Apple AirPods satisfaction at a remarkable 98% for customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.experian.com/blogs/insights/2017/05/experian-airpods-survey/ <comment><USER2> > New Experian survey explores consumer satisfaction with AirPods and other > voice-first hardware

> Conversational user interfaces are now mainstream.

I really like my AirPods, but... this is a strange comment to make about them. The Siri integration / audio controls is the most awkward part of using AirPods. Honestly really hoping they revisit in v2.

<comment><USER3> If you have an Apple Watch, you can control audio/volume from there. (having the Now Playing complication helps too)

<comment><USER2> I don't have a watch myself... I've been pulling out my iPhone and doing all of the controls there.

Not sure if my AirPods are defective, but I'm getting a successful detection from a tap on the AirPod sensor maybe 1/3 of the time.

<comment><USER4> Mine are about 100%, but it does seem to require a decent little thunk. You can't just touch it. I've heard people say they don't like it because it feels uncomfortable in your ear when you hit it hard enough. It doesn't bother me but I'm not going to say it feels _good_.

I don't think it's capacitive, I think it's based on the little chip's gyro sensor.

<comment><USER5> Just to be sure—you're both doing a double tap, right? It has to be a double tap. Mine responds just fine unless I hit it weird, which has only happened a couple of times.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, looks like I wasn't thunking it hard enough. I was tapping it with the force of a tap to click trackpad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't doubt the ergonomics are amazing, but it's somewhat surprising to me that people are happy with such mediocre audio performance.

<comment><USER7> Audio quality on them is average, not bad, but their strengths balance out those weaknesses. In particular, I find myself using headphones more often now because I always keep these in my pocket. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts with them.

Apple AirPods are the real deal. Best new Apple product in years.

<comment><USER8> I'm sad that Beats was the one headphone brand that Apple ended up purchasing when they wanted to expand that space. B&O felt like a natural synergy for them too.

I would _love_ to be able to buy better-sounding AirPods under an Apple/B&O label.

<comment><USER9> Apple didn't buy a headphone maker for expertise at making headphones that sound good. Apple Stores _sell_ headphones from any number of brands—including B&O—so there's nothing to gain by making their _own_ headphones more audiophile-friendly. They still make money off of other companies' audiophile- targeted headphones, without having to actually design and produce any.

Instead, Apple bought the headphone maker whose products make money through a combination of visually-distinct brand-recognition and a high level of "fit and finish"—the same way their own hardware does. Beats slots into Apple's product-design paradigm as naturally as if they had created the brand themselves.

<comment><USER4> There's a pretty good argument they bought Beats for the music service (and it's people and relationships), which they turned into/merged with Apple music. They seem to have left the headphone business alone (other than giving one kind of Beats have the same chipset that the AirPods have).

<comment><USER9> > They seem to have left the headphone business alone

Well, why wouldn't they? Going by my argument, it was already being done "the way they would have done it."

It's like moving in with someone who already has the same cleaning habits that you do: you can just leave them alone and trust them to do the right thing, and then be happy with the results.

<comment><USER4> Apple has never really bought something and left it alone before. While the Beats headphone brand was good, some people wondered if they would change it somehow. "Beats presented by Apple" or something like that. Start putting their logo on the product, etc.

I'm not saying it would be a smart idea. I think Apple did the right thing. But Apple couple years ago may well have made a change like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't get the damn things to stay in my ears if I'm doing any physical activity beyond brisk walking. Working out in them is out of the question, so I'm still using my regular bluetooth headphones, and I looked quite comical running to catch the train with both hands over my ears so they wouldn't fall out. I'm surprised only 1 out of every 50 people who bought Airpods are experiencing similar dissatisfaction.

<comment><USER11> Mine have never fallen out, even when running or jumping or leaning over. Do apple's wired earbuds fall out of your ears? Seems like this varies by body.

<comment><USER10> That's a good point, I hadn't researched into this and it seems like there are solutions out there for ear shapes that don't conform well to Apple headphones.

[https://appadvice.com/post/airpods-dont- fit/732275](https://appadvice.com/post/airpods-dont-fit/732275)

<comment><USER2> The covers are a cool idea, and I think I'll end up getting the ones that look like Bose tips.

That said, the friction that they add by being too bulky to fit in the case makes any of these half-baked at best. The case is such a core part of what differentiates AirPods. Having to keep track of and put on / take off covers all the time sort of kills the magic.

IMO it's really a problem Apple should solve, or at least accommodate as opposed to leaving up to a hacky third party solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> AirPods are amazing. Best Apple product launch since the original iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to know why they're _still_ being sold at a 6 week delay. Tim Cook is really good at operations stuff, and this isn't like Apple. They certainly know the demand is there by now.

Seems like the only possibilities are some sort of part shortage (maybe it's really hard to get those tiny batteries) or a very high defect rate (there were rumors of that around launch).

I wonder how long this will last.

</comment><comment><USER13> To any of they naysayers, I'd say survey the competition for AirPods. They are far beyond anything else available in terms of ergonomics and battery life for wireless earbuds. Audio quality is less of an issue in the first place if you're talking about Bluetooth anyways. Audiophiles should stick with wired.

<comment><USER14> They're also, at least as of a month or so ago when I last looked, fairly low- priced for their product category.

If you want a "true wireless" headphone (and, from personal experience with these, I find it quite compelling), you're not going to pay much less than Apple's price. I think the cheapest I've seen is $150, and that's lacking the Apple polish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm confused, is this a new kind of blogspam?

<comment><USER16> It's 100% an add for Experian services/data.

It is interesting that the product is well-received, but obviously the post is light on details and could be a lot better.

<comment><USER17> Of course it is, every single post on every company blog is marketing. That's how the internet works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Apple AirPods are the real deal. Best new Apple product in years.

</comment><comment><USER18> And suddenly Apple's usual marketing strategy makes a whole lot more sense.

Price it high enough that nobody who has to care about money would buy it, and make it crappy enough that nobody who cares about quality would buy it.

And, apparently, it seems the people who aren't filtered by that will say anything is the second coming of christ as long as it comes in a shiny enough box.

<comment><USER19> > _make it crappy enough that nobody who cares about quality would buy it._

This is a remarkably bizarre thing to say in response to a 98% customer satisfaction rating.

<comment><USER20> I do not find it bizarre, we are talking about 98% of the customers who actually bought the product, despite its low sound quality.

<comment><USER19> Your theory relies on nearly 100% of consumers having a priori knowledge about the quality of the product, sufficient to decide if they want to purchase it or not _without having actually tried it yet_.

Also, if your theory was true, then why does any product anywhere have a less than near-perfect satisfaction rating? If consumers can have magical knowledge about AirPods, why can't they have the same knowledge about all the other products they purchase?

And finally, the sound quality isn't bad. It's better than earbuds. If you're comparing it to a high-end pair of headphones, sure, it's not going to be as good, but if you're comparing it to products in the same category as AirPods then it holds up pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My office has some really noisy people, so I wear my AirPods under a set of big ugly 3M ear protector 30dB earmuffs. Works great!

<comment><USER22> This is a case where these might actually make sense for me. I hadn't thought about the lack of cord making them more usable underneath hearing protection.

Any experience with my number one reason not for buying them which is the fear of losing them?

<comment><USER23> Why not get the Bose QC35s then? Much longer battery life, tune the world out.

<comment><USER22> I haven't liked active noise cancellation in the past. For office work I tried an old Bose quiet comfort (10 years ago) and decided I much preferred Sennheiser HD 280s for isolation.

Also I've heard bad things about the microphone.

<comment><USER24> Sennheiser Momentum 2 Wireless ANC is far superior to Bose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious as to why Airpods have 98% satisfaction rate? I don't have a pair, but it seems like a lot of people I know who have them feel similarly.

Is it because the battery life is good and they connect super easily and stay connected? Or is there some other feature that pushes people over the top?

<comment><USER14> Speaking just for myself, it's two things:

First, there's that Apple "it just works" whole-package experience. If you're bought into the Apple ecosystem, using macOS and iOS, it's really incredibly seamless and gets rid of all those bluetooth hassles. Plus, as you say, battery life is good enough that I've never personally run up against it.

Second, and the part which surprised me to discover after I got mine, it turns out that headphone wires had been subconsciously bothering me. Experiencing earbuds without them is genuinely _better_ in feel, and I find I use earbuds so much more as a result.

<comment><USER22> Reading this I might actually buy these. I was pretty set against because of the fear of losing them. I've been annoyed on many occasions at not being able to use my lightning headphones with my Macbook Pro while traveling and I can see this being a superior option to any corded headphone solution. I use video chat a lot and using corded Apple headphones with a laptop is definitely awkward.

<comment><USER14> I had some worries about losing them, as well. These have proven to be unfounded over the last few months... though I haven't done anything _intense_ while wearing them. In the course of my day to day life walking around, maybe occasional light running through the rain, they've never fallen out.

I did try some experimental jumping around and shaking my head wildly after I got them, and they didn't slip out from that.

I suspect a lot of this comes down to your ear shape. The fit of the wired EarPods are a decent proxy for how the AirPods will fit. The AirPods are less likely than the EarPods to fall out, because the wires aren't there tugging on them as you move your head, which turns out to be a useful difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> i belive it. i love love love mine. best purchase of 2016

</comment><comment><USER27> how is it on android? or mac? or windows?

<comment><USER15> Works on Android, but you don't get all functions.

Samsung has a similar product for Android, check it out.

<comment><USER4> I seem to remember those has pretty bad battery life.

I've used my AirPods with a Mac that didn't have the latest software (so they were just treated like any other Bluetooth headphones) and something else and they work just fine. You don't get the double tap control (I think) or the auto pause? (not sure) but they sound just as good. If you want really tiny headphones that are easy to charge they'd be a good candidate.

But the experience on updated Apple products is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Do the comments on this seem a bit weird?

See: [http://i.imgur.com/AZe6fCF.png](http://i.imgur.com/AZe6fCF.png)

<comment><USER4> It's hard to say. I have a pair and I really do love them. I've heard a number of people on podcasts I listen to call them their favorite product Apple has released in years. It could be real.

<comment><USER28> Yeah I definitely won't discount that, it just seemed interesting that they said basically the same thing a minute apart.

<comment><USER29> With a 98% satisfaction rating, I would think that most people who own them are going to say approximately the same things.

<comment><USER30> They've also been discussed a lot in those terms because of the prevailing narrative of Apple being in a slump or not being able to innovate anymore.

<comment><USER4> I've also heard the guys on ATP, rebound, and Gruber use nearly identical language. It would be easy to subconsciously pick up those phrases.

<comment><USER31> Cryptomnesia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I recently evaluated AirPods, Beats x and Bose QC 35. The Bose won in the feature depts, esp. NC and multipoint BT. I don't care what brand it is so long as it works well.

</comment><comment><USER33> Looks like some advanced level trolling to me. The only way I can imagine 98% of a group being satisfied with such a product is some variant of Stockholm syndrome.

Some days it feels like the "Next "Great" Apple product will be ... a place where you can work for free, to benefit Apple. And then we'll hear the usual suspects extolling the benefits of that.

(warning, audio geek, also wireless protocol geek, and also their damned overpriced P.O.S. don't even fit in my ears >.>)

</comment><comment><USER34> People are satisfied because they need to justify their purchase. If the airpods costed much less, im sure we would have people complaining about audio quality and other minor issues, but when you pay that much you overlook the little things to justify your purchase.

<comment><USER30> Nope, I'm actually satisfied. Bought a couple for friends because I liked them so much. They're both satisfied despite having paid $0.

<comment><USER24> My girlfriend loves her Airpods, too. First Bluetooth headphones she's been willing to put up with, heh - because _they just work_.</comment></comment></comment>


I can preview blocked website after pasting it in Facebook any similar fix? - <AUTHOR> Censorship of website does not mean you can not preview a news story, I use facebook to preview blocked website after pasting (not full posting)  any similar fix for blocked websites where a bigger preview is possible to read more than the first paragraph? <comment><USER2> this will take a url and convert the entire page's contents into an image: [https://web-capture.net](https://web-capture.net)

</comment><comment><USER3> outline.com

</comment><comment><USER4> There was a Show HN recently about a search engine[1] that displayed previews. That might be useful here.

[1] peekier.com</comment>


Waterfox – Firefox fork retaining XUL support - <AUTHOR> https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ <comment><USER3> Huh, didn't expect to see this on here again!

Just before I continue I'd like everyone to know I have complete respect for Mozilla and everything they have achieved with Firefox in v57! It really is awesome and a testament to their engineering talent. I used to submit patches to them to get the code base compiled with Intel's C++ compiler and they really are great in communicating with you and even going out of their way to fix obscure issues. I hope to return to submitting more helpful patches and I'm excited to see where Firefox goes from here on out!

Now on to some other points:

* v56 with security patches from v57 is available to test here if anyone is interested: [https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/7ed9sf/waterfox_5...](https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/7ed9sf/waterfox_56_test_build_download_plans_please/)

* v56 will stay here with security patches remaining until the end of v59 ESR (I'll be using it to track security issues and patch them).

* In the spirit of YCombinator and HN, my next step after the release of v56 is to go to VCs (or other funding sources) and show that open source projects can be successful business ventures without having to sell out the user. Then hopefully set up a team and create a power-user focused browser based on all the exciting technology out there - (servo would definitely be a fun base).

Of course I'm young and Waterfox was a side-project that I thought made me a real programmer at 16 because I managed to set the 64-bit flags on MSVC (oh dear). I never thought it'd basically become a full time job, get me into prestigious universities and even land me job contracts because of all the years I spent working on it!

If anyone has advice I certainly wouldn't knock it and it would be much appreciated. If you think I'm crazy go ahead and let me know as well haha!

<comment><USER4> I have a lot of respect for open-source contributors and for OSS project maintainers.

However in order for a fork to be sustainable it means that it needs to be more than a rebranding, otherwise it cannot survive. In particular, if Waterfox is retaining the XUL support, then it's going to get harder and harder to merge upstream Firefox into it, which means a bigger and bigger burden on you.

> _my next step after the release of v56 is to go to VCs (or other funding > sources) and show that open source projects can be successful business > ventures without having to sell out the user_

If you succeed, that's going to be great, since it means more funding for open-source.

However the elephant in the room is that you're dependent on Mozilla's developers for continued development. That's much like greenwashing, you know, how some companies claim to be "green" by outsourcing pollution to other countries.

And implicit in this claim is that Mozilla is selling the user out and I don't see how. I understand the reticence for Google being the default search engine, but as a DuckDuckGo user and as an European I can tell you that the difference can be night and day. And it's easy to change the search engine, there's no other browser that makes it easier, desktop or mobile.

Speaking of which, Ecosia might be cool for having trees planted from its revenue, but it kind of has the same problem — being dependent on Bing and thus Microsoft. And I'm going to guess that the results are at least as poor as DDG and the problem for users is that most users will apply the "three strikes you're out" rule, because you don't want to second-guess your search engine on every search, unless you really, really care so much about privacy that you can take that pain and most people don't.

<comment><USER3> Sorry for the delayed response!

> However in order for a fork to be sustainable it means that it needs to be > more than a rebranding, otherwise it cannot survive. In particular, if > Waterfox is retaining the XUL support, then it's going to get harder and > harder to merge upstream Firefox into it, which means a bigger and bigger > burden on you.

I am aware, but the plan is to keep XUL support going for now until the end of ESR 59 (Q1 2019) and by then having an appropriate replacement.

One path was the idea to keep following Firefox except to extend the APIs available (and submit them to Mozilla as well in-case they get would like to merge).

> And implicit in this claim is that Mozilla is selling the user out and I > don't see how.

Sorry I didn't mean it to be interpreted that way! Just meant that the general stigma about OSS + business not working together (although the last few years that has been changing).

> Speaking of which, Ecosia might be cool for having trees planted from its > revenue, but it kind of has the same problem — being dependent on Bing and > thus Microsoft. And I'm going to guess that the results are at least as poor > as DDG and the problem for users is that most users will apply the "three > strikes you're out" rule, because you don't want to second-guess your search > engine on every search, unless you really, really care so much about privacy > that you can take that pain and most people don't.

I see. Well I believe it's still worth it and from feedback I've heard, many people don't mind the results as they find Bing results fairly decent and are more than happy to support the project. I don't think it's too unreasonable to not want to have to rely on Google for everything? People are free to use it if they want to though.

<comment><USER4> It's not unreasonable to want to be free of Google. I went through this process already, which is why I'm a Firefox and DuckDuckGo user and a FastMail customer, having used Google Apps before.

I'm glad to see your attitude, I guess I've read too much between the lines — personally I'm a little annoyed by a double standard I've seen here regarding Firefox, which is somehow held to a much higher standard.

So good luck to you and your project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apart from retaining XUL support, it also:

      * Disabled Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)
      * Disabled Web Runtime (deprecated as of 2015)
      * Removed Pocket
      * Removed Telemetry
      * Removed data collection
      * Removed startup profiling
      * Allow running of all 64-Bit NPAPI plugins
      * Allow running of unsigned extensions
      * Removal of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page
      * Addition of Duplicate Tab option
      * Locale selector in about:preferences > General

Judging by that feature list alone, this seems like a browser that respects user privacy, is against DRM and advertising to its users, and gives the user the power to run any extension they want instead of limiting them to running only signed extensions.

<comment><USER6>
      * addition of duplicate tab option

Why can't Firefox and Chrome add this functionality?

How it should work: In IE11 it's Ctrl+K and it opens a new tab (a deep-copy of the current one, incl history so one click on the back button in the new cloned tab.

<comment><USER7> Duplicate tab option is present here in Firefox 57. It's in the right click context menu on any tab.

<comment><USER6> Is it too much to ask for a simple shortcut, like Ctrl+K

Ctrl+T ... new Tab

Ctrl+K ... dublicate Tab

Ctrl+W ... close Tab

I won't start clicking around on the tabs. Please add the missing shortcut (Ctrl+K)

<comment><USER8> can you file a bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org? It should be easy to do!

source: I added the duplicate tab context menu option in Fx57

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On another note, XULRunner was a JS runtime with XUL for UI markup, like an early Electron. It's a shame the project was scrapped, I really enjoyed writing XUL+ES5 and seeing XML become native widgetry. (It's the platform that Firefox was initially built on, I don't know how much of it is still there now)

Bring back XULRunner :'( That project was way ahead of its time

<comment><USER3> XULRunner was a great piece of tech!

> (It's the platform that Firefox was initially built on, I don't know how > much of it is still there now)

Looks like it was completely removed in this bug: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221724](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221724)

Although I suppose some form of it is used in Firefox now (although I imagine XUL will get removed some time after XBL has been replaced with WebComponents).

<comment><USER9> I wonder what kind of effort would be required to port it to node/V8? IIRC XULRunner's main handicap was relying on Moz's older-gen JS engine

<comment><USER10> I would personally be interested in using XULRunner's innards to create a dependency-less cross-platform GUI framework (as a C library ala libui). Does anyone know how easy that would be and where I should start looking?

<comment><USER9> I don't have any answers for you, but it's worth noting that Moz worked around the JS speed limitations with bespoke C++ via XPCOM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Developers are free to spend their time on whatever projects they wish, but I suspect that Waterfox users will quickly run into the tradeoffs between customizability and performance that the Firefox team made.

It's a noble effort but I suspect there just isn't a big enough community to keep a XUL-based browser (plus the extensions themselves) moving forward while being as secure, web-standard-current and fast as Firefox proper.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure that there will be many XUL extensions left maintained after a while -- since no major browser supports them and the fact that WebExtensions is a much easier framework for development. As a result, I don't see much of a future in Firefox pre-Quantum forks.

<comment><USER13> Yes, in time there won't be any XUL extenions. But what do they say we are all supposed do with that tiny nagging:'it worked yesterday, but not today' problem?

<comment> semi-extrinsic Firefox's Extended Support Release, which will keep getting updates for almost a year, certainly helps.

I've been on ESR because of vimperator/pentadactyl not being portable, plus some other extensions like FoxyProxy, Tree Style Tabs etc.

But today I discovered tridactyl works well enough on latest FF to suit my vim-ish needs, while the other two have been fairly completely ported.

<comment><USER14> Neat saka tridactyl and vim vixen several interesting choices

<comment><USER15> I did not like Saka Key (some weird behavior sometimes), but Vim Vixen comes close to VimFx.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Using forks of unsupported Firefox versions/features (this, Pale Moon, etc.) is a good way to introduce vulnerabilities into your daily browsing.

Firefox ESR should be the addons stopgap of choice while they're ported.

<comment><USER7> Pale Moon reportedly backports security patches.

<comment><USER16> Sure – not _trying_ would be obscenely irresponsible. But:

1\. I don't trust them to do that right

2\. You're later to get the same patches

3\. You can't backport patches for removed features

<comment><USER17> It's funny that you say these things with such confidence when you're demonstrably wrong (ie, 3) by simply looking at the Pale Moon update logs and the 'Defense in Depth' "fixes" for vulnerabilities that don't exist in PM but do in FF which are changed anyway just to be sure. [http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml](http://www.palemoon.org/releasenotes.shtml)

<comment><USER16> #3 is a weird one to take issue with. Unless by "demonstrably wrong" you mean "objectively right"? You can't _backport_ a patch from a fork for a feature that _doesn't exist_ in that fork. You _can_ make your own patch. XUL ones can come from ESR… except when you don't fork ESR. Oops! A fork has to be able to maintain the browser as well or better than the Firefox community does right now, and again, I don't trust any of the fork teams to do that.

You're also misrepresenting what "Defense in Depth" changelog entries in Pale Moon mean. For two of the five on the current page: CVE-2017-7809 was fixed by Firefox; NPAPI plugins aren't supported anymore. The other three aren't specific and don't link to an issue tracker or patch, so it's hard to say.

<comment><USER17> Well, 1 is your opinion so it's hard to change that. 2 is obvious and not really a problem. So the only thing you had was 3.

And no, I mean demonstrably wrong. But you are right that all the useless attack surfaces that Firefox has (ie, WebGl, Websockets, Pocket, etc) aren't in Pale Moon. Luckily for PM it doesn't need to do as well or better than Firefox because it simply doesn't have all the excess "features".

<comment><USER16> Maybe an example will make it clearer to you what #3 means. Firefox stops supporting certain types of extensions. Firefox stops making security patches to this (eventually) removed feature. Because there are no patches, you can't backport them to your fork. From this, we have the objectively correct

> 3\. You can't backport patches for removed features

which is just as obvious as 2 – and they _are_ important.

<comment><USER17> Ah, I finally get what you're saying. You're complaining that forks will have to support code that Mozilla no longer does.

Yeah. That's the point of forks.

<comment><USER18> They're not complaining, they are pointing out that this is a bunch of work that Palemoon's authors need to do, just to be no worse than Firefox. Work there isn't much evidence of them doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I used Waterfox long time ago, as a fast 64bit alternative to Firefox (although never noticed a significant speed difference). Now I think the only reason I'd still use it is because add-ons such as Vimperator, but I already switched to the less powerful Vim-fx.

I love the idea that projects such as this one or Pale Moon exist, but I find it hard for me to use them as a regular user, apart from sentimental reasons.

<comment><USER20> FWIW, I've had much better luck with vim-vixen than I did with vim-fx. Obviously ymmv

<comment> semi-extrinsic Have you tried tridactyl?

<comment><USER20> I don't believe I have, I'll give it a shot sometime

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just completed my first Firefox for Android build and I have to say that Mozilla makes it really easy to get started [1] - I plan to run a personal fork/modified Android version from now on if this works this smooth.

Ignoring the huge download, this has been one of the easiest open source projects to build so far. I'm impressed.

1: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_guide/Build_Instructions/Simple_Firefox_for_Android_build)

<comment><USER7> What's your reason for building your own FF for Android may I ask? Just curious...

<comment><USER21> Firefox improves greatly in speed and features - I like that and don't want a long term release thing or a radical fork like the one discussed here. I can live with some plugin issues on the desktop (web extensions being less powerful). But I refuse to use Firefox on Android without 'Share To Bottom' [1]. Feel free to link to xkcd's "you broke my workflow", but without this feature my blood pressure is constantly too high.

Whenever I long-press on a link I want either (80% of the time) 'Open in new tab' or (the rest of the time. No exception. Never anything but these two things) 'Copy link'. I never ever want 'Share', but some time in the past Fennec/Firefox for Android moved that option to the top of the menu. I filed bugs for that, got shot down rather quickly and stumbled upon the addon [1] as a workaround. The workaround is now broken and so is literally nearly every single (I rarely just click links, always long-press them. I have sometimes more than 90 tabs open on my Android phone) interaction with a link on the internet. The menu is annoying me with a prominent button that I never want, but press in error again and again (probably adding to Mozilla's heatmap, so that they'll conclude in the future that this was a very good change indeed! Lots of people click "Share"!).

So right now I created my own Firefox build and I'm trying to do this the nasty way (still searching my way around in this codebase, but I plan to completely remove the 'Share' menu item. A hardcoded 'Share To Trash' modification, if you will). I'll happily rebuild the browser for this change, for all eternity.

(Note that I never understood the 'Share' option in that menu in the first place. Everyone I see around me uses 'Share' from the page menu, i.e. the top- right … thing. To share the page you're _actually_ looking at. Instead of sharing a link to a page (via a popup menu) that you cannot see right now. So the version I envision still allows you to share stuff, just not from the context menu of a link)

1: [https://github.com/miraks/ShareToBottom/](https://github.com/miraks/ShareToBottom/)

<comment><USER22> I've used the "share" option on that long-press menu recently, to share a link through zxing's Barcode Scanner to another person's phone. Unfortunately, doing that seems to somehow have moved that rarely-used option to the top of the menu, above even the frequently used "open in new tab" option.

<comment><USER21> Hmm. If that happened only because you clicked it once, then it should be reversible to "never wanted it in the first place" somehow, I hope..

Might be worth investigating..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> from time to time i lose firefox extensions because they are not updated anymore; with firefox 57 i am losing my beloved fireftp, which is still available on waterfox... but there's no way i would get rid of firefox, even for fireftp

<comment><USER24> I don't know exactly what your situation is, but I had hundreds of sites saved in FireFTP. It won't get you FireFTP in Firefox 57 but I wrote a utility to help move them over to FileZilla. Maybe it can help you too.

[https://github.com/myspoonistoobig/AtomicFire](https://github.com/myspoonistoobig/AtomicFire)

<comment><USER23> Oh thank you, that's great! No, I used to use at most 2 or 3 different logins, mainly one. And I indeed switched to FileZilla

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, if this allows people to bridge the gap until the WebExtensions API in Firefox is comprehensive enough for their needs, then I'm all for it.

<comment><USER26> Firefox 52 ESR would probably be the safer alternative. It will receive security updates until June 26, 2018. And I honestly just can't imagine Waterfox or other forks trying to keep XUL compatibility to stay secure long after that, as XUL extensions used to be a major maintenance burden for Mozilla and these forks have only a fraction of the size of Mozilla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is also SeaMonkey, how do waterfox and seamonkey compare?

<comment><USER28> Seamonkey is much older, and not really a fork as it follows current day Firefox development quite closely.

Hell, one may well call Firefox a fork of the browser part of Seamonkey.

A more interesting comparison to Waterfox would be Pale Moon. And there is also Basilisk, a more recent project by the Pale Moon people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sadly, Pale Moon is still not available on Mac. I wasn't aware of Basilisk, though! It appears that that one too is Windows/Linux only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Has anyone here done any line of business/crud type of app with XUL that they feel has been successful? I'd be interested in hearing any short description of the ups/downs of your efforts.

<comment><USER30> About 15 years ago German car rental company Sixt migrated some mainframe based console UIs to XUL, while keeping the backend in COBOL. They focused a lot on reaction time and keyboard shortcuts as the tool was used in the call center to capture damage reports. I have no idea how much of this is still used. Slides from an old talk about this: [https://blog.mayflower.de/uploads/XUL_xtech2.pdf](https://blog.mayflower.de/uploads/XUL_xtech2.pdf)

<comment><USER29> Thanks for this. I played around with XUL in 2004 for the first time - <USER2> last time. Being totally blown away by its native controls then, I suggested it for an in-house insurance app my client was developing. My recommendation did not receive much respect! They ended up developing an ASP app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If only people would put their efforts toward making WebExtensions support better, with features they liked from XUL, like they do with their XUL forks...

<comment><USER32> That's kind of hard when this requires changing the WebExtension API, which Mozilla seems to be very hesitant in doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > "Addition of Duplicate Tab option"

As a user of both Chromium and Firefox browser, I miss this option in tab's context menu in "stock" Firefox browser.

<comment><USER34> When did you last test? For me, using Firefox 59, there's a "Duplicate Tab" entry when I right-click on a tab.

Also, I know for a fact that you've been able to Ctrl+drag to duplicate a tab in Firefox for years and years now, because I do it every week. :)

<comment><USER35> It's in 57 for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not Pale Moon?

<comment><USER36> Pale Moon is a 3.5 fork, it's ancient, although it's gotten a lot of independent development.

<comment><USER37> Do you not wonder that this fork will suffer the same fate?

<comment><USER36> Waterfox has been around for a while. What fate are you talking about? Pale Moon is still in active development and use as well. I use it on some older machines for performance reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For a while I was thinking of the idea of Gecko for legacy XUL support and Servo being WebExtensions only.

<comment><USER28> I become more and more convinced that Mozilla could have saved themselves a lot of pain by giving FF57 a completely new name and version number, rather than suggest it is a continuation of the venerable Firefox lineage.

<comment><USER9> Idunno, that'd be an uphill battle in terms of branding, and you'd split the userbase even more than with a simple update

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I use Waterfox every day. Mozilla may want Firefox to be a Chrome clone, but I still use my 'old fashioned' extensions and don't need new (pardon the pun) chrome all over the place.

<comment><USER28> I find it hilarious that while they took the time to give FF57 a new "touch" UI, the zoom gesture is still only enlarge the font size.

<comment><USER40> go to about:config and set browser.zoom.full to true this will cause the whole page to get zoomed.</comment></comment></comment>


App Store Exposed: Notes Of Interest From Apple's Statement To The FCC - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/21/app-store-exposed-notes-of-interest-from-apples-statement-to-the-fcc/

<comment><USER2> Blogspam.</comment>


Ask HN: What should I look for when hiring a junior developer? - <AUTHOR>

I've got experience hiring developers, and I'm used to asking a mixture of technical questions and interview questions to gauge a person's skill and their passion.<p>However, my company is now hiring for a junior developer position. I'm completely baffled at how to approach the interviews. I feel like I can't ask my usual technical questions because we're specifically hiring under that skill level. What's a good way to get a read on somebody's ability to learn new things in an interview? <comment><USER2> What language(s) are you hiring for? I asked a Python lead this question the other day and here's what he told me:

for a junior, then i'd probably quiz them on some of the fundamental types of python

tuple vs list

what does it mean to be immutable vs mutable

what's a dictionary

how to define a class

probe them for their understanding of reference counting in cPython (assuming that's what you guys use)

if they're coming from a CS background or development with C/C++/Java/etc, ask them for how they think python compares to the other languages

especially dynamic vs static typing</comment>


World's First Fully Programmable and Open-Source Massive-MIMO Platform - <AUTHOR> https://renew-wireless.org/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but what's this? Am Open Hardware RF initiative? Is it just antennas? I'm sorry but the info is all over the place and I'm a bit confused. I'm not native english speaker but I work on the ISP space. It would be easier to compare it to standard ISP stack.

<comment><USER3> Their project is more focused on (but not limited to) the physical layer, particularly for cellular wireless networks.

Usually in cellular (e.g. LTE, 5G) both the mobile phone and the cell towers implement all of their PHY using a mixture of custom SoCs, FPGAs and DSPs, and all the code behind of this is as closed as it gets (even the drivers).

What they are doing is basically implementing as much as possible of their cellular network with code that is open. Literally getting the signal as close as possible from the antennas, sampling, and processing everything with code that can be studied and changed.

This openess makes it easier for researchers to develop new ideas for wireless networks (just reprogram your CPU, instead of having to beg to a manufacturer to provide SDKs for their super secretive equipment).

<comment><USER4> >This openess makes it easier for researchers to develop new ideas for wireless networks

Could it be used as part of the stack to create city wide non-cellular wireless network for Internet[1], Are there any such current projects anywhere?

[1][https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network- mobile-...](https://needgap.com/problems/51-non-cellular-network-mobile- internet-telecom-internet)

<comment><USER5> Not really. The same economic and spectrum constraints apply. By the time you've extended the Wi-Fi PHY and built out a network to cover most of a city you've effectively reinvented LTE.

<comment><USER4> >The same economic and spectrum constraints apply

Single Indian Telecom (Airtel) paid ~ 2 Billion USD(current price) in 2016 for 173.8 Mhz spectrum across 1800/2100/2300 Mhz bands. Where as small YC startup(Link in my parent comment) has created Bangalore city wide WiFi Internet(2.4 Ghz/ 5 GHz has been made unregulated and free).

So, definitely telecom spectrum cannot be called same as WiFi as one requires Billion dollar oligarchy to enter the space and the latter can be entered with 4 member startup team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean a real possibility for user-defined, community 5G networks? If so, that could usher in a new age of mesh networks to democratize the long- range wireless network space. If the hardware is cheap and a protocol were used that's anonymous and encrypted by default, this could be a game changer.

From an idealistic newbie's perspective, I imagine the possibility of users buying routers with this tech, plugging them into their fiber or copper connection, and creating or expanding an existing 5G meshnet + a home net. Maybe it could drastically drop costs for 5G network operators as they wouldn't need to put up extra receivers anywhere. They could simply offload that burden to the consumer. Most routers are lent out anyway, so not only would they make money, consumers wouldn't need to worry about which operator they chose because they'd all be in the same meshnet anyway.

But eh... I'm sure there's some big thing I'm missing besides human greed.

<comment><USER7> Well, a LimeSDR based E-UTRA (LTE) Band 38 2x2 eNodeB could be had for a couple hundred USD, depending on how cheap you can get the Host computer and clock source.

I'd consider just injecting the clock via the fiber (running a dedicated single-mode fiber from the next PoP (up to ~10 km away) to the eNodeB, potentially exposing Ethernet service from the base station, just like the typical monolithic DOCSIS wifi router), via one of two ways:

(1) run a separate wavelength via CWDM and just AM-modulate a sinusoidal reference oscillator output onto it, or

(2) anchor the clock for the data link from the PoP to the eNodeB to your reference oscillator, and just tap your reference clock (to feed into the local VCXO-based master-PLL) off of the data link receiver's clock recovery circuity. Some mild phase noise is acceptable thanks to the VCXO.

</comment></comment><comment> ur-whale There is a fairly high density of acronyms and domain specific jargon on this page which makes it quite hard to understand what this is about and what is cool about it.

Could someone ELI5?

<comment><USER8> It is a first attempt to make a full solution open source radio that uses multiple antennas.

I believe all current high performance radios in this space are super duper proprietary, with near no data on how they work in open access.

<comment><USER9> It's not so much that the high performance radios are proprietary as it is that building one of these systems is expensive and requires lots of domain specific knowledge. You could somewhat easily build one of these systems for ~$250k using CoT's hardware, in fact Lund University did a few years ago for some of their MASSIVE MIMO research.

If you don't want to use CoT's hardware for some reason then you can roll your own transceivers. You have a choice of Analog Devices chips or Lime Microsystems. Xilinx has a new platform that would also work but it hasn't been widely released yet. Lime's chip is cheap but it's performance is crap and its drivers are even worse. ADI's chips are easy to use and have fantastic performance but you pay for it. You also need to shell out for the massive FPGA's to handle 64*6.4GB/s of streaming data and then you need a system capable of processing it which will still probably be an FPGA or a DSP.

<comment><USER8> Even this way, try to find a schematic in open access with software, and etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really cool, valuable, important project. It's a little bit of a bummer that they went down the USRP Route ([https://powderwireless.net/equipment](https://powderwireless.net/equipment)), as USRPs are really not accessible to many people (price point). Something like a Lime Microsystems radio, or the BladeRF 2.0 Micro ([https://www.nuand.com/bladerf-2-0-micro/](https://www.nuand.com/bladerf-2-0-micro/)), would have been really nice.

<comment><USER11> The Skylark Wireless radios are based on the Lime Microsystems chip. The lead developer at Skylark is the guy who originally wrote Gnu Radio Companion and went on to write SoapySDR and Pothosflow, as well as the first (useful) driver for the LMS chips. Super smart guy at the core of a super smart team. They're big on open source and I know firsthand that the University of Utah is using their radios. I believe that page is just old, there's a picture on that page that shows a box that I recognize as very early Skylark equipment.

(disclaimer: I used to work at Skylark.)

<comment><USER10> I guess what frustrates me is stuff like googling "ad9361 sync" gets you: [https://wiki.analog.com/resources/eval/user-guides/ad- fmcomm...](https://wiki.analog.com/resources/eval/user-guides/ad- fmcomms5-ebz/multi-chip-sync)

Whereas googling this about the LMS7002 seems to show you can buy a very expensive board to do this: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/fairwaves/xync#synchronization-p...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/fairwaves/xync#synchronization- phase-coherency)

Also, on the limesdr too: [https://discourse.myriadrf.org/t/synchronize-two- limesdr/171...](https://discourse.myriadrf.org/t/synchronize-two-limesdr/1714)

it looks like you can chain reference clocks to get a fixed offset? [https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR- USB_hardware_description](https://wiki.myriadrf.org/LimeSDR- USB_hardware_description) and then get some external device to do reset on the digital side for sync.

\----

Independently, I'd love to know more about Skylark's SDR product and play with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's MIMO? I thought it was MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online).

<comment><USER13> Multiple Input, Multiple Output.

<comment><USER14> Not very descriptive. Many things are that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those confused what it is the YouTube video in the page breaks down what it is, what they hope to do with it, and how they are testing with it at a more general level than the text. It also breaks down some of the terms like massive MIMO.

</comment><comment><USER16> Trying to read this on iOS, but the site is completely obscured by an expanded menu that I can't seem to close in any way. Could anyone give a TL;DR of what this is?

<comment><USER17> Reconfigurable Eco-system for Next-generation End-to-end Wireless Argos was first developed at Rice in 2011 as a 64-antenna base station, becoming the first Massive MIMO base station ever built. Since then, Argos has evolved with two newer versions. The most recent version of Argos (ArgosV3) has been already deployed around Rice campus as part of the ArgosNet project. Argosv3, now known as Faros, is developed by Skylark Wireless and now commercially available.

The RENEW platform aim is to serve three goals: 1) Integrate and deploy on the POWDER platform, at the University of Utah campus and areas around the campus. 2) Empower custom testbeds, using Iris and Faros, to enable novel applications. 3) Work closely with other open-source efforts, like OpenAirInterface, to empower next-generation of wireless equipment.

The RENEW team will be part of the 1st international workshop on open software defined wireless networks (colocated with MobiSys 2020)>>See more

Our team is launching the RENEW Visitors Program inviting the community to come to Rice to work with us on the massive MIMO platform>>See more

Ashu Sabharwal will give a talk at the IEEE 5G World Forum's Workshop on 5G Applications and Services in Dresden Germany>>See more

[https://renew-wireless.org/](https://renew-wireless.org/)

<comment><USER18> Let's pretend like this isn't an attempt to REstore a network for communicating over the head of the uninitiated.

<comment><USER18> Powder absolutely couldn't be referencing an illicit form of said SUBstance. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The page is really bad. I am working in telecommunications and needed some time to find what it exactly is...

</comment><comment><USER20> Do they make a chip without the diplexer built in, so you can use different antennas for RX and TX?

</comment><comment><USER21> It's free grid internet or what?</comment>


Star Citizen Alpha 3.10 - <AUTHOR> https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link//17711-Star-Citizen-Alpha-3100 <comment><USER2> I've been following SC since the beginning, first in the hope that it truly would give us the next big leap in space games (a genre i'm obsessed with), but quickly turning into it being me following it just for the drama and entertainment.

Star Citizen is without a doubt a total scam, with development pushing out the absolute mimimum[0] to keep more sucke^H^H^H^H^Hpeople investing more money. They're pulling in more money every year, with this year on track to be the biggest year yet[1].

I'm far from the only person who thinks it's a scam[2] and there's entire subreddits[3] devoted to people complaining and trying to get refunds.

The SC rabbit-hole is deep and (if you're into the industry drama) very entertaining, and while I don't feel sorry for the rabid fanboys who go into every SC thread defending their tens of thousands of dollars spent on a tech demo, I do absolutely feel sorry for the MILLIONS[4] of people who got suckered by these predators and led to believe they'll ever get what they paid for.

[0] [https://starcitizentracker.github.io/](https://starcitizentracker.github.io/)

[1] [https://www.gamerspack.com/2020/05/13/star-citizen- funding-r...](https://www.gamerspack.com/2020/05/13/star-citizen-funding- records-2020/)

[2] [http://dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-citizen-year- six/](http://dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-citizen-year-six/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Citizen#Funding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Citizen#Funding)

<comment><USER3> I have strong doubts that it's actually a real scam. My impression is that the scope is just totally blown out and the devs are trying their best. I think it's a classic example of committing to something you can't reasonably ship.

I'll totally buy into some scammy behavior like ship purchases. But that's basically the only source of cash until it actually ships (lol), and we all know that big engineering teams are very expensive.

I backed SC at the smallest level way back, and I still enjoy it from time to time. It's definitely very cool and unique, the progress is just slow. They're trying to do way too much, IMO, and they don't really know how to communicate timelines well with the community. Hell, I don't know how to create estimates well.

I think if the game had been in the hands of a talented game studio, things would have gone much differently. Having to build out the studio and company along with the game is likely a big task. Processes that already exist in a studio have to be created from scratch. Plus, a studio would have a much easier time cutting the scope to meet deadlines. :P

But I could totally be convinced that it's a real scam in the future. The amount of work that has been put into it so far seems quite large by my estimation, and I doubt they are just doing that work to run away with folks' cash. 300 engineers would cost enough that I could see them being tight on cash anyways, even with the large crowdfunding efforts.

<comment><USER4> I think the scam-ie-ness of it is more along the lines of predatory marketing.

They sell ship concepts for a lot of money. And are only now getting into the real meat-and-potatoes of the critical development. Things like server meshing, and appropriate object culling server/client side.

There are NO gameplay loops that don't involve a small variation of the following: Kill bounties / mine minerals / trade goods to earn money. Use money to buy ships. And even that is kinda bogus because your purchases may/may not persist between patches!

Any PVP is completely optional and not really a real gameplay loop.

Any group events are completely optional and not really a real gameplay loop. There are a few things you can do to speed up say mining loops by having a scout + cash maker(s).

There is ZERO logistics. There is ZERO economy (8 years in and they finally created money transfers).

Overall this is a project that has every incentive to keep developing forever and not deliver. Because of this they over-promised so so so much that it is almost impossible to meet these expectations.

Also development has been... insanely slow. Took them 7 years before they gave you a mobile respawn point on some ships. Took them 8 years to get aiming even remotely okay. Took them 8 years and NPCs still can't glitch out and stop moving/acting. 8 years later and only the latest top notch PC can even attempt to get 30fps in this game, and even then, not in most areas.

This has to be Fyre festival. The same thing happened there. "Just fund it, we'll figure it out." until... they couldn't figure it out. So they asked for more funding.

<comment><USER5> They have already accepted investment. I think they will run out of money and get picked up by a publisher. The game and audience is just waiting there, publishers would be silly not to bump it over the line. I doubt it would never get released though.

<comment><USER6> According to the feature tracker mentioned elsewhere, the game is 27% complete, far from "bump it over the line".

I guess you could postpone 60% of the outstanding features, get the game released and then work on add-ons with those features.

<comment><USER7> From what I can tell that's 27% of the _game systems_. Then they have the actual rest of the game to build with all the actual content. Planets, scenarios, dialogue, story (if there is one) etc.

Oh, and also another game (Squadron 42).

<comment><USER5> Which is frankly MIA most of the time, Squadron 42.

The game content actually seems pretty quick to produce, given that it's been highly automated. They went from next to nothing to 20+ planets/moons with a mix of procedural and hand placed locations to visit in a short time frame. The technology means the artists basically paint the planets content in real time with brushes. Then the missions/social content is also a mix of hand written and procedurally generated content, eventually backed by an economic model that fuels the missions and NPC behavior. This all makes sense because it's an infinite open world, not a story game, but so far it plays pretty well.

The "hero" landing zones seem to take the longest. My guess is they will launch with only a handful of the star systems and build from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There was a conversation a couple of years ago where many people who had invested in Star Citizen, due to so many delays are now were in different stages of their lives where they would be unwilling to now play the game.

I have never seen so much hype in a game that has yet to come to fruition for so long.

<comment><USER9> Speaking of pre-release hype for over-promised scope,

Internet Historian's "The Engoodening of No Man's Sky" is surprisingly a well told, heart-warming (albeit quite long) video telling the story of No Man's Sky, how it got so hyped, and the good-faith steps the developers took to do their best to make good on their promises. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5BJVO3PDeQ)

<comment><USER2> For those that dismissed NMS due to the launch fiasco and never looked at it again, it's now an incredible game. If they'd launched it then in the state it's in now, it would probably have been a colossal hit and gone down as one of the best space survival/exploration games ever made. For me personally it's easily top 5, and space survival is the primary genre I play almost every day.

Also, playing it on PSVR is incredible. No cut-down "VR Experience", it's the full game in VR. Doing VR dog fights in an asteroid belt against waves of fighters, then transitioning through the atmosphere as the fight follows you down to ground level is an awesome experience.

<comment><USER10> > it's now an incredible game.

No, the core gameplay is the same, it's incredibly shallow, even by survival standards. I understand some people love busy work, but let's not pretend they did something incredible. They barely fulfilled their original promises (multi-player). Murray still needs to apologize publicly for his lies on TV though.

<comment><USER11> Completely agree. I have played NMS on launch day. Played everything it had to offer. Even went through the grind and flew to the middle of the galaxy.

Biggest disappointment in gaming I ever had.

Recently played it again. Has it more content? Sure. Has it multiplayer? Well.. I guess you can see each other, but it's a terrible experience in so many ways. Has it most of the features promised to be in the game even before it launched? Not.. even.. close. It might be an "okay" or for some people even "good" game, but compared to what has been promised, it would still deserve the steam rating of "mostly negative"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really loved Eve Online but just felt like I came way too late too it. I was hoping Star Citizen would be my Eve do over.

Twice a year I install SC. The mechanics are confusing, some places too big to get around, and constant lost connections, an issue I've never had. I really want this to be the MMO I get in on the ground floor of, but I'm losing interest.

Also, when they sell ships for real money, insurance should be permanent. I refuse to buy any new ships beyond the starters until they figure this out.

<comment><USER11> They made the mistake of advertising LTI (life time insurance) as an exclusive feature for early backers. They had some events with LTI afterwards, but it is always combined with an outcry of some early backers that they should be the only ones with LTI, because that is their reward for backing early.

Personally I think LTI should not have been offered at all, since it could potentially break the game if offered on expensive Ships that people will then use as suicide bombers without consequence, but that is a different issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Did Elon Musk make an electric vehicle and a reusable space rocket in the same time frame? Did we get to space faster than building a video game about space?

<comment><USER14> Yes,

SpaceX founded in 2002 and first reached orbit in 2008, so 6 years.

Tesla founded in 2003 and first deliveries was 2012, so 9 years.

Development of Star Citizen began in 2010 and it's still not even in beta.

<comment><USER15> Warframe is not much older and that game is actually suffering from feature bloat where it takes new players around 300 hours to even scrape the surface of the game.

<comment><USER16> Warframe is by far not doing anything as complex as SC. And most of the bloat is content, rather than actual systems IME.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've not tracked this project since its huge Kickstarter _7 years ago_ , it's just now reaching an Alpha state? Did the dev bite off more than they can chew?

<comment><USER18> The designer (Chris Roberts) landed way too much money, and used it to justify a seemingly unbounded project scope.

As one might imagine, an unbounded project takes infinite time to deliver.

And they seem to be keeping to that schedule.

tl;dr - Don't give artists unlimited time and budget. Bad things happen without constraints.

<comment><USER19> > The designer (Chris Roberts) landed way too much money

[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding- goals](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals)

Currently at ~300 MILLION dollars? imagine if this game broke the 1 Billion $ barrier in funding.... that would be insane!

At this point its almost a "meme" to donate to this project. Like rich crazies on wsb's throwing money around, this projects donation button, probably hits the dopamine receptors too

<comment><USER20> >Currently at ~300 MILLION dollars?

But that's not so much for such a game, for comparison:

"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" \- $200 million

"Grand Theft Auto V" \- $137.5 million to $265 million

"Destiny" \- $500 million

[https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-expensive-video- gam...](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-expensive-video-games-ever- made-2014-7?r=US&IR=T#destiny-500-million-10)

<comment><USER21> Most of those include marketing too. According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) Star Citizen has the highest development cost.

<comment><USER5> It is also two games, not one. Squadron 42 is being developed separately and will release separately to Star Citizen.

They also had a failed attempt at Squadron42 developed by a partner agency that was thrown away.

<comment><USER21> I would imagine that any multi-hundred-million project has had unproductive branches, pivots and starts. Star Citizens has been been more public, so it's harder to compare, but I don't think many of the others on the list had a straight path to what was released.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an early backer of the game ($35) and give it a try once per year or so. This update (3.10) has some long overdue changes to the flight model which sound nice.

That said their roadmap is a joke - it doesn't even have the non-alpha phase on it.

It's painfully obvious now that as long as the developers remain in this early development phase, they are able to raise large amounts of money through the sale of virtual spaceships. As soon as there is a real game to play, this well will likely dry up. Will there be other source of capital? Probably, but they may not be as rich.

<comment><USER22> I'm not a backer, just a curious gamer.

My perspective is that they're losing too much momentum, and looks like the game (if ever will have a full release), will be for a niche of the niche that started following the project.

I mean, how will they even market this among triple A titles budgets? They can't even take the ride for the "new space age" hype from media entertainment/tech achievements.

Part of the strength of this type of "business model" is precisely the backing of a community that want things to happen... but like you said, they're stretching it beyond what's reasonable.

I can only assume that with this development budget - which is in the AAA level - they must need AAA sales level, right? Or are they marking up this game for 200 USD annual subscriptions (assuming is 10x20 USD (avg season pass for AAA gamees?? no idea)?

<comment><USER5> They don't need to make their money back because they never invested any, people have already bought the game. The employees are paid, CR has taken his salary. Mission accomplished. It's more nuanced than that, but it is definitely not a traditional invest > produce > reward cycle. It was more like reward > produce > reward/debt, remains to be seen.

The long term goal though is to sell in game currency, and it's that simple I think. I imagine we will see ship sales continue after launch, but you will instead have people paying for in game currency and buying the ships in game. While you could grind for them in game, many people will just buy the currency to save time.

<comment><USER6> If the game were to be released (and received well), it would generate a lot of new sales. There are a lot of people who don't preorder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Star Citizen has been very useful to me.

I mention their recurring whale investors whenever I need to explain what Stockholm Syndrome means.

<comment><USER6> Is there a high score list of whales for this game? Has anyone managed to invest $100,000 yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If we are too old, we can watch our kids play this game... eventually.

<comment><USER13> The old joke now days is you'll have to be a 'Senior Star Citizen' to play the game.

<comment><USER15> Does backing the game for 10 years grand you permanent residency as a Sentior Star Citizen?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me of this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD)

<comment><USER26> You would be highly amused to know that the game's creator, Derek Smart, has written extensively against Star Citizen:

[http://dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-citizen-year- six/](http://dereksmart.com/2018/11/star-citizen-year-six/)

A con man knows better than anyone how to spot a fellow con man, as they say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's actually an entire single player game on or parallel to the Star Citizen roadmap as well. "Squadron 42 Cinematic Teaser": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppjX4to9s4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VppjX4to9s4)

<comment><USER11> I backed this game just after it's kickstarter campaign 7 (?) years ago. Mainly for the MMO aspect.

The vision since has changed so much, I probably won't enjoy the MMO part. It looks more and more like a job in a space simulator, rather than a game that might not be 100% realistic, but at least fun.

Nowadays I'm just looking forward to Squadron 42, hoping they will at least manage to release episode 1 before running out of money

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't expect to see this here.

My biggest excitement for this game is how it's being built with systemic gameplay at its core. For me, that has always been my draw to games. Their ability to model interesting systems and let you play and tinker with them. It adds almost immeasurable depth to a game.

I implore anyone with a negative or shallow opinion on the project to dive a bit deeper and check out their approach. It's such an impressive technical achievement already, and it is already a fun game to play with more content than some games have on release.

It gets plenty of negative press, and I think it's entirely down to poor communication. I can't see how anyone could be disappointed by what is being delivered, except for the timeframes.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's already the most expensive game to be ever developed at 250m dollars[0] with only 27% (self claimed) completion.

It looks like a fraud scheme[&] where the previous customers money is being used to gain new customers without actually providing the finished product.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_g...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)

[1] [https://starcitizentracker.github.io/](https://starcitizentracker.github.io/)

[&] is there a specific name for this type of scam, it doesn't follow the typical Ponzi, pyramid scheme blueprint.

<comment><USER29> > is there a specific name for this type of scam, it doesn't follow the > typical Ponzi, pyramid scheme blueprint.

[https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oz8xtBx06mcZWoNJm/giphy.gif](https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oz8xtBx06mcZWoNJm/giphy.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So this is the only game I've ever backed (and I refuse to even pre-order games) so I guess it shows how much I wanted to believe. I only paid ~£30 so I'm not too bothered, but it is sad.

Honestly, if you try the game, for the first hour or so it's beautiful. Going down to a planet and flying around is pretty magical but it quickly wears out and you won't play again until the next big release.

It does have __real __potential, but they need to cut 99% and focus on the basics.

</comment><comment><USER31> Wow an alpha to a game that is unplayable. awesome, I want my money back...

</comment><comment><USER32> Hmmmmm.... I was one of the original backers at the minimal amount. I think 35$.

I absolutely loved the Wing Commander series and it still ranks as one of my all time favorites so I eager to see what Chris Roberts would produce.

I've played the game co-op with a friend on and off over the years and have definitely gotten more then 35$ enjoyment from the game. As long as they keep moving forward, I have little to complain about.

</comment><comment><USER33> Repeated changes to the scope

Repeated changes to the ToS

Repeated changes to the schedule

Not a single commitment met

6 years late and no sign of shipping a feature complete beta any time soon (certainly not by 2022)

Selling virtual ships for thousands that aren't even playable and probably never will be

Never even shipping the original promised scope and being absolutely nowhere near the impossibly large current scope.

Respectfully - fuck DNF, fuck NMS, fuck Prey, fuck 3000AD.

Star Citizen is the absolute king of gaming vaporware bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER34> I bought it eons ago, never played it.

The newsletter gets annoying sometimes ha, hope they finish it someday

</comment><comment><USER35> This is the first I've heard of this project. Got my hopes up, but apparently development has been slow and controversial?

Sigh, guess we'll have to wait a little longer for The Oasis.

<comment><USER36> It was a kick starter project from back in 2012! It has raised over $300M through crowdfunding overall plus additional investments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The "Chandler" of the gaming world.</comment>


Fighting Robots with Robots; an Answer to the Robot Uprising? - <AUTHOR> https://artplusmarketing.com/fighting-robots-with-robots-an-answer-to-the-robot-uprising-b051ac261263 <comment><USER2> I think the theory is that an artificial intelligence will become so advanced at hacking that any kind of robot you built would come under ai command and control. especially as interconnected things are now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's a good point. Of course, I was picturing an autonomous robot as not being internet connected and generally having AI that comes down to 'destroy anything that moves' without any way to change it (maybe the entire hard drive in the thing is read only).

It'd be significantly harder to hack if there was no way to change how it works without opening the thing up with a screwdriver.

Then again, I'm not sure how attractive something so primitive would be in a society where internet connected systems with learning possibilities would be touted as the next big thing. I mean, I'd also say most internet of things devices could also be made much harder to hack if they didn't ever 'phone home' and were maintained entirely locally, but the market doesn't seem to be doing that.</comment></comment>


What does Hacker News think of ipsum: a daily feed of bad IPs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stamparm/ipsum <comment><AUTHOR> You can use this to block malicious ips from connecting to your server using ufw.</comment>


GNU Toolchain Update – Fall 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2017/11/03/fall-2017-gnu-toolchain-update/ <comment><USER2> Red Hat is doing a great job keeping RHEL/CentOS 7 up to date with latest technologies while not introducing regressions. Very welcome, they used to be more conservative.

The Software Collections are particularly useful - you can use them to install, for example, Python 3.6 or GCC 7 without introducing third party repositories (and thus additional attack surface).

[https://www.softwarecollections.org](https://www.softwarecollections.org)

7.4 even had a OpenSSL rebase for HTTP/2 and it was painless. Hats off (heh) to their QA department!

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't even know about __builtin_clz(0) being undefined and I use it regularly (for code challenge BS mostly). That's really painful.

It looks like it's something to do with log(0) being undefined and hardware vendors just couldn't agree on wether to set a flag or just count the number of leading zeros.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coming from redhat and they aren't advocating calling GNU/linux by a new name systemd/linux. What a nice surprise.

Or maybe they still working on it.</comment>


A Conversation with Alan Kay (2004) - <AUTHOR> https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 <comment><USER2> Submitters: Please don't editorialize titles, such as by cherry-picking one detail from the article and making that the title instead. This is in the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

If you want to say what you think is important about an article, please do so in a comment. Then your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22level%20playing%20field%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(Submitted title was _Alan Kay: ""Maxwell's Equations of Software ""_ )

</comment><comment><USER3> > that was the big revelation to me when I was in graduate school — when I > finally understood that the half page of code on the bottom of page 13 of > the Lisp 1.5 manual was Lisp in itself.

> These were Maxwell's Equations of Software! This is the whole world of > programming in a few lines that I can put my hand over.

Here's the whole (short) section, which culminates in the definition of eval.

"An Universal Lisp Function" [http://web.cse.ohio- state.edu/~rountev.1/6341/pdf/Manual.pdf...](http://web.cse.ohio- state.edu/~rountev.1/6341/pdf/Manual.pdf#page=18)

<comment><USER4> If you haven't watched it - check out William Byrd on "The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyfBQmvr2Hc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyfBQmvr2Hc)

It's the above and deriving it. It is fascinating to think of it as the essence of a language in 13 lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Submitted many times but never many comments. Leaving out the ones with zero, we have:

2019 (1): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051447)

2016 (6): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12898862](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12898862)

2015 (4): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9588504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9588504)

2012 (11): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3945146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3945146)

2011 (1): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2114193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2114193)

2010 (4): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1407218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1407218)

2009 (10): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515188)

2007 (1): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=72079)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes I think the most interesting thing about (and perhaps the only _deep_ problem concerning) software is complexity. Never before in the history of the constructed world, of human artifact realisation, has it been possible to create complexity on such scale.

For a given design problem there are usually a handful of sensible solutions, so the solution complexity is bounded below accordingly. With buildings, machines etc, the laws of physics and economics bounds potential solutions above. This is not the case with software! Given the ever increasing amounts of processing and memory available, solution complexity is bounded above only by human ingenuity (particularly the kind of ingenuity that emerges from large groups) - and occasionally the necessity for someone to actually understand what is going on.

</comment><comment><USER6> What happened to those quotes in the title?

Anyway, reminder, while you're visiting ACM, that the entire Digital Library, including books, is free to download until June 30, 2020: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22794984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22794984) .

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting conversation, the only thing that I wasn't expecting is the Egyptian pyramid analogy. Maybe I misunderstood something, but I think that Egyptian pyramid has a great structural integrity ? "Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves."

<comment><USER8> i think his point isnt so much about structural integrity as it is with volume and required effort to get that structrual integrity

a pyriamid is a huge srtucture with tiny tiny passages that are of use to almost no one, which took massive amounts of work and time to accomplish

whereas a cathedral constructed mostly of arches made of less than 100th or a 1000th of the material could scale to the size of a pyramid yet internally be mostly air

taken further, a geodisic dome could scale even further and easily encolse both, with even less materials

so what he is saying is, architecture matters in relation to effort, scalability and also structural integrity

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "A Conversation with Alan Kay (2004)"

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh, boy! This interview has oodles more thought provoking stuff beyond the "Maxwell's equations" quote. Sometimes I feel like we worship more than actually listening to what is being said (and thinking about it and understanding it).

> _Perhaps it was commercialization in the 1980s that killed off the next > expected new thing. Our plan and our hope was that the next generation of > kids would come along and do something better than Smalltalk around 1984 or > so. We all thought that the next level of programming language would be much > more strategic and even policy-oriented and would have much more knowledge > about what it was trying to do. But a variety of different things conspired > together, and that next generation actually didn't show up. One could > actually argue—as I sometimes do—that the success of commercial personal > computing and operating systems has actually led to a considerable > retrogression in many, many respects. You could think of it as putting a > low-pass filter on some of the good ideas from the '60s and '70s, as > computing spread out much, much faster than educating unsophisticated people > can happen. In the last 25 years or so, we actually got something like a pop > culture, similar to what happened when television came on the scene and some > of its inventors thought it would be a way of getting Shakespeare to the > masses. But they forgot that you have to be more sophisticated and have more > perspective to understand Shakespeare. What television was able to do was to > capture people as they were. So I think the lack of a real computer science > today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to > this pop culture._

> _The user interface, which is still the predominant approach today, is a > user interface as the access to function. If the area is interesting, you > eventually wind up with something that looks like the control panel of a > nuclear reactor. So this is the agglutination of features. [...] Corporate > buyers often buy in terms of feature sets. But at PARC our idea was, since > you never step in the same river twice, the number-one thing you want to > make the user interface be is a learning environment—something that's > explorable in various ways, something that is going to change over the > lifetime of the user using this environment. New things are going to come > on, and what does it mean for those new things to happen? This means > improvements not only in the applications but also in the user interface > itself._

> _SF — What do you wish you had done differently in the Smalltalk era? AK — I > had the world's greatest group, and I should have made the world's two > greatest groups. I didn't realize there are benefits to having real > implementers and real users, and there are benefits to starting from scratch > every few months. I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor > finisher, but it took me a long time to realize that I was interfering with > them by trying to improve things._

</comment><comment><USER11> Boomers still talking about Smalltalk yet we have an explosion in new programming languages and no one has brought it back to life. You have your pick of mature VM's. The most popular VM (by installs) even has a popular and extensible transpilation library. The opportunity is there Boomers, build Woodstock again.

So if Smalltalk was so great where is babel-plugin-smalltalk or smalltalk-jvm? Frankly I'm not even going to google and see if they exist. The point is I don't know of them and no one I know is using them.

<comment><USER12> Banks and other major companies use Smalltalk as a "secret weapon". I put it on my résumé as a skill (mainly because I was arsing about with Squeak in the early 2000s), and recruiters kept calling me about it. Even though it's not publicly acknowledged that these companies are using it.

<comment><USER13> Can you tell me more about this? Are you saying that banks and other major companies have "secret" ish projects in small talk that give them a competitive advantage somehow? What are they used for? high speed trading maybe?

I've worked with a lot of banks and only ever see Java and Python (mostly Java tho). For high speed trading systems I've usually heard of C/C++</comment></comment></comment>


Syria's Palmyra Temple of Bel 'severely Damaged' by ISIS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34103994

<comment><AUTHOR> this reminds me of the destruction of the Parthenon in the late 17th century...The stupid Ottoman Turks used the temple to store gunpowder. The temple still had been relatively well preserved for 2 millenniums, until one night in the year of 1687, the gunpowder blew up and severely damaged the building. Much part of it had fallen into rubble...The next year after this great explosion, the Turks took the rubble and built a small mosque upon the ruins...Through the rest of the time, the survived remains continued to crumble and disintegrate, and then becomes what we could see it today, which is still a magnificent piece of monument...

But I could imagine it would be really really awe-inspiring, if we could see how the Parthenon looked before the 17th century...</comment>