Mozilla's Servo Team Joining Mixed Reality - <AUTHOR> https://blog.servo.org/2018/03/09/servo-and-mixed-reality/ <comment><USER2> > Coming in to 2018, we see virtual and augmented reality devices > transitioning from something just for hardcore gamers and enterprises into > broad consumer adoption.

Every time I see phrases like this I just cringe. As someone who spent a ton of time in the gamedev/3D UI space I've yet to see anything about VR that points to be being successful in anything other than small markets. I think there are some amazing applications in architecture and gaming but I really don't see something you have to strap to you face making the mainstream in a meaningful way.

I really hope this doesn't dilute Servo's effort too much because they've been doing awesome stuff lately.

<comment><USER3> Forget "useful" for a moment. How does good VR make you feel? Have you not had any "wow" moments?

I'm constantly surprised how blown away people are when they try (real) VR for the first time. That's what makes me optimistic about it as a medium.

<comment><USER4> The problem I think, is how many people will actually pay that money to be "blown away" one time, and how many people will pay to be "blown away" multiple times after.

We had few "VR experience center"s in our little city, they were popular when they just opened, but now most of it are closed.

So, I think "blown away" is not enough, usefulness is important.

<comment><USER5> I remember playing a VR game at a mall kiosk in the 90s. I realize that the component miniaturization that came along with mobile phones has huge ramifications for the cost and quality of VR, but it's not like there haven't been people thinking about VR content for 25 years.

Maybe the barrier to entry for VR hardware is low enough now that some small team will invent something that makes it a must-have, but I remain as skeptical now as I was when Oculus first hit the hype train. I haven't really used an Oculus or a Vive, so I hope this isn't coming from a place of abundant ignorance, but VR just feels like hype feeding hype. I haven't heard a VR concept that justifies it yet. The only one I even want to try is Tilt Brush.

<comment><USER3> > I haven't really used an Oculus or a Vive, so I hope this isn't coming from > a place of abundant ignorance,

There's only one way to find out. I'm over a year into VR ownership and it still fascinates me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some questions around Servo as a result of the announcement, so I just wanted to jump in and talk a bit more about what's going on. tl;dr - Servo is Mozilla's vehicle for web engine research, and continues to be a major source of new tech for Firefox. But we're also adding a more direct path to product for Mixed Reality.

Servo has produced lots of great browser tech. We're seeing that tech make its way into Firefox with Stylo and the Quantum release, and there's on-going work to bring even more tech into Firefox, like the WebRender work that you can try out in the latest nighlies. Servo's goal is to create the best technology for working with both current and upcoming web standards, which means collaborating with multiple product teams, from Firefox to Mixed Reality to other, future explorations.

There's still a long road to full compatibility with the existing web in all of Servo's components, and it will take time to get there. In the meantime, though, there are emerging technologies where Mozilla believes it is vital for the open web to play a central role. One of these is Mixed Reality (which refers to both Virtual and Augmented Reality), a space that's getting a ton of attention from all of today's tech giants.

Mixed Reality is interesting for Servo in two different respects. First, it's a huge opportunity: it's early days and content is brand new, so there's no long tail of web compat to worry about; we can get products built on Servo to market relatively quickly. By putting open web tech on the cutting edge, Mozilla can help ensure that Mixed Reality doesn't become yet another siloed technology.

But second, the constraints of Mixed Reality will help us push Servo technology to the limit: we need to achieve 75 or 90 frames per second per eye to make a workable product. The research advances here will pay huge dividends back in traditional browser engines like Firefox.

In short, this is a "yes, and" shift. Servo continues to be about building the best browser tech, period, for use across Mozilla's products. The increased emphasis on Mixed Reality represents an opportunity to push that tech further, sooner. And the organizational change within Mozilla Research reflects a closer collaboration between the teams needed to make that happen.

<comment><USER7> I distinctly recall Servo presentation in 2012. It started: "web browsers are written in C++. It is bad for humanity."

Web browsers are still written in C++. It is still bad for humanity.

Emphasis on mixred reality may or may not solve that problem sooner. Sometimes the quickest way can seem roundabout. But I am skeptical.

<comment><USER8> I think, that does actually work out.

The problem for humanity is not that browsers are written in C++, it's that browsers have lots of security vulnerabilities.

Being written in C++ is not helpful with that, but it's not integral to the problem. It's not impossible to produce C++-code that doesn't have vulnerabilities, it just requires a lot of effort and often years of battle- testing to close all of them.

But Firefox's source code has for the most part had those years of battle- testing. It's probably safer than if you'd completely rewrite it in Rust, at least in the short term.

Where the use of Rust can deflect most vulnerabilities is in new code. And that's what Mixed Reality is. It's gonna need to be in the browser at some point in the near future and it is a big chunk of new code. It also has harsh performance requirements, meaning they'll have to work with parallelism, which is where C++ is particularly error prone.

<comment><USER9> So we continue to play wack-a-mole with the C++ codebase rather than develop in a language that makes whole classes of exploits impossible?

Firefox is not safe. It's been routinely exploited by law enforcement and hackers alike.

<comment><USER8> Trust me, if Mozilla actually had a choice in the matter, they would opt for just having it all in Rust, too.

But there is no choice. Rewriting Firefox from scratch is going to take decades. Firefox has to continue to function in the meantime. They do occasionally replace components with equivalent Rust components from Servo, and that's so far been a great success, but it's still scary as all heck to take a software that millions of people depend on in their daily life and wholesale replacing the CSS engine, URL parser or media decoder in it.

Besides that, it's not like Chrome/Opera, IE/Edge or Safari are bastions of security. Users can't go anywhere that's decisively safer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once again Mozilla does its best: derailing good projects in unrelated contexts for unknown (and weakly supported) reasons.

<comment><USER11> I would like to disagree, but I can't.

Firefox OS all over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Genuine question: Are there non-toy-related uses for AR/VR that exist? Or is that typical assumption that the applications will emerge only once the technology exists?

<comment><USER13> Certainly, it's early stages, which is why we (Mozilla Research / Emerging Technologies) are investing in it.

We're seeing a lot of industrial use of AR in manufacturing and industrial settings, though consumer use is still less common. If you have't come across it, this HBR article is one of the best public materials: [https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented- realit...](https://hbr.org/2017/11/a-managers-guide-to-augmented-reality)

VR is certainly still emerging as a platform and trying to get out of its hardcore gaming and training/corporate silos. We really believe from early user data and some more advanced markets (e.g., China) that standalone VR headsets and great cross-platform social experiences will help it reach more users.

All that said: I don't personally know what the "instagram of VR" will be, though I certainly wish I did :-)

<comment><USER14> I get why people are excited, and maybe these technologies really will go somewhere this time. But the first commercial AR systems are 25 years old [1], and VR had a wave of popularity in the 90s as well . [2]

The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate. But that's the very thing we should be questioning. I note that pretty much anything 3D has a long history of being heralded as the "early stages" of a revolution that never came.

The most obvious example here is 3D video. We're at the tail end of a boom in 3D movies, a technology that now only gets applied to certain high-priced, effects-heavy blockbusters, and could well vanish. There was an even shorter 3D TV boom. [3] And of course there was the 50s boom in anaglyph (aka colored glasses) 3D. [4]

But previous to that there was the ViewMaster, which was imagined to have all sorts of potential. In WW II, the US military bought 100,000 viewers because they thought the magic of 3D would be better for training soldiers. [5] And this history goes back to at least the Brewster Stereoscope, which sold 250,000 units in the 1850s, and was also expected to be revolutionary. [6]

Given the many waves of hype in this era, I think we should be careful of thinking that we are on the path to some sort of destiny. Smart people have been fooled before. It's perfectly possible that this will be just another hype cycle whose main result is a bunch of dusty old hardware in the junk shops of 2050.

[1] [http://www.augmented-reality-games.com/history.php](http://www.augmented- reality-games.com/history.php)

[2] [https://killscreen.com/articles/failure- launch/](https://killscreen.com/articles/failure-launch/)

[3] [https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv- finally-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/shambling-corpse-of-3d-tv-finally- falls-down-dead/)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_film#The_%22golden_era%22_\(1952%E2%80%931954\))

[5] [http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did- the-...](http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/2015/08/24/did-the-u-s- military-buy-millions-of-viewmaster-reels-during-world-war-ii/)

[6] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereosco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope#Brewster_stereoscope)

<comment><USER15> > "The only way we can really call today the "early stages" of either of these > technologies is by imagining a future where they dominate."

I'd suggest domination is not a prerequisite for success. Let's imagine a scenario where only 5% of the world population uses VR or AR on a regular basis. That's still a market of millions of people, but it's not at the level of world domination. Not every new technology has to replace the one before, it's far more common for old and new technologies to co-exist.

<comment><USER14> Maybe. But at this level of hype, I think that sort of niche success means people can't really call what's going on today the "early stages" of anything. Instead today would more be the bubble before the crash.

The ViewMaster is a fine example there. It's a neat novelty technology! I loved mine when I was a kid. People still love them today. Is it successful? Sure. Do millions of people own them? Definitely. But in retrospect the DoD purchase of 100k viewers doesn't seem like the early stages of anything.

Or think of satellite phones. The Iridium program was massively hyped, and it was a technical success. But commercially it never took off. Satellite phones are still available today, and there are circa a million subscribers. Was the 1990s hype the "early stages"? Again, in retrospect I'd say no.

So sure, domination isn't necessary for success. But I think future domination is necessary to retroactively justify the hype and investment of our current era.

<comment><USER15> Regarding justifying the hype, people are always going to hype new tech they're interested in, regardless of its commercial potential (I realise VR is nothing new, but this current generation of devices has already made further inroads into the mainstream compared to their predecessors). I don't think hype requires justification, it's just a reflection of what humans get excited about. To put it another way, imagine someone you know told you they were going on holiday to somewhere you've already been before, and they were really excited about having the chance to go there. Even if you didn't think this place was that great, would you expect them to justify their excitement?

As for investment, you have a point. Perhaps the level of investment will prove to be a mistake, but at this point in time we don't really know how big of a demand there will be for VR and AR. I'd struggle at this stage to predict how it will end up, but what I can say is that I can see evidence supporting the prediction that they'll be mainstream, as well as evidence supporting the prediction that they'll be niche. We probably won't know with any certainty until after the second or third generation of current devices is on the market, as that's the point where they're likely to take off commercially if they're going to. Speculation before that point can be fun, but I don't think it'll change the outcome.

<comment><USER14> Excitement is a feeling, which nobody has to justify. Hype is a behavior, and people can and should be held responsible for their behaviors.

Especially so given that hyping something is "to promote or publicize (a product or idea) intensively, often exaggerating its importance or benefits". It's not a neutral act. And in the commercial context, the purpose of hype is generally, in one way or another, to put money in the pockets of the person doing the hyping.

<comment><USER15> > "Excitement is a feeling, which nobody has to justify. Hype is a behavior, > and people can and should be held responsible for their behaviors."

Depends who's doing the hyping. If it's a potential consumer, then hype is derived from excitement, and the same rules that apply to the justification of excitement would apply to the justification for hype. On the other hand, if it's a company hyping their products, then they may not be led by their feelings, but I don't see the harm in it either. What do you lose out on if a company is hyping their products?

<comment><USER14> If you honestly cannot imagine any negative effects of a hype cycle, especially when I just quoted the fact that hype involves "exaggerating its importance or benefits", then I really don't think I can help you.

<comment><USER15> Do I think there's anything wrong with the current hype cycle for VR? No. The way I see it, If someone knows they're being sold to, then they can assess that sales pitch accordingly.

What's more interesting to me is that you're implying that this hype (a.k.a. advertising) is having a negative impact on you, even if you don't intend to buy the product yourself. What's the worst case scenario here? That some investors make a bad investment?

<comment><USER14> If you honestly cannot imagine any negative effects of a hype cycle, especially when I just quoted the fact that hype involves "exaggerating its importance or benefits", then I really don't think I can help you.

<comment><USER15> Repeating yourself just highlights you don't know how to respond to someone questioning something you hold as unquestionably true. It's not healthy to hold onto anything as unquestionably true, so you have my condolences. Perhaps we have different views of what the hype cycle is, but it doesn't look like you're willing to explore that further. If you were willing to explore it further, picking a previous example where the hype cycle has either ended or is coming to an end, such as for smartphones (which appear to be largely seen as a commodity now), how would you describe the damage caused by the hype cycle?

<comment><USER14> It's not my job to educate you. It's not that I don't know how. It's that I think it's a waste of my time. I made that clear once and you ignored that. I repeated it because you apparently wouldn't take the hint. Which you ignored again, with more lazy, entitled waffle.

If you would like to make it my job to educate you, my casual consulting rate is $250/hour, 10 hour minimum, paid in advance to MBO Partners in Virginia. Until then, adieu.

<comment><USER15> > "If you would like to make it my job to educate you, my casual consulting > rate is $250/hour, 10 hour minimum, paid in advance to MBO Partners in > Virginia. Until then, adieu."

Forgive me if I pass on being enlightened on something as trivial as hype. I hope you teach something more substantial to those clients paying $250 an hour.

<comment><USER14> Imagine my relief.

<comment><USER15> I'd imagine ignorance is bliss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does this mean Servo will exist only as a mixed reality platform, and they are abandoning the independent next-generation browser project? EDIT: Is it an organizational change - i.e., does the Servo team now report to Mixed Reality?

<comment><USER13> Servo will continue to be a next-generation browser engine and a place where we'll be doing a lot of experimentation on new standards and implementation techniques. I'm sure the community will also continue to use it for all sorts of cool things!

Joining up with the mixed reality team is more about how the Mozilla staff working on Servo will be focusing their time and some of the desire we have for things we want to do for mixed reality that are a little invasive and early-stage of the standards process to be experimenting with inside of existing production browser engines.

With regards to a full browser, there's still a pretty big gap before Servo could stand on its own in a browser ([https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Remaining- work](https://github.com/servo/servo/wiki/Remaining-work) ). Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices.

<comment><USER17> >> Filling that list out is not a higher priority for the Mozilla staff over getting the stuff done we need to experiment with delivering the web on VR & AR devices.

So building a fully functional browser is not higher priority than getting the half-baked browser working in a niche environment? I'm half joking here, and half serious. How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR? And why does it need to be aware of the fact that it's in VR? People are still developing interaction and navigation methods in VR.

<comment><USER13> > How is a browser supposed to look differently in VR?

Great question! Some of the best early work on this was done by ex-Mozilla, current-Google employee Josh Carpenter - check out:

[http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/](http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/declarative-3d/) [http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing- explorations/](http://www.joshcarpenter.ca/vr-browsing-explorations/)

There's a lot we can do that is even beyond these early explorations to deliver new features to developers to experiment with and users to try soon via Servo, alongside GeckoView in new VR/AR-focused browser products.

If you take a look at the link I provided above on remaining work and rough estimates to get things just working in Servo (and not FULLY web compat), you're looking at an effort of several years for the entire team, and that's assuming the web platform both stayed still and went ahead and finished writing all the tests and specs for everything on the web that is today neither tested nor fully spec'd. I don't see that in the cards for 2018.

<comment><USER18> So is this the end of the attempt to make Servo into a fully web compatible competitor to go up against/replace Gecko, et al? Was that ever the goal, really? It seemed like Servo was a "let's see if we can do it" and now it's changed into a "what's the point of putting all this effort into making one more 2D web renderer when we can be at the forefront of 3D web renderers?"

Not passing judgement on anything with the above statement. Just trying to make sense of it all.

<comment><USER19> We're still working on web compatibility; that's not changing.

But I don't think we've ever had a concrete goal to have a standalone Servo browser. Parts of servo in firefox? Sure. Trying out new ideas? Sure. Embedding servo a la electron or WebkitView? Sure. But Servo as a standalone browser has always been a "maybe someday" thing -- we've never worked _against_ it, but I don't recall us ever explicitly targeting it, though I think most of us have always had some hope that we'll reach that point eventually.

<comment><USER20> What about the concept of turning Gecko into Servo piece by piece?

That is, continuing the Quantum work until there is either no C++ code left, or the C++ code left can turned off via config option ("prefer perfect security over perfect compatibility") while still having a browser that works on the vast majority of the web.

<comment><USER21> Servo components will continue to be uplifted into Gecko (e.g. WebRender and Pathfinder are on track to be in Firefox later this year). But ever since Servo's original announcement people from Mozilla have been explicitly saying that people should _not_ expect Servo to wholesale replace Gecko in Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the way the title is phrased it sounds like the servo team is leaving servo to work on mixed reality, quite misleading.

<comment><USER23> Exactly what I thought, I'm still not sure whether it's another "Advancing our amazing bet".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one thinking VR for consumers won't happen for the same reason 3D television didn't happen 5(?) years ago?

It's too clumsy. If you aren't gonna walk with it then it's 360 display that makes you vomit, and if you are gonna walk with it not every consumer has huge empty room where that's feasible. Most of us have couch or desk at home where we consume media, not empty warehouse. I predict whatever Mozilla thinks they are doing it will fail for the same reasons Google Glass failed spectacularly or why after years already spent on VR I don't see anybody outside koolaid- drinking techies owning one set.

Mozilla has one good consumer project that can realistically be completed (browser in type-safe language) and getting the team behind it bogged down with tech that's immature and doomed to failure is unfortunate.

<comment><USER8> Servo is actually not typically viewed as realistically completable. Even Firefox, which is being developed full-pelt, is behind on web standards (like any other browser is).

So, for Servo to catch up to the current state of Firefox and to then also keep pace with new web standards, it would have to be developed much quicker than Firefox is being developed. So, that would require more than double the development capacity that Mozilla currently has, as they can't drop Firefox development either.

There is some points that could alleviate this: <ul> <li>A smaller project grows quicker, <li>it being written in Rust might speed up development in the long run and <li>several components are now shared between Firefox and Servo, meaning that the development and maintenance work is shared as well, <ul> but it still is far away from realistically completable.

Which is also not what the project is meant to be. It's a research project. Trying out new things, creating components that can be used in Firefox, and doing experiments with VR or similar are exactly what it can be used for.

<comment><USER24> It's helluva more completable then any VR project Mozilla is going to try. It will be another Firefox phone project.

And you don't have to repeat 20 years of Firefox to complete Firefox, a lot of it were dead-ends like XUL (themed GTK would do), a lot of it were non- essential features like Pocket and a lot of it were rewrites and mistakes that they won't have to repeat and like you said being written in Rust should speed things along. Lastly, I don't care if Servo is released standalone or if Firefox gets replaced by Servo like the ship of Theseus, all I care about is browser that is less explodable, otherwise I'll continue on Chrome.

<comment><USER8> They already have completed VR projects: [https://vr.mozilla.org/](https://vr.mozilla.org/)

Pocket required essentially no work. They bought an existing service and stuck a fancy bookmark for it into Firefox.

And well, I'm mainly just repeating what Mozilla devs have said. They are deeper into the matter than both us, they can better judge just how much work it is. And it's easy to forget just how complex web browsers are. None of the major browsers use a browser engine which's development started in this millenium for exactly this reason.

I'm also not aware of Chrome being less explodable. I'd say, it's more explodable with its malware-filled extension store, default unencrypted sync service and annecdotally a vulnerability like this [1] being left unfixed for years and careless behaviour like this [2].

[1]: [https://github.com/anttiviljami/browser-autofill- phishing](https://github.com/anttiviljami/browser-autofill-phishing)

[2]: [https://www.wired.com/story/chrome-yubikey-phishing- webusb/](https://www.wired.com/story/chrome-yubikey-phishing-webusb/)

Firefox used to have a worse security architecture, but it's essentially equivalent now. The only real difference that I'm aware of, is that Firefox by default groups processes for tabs, meaning if a webpage manages to exploit a major vulnerability in Firefox to gain control of the process it's being executed in, then it has access to 1/4 of your tabs and therefore might potentially be able to steal sensitive data, whereas in Chrome it would then also have to exploit a vulnerability in the OS to do that.

<comment><USER24> > They are deeper into the matter than both us

Or execs are driving a bus into the wall. It wouldn't be the first time that happened for sure.

> I'm also not aware of Chrome being less explodable.

It used to be. It only took them 10 years to enable sandboxing.

> with its malware-filled extension store

And no rational person installs extensions from it for that reason without first checking who stands behind the extension.

> then it has access to 1/4 of your tabs and therefore might potentially be > able to steal sensitive data

So essentially not equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> """We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene."""

This is the most important missing piece, are their bugs for this?

Until we have html/dom textures in vr I just don't see webvr being very successful.

Just like the headset isolates you from the room, the lack of normal web content in vr/mr is very isolating.

<comment><USER26> I think they will never do this for DRM and security reasons :(

<comment><USER27> DRM doesn't factor into this. canvas.drawWindow() has been a thing (for addons) since 2005: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRende...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/CanvasRenderingContext2D/drawWindow)

<comment><USER26> That's pretty cool - so you can just render DRMed video to a texture and record that texture to get around the new DRM stuff?

<comment><USER8> You can also set up a camera in front of your monitor and just record the whole thing. DRM has never been functional. Best it can do, is deflect the average user from just quickly sending it to his friend. But anyone with any motivation can easily get around it.

<comment><USER26> I'm honestly really glad to hear this

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The amount of negativity in this thread is crazy. With Microsoft pushing VR & AR right into the operating system, and headsets < $300 becoming commonplace, not to mention the iPhone X being built around the AR tech, you'd think people might get the hint that things have changed.

Anyway, I was just wondering if the Servo team had seen the work Elevr had done on basic interaction design? They lost funding last year but I thought they had a ton of work done.

<comment><USER29> "Things have changed".

That's being a bit liberal. Sure, [AV]R is going to be important in the next few years, but it certainly won't be _mandatory_. People will still be using flat monoscopic (not stereoscopic) displays.

The work Mozilla has put into Servo is clearly very useful _right now_. There is still _a lot_ of work to be done on Servo, and on Rust itself. Are you really that surprised that some of us are wary of splitting that team's priorities to work on something like [AV]R?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> When I first heard the announcement about Firefox OS a handful of years ago, I thought to myself "that's a bad idea. They should stay focused instead of stretching themselves too thin."

You're still not as fast or battery-efficient as Safari on macOS, so for me, Mozilla has more work to do on its core products before jumping onto a new tech project (like Firefox OS) that doesn't even have a clear use in the market.

You're not Sony. You're not Facebook. Focus on what you're good at now, let those guys find the market and the killer apps, THEN jump into AR.

You still have more work to do where you are. Tell the product people to shut up. FOCUS. Fewer features, better quality.

</comment><comment><USER31> > We will continue to experiment with things like DOM to texture. It is still > difficult to allow web content to be part of a 3D scene.

Microsoft's Chromeffects did this in 1998. It was pretty amazing, but alas, got canned less than a year later.

</comment><comment><USER32> And they still make something VR/AR on rustlang ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> That's a pity. I was thinking that maybe Mozilla was getting back on track and making a no-nonsense web browser. Instead they're diverting resources to yet another gimmicky fad.

<comment><USER34> > making a no-nonsense web browser

I fear that ship has long sailed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I really like all the questions and remarks being placed here by people who have experience with the challenges of MR or are unclear about the goals of Servo, and the Mozilla people interacting here.

For those of you simply dismissing whatever's happening because VR has been hyped before and it didn't pan out this time, I'd highly recommend this post: [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five- minutes](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes)</comment>


Since March, IE Lost 11.4 Percent Share To Firefox, Safari, And Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/since-march-internet-explorer-lost-114-percent-share-to-firefox-safari-and-chrome/ <comment><USER2> It looks like a lot of IE 7 went to IE 8 not the "new browsers" maybe IE6 users are switching over though.

I still know plenty of people who won't switch because they like the way ie6 looks and plenty more who don't know firefox is a browser on campus computers.

edit: Most of those people don't even know what a browser is and if you tell them to open up their browser they say "do you mean the internet?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Since January IE7 went from 53.7% down to 30.79%. For a net drop of 22.91%.

In that same period IE8 went up from 1% to 15.23%. A net gain of 14.23%.

So the upgrade there cost Microsoft 8.68%. And then there is an extra 10% drop for IE6

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if they could pick colors that aren't almost identical for their graph lines.

</comment><comment><USER4> Great to see IE7's significant drop, should make life easier on developers.

Does anybody know how these stats are gathered, or what they mean when they say 'market share'? Is it % of internet traffic requests by browser? or % of downloads/installs?

I'm wondering if browser market share is based on users primary browser, using stats from companies like compete, or if it is based on downloads or some other metric.

I have IE, Safari And Opera only for testing purposes, I do most development in Firefox due to firebug, and use Chrome as my main browser. So how would I be counted in this survey?

I think this is important because if it is based on % of traffic, non-OEM browsers (Firefox, Chrome) could appear to have more traffic than default installed browsers (IE/Safari) simply because the users of Firefox & Chrome spend more time on more sites.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER5> At Yahoo our "browser share" stats mean "unique visitors using this browser". A certain amount of effort goes into de-duplicating users to get the "unique" score, but there's a pretty big margin of error.

Page views are not taken into account, and downloads/installs are absolutely not considered (because nobody has reliable numbers on those anyway, not even the browser makers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like just since January the combined market share of IE versions has declined from 73% to 55%. That is a dramatic change. More significant, probably than a temporary spike in search share driven by ads.

</comment><comment><USER7> In fact, IE's market share fell 17% (65.8-55.4)/65.8. Oh Techcrunch.

<comment><USER8> 11% of the total, right?

<comment><USER7> Yes, but suppose it fell 11 percentage points from 90%. That would be a smaller real drop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like Microsoft is going to have to come up with a new angle of attack.

Hiding $10,000 on an IE-only website doesn't seem to have cut it.

<comment><USER10> I bet hiding $100,000 on an IE-only website would totally do the trick, though.

<comment><USER11> What about a website that only vomits on IE users?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This will accelerate greatly if Microsoft doesnt get IE9 out the door with comparable javascript speeds. It took Firefox a while, but its finally performing as fast as Safari & Chrome. Lots of people use apps like gmail and google maps, and if they see one browser running them silky smooth, while the other is a jerky mess, they'll be compelled to switch.

</comment><comment><USER13> The really, really good news is the fall of IE6. Currently 7.6%. 5% should be an important milestone in its decline into irrelevance. Hopefully when that is attained - and it looks like it could be soon - we can all kiss that nightmare of a browser goodbye for good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I say kick it now. Only 9% of people use IE6, that # will continue to dwindle. The current rate of drop for IE6 is 2% a month. So it'll probably go down to 5% within 4-6 months.

No sense in supporting a browser that will become irrelevant in 6 months.

<comment><USER14> Depends on who your client is. If you're running a tech-y website/blog and most of your users are running Safari or the next FF beta, you're generally OK not supporting IE6, and can probably even pull off a snarky message that pops up alerting your IE6 users that they're using a crappy browser. If your client is a financial services company that mandates its employees use Win NT, your cries of "but IE6 is dead!" will be drowned out by angry shouts of "our interwebs site is broke!"

Charts like this are helpful because they give us a sense for the current, global browser-usage climate and trends. However, _global_ statistics alone should never be used to determine which browsers your site should support, as a cross-section of your niche of users may vary widely from this data.

<comment><USER15> I really wish Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and everyone else who controlled a decent portion of the net would all just agree to simultaneously put up snarky messages. What if the _entire_ internet _did_ break for IE6, all of the sudden? Given a long, fair warning--perhaps even a TV ad--it could be similar to the analog switchoff.

<comment><USER16> This is super unlikely to happen.

Google's snarky messages would invite people to download Chrome, while Apple's would try to convince people to download Safari. Combined with the fact that people still using IE6 of their own volition would be most likely to blame Microsoft for "breaking the Internet" and switch to a different browser, it would not be in Microsoft's best interests to coordinate something like this.

In addition, television advertising made sense for switching off analog television, since the people most likely to be affected would be watching. Even if even one of the three companies you mentioned put up money for television advertising, it would be a waste of resources. Targeted banner ads would be better.

<comment><USER14> > Google's snarky messages would invite people to download Chrome

Actually, I'm surprised Google hasn't tried anything like this yet. Given how many ie6'ers use Google everyday, I bet a nonintrusive, hide-able message on search results pages encouraging them to 'upgrade' to Chrome would go a long way towards increasing their marketshare.

<comment><USER17> This could probably be considered anti-competitive (using their search monopoly to push their other products). Even though the courts may rule their way, why should they bother?

<comment><USER18> > _This could probably be considered anti-competitive_

It could be, but I don't think it is. Every other browser supplier has the right to -- and does -- put up web pages suggesting people use their browser; they also have the right to put up other content on their websites, which may or may not drive traffic to them. I note that the Microsoft home page has an ad for IE8 on it, and this isn't anti-competitive either.

Jusdt because Google is successful, doesn't mean they're anti-competitive. Now if they fiddled with their web site so other people's browsers didn't work properly, or fiddled with their browser so other people's websites were poorly rendered, that would be uncompetitive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are botnets the second-hand smoke of computer security? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/10/are-botnets-the-second-hand-smoke-of-computer-security.ars <comment><USER2> Hrm, no mention of "negative externality", which is what they mean, and what it really comes down to.</comment>


Umati: using R and python to study inflammatory speech online - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iHub/UmatiCodebase

<comment><AUTHOR> From the same mob that has bought us the rugged modem BRCK and the crowd mapping Ushahidi software, this project is the result of some great work from the Kenyan iHub hackspace/incubator. Refined over many months with a focus on Kenyan political situation, it's application in other places would be welcome. I believe the group have been asked to set up for the coming Ethiopian and Nigerian elections in 2015.

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the fact that they are being cautious about using the term hate speech. It has become a catch-all for anything that's unpleasant, even if harmless to society.

If anyone wanted a background I found this link: [http://voicesthatpoison.org/guidelines/](http://voicesthatpoison.org/guidelines/)</comment>


UnCommon Web (PG Inspired Lisp Web Platform: Then there was UCW, and all was good) - <AUTHOR> http://common-lisp.net/project/ucw/index.html <comment><USER2> First off, I like the elegancy of the CPS approach, however...

The continuation-passing approach doesn't scale. Not only to multiple machines, as papersmith points out, but on a single machine. news.yc has (had?) problems with a theoretical DoS which pg has acknowledged in email: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=18083> (post formatting corrupted by pg hiding then unhiding the post).

Dave Roberts has an interesting write-up of the approach: <http://www.findinglisp.com/blog/2004/11/web-application-design-rest-of- story.html> In email he said that talking about it with pg one time, pg made clear that for Viaweb it was only used for the web site the merchants accessed, not the many hoards of customers who accessed "normal" links, and only the links on the current page for that merchant worked, i.e. if you pressed the browser's Back button all the links on that old page were broken and the server would just present you with the current page again. In summation Dave said if your site is small enough continuations may work fine, but if it's meant to be the next big thing use REST and I agree.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is probably the neatest web framework of any language I've used. The only downside I can see is that it stores the app states in sessions in the form of closures, and since you can't easily serialize closures, each session is stuck on one machine. So if you want to scale to multiple machines, each user will have to use a single machine for the entirety of the session, which could result in load imbalance with traffic-heavy sites. This is only in theory, it would be nice to hear some stories where sticky-session has not been a problem in scaling.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone have experience with the highly object-oriented UCW Lisp web platform? It looks interesting.

<comment><USER4> It uses things called components which are like objects but represent either a page or portion of a page. It's really easy to prototype in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks exactly like Perl's CGI.pm or CGI::Simple to me.

That's not a bad thing. Most folks working other languages would do well to pick the most popular CPAN module for a given area and re-implement it in their preferred language as a way to get a jump on development. As some folks have done with Template::Toolkit for other languages.

But, I'm not sure I see what's interesting about UCW, other than being written in Lisp.

<comment><USER6> UCW is based on continuations and allows you to code your web apps in a manner more like a desktop app. It was originally like a Lisp verison of Seaside, although I think it has evolved into its own personality. It's nothing like CGI.pm.

<comment><USER5> I didn't see any continuations in the first couple of pages of the docs. They merely looked like lisp versions of the examples for CGI.pm. If those first few examples aren't representative of UCW, then I'll happily retract my assertion.

<comment><USER4> It's an unnecessary detail (the continuation I mean) there is no need to bother the user of the framework with that detail. It's hidden in code like this...

(call 'componentname :param1 value1 :param2 value2)

and

(defaction are-you-sure ((q question) answer)

(if (string= answer "y")

(call 'excellent)

(call 'tobad)))

Question excellent tobad represent pages/widgets. Here question probably has a form which has a field called answer and the submit binds to the action are- you-sure.

Thing to note: The workflow is defined easily and is very clear.

[sorry I couldn't get this to indent]

<comment><USER7> Continuation-style webapps are supposed to make programming easier, but doesn't that contradict REST principles for webapps? I think it would be preferable to have a good framework (for lisp!) that supported REST-style. I would expect the continuations-style holding session state would lead to problems once you get past prototyping. Also, can you make cool urls for bookmarking?

<comment><USER4> Actually bookmarking is an issue with what I am doing so for now I'm using a redirect to get the url cleaned up. For example if you want to get timetable from London to Brighton then you search and the results are on a url like /timetable/london/brighton.

There is a way to change the url but that only half works for me. I still get urls like timetable/?from=london&to;=brighton</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nine skills that separate good and great designers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/001266.html

<comment><AUTHOR> A very good talk & slide -- unfortunately the audio seems to be unavailable (and the iTunes link is giving me a "Sorry, this clip isn't available to those in US" message) -- if someone has it, can they please put it up somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER2> I thought this looked vaguely familiar when I read it, and then I noticed the date: 29 September 2006. Still relevant though, so good to be reminded.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone put this on slideshare? I'm in Indonesia and my internet is dialup slow. Thanks.</comment>


Nancy Pelosi, Ron Paul join SOPA opposition - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/strange-bedfellows-nancy-pelosi-ron-paul-join-sopa-opposition.ars <comment><USER2> I don't think there was any doubt that Ron Paul would oppose SOPA. Nancy Pelosi's opposition, on the other hand, is somewhat surprising, but also quite promising.

<comment><USER3> Nancy Pelosi represents the 8th Congressional District, which is basically San Francisco. She knows who her constituents are.

<comment><USER4> Is there any real chance she could fail to get re-elected?

I suspect some other reason for her stance on this (can't fathom what, though).

<comment><USER5> Pelosi will never fail to get re-elected. But as House Minority Leader she has other things to worry about, in particular getting all the _other_ Democrats re-elected. And that means trying not to piss off any big donor group. Big Content is a big donor group for the Democrats, which is why she'd be naturally inclined to support something like this. On the other hand, overwhelming opposition from Big Internet (particuarly Google, etc) is a bit of a dealbreaker even if Silicon Valley isn't nearly as conscientious about paying its protection money (err, political donations) as Hollywood.

So, like she says, "we need to find another way". They'll come up with a new bill that is either less objectionable or one that hides the objectionable parts more clearly... and then they'll pass it when nobody's paying attention.

<comment><USER6> This is roughly correct. Please do not confuse Pelosi's temporary and minor objections to the bill as written with any sort of principled long-term objection to the concept behind the bill. Pelosi supports copyright maximization as much as anyone; she's just attempting to find some minimal accommodation to stop Silicon Valley from squawking so loudly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone yet made a serious estimate of how likely SOPA is to pass?

I would hope that if our legislative system is so divided that they can't agree on legislation relating to budgets or healthcare, they won't agree on this legislation either.

Not that its a good thing for the legislation system to be so ineffective, but it would seem truly ironic if they agree on something that will hurt the economy, but not on things that will help the economy.

<comment><USER8> The House _did_ manage to pass a bill upholding the status of pizza as a vegetable: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-usa-lunch- idUST...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/18/us-usa-lunch- idUSTRE7AH00020111118)

<comment><USER9> They did no such thing. That part of the bill concerned how much tomato paste has to be on the pizza for the tomato paste to be enough to count as a serving of vegetables. The USDA wants 8 tablespoons, and Congress wants 2.

<comment><USER10> _for the tomato paste to be enough to count as a serving of vegetables_

Sigh; I live in a country where tomatoes are considered a vegetable.

<comment><USER11> Tomatoes are actually both a fruit and a vegetable. Fruit is a botanical distinction, while vegetable is a culinary one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In all seriousness, all we need is President Obama to say he is for SOPA and it will immediately be voted out of existence.

<comment><USER13> Sadly, that won't happen, though. Obama and Biden are big supporters of RIAA and MPAA. They were the ones setting up the "voluntary" ISP alert system for people downloading illegal torrents, too.

<comment><USER14> I missed your logic. If Obama is a big supporter of RIAA and MPAA, then why wouldn't he come out and say that he is for SOPA?

<comment><USER15> Two words for you: Overton Window.

SOPA was designed to fail. It was designed, however, to help pass a less evil version of it in the future, by leaving the impression we have to defend content creators, but not this much.

Wanna bet?

<comment><USER16> Are you sure Protect-IP wasnt the bill to be shot down, and SOPA is the replacement?

<comment><USER15> It may take more than one absurd bill to shift the window enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The _real_ question is, "Can Barack Obama stand to sign this bill when he relies so heavily on youthful support for election?" Also, "what happens if Republican nominee comes out against it?"

I don't hear much about Obama vetoes, does he just sign everything that hits his desk like Bush?

</comment><comment><USER18> That is not going to chang enuch I am afraid. We could always count on Ron Paul to vote against it but there are way too many people in the house for one vote to matter.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is very interesting news, but I am scared that there will be a bit of a backlash against this post because of its political nature, on HN specifically.

How do people feel about Ron Paul's standpoint on Net Neutrality?

<comment><USER20> His standpoint is consistent with other libertarian views he has. No regulation. The Internet has worked fine without regulation for so many years. And if your carrier/isp is throttling your connection, switch to a different one.If many people switch then they'll stop throttling. Simple as that.

<comment><USER21> The internet is the product of a government project and has been heavily regulated since its inception.

<comment><USER22> > and has been heavily regulated since its inception

Interesting; I wasn't aware of this. I know that the original network design grew out of a DARPA project, but I wasn't aware of any significant federal regulatory involvement since the internet became open to general, non- government use in the '80s. Do you have any references you could point to that might provide more detail?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Love this. Thank God.

<comment><USER24> Not so fast. I heard God is in favour of SOPA.</comment></comment>


Need feedback on project dealing with monitoring the event loop - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone I'm part of a small team of developers who will be spending the next few weeks creating a tool to benefit the Node ecosystem.
We're interested in doing something with monitoring the event loop.
Using async hooks and performance hooks we are thinking about creating a tool that shows you how long each async call and subsequent calls take in the event loop. Given any user's experience with Node, do you think this is a reasonable idea? If so what other metrics or information do you think would be valuable for developers?
If not, what developer tool do you wish the Node ecosystem had?
Thank you for your time; my team and I really appreciate your feedback! <comment><USER2> Is this for educational purposes or for production-grade code?

Because you can take CPU profiles to create flame graphs to show stack depth and examine how much time is spent in different stack frames.

You can also run via node --inspect program.js to connect the chrome dev tools and take CPU profiles / heap snapshots that way.

I've run into a few issues doing this but they might be too niche for whatever it is you're doing:

1\. Platform compatibility sucks. I think you can use perf on Linux or dtrace on OSX. On Windows there's xperf but you run into issues when you need to run things in elevated CMD but you don't have access to do so (not an uncommon situation in enterprise environments). In the end I gave up going this route

2\. With doing this via the Chrome dev tools, I couldn't find a way to persist a .cpusnapshot to disk and load it later in Chrome. I wanted to do it on disk first because the whole thing crashes on me if the CPU snapshot runs longer than X minutes, so if the browser crashes with the file from disk I could try running it with the stackvis package. Again I couldn't run with node --perf_basic_prof because it's not cross-platform

I hope that helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is for educational purposes. Thanks for the tip on seeing how much time is spent on different stack frames. Your response has helped most definitely. However, we want to take a deeper dive and be able to access nested async functions. We would like be able to specifically identify each function, and the time spent to execute each function, whether it be async or a nested async function. This would help for debugging purposes to be able to see which function is taking a while to process. Do you find this to be a feasible idea?

<comment><USER2> By "the time spent each function", how is that different from [http://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/flamegraphs.html)? The only thing I can think of is that typically the x axis in flamegraphs is sorted alphabetically and aggregated and you could instead try to do this chronologically and in isolation.

I'm curious which workflows you think your approach would be well suited for. In my case, I was investigating a webpack build process and flamegraphs served me well because with over 2000 modules seeing the data in aggregate is actually helpful. Though if purely for educational purposes, you can always do this chronologically and focus on a subset if the running time is too long</comment></comment></comment>


Google and H.264 - Far From Hypocritical - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that Apple-centric folks think H.264 is popular because of them, when in reality the major, basically only, reason it's used on the web is because of Adobe Flash, which of course they have all been trained to hate. This leads to many strange opinions, including the one discussed here.

So globally, in a couple of months when Google turns off H.264 in Chrome the HTML5 support for H.264 will stand at 5% (yes, that's not a typo) including all mobile browsing i.e. iOS which contributes less than a percent. Even in the US where Apple is strongest it only reaches 10%. Meanwhile in Europe WebM in HTML5 after Firefox 4 is released will be up at 60% (50% worldwide, 40% US).

So with numbers like 60% vs 5% why isn't WebM going to totally wipe the floor with H.264? How can people be complaining about Google ruining things and causing them so much extra work by taking away their 10% of the measly 15% share that H.264 has now? Short answer: Flash.

Flash currently delivers H.264 to 98% of the web. They've promised but not yet released VP8 support and can rapidly get it to a good 85% of the web within a year of release. What Google does with Chrome is really irrelevant in the face of that. It's more about sending a message. A message that roughly says "H.264 in HTML5 cannot work without Flash as a fallback or shiv, so a strategy to promote WebM via pushing people to Flash in the short-term is no less (or more) ridiculous". Apple's position is only tenable because of the actions of their two arch-frenemies: Adobe and, to a much lesser extent but growing as IE9 comes online, Microsoft and either or both may just see this as a chance to stick it to Apple and steal some glory for themselves.

<comment><USER3> _when in reality the major, basically only, reason it's used on the web is because of Adobe Flash_

Could you elaborate on this or provide a citation? I thought Flash video was almost exclusively a proprietary variant of the H.263 (yes, that's not a typo) standard until the most recent release of Flash.

<comment><USER4> The other thing to remember about Flash though, is that they achieve something like 97% penetration very quickly. There are very few devices sitting out there w/ flash9 or earlier.

See this: [http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/vers...](http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html)

<comment><USER3> Exactly, which raises the question of why Adobe would bother transitioning a market that they completely dominated from one codec to another if they weren't feeling the pressure of H.264 from the mobile space (ZG's assertion appears to be that mobile in general — or, at least, iOS in particular — exerted no such pressure).

<comment><USER2> I think Adobe rarely gets accused of having their finger on the pulse of the mobile market around the year 2007. Instead H.264 was just an obvious choice, they would probably have gone with it in 2005 if the licensing situation was better, they certainly got abuse from some quarters for not doing so at that time.

My contention was that serving H.264 became feasible the day Flash started supporting it. The day before VP6 was a better choice because everyone had it installed and could therefore actually watch your video. The same is true now of H.264, it may be a wonderful codec and used in Blu-Ray and blah, blah, blah but the reason you can put it on a website and have 98% of people watch it is because it's supported by Flash. Sure Apple can force you to install Quicktime to watch their keynote, Microsoft can do the same with Silverlight, everyone else uses what's already out there on basically every machine, which is, and has been for a while, Flash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another telling point (and an easy way to identify Apple fanbois) is that this isn't a complaint about proprietary plugin usage. This is a complaint about _Flash_. And that's where the sour grapes are. Anything that fanbois want to say about the inclusion of Flash in Chrome can be said about Java Applets, but there hasn't been the merest hint of a peep about Google's relationship with Oracle.

<comment><USER5> To be perfectly honest with you, your comment reads far better without the use of the word _fanboi_. That's name calling, and it sits at the lowest rung of Paul Graham's "how to disagree" scale.

<comment><USER4> Duly noted for future use.

I however do intend some derision for what i view as a piece of fairly serious intellectual dishonesty.

Not sure whether it'd be better to leave the comment up intact, given that you've commented at this point, or edit the term out.

<comment><USER5> Leave it there. The rest of your point is valuable, and Hn readers ought to be (ha!) open-minded enough to:

a) Read your point and agree with it even if "fanboi" isn't their favourite word, or; b) Read your point and respectfully dissent even if "fanboi" is their favourite word.

This isn't a "tea party."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course it's a business decision by Google. It would be negligent to their shareholders if it weren't a good-faith business decision for Google. It makes plausible strategic business sense for all the reasons others have outlined. (I think it's a bad move, but hey I'm not running the billion dollar company.)

Same with Apple. It is too simplistic to say "Apple dumped Flash". There were three great business reasons for Apple to not have Flash on iOS. (1) A decent speed/energy Flash didn't exist, and Apple had no leverage to get Adobe to make one, (2) Apple does not want to depend on any outsiders to advance their platform, (3) Apple wants to differentiate iOS, so they want to have software target advanced iOS features and be exclusive. Cross-platform tools like Flash defeat that.

Folks, these are the biggest tech players in the world. I don't think either one gives a crap about standards or the free software movement any farther than it advances their business model. We've been in a lucky stretch where both Apple and Google want to commodify web access, so they've support (mostly) open standards. Now they turn their guns on each other and will seek to commodify each other's core products (for Apple, hardware; for Google, advertising).

</comment><comment><USER7> Google fan boys can try and rationalize this decision all they want, but a few things are known.

1\. Most people saw this announcement as 'business' decision by Google

2\. This was not a decision driven by what is best for the average computer/online user

3\. Yay, Flash video! :(

<comment><USER4> 1\. that's totally projecting. Read what they wrote, not what you think they mean. But if you really want to play that game, same can be said for Apple's decision to drop flash.

2\. And dropping flash was good for average users?

3\. Regardless of how much we all hate flash, flash video wasn't dead to begin with, or even dying yet. Sorry to pierce the reality distortion field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know I'm taking to a wall for most of you, but anyone with an open mind and more than 3 years of experience knows:

The reason we moved to H.264 is because it's a standard in the video world. It unified online video really well - everyone uses it and we were all tired of the fragmentation.

Flash is also a standard, particularly for multimedia. You can't have 99.7% penetration and not be a standard.

With all due respect to web standards: a standard is something that everyone uses. I think this is the best and most ironic line in the article:

"HTML5 is an emerging standard and anyone dealing with it has to expect change constantly."

<comment><USER3> _With all due respect to web standards: a standard is something that everyone uses._

It depends upon your priorities. Others would say that a standard is something that is completely & unambiguously specified so that interoperable implementations can be made. The terms under which such implementations are created is yet another concern. We probably need 3 orthogonal axes to plot various standards: ubiquity, specification, licensing terms. A "defacto standard" would score high in ubiquity but might have no specification (let alone one of quality) and might have bad or undefined licensing terms. Other things may have excellent specifications but niche existance. Something like H.264 has a specification, high penetration, but licensing terms that require certain participants to pay. Something like WebM is shooting for very liberal licensing terms, they are currently a niche but are angling for penetration — although I'm not sure if they have/intend-to-have a specification upon which interoperable implementations can be based.

Edit: there are also those who seems to put the greatest importance upon who controls the specification. They wouldn't accept PostScript as a standard, for example, because it isn't controlled by a standards bureaucracy —despite the clarity of its specification. I personally believe that unless we can openly acknowledge all of these components of the concept of "standardization" we'll have a lot of heat & no light when we're discussing it.

My personal leanings: I value a complete & ambiguous spec above all else, and loathe _de facto_ standards that thrive in absence of one. I don't feel standards bodies are a must-have, but acknowledge that they can be nice. I also acknowledge that standards bodies can give the illusion of community control when in fact they provide no such guarantee. I'd rather not have to pay to implement a spec, but in some problem domains (such as codecs) I can understand why some would want to be rewarded for their work.

<comment><USER8> I say _tomato_ , you say _Nix v. Hedden_...

=)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This further complicates building video into web sites with a significant IE user base. I've already seen mushrooming complexity with fellow devs trying to get Ogg into the mix using <video> tags, wanting to "do the right thing", and still ending up with a Flash fallback for Windows users.

HTML5 as we currently find it isn't making this simpler at all.

</comment><comment><USER10> Flash and h264 are completely different and are not at all equivalent.

Google doesn't support Flash. Google supports BROWSER PLUGINS. And Flash is by far the most popular plugin to the point of being ubiquitous. Google CAN'T drop support for Flash without dropping support for plugins. Google could, symbolically, stop bundling the Flash plugin. But really they believe in an open plugin standard which allows for browser extensions.

By comparison h264 is more like a proprietary, out of spec superset of the HTML standard. Building h264 support directly into the browser is equivalent to supporting IE specific markup. Or maybe even ActiveX. It just exposes Google to patent suits.

The real problem is the W3C needs to recommend a codec for the HTML5 video tag. Until they do there is no chance for standards compliant implementations to exist because there is no standard. h264 is not a solution because it's not part of the standard. And it won't become part of the standard until it loses the patent encumberance.</comment>


Show HN: Generate your og:images automatically - <AUTHOR> https://placid.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Hacker-Newsers!

I'm Armin, co-maker of Placid. We deliver Social Images as a Service: Placid lets you generate nice Share Images for Twitter and Facebook via our API. (And more Social Image Formats soon!)

Here's how it works:

1) Choose a preset design from our library.

2) Customize your template with default values for colors, text, photos / logos.

3) Integrate the meta tags into your project.

4) Change parameters of the Image URL in the meta tag to dynamically fill elements of the template. You can f.ex. generate your blog article's title on to the image or fill a browser window with a screenshot of a website.

We started building Placid as a tool to automate Social Image Generation for our own projects and we figured it's something that other people could use too. For now, we concentrated on providing Meta Images, but we're already testing Placid for other use cases, like generated Pinterest Images. So we'll soon add:

* An editor to create templates from scratch (and with custom Image Dimensions)

* More options to customize Presets

* More Presets (also for Instagram Posts and Stories, Pinterest Pins, Facebook Posts,..)

We'd love your feedback and suggestions for missing features or preset options :)

Armin

</comment><comment><USER2> Good idea and it looks good so far. I didn't test it out, but I can imagine that for some cases the fee is worthwhile. I would reduce the amount of "In the future we will implement ..." on your landing page. You should think about creating a Wordpress plugin for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! :)

> You should think about creating a Wordpress plugin for this.

yes that is definitely on the list!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome. I have had the problem that og-image/meta tags are such a hassle (not hard, but just a hassle) -- and was really putting together an idea of making it easier (also supporting SERP previews) and via a JS script. It would use a dashboard so that you didn't have to update the code. But this is definitely one step closer to never having to worry about og-meta tags again :)

Question: I scanned through the landing page but didn't really see any examples of the watermark. Is every og-preview image watermarked?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your kind words

That's true, and I have to Update the Landing page to show some Watermark- Examples also!

but for you now: [https://placid.app/u/mhick?title=hey%20kevinyun%20look%20at%...](https://placid.app/u/mhick?title=hey%20kevinyun%20look%20at%20my%20nice%20watermark)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if you could automatically a/b test the impact of changing the og:images tag has on social media sharing/interaction. That would be a nifty feature too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow - That sounds indeed nifty - afaik you can only have 1 og:image for a Facebook Url/Resource - like [https://placid.app](https://placid.app) can just have 1 image and I can update that via API, but after like 50 Interactions (Clicks/Likes/Shares) you cannot Update any longer.

I think you cannot test on the basis of one article, but in general, you could swap between entirely different templates - hmm I should write that down

<comment><USER5> I believe Facebook will cache the OG image. You can refresh the cached image using their debugger[1]

[1] [https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug](https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug)</comment></comment></comment>


Why the Open Code of Conduct Isn't for Me - <AUTHOR> http://dancerscode.com/blog/why-the-open-code-of-conduct-isnt-for-me/ <comment><USER2> I tried explaining this to my friends who work for GitHub and Facebook just shortly after they offended me by bashing and making fun of Christianity without cause (no one brought it up, or anything remotely related to religion). I don't need to name them. They read HN and know who they are.

I chose to be offended because we're amongst other friends in a Skype chat who promote this sort of thing: environments where discussions and comments that would offend people should be avoided. I'm fine with that. Who wouldn't be? The the degree they promote this to is equivalent to what's in that CoC. It's well-intentioned, as mentioned in this article.

What I'm not fine with is them being hypocrites about it. That's when I choose to be offended. I don't speak ill of anyone in that chat, but to have such "progressive" individuals claim this is the environment they want, and to selectively choose what they want to apply it to is reasonable grounds to get mad.

My problem with these codes of conduct are that the people who promote them have repeatedly persecuted me, and even went as far as to try and deface me in front of my employers.

I think the concept of it alone is fine, but the people advocating for them have been nothing but offensive to me, ironically enough. The people advocating for this haven't been peaceful, respectful individuals. They've made _personal attacks_ on me.

<comment><USER3> There is a slight difference. One doesn't chose to be black or be gay or chose what age they are. These are givens. One does however chose to believe in a religion. Also, blacks and gays and senior citizens don't generally have a habit of proselytizing and judging others morally inferior based on differences. Being blacks or gay or a senior citizens also doesn't require a world view totally at odds with manifest reality nor require financial support or political or even violent action. Some religions do.

<comment><USER4> One chooses to be a feminist. Fair game in your opinion?

<comment><USER3> Yep, fair game. Feminism, racism, whatever "ism" are beliefs. Not intrinsic characteristics. When people believe things someone else finds silly or repugnant and they are mocked... suck it up. Rough luck and too bad. Defend or ignore. Ideology and belief systems shouldn't be protected against mockery and there shouldn't be a free pass to not be offended on this. Unlike intrinsic characteristics.

I say this because it's part of my religion of free will. I really wish people would stop mocking my religion and oppressing me:)

<comment><USER4> I rather like your "religion" (at first glance it seems logically consistent), but I wouldn't personally espouse it except in the kind of company that might tolerate modest proposals :)

There is the "bootstrap problem", which is that what you're describing is more or less a truncated form of humanism - and that in itself is of course a belief system much in the manner of a religion (I guess, as you observe above).

Practically speaking, religion and belief are enshrined as "protected characteristics" for discriminatory purposes in most human rights laws. Right up there with age, disability status, sex, sexual orientation and so on.

<comment><USER3> Sure, "enshrined"... i.e, useful to the state. When not useful or maybe harmful, enshrining doesn't take place. Instead they send federal agents to burn your compound down. And thus it has always been.

I personally don't care for organized religion (nor organized much of anything for that matter). But this bias is irrelevant to the point. That is... belief systems are not the same as intrinsic characteristics of a person and don't in any way deserve the same respect. The comment about "my religion" was to illustrate a simple point. That is, it is practically impossible to respect and refuse to counter all belief systems. Which why would we?

Now, for a workplace where people need to get along, yes, there should be rules about not being rude. But that might include not mocking the kind of shoes someone wears or their preference in movies. Or their religion. But that's as far as I would take belief protections. Religion has gotten a special pass for far too long, probably because it has been useful to the state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sudden thought on reading this: If you have a code of conduct that says that causing offense is the criterion, and someone wants to remove you from the community for whatever reason (malice, jealousy, whatever), all they have to do is repeatedly claim offense at what you say. There is _nothing_ you can do except withdraw from the community. No defense is possible to this attack.

Note well: I am not advocating this attack. I am merely noting the way that offense-based codes of conduct can be used to ruin people.

<comment><USER6> That is exactly right. And it will even go further. Someone will see your twitter feed/blog/facebook/whatever kids are into these days, find something "offensive" about it and complain about you on the Github project you're part of (and probably to your current employer and your mom).

Maybe the project owner will try to say that the CoC only covers what happens in the repo/chat, but the "victim" will explain how she doesn't feel "safe" anymore working with you and you will be kicked out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, like [https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941](https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did any body else notice that r/programming seems to have taken down the link to the discussion from their page. The link to the discussion is here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3e5c6f/why_the_open_code_of_conduct_isnt_for_me/)

It seems to have over 700 points and is around 16 hours old, but I am unable to find it on the r/programming hot tab.

If administrators of r/programming or reddit took it down, I would be interested in why.

</comment><comment><USER8> To those that are up in arms about "political correctness", what is your counter proposal?

I'm a firm believer in your _Right to be Offended_ , but you know what? Maybe GitHub isn't the place where you should expect to be offended. Maybe this Code of Conduct is an attempt to set the conversational tone.

Freedom of speech does not mean the freedom to spray your thoughts and opinions on all platforms, public and private. You have a problem with GitHub? Get your own site and go nuts.

It's _that_ aspect of the internet worth defending tooth and nail. GitHub is not the internet.

<comment><USER9> This doesn't apply to all projects on github, just projects managed by github.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's why I'm baffled that people are losing their shit over this.

<comment><USER10> Because it's setting a bad precedent that others are likely to follow/adopt. "Let's do that. Github did it". Beware cargo cult political correctness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really wonder about people who believe that they have the right to not be offended. It is a disturbing trend. Religion offends me, but I seldom bring it up. The biggest issue I have, though, is that the people who are "invading" these public repos are in no way contributing to the project. They throw a fit and then vanish into thin air. It is some of the most vapid bs I have read about in recent weeks.

</comment><comment><USER12> > race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, colour, immigration status, > social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation, > gender identity and expression, age, size, family status, political belief, > religion, and mental and physical ability

I think they missed "chosen brand of kitchen sink".

<comment><USER13> KOHLER for life

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have yet to read an article complaining about a code of conduct that isn't actually complaining about not being able to be an ass without consequence.</comment>