Reinventing Firefox for Android - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2019/06/27/reinventing-firefox-for-android-a-preview/ <comment><USER2> To any Mozilla/Firefox developer reading this. I try to convert people to Firefox. The number one reason people switch, by far, is because mobile has add on support. So I say to push this front and center in marketing (I know this is a preview). People are reluctant to switch their desktop browser because chrome pretty much has the same features. But it they switch their mobile browsers they also switch their desktops to take advantage of the full feature suite.

And to anyone trying to convert your friends "mobile supports ublock" is usually all I have to say.

Edit:unblock == uBlock Origin (sorry, on my phone)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're certainly aware of how significant ad blocking extensions are. This release required a great quantity of features with only a six month timeline until now.

We already support a very limited set of the WebExtensions API to offer features like Reader Mode. Rest assured that more features will land in the coming months.

If you're a developer and you want to help us, our Github site is at this link. We mark easier issues with a Good First Issue label. We also need help with translations, documentation, and even getting issues filed.

[https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix](https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix)

<comment><USER3> The hard work you guys put in is always appreciated, FF in all its forms has become truly the best browser there is. That being said, how on earth was Reader Mode prioritized above adblocking?

As it stands, adblocking is "post MVP"[1][2]. QR code scanning, however, is somehow part of the MVP. This doesn't make sense to me: there are many apps that launch the default system browser when scanning a URL QR code. You can _easily_ get by without that functionality in the browser.

The comments in this post should be sending you really loud signal: technical users (the type of people who install preview software) don't consider a browser without adblocking MVP. You are drastically underestimating the significance of adblocking extensions.

[1]: [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/96](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/96) [2]: [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/2622](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2622) [3]: [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/113](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/113)

<comment><USER4> When Chrome first came out I stopped using it cause it didnt have adblock. Then when it did it was still crippled and I realized Google is in the Ad business so I never used Chrome since. This is very correct adblocking is a necessity, if they even include a Mozilla Adblocking DNS server for the browser thats fine to me. As long as I dont see ads.

I wont give up on Firefox anytime soon. I would love to see some serious competitors though.

<comment><USER5> I don't want my browser ignoring my DNS settings!

<comment><USER4> I would assume it would be opt-in if they went with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just switched to the current Android Firefox a few weeks ago and I must say I find it very hard to go back to Chrome. uBlock and Dark Reader make the phone browsing experience a remarkable amount more pleasant.

Chrome's general UI interaction is definitely more polished and snappier all around, but browsing mobile with good ad blocking, and not getting blasted in the face by stark white pages more than covers for Firefox's warts.

<comment><USER7> It should probably be noted that this Firefox Preview they are announcing doesn't yet have Add-On support.

But I agree, uBlock Origin makes the mobile web far less painful. Also, I'll point out that you want to be using uBlock Origin, not uBlock. As I recall, Raymond Hill (the creator of uBlock) decided to hand over uBlock Firefox to one of the contributors to offload some of the maintenance burden but then the new owner immediately started trying to monetize it which prompted him to create uBlock Origin.

<comment><USER8> Last time I checked, Raymond Hill's website didn't even have a donation button. This is an incredibly generous stance for him to take but if he doesn't want money himself maybe he could collect funds for a charity. I really feel I owe someone for this software.

<comment><USER9> Raymond outlines his reasons for refusing donations on the ublock wiki, if anyone is curious: [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you- accept-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept- donations%3F)

One thing he (rightfully) points out is that the real power of ad-blocking solutions comes from the community-maintained blocking lists. In _theory_ one could manually block every url they run across, but in practice we can use these tools (or a tool like pi-hole) almost effortlessly.

<comment><USER10> Can't he just accept donations while also maintaining the same 'no expectation' attitude ?

Isn't it what donation is ?

<comment><USER11> on the other hand, political "donations"

<comment><USER10> Or just simply called donation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm aware that I'm reaching a Cartago-delenda-est situation here, but since I see some mozilla devs here I must ask: Is there any news about the deal breaker bugs that are still keeping thousands of people from moving to firefox on OSX?

I'm referring to the bugs that cause extreme CPU usage and as a consequence extreme heating and battery usage, mainly on macbooks with retina screens set to "more space" resolution.

I work in a whole building full of developers where every single mac user has stopped using firefox due to this issue, yet there seems to be a deep disconnection between how prevalent the issue is and the priority it seems to be assigned.

I hope I'm not coming off as an ass here, I'm just sad that I've had to move away from firefox and to see all my coworkers also moving to chrome.

<comment><USER13> That's odd. I'm on a 2015 MBP with Mojave, and I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox because Chrome started causing intermitted freezes (even the mouse pointer wouldn't move). I've been on Firefox (and Safari) for over a week now. No issues.

<comment><USER12> Do you have your MBP screen's resolution set to "more space" on system preferences -> displays? Are you using an external monitor for FF?

(Just curious about how your setup differs from mine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I dont envy Mozilla. The demographic that they're targeting are really hard to please.

<comment><USER15> You're probably right but, as a member of that demographic:

\- I use Firefox, and have done continuously for a long time. I don't intend to switch to anything else, despite being very unhappy with the experience in many ways, as I consider it to be the "least worst"

\- I genuinely believe there are very easily achievable low-hanging fruit that Mozilla could implement that would at least please a large swathe of their target demographic. Namely, not talking about privacy and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do. I understand that there's a revenue stream there, and a balance to be met between economic survival and ideal conditions, but this particilar issue is a deal tipped too far towards defying the point of the exercise.

Perhaps I'm in a bubble and this is just my "single issue", but shouting about privacy and sending all that data about their users to Google seems a fairly large deal to me.

<comment><USER16> > ...and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do...

Huh, I must have missed that - if true, this is a _huge_ breach of trust for me. Do you have a link?

<comment><USER17> Until it's provided I would assume that it's a gross misrepresentation/exaggeration.

<comment><USER15> Other than putting Google Analytics on all Mozilla properties as sibling commenters have already mentioned (link to info on that here [0]), there is also the following:

\- as I mentioned in another comment, Firefox Preview comes with Google as a default search engine (not a huge issue) and with "search suggestions" enabled by default (which sends everything you ever type to Google).

\- Even if you disable search suggestions (or change provider), Firefox has a built-in feature called "Google Safe Browsing" which collates every URL you visit and sends bulk reports to Google. This feature is only disable-able via the "here be dragons" about:config area.

\- then there's Google Location Services, which sends your WiFi router SSID, SSIDs of routers in range, and hardware details, to Google. This is less clear cut as Mozilla's use of this service has been on-off over time, and varies per device. See[1]

[0] [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/privacy/websites/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/)

[1] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1512161](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1512161)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the clarification - this is all acceptable in my eyes then. Of course I never use Google Search (prefer Qwant, StartPage and DDG) and location services are _never_ running in my browser. Safe Browsing - I prefer not to have it enabled, but it's not such a risk if it is.

This is quite a different thing from using Chrome(-ish browsers) with the "phone home".

<comment><USER15> Exactly.

This is what it comes down to: I still use Firefox confidently despite being aware of these issues, as I'm aware they're still very minor compared to running Chrome, or even any other Google-engine-based project.

It's still however worthwhile probing these issues. They're still far from ideal, even if they're preferable as a "least worst" option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have been using Firefox on Android since 2013. It's been constantly improving. I am so glad that it exists so that I am not forced to use a browser (Chrome) that doesn't respect me or my privacy and has every incentive to fuck me over.

<comment><USER19> I used it in 2013 and found it constantly degrading with each update. They removed a major feature to reflow text to fit your screen nicely, worsened the UI, and other things I don't remember anymore. After using an old version for a while, I tried another browser, and _holy crap_ that was 10 times faster as well as being customizable the way I was used to from Firefox desktop. Not open source, not as featureful (no add-ons), but that was so much better. Since then I switched to Lightning: even fewer features, but open source, very lightweight, and great UX.

Whenever I raised issues with Mozilla about things that degraded, it was always either talking to a brick wall or a wontfix. They made the decision based on one person complaining about it being the old way, implemented the change, and no matter that other people liked the old way, it wouldn't be changed back or made configurable.

I then tried to compile Firefox for Android myself and cherry pick only security updates, but that was enough of a pain in the ass that I gave up on it.

<comment><USER20> Interesting point about reflowing text: Why don't browsers reflow text on mobile when zooming the same way they do on the desktop? This is a mayor annoyance for me since, well, forever. As a visually impaired user, forcing me to swipe text left to right the whole time after I zoomed to a comfortable font size makes reading on smaller screens really bad.

And before you mention it, changing default font size in browser/OS doesn't really help, mostly makes things worse (Bad categories like "medium", "huge" instead of font size, page layouts breaking etc.)

<comment><USER21> Im using this add on on Firefox for Android: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/text-reflow-w...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/text-reflow-we/). Maybe it can help you. Be aware it's not perfect: >This add-on is my attempt to provide the "reflow" option for text in Firefox Android. Warning: It is very limited. It will only reflow one paragraph at a time. You will have to tap/click on every single paragraph that you want to reflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does not support any addons, and is therefore useless until it does.

(uBlock Origin is a prerequisite for me.)

<comment><USER23> Same here. I do not know why the heck Mozilla is tiptoeing from just hiring Raymond and making uBlock an integral part of firefox.

Note that they already included something similar, which is SafeBrowsing(TM), that is maintained by google. Technically, it is exactly the same concept. But uBlock is actively request by 99% of their users, while safeBrowser(TM) fingerprinting is mostly disabled by half.

<comment><USER24> Pure speculation, I wonder if their contract with Google forbids them from having ad blocking as part of the browser. At least if I was a company paying another company millions of dollars I wouldn't let them block my income stream in their product.

<comment><USER25> They already have an adblocker built in (well a tracking blocker but that often amounts to the same thing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You can learn more about Geckoview, the reusable heart of Firefox Preview, at [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview- in-2019/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/)

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla)

</comment><comment><USER27> If there is one thing I miss from current mobile Firefox, it's text reflow. Opera mobile did it perfectly.

I want to be able to zoom in or out and have text reflowed to the screen width. This makes the web magnitudes nicer to use on a small screen. No cut off lines, no 10 lines per screen. Just convenient freedom over the primary tool we interact on the web: Text.

<comment><USER28> I wonder if this does what you expect? [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/fit-text-to-w...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/fit-text-to-width/?src=search)

<comment><USER27> Nope, does not work on HN. But thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just yesterday I thought it is really annoying that mobile browsers put the address bar on top, even worse if it is moving in and out. That way it is impossible come close to a native look and feel. Now FF puts the address bar on bottom. Quite a suprise but I think it is a pretty smart change.

<comment><USER30> I can't understand how UX designers come up with the idea that putting stuff on the top of the screen* is a good thing, and even keep reiterating through that. That's an honest question, anybody knows what's the motivation behind that?

* or, places that are hard to reach for most users

<comment><USER31> Legacy design and use patterns. The top of the screen used to make more sense than today.

Mobile-first design really hasn't taken hold for many UX web designers (and/or the organizations haven't adapted). Relatively speaking, large phones where it's difficult to reach the top weren't popular until recently. Even mobile apps are just starting to put navigation towards the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't bother sending feedback to the email address mentioned in the blog: it bounces.

      We're writing to let you know
      that the group you tried to
      contact (firefox-preview-feedback)
      may not exist, or you may not
      have permission to post
      messages to the group...

<comment><USER33> This has been fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Small tip: please avoid giving time estimations using seasons "coming this fall", as in the other hemisphere it is going to be spring.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm a happy user of both Firefox Focus and Firefox mobile, I don't know what could they improve but I'll give it a look.

About Firefox focus, I love to have it as default browser when opening links, it gives me a lot of confidence to know that the session will be completely destroyed afterward. I'd miss it if it were to be discontinued.

<comment><USER36> A neat little thing I've discovered after installing the Preview is that Focus is still here.

You can toggle between the modes in one tap, and if you're in a private mode, opening links from other apps behaves just like Focus (minus the convenient "erase everything" button, at least for now).

It's the best of both worlds, I don't have to use a second one for those rare scenarios in which I want cookies (like remaining logged into HN).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> One reason I like FF on Android better than Chrome:

The Chrome user agent has your device model, even in incognito mode.

If you have a relatively rare Android device in your market, I think you can be tracked fairly uniquely on that alone. I was creeped out when I discovered this.

<comment><USER38> > The Chrome user agent has your device model, even in incognito mode.

For example, on my phone, Firefox's current User-Agent header is:

      Mozilla/5.0 (Android 8.1.0; Tablet; rv:67.0) Gecko/67.0 Firefox/67.0

while Chrome's is:

      Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 8.1.0; Moto G (5) Plus) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/740.3729.136 Mobile Safari/537.36

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow, this preview is incredibly good! I was not expecting such a good quality from a preview app (given how bad some of the other tries from Firefox have been on Android).

And you know what absolutely clinches it for me? That you moved the address bar to the bottom!! Just like Edge on Windows mobile - that's the best position for address bar IMO.

I also hope you do something about better battery management on the android app.

Have a bow!

<comment><USER40> Agree about the address bar positioning, last time I used a browser that had this feature was dolphin browser, at least 5 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Main thing I don't like about Firefox for Android is the lack of support for containers. I want to use sites like Facebook within a container.

<comment><USER42> I love containers, but the lack of ability to sync them really annoys me. Every time I get a new computer (or re-install, or setup a VPN to test with, etc) I have to manually create all my rules to always open my bank stuff in a special container, and always open my work sites in their container, etc. It seems like these rules should just sync.

<comment><USER41> Totally agree. I've also had it just completely forget all my "always open in container" settings in the past. But that hasn't occurred recently, so hopefully those days are over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 Not fond of the bottom address bar, I guess I'm not used to it because I always tap the top-right corner to switch tabs... I just need to get it in my muscle-memory, not a big deal. I still cross my fingers this will be configurable at some point.

My main gripe is that I feel like bookmarks are now a second-class citizen in Firefox Preview, they're not as accessible. I could see my mobile bookmarks right on the new tab screen in Firefox, now I have to press ⋮ > Your Library > Bookmarks and then click the bookmark I want.

4 clicks, while it took only one (or two) before with bookmarks as the default panel on my homepage on Firefox "classic".

<comment><USER39> Bookmarks have become even more first-class now - just swipe up from your address bar anytime. Try it now ( in the Firefox preview).

Also, I feel the opposite regarding the address bar position - give it a few days, you'll absolutely love it. Edge on Windows Mobile had the same position, and it was a very nifty and time-saving UX. You can now use the phone one- handed more easily, even for small-handed people.

<comment><USER43> Any UI element that you can't find by searching is not first class. In particular, if there's some gesture you have to randomly guess exists, it's a hidden feature for advanced users only.

<comment><USER43> I'd actually downvote my own comment right now.

There's a thumb that indicates dragability. They're about as hidden as a feature in a menu - that's not great, but it's a lot better than I understood before. (The preview took several hours to download and install on my phone. It's big, but it's not that big that it should've taken that long.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm a huge fan of the navigation bar on the bottom. I've missed it since I had to give up Windows Phone. It's hard to believe that neither Apple or Google ever added the option. I can't think of a single reason it would be better on top, It's simply harder to reach and less usable.

This also goes for all other apps...

<comment><USER45> Brave on Android has had bottom-bar for quite a while, it was the reason I switched from Firefox. I would switch back, but as there is no add-on support...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Some feedback: If you are going to market your browser as privacy focused, it has to block ads by default. As far as I can this one does not block ads at all. Good initial experience but please block ads.

<comment> orbital-decay _> If you are going to market your browser as privacy focused, it has to block ads by default_

A privacy-focused browser should care about the _privacy_ part of the online advertisement, which is tracking. Completely preventing the site from showing any ads is a different feature.

<comment><USER46> Considering that advertisements are a common vector for installing spyware and malware, I think adblocking and antitracking are two sides of the same coin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've been using it and it has been actually pretty good. It already has Firefox Sync and ability to send tabs to different devices. Only thing I miss is the ability to open tabs in background. This was my favorite feature in the previous Firefox for Android.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Only thing I miss is the ability to open tabs in background.

Long press the link.

<comment><USER47> I meant send links from any app to firefox and switch to firefox at a later time to find them ready to be read.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know about that feature. Feel free to request it on GitHub.

<comment><USER33> In Fennec that feature is referred to as "Tab Queues."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've been using Firefox Preview for a while and I like it, especially the bottom navigation bar, but one thing that I hope survives from the old app is the tab queue, which sends links opened from other apps to Firefox in the background without stealing focus from the original app. To me it's a game changer on the level of tabbed browsing and I don't know why all mobile browsers don't have it.

<comment><USER42> I agree, one of the best parts about FF on android was the queue. I hate the clicking a link, and it forces you to task switch right then to that link. I like to read things, click for more info, and then follow up when I am done. I rate it higher than add-ons and ublock (I use a DNS server that filters out many ads for me already, [https://www.nextdns.io/](https://www.nextdns.io/) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Now if they could just fix Firefox Mobile's abysmal tab management. Chrome Mobile's tab screen is a stack of pages in the Z-axis with the one closest to the user being the most recent tab and so on. Firefox Mobile's is a grid with the number of rows and columns being variable depending on screen dimensions. Figuring out which ones you opened in what order is not immediately apparent. It also suffers from the frankly amateur Android programming mistake of varying the swipe limits directly with the width of the screen, so going from portrait to landscape on a 19.5:9 phone screen means dismissing a tab suddenly requires you to swipe over twice as far as it does in portrait mode.

More than once I've found myself saying "oh my god, go away!" after trying and failing three times to swipe an unwanted tab away before remembering I have to drag the damn thing halfway to Timbuktu to dismiss it.

<comment><USER28> > Now if they could just fix Firefox Mobile's abysmal tab management. Chrome > Mobile's tab screen is a stack of pages in the Z-axis with the one closest > to the user being the most recent tab and so on. Firefox Mobile's is a grid > with the number of rows and columns being variable depending on screen > dimensions.

You can change it to a linear list easily. Settings -> General -> Compact Tabs.

Personally I strongly prefer the way Firefox does it. The order is actually pretty simple. Left to right, top to bottom is oldest to newest.

<comment><USER49> ...which does nothing to address the problem of inconsistent UI experience because the setting doesn't affect landscape mode so now it's even less consistent.

<comment><USER28> You're right! I didn't realize it didn't affect landscape mode. That's probably a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Not too shabby.

\- Performance is great. I'm already using it pretty much everywhere.

\- Ad blocking is about to become Firefox's killer app, and it was a major PR mistake to release a preview without enough extension support for ad blockers to work. They should have delayed the release, if necessary.

\- I wish the QR code reader had been released as a separate app (and on iOS too), but I'm actually quite glad to see Mozilla doing one. I look at my app store for QR code readers, and I'm confronted with a sea of questionable permissions, ads, obvious fake reviews, and tainted makers. I welcome a free QR code reader from a source I know and trust, but you can't build something like that into a browser without either bloating the browser or limiting the reader. It should be spun off into its own app, then allowed to grow.

</comment><comment><USER51> I love addons for firefox mobile so I'm not sure if I can give that up just yet :/

</comment><comment><USER52> This is a great step in the right direction

…but I really don't like the thing that slides up at the bottom of the screen. It takes the place of content which is 99.99% the reason I'm there. Not to share our bookmark. If I want to do that, I'll find it in the menu.

And is it just me that really, really needs a fast way to switch tabs to use a browser?

Chrome lets me swipe across the bar at the top of the screen, but with Firefox it's a tap, a visual scan to find the tab I want, and another tap.

Otherwise I'd switch to this browser yesterday

I like the collections concept, and the home screen.

Also, it's a joke that Google's image search is horrible on Firefox, for no good reason. If you switch the user agent it works fine.

<comment><USER53> Please allow swiping the address bar to switch tabs.

Otherwise it's just too slow.

That is what keeps me away from using Firefox on mobile (15 years Firefox user).

<comment><USER52> I'm wondering if I should fork Firefox mobile...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I keep using Opera because of a few small affordances that any browser could implement (and some do, but only Opera does all of them). The main one is text-reflow on zoom. It seems so ridiculous that I have to either stare at microscopic text or pan back and forwards just to be able to read things. Surely actually reading the contents of pages is a primary feature of a browser?

The other one I just can't understand is why not implement pull-to-refresh? Surely that can't be hard?

I know this is just ranting, but it's weird to see browser makers completely re-inventing their products when small, basic things could be fixed in their current versions.

<comment><USER55> [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/3262](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3262)

<comment><USER54> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me want to contribute to and use Mozilla projects. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER57> I've been using Firefox on Android for about a year now, and it is great, except one major problem. Google news site (news.google.com). News I believe uses my entire phone's RAM and starts swapping (I am totally guessing, does Android use swap?) because the app will become unresponsive for about 2 full minutes while the page is rendering. Closing and re-opening a tab in this state actually breaks the app FYI (all other tabs freeze as well). Scrolling will give low resolution visuals below the fold. Horrible experience on google news. Actually all google properties are PAINFULLY slow. Is that on purpose Google? I got around it by installing Firefox Focus, and that seems to load google news quite fast, but Focus is like a permanent incognito mode, so that is quite inconvenient in itself. So now I just use Focus for google news and regular Firefox for everything else. Hopefully there will be performance improvements to come. My phone is an older Huawei Honor 8 so maybe I should just buy a new one... but the infrared on it is so great!

<comment><USER58> Memory management on Android is awful. My music player routinely gets killed; I've tried all options available to me to prevent this.. It's just too difficult for Android to work out "you're listening to music, even though there's no visible ui, so I won't kill it". I understand that there is a whitelist of music apps which don't get killed - so intractable is this problem - but the one I use (Rocket Player) isn't on it.

<comment><USER59> The killing isn't actually the fault of Android itself, but the smartphone vendors that try to push the battery time metrics to the max. Battery management from Android isn't that bad actually, but the vendors will always find a way to fuck it up. I really liked this insight from "Zombies, Run!" developer: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18901006#18902273](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18901006#18902273)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I can't get it to work with my custom certificate authority (which I use to analyse traffic coming from my phone every now and then to see if any apps are leaking personal info). Also, though I know better, I also have some intranet services running with a certificate signed by that authority because the domains are dynamically generated and I can't automate my DNS to get wildcard letsencrypt certificates.

Normal mobile Firefox has their own cert store, so you can import it by clicking a link to the certificate and hitting OK. Other apps use the system certificate store so I have imported my certificate into there as well. Sadly, it still doesn't work.

My specific use case may not be very common, but certificate authorities in BYOD companies aren't uncommon either. I can't use this for my daily driver until I can import my certificate :(

The new system is very interesting though, the idea of separate browsing behaviours between devices can be a game changer if they implement it smoothly.

<comment><USER26> There's an issue for this at [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/2286](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2286)

<comment><USER60> Thanks, I just subscribed to the issue. Seems like it's blocked by a Bugzilla issue that didn't get updated in five months. I guess it's gonna be a while until I switch browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Wow. Just tried it out and it is fast! It feels more than just 2x as fast as the regular firefox mobile on the same device.

Now just add proper settings (no settings menu yet to disable thirdparty cookies) and add addon support (ublock, skip redirect, cookie autodelete) and I will switch immediately even with smaller bugs

</comment><comment><USER62> It would be nice if they merged my open PR on GitHub with a core bug exposing global variables...

[https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus- android/pull/4296](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/focus-android/pull/4296)

</comment><comment><USER63> Cool, how about working on that mobile browser you already have? I've been using it for years and it's good but apparently the lack of progress on it is because they abandoned us users of it to focus on this thing.

When quantum came out addon capability on mobile severely regressed and never recovered. This issue to support the context menu API has been open for TWO YEARS.[0] I just want to be able to long press an image and reverse image search it like I used to, is that so much to ask? Yes, there's an addon to do it through the addon menu and then tap the image but it's not the same.

0: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1363016](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1363016)

<comment><AUTHOR> We had many discussions around this. The Firefox for Android code base was not in a great condition to maintain backwards compatibility as well as accept a new rendering engine and all of the new Android Components we wanted to introduce to unify of our code bases for different Android-based products.

TL;DR: There was too much cruft built up.

Work should move faster now. We substantially grew our Android team in the last year.

<comment><USER63> I hope that works out then, I'm just frustrated with the state of mobile as it's been since the regressions. As someone who still thinks dropping XUL from desktop was a mistake (and maybe even mobile now that devices are more powerful) I wish it could've just stayed how it was but I'll just have to make the best of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I now have Firefox Preview, Firefox Focus, and Firefox, on my Android phone. I'm not really clear what the strategy is, and future deliverable? I read that Firefox Focus development has stopped, and Firefox Preview will become Firefox on Android. But is Firefox Preview a whole new thing or is it based on what's been learned about Focus? Or?

Also, it's kinda odd but I always have Twitter not fully loading on Firefox (on Android), where Firefox Focus always works fine. Typical is it hangs with spinners, if I reload it'll say "something went wrong" and the in-line retry/reload button doesn't work, same error, but reloading the whole page sometimes works. So far I haven't had this problem with Preview.

</comment><comment><USER65> Does anyone suffer from degrading image/video quality on some websites while using Firefox Android? I have this issue with Facebook. I don't want the Facebook app installed on my phone (mostly to block notifications and for privacy reasons) so I access FB via Firefox but images look terrible and every video I click opens in a separate tab instead of in-page (at least I can download it tho).

Only solution I have is using user-agent switcher to change my UA to either Chrome or Firefox for iOS (which is what I picked to keep Firefox in my UA) but this breaks other stuff on some websites.

Question is, how to get Facebook and other sites to stop serving shit quality to Firefox users? How is this fair?

<comment><USER66> One option is to attempt (despite of all of the obstacles they might put in place..) to increase Firefox's market share, perhaps by spreading the word about privacy concerns and/or ux benefits.

Another might be adblocker-esque trusted and shared community-maintained lists along with an add-on (does this exist?) for per-domain user agent mocking. Hopefully with enough adoption (i.e integrated into ublock) that it reduces the value proposition of investing the time.

Thirdly, continuing to call out the companies who do this sort of thing.

<comment><USER65> But why would market share matter if the browser is more than capable of handling whatever content a site serves. I don't see this relevant to the issue.

I think the fact that Firefox doesn't announce the device's model in its UA could be a factor so some sites fall back to their lower quality version by default but it sucks that we can't force the higher quality version.

<comment><USER66> Alienating users for using adblocker-capable software might be a more difficult sell as the group gets larger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I guess first party isolation isn't supported? (yet?) about:config loads a blank page.

</comment><comment><USER68> The situation didn't change with this another version of Firefox for Android (and I have all of them):

1) A webpage with many and mostly made out of grid and flex elements does tender waaaaay too slowly and ugly (low quality artifacts on scrolling)

2) Animations like of the mere max-height to unhide content perform like garbage, as if it was performed by the CPU alone

And I already did report this behaviour even with this version, let's see how it will turn out.

Out of this experience, expecting mobile web apps to perform well enough is meaningless, lag and rendering artifacts will fill your patience meanwhile on Chrome like browsers everything is waaaay smoother.

</comment><comment><USER69> After a few years of using Brave on Android, I switched back to Firefox, since I now have a powerful enough device that the bad cold boot performance can be ignored. A few missing things:

\- Chromium's zoom on tap is really more intelligent. Hitting the [-] on HN is much easier on in Brave than Firefox.

\- The gesture to switch tab on Chromium is also more comfortable. That's a missed opportunity on Firefox Preview as well.

\- I wish there was a way for uBlock-Origin to integrate better on a webpage. Disabling javascript makes many websites much more usable (disabling most on- load popups). It's one more tap to do that on Firefox than on Brave.

</comment><comment><USER70> Last time I tried FF on Android, the Font Rendering was abysmal :( I've always been a faithful FF user on Desktop and I wish it would be a good alternative on mobile too. Let's see where this Preview goes.

</comment><comment><USER71> Most of the time it feels great already (sometimes it freezes for a few moments), but does someone know how/if it is possible to add Progressive Web Apps to the desktop with this Firefox for Android Preview?

<comment><USER38> The Firefox Preview team is actively working on PWA support for Q3 or Q4, including add to home screen.

<comment><USER71> Thanks for the info. I am looking forward to it :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Feedback : When you are making a new Firefox for Android, please fix this small problem but personally a big annoyance : I should not need to open a whole new page _before_ trying to open a new tab. Just add a plus button next to the address bar, that's it. Currently the workflow just disturbs me in all Firefox browsers for mobile - you have to click the tabs button, _then_ the 'Plus' button (or click the settings menu and then the new tab - both require two taps with some delay, for something that should be just one quick tap).

<comment><USER73> I'm confused about your comment, just was pleasantly surpised by testing this new Firefox Preview, that only one click was required to open a new tab:

1) Tap the tabs button

2) You're already on the new tab, so either

a) Search in the search bar: this opens your search results in this current new-tab (you can also type an address there and search see your recent history)

b) Click on one of the links saved in a "Collection": this opens in this new tab.

<comment><USER72> Thanks. For the old Firefox for Android that's not the case, but for the new one that's an improvement (I actually didn't notice in my quick stint with it). However, they can further improve it by having the focus on the address/search bar by default. It's currently still two taps before I can start typing. Having to tap two times is my major annoyance with almost all the mobile browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Its pretty good, just need faster tab switching and extensions.

</comment><comment><USER75> Ok, tried it. Almost no settings, no tab previews, no addons, not even about:config. So far unusable for me. And unfortunatelly as seless as Foxus - it's effectivelly Focus v2, so I uninstalled it. I hope some provacy features and speedups will eventually be backported to our awesome Firefox which I use daily. Instead of Focus v2, I would like to see Firefox as an alternative default webview for Android.

</comment><comment><USER76> > In order to have a strong foundation for the next generation of mobile > Firefox browsers and put all our efforts and resources in GeckoView, work on > Firefox Focus will currently be on hold. Don't worry though, you can still > keep using our privacy browser, Focus, as well as our current Firefox for > Android.

I think this is a typo, and meant to say that Firefox for Android development is on hold, not Focus.

<comment><USER77> Not a typo; we had not formally announced that Focus was on hold while we bootstrap the Firefox Preview / GeckoView / Mozilla Android Components ecosystem. Now we have. :)

If you're interested in community maintainership of Focus, please fill out this survey: [https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5022894/Firefox-Focus- Survey](https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5022894/Firefox-Focus-Survey)

(Linked from [https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview- in-2019/](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> With a new look and UI, a walkthrough maybe warranted. Took me a while to find the bookmark button. And the color scheme on the button itself is not as intuitive, does not present the idea on first viewing whether a page is bookmarked or not. But overall, looks great and works fast too. I am sure more devlopments are yet to come.

For now, looks promising to be a challenger to the Chrome monopoly.

</comment><comment><USER79> I can't find any info about Sync (especially with my own back-end) which is one of the main reasons I'm using Firefox everywhere.

<comment><USER80> Sync works fine, at least for bookmarks and history, but I cannot choose what to sync, the check boxes are greyed out: [https://i.imgur.com/atDU75z.png](https://i.imgur.com/atDU75z.png)

<comment><USER81> It's not implemented yet. Coming soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> I am really glad they moved the URL bar to the bottom. As a former BlackBerry10 user I find it more UX friendly for touch-based devices.

</comment><comment><USER83> Add reflow... Opera does that really well. Doubletap to reflow and make text larger. Its the only android browser that does it afaik.

</comment><comment><USER84> I use Brave on mobile (also has built in ad blocker). Is this version of Firefox for Android on par with Brave regarding ad blocking?

</comment><comment><USER85> I think FF should implement an add-blocker which allows me to say which adds I like and which I don't.

Many important services like news-papers can only survive if they get add- revenue. They also contain adds in their print-edition and people still subscribe to them.

So I don't mind adds in general just adds which have no relevance to me.

</comment><comment> V-2 First impressions:

1\. It doesn't properly "Follow device theme" (as per Settings) - I had to switch it to Dark manually;

2\. Zooming text doesn't work on some pages, and on others it doesn't make the text rewrap. That's a pet peeve of mine as far as mobile browsers go. Only a handful gets this right (Opera, Yandex).

</comment><comment><USER86> Again Telemetry on by default with asking anything to the end user. Mozilla, when are you going to learn?

</comment><comment><USER87> Why does the link to the preview release go through a tracking site and not directly to the Play Store?

<comment><USER88> Why did I hope that app.adjust.com was somewhere that I could get the .apk without having anything to do with the Play Store?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can grab APKs on GitHub, but you'll need to update manually if you do so. [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/releases/tag/v1.0.0](https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

<comment><USER88> Thank you. I always expected this sort of thing (like pgeorgi's link) to be available but it isn't made as obvious and I stopped hunting too early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Preview just lost 3 opened tabs replacing them with about:blank. Could be out- of-memory condition or smth else, but that doesn't give me trust. I'll stay with an old version for now

Very hopeful for the future when it works and supports arbitrary add-ons though (containers pls!)

</comment><comment><USER90> So how is this new Firefox for Android different than the Firefox I have installed on my Android right now? Will I automatically get upgraded to this when it rolls out or is it a separate product? It would be nice to have that explained on the page/blog post.

</comment><comment><USER91> Why are they breaking their own stuff over and over again?! I updated their browser on Android and after the update it started hanging, refusing to load any website without a restart and eating up all the RAM? Why can't they invest in testers? WHY?

</comment><comment><USER92> Can they please provide a way to close all tabs instead of always having at least a blank one open. I'm probably just OCD on this but it's the most annoying thing I found about Firefox on Android compared to Chrome when I start using it.

</comment><comment><USER93> Wow, usability is so much better - dark theme, support for Samsung OneUI, search on bottom. Full release will be great (and used by 0.00001% of droid users). PS: using FF mobile for 3 years exclusively. Googlenet can go in the known direction.

</comment><comment><USER94> Mozilla should do a deal with Huawei now when the trade war is raging. Hard Chinese money, desperate for a high quality Chrome alternative browser, might be better than wishing Google keeps paying for the default search engine spot.

<comment><USER95> That's pretty damn risky. Not only would it draw the ire of the government, but they could have their entire company cut off at a whim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Firefox Preview is dope. Hot off the shelf, and it's as swift as a fox. Maybe hopeful but I feel this browser is on fire. Now just need to work on the ux like the button for `read` mode. Bye, G.

</comment><comment><USER97> reinventing by not even providing pull down to refresh as option? so much for Firefox customization, lacking for years such basic feature

and don't tell me about buggy add-ons as substitute

also by my experience it was crashing on regular sites and had problems with repeated words/characters and jumpy cursor in text fields making even writing comment on hacker needs impossible

I mean first fix such horrible bugs and provide basic features before you start doing something else

I use Firefox on desktop, but I am not really masochist to use it on Android

</comment><comment><USER15> \- Talks about introducing a browser more focused on privacy

\- Comes with Google search suggestions enabled by default on first run

(has a Google logo prominently displayed in the middle of the screen on first run in fact)

<comment><USER98> Google pays a large amount to be default search engine.

<comment><USER99> It seems highly unlikely that Google cares enough about suggestion data that they'd pay more for suggestion traffic than for just the searches.

It is much more likely that users expect search suggestions to work out of the box and some will bounce if they try a new browser that doesn't do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Is Firefox on Android ever going to build a sandbox architecture, or are the hard won lessons from the Desktop world going to be ignored?

</comment><comment><USER101> I and many others that I'm aware of truly desire a mobile browser that has the feature to disable all mobile sites/web pages.

</comment><comment><USER102> What is the point to have a different version of Firefox? Can't they simply remove the unneeded cruft from the standard version?

<comment> dao- The new Firefox for Android should eventually have roughly the same feature set as the old one. It's faster because it uses a whole new technology stack, not because they decided not to add unneeded cruft, whatever that means.

<comment><USER75> I wish that were true. But from other software redesigns and improvements, I learned that new designs often come with simplifications and reduction of functionality. Missing about:config and very simple Settings page is frightening me. Firefox and Mozilla saved the world from IE monopoly and it was always targeting power users but I fear that might change. :( So far I am happy with mobile FF but so far pretty unhappy with this preview. Almost everyone talks about bottom address bar (which after clicking moves on top anyway) and the speed. I am alergic to oversimplification ala new apple designs. I fear of: "We've reinvented mobile browsing. Now there is one big blowing button and an animation of colorful unicorns where you can customize the speed of movement and size of its horn. _applause_ It loads 2x times faster but you can't configure anything else because it's using our next-gen AI which learns your habits and automatically enables pull to refresh after after 50 swipes down (no way to disable) and starts blocking some ads (except those participating in OurSafeAD(tm) program) once it detects from your eye movement you are trying to avoid looking at them"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Add a mobile JS console and this will immediately become my default browser. I don't understand why no one has done this yet.

</comment><comment><USER104> I really wish I could still access about:confg

</comment><comment><USER105> Seems you can't move open tabs to Preview from Firefox Beta on Android. What a pity!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's coming very soon. The feature almost made this version except for a late bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> Finally. I already switched on Windows and Linux. Now macOS and Android is missing.

</comment><comment><USER107> Tried it out. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER108> My ideal for mobile: Firefox + uBlock Origin + Containers

Now: Firefox + uBlock Origin (no Containers)

Upcoming: Firefox (no uBlock Origin, no Containers)

Seems like we're moving backwards, no?

<comment><USER109> This is a preview version (as mentioned a billion times in the article). Addons are planned by the end of 2019. This is for testing.

<comment><USER110> Like others have said, uBlock Origin ( or solid alternative; uMatrix, etc ) at this point is a prerequisite for any browser.

I am not testing something that puts me in danger and throws me into the festering garbage dumpster that internet is these days without it. It's like testing a car that doesn't have brakes yet.

<comment><USER111> So don't test, it's not mandatory...

<comment><USER110> I am a developer and spend half my work time in Firefox Nightly. This is not usable for me despite being exactly the target for this preview.

<comment><USER24> The target of a preview is not people expecting it to be feature complete, so no, you're not the target.

<comment><USER110> Tell me how am I supposed to test add-ons on this Firefox as a developer before the release then.

Edit : And again, most of my work if not all related to Firefox, I do on the Nightly build. I expect things to break, but this preview ( of which there have been builds for a while already ) is a non-starter.

<comment><USER112> Why are you assuming that addons will be added in the GA release, and not some version prior to the GA release?

<comment><USER110> These builds have been available and in development for months now. They are announced at this time for 'early adopters and developers' ( EXACTLY us ) and still not even a hint of add-ons, or any obvious / apparent interest in them from Mozilla.

The only way to use uBlock Origin and / or uMatrix ( which again, many of us argue are essential, on top of add-on development itself ) on Android today is Firefox. Yet there have been nothing but vague replies these past months about when development from Mozilla will pay any attention to this, arguably its biggest differentiator and advantage compared to the spyware army of Chromium / Chrome clones on the biggest platform accessing the internet today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Nice changes, I'm now wishing for an Android :-)

</comment><comment><USER112> >At Firefox

You mean, at Mozilla.

This whole branding campaign to shove everything under the "Firefox" umbrella is silly.

<comment><USER72> It's _literally_ supposed to be the new Firefox for Android. So the 'Firefox' umbrella seems reasonable?

<comment><USER114> Reasonable for the product, which is not the same as the organization.

At Microsoft they make Windows. At Mozilla they make Firefox.

<comment><USER33> And Firefox has much higher brand recognition than Mozilla.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER115> Add extensions support and disable telemetry/remote-control by default (pushing updates where you control the code is remote control, don't even try to argue against that one).

<comment><USER116> > disable telemetry/remote-control by default (pushing updates where you > control the code is remote control, don't even try to argue against that > one).

So they shouldn't put updates on the Play Store?

<comment><USER88> They shouldn't be sending me to the Play Store ITFP.

I can't use Play because I've got no GApps in my phone, so I can't try their app unless I find a copy "somewhere" and convince myself it hasn't been poisoned. I got a reasonably up-to-date Firefox through APKPure, and later on after watching that 35C3 talk [1], I unzipped and grepped all those saved .apks to find the APKPure app itself and Firefox and LingoDeer had the same traces of Facebook's SDK in them. So that's off the table, huh? The ones that I saved from older phones after having gottten them through Play were all fine, but _I can 't update those_ without grabbing another phone and letting Google ... play in it. <ducks>

Just the other day I asked the Waterfox team for an apk and an md5sum, for the same reason-- though I'd settle for the md5sum alone! But Mozilla has resources WF can barely dream of, and it apparently intends to be a champion for privacy, so this is kinda sad.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc)

<comment><USER116> If you have a phone without GApps, you're either in China (which has its own app store ecosystems) or not Mozilla's target audience for their binaries.

[https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/68.0b13/](https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/68.0b13/) has the APKs plus signed hashes though.

(But more generally speaking: Why don't you build Firefox from source if you're so concerned with middlemen messing with the code?)

<comment><USER88> Again, resources. My workstation is still waiting to get torn down to have the smoke scrubbed out; my desk is torn down and cleaned already but still waiting for me to have a new place to put it. My room didn't burn but there's no electricity and the whole place is not habitable; by the time it is, it won't be my room anyway.

The 4GB laptop isn't very good for compiling large projects, because running WF needs much of that-- and then, just linking libxul.so needs almost all of it. On the side, maybe I also care a little bit about not wasting the energy since I wouldn't be customizing it at all. On the other side, my software compilation experience perfectly matches my desire to ever do it: 100% for Linux, 0% for Android.

Thank you for the link. I went looking for that in the past but gave up, apparently too soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> Still no pull to refresh. They really don't want users to adopt their browser. Literally every single other mobile Web browser supports it.

Yet Mozilla has some ideological stance that it breaks web interaction (with what, the 0.0001% of browser that target Firefox above Safari or Chrome on mobile).

<comment><USER118> Pull to refresh is why I want to move away from Chrome. It keeps going off as I scroll down a page, changing my page position or losing content.

Unfortunately it cannot be disabled. The flag to disable it was removed. [https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/8152831?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/8152831?hl=en)

<comment><USER117> How does it go off when you scroll down? Does chrome refresh when you also hit the bottom?</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon granted patent for common photography setup - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/8/5696356/amazon-inexplicably-granted-patent-for-common-photography-flash-setup

<comment><USER2> reminds me of this earlier yoga video patent: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/12/13...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/12/13/a-yoga-patent-heres-why-the-uspto-approves-so-many- dubious-applications/)</comment>


Ask HN: What are your homepage tabs? - <AUTHOR>

When you fire up your browser each morning, which sites come up by default?<p>Mine: HN, theinquirer.net, mixpanel.com, startups.alltop.com, businessinsider.com/sai, readwriteweb.com <comment><USER2> I use Firefox; it restores the tabs I shut down with. There's ALWAYS tabs leftover... so I never see this "home page" you speak of.

</comment><comment><USER3> about:blank

</comment><comment><USER4> minimotivation.com (it's a random saying every time you refresh)</comment>


Rectal Marijuana Is More Effective Than Smoking Joints: Doctor - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/03/05/rectal-marijuana_n_15178784.html <comment><USER2> "For all the good it'll do me may as well shove it up my arse" Renton - Trainspotting

</comment><comment><USER3> ...I'll pass, thanks. It sounds like sub-lingual would be an effective route. That said, if you're in a lot of pain... bombs away.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fun fact, in cases of dehydration where an IV is not available the best means of hydration is via the colon. So if you are in a situation where it is impossible to hydrate a person due to vomiting and emergency services are not available...

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like that doctor is blowing smoke up someones ass.</comment>


Need a pronounceable random n-character string? - <AUTHOR> http://www.random-string.com/

<comment><USER2> I can probably get my brain to generate one faster than visiting a web page :) .... but here's something similar in python:

        import string
        import random

        def random_pronoucable(minpairs=8,maxpairs=10):
        	consonants='bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz'
        	vowels='aeiou'
        	password=''
        	for x in range(1,random.randint(int(minpairs),int(maxpairs))):
        		password += consonants[random.randint(1,len(consonants)-1)] + vowels[random.randint(1,len(vowels)-1)]
        	return password</comment>


Show HN: My DevOps Friday Newsletter - <AUTHOR> http://kyotosolutionslimited.createsend1.com/t/ViewEmail/j/E5F0855E1F993760

<comment><USER2> How can I subscribe to your newsletter?

<comment><USER3> [http://www.devopsfriday.com](http://www.devopsfriday.com)

<comment><USER2> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone have a sample software development contract? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Unless you're asking for something a bit more specific, Google is your friend: <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=software+development+contract>

<comment><AUTHOR> A recommendation is much more valuable than Google.

<comment><USER3> i think mrleinad is recommending a google search. :)

docstoc.com has some fantastic resources. a quick search for "software development contract" under my account on their site pulls up 14 docs avail.</comment></comment></comment>


"My tires have RFID tags in them. Yours probably do also" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JGamblin/status/685617755479871489 <comment><USER2> (1) Video surveillance is used everywhere on police cars, traffic lights, etc. It's cheap, practical and can work at (2) Tires already have serial numbers. (TIN). I don't know if they track these numbers when tired are installed or not, but if they do, then RFID just makes the job faster. If that is your concern, pay cash for tires and install them yourself in your garage. (3) RFID would be REALLY hard to do as you are driving down the road. It takes time to power up the RFID tag, send it a message, and get a response. I found a reference of 300 milliseconds for a reading. That's IF you are two inches away, and the object is NOT moving. If the tag is at the edge of the tire (as the picture implies) - where are you going to put the reader so that it can get within 2 inches of the tire? And how can it read the tag at 40 miles an hour, when the tag is spinning around the edge of the tire? If the sensor is embedded in the road, you have to drive directly OVER it, and the tag has to be at the bottom of the tire, and the car has to be driving very very slow. That's assuming the sensor and the power cable will survive being embedded in asphalt. A sensor near the edge of the road would be too far away to get a reading, If someone can get within 2 inches of your tires while you are driving 40 miles an hour, you have other things to worry about.

<comment><USER3> > That's IF you are two inches away, and the object is NOT moving. If the tag > is at the edge of the tire (as the picture implies) - where are you going to > put the reader so that it can get within 2 inches of the tire?

900Mhz RFID tags can be read from over 30ft away. Can't find a video but someone @ defcon was able to get a read from 250ft away using a yagi antenna & power way over the FCC limits.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but there's a big difference between a one-time demo under ideal conditions, and something that can be mass-produced and used daily. In the case of tires, (1) the car is likely moving, (2) the tires are spinning at the same time, (3) there are 4 tires (at least - not to mention shoes, credit cards, etc.) and all RFID tags of the same frequency will respond to the reader at the same time, making it very difficult to capture the ID of a single tag. There is no collision avoidance in the transmission.

Yes, I'm sure some special technology can be developed that can track and follow a single car as it travels down a road, and isolate the tags, but the police already use ANPR to identify amber alerts, stolen vehicles, unpaid fines, etc. ANPR systems cost under $200, and some (according to Wikipedia) will work even if the car is traveling at 120 MPH.

It makes no sense to attempt to use RFID for tracking cars.

<comment><USER3> > and all RFID tags of the same frequency will respond to the reader at the > same time

Depends on the tag design. Using Q Values you can avoid the collisions to some extend. [http://www.rfidsb.com/anticipating-your-starting-point- with-...](http://www.rfidsb.com/anticipating-your-starting-point-with-the-q- value/)

Not sure how much the spinning tires distort signals...etc. Def out of my scope of knowledge.

> It makes no sense to attempt to use RFID for tracking cars.

Agreed, grabbing license plates makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the replies below the tweet points out that RFID tags have been present in tires since 2003, and provides this reference:

[http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269](http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?269)

The intended purpose is being able to track tires that are subject to safety recalls.

<comment><USER5> Yup, and when this came out I took my RFID reader kit out and read the tags on my tires. And yes they were all unique.

Some folks at UC Berkeley built an RFID reading device you could put by the side of a (one lane) road (like an on-ramp) and read the tires from it. From a traffic analysis standpoint it would be much more effective than those hoses they put across the road to measure cars going by.

At the point we reach Tools Offering Aggregated Surveillance Things (TOAST), you'll be able to figure out where a tire (and the car it was attached to) was 24/7

<comment><USER6> > Some folks at UC Berkeley built an RFID reading device you could put by the > side of a (one lane) road (like an on-ramp) and read the tires from it. From > a traffic analysis standpoint it would be much more effective than those > hoses they put across the road to measure cars going by.

Why would that be much more effective? Do the hoses have significant count errors, or is it that the RFID system will let them tell what make/model of tire went by and so infer data such as vehicle type that they do not get from the hose system?

<comment><USER5> The hose system tells you total traffic but unless you have two of them you don't know what direction the cars are going. Also it can't tell how cars "flow" so where cars enter the measured area and where they exit. Traffic planners need flow to understand if "express" lanes would help for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When your car has a license plate and there are ANPR cameras all over the city... The tracking horse has long since bolted.

<comment><USER8> How is anyone able to steal cars anymore with those cameras?

<comment><USER9> Strip and switch tires/license plates in blind spots.

<comment><USER10> most cars worth stealing are also probably connected 24/7 [1]

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec- gps-2014-1](http://www.businessinsider.com/ford-exec-gps-2014-1)

<comment><USER11> How is that "most cars worth stealing"?

<comment><USER10> that's just one example... look up other brands, most major brand's cars are connected, at least their somewhat recent products

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The tracking potential is very low for tire RFID tags because every tire as well as every car has some sort of visual identification. However, the main advantage I see is that you can very easily find out who dumps used tires in a river or in the woods.

<comment><USER13> So they would burn them instead now. Better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's also this:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/tracking_auto...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/12/tracking_automo.html)

and this:

[http://resources.impinj.com/h/i/2503326-vehicle-tracking- wit...](http://resources.impinj.com/h/i/2503326-vehicle-tracking-with-rfid)

</comment><comment><USER15> An RFID is just a unique serial number no real different to a barcode or a written serial no, just it can be read easier (and generally matched to a UID on a maintenance database or suchlike) Yes the manufacturer can also store encrypted data on one but I honestly cannot figure out how an external party could abuse this system.

<comment><USER16> It really doesn't take very much creativity to abuse this system. How about a database of who bought each tire cross referenced to a monitoring strip in the road to see who is going where? How about that monitoring strip being in the entrance to every fast food joint, restaurant, store, mall, etc - now you can track drivers just like we track browsers. Since we have your name, we can cross reference your driving and browsing history.

<comment><USER17> And if you put a video camera in a strategic location you can capture every license plate that pass by...

<comment><USER18> This is exactly what I was thinking. As much as these RFIDs seem like a privacy issue, a license plate is already there and in many ways a more accessible way to track a vehicle.

<comment><USER19> Especially now that state governments have redesigned the plates to be more easily read by OCR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Your shoes probably have RFID tags in them too.

[http://www.rfidjournalevents.com/retail/](http://www.rfidjournalevents.com/retail/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe I'm naive, but this doesn't seem a very big deal in today's world. So this would theoretically - if you have enough time and power to equip all intersections with hidden RFID readers mounted below the road - allow you to collect a sort of poor-man's location history of cars. However, it's restricted to the things that happen in the area you bugged, it doesn't tell you anything about _who_ is driving the car and if all routes are done by the same person and it captures nothing that takes place outside the car.

Compare that to the almost complete, 100% personalized location history you get when you manage to get your "flashlight" app installed on an android phone...

</comment><comment><USER22> What is he using to detect the chip? I would like a recommendation on a good detector

<comment><USER23> The device in the photo appears to be one of these [http://www.ebay.com/itm/125Khz-RFID-EM4305-Card-Reader- Write...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/125Khz-RFID-EM4305-Card-Reader-Writer- Copier-Writer-programmer-burner-USB-FA-/361193718200)

Edit the 125khz ones and 13Mhz ones look similar so not sure which.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know that Goodyear was resistant to tags for many years - they cost too much. Margin on tires is razor thin.

<comment><USER13> Most new factories are now 99% automated. Literally 5 people running the whole facility.

<comment><USER24> Retread is where tags really shine. And that's not automated yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see the problem, just wrap your tires in tin foil ;)

</comment><comment><USER26> I suspect these are for inventory and recall tracking. While they could be co- opted for more nefarious purposes it makes sense from a manufacturing perspective.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't wait to see videos of people trying to put their tires into microwave ovens to get rid of RFID tags, like what Germans are doing with their IDs :-D

<comment><USER27> I suspect passing a degaussing coil over the tire for a while will kill the tags. If that doesn't work, it's really easy to make an HERF gun.

// Safety Warning - Actually building an HERF gun can be extremely dangerous, and should only be attempted by people familiar with both high-voltage safety and radio safety. Seriously, RF burns can be really nasty. //

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't say I like the idea of being tracked, but your vehicle already has at least one ID tag that is easier to read at range - the registration plate. Coupled with other identifying tag you are likely to be carrying (e.g. WiFi MAC addresses - I know at least one bank in the UK uses this to measure branch visit numbers), this doesn't seem like a big deal (from a privacy standpoint at least).

</comment><comment><USER15> Out of interest I just checked both my cars bridgestone and toyo brands bought in NZ in 2014 with my 125Khz and a 13.7Mhz (mifare) reader and found nothing, Could be UHF RFID but I don't have a reader for one of those.

I guess if the state is out to get you that bad you could move to NZ :-)

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems like a great way to optimize parking spot usage. Could RFID readers be used to know if a parking spot had tires in it? Could this be deployed attached to parking meters or in parking garages cheaply? If not how much cheaper do the readers have to get?

</comment><comment><USER30> Tracking is easier and more pervasive with APNR.

</comment><comment><USER31> I bet they're used for the tire pressure sensors.

<comment> Arcanum-XIII Nope, the sensor is in the valve most of the time, albeit there's one version in the tire (not compatible with lot of cars atm)</comment></comment>


Show HN: World Cup Qualification - <AUTHOR> http://sport.ismyreligion.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Explore various World Cup qualification scenarios.

Written in Haxe.</comment>


Top Tech Trends of 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/utopiapress/top-tech-trends-of-2019-99b76f89ef53 <comment><AUTHOR> Crazy amount of tech trends for 2019, but what stands out in this?</comment>


Trust in fast and slow decisions - <AUTHOR> http://voxeu.org/article/trust-fast-and-slow-decisions <comment><USER2> Reminds me of reading about the HP-12C financial calculator. As CPUs got faster, the calculator was never increased in speed, because users would not trust the results if they appeared too quickly.

</comment><comment><USER3> it reminds me of sociological imagination.</comment>


White papers: Modern Perl tools and best practices  - <AUTHOR> http://www.perl.org/about/whitepapers/

<comment><USER2> Note that these whitepapers are just one person's opinion and not some sort of consensus. I am going to pick Varnish over Perlbal any day, for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would help if these were timestamped. One of my first questions with such resources -- particularly when getting up to speed in something -- is: Am I looking at this year, or at five years ago?

I suppose I can dig into the resource dates, history, but please: Just include a published/last updated date on the page.</comment>


Show HN: GigaSecond - <AUTHOR> http://gigasecond.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Me and my brothers came up with this as a bit of a joke for measuring time; I got bored and decided to take it to another level. Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER2> unix time replacement?</comment>


From Gen X to Microserfs to JPod - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/wordsatlarge/blog/2008/01/from_gen_x_to_jpod.html JPod is novel set in Vancouver, BC about employees at Electronic Arts.  There is a new series based on the novel airing on the CBC.<p>This interview touches on life in the Google generation. <comment><USER2> I found jPod to be lifeless and depressing. In Microserfs the characters were trying to become _something else_. They may have been stunted nerds but at least they were trying. Jpod is just a bunch of stunted nerds that are shocked by nothing, aspire to nothing, and end up left on the stage in impotent rage they can't even articulate.

And as for Coupland writing himself into the story... it's a device with a long history. Dante does it, Cervantes does it, Vonnegut does it, Borges does it. But Coupland is no Cervantes.

<comment><AUTHOR> _I found jPod to be lifeless and depressing._

Hmm, I live in Vancouver and work in the game industry. So, I didn't find it lifeless. And working for a big studio is kind of depressing. So, that's a feature not a bug.

I agree that jPod wasn't as good as Microserfs.

 _And as for Coupland writing himself into the story... it's a device with a long history._

I think Coupland uses it as a device to answer his critics. For example, in the Gum Thief, the last chapter is written from the point of view of a university professor critiquing a novel written by one of the characters in the book.

<comment><USER2> Yep. The problem is that that literary device, while used by some of the best writers ever, is tricky. You had better be sure you _are_ one of the best before using it, else you come off a fool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I loved Coupland in college and thought he was so damn smart.

Then a few years later I saw him at a reading of JPod, and instantly changed my mind.</comment>


No Messenger, I will request the desktop version of Facebook - pi-squared For example in Google Chrome and Firefox for Android: Go to facebook.com > click on the three dots at the top right corner > Request Desktop site > Click on Messages in Facebook > Profit <comment><AUTHOR> Or you know just dont use it instead of always finding new hacks to keep it somewhat useable. You are not doing yourself a favor.</comment>


Lipstick Effect - Women Try to Increase Attractiveness in Recessions - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/06/27/lipstick-the-recession-and-evolutionary-psychology/

<comment><USER2> Of course rationally I know this is how the world really works, but somehow paragraphs like this one still manage to depress the hell out of me:

      women's mate preferences reliably prioritize resource access. This preference
      stems from the important role that mates' resources have played in women's
      reproductive success. [...] news of a recession may therefore signal to women
      that financially secure men —those able to invest resources in rearing
      offspring— are becoming scarce.

Am I just a lone hopeless idealist or does anyone else share this feeling of profound disappointment in society, and the male-female dynamic in particular?

<comment><USER3> It's not "society" that's failed. It's basic natural instinct kicking in. Many men prefer wider hips, large breasts, and youthful appearance. We can say all day that this comes down to taste but your inner caveman knows that she will be a healthy and providing mother.

<comment><USER2>
      Many men prefer wider hips, large breasts, and youthful appearance.

If I don't, so does that mean I'm actively repressing my "inner caveman" or is it more of a hint that I'm secretly gay?

      We can say all day that this comes down to taste but your inner caveman
      knows that she will be a healthy and providing mother.

We somehow presume that our movie-fueled fantasy of how a stereotypical caveman must think and behave is a biological dictate. I know from many, many conversations with other people that I'm probably the only person in the world thinking this, but nevertheless I feel compelled to repeat it here: it's worth considering that we know a lot less about very early human society than we care to admit (and even if we did know more: how did we decide this was _the_ natural state which we should, nay, must aspire to regain?) and also it's worth noting that social norms have historically often been justified by invoking (some kind of) natural law.

But as I said, I know in the end it's me who's the odd one out, not society. It's the exact same thing when people talk about religion, I just don't have the "special knowledge" built in that everyone else has. It's all alien to me. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Outrageous! People using their sexuality to get ahead! First-wavers fought so hard to get rid of this type of behavior. When will everyone wake up and see the value in a meritocracy?!</comment>


Copyright-trolls: mind your own extra-judicial business, court says - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/patent-trolls-mind-your-own-extra-judicial-business-court-says.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> The judge protects copyright infringers and gives reasoning:

"Unfortunately, it would appear that the technology that enables copyright infringement has outpaced technology that prevents it."

It's crazy to see that judges are wising up to the antics of the recording and motion picture industries.

I know PG is looking for a way to radically disrupt the way these giants do things, and I think the current state of our culture and judicial system creates an opportune moment for a new startup to do just that.

<comment><USER2> "wising up to the antics of the recording and motion picture industries"

Neither the RIAA or the MPAA are involved in the bittorrent lawsuits. The big lawsuit that really kicked it off was over The Hurt Locker, which isn't an MPAA-affiliated movie. It was kick-started by a lawyer named Thomas Dunlap, who worked out the idea with Uwe Boll for his shitty movies. The RIAA stopped going after file-sharers when its lead attorney, Donald Verrilli, was appointed by Obama to be Solicitor General. That alone was more than they wanted.

All of these mass lawsuits are the idea of small, sometimes desperate lawyers, not content providers or publishers. Most of the lawsuits, including the one in this article, are over porn downloads; porn is obviously not an MPAA endpoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Jonny you bring up some valid clarifications.

Still is interesting to see that times are-a changin' and it appears that the courts are now starting to realize that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Link to the court PDF

([http://ia700706.us.archive.org/14/items/gov.uscourts.cand.24...](http://ia700706.us.archive.org/14/items/gov.uscourts.cand.243765/gov.uscourts.cand.243765.18.0.pdf))</comment>


Show HN: Anyway – Hear what your campus has to say - serious-sam https://www.getanyway.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Anyway is a localized feed, the more likes a post gets, the bigger the > 'radius of discovery'. The kicker is that you can like things as many times > as you want - now you can one-man-army your post into the spotlight.

This seems like bad mechanics design. Assuming the "radius = f(likes)" function isn't linear and asymptotes, everyone will just spam-like their post until it gets close to the asymptote. Then, the app essentially consists of posts that just have a constant radius (r ~ threshold radius), making dynamic radius a completely useless mechanic.</comment>


How Apple Built a Chip Powerhouse to Threaten Qualcomm and Intel - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-apple-custom-chips/ <comment><USER2> I have only skimmed the article but two things jump out:

> Recently the company got a fresh incentive to go all-in on silicon: > revelations that microprocessors with components designed by Intel Corp., > Arm Holdings Plc and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. are vulnerable to hacking.

Apple isn't immune: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208394](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208394) (indeed seems iOS devices suffer from Meltdown where AMD devices do not).

> The result: a chip powerhouse that could one day threaten the dominance of > Qualcomm Inc. and even, eventually, Intel.

Surely to threaten dominance Apple needs to start selling it's chips to other people? Whilst it's possible it would run counter to the way Apple likes to do things, namely get as much in house a possible to get maximum control and seamless vertical integration, they've never shown any interest in selling bits of their technology to others (well recently anyway).

<comment><USER3> Apple may be a (large) minority purchaser of modem chips overall, but it's a hugely dominant chunk of the market for high end devices. If they do their own high end modems, it would gut the high end modem business for Qualcom. That could also drive up prices and jeopardise supply for other high end phone manufacturers. It might even make some high end features uneconomical for Qualcom to include.

Right now Apple is several years ahead of other high end phone manufacturers in CPUs. If they cripple Qualcomm's high end modem business by taking most of it away from them, they could extend the same lead to modems.

<comment><USER4> > Right now Apple is several years ahead of other high end phone manufacturers > in CPUs.

I hear this statement a lot... how is this determined?

<comment><USER3> Performance and features. In single threaded performance, Apple's A chips are way ahead. That's because Apple highly customizes and optimizes their core designs, while Qualcom and Samsung use largely vanila ARM reference designs with maybe a few tweaks. Apple chips also have considerably more cache. That's difficult for the competition to counter because they are very price sensitive and cache size eats up expensive die space.

The counter argument is that the other systems make up for this by having more cores, which is really a cop out. Single threaded execution has a far more direct effect on user experience, gaming performance, etc. They can't compete in core engineering so make it up by slapping on more fairly generic cores. It does appear that Samsung is responding to this and investing in more advanced core designs.

The final area is custom features like the neural engine behind real-time face recognition, real time 3D face lighting effects and such. The competition don't really have these at all, so we don't know how far behind they are.

There's a pretty good article on this linked below.

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4138071-apple-cpu- advantage...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4138071-apple-cpu-advantage- revisited)

<comment><USER5> The Samsung M1, M2 and soon the M3 are all fully custom.

<comment><USER3> Yep, it does look like Samsung may be in a position to catch up soon. That could make a real problem for Qualcom the other Android manufacturers. Samsung are the biggest manufacturer of high end Android phones. If Qualcom can't sell high end CPUs to them any more, it might make manufacturing any truly high end CPUs uneconomical, or at least drive up costs even further.

<comment><USER5> Watch out for what comes out of ARM Austin. Their last core was the A72 from a couple of years ago. Rumour has it they've been working on a big core to better compete with Apple and Samsung.

Looking back, it makes sense that Qualcomm discarded their underperforming custom design efforts (at least for the mobile market). If ARM can deliver a competitive design, why not fully commit to their roadmap and save significant amounts on R&D costs?

<comment><USER6> Because if ARM cannot deliver they are fucked.

<comment><USER7> ARM is not just one company - it's a semi-standard.

<comment><USER8> Would you mind backing up your claim? To my knowledge, ARM is one company that licenses their designs to other companies, who are free to parameterize and modify as they please.

<comment><USER4> Why don't companies just come up with their own designs?

<comment><USER3> First off designing a whole core architecture from scratch is a huge and very expensive undertaking. Youd need to be able to get a really big competitive advantage to make it worthwhile.

Secondly theres a large ecosystem of add on components designed work with ARM and be dropped into ARM SOCS, such as GPUs, Wifi modules, Gyroscopes, wireless modems, GPS, etc.

Thirdly there are a lot of SOC engineers very familiar with ARM. You can hire them streight from competitors, or college, including PHDs that have done research on it. Youd need to train up any new hirs from scratch on your architecture.

Finally theres a huge software development tool chain built around the established processor architectures. To support a new architecture youd also need to build a set of compiler back ends, bearing in mind the existing ones benefit from many years of tweaking and optimization.

<comment><USER9> Yes, SW is the key; especially Linux. ARM is way ahead of other embedded CPU architectures in terms of Linux support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The SoC timeline is not uninteresting but it's lacking at least one of the _major_ events: Apple switching from ARM-licensed to internally designed cores with the A6. It should also outline the A7 more, that wasn't just Apple's first 64b SoC, it was an industry-wide-first of shipping 64b cores in a product, that took the industry very much by surprise (64b products were planned for 12~24 months down the line before that IIRC).

These are the events which genuinely placed Apple on a serious footing as a chip designer, the A4 was Apple-branded but only a preparatory step.

The essay also lacks other silicon acquisition of Apple, like Intrinsity, whose work actually showed up as early as the A4 (before it was acquired).

It's also oddly padding the timeline with X-variants.

<comment><USER11> The opening paragraph also glosses over the fact that some of Apple's chips are also vulnerable to Meltdown and Spectre.

<comment><USER10> I'd missed that, but you're perfectly correct.

It's also stating that Apple could topple Qualcomm… despite Apple not selling to third parties, the only way that'd happen is if they obtained a complete monopoly on the smartphone market. I don't see either happen.

<comment><USER12> If Qualcomm sits around and does nothing. However Qualcomm are competing for the nascent ARM server market with the (incredible IMO) Amberwing, and Qualcomm would still have 50%+ of the mobile market for selling their modems and Snapdragons to fund development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can only hope for Apple to revive the Mac Mini, or the " Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse" concept.

I think there is a (small) market for Apple, but it is also a way bring new users into the Mac ecosystem (although the iPhone/iPad do this).

I want a small, but affordable Mac to have as a backup and toy around... and as a Mac user, the Mac Mini was perfect. I'll cross my fingers.

<comment><USER14> I think, Apple _should_ have a roadmap where all of their Mac will be SSD by default. The current iMac and Mac mini, is still on super slow HDD.

But those NAND prices per GB aren't coming down. I think might be one of the most important reason why Apple hasn't has new Mac mini.

This is especially true when Apple said APFS is specially designed for NAND, and not HDD.

<comment><USER15> NAND prices per GB are actually starting to come back down, now. Most of the 3D NAND tooling change-overs are completing at the various NAND fabs, so NAND prices should only continue to fall in the coming months/years in $/GB pricing metrics.

You can get consumer grade 500GB-class SATA 2.5" SSDs for $130 (or less!) now from multiple vendors. This time last year these were up around $200 (EDIT: this may not be accurate!). Consumer SATA SSDs were some of the first to transition to 3D NAND.

For example: [https://camelcamelcamel.com/SanDisk-Ultra-2-5-Inch-Height- SD...](https://camelcamelcamel.com/SanDisk-Ultra-2-5-Inch-Height- SDSSDHII-480G-G25/product/B00M8ABFX6)

<comment><USER16> Note that many of these high capacities SSDs are able to sell at lower prices due to them not having any onboard dram, meaning the mapping data for wear leveling is either stored on the nand itself or in the system ram which causes random read/write to slow down a significant amount.

<comment><USER15> DRAM is still extremely expensive, so you're probably on-point about part of the low price being the lack of DRAM. It would be interesting to see tear downs of current consumer and enterprise SSDs to better understand how they work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Apple has wisely focused on designing its silicon (for its system on a > chips, Apple uses reference designs from Arm Holdings Plc).

I was under the impression that the current A cores are not reference designs from ARM... That it was a purely Apple-designed core implementing the ARM ISA. Am I mistaken or is the article mistaken?

<comment><USER18> Apple is one of very few companies that has an ISA license. This allows them to implement the ARM ISAs using their own microarchitecture and physical implementation.

Digital was afaik the first ISA licensee, which allowed them to design the StrongARM. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM)

StrongARM ended up at Intel when they bought Digital. The design team for StrongARM split up into two companies: SiByte and Alchemy. The design work i in SV on StrongARM was lead by Daniel W. Dobberpuhl. Daniel was cofounder of SiByte and (more relevant) founder of PA-Semi.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_W._Dobberpuhl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_W._Dobberpuhl) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi)

PA-Semi was a fabless company that designed really powerful and power efficient CPU cores based on the Power (PA) architecture. PA-Semi was really good at both architecture, but also physical design for low power. PA-Semi was acquired by Apple in 2008 (as mentioned in the article. Boutique chip maker is an interesting phrase btw). PA-Semi basically became the processor design team at Apple.

Looking at the timeline, the first A-series CPU (A4) was released in 2010 which would be possible for the PA-Semi team to have developed.

(If my understanding of the history is correct.)

<comment><USER19> Small correction: Intel didn't buy Digital, but got StrongARM with it's design team (and IIRC some tangentially related products like 21152) as part of settlement of some kind of patent dispute.

Also of note is that Success of HTC is to some extent also coming from DEC and it's StrongARM reference platforms (mainly Itsy) which Compaq then commercialized as iPaq which was manufactured by HTC (with pressumably HTC- designed "HTC ASIC" which contained most of the various PDA-specific glue required for StrongARM).

<comment><USER20> > Intel didn't buy Digital

Compaq did. Rose to glory as an IBM PC clone maker, had enough cash to buy busted out DEC, dwindled away in turn to be purchased by HP, if memory serves.

Sic transit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/google- is...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-30/google-is-designing- more-in-house-phone-chips-to-take-on-apple)

 _" Google officially closed its $1.1 billion deal with HTC Corp., adding more than 2,000 smartphone specialists in Taiwan to help the search giant chase Apple Inc. in the cut-throat premium handset market. The deal will help Google design more of its own consumer hardware and could set it up to wade deeper into special-purpose chips -- like Apple. Google's most recent Pixel model came with a new image processor to improve the device's camera. More of this "custom silicon" will come in the future, Google's hardware chief Rick Osterloh said in an interview._"

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm surprised they don't mention Jim Keller, the engineer who designed the A4/A5 chips, as well as the AMD Zen and K8 (Athlon 64) microarchitectures: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_\(engineer\))

<comment><USER22> I'm surprised that you're surprised; this article clearly isn't meant to be a serious piece of journalism. Regardless, thanks for posting a reference to Jim Keller's wiki page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if this all started with Apple buying the company behind this PowerPC processor:

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

I rarely see that company mentioned when people talk about Apple getting into hardware. What I dont know if it's because they were uninvolved in ARM-related stuff done later or just not well known.

</comment><comment><USER24> I feel like this article is just an advert for Apple - in the wake of the recent processor flaws we've collectively suffered.

</comment><comment><USER25> I am not worried but instead welcome the integration of their chips to protect the integrity of my machine's data from hackers or even government agencies. That I fully support and expect to see.

I do seriously doubt they will move away from an Intel compatible platform, at most if they did then perhaps AMD chips. If Apple took their Macs away from Intel compatibility I doubt I would buy a new one and it would put into question the ability to maintain what software library that exists for the platform.

<comment><USER26> On desktops or notebooks, where the power budget is much bigger an cooling more efficient, they might push for a high performance ARM chip, coupled with an x86 translation layer. They pulled this successfully twice already (m68k -> PPC and PPC -> x86).

<comment><USER27> Considering that Microsoft is doing it, it's not unlikely. But, they seem to also push iPad forward.

<comment><USER28> Didn't Intel start passively aggressively signalling that they'd start enforcing their patents with lawsuits if companies do that?

<comment><USER29> Yes, but that's solveable by buying AMD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "But Apple is just good at marketing"

<comment><USER31> We've banned this account for posting too many unsubstantive comments. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>