The New Firefox and Ridiculous Numbers of Tabs - <AUTHOR> https://metafluff.com/2017/07/21/i-am-a-tab-hoarder/ <comment><USER3> I'm really glad that people at Mozilla use ridiculous numbers of tabs too. Lazy-loading of tabs is the reason I switched to firefox. I'm not sure if it's still this way, but Chrome used to load every tab on startup. So even if you only had 100 tabs, you were looking at 5+ minute startup time. God-forbid that any of them were Youtube, or you'd have to go through and pause them all.

I've just updated to Firefox 55 to test this, and the improvement is ridiculous. I hope that Firefox focuses more on power users in the future.

I'm curious what the author uses to manage all of these tabs. I use Tab Groups, but I think they won't work in a few Firefox versions so I'm looking for alternatives.

<comment><USER4> _So even if you only had 100 tabs_

This is fucking surreal. Why on Earth would anyone want 100 open tabs, besides testing? What's the real life scenario we're looking at here?

<comment><USER5> I wish tabs/windows worked more like persistent "workspaces".

For example, say I'm booking a trip. I always open a bunch of sites (Kayak, Booking.com, lots of hotels, Google Maps, places to visit, etc.) in a single window. In pre-computer times it would be like covering a desk with a ton of papers, books and notes. Gradually I will figure out stuff, book the trip, etc. but the tabs can stay for quite a while.

I feel like many "dozens of tabs" windows are little projects like this. For example, doing development I typically have a bunch of documentation tabs open. We keep these windows open because there's no way to stash them into a drawer while they're not actively being worked on.

What browsers lack is a good way to treat these tabs as "persistent workspaces". I'd like to be able to close a window and be able to return to it later. Rather like an IDE which remembers your open files. So I wish I could "save" a window (as a "workspace") under a name, after which every action would automatically update the saved workspace. Close the window, workspace stays saved. Open the workspace, everything is restored.

There are some browser extensions that allow saving groups of tabs, but there aren't any that behave like I described above.

<comment><USER6> Firefox used to have this feature, but it was removed. You need to install this extension now: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab- groups-pa...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups- panorama/)

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, this extension, too will soon die when Firefox no longer supports legacy addons.

I think there is a new Firefox experiment that behaves somewhat like this: [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/containers)

<comment><USER8> IIRC [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab- groups/?s...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab- groups/?src=ss) is a replacement

Container tabs is totally different, that's about basically having multiple profiles in one window. E.g you can have the work container logged into your work email and work stuff, and your personal container logged in to your personal email and personal stuff, and they don't know about each other. Like incognito, but persistent and within the same window.

<comment><USER9> I didn't know of this one, is its tab management any good ? As in how do you move tabs around groups, open/duplicat/close tabs and groups ?

The 'simplified' in its name makes me doubtful it has any of the advanced features I need.

<comment><USER8> No idea, I haven't used tab groups in a year, so I've never tried the new version.

These "redone" addons that work post 57 start out pretty bare-minimum but they rapidly gain features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are a lot of people who use tabs as bookmarks. Seems like a good way to keep the RAM industry going strong. Someone once told me (seriously) "I need at least 128 GB of RAM otherwise I can't keep my tabs open." But does everything you were interested in over the last X weeks or months really need to be loaded up? No, and if you use it like that then it can't preload stuff.

I think the main lesson is that bookmarks don't work too well or people just don't use them. If nothing else, make the bookmark display show newer bookmarks rather than the same old ones from four years ago. And maybe start preloading if they are opened regularly. Merge two features together, maybe add optional other organizational features for example similar to new tab screen.

The tricky thing is that there are a lot of things that are potentially supposed to happen while a tab is open. The browser is now it's own OS, and it may be very difficult for developers to use important features if tabs (processes) only _look_ like they are running.

<comment><USER11> That's because the bookmarkers sucks. They do not adapt to what you are doing, you need to do a lot of setup and organize a lot to be able to use it well. It should be more organic, grow with the use you make. I still believe that anyone who makes a better bookmark will dominate more than just the browser war.

<comment><USER12> Bookmarking always struck me as a 90s solution to just having fulltext search and analytics over your browser history, there have been a few attempts at browsers that addressed this head-on, but they've all died off over time

IMO just one good new tab UI over a user's history/local cache could make a sizeable dent in Google's ad revenue

<comment><USER9> Opera with its unique cache offered the option to have full text search in history and it was great. Then quarterly profit became a priority for the board and they dropped their browser to become a google chrome advanced skin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. I've been getting more and more frustrated with how poorly Chrome handles even a moderately large number of tabs (~150), and it sounds like my savior is going to be ... Firefox. Huh.

Wouldn't have guessed it, but I'll totally take it.

I have a nice extension for Chrome called Quick Tabs that gives me a searchable list of my open tabs and makes it easy to find things I have open... anyone know which of the several things that seem to do that with Firefox would be the best to use?

<comment><USER14> It's unfortunate because back in ~2010 I used to open over 1,000 tabs in Chrome at a time. It's very useful when doing research: each window represents a topic, and each topic can spawn 30+ tabs.

Nowadays Chrome keels over at around 150, like you say. It also leaks memory like a sieve, so if your hard drive is anywhere close to full you'll end up with a lovely OS X popup saying all your running programs have been frozen and that your system is out of memory (since it can't page to disk because it's full).

<comment><USER15> There has got to be a better solution to this problem than having 1,000 tabs open in a web browser. That sounds like an absolute nightmare.

<comment><USER16> I don't understand this perspective. It's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 files on your file system. That sounds like a nightmare."

It's not like you're actively monitoring every tab at once, you just have the knowledge ready to go and at a finger's whim. You use extensions like Tab Hunter to jump directly to the tab you care about.

Yeah, you could do the same with using a bunch of profiles and bookmarks... but then you need to copy your login cookies and such and it just becomes a mess. I've tried many, many other solutions over the years and simply having a huge number of tabs is the one that continues to Just Work.

<comment><USER17> > It's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 > files on your file system. That sounds like a nightmare."

No, it's similar to saying "Surely there's a better solution than having 1000 radio/tv channels tuned on at once, waiting for you to decide which one is relevant"

Like why not open what you need when you need it rather than squirreling all those "maybes"?

<comment><USER14> Different people are different. When researching a question without a direct answer, it's more effective for me to open up tabs as I read a page and then search the most likely candidate. Whenever I reach a dead-end I can just switch tabs as opposed to pressing the back button N times. zzalpha's comment sums it up nicely: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14824086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14824086)

I know I'm a power user, but I miss how effective old Chrome was at this.

<comment><USER18> I'm a chronic tab abuser as well, often with over 100 tabs at once. 1000 tabs still sounds insane to me.

<comment><USER19> Well, I'm running 600+ in Firefox for no particular reason. I guess that makes me only 60% insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been considering switching to Firefox due to these performance improvements, but the one feature that's always missing is for the location bar to autocomplete terms from other sources such as Wikipedia. Is there some add-on I can install that can fix this?

Safari is brilliant here. If you enter something in Safari's location bar, it will suggest Wikipedia and other search suggestions right away [1]. I use this feature all the time. But FF, out of the box, will only show suggestions from _one_ source. Here [2] is what FF suggests; all the hits are from Google, and it doesn't try to be clever about showing what I might mean to search for. Notice how it offers to _search_ Wikipedia, with this tiny, obscure icon at the bottom of the suggestions, which I find to be a completely useless feature (I have keywords for that). The top hit tends to be what Google puts in a special box in its search results.

Here is another nice thing Safari does [3] which I make use of all the time. I've not visited walmart.com, so that "Top Hit" is just because it's a popular site. I can't make FF do anything like that.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/83FfnPn.png](http://i.imgur.com/83FfnPn.png)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/T4p1NZv.png](http://i.imgur.com/T4p1NZv.png)

[3] [http://i.imgur.com/MkRP2Le.png](http://i.imgur.com/MkRP2Le.png)

<comment><USER21> Go to Preferences > Search and set keywords for each search engine.

E.g. I use "g" for Google and "w" for Wikipedia. "g hacker news" in the AwesomeBar would then search for "hacker news" on Google and "w hacker news" likewise on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER22> That requires typing the full name of the thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I <3 you Firefox. I'm so sad that nobody uses you.

<comment><USER24> Hard to love when the broken extension ecosystem prevents the use of vertical tabs for these scenarios.

<comment><USER25> > Hard to love when the broken extension ecosystem prevents the use of > vertical tabs for these scenarios.

Here's an in-development vertical tabs extension using their new extensions API.

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/

Apparently the tabs still show up at the top because the API to disable that isn't available yet. But you get vertical tabs and it should get better over time. I've been using this and it isn't 100% perfect, but getting better and better.

<comment><USER26> I've started making another one that try to respect the system's theme: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertigo- tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertigo-tabs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I find way more productive to use bookmarks

\- Archive folder: bookmark dump to keep the links just in case I ever need it again (so they pop on the search bar even after I clean my history, you can also add keywords manually if you want)

\- Buffer folder: to-dos, reminders and things I <need> to read soon™. I keep it at a maximum of 10 items at all times

\- Follow up folders (plural): pages I want to check ocasionally for updates. Often used for pages without RSS. I don't like to use extensions to check for page modification because I want to do it on my own pace. This helps reducing my mental load because I know it's there if I ever need it. I often delete the entire folder if I don't feel it's useful anymore.

\- The rest are folders divided by a main folder and subject. This way I can easily delete them after I'm done with that task (after a minute or after a year). Example: Programming > Project X, Programming > CSS fix for that thing.

Middle click on the folder to open everything at once. Done.

The position of the folders are crucial and also helps with muscle memory. I keep it like this: the more to the right (of the browser), the more disposable they are.

</comment><comment><USER28> Firefox is a case study in how performance really does matter. A lot.

It used to be the best browser, and then something happened and it gradually became slow, really slow, while Chrome became fast. Who was in charge over at Mozilla during all this?

Any engineering director worth their salt would have noticed what was happening and installed metrics that didn't let engineers commit code that caused performance regressions and given an engineer (or multiple engineers) who loves optimizing things carte blanche.

Really, I want to know what happened over there. Does anyone know?

<comment><USER29> > It used to be the best browser, and then something happened and it gradually > became slow, really slow

In many cases, it wasn't that Firefox became slow but that people installed extensions which made it slow. For years, you could solve 90% of those complaints by uninstalling AdBlock Plus.

<comment><USER30> Except that Adblock Plus wasn't the problem when Firefox was slow with web apps or sites that used JavaScript to load content. Firefox's JavaScript engine lagged significantly behind Chrome (and Safari) for a few years. It still does in a few areas.

<comment><USER29> That's partially true but remember that you're generalizing from micro- benchmarks – which did not universally tilt Chrome – to the complex behavior of real sites, where networking, memory usage, and general de-optimization tended to cancel out many of those small wins.

That's not saying that the browser teams haven't made big strides, only that it's not such a simple story. Chrome running a certain JavaScript function 15% faster isn't a game changer if a side is limited by layout or poorly structured DOM interactions.

<comment><USER30> Aren't micro-benchmarks kind of pointless if they don't reflect real-world behavior?

The fact is that javascript execution (not networking behavior but javascript performance) on many web apps differs by orders of magnitude between Firefox and Chrome. There are a handful of sites that I find literally unusable in Firefox on a new Macbook Pro because even after loading, sitting in the background doing nothing, they make the entire computer unresponsive due to high CPU usage. These same sites work just fine in Chrome and Safari.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> A quick tangent to plug my method for paring down open tabs when it gets out of control: I create a document!

Personally I use Google Docs, but you could use a wiki or MS Word or many other things. The point isn't the technology, it's that when you have a whole slew of tabs open, and you feel the urge to keep them open, it's a strong sign that your mind is trying to gather info about a topic.

Putting it into a document often feels great. It gives you an opportunity to type out a few quick notes on the topic (like what you thought was significant about various links) or other thoughts you had. And you might find you want to share the document with people you're working with. And I find I feel more organized, not just because I cleaned up something messy but because I took a moment to focus my energies on something my mind was begging me to pay attention to. Sometimes you even realize you need two different documents on different subjects, and it's a little enlightening to realize the two separate themes.

<comment><USER8> I once wrote AnnoTabe ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/annotabe/fdhebnled...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/annotabe/fdhebnledngmjdkhgamneiapbmjeigee?hl=en)) for this in Chrome. Bare minimum extension that lets you annotate tabs, and find them again after closing them.

Pocket is good for this too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm also very impressed with FF's performance on Linux in recent versions. I bumped up the RAM allocated for multiprocess but I never really have more than 20 tabs open. Startup and rendering seems much quicker, and the add-ons seem more open.

<comment><USER33> I'm curious, if you go to about:support are HW_COMPOSITING and OPENGL_COMPOSITING enabled?

Someone (likely here) mentioned that setting layers.acceleration.force-enabled to true in about:config makes a dramatic difference in performance, and based on my limited experience, it does. So much so, that I'm thinking about switching to Firefox after many years of only using it sparingly due to lousy performance on Linux compared to Chrome (e10s has helped too).

edit: I should note that HW_COMPOSITING and OPENGL_COMPOSITING are not enabled by default on the 2 Arch Linux systems I have (Ivy Bridge and Haswell iGPUs, up to date Firefox, Mesa and Kernel). Not sure if there is a white/blacklist, or if its just always disabled in Linux.

<comment><USER34> Is there a particular reason that layers.acceleration.force-enabled is off by default?

<comment><USER35> Linux users have a lower priority and there are some hard to debug issues with graphics drivers and sometimes it causes horrible performance and freezes.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=ogl-linux- beta](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=ogl-linux-beta)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why do you have a profile w/ 1600 tabs in it. If whatever it is is so important, aren't you afraid to lose it? I'd be terrified that one time Firefox just wouldn't shut down clean.

<comment><USER37> > I'd be terrified that one time Firefox just wouldn't shut down clean.

This is why Firefox stores a sessionstore file. _And_ a backup of that sessionstore file. And a previous version of that sessionstore file. And a backup of the file as of the last several times you did a browser update.

The idea is to never lose the session in an irrecoverable way.

<comment><USER38> From my experience (max tab count of maybe 30, usual close to 4 or 5), when I tried to restore, I would always get the 'we tried hard, but couldn't do it' type of message, so I don't even bother trying anymore. My guess is that all the people relying on session storage are losing a bunch of data, but they just don't know it because how do you know when you lost one of 1000 tabs.

At one of my jobs, they instituted weekly scheduled reboots of desktops; after several times of getting my sessions killed by that, I started making an effort to close everything at the end of the day; I don't always close all my tabs, but often, and I never leave more than two or three. Whatever was interesting, but I couldn't read, I don't worry about -- if it's important, it'll probably come up again; I just leave a couple things open if there's work I need to do on them when I get back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Surprised to see no mention of Tab Center ([https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab- center](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center)) in the comments. I've gotten so used to it that now I find it hard to use a browser with tabs on top. Being able to see more of the page title when tabs are displayed horizontally is extremely useful. There's a search field too. This combined with the "browser.ctrlTab.previews" set to true in about:config (enables MRU tab switching with ctrl-tab) makes managing tabs awesome for me.

<comment><USER8> Note that Tab Center will stop working by the end of this year, but I have found [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center- re...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/) to be an adequate replacement!

<comment><USER40> How is this different from Tree Tabs?

<comment><USER8> There's no tree, it's flat. I find it works better than Tree Tabs at the moment unless you need the tree.

<comment><USER26> Shameless plug: the current lack of a WebExtension for vertical tabs bothered me, so I wrote one: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertigo- tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertigo-tabs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Can anyone offer an explanation of why should not tabs be managed by the window manager? (My understanding is that this question is independent from how the particular application would choose to control the _contents_ of a tab - whether directly, or through a separate thread, or by spawning a child process.)

<comment><USER42> We had that already. Opera was the first browser with tabs, it had MDI support and tabs. MDI stands for Multiple Document Interface, and was common with Win 3x and Win9x (WinAPI) applications: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_document_interface) .

Macromedia Dreamweaver had tabs even before Opera browser, as well as Frontpage. Word, Excel and PowerPoint used to be MDI applications up to Office 2010 (up to 2003 with a good UI, kind of hidden but still that way until 2010). Photoshop on Win, older Acrobat, mIRC, etc use MDI and have tabs as well. Win3x had all the auto arrange and different MDI modes, Win95 unfortunately broke the "icon" MDI mode, though the mode still exists but doesn't work in Win95 or later.

So it would be great if Chrome and other browsers would support MDI with tabs like the old Opera 4-6. Use could auto-arrange two tab-windows within the browser main window side by side or arrange them in any way you wanted by hand. Very unfortunately Microsoft lost all their proper devs from last century and with it all the previous inbuilt WinAPI knowledge - otherwise Win8 and Win10 trainwrecks would never have happened.

<comment><USER43> Non-mobile link:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The OneTab extension has been really good for helping me handle my tab hoarding tendency.

[https://www.one-tab.com/](https://www.one-tab.com/)

It lets you hit a button and send all open tabs to a single page that persists between browser sessions. You can remove a link by opening up that list and clicking on it.

Has a bunch of other handy features too ... like publishing the list of links to a share-able URL.

<comment><USER45> I'm pretty happy with this extension too. The other one I use is 'The Great Suspender' which basically suspends unused tabs to free up resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I would love get rid of chrome and to switch back to firefox as my everyday browser, but simply can't get over how messy/ugly the tabs(even in compact theme) and window title look compared to what chrome does with tabs and title bar, and lack of window title bar.

<comment><USER47> If you enter customize mode, you can:

1) Choose one of the compact themes, which have square tabs instead of curved

and

2) Re-enable the title bar

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I was already using 55.x Beta. My BIGGEST issue, is that EVERY browser seems to chew up memory over time, just by leaving it open with tabs going. Firefox, Chrome, Safari. All do the same thing. Alleviated by using the Great Suspender in Chrome, but why can't they all have this just built in? Startup/speed, and initially memory use really haven't been that big of an issue. It's the memory, and finally grinding to a halt that is the BIGGEST issue for me. I can't escape it.

Happens on MacOS, and Windows for me.

<comment><USER49> I just downloaded 55.x beta to see whats such hype about, but opening more tabs are still chewing memory on Mac. maybe it is not mac optimized yet?

<comment><USER48> Yeh I've gone from 500MB to 1.06GB in the time since I wrote the last post, an hour? Forty tabs total.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "Ridiculous" is right, especially from a UI perspective --- it still puzzles me why they would design it so that by default all the tabs are crammed into the place which used to be the titlebar, making it difficult to both read the title and find the tab you're looking for.

I've seen others start opening multiple windows when the tabs get too small. I usually do that to keep tabs grouped into "pages I am unlikely to view simultaneously".

<comment><USER8> Chrome's UI is worse. Firefox shrinks tabs until they're maybe 10 characters in width, and then lets you scroll through them. Chrome just shrinks forever.

I've found that a vertical tabs addon (Tree Tabs, Tab Center Redux) is great for fixing this problem, since vertical tabs never get squeezed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I have 2 tabs open right now. If the number of open tabs gets over 10 I start to actively look for tabs to close.

<comment><USER52> I'm the same way. I use bookmarks for places I regularly visit that I will want to have ready access to (things like work related services and what have you).

For just articles or something I'll want to read later, I've started using the Google Inbox extension to save the link as a reminder. From there I can snooze it until I have the time or motivation to actually read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I use Firefox as much as I can, for many reasons. Two things keep me from using it all the time:

– Yubikey – My Chromebook (I would use and equivalent FirefoxOS if given the choice)

There are performance issues in some cases but nothing major. It is still somewhat slow compared to Chrome, even though this may be due to optimizations done specifically for Chrome.

<comment><USER54> There's a plugin for U2F support[1]. I use a Yubikey at work daily without issues.

1\. [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/u2f-support-a...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/u2f-support-add-on/)

<comment><USER55> Many sites, including Google, specifically check the UA instead of checking for U2F support, so won't work with this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> (shameless plug) For those of you keeping many many tabs open because you worry you might forget it again, or working on related topics, I am building [https://www.pagedash.com](https://www.pagedash.com) to save your page exactly as you saw it, and everything from the original page (HTML and assets) are saved to PageDash so that you can load it again without worrying that the original page went bonkers/down.

v1 will be quite basic, just a list of saved pages. Expect more organization tools (folders, tags, etc.) in the further releases.

Please do sign up to be informed of impending release! :) (estimated end August)

Also, do leave a reply if you are keen on using ML (link classification) to help organize your pages for you. Unfortunately, because computers can't read our minds, this can't be perfect so folders are probably still relevant for your mini-projects.

</comment><comment><USER57> Sorry if this is somewhat off-topic but how do you make Firefox' tab bar look like the one in the article (i.e. no rounded edges for the tabs) on MacOS?

<comment><USER58> Firefox has two alternative built-in themes, compact light and compact dark.

<comment><USER57> I've never noticed this, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Whenever people ask me about the excessive number tabs in my browser, I simply show them Einstein's desk: [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eyOIn_EOW2Q/Vmcl6O-55OI/AAAAAAAADs...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eyOIn_EOW2Q/Vmcl6O-55OI/AAAAAAAADsc/9LxoHK4jV00/s1600/La%2Boficina%2Bde%2BEinstein.jpg)

I am not Einstein but it is probably not a bad idea to have a whole lot of interesting things around you all the time. Sort of like a cache or the way proteins are synthesized, like swimming in a nutritious soup. "Oh, look here is a piece that fits!".

One basically decreases the chance of forgetting interesting and useful information. "Out of sight, out of mind."

</comment><comment><USER60> I love Firefox and never had issues, except at work. For some odd reason it will break, all tabs will look white and all I see is a loading icon on the middle no matter what tab I click on ruining my workflow. No idea what that's about since at home Firefox works fine, Chrome seems to work fine at work on the other hand. I guess I'll be using Chrome at work and Firefox at home till I figure out how whats causing the Firefox issue. I only usually have no more than 20 tabs open at any given time. Very unusual for me to keep 10 tabs open really.

<comment><USER61> I had a very similar issue (running e18s) with uBlock Origin after restoring my computer from backups.

I narrowed down the problem to that add on by selectively disabling them.

Uninstalling and reinstalling uBlock fixed it.

YMMV, but figured I ought to speak up :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm torn between thinking it's time to switch back to Firefox, and thinking I need to avoid Firefox at all costs, because the slowdown when Chrome gets over 100+ tabs is the only thing keeping my browser windows remotely navigable.

You know what I really want? A way to attach _titles_ to browser windows. This window is "Games", this one is for "Books", this one is for my current "Work" task, this one is "Research" on the new doohickey I'm thinking of buying...

<comment><USER63> Check out the Firefox extension "Simplified Tab Groups" to create named groups of tabs:

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

<comment><USER62> Holy shit. Don't have time to try it right now, but if it does what I want I probably will go back to Firefox. Thanks!

<comment><USER64> It was a built-in feature for manu Firefox releases (called Panorama), but then it was removed, and ended up in extensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've been running a ~7 year old laptop for occasional browsing. Chrome is unable to seek properly in video playback (gives page unresponsive after a while) and lags randomly when loading large pages, I suspect due to RAM allocations.

Old Firefox played videos fine, but lagged on many page loads. I was about to conclude it was just too old to browse the web decently, but this... this seems incredibly usable.

Thanks Mozila, I'm definitely installing this thing on my main, much more modern machine tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER66>
      I measured by eyeball, using "time cat" on the command line. This might seem weird, but c'mon - I'm measuring minutes. Microsecond precision is not required.

For anyone else doing this sort of testing; there is an extension to monitor startup speed called about:startup

[https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/about- startup/](https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/about-startup/)

</comment><comment><USER67> I use chrome with the extension The Great suspender and that works well for me:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great- suspende...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great- suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en)

Would love to switch to Firefox, but I still find Chrome faster to use. Anyone tried vivaldi?

</comment><comment><USER68> This is nice to hear. I use Firefox as my default browser with the tree-style tabs add-on, and just yesterday I replaced ABP with uBlock and Ghostery with Disconnect out of frustration with how slow things were going (~30-50 tabs open). The slow startup time hasn't been helping (come on, its not even loading the tabs until I click them, what's taking so long?)

<comment><USER69> Hint: uBlock Origin already includes filters for Disconnect if you go to the settings

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> My biggest frustration with Firefox is that you can't 'Tab to Search' as you can in chrome. Every time I attempt to switch to FF the lack of this feature just kills my productivity and I end up switching back.

So wish this was possible.

Ref: [https://www.chromium.org/tab-to-search](https://www.chromium.org/tab-to- search)

<comment><USER71> A similar (but not as magical) feature in Firefox is Smart keywords: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from- address...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address-bar)

There's a bug on file to consider adding this, but it has no momentum behind it right now since it's a bit niche: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1373740](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1373740)

<comment><USER63> I used to have dozens of Firefox Smart Keywords (for Wikipedia, Amazon, etc), but now I just use DuckDuckGo's !bang searches in my address bar:

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I currently have over 1380 tabs open in firefox 52 ESR (over 4 windows). Oh god, it's terrible. Very slow and unresponsive, CPU usage is typically 60+% when idle. I restart firefox every couple days (which takes many minutes) to keep CPU and memory usage down, by causing all tabs to be unloaded. (As an example, right now at 5.2GB resident, with only a small percentage of tabs loaded). I've been trying to kick the habit. I also have several other profiles and other computers. Probably adds to 5000 tabs all in all.

I use All Tabs Helper to help jump between tabs. Finding tabs is hopeless without it. ATH also has features like mass closing tabs or unloading them. I wish it had a way to bookmark tabs, which I would use to close most of my tabs.

So, I'm very glad to hear this. Time to switch off ESR.

</comment><comment><USER73> Is there anything similar for chrome/chromium? Would be interesting to compare them.

</comment><comment><USER74> With Chrome, I use "The Great Suspender" extension.

<comment><USER75> This. Changed the way I use a browser. New window per topic. Only stop making tabs when the titles/icons can't be seen any more...

<comment><USER37> In Firefox, the "titles/icons can't be seen any more" state is never reached, because Firefox enforces a minimum width on tabs so that information is always visible. Combined with searching tab titles via "% stuff" in the URL bar, it's a much nicer experience than Chrome, imo. [Disclosure: I'm biased, obviously, since I'm using Firefox and hence more used to it.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I am happy to hear this because I stopped using firefox and migrated to google chrome around firefox 51, and boy it was SLOW.

Now it might be worth it to give it another try.

In the meantime, I am seriously concerned about Thunderbird. Thunderbird is my MUA of choice and quite frankly, there are very few options to replace it, and none of them seems 100% okay (except, maybe, Evolution). Clawsmail is okay- ish, but so ugly to see and feature-poor.

</comment><comment><USER9> How does this translate to real use, as in actually loading the pages and having a couple dozens extensions ?

The ability to open 5-10 times more tabs than I use is quite and edge case that mozilla usually doesn't care about, but the real question is what is the point of this when it comes with making firefox totally useless for said use case by dropping support for extension that make it practical or useful.

</comment><comment><USER77> I follow the zero inbox mindset with tabs and try to reduce them to a few ever running apps like Gmail and Mixcloud. The rest is just noise and mental load that I can get rid of.

I put articles to Pocket if I don't read them for a week or so. I'll probably read them on a vacation, but I don't need a constant reminder how poor my time limits are.

</comment><comment><USER78> Note for the blog author:

"It's interesting that Firefox startup time got consistently worse over time until Firefox 51."

I believe you meant to write "until Firefox 52." I think the usage of "until" would typically point out the exception to the rule, in this case Firefox 52 is the first version that is no longer slower than the previous.

</comment><comment><USER79> So one challenge I face is that many of my tabs are for web content that isn't always there. Do any of these extensions like Great Suspender, Session Buddy, etc actually let me save the webpage as it is and then let me choose to refetch it as necessary?

<comment><USER80> not exactly what you're looking for but pinboard.in archival account does this: [https://pinboard.in/upgrade/](https://pinboard.in/upgrade/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I have the bad habit to open many tabs on my old MacBook (mid 2010). Boot time, together with CPU usage, is one of the main reasons I had to use Opera as my primary browser. I'm really happy to see this might change in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER82> And then there's Firefox Focus which has no tabs and no other new instance capability. One single window. "Focus" indeed. It still makes me twitchy, but is so far completely usable.

Could do with a "fetch as desktop" mode, though.

<comment><USER83> How does this work in practice. I frequently have workflows where for example I have the AWS or GCloud console open and in parallel some kind of tutorial, documentation or help page I'm looking at. Would you go back and forth?

<comment><USER82> Yeah the one major issue is comparison shopping: you can't open multiple tabs/windows and flick between them.

Then again, "focus" might mean reading one review at a time. Or instead waiting until you're at a desktop and remembering to do it. If you forget, are you worse off or better off?

It's just a different situation. Depends on your criteria. Certainly, I've not missed it on my mobile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> If such numbers happen in android also you sir just have another firefox fan. I want to know right now. (Chrome sucks at this on all devices now.) The only reason I am using it is that it is better than firefox for accessing google.

</comment><comment><USER85> This would have been useful 4 years ago before we all gave up on Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER86> This is the first time in a decade that something (the article) convinced me to try Firefox as a possible day-to-day browser once again.

</comment><comment><USER87> Great that you can open over a thousand tabs now. Next blog post will be when it's over a million I guess?

Personally, I usually have something like 3 or 4 tabs open. But what I would really need is this:

[https://xkcd.com/619/](https://xkcd.com/619/)

Yup, hardware accelerated video on Linux. Chromium has it. Firefox doesn't.

It's 2017 and for me Firefox is still missing the basic feature of seeing smooth Youtube videos.

Anybody working on that? Can't you just take it from Chromium? I mean it's open source, isn't it?

</comment><comment><USER88> I use ridiculous numbers of tabs, and Firefox has been less stable for me the past months than ever before.

</comment><comment><USER89> What made it so much worse over time?

<comment><USER90> Things that need to be initialized per tab. Lazy-loaded tabs were till backed by about:blank content window which get replaced with the actual content once you open the tab. And with that about:blank comes overhead, which is fairly small for a single tab but it adds up in large numbers.

The change is that now the tab item does not have an associated content window at all until you visit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Impressive, now I'm looking forward to the official stable version of 55

</comment><comment><USER92> I wonder what these numbers would be compared to chrome.

</comment><comment><USER93> I tested with 1690 tabs and got similar results :D

</comment><comment><USER94> lol this is why I love firefox. I hoard tabs. But not as excessively as OP though... 1000+ is crazy.

</comment><comment><USER95> John Siracusa would be proud :)

</comment><comment><USER96> My usual day looks something like this:

open FF (it it's not already running) and wait for a hand full app-tabs to load:

      * slack (there's no dark theme in the native app)
      * skype (there's no dark theme in the native app)
      * toggl (timetracking)
      * email (office365, I stopped worrying about outlook/thunderbird)
      * jira (gotta know what to work on next)
      * social (fb&twitter - could probably also do w/o - I rarely open those)

since they exist I'm also use a hand full tab groups - at least those 3:

      * work
      * private
      * to read

the work tab group usually starts empty (at least when I finished up the day before), might grow to a hundred or two during the day - but usually ends up empty at the end of the day when I'm done again.

I hardly ever left-click a link, I only wheelclick. but my ^w is at least as fast as my wheel click - since the awesomebar searches through history, pagetitles and already openend tabs it's really easy to navigate even between tab groups just by ^t, type 3 letters, press return to 'switch to tab' (really convenient icon there so you know you're going to close the new tab and switch to an existing tab at this moment)

if I want to restore a tab i killed prematurely I fire up the history - <USER2> I only use the 'by last visited view' \- does anyone srsly use the 'by date and site' view?

tabs are something very different than bookmarks to me, a bookmark is something I return to on a regular basis - a tab is an open 'todo'. I don't use the usual bookmarks thou, only the bookmark-toolbar below the url - and my bookmarks there have no text - they get renamed to "" so I only see their favicon. entries there are e.g.

      * HN
      * blog.fefe
      * oglaf
      * xkcd
      ...

one thing that I really disliked that mozilla sometimes decided to drop the dedicated keyboardshortcut to hide/show the bookmark-toolbar (I tend to hide it for screenshots where I want the URL to be on the screenshot [https://xkcd.com/1863/](https://xkcd.com/1863/) )

I have no idea what I'm going to do after the death of the tab groups extension.

one thing that really bugs me is that every time a show tab groups to 'normal users' (tm) they insta love them. I really wonder if no one used to use them bcs hardly anyone ever knew about them.

<comment><USER97> You might want to try [http://meetfranz.com/](http://meetfranz.com/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> thanks for info

</comment><comment><USER99> It's about time. Slowness is why I quit all of Mozilla. Also dumping Thunderbird is irresponsible. We need one client that doesn't give annoying pop-ups when using IMAP and that use to be it. Guess we have to go back to using CLI to avoid pop-ups.

</comment><comment><USER100> I suppose I'm alone in getting all nervous if I have more than 10 tabs open.

<comment><USER101> Getting nervous because your computer starts slowing down or swapping because of the number of tabs open, or because you can't read the tab titles or see the favicons anymore? Firefox doesn't have those problems. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER102> Opera has supported this abnormal behavior for like two decades now. I remember being shocked by how many tabs the Opera core browsing/rendering engine developers used to have open on their desktops when I joined Opera back in 2004. I guess it was an odd pride thing? :)

To clarify: I am talking about a one-row tab scenario. With about 3-4 pixels per tab. And they were perfectly happy with that. Even seemed to feel it was a good user experience.

</comment><comment><USER103> When I see bug reports with these sorts of ridiculous over the top use cases, I think, yeah buddy, why don't you join the project and fix it since it's only applicable to you.

And in this case that happened. This guy is an actual Firefox developer.

This is as it should be and congrats.

Now I am wondering how I can possibly get into this mysterious world of having thousands of tabs open.

</comment><comment><USER104> LOL I've been running Firefox with 5k+ tabs since 2009.

</comment><comment><USER105> Dear god, why?

</comment><comment><USER106> Whut? It didn't get any faster, it's just more aggressively lazy loaded now. This is breaking the very use case of people who have 100+ tabs; they want stuff to be there when they click on it.

<comment><USER107> Things have been lazy loaded on startup since Firefox 13: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=711193](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=711193)

but the feature itself is much older.

The problem was that the xul/xbl code creating the tabbar was still doing a lot of work for the not-yet-loaded tabs.

<comment><USER106> Yes, it's "it's just more aggressively lazy loaded". Unless you are trying to say it's now not doing less work because it's 1) lazy loading but because 2) they don't know how to implement a tabbar and should have used some native component like Chrome.

<comment><USER108> I wouldn't call it "more aggressively". The lazy loading is the same, but they fixed the UI code around it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NSA's ANT Division Catalog of Exploits - <AUTHOR> http://leaksource.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/nsas-ant-division-catalog-of-exploits-for-nearly-every-major-software-hardware-firmware/

<comment><USER2> This is starting to feel like a sick, twisted joke. Or perhaps Fools Day. That these ... people ... exist and dedicate so much engineering expertise to this pursuit is ... evil. To me, and it sounds hyperbolic, its just evil.</comment>


The Shared Suffering Hypothesis, or setting things up the way everyone else does - <AUTHOR> http://miksovsky.blogs.com/flowstate/2008/05/maximizing-the.html

<comment><USER2> Corollary: how "different" you can be depends on how quickly you can isolate a problem in an unfamiliar system.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice post!! I find I use this rational lots when choosing/working with open source libraries and frameworks. There are always ways I would like to do it different. But "going with the flow" gets the job done faster.</comment>


ZNGA down 35% on surprise loss. - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2012/07/25/zynga-posts-surprise-loss-shares-down-more-than-30/?mod=yahoo_hs

<comment><USER2> Good riddance to bad rubbish.

<comment><USER3> That comparison is insulting to rubbish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just out of curiosity... How does a software company with >$300MM in revenue lose money? Is it spent on people, hardware, advertising?

<comment><USER5> Beagle3, James33 are you saying their model is not sustainable? Do you think they would be afloat or keep loosing money were they cut their marketing expenses significantly?

<comment><USER6> I'd say it's not sustainable since there is a limited lifetime value of a user in their game space. In order to continue increasing revenue you must grow new users at a rate that exceeds the loss of existing or prior users that have aged out of that phase of "spend money in game."

I suspect that Zynga IPO'd near the top of their possible revenue and without the ability to constantly acquire new users and/or re-engage previous users who have moved past spending money in-game they are going to decline over time. Even if they establish a stasis between loss of user revenue vs new revenue their share price will have to drop since the P/E multiplier would be that of a matured company rather than a growth stock. Share price would be discounted accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy (Mark Pincus). I say this after his extortion racket last year [1]. These kinds of antics (and I include the Skype clawback scandal [2] in this) threaten to undermine the tech industry as a whole.

But as far as Zynga goes, I see these "social games" as largely parasitic and should be regulated in much the same way that gambling is for much the same reasons. Zynga is struggling in a world where such gamers are going increasingly mobile.

Zynga is a proxy for Facebook because Facebook's near-term revenue sources are essentially:

1\. Facebook credits; and

2\. Display advertising.

(1) explains the correlation with Zynga. Apple is really drinking Facebook's milkshake here.

And I remain skeptical about the value of (2). I continue to believe that people's behaviour builds a better profile of what they want than what they tell you (ie look at what they do rather than listen to what they say). Facebook profiles reflect the human predilection for lying--to oneself and to others--about who they are and who they appear to be.

Don't get me wrong: Facebook could be a valuable display ad property. That just doesn't, by itself, make a $100B company.

You can count me as one of those that'll dance on the grave of Zynga however. The same goes for Groupon.

EDIT: regarding "parasitic", I refer you to Zynga's notion of "whales" [3] [4]. As much as Zynga might publicly state that these people might just be rich, I think they well know they're preying on those who are largely without self-control, intentionally cultivating addictive behaviour.

Some are OK with this. I am not. I see this as no different to encouraging gambling or drug addicts. YMMV.

[1]: [http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142405297020462190...](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204621904577018373223480802-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html)

[2]: [http://www.businessweek.com/technology/silicon-valley- wakes-...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/silicon-valley-wakes-up-to- clawback-culture-06292011.html)

[3]: [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-06/tech/31028725...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-06/tech/31028725_1_social- games-social-network-engineer)

[4]: [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-05/tech/31123148...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-05/tech/31123148_1_of- zynga-facebook-games-mafia-wars)

<comment><USER8> "I see these "social games" as largely parasitic and should be regulated in much the same way that gambling is for much the same reasons. "

Do you mean to say "addictive" or do you really mean parasitic?

Both "social games" and "gambling" are addictive. In both you can loose money.

But there are other things that are addictive that you can loose money in as well (stamp collecting, art collecting, buying and building model helicopters (great fun btw)).

Where do you draw the line with this?

In any case if you did mean parasitic could you explain further?

<comment><USER9> Nobody engineered the hobby of stamp collecting to efficiently separate addicts from their money.

<comment><USER8> The stamp collecting was tongue and cheek.

But the truth is companies make many products to separate "addicts" from their money. Women's clothing, electronics, fancy cars, women's shoes. Or take QVC or HSN. You don't think that the nature of business in general (or food marketing I mean the list is endless) is engineered to separate people from their money? (Food obviously is really addicting no question about that).

All off these things share the same thing in common. They engineered and perfected to get you to spend money or something that gives you enjoyment. (It's not food though it's a certain type of food. Nobody is getting addicted to broccoli or boiled potatoes. Fried chicken or Lay's potato chips or things with MSG? Very possibly.

Obviously not every example I've given has the same degree of addiction.

<comment><USER9> I hope you realize that there is quite a difference between simply wanting or liking something a whole lot, and being addicted to something.

KFC does not seek to prey on the (hypothetical) few who are so addicted to fried chicken that they lose their families, sell their valuables, lose their careers, and sell their bodies to get another fix. They "prey" on people who _like_ their product.

Real addiction (not your perverted sense of "addiction" being merely liking something intensely) is a hypothetical _side effect_ of the businesses you give as examples. For the gambling industry and companies like Zynga, it is the _business model_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Our main weapon is facebook users and dedicated social gamers. Our two main weapons are facebook users, dedicated social gamers and micropayments. Our three main weapons are... I'll come in again.

<comment><USER3> Nobody expects the underwhelming earnings report!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think they _may_ turn out to be a very good long term bet. Pincus is quite directly attempting to mimic Bezos' strategy with Amazon. He's in control and he doesn't care (much) about the short term stock price.

Zynga is in the best position to profit from the rise of social/casual gaming. It may take 10 years but they could quietly grow into the behemoth of gaming the way that Amazon did in shopping.

<comment><USER12> Bezos has a product that has incredible staying power and enormous infrastructure and capital-intensive advantages over its competitors, making it very, very hard to clone. Many have tried, all have failed.

Zynga, in comparison, does not. A 10-person team can execute just as well as their behemoth of a company, and that makes their market a hell of a lot more competitive than online retail.

> _"Zynga is in the best position to profit from the rise of social/casual > gaming. "_

Zynga is not casual gaming. PopCap is casual gaming. Nintendo is casual gaming. Rovio is casual gaming. Zynga is gambling under a thin veneer. Zynga is "social gaming" in the way we've redefined it in the last couple of years.

And even there, I'd argue the "rise" of social gaming is already behind us. Remember when _everyone_ was playing Farmville? Like, _everyone_. Now, it's completely dropped off the mainstream consciousness. Sure, they have plenty of players still, but it's a sharp decline in mindshare from just two years ago.

The world had its turn at the "glorified slot machine" formula, and most people have moved on. I heartily argue that Zynga's best days are already behind them, short of pivoting into a wildly different formula for social gaming.

<comment><USER13> >>Remember when everyone was playing Farmville? Like, everyone.

I must be really out of touch. Don't know anybody who plays or has played Farmville.

<comment><USER14> There was a time when it was actually popular on Facebook, and many people were playing it, including myself for a time.

It just got old. You can't spend that kind of time on a single game forever, and since a significant part of its value was social, once friends stopped playing, everyone stopped playing.

They were right to buy Draw Something and WWF, because that is truly what everyone is now playing. But that's all it is—that's just what they're playing _right now._ Unless they can innovate and come up with or buy a new concept and monetize on it quickly, they're truly screwed. The popularity cycles of these things are measured in weeks or months at most. And it's hard to keep doing the same thing over and over again—it's not a business model I would bet on. The stock price reflects my opinions quite nicely here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From quarterly report: As of June 30, 2012, cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were $1.6 billion

This is out of their current market cap of ~2.5B. Facebook down 7% after hours too. Honestly looks like an over-reaction that shows investor worries about new business models.

Dangerous time trying to exit a social gaming company methinks.

</comment><comment><USER15> "surprise" loss? I guess a lot of people are surprised by things that seemed obvious to me. Zynga's userbase consists of fossilized shut-ins who don't know they're wasting money buying virtual trinkets online. As they die off, their revenue stream will too.

<comment><USER16> As far as Zynga stock owners and traders are concerned, it is by definition a surprise. If the loss had been expected then the price would have gone down earlier.

Alternatively, one could argue "hey, I knew that a large loss was possible, but consider that a large unexpected gain was also possible, so the price I paid last week as fair". In any case, the loss was not certain.

<comment><USER16> (typo. I mean "so the price I paid last week _was_ fair")</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Screws Over Nokia - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406145,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Don't company leaders read business history?</comment>


"Superatoms" Mimic Elements: Research Reveals New Perspective of Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2009-news/Castleman12-2009.htm

<comment> daniel-cussen _"It looks like we can predict which combinations of elemental atoms mimic other elemental atoms," he said. "For example, by looking at the periodic table, you can predict that titanium monoxide will be a superatom of nickel. Simply start at titanium, which has four outer-shell electrons, and move six elements to the right, because atomic oxygen possesses six outer-shell electrons. The element you end up on is nickel, whose 10 outer-shell electrons make it isoelectronic with the 10 outer-shell electron molecule resulting from the combination of titanium and oxygen. We thought this finding must be a curious coincidence, so we tried it with other atoms and we found that a pattern emerged."_

It's curious how genius appears obvious in hindsight.

<comment><USER2> I thought that's why the periodic table was setup to look like it does in the first place. AKA right side are the noble gases <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_gas>

And on the left side the alkali metals Rubidium, Sodium and Lithium all both useful for batteries. (Lithium is significantly lighter, but Rubidium is more abundant etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> What the article says is TiO (a molecule aka superatom) mimics Ni (an atom). The group is trying to add another layer of molecules (superatoms) over the 2D periodic table.

Disclosure: I was a graduate student of Dr. Castleman.

<comment><USER3> Hey awesome, I saw some people from your group speak at a conference a while ago and I was really intrigued by this idea. Especially the idea of making superatom analogues of Alali-Halide crystals. i.e. taking closed shell Al cluster cations and anions and packing them into an ionic crystal. What's the inside word on efforts to actually fabricate these things? Are they still just theoretical? Could you make them with a ion cluster beam and doing deposition after mass filtering it?

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is not making them but making them in enough quantities to be actually used for applications. A lot of the current research efforts are in pursuit of depositing them on a surface in our group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> FTA: "This research was funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research."

Interesting to see the kind of practical basic research being done by the military. Their website is interesting: <http://www.wpafb.af.mil/AFRL/afosr/>

<comment><USER5> Hasn't a lot of scientific advance come about as a direct result of military research?

<comment><USER6> You are using the result of military research right now

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is interesting, but it seems so simple that if it actually works (ie if you can actually substitute tungsten carbide for platinum or zirconium monoxide for palladium), it's quite surprising that no-one has noticed this before.

</comment><comment><USER8> The superatoms share all the same properties than the original atom? I've plutonium & uranium in mind...

<comment><USER9> No.

But since most chemical properties of an atom are set by the outer valence shell, there is a good chance that the superatom will share many chemical properties with the mimiced atom.

<comment><USER8> Im sure that the military is curious about chain reactions and things like that.</comment></comment></comment>


How Does Voxel Quest Work Now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.voxelquest.com/news/how-does-voxel-quest-work-now-august-2015-update <comment><USER2> Your work is incredible. Every time you post an update it's fascinating and humbling.

That being said, it's hard to be excited about the game, because there doesn't seem to be one. I'm looking forward to when you release the engine in a documented usable form so that people who are passionate about games--not game engines--will have a chance to use this amazing tech.

On the other hand, it seems like there's nothing you can't do, maybe you're also a genius game designer. Though I'd still like to see what other people can do with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I agree with you on the game part, which is why I am buckling down on creating a simple game to ship within the next few months (this is outside of my long term goals for the game). I am open to suggestions as well as to what this should be - there is a thread on the forums about the prototype game and all ideas are welcome.

I really can't claim to be a good game designer yet. My primary goal really was to get this engine into other people's hands, and the only reason I am building a game is because I can't build a business off an engine alone, and I need to dogfood the engine to ensure necessary features. :)

<comment><USER3> Some sort of game where you design, build, and manage dams, canals, and water usage for a small coastal country might be interesting and let you take advantage of the terrain and simulation aspects of the engine. Plus you could find out what happens when CA really does run out of water, ha ha.

<comment><USER4> Wow, that would be quite fun! How does one sim water in 3d effectively in this sort of case? Is it basically a 2d grid with a third "depth" variable and some simple rules like "where neighbor depth > mine: +1 to neighbor depth on tick" or something?

<comment><USER5> That approach has the downside that you can't have water jets or multiple layers of caves with lakes above each other. Most "voxel"/block-based games allow blocks to be filled with different levels of water and then have rules to spread it around.

2 Examples:

In Minecraft, there are source blocks and normal water blocks. Water spreads from source blocks towards the lowest point in the area and loses one level (from 7) each step. If you put water source blocks close together, new ones spawn between them. Water just "evaporates" after a few blocks: If you dig up from a cave with flat ground into an ocean, water will spill to the ground and flow 7 blocks. But that makes it easier to handle for players. Example: [http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Das_Waterfall.png](http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/File:Das_Waterfall.png)

Details: [http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Liquids#How_liquids_work](http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Liquids#How_liquids_work)

Dwarf Fortress on the other hand has infinite water sources that also have pressure, so hitting a water source with a tunnel will fill your fortress up to the level of the source block, because the water spreads infinitely and also can go up bends. FUN! (Especially if you hit one with high pressure = producing a lot of water. First thing you notice is that the frame rate drops to slide show speed, a few frames later there's water everywhere)

If you block it off, it remains. (vs in Minecraft plugging all source blocks makes water disappear)

This is a more realistic approach, especially if the speed at which the sources produce water is limited and they are only used at the map edges to simulate inflow. Or one could look into finite element modelling and other fluid simulation techniques and try to adapt them for game usage.

<comment><AUTHOR> The water simulation I have built has finite water and also simulates pressure correctly, as demoed in the past. However, on the downside it is infinitely elastic (a single drop will spread over a large plane, like oil in an ocean). The rendered water also does not correspond 1:1 with the actual water volume, so it can look buggy. And there are still a few minor bugs as well.

<comment><USER6> I noticed that it seemed to spread laterally much quicker than it dropped, which looked odd. I imagine modeling water in a performant and semi-realistic way is rather hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SDFs (Signed Distance Fields) are an amazing optimization to marching a ray through a scene. Unreal Engine 4 uses them for ambient occlusion [https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Li...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/DistanceFieldAmbientOcclusion/index.html#howdoesitwork) and soft shadows [https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Li...](https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/RayTracedDistanceFieldShadowing/index.html)

The author mentions Inigo Quilez, an incredible demoscene artist, who has an amazing writeup of how he uses SDFs for creating the geometry in demos: [http://iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/rwwtt.pdf](http://iquilezles.org/www/material/nvscene2008/rwwtt.pdf) I remember when it "clicked" for me... instead of defining geometry and generating SDFs for use in shading, which is expensive, he was generating SDFs directly to be used as the definition for geometry! It's brilliant.

<comment><USER8> Are you talking about IQ from Shadertoy? You can check out his stuff here: [https://www.shadertoy.com/user/iq](https://www.shadertoy.com/user/iq)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think one of the reasons there continues to be so much excitement about this project is that it clearly does not look like any other game on the market. It's only more exciting now that the renderer is fluid and the perspective not limited, demonstrating that the results are not an unpractical hack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! There was a time when graphics coding was more creative (people get quite creative with what we have, but we can only take it so far). John Carmack was writing Doom's engine, Ken Silverman the Build engine, etc. Everything looked and felt different. The standardization of rendering hardware and APIs has become a blessing and a curse. On the bright side, it saves us from reinventing the wheel, but on the downside, there is some art in reinventing the wheel. When I launched Doom for the first time, it was basically Wolfenstein in terms of gameplay. But it was visually beyond anything I had seen prior, and the visuals created an entirely different experience on their own (and I used to be a large proponent of the "graphics don't matter" camp). It is incredibly punishing (from a business standpoint) to be in the engine business - even if you are one of the big guys, but I feel like somebody has to add a little diversity to the arena. Using these newest techniques is very refreshing to me because it allows for all kinds of tricks that simply are not possible in your traditional modern polygon pipeline.

<comment><USER10> I agree completely. But as someone very interested in game dev, I am also terrified by the idea if spending 3-4 years on just the tech. I wish there was a good middle ground.

<comment><USER7> As someone who is writing a real-time 3d engine, let me tell you the experience is incredibly rewarding. My math background is weak, but the practical applications of 3d maths that you will learn is invaluable. If you're interested in learning how a pixel is created on the screen from some arbitrary model in a lighting environment, nothing can really replace writing an engine. Give it a shot! [http://web.archive.org/web/20150311211412/http://www.arcsynt...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150311211412/http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks great. What does concern me is the VERY limited view distance. I assume this is a micro-voxel engine. So that in that small space there are millions of voxels. Scaling that up to give a reasonable draw distance is a challenge I have not seen anyone live up to yet.

If you like this style of engine check out [http://www.atomontage.com/](http://www.atomontage.com/) and Ken Silvermans [http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/pnd3d.htm)

Keep up the good work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I mention it in the video, but it is somewhat buried - view distance is more a data loading problem than a rendering problem. I just have to optimize for faster data loading (right now it happens on the main thread so it locks the program for bigger data loads/unloads and makes it lag). Still pretty early in this respect, so a lot of room for improvement there down the road. I am friends with Branislav (Atomontage) and a long time fan of Ken's work. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gavan's work is outstanding to say the least, I haven't felt like such a fanboy in a very long time. Every time an update is posted, I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to hear/see more.

Some people here and other places have noted that it is hard to get excited without an actual gameplay, but for me the gameplay, while a very interesting and essential point for the final product, is almost secondary. Just looking at all the ideas people have come up with around the engine is quite telling.

People are being excited, curious, creative, collaborative and kind about the whole project. Gavan's doing an amazing job at being transparent and honest, while patiently listening and responding to people. Even if these are the only things that ever come out of Voxel Quest (though I'm sure that won't be the case :) ), I'd say that's already a great achievement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I am honored :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That draw distance is giving me Superman 64 flashbacks...

In all seriousness. Voxel tech is awesome and I can't wait to see some games implement it fully.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha - yeah it is pretty poor but I will fix it up a bit soon. I did get farther distances working "ok" but still need to work on optimizing it to load in data without lagging. Here is one shot with a farther view distance: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ83yn7UcAATnkU.png:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJ83yn7UcAATnkU.png:large)

<comment><USER14> For your first game, you'll probably want to pick a topic that either is not hindered by the draw distance or is even helped by it. Like the way the early Silent Hill games used the limited draw distance to create a spooky foggy town setting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, Daggerfall had a fairly limited draw distance IIRC, which I didn't mind when I played it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've played in the past with ray marching [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/26628848007/rod-m...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/26628848007/rod- marching) (I eventually did it all on the gpu) so I'm curious how this is split between cpu and gpu?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly GPU - the logistics of the fluid simulation are the only expensive thing that runs on the CPU really

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Impatiently waiting for an engine + API docs that I can download and play with. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Soon actually - I can't give a release date but source should be going out in the not TOO distant future. :)

<comment><USER17> Have you figured out what you're going to do with your billions when this eats up Minecraft? In all seriousness the bits and bobs you're putting together are delicious. I would say that the stories and games that people use to built it will be the most important part of its success, obviously.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope so! I'll settle for millions ;) ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looking good.

Something about that land-based ripple effect makes my brain think the effect is happening in screen space. Wonder why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - its actually world space :)

<comment><USER7> Speaking of world space, have you run into any precision errors in world space? The further you get away from the origin, your floating point numbers lose precision, so I've understood that doing world space transformations and comparisons can lead to artifacts. Have you had to compensate for this anywhere yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I've hit these errors in the past. One way around it is to keep things local to camera space (as far as rendering goes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And now I want to play magic carpet...

<comment><AUTHOR> An ex-Bullfrog employee just told me they wanted to use my engine, so... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really like the sprites they have some character though the shiny dirt is not really my thing. Any idea when content like structured gameplay or stories will start to be added or is this more like Minecraft where you kinda just play with the world?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep the terrain needs improvement. :) Sprites are just placeholders I bought from an asset pack. I am currently working on a building a small prototype game that will be very simple, along the lines of Capture the Flag - so not quite a story, but structured gameplay at least.

<comment><USER21> CTF? OK. between this and the axe, at one point you basically have to do voxelquake, just so that we can play with that engine :)

that might not be a bad idea for a 'simple enough' game, a fps within everything is destructible. four a side, some simple enough goal, a timer set to 20 minutes and you have a potentially very fun game.

/edit: in an 'afps' level design would make draw distance less of an issue aswell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for the update! I really like your novel approach. Ray marching is pretty cool for scaling in procedural generated graphics so that you don't have to load entire geometries and cull most of it. Just render what you can see! :)

Nice trick with the objects.

</comment><comment><USER23> I heard mention of single core and Im, afraid its already too late. Projects that start single core and get advanced enough are very difficult to convert, if not impossible without a total rewrite.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use multiple cores for some tasks, such as the fluid sim - I only have not moved loading scene data into a separate thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >Arguably the isometric rendering looked the best of all the methods

I disagree just based on the few screenshots here. The isometric looks so generic. The latest version almost looks like a 3DS game (especially with the draw distance), but at least it has some character. The isometric screenshot looks like an iPhone RPG that I would see in ads but never actually play.

<comment><USER25> But I love that look, I actually want to see videos of the first revision

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find videos here: [http://www.voxelquest.com/videos.html](http://www.voxelquest.com/videos.html) (scroll down)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> rev 1 and 2 look better... 3 looks like everything is covered in oil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha - thats an apt description. :) I've added in "real" specular (it was "fake" prior), and probably went a bit too crazy with the specular highlights. I need to tone it down considerably.

<comment><USER26> or just deep fry it :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to clean smart phone to protect against Corona virus - <AUTHOR> There are a number of articles on how to wash hands to get rid of corona virus. But smart phones are the one that is being touched and worse it is rubbed against the cheeks and is in close contact with the mouth during talking.How do you clean your smart phones ? <comment><USER2> I keep a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a cloth next to my phone charger. That way I remember to disinfect my phone and my partner's phone at least once a day before bed time. I wipe down more frequently if I have been outside and touching my phone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps using UV rays? This may help... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_processing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_processing)</comment>


The Fighting Has Begun Over Who Owns Land Drowned by Climate Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-25/fight-grows-over-who-owns-real-estate-drowned-by-climate-change <comment><USER3> From the article: _The owner sued, with backing from the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian advocacy group supported by the Koch brothers. Jim Burling, the foundation's vice president, says there was a fundamental flaw in the town's argument: Only the state, not local officials, has the authority to declare that the high-tide line has moved — and where the line's new position might be._

The libertarians say you need the government - in fact only a certain governmental department will do - to declare where the high-tide line might be?! Peoples' eyes might not be enough? That's hilarious! Libertarians are all about freedom, individual sovereignty and decentralization but for where the beach ends in Nags Head you need to go up to the government offices in Raleigh, NC.

I understand that when two adults disagree that they go the referee - <USER2> court - together, but how can two adults disagree over the fact where the waterline is?</comment>


Self-Driving Cars Might Get Their Own Formula 1 Championship - <AUTHOR> http://readwrite.com/2016/04/02/self-driving-car-roborace-cup/ <comment><USER2> Unless the cars wreck, unlikely that this will get a mass following; ironic.</comment>


The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/the-promise-of-vaping-and-the-rise-of-juul <comment><USER2> I got hooked on cigarettes in the summer after 6th grade, many moons ago when I learned how to inhale. I tried vaping, chewing, and nicorette but it didn't quite cut it. I tried Juul a week or so ago and have only smoked a few cigarettes since and haven't for a few days. It's a godsend.

Getting hooked on nicotine isn't a very good idea, but if you are going to do it, Juul or vapes is a relatively healthy way to do it, simply because it won't kill you like cigarettes might.

I think all the hysteria from these people in the article is because these people can't disassociate vapes with cigarettes, particularly after the 2 decade long marketing campaign against cigarettes (with quite a bit of hyperbole as evidenced in the article).

Long story longer, Juul might finally get me to quit (fingers crossed). Kids are doing it which is dumb, but that's what kids do. Kids my age did the same with cigarettes during my time, so it's going to happen. Thank goodness that today having a nicotine addiction isn't as unhealthy as it was 20+ years ago.

One final thought; the only complaint I have with Juul is the disposable pods. They should have some sort of recycling program or something. I can go through a pod a day / day and a half.

<comment><USER3> I smoked for around 15 years (from college through my mid 30s) and the only thing that got me to quit was the development of more functional nicotine vaporizers. The old cigarette-looking ones didn't do the trick but I've got a little battery thing that's about the size of two lighters stuck together and a small tank that sits on top.

The only real hurdle was getting used to the change in how you use it versus smoking. With smoking, you have a cig, get a massive dose of nicotine, and then it tapers off in your bloodstream over the course of the next hour, leading to that craving for another dose. It's a stimulant so I'd feel a bit cranky and foggy until I had another smoke.

With vaporizers it's more like a hookah where I just sort of puff on it throughout the day, getting a lower yet more steady dose. It took a bit of getting used to but it was entirely more effective than any other nicotine replacement I'd tried. More importantly, it was still enjoyable which is something the gums and patches and sprays miss.

Since then, I've lowered the amount of nicotine to barely anything (maybe 2-3mg/ml) and read up on how to mix up the liquid so I'm not spending a fortune and I know exactly what goes into that mist I'm occasionally inhaling.

I hear so many comedians and read articles where people make fun of "vaping" as super lame and uncool, but I never gave a shit about that to begin with. I just accepted that much like my morning coffee, I like the bit of mental stimulation provided by a bit of nicotine and am thankful that I don't need to inhale tars and carbon monoxide and particulates and all the nasty products of combustion in order to get it. The idea that this is a "cool" thing the way some insist that smoking is just makes me shake my head.

RE: the disposable cartridges, I could never really get into that either. I don't like the waste or the cost and always gravitated to the things I could just fill up myself and maybe swap out the wick every week. I'll always spend that 5 minutes a week to avoid buying and tossing packs of plastic bits every couple of days.

<comment><USER4> > I hear so many comedians and read articles where people make fun of "vaping" > as super lame and uncool

This comes as a surprise to me, as the majority of people vaping are hipsters, where I am.

I do know someone who tried to use it to quit smoking, but that lasted about a week.

<comment><USER5> I used to work with a smoker who tried vaping as a means to quit smoking.

Vaping quickly became a way to get his fix in between his regularly scheduled cigarettes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To state the obvious, tobacco is far more harmful than you for pure nicotine, but pure nicotine is harmful too - just to a way lesser extent, whereas drugs like cannabis are (physically) completely harmless.

It's actually pretty shocking how not-bad-for-you weed is by comparison. I used to think smoking cigarettes was bad because you're inhaling smoke, but it turns out they're bad because you're inhaling a specific kind of pro- inflammatory, oxidative-damage-causing smoke. Whereas something about cannabis, whether it be the antioxidant effect or the different particle size, makes it actually ridiculously safe.

[Sorry if I was off topic, but I see a lot of misconceptions about tobacco vs nicotine vs cannabis in terms of relative harm)

<comment><USER7> > pure nicotine is harmful too

In what way? A summary [1] I have read some time ago does not seem to suggest nicotine is really harmful in any obviously offputting way.

[1] [https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#health- issues](https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine#health-issues)

<comment><USER6> I've read the same summary. I agree nicotine isn't very bad overall, but inhaling it is definitely not good for your lungs. This is anecdotal but I can feel the difference in respiratory inflammation when vaping a lot as opposed to just smoking/vaporizing weed.

And again, tobacco is an order of magnitude worse most likely (if not more). But I highly doubt nicotine is completely harmless to the lungs, throat etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do people care about high schoolers getting addicted to this?

Is it the money they'll waste, that they might shorten their lifespan by a couple of years, or just because they'll be addicted?

You could say the same things about Coffee, Video Games, or TV. There's so much to be addicted to and so little time. At the same time it helps adults that are already addicted to cigarettes extend their life span, save money, and maybe become less addicted.

I fail to see an issue.

<comment><USER9> One because it is illegal. Nicotine smoking age is 21 in the USA.

I might be wrong but I am pretty sure that nicotine is way more addictive than coffee, TV, or video games and the problem is that teenagers are already addicted.

 _"You fall asleep with your Juul under your pillow," my other friend said.

_ "With Juul, the pattern of use isn't kids having a cherry vape every now and then," he said. "It's kids sneaking off to the bathroom, kids vaping consistently throughout the day."

<comment><USER10> > Nicotine smoking age is 21 in the USA.

That is not true. The federal smoking age is 18, and many states do not have a minimum smoking age set at all, only a minimum _purchase_ age.[0] This means they simply defer to federal law. Some states made 21 the purchase age, but it is not federally mandated.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_age#Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_age#Americas)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Sorting 50,000-element array in web browser using HTML5 web worker - <AUTHOR> http://afshinm.github.io/50k/?new

<comment><USER2> ...with bubble sort.

Might want to mention that in the title.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how the algorithm is relevant here.

<comment><USER2> Because with a half-decent sorting algorithm you wouldn't need to use multithreading for this?

On my machine with that particular 50k length array it takes 7ms if I just do "a.sort();".

<comment><USER4> Hey ! Bubble sort _can_ be a descent algorithm when you know when and how to use it !

After all, it is _the fastest_ sorting algorithm when your collection is already sorted ! Moreover, it has very nice properties which make it suitable for a lot of concurrent operations.

<comment><USER2> Insertion sort is faster for already-sorted data.

(Note: I am not advocating to use insertion sort!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not meaning to offend you, but... what's the point of this submission?

Webworkers have been here for a while now...

<comment><AUTHOR> To show the difference between performing a time/resource consuming action on web browsers with web workers and without it.

Excuse me if you didn't find it useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is neat, thanks. It would be better if the progress bar actually showed progress. A simple loading spinner gif would be better if that's all the progress bar really is in this case. I ran this on my phone earlier and wasn't sure if anything was actually happening because it took too long, and I gave up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ow thanks :-) The reason I used progress-bar is to show the busy time of the browser while performing the action.</comment></comment>


Cellular Automata as Convolutional Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.02942 <comment><USER2> See also: "learning" Conway's Game of Life configurations by gradient descent.

[https://hardmath123.github.io/conways- gradient.html](https://hardmath123.github.io/conways-gradient.html)

<comment><USER3> I wonder if it is because using backpropagation all non-linear functions are chained together when the weights are learnt? Is it naive to think by that formulation the results will be quite similar since the final model equations are close?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now just use the OTCA Metapixel, build a computer within the simulation, and let it go wild!

[http://www.amandaghassaei.com/blog/2020/05/01/the- recursive-...](http://www.amandaghassaei.com/blog/2020/05/01/the-recursive- universe/)

[https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build- a-w...](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/11880/build-a-working- game-of-tetris-in-conways-game-of-life)

[https://github.com/QuestForTetris](https://github.com/QuestForTetris)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure I understand the importance of this...

<comment><USER6> Indeed, CA can be represented by simple combinations of boolean functions, obviously by NN also, which is a combination of similar nonlinear functions.

<comment><AUTHOR> A wide enough NN can represent any arbitrary binary function, but it's not obvious that one can learn it.

<comment><USER7> Yet the best NNs are deep, not wide.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by 'the best'? Deeper architectures are popular because they quiet easy to train. They do work well in practice on many tasks (especially vision) but they have their limits.

Infinite wide networks are a newly active field and has recently shown some promising results, theoretically [1, 2] and empirically [3].

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.06931](https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.06931) [3] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07572](https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.07572) [2] [https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/03/fast-and-easy- infinitely-w...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/03/fast-and-easy-infinitely- wide-networks.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > We show that any CA may readily be represented using a convolutional neural > network with a network-in-network architecture.

</comment><comment><USER9> I take it this is not a bidirectional mapping?

</comment><comment><USER10> I was hoping to see some mention of rule 110

</comment><comment><USER11> kind of obvious

<comment><USER12> Can you please tell us how is it obvious? I am interested in the network in network part</comment></comment>


Show HN: Illustrio – Search, customize and download illustrations - <AUTHOR> https://app.illustrio.com/ <comment><USER2>
      > © illustrio 2016 - Patent pending

What are you patenting?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've built a CSS based language to enable designers to easily make their SVG graphics dynamic and customizable. You're right though, it makes no sense to put it there while it's pending, I'm removing it. Thanks for asking!

<comment><USER3> Can you tell us your rationale for patenting this "CSS-based language"?

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be the same rationale for any patent? To protect your intellectual property?

<comment><USER3> Well sure, but obtaining a patent is no small thing (if done seriously). So I'm curious why they feel it's so important to protect this.

Basically I'm wondering if it's just a purely defensive move, (maybe an investor asked them to file a patent or whatever), or whether they are aiming for a business model where people create things using a language that they control and can obtain fees for its use.

Of course they don't have any reason to share this info with us at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! I initially thought it was just color swapping, but the percentages section in particular is fantastic.

Led by the CTA arrow: [http://i.imgur.com/odtBsuE.png](http://i.imgur.com/odtBsuE.png), I clicked on "Illustrations" first, which I actually think is the weakest example of cool customizability. Percentages and Words are both more compelling IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback. The percentages stuff is my favorite too. And you're right, I'm moving down the arrow CTA :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not clear on the licensing here. Are all files under the "illustrio license", and why does the summary that pops up seem to say something different than the detailed license text? I would be much more comfortable with a standard license being used - say, the Creative Commons licenses. At least let users filter their search by license terms, unless they're all under the same terms in which case that should be clearer.

I like the idea of being able to customize, but is that simply changing the colors? Or is it the ability to commission edits to the work? If it's just color changes I have trouble seeing the value; if it's substantial edits to the work then the pricing looks too low and the license terms are too restrictive.

Basically, what does this offer me that the Noun Project doesn't, except far more restrictive licensing terms?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback. The illustrio license applies to all graphics. What differences have you noticed between the pop up and the detailed text? We might need to clarify if anything is unclear right now. Also, you may customize other things than colors by playing with the inputs in the left side-bar under each "product". Try to play with the slider under Percentages for example. You need to click on Percentages first.

<comment><USER6> Ah, it's only in some categories. That is definitely a neat feature now that I see it. Unfortunate that the licensing makes this something I can't use. I'd never get your license text past the legal team at my day job, and almost all of my side projects are FLOSS. Plus, having a policy of never using anything that I can't either own the rights to or use and modify under a permissive license makes my IP management so much simpler.

The summary license says that you can't redistribute the graphics. Admittedly, I'm used to licenses such as GPL where including the file in an app's package file would be "redistribution" \- it looks like you mean "no redistribution of JUST the graphics file" which could perhaps be clearer.

Also, the license seems really concerned with not putting any of your graphics in a theme or template. Why is this? I'd consider offering a licensing option which permits this, perhaps on a different pricing structure.

You say can't use in/on a paid product, but can use in a paid service. That's confusing because I'd think of my paid website service AS my product - I think you might mean "no use on physical goods for sale" which is another restriction I don't particularly understand but okay. Again that might be something to offer an option for.

<comment><USER7> All good points and we certainly need to clarify a couple things. The reason why our license is restrictive is because we target non-designers who are generally not making a living out of design. This way we can offer our own pricing and not compete with all the already good icon and graphic providers out there targeting designers. It happens non-designers are also happier with our limited editing features than Adobe illustrator's for instance. Hope it makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very good idea. Are you planning to make it marketplacable? So that there can be creators of SVGs as well.

Also, right now, when I look at the pricing section, only an empty modal dialog shows up (el capitan, chrome, ad blocker off).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! We're currently working with a few designers in private but we're working on tools that would enable designers to upload packs of .svg graphics and make them automatically customizable on our platform.

I'm having a hard time trying to reproduce the modal bug although you're not the first one to report the issue. I'm working on it!

edit: typo

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, I just checked and the pricing dialog works now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird. Thanks anyway :)

<comment><USER9> Also ran into the pricing modal issue when I clicked through to one of the designs [1]. Using OSX Chrome 50.0.2661.102

[1] [https://app.illustrio.com/detail/percentage/55803bfd7ca4ca2e...](https://app.illustrio.com/detail/percentage/55803bfd7ca4ca2e5c0ded6b)

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be fixed by now :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm getting the following very abrupt error (which I assume is caused by a content-blocker) and then the site fails to load.

      AlgoliaSearchJSONPScriptErrorError: <script> unable to load due to an `error` event on it

Tweaking content-blocking fixes this and all works fine, but just to report that the alert() popup is a bit abrupt.

<comment><AUTHOR> The app still needs a lot of error handling love. Thank you for the report.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "All packs are valid for 12 months."

What does that mean? Can the illustrations only be used within that 12 month period?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. If you buy a downloads pack, you have to use them within 12 months. After that period, they expire.

But once the illustrations are downloaded, you can use them as long as you want.

edit: for clarity

<comment><USER12> Perhaps you should say "Must be downloaded within 12 months; perpetual license lets you use them for as long as you want."

<comment><USER7> Indeed good point, thanks for that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can see myself paying for this to improve my next presentations, the value proposition is really good!

I'm not sure of the business model for big customers though, the gap between 100 and 5000 downloads being huge. Maybe unlimited downloads would be better, maybe not, only time will give you an answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, we had to came up with a pricing based on the few customers/users we already have. But I agree that the gap may seem inaccurate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was interested until I realised you can't get the icons in SVG. Why use raster images for icons? SVGs are smaller, crisper and always the correct resolution.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nicely done! Can actually start using this service immediately ;)

How easy would it be for Illustrio to take requests for specific illustrations from the community?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Currently we don't have the tools to accept requests automatically. Still, we're closely monitoring the search terms/expressions users make that return no (or close to no) results.

We try to be as reactive as possible, so feel free to contact us (bottom left of sidebar) and ask for what you need!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We clearly did not expect such a traffic from HN. The download requests are stuck for the moment, sorry for that! We're working on it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice.

On signup - there is a field labelled 'company' that validates as an email address. I'm guessing the label is wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed thank you! edit: Are you referring to the placeholder "Your company email..." in the signup modal? If it's the case, we're planning on creating a color scheme automatically from the company's logo. Currently, it can be done by picking colors manually from any logo the Clearbit API can find. Try to create a new color scheme :)

<comment><USER16> Maybe I didn't spot the word 'email' in "Your company email..." but I swear it just said "Your company"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is like Clipart, but better, and for the internet. Loving it!</comment>