google's desires for the web. E.g. signed HTTP exchanges are more AMP shit that nobody asked for.

<comment><USER8> Sorry but I like amp. I don't want sites like the guardian to drain my phone battery and load in 10 seconds. I understand if it's bad for publishers but as a consumer I love it.

To suggest that an end user would go about disabling JavaScript and other reasons just shows how HN is in a bubble and don't really understand that 99% of the users don't care.

<comment><USER9> Psst, the thing that drains your battery on news sites are the ads, which Google is 100% responsible for by encouraging an ecosystem of third party JS.

<comment><USER10> Not just the ads but also autoplay videos, 2mb of javascript and the ocasional fancy background fullHD video.

Amp gets ride of those.

<comment><USER11> [https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp- video/?format=w...](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp- video/?format=websites)

[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp- video-interface.md#autoplay)

<comment><USER10> A great advantage of having standards like Amp is that we can then control and limit how things behave. See criterias for autoplay video on Amp:

\- the video is automatically muted before autoplay starts

\- when the video is scrolled out of view, the video is paused

\- when the video is scrolled into view, the video resumes playback

\- when the user taps the video, the video is unmuted

\- if the user has interacted with the video (e.g., mutes/unmutes, pauses/resumes, etc.), and the video is scrolled in or out of view, the state of the video remains as how the user left it. For example, if the user pauses the video, then scrolls the video out of view and returns to the video, the video is still paused.

Source: [https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp- video-interface.md#autoplay)

<comment><USER11> None of these features should need Google's proprietary platform. See, for example, Mozilla's `media.autoplay.enabled` or `media.block-play-until- visible`

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Of course a Google engineer would say this, because only a Google engineer has the perspective to truly appreciate Google's position as the world's benevolent steward of technology leadership - not just to maintain web standards but drive them forward in ways that Google knows will benefit everyone.

Sure it would be great if Google wasn't a de-facto monopoly or that they have massive conflicts of interests as the Internet's biggest advertising network. But what people need to understand is that Google knows what's best for all of us when it comes to what the Internet is and should be. So when Google rams half-baked APIs into their browser well before they even have gone through third party certification, often releasing features with glaring security holes, they're doing it because it's best for all of us, not just Google.

All the nay-sayers need to just relax and know their place.

<comment><USER13> I am a little confused. Is that supposed to be a sarcastic comment? Honest question, because I am a bad judge of sarcasm

<comment><USER14> An example of heavy sarcasm. It would be worth your while to study it carefully to learn the style points.

<comment><USER11> And the tone of voice someone might use when speaking such heavy sarcasm: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URnJzUPChSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URnJzUPChSg)

<comment><USER12> Oh by the way, I was being sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Safari is the new IE. Apple's ecosystem is holding back the web severely by shipping a crippled web browser. Safari severely lags behind other browsers, and due to how iOS and the like require other browsers (like Chrome) to use it's archaic rendering engine, it hurts competition as much as the 30% store tax. No PWAs, no notifications, no native experience.

I would love to see someone push for iOS to allow any browser/renderer to run.

<comment><USER16> Also you can't test on it without paying them thousands of dollars for hardware.

I remember maintaining a bunch of sites and university, and while IE11 was missing a couple of APIs (like Promise) at least I could download a VM straight from Microsoft and figure out what was going wrong. I still have no way to test on Safari which is becoming more and more annoying as they "fall" behind.

<comment><USER15> I learned that on Linux, GNOME Web (Epiphany) is basically Safari. It will exhibit most of the quirks and rendering issues, and it has a decent dev console. It definitely helps avoid paying the Apple tax.

<comment><USER17> Isn't Konqueror the original webkit browser?

<comment><USER11> It's called KHTML, but yes. Apple's fork is WebKit/WebCore: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#WebCore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#WebCore)

KHTML isn't officially dead, but it's also not very active: [https://phabricator.kde.org/source/khtml/history/master/](https://phabricator.kde.org/source/khtml/history/master/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > IE was what happened when Microsoft conquered the browser space (where there > really was only one other serious player), without any clear sustainable > vision of what was "next". Chrome has plenty of ideas of what's "next" for > the web - and they're not just about Google. (cont)

This is literally the problem though. If you consider all the Chrome derivatives and WebKit as one single browser. Then Firefox is the main competitor and Chromes market share is at the rate of IEs.

Just because you worked on IE and Chrome doesnt mean you are not biased. The issue we all have is that exactly that Google assumes control of what the web will look like and other browsers are left scrambling to implement things that were not standardized beforehand.

If you want to argue Chrome is not the new IE then Chrome needs to stop pushing out features not yet fully approved by their respective standards committees.

Chrome is the new IE in several ways including websites only working on Chrome as they once only worked on IE.

Lastly... A good number of things Google has added to the web could be argued that it is indeed about Googles own interests. WebRTC was useful for Google Hangouts for example. AMP only exists to give Google total control. Their adblocking changes only exist for the same reasons. Removing URLs from the URL bar also are not part of an open web standard. This is beyond anything I remember IE doing. Chrome is literally worse than IE for the open web.

<comment><USER19> > If you consider all the Chrome derivatives and WebKit as one single browser.

WebKit has a very different direction from Chromium and it is usually not very useful to model them as being related anymore in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think that Chrome is different for the web than IE was, but I'm still wary of Google having such a heavy influence over the web as a platform.

Google have consistently shown they're great at data, struggle to build platforms, and approach product development by throwing stuff at a wall. They have a heavy cultural bias towards developing and shipping new initiatives over supporting existing products.

None of these attributes are good things for supporting an open platform. Google does a good job at firewalling their data gathering tendencies from Chrome and web standards, but over the last ten years they've consistently pushed new standards and experiments that no one has asked for: Dart, GWT, Angular, Web Components, AMP, Service Workers, notifications, payments, DRM support, web bundles, etc. The actual innovations that have helped the platform grow have largely happened elsewhere.

Some of the stuff they do will be great, but there is going to be a long term cost to the platform from this relentless push to use the web as Google's personal playground for innovation.

</comment><comment><USER21> "It's different looking from the inside" is little consolation to those of us on the outside.

<comment><USER22> I frequently find conversations with Googlers with regards to privacy and trust always end this way. The assumption is if you were just a Googler, if you knew what working at Google was like, you'd also believe it is a good thing.

But since you don't have that inside Google knowledge, just trust them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's not the new IE in so far as the problems with it are not the same as the problems IE had.

IE was a stagnant platform with proprietary technology that still haunts my workplace: Cognos < v.11 only has complete functionality with IE. For a couple of years we could only use our primary ERP system with a specific version of JVM in a specific version of IE. IE failed (at least in part) because it failed the consumer experience.

Chrome generally gives users a good experience: Page load times, better in its own very popular apps (though apparently sand-bagged against competitors) built in high-quality search, etc. The reasons it fails are, in my opinion, primarily on the privacy front.

</comment><comment><USER24> this half-article just seems like pointless arguing over definitions. people aren't saying chrome is the new IE because the two situations are exactly alike in every way. but google, as a private entity, now effectively has a monopoly on deciding what the web should function like.

<comment><USER25> Yeah because Microsoft is a small company that has not a say in it?

<comment><USER26> Oh do they? In what way?

<comment><USER25> For example they rejected the future changes that were potentially limiting uBlock Origin. But most of the time, chromium Google devs are just talented engineers and Microsoft has not to conflict much with their excellence

<comment><USER27> Would you please say how you know that Microsoft has (in your words) "rejected the future changes that were potentially limiting uBlock Origin"?

E.g., did a Microsoft executive say something to a journalist, who wrote it down somewhere where you subsequently read it?

E.g., do you know people who work at Microsoft?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > IE was what happened when Microsoft conquered the browser space (where there > really was only one other serious player), without any clear sustainable > vision of what was "next"

I was under the impression that HTAs were what they viewed as "next", letting developers host and dynamically generate applications that would run over the network on Windows (or otherwise IE-equipped, hence IE for Solaris, et al) clients: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application)

It even has that whole super-granular "Zones" security system to e.g. trust an intranet-hosted HTA more than a publicly-hosted one. Am I off-base here on my historic Microsoft speculation? :)

</comment><comment><USER28> I feel like people don't remember how terrible IE 6 was for so long.

You can criticize Google for any number of things, but they certainly want browsers to be as good and as capable as possible.

<comment><USER24> I don't really think people are criticizing google for not wanting browsers to be capable when they say that chrome is the new IE

<comment><USER29> I don't know what other people think, but IE to me is synonymous with a browser that was good, but then stopped improving in any meaningful way for years. The first version of Chrome showed that there was still immense worthwhile improvements that could be made in browsers. If anything, the rate of improvements to Chrome is accelerating, even after they established marketshare dominance.

<comment><USER23> When Chrome came out I had been using Netscape -> Mozilla -> Firefox for about 10 years. Then Chrome seemed to blow it out of the water in terms of speed improvements. I switched virtually over night.

<comment><USER30> Wasn't Chrome also the start of browsers keeping each tab in its own process? I remember the Chrome "comic" mentioning this.

I remember when IE got tabs, a crash would bring down the whole instance. After all, there's no point segregating the tab from the chrome (no pun intended) when it was single "tab" only.

<comment><USER23> Possibly, but I'm not sure they did that at the begining. I remember sometimes a tab would crash with a little unhappy face with a squiggle mouth (or something like that) and all the tabs would go down like that. But then again the whole app didn't come crash and I could refresh the other tabs to get them back without losing everything I had open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > _... Are they all good ideas? No, probably not, and that 's why we have > processes (that get revised - hi, that's part of my job now) to make sure > we're including lots of external input too. The Web stagnating as a platform > for just docs would be bad too. (cont)_

Oh, you guys have _internal processes_!

You're close to able to unilaterally set the direction the web should be taking, but that's ok, because you have processes!

</comment><comment><USER32> It's worse, because this time there is no hope on the horizon.

<comment><USER33> When IE6 was king, there was no hope on horizon. IE6 came out in 2001, Chrome did not come out until 2008.

<comment><USER34> Mozilla was there.

<comment><USER23> I'm guessing them mean in terms of anything likely to actually unseat IE. Netscape->Mozilla->Firefox had been around years and were still only minor players ~20% market share. Chrome on the other hand saw nearly instant hockey- stick growth. I remember I switched almost instantly after a quick try and everything was so much faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I believe he is in good faith. My concern is that his opinions and what corporate policy is going to push for in a monopoly situation are two different things. You only have so much power as a technical person. Policies that are good for the community align with a company bottom line only when there is competition. Otherwise things degenerate, it might take time but I don't see any reason why they shouldn't. Especially when the barrier to entry is so high.

</comment><comment><USER36> I will say unlike IE, Chrome (more specifically Chromium) has allowed for a new generation of browsers to compete. Rendering / JavaScript engine is now a commodity.

If you want try out something that feels new and different you can try out what I'm working on! It's designed to make you more productive and feel more like an OS than a browser...

<comment><USER36> Forgot the link to get access: [https://www.aspen.cloud](https://www.aspen.cloud)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Chrome is the opposite of IE. IE was dragging the rest of the web behind with its glacial update pace and lack of automatic updates. Chrome moves at light speed meaning no one else can actually keep up with all the new features getting added. Chrome has resulted in browsers being more complex than an OS.

<comment><USER38> Agreed 100%, and IMHO it was a _good_ thing that IE "was dragging the rest of the web behind", because it at least gave some _stability_ to the platform and gave the small competitor browsers a chance, while keeping sites relatively simple. In contrast, Google's "pushing the web forward" propaganda and the explosion of complexity and churn that has basically become a cancerous growth is much worse.

<comment><USER37> Most of the time it doesn't actually matter that your browser is missing support for webusb or webwhatever but every now and then you hit a site that uses it and it creates a user experience of "Just use chrome and it always works" A good demo is Mozilla spent about 7 years and 43,000 commits on Servo which is JUST a rendering engine and not any of the JS apis and it still doesn't actually work well enough to render most sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not scared of an open-source engine ruining the Internet. Not gonna happen and I'm fine with Google doing whatever they're doing. My experience with the Webkit gang is that they're obsessed with the consumer and privacy and all that stuff. So much that they won't entertain any adjustments to permit adtech. That's enough for me to be convinced that browser engine development is sufficiently separate from Google's main business.

The real problem is when things like EME make it into the standard and you need to use Widevine and friends to see things.

Also, I hate having to stand with people who rail against everything because then no one takes you seriously when there is a thing that needs railing against.

Given that and given that my life is short, I'm not going to lose any sleep over this.

<comment><USER19> > open-source engine

An open-source engine that is under majority control by one company.

> Not gonna happen

It is already happening!

> So much that they won't entertain any adjustments to permit adtech.

The WebKit team has created special features to essentially restore things lost with ITP, and really has no other purpose to exist: [https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click- att...](https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution- for-the-web/)

<comment><USER40> WebKit is Apple, not Google, no?

<comment><USER19> For the most part, yes. Were you confused about something?

<comment><USER40> The OP was talking about WebKit in the context of "an open-source engine ruining the Internet", and how "browser engine development is sufficiently separate from Google's main business".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Chrome is without a question the new IE. Worse then IE now that Chrome tracks your Google login directly in the browser and takes away functionality if you don't login. IE forced all other browsers to follow its standards and guess what... Chrome does the same thing.

<comment><USER23> Except IE was ripe for disruption due to a fairly poor customer experience. Various web apps of the time wouldn't work in different versions. It was slow, and frequently locked up completely needing a force-quit or, worse, hard reboot. Chrome isn't in that same sort of position.

<comment><USER42> While true, I feel it is simply a more competent prison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Chrome has plenty of ideas of what's "next" for the web -

I mean, I feel like that's so much worse.

</comment><comment><USER44> It would be easier to not believe accusations like [0], if google didn't squander it's reputation of not doing evil long time ago.

[0]: [https://fossbytes.com/google-accused-of-sabotaging- microsoft...](https://fossbytes.com/google-accused-of-sabotaging-microsofts- edge-browser-by-ex-engineer/)

<comment><USER45> Quite a bit of sloppy reasoning there. If I add a DIV to my page and it stops your video acceleration, that's because your browser engine sucks.

<comment><USER24> all browser engines suck in specific enough circumstances, though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Many comments are saying _it 's not a technical issue_, I think it is. Chrome is mostly developed as an open-source project (chromium), meaning features and bugs are transparently discussed and fixed. Compare that to IE which was closed source, meaning nothing was fixed...

<comment><USER47> Ever get your ideas on the roadmap? Ever add new features or change how chromium or how google chrome works. I didn't think so.

Open source doesn't mean you have any infuence or say in the future of the project. It only means you can take a copy make changes and roll your own version.

The roadmap changes the internet unhealthy ways.

<comment><USER46> > _" Open source doesn't mean you have any influence or say in the future of > the project. It only means you can take a copy make changes and roll your > own version."_

Exactly, just because you have a change you want, doesn't mean you can force in on everyone. The maintainers of the project decide weather they want it or not.

Unfortunately the best open-source projects have some-kind of [1] top-down control. For example; _Linux_ is developed the same way. You can fork and submit changes, but there's no guarantee that Linus Torvald's will accept those changes....

What would be a better alternative? Developing in behind closed doors? Some kind of democratic system of implementing features... these projects usually suck as there's nobody in charge and it tries to please too many people.

Anyway, it's definitely better than the IE situation, which was much less transparent and resistant to changes... with absolutely ZERO input from the community...

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Seems reasonable enough to me. If URLs were no longer a thing, for what reason would I Google anything? How would google create results if they couldn't crawl publicly accessible websites? The value of the search engine and a public internet seem hand-in-hand.

<comment><USER49> Well if Google is already hosting all the content in their walled garden (see AMP), this would still be able to crawl the content, and even be able to be the exclusive platform that could crawl that content (in theory)

<comment><USER29> This is probably straying a little off-topic, but AMP seems nothing like a walled garden when compared to Facebook, Instagram, or Apple app store.

<comment><USER45> AMP is nothing like a walled garden, period. Anyone can host it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Back in the day IE always had an 'advantage' purely by the name: 'Internet Explorer'.

When people 'got a computer' to 'get on the internet', seeing that icon on the desktop got them where the thought they needed to be.

Very, very few people, even years after after Chrome and Firefox came out, even knew they had a choice over the (browser) matter of getting 'on the web'. (There are some classic videos out there of voxpops of people being asked about 'the web' and 'the internet' etc.)

(To begin with, for me, it was Spry Mosaic then Netscape from about '93.)

<comment><USER11> Internet Explorer 3 was even more blatant — its desktop icon label was "The Internet"! [https://i.imgur.com/uq1AW2I.png](https://i.imgur.com/uq1AW2I.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> As long as AMP exists then Google can not be trusted stewards of the web.

</comment><comment><USER52> Twitter bio: "Web Standards at Google in my spare time".

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

</comment><comment><USER53> Someone's going to get a friendly email from in house counsel tomorrow morning....

</comment><comment><USER54> Author doesn't understand what "the new IE" actually means.

<comment><USER55> What does it mean? (Honest question)

<comment><USER54> alias of the internet for users, main target for devs and designers. Chrome is the new IE.

<comment><USER56> Uh...no. Perhaps you weren't there.

Microsoft wanted IE to be a wedge to drive Windows into enterprises. An open, standards-based web threatened that quite deeply (particularly one where the experiences that could be created could rival desktop apps).

Microsoft adopted a two-pronged approach. One was the inclusion of IE into the operating system to ensure the ground was seeded, and IE would be ubiquitous (keep in mind this was prior to Apple products being a realistic alternative in enterprise settings, so it was PC/Windows everywhere).

The second part was investing significant engineering efforts into ensuring that Windows- and Office-specific capabilities could emerge through IE (and only IE).

For example, if you wanted vector graphics you could use Office to produce VML and that could be viewed through IE (only). Pointedly, IE did _not_ support SVG, which was the other major vector graphics standard at the time.

This neatly (and painfully) fragmented the market for anyone who wanted to produce vector graphics as part of a solution. You had to find a way to support VML and SVG if you wanted that to happen (and many early graphical toolkits for the web did precisely that).

All development for IE was conducted as closed source. Microsoft had no particular interest in making the browser compatible with the web standards, because as synergy between Windows and IE created a development target with benefits for Microsoft. Nobody else could create an equivalent to IE that would replicate the Microsoft-specific capabilities. The lack of standards- support created stickiness that kept IE around for a long time, because enterprises couldn't (or didn't feel like paying for) the changes necessary to bring apps into standards compliance.

A wholesale shift towards Adobe Flash was made a big crack in IE's armor. Flash ran everywhere, and sophisticated solutions could be built with it. Real web standards also made a lot of progress, and IE's creaking old engine was easily outperformed and "out-standarded" by Chrome. The subsequent rise of Apple and fall of Flash cemented Chrome (and Safari) as solid performers that could be used to deliver enterprise solutions and worked on multiple platforms.

Is Chrome the new IE? Well, is Chrome being used to drive Google-specific functionality that can only be used with other Google technologies, and can't be implemented elsewhere? Does Chrome actively avoid standards? Is Chrome actively attempting to fragment the standards? Is Chrome developed as closed source?

The thing is, Microsoft's strategy stood a pretty good chance of working. I'm always amazed at how IE stuck around when there were better alternatives, and how long it took before market pressure forced Microsoft towards web standards. A lot of money was spent on Enterprise Windows, and a lot of solutions used Microsoft-specific parts of IE. Enterprise dollars cast a long shadow, over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Node is the new IE.

No support for fetch. Has its own non-standard APIs. Doesn't implement basics like atob.

</comment><comment><USER25> Chromium is the exact opposite of internet explorer: Internet Explorer slowed down progress by getting low human resources, chromium on the other hand has more human resources than any browser has ever had (especially since Microsoft joined them) and enrich the web through new features at an unprecedented pace. Internet explorer was stagnation while chromium is making the web a better platform in real-time

The new IE obviously is webkit which miraculously can still run most websites,but for how long? After the mozilla lay offs, it's probable that they will slowly but surely get massive webcompat issues too

<comment><USER38> You call it "stagnation", I call it "stability" \--- something that seems to be ignored or even actively discouraged by a lot of these "modern" trends.

<comment><USER57> I also call it stagnation. Stability suggests that you are in a good place and don't need to move on. IE was anything but a good place, in particular for the people that had to build things for it. Not all modern trends in web dev are good, but there have been many, many quality of life improvements for developers and users alike since IE finally stopped being so ubiquitously supported.

<comment><USER38> It was definitely a much better place back then for everyone who did not have to rely on IE, since the heavy abuse of JS was not common and sites were far simpler and more content-focused as a result.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


gEDA project - <AUTHOR> http://geda-project.org/index.html <comment><USER2> > The gEDA project has produced and continues working on a full GPL'd suite > and toolkit of Electronic Design Automation tools. These tools are used for > electrical circuit design, schematic capture, simulation, prototyping, and > production. Currently, the gEDA project offers a mature suite of free > software applications for electronics design, including schematic capture, > attribute management, bill of materials (BOM) generation, netlisting into > over 20 netlist formats, analog and digital simulation, and printed circuit > board (PCB) layout.

Some of those keywords should have been included in the title, i.e. "gEDA project - toolkit of Electronic Design Automation tools". HN has a search function and the better the title the more likely it is to be useful to people that search for keywords like "toolkit", "electronic design", "design automation", etc.

I added this comment so that it will show up in search for those keywords so that people can find the link. People worry about tagging systems but sentences and words already are a form of tagging.</comment>


Show HN: Firefox User CSS for HN (post your own and/or requests, if any) - <AUTHOR> https://pastebin.com/8StFpps9 <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't manage to style the form inputs, which kinda stumped me (changing size and padding works as it should, while e.g. background color or border parameters do nothing, huh)

here's how it looks: [https://i.imgur.com/l9FA7qs.png](https://i.imgur.com/l9FA7qs.png)</comment>