A Dragnet for Pee-Wee - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/33713850223/a-dragnet-for-pee-wee <comment><USER2> Looks like HN is cranky this morning.

I like it! A bike used to be my primary means of transportation back in the Bay Area, and I used to pay for good ones. Every single one of them got stolen. Every one. The last one I owned had a state-of-the-art lock on it, so the thieves _cut the bike rack_. People that don't rely on a bike seriously underestimate what it means to a bike owner when their bike is stolen; to a lot of people, it's just, "oh, you lost your toy, just go buy another one". To many bike owners, it's more like, "I just lost the ability to get around quickly."

The number one reason I don't own a bike right now is because I don't feel like putting up with it being stolen.

So this is one of those really big under-served pain points that everybody keeps saying you should look for when building a business.

priceonomics' approach makes perfect sense: make it easier to locate stolen bikes online, and build a new, centralized marketplace specifically for bikes that people will want to use (which also makes it harder for thieves to sell bikes online without the owner finding it).

Good job, guys.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever tried putting a GPS in your bike?

<http://www.gizmag.com/spybike-gps-tracker/22999/>

<comment><USER4> Or just buying a cheaper bike on the assumption that you'll need to get a new one sooner or later?

<comment><USER5> I don't know how it is in "nicer" climates, but where I am, my commuter bike has gradually accumulated various things:

\- taillight which I don't bother to remove

\- expensive headlight which I do remove when parked (but I leave the mounting bracket)

\- pedal straps (a must, in my opinion, for safe riding in traffic; feet slipping off pedals can mean a crash)

\- thorn resistant tires

\- stronger wheel (I'm above-average height and not fat, but the cheapo wheels kept getting bent)

\- fenders to reduce splashing in the rain

\- rack to hold saddle bag

The bike itself is rather old and worth less than $100. All the accessories add up to maybe another $400. So, I do have a cheap bike, but it's still not so cheap to replace, and doing so is a rather big time commitment.

<comment><USER6> I mount head and tail lights on a helmet so I don't have to care about that part. You can also put lights on your bags too. The lights are often the most expensive part.

For stronger wheels & tires, I'd just get a thicker tire bike. For a strong frame I just go with cromoly. You don't need anything special then as far as strength goes. The rack, fenders and strap can be had for $50 total after all of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure it's fair to say that every bike sold on Craigslist is stolen, which is pretty much what their "stolen bike finder" tool suggests.

To then offer a classifieds tool seems a bit off... especially since there's nothing to say that stolen bikes are not being sold their either other than their word. But then, Craigslist would surely say that they don't support selling stolen goods either.

Mostly, as someone who runs one of the largest bike forums in the world, I'm unimpressed.

But as I don't like commenting negatively without at least thinking how I'd possibly do it better.

Provenance.

I would love to see something like <http://velospace.org/node> that provides profiles of bikes, but with the capability of registering the components too.

Such that it becomes a database of bikes over time, you'd see what bits you changed when, etc.

If your bike gets stolen then you have a record that it was yours, and you mark it as stolen and it auto-alerts the police as well as auto-searching classifieds sites. And you'd have a record of anything you changed that helps identify it.

If you sell your bike, you assign the bike to the new owner, and the bike now shows who currently owns it as well as who used to own it... the bike gets provenance. A nice history of what it looked like when, and how owns it now.

With a bicycle provenance database you combine the best of buying a bike, owning a bike and selling a bike... whilst at the same time making it very easy for people to find the bike online if it gets stolen, and very easy to find it if it gets sold online. You have the ability to prove it was yours.

So what I'd like to see are sites like velospace expand into managing the provenance of bikes and for that to be used as a major deterrent to bike theft.

<comment><AUTHOR> We considered the "registry" angle but decided against it since it only works if everyone uses it. We wanted to build a tool that could be useful without needing any network effects to kick in.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but registries don't have to just be focused on "find once stolen". Who wants to fill that in?

Velospace is a great example of a registry based on people loving their bike and wanting to share it. People use it even without the trace functionality. It didn't need to overcome any network effects, people love posting pictures of their bike online and talking about it only second to posting pictures of cats.

What I'm saying is:

Build something that has such a great utility without your bike being stolen, such that if that unfortunate event occurs you already have a record of the provenance constructed.

If someone builds that, then I will email my 22,000 London cycling contacts and tell them to put their details in. And then I will post on my forum, and then I will email other forum admins (and I know a fair few personally) and say... this is awesome, tell your users too.

And people will do it, because they love posting readers wives pictures of their bikes online and would love to do so yet again and talk about it.

And with all of the avid cyclists reached pretty quickly, the utility cyclists would follow naturally as more blogs, forums and magazines say, "use this awesome registry to keep your bike safe".

Seriously, I'd champion it. I might even build it... #4 on my list of startups to make if Microcosm fails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm impressed by your transition from the blog post to doing this site, and hopeful that a site like this one will finally take hold. Good luck!

<comment><USER9> Likewise. Seems like a smart use of the pricenomics search/algorithm engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand what they are actually doing to prevent the sale of stolen bikes through their site? I don't see anything on the bike listing or stolen bike search pages that would help with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Primarily community driven to raise red flags about stolen bikes. That said, it's pretty easy to look at an advertisement for a bike and know if the seller actually knows anything about it.

<comment><USER9> 2 ideas: 1\. stolen bike finder button should stand out a bit more. maybe in red (btn-danger) 2\. Dont have a stolen bike but is there a way to flag listings so that other browsers know they are browsing a stolen bike. Might auth with a social network and require a couple friends to flag it as well (so individuals dont do it maliciously). But would massively improve your data and would help the community self police.

<comment><USER11> How would people identify stolen bikes that are not their own?

<comment><USER12> I've seen suspicious craigslist ads in the past.

Many bikes photographed in the same spot. Poor-quality photographs (blurry, etc.) that make it difficult to pick out distinguishing marks. Very little detail about the bike's components.

None of these are proof of a stolen bike, but each is a useful flag, an indicator that the ad is worth further scrutiny, and flagging could help people looking for their bike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the great frustrations of bike theft is that we know almost nothing about it. Auto insurers have an obvious incentive to research auto theft, which has led to numerous innovations in theft prevention. Things like locking wheel nuts, radio coding and immobilisers have hugely reduced automotive theft. With no such interested body in cycling, any efforts to reduce cycle theft are just guesswork.

We have absolutely no idea whether chains are better than D-locks. We don't know which kinds of bicycle are most likely to be stolen. We don't know what the most common methods of lock removal are. We don't know if any of the tracking products actually provide a deterrent or facilitate recovery. It's practically impossible to give good advice beyond the most basic aspects of using a good quality lock and parking in a busy area.

If anyone can think of a good approach to gathering this data then please let me know - I believe it's the biggest single solvable problem in cycling development.

<comment><USER14> With a little time and a little money it wouldn't be hard to get answers straight from bike thieves themselves. Give me a day and £200 and I don't think I'd have a problem getting taken along watching bikes being stolen while being talked through it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let's say a bike would normally last you ten years, but it gets stolen every two. Each time you buy a new one. Therefore, there are now five as many bikes as needed. But then, why isn't the market saturated? How can it sustain such a high churn rate? It seems to me that bike thieves need a way to get bikes out of the market, too. They can do it in two ways: by hoarding bikes ([http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y171/FORDSVTPARTS/Bikes/bik...](http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y171/FORDSVTPARTS/Bikes/bikes.jpg)) or by destroying them. Couldn't something be done about that side of the equation? Reporting people who have abnormal numbers of bikes, or who sell hundreds of old bikes for scraps?

<comment><USER16> _But then, why isn't the market saturated?_

Because the price isn't fixed. If you dump a whole bunch of bikes on the market, you'll have to lower your prices to sell them.

<comment><USER4> Also, people need new bikes. Bikes break, people want a new bike, people stop riding and just store their bikes, and people whose bikes are stolen need new bikes. Neither supply nor demand is absolutely fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone ever considered engineering a disable feature into bikes? What if there was, for example, a lock for the crank that would require too much work to defeat/break. The thief wouldn't steal the bike because his costs/time/difficulty would go up. Car stereo manufacturer's had this same issue a couple of decades ago. One brilliant solution was a removable faceplate for the the stereo. The owner just pulled that out (about the size of an iPhone 5) and took it with him/her when leaving the car. Another solution was to put a matching chip in the speakers...if the stereo was stolen and connected to an unmatched set of speakers, it wouldn't work. Let's get creative and end bike theft!

<comment><USER18> It's been done a few times. Biomega and Puma made a bike with a structural wire that could be used to lock the bike; cutting the wire made the bike unrideable. There's the n'lock, which lets you turn MTB style handlebars sideways for hallway storage, but also acts as a theft deterrent, since you can't ride the bike with floppy bars. Removable pedals (Wellgo QRD, MKS EZY, etc). And dozens more.

There's a problem with designs like this. Bikes are very portable; thieves can walk with them, shoulder them, stick them in a van. The designs do not discourage the thief from cutting your U-lock in the first place - they only discover the bike is unrideable as they try to leave, and your bike still has value in parts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've always thought that bicycles should have a standard ID number similar to how vehicles have a VIN (a BIN maybe?). This would go a long way in allowing victims to search for their bike in a registry, and also allow buyers to confirm the bike they're buying from some flea market wasn't nabbed the week prior somewhere. To me this would be the first step no-brainer to helping discourage this kind of theft.

<comment><USER20> I think this is clearly the easiest solution to the problem if we want to fix it in the long run. It requires people to boycott bikes with a scratched off BIN, but shaming can go a long way to adjust demand. +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like the concept - a good addition would be to provide reporting and/or policing tools if you find a stolen bike (notify the local PD perhaps, or automatically send CL a takedown notice). It seems like Craigslist would be the first place you go if your (nicer) bike gets stolen, so as it stands, the Racklove search engine doesn't provide a lot of extra value.

As someone who works to provide better access to bikes via bike-sharing, I've seen that it's actually an incredible way to prevent bike theft. Sharing systems are over-engineered to the point where they're very difficult to mess with. However, deterrence for personal bike theft is an interesting problem. Despite the prevalence of bikes, nobody has found a method to secure or track them that's better than a standard U-lock. We're close to the point where GPS units could be installed on many bikes at reasonable cost, but it's still not easy. Something to work towards, or perhaps there's an easier solution out there.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd propose another feature: you can upload a picture of your stolen bike (make one now!) and crowd-source finding a match. Like others have said here: even if one person finds their bike on this service it's worth it. I've had bikes and bike parts stolen all over the world and I won't buy another one as I can't keep it indoors where I live at the moment. This service won't make me change my mind to buy another one but I might spend a few minutes a week comparing bike pictures as a good samaritan.

</comment><comment><USER23> More private garages that accept bikes would go a long way towards mitigating the problem. They've just started appearing here in NYC (the muni garages are/were free, but maintenance and sanitation seemed like major issues) so I've started using them. I've been using Parkfast (<http://www.parkfast.com/>) for about 6 months and have been very happy with them. Your bike gets some protection from the elements too. $20/month

</comment><comment><USER24> The major problem with trying to locate a stolen bike is that it's quite likely not being listed as a "1995 Schwinn YZ123", it's listed as "MANS BIKE L@@K".

</comment><comment><USER25> Makes me think of this:

25\. A Craigslist competitor. Craiglist is ambivalent about being a business. This is both a strength and a weakness. If you focus on the areas where it's a weakness, you may find there are better ways to solve some of the problems Craigslist solves.

<http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html>

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems like a good way to legitimize a bike market place is to require listings to prominently feature bike serial numbers to search for their bike, thus reducing the revenue potential for flipping stolen bikes (and playing into the market theory in the linked article).

</comment><comment><USER27> Really awesome, not sure how Racklove will prevent thives from selling stolen bikes... Maybe if it will be integrated more with FB, it will be less likely that thieves will use their real fb profile.

</comment><comment><USER28> spoiler alert:

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&noj=1&site=webhp...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&noj=1&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site%3Acraigslist.org+bianchi)

<comment><USER29> Try doing that for trek and you end up with 67000 results. I don't think that would work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It sounds like Priceonomics is pivoting... into a bike classified site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not likely. This was a self-contained project to scratch our own itch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A rabbi visiting my house had an easier solution:

Every time he left his bike, he removed the seat and carried it with him. Annoying to steal a bike without a seat! Cost goes up!

<comment><USER14> Annoying if youre an amateur about to ride off on it, not particularly annoying if you have a van to load it into.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Weird. The story with the YouTube video of the bike theft sting has apparently been taken down for violating the YouTube ToS.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is yet another Craigslist scraper, no?

So it's vulnerable to the same issue that Padmapper, Carsabi, etc. have met...

</comment><comment><USER34> A similar service for London <http://bikeshd.co.uk>

</comment><comment><USER35> The city should place closed circuit cameras near bike racks and prosecute the thieves seriously.

</comment><comment><USER36> Found my lost bike the the basement of the Alamo.</comment>


The End of Tangible Media is Clearly in Sight - <AUTHOR> http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/11/the-coming-end.html

<comment><AUTHOR> It won't happen by 2014. Need to cycle through the Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y and Millenials before this is a reality.</comment>


Insurers using CPAP data to monitor sleep compliance - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/you-snooze-you-lose-insurers-make-the-old-adage-literally-true/amp?__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> ugh. knowledge of this monitoring will probably scare some CPAP users, stress them out, and worsen their sleep quality.</comment>


Show HN: Newsbin – annotate news with wikipedia summaries - <AUTHOR> https://newsbin.us/ <comment><AUTHOR> You might notice that some of the articles have the letter 'S' highlighted. I added S accidentally yesterday, Wikipedia (apparently) has an article about the letter S, and I haven't removed it from the database yet.

I need to find a way to filter annotations a bit more.</comment>


You're Likely to Get the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/ <comment><USER2> This article states, that the path to a vaccine is something between 3 months (optimistic intial version) to 18 months (fully tested and mass production) ahead.

Does anybody know, what the path to a reliable and cost effective detection mechanism is?

<comment><USER3> We already have RT-PCR assays for COVID-19, which is pretty affordable in terms of reagents (whether that translates to affordability overall is a different story). There are supposed to be six labs in the US performing screening for COVID-19 this week [1].

There is also the possibility of a faster point-of-care CRISPR-based diagnostic tool that should be very sensitive (for instance, [2]). However, this is a novel diagnostic method. It is not outside of the realm of possibility that we could see it deployed in a matter of months, but that would require significant (probably unprecedented) collaboration between the developers, the CDC, the FDA, and manufacturing partners.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/24/21147157/coronavirus- lab-...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/24/21147157/coronavirus-lab- surveillance-flu-cdc-virus-tracking-testing)

[2] [https://mammoth.bio/2020/02/15/white-paper-a-protocol-for- ra...](https://mammoth.bio/2020/02/15/white-paper-a-protocol-for-rapid- detection-of-sars-cov-2-using-crispr-sars-cov-2-detectr/)

Edit: this is such a new method that I'm not sure what to expect with regards to its performance. There might be a high false positive rate, for instance.

<comment><USER2> thanks, very interesting</comment></comment></comment>


An update on strong mode - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/strengthen-js/ojj3TDxbHpQ <comment><USER2> > _ES6 performance sucks! Strong mode is a mode for ES6, you cannot use it > without using various ES6 features. However, idiomatic ES6 code currently is > substantially slower than ES5, across all browsers -- easily by 2x, often by > 10x or more. Due to the sheer size of ES6, plus a number of unfortunate > design choices, it will likely take years until implementations catch up > with ES5 optimisations, and the hundreds of man years that went into those._

This has been my suspicion for a while. Perhaps I've missed other comments to this effect, but I don't think I've heard anyone else articulate it.

<comment><USER3> I wonder which features are slow. I'm assuming generators and by extension the for-of syntax, which is otherwise a thing of beauty. I imagine proxies are somewhere between slow and horrifyingly slow.

I have noticed that none of the features I'd hoped would save cycles (const, generators, fat arrow functions) seem to be helping at all in the browsers of today.

<comment><USER4> Last time I checked, fat arrow functions have a performance penalty because of all the optimisations that's made around scope in regular ES5 functions can't be used.

I believe ES6 fat arrow functions are slow for a similar reasons as why regular functions are slow when you use the magic arguments variable.

<comment><USER2> Regarding the scope optimizations: that's an interesting point. I wonder if the different scoping of _let_ / _const_ also create a performance penalty versus _var_.

<comment><USER4> This is true as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who were wondering what strong mode is, this is a post to the Strengthening JS group, which for discussion of "strong mode and type system extensions that the V8 team is working on."

Strong mode is "a new language mode (an extension of strict mode) that implements a stronger semantics by removing brittle or costly features."

[https://developers.google.com/v8/experiments](https://developers.google.com/v8/experiments)

The conclusion is that "we have reluctantly decided not to pursue strong mode further."

<comment><USER6> Additional quotes:

Not all is lost. We continue to investigate the addition of types to V8. And in fact, typing may bring some of the benefits of strong mode for lower cost.

...probably have us readjust our design goals. In particular, we no longer believe that requiring type soundness _by default_ can ever work successfully in JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does one of the comments on that thread say strong mode is dead? Everyone seemed to ignore the comment.

<comment><USER8> Because it _is_ dead. Relevant excerpt from the OP:

TAKE-AWAY

Considering all that, we have reluctantly decided not to pursue strong mode further. We learned some worthwhile lessons, but overall it is not clear that the benefits justify the costs. Starting with the next version of V8, we will hence remove support for strong mode.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Unlocked Nexus S and T-mobile - <AUTHOR>

I want to buy the Nexus S phone unlocked, but from what I can tell the only carrier that this works on is T-Mobile. If this is the case, then assuming I don't travel outside the country, what is the purpose of buying it unlocked as opposed to subsidized from T-Mobile?
I do not have any friends on T-Mobile, so I am unsure what quality of service I get in the area that I will be moving to in a few weeks (outskirts of Atlanta, Ga). I am afraid if I buy the Nexus S, even if I get month to month service, cancelling won't do me any good... because the phone is no good on another service.
Is there a way to know if T-Mobile will work for me, and what has peoples' service been like in other parts of the country (I do travel sometimes)? <comment><USER2> Buying unlocked will save you money over two years because T-Mobile will give you a discounted monthly rate. I do it this way.

Also, if you are considering a variety of T-Mobile phones, then you can buy them and return them within 15 or 30 days. For example in the past season I've bought the Samsung Galaxy S, the Google G2, the HTC MyTouch 4G, and will buy the Nexus S.

FWIW, T-Mobile has been great for me. The network is significantly better than ATT in San Francisco. Also, the customer service people are head and shoulders above the other wireless providers. They have taught me how to tether in Linux, how to root a phone, and were especially helpful diagnosing a GPS chip issue with me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know anything about the Nexus, but T-Mobile's service has been great for me on the East Coast. I switched from Verizon about a year ago and with prepaid service spend well under half what I used to. I can also make calls from inside the house again, something I couldn't do with Verizon (except if I stood on one leg in a corner).

It also saves time because it's one less monthly financial transaction to monitor--I just buy a bunch of minutes every few months or so. I recommend it for anybody looking to reduce costs and complexity (start-uppers, for example).

</comment><comment><USER4> Never had a problem with T-Mobile service, and I've been midwest, southwest, and east coast. Haven't been to Georgia. I'm thinking about that phone too, but some of the features missing from Galaxy S (microSD slot) give me second thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER5> The only purpose for you buying it unlocked is not being locked into a contract.

</comment><comment><USER6> I lived in downtown ATL and worked in Norcross ~4 years ago, and had solid T-mobile coverage (better than I have with AT&T in SF now, but that's not saying much).</comment>


Firefox Preview/GeckoView Add-Ons Support - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/10/23/fx-preview-geckoview-add-ons-support/ <comment><AUTHOR> And here's the Issue for supporting uBlock Origin: [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/5630](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5630)

<comment><USER2> I might switch from the current Firefox for Android (Fennec) when it supports uBlock Origin. I'm not giving up adblocking anymore. It would also help to have it available on F-Droid.

<comment><USER3> For me, it's uMatrix which I use more often as a general javascript blocker.

<comment><USER4> It's really ridiculous how much faster websites are with those two add-ons installed. Actually, faster isn't the right way to describe it, "how much dead weight the internet has these days" feels much more apt.

<comment><USER5> Oddly enough, I always ran into performance issues when running uMatrix. I'd turn off JavaScript by default though and only selectively enable it. That seems like it should speed things up, but I'd often experience the opposite, both on Vivaldi and Firefox.

<comment><USER6> By default, uMatrix blocks Google Analytics, whereas uBlock Origin stubs it. If both are installed (in my case), uMatrix often wins out. If Google Analytics is blocked, many sites will spend 2 seconds on a white screen waiting for Google Analytics to load.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love that they have moved the whole address bar to the bottom of the screen, where my thumb can reach it easily.

<comment><USER8> This is a massive UX improvement for large screens. I wondered how long it would take UX folks to make this change (along with moving app navigation to the bottom generally).

Minor aside, they don't seem to support the <meta name="theme-color" content="#000000"> to colour the address bar.

<comment><USER9> > they don't seem to support the <meta name="theme-color" content="#000000"> > to colour the address bar.

Do you consider that a bug or a feature? :) Some people wouldn't want the website to mess with their app UI. I can file a Firefox Preview bug report.

<comment><USER9> Also, did Firefox for Android (Fennec) support <meta name="theme-color">? Or is this a regression in Firefox Preview?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've used it quite a bit over the last few months. It's a really positive start and does lots of things right, I _really love_ the reader mode. It allows me to bypass all the cookies nagging and just read an article without fuss.

I'm not totally sold on the URL bar being at the bottom, and I kind of miss the support for CSS theme-color, but I can see myself switching at some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI: regular Firefox for Android also has reader mode.

I still quite like Firefox Preview though. I'm not quite sure what you mean by CSS theme-color, but if that refers to preferes-color-scheme: dark, then as far as I can see it supports that? DuckDuckGo is dark for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _an early version of the new browser for Android that is built on top of > Firefox's own mobile browser engine, GeckoView._

Isn't the existing Android browser built on top of Firefox's own mobile browser engine? Or am I reading this wrong?

<comment><USER6> GeckoView is different from Gecko, which is already used by Firefox Android. I heard GeckoView is closer to Android's WebView API and designed for easy embedding into apps.

<comment><USER12> You're right, GeckoView [0] is a lot like WebView.

        GeckoView view = findViewById(R.id.geckoview);
        GeckoSession session = new GeckoSession();
        GeckoRuntime runtime = GeckoRuntime.create(this);

        session.open(runtime);
        view.setSession(session);
        session.loadUri("about:buildconfig");

[0] [https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/](https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/)

<comment><USER9> Yes. GeckoView is currently used in Firefox Preview, Firefox Focus (on Android), Firefox Reality (VR browser), and some Mozilla test apps. There are a few third-party developers already using GeckoView to embed web content in their apps.

One advantage of using GeckoView in your app instead of WebView is that you know exactly which Gecko engine version and features are available; you don't have to support old random WebView versions across different Android devices and OS versions.

<comment><USER6> >One advantage of using GeckoView in your app instead of WebView is that you know exactly which Gecko engine version and features are available; you don't have to support old random WebView versions across different Android devices and OS versions.

Is this similar to how each Electron app uses a bundled version of Chromium (which takes up disk space), as opposed to web apps which have to run in whatever Chrome version (or other browser) the user has installed?

Firefox Focus on Android is quite a large app (132MB installed on my phone), even though on my phone, it uses either Chrome or WebView (bundled Gecko is disabled).

<comment><USER9> > Is this similar to how each Electron app uses a bundled version of Chromium > (which takes up disk space),

At the moment, yes. In Android 10, Chrome and WebView are sharing common code (a feature Google calls "Trichrome"), even though they are separate downloads, so perhaps there is a way for GeckoView apps to share one GeckoView in the future.

[https://www.xda-developers.com/google-chrome-no-longer- webvi...](https://www.xda-developers.com/google-chrome-no-longer-webview- provider-android-10/)

> Firefox Focus on Android is quite a large app (132MB installed on my phone), > even though on my phone, it uses either Chrome or WebView (bundled Gecko is > disabled).

Some Firefox Focus users were still getting WebView as part of an A/B test comparing GeckoView to WebView. As of the latest release (Focus 8.0.23), everyone should be getting GeckoView.

The Firefox Focus APK (with GeckoView) download size is about 38MB, but the uncompressed footprint is larger.

<comment><USER6> >As of the latest release (Focus 8.0.23), everyone should be getting GeckoView.

Oh you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> AFAIK there are only two browsers for Android that supports extensions. Firefox and Kiwi Browser. Because of scrolling issues with Firefox I switched to Kiwi Browser. It supports all desktop Chrome extensions and uBlock Origin is working perfectly. I might switch to this if it supports all extensions.

<comment><USER14> What scrolling issues are you referring to? Perhaps they have been fixed

<comment><USER13> Just installed it again to test it and you are right. The scrolling is now as fast as Chromium. Many thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excellent news. I know this worried a few people, and not having them would remove my major reason for using Firefox on mobile.

It's a shame it's going to be months until they get there, but hopefully I can continue with the current Firefox on Mobile until then.

<comment><USER16> Yes you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just started trying out Firefox Preview in response to seeing this post. Firefox has SO many entries in the Google Play store (e.g. regular, Focus, Preview, Nightly, Beta), I didn't really understand what this was.

An immediate concern is that the privacy settings are either dumbed-down, or else altogether missing. I'm noticing a trend in Firefox across the various devices and versions:

* FIREFOX FOR DESKTOP - The "settings" section allows you to block trackers, 3rd-party cookies, and fingerprinting.

* FIREFOX FOR ANDROID - The "settings" section allows you to block trackers and 3rd-party cookies. Fingerprint protection is possible, but hidden. You have to go to "about:config" and know how to enable it manually.

* FIREFOX PREVIEW FOR ANDROID - The "settings" section appears to be built for my Mom. It has a toggle for blocking trackers, and that's it.

Are more granular (or at least visible and understandable) privacy settings coming in future releases, or is this just the UX direction? Why is Mozilla making it so much harder to enable desktop-class protections on mobile devices?

<comment><USER18> > Are more granular (or at least visible and understandable) privacy settings > coming in future releases, or is this just the UX direction? Why is Mozilla > making it so much harder to enable desktop-class protections on mobile > devices?

Yes, that release is imminent. Preview will include all of those settings. You can try them right now by downloading Firefox Preview Nightly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't use Firefox Preview fully because of lack of login/password sync.

After looking at github, I understood that Fenix won't support Firefox Sync for syncing login and passwords, but will rely on Firefox Lockwise, and is the way forward. It this correct ?

edit : added a precision regarding firefox sync for passwords

<comment><USER20> Firefox Lockwise is built on Firefox Sync and (IIRC) will eventually become the built-in password manager on Firefox desktop.

<comment><USER21> It did with Firefox 70, which was released a few days ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It has that persistent toolbar at the bottom with no way to hide it. I wish I could have those pixels back.

<comment><USER23> Isn't there an option to hide it when scrolling down?

edit: It's supposed to do that automatically, if it doesn't - I think you could report an issue.

<comment><USER20> Firefox for Android (Fennec), yes. Firefox Preview (Fenix), no.

<comment><AUTHOR> Firefox Preview does it by default.

<comment><USER20> Still no. Apparently this is temporary until they can properly implement it post-MVP release [0].

[0] [https://github.com/mozilla- mobile/fenix/issues/2689](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2689)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh thanks, I didn't notice that it stopped doing that. (I didn't really like it anyway - having it appear at the bottom when scrolling up felt weird.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are recommended extensions merely curation designed to help users find high quality extensions/themes or are recommended extensions going to ultimately be the only ones available in future versions of firefox mobile?

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, this means that I won't be able to use it until next year...

Lack of add-ons and lack of user specified search engines is a must have to me...

</comment><comment><USER26> So what's the trick to install add-ons right now? Either I break things or it works, won't use it without add-ons anyways.

</comment><comment><USER27> _fondly thinks back to the launch of firefox preview where hn was convinced that them not explicitly mentioning extensions in their first quarter goals meant they weren 't ever going to have them and the end of the world was coming_

<comment><USER28> Yes, and you can likely thank the backlash / such comments for this change of heart. Oh, you were implying they always highly valued Addons for their new FF? I don't see anything in this blog post supporting that stance.

<comment><USER29> I don't know anyone who works here who doesn't use addons all the time.

<comment><USER28> Maybe its just me being disgruntled / fondly remembering the XUL days (pre multi-process in 2008ish was when I was messing around with it) were it felt like addons could anything. The possibilities seem way more restrictive now that there only seems to be a specific list of white-listed api's. Scaling that back even more for performance and (somewhat justified _) security reasons seemed like the next natural step.

Anyway, I'm thankful for leaving a comment.

_ At the same time, all Addons I've installed right now require "Access your data for all websites", making absolute trust in the developer / reviewer necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Firefox Preview is great but I don't understand why it doesn't have night mode and neither one of Firefoxes. Today night mode is standard for almost all of the applications and that's the only reason why I simply can not switch to Firefox completely. Btw, don't say that addons are good for since they only switch text in dark not UI. Even Chrome now allows UI to change to dark not just text.

<comment><USER31> Firefox Preview supports dark mode for UI. You can switch between light, dark or follow the device theme.

<comment><USER30> But it doesn't have ability to make text dark so again there is no dark mode.

<comment><USER32> Websites are complex, you cannot make a script that edits every page to make it both dark and readable when things like the background could be light colored images and fonts that are permanently dark exist

<comment><USER33> It's actually feasible for most websites, with surprisingly good results. CSS tricks go a long way, even if the website doesn't support prefers-color- scheme.

Give this addon a try (on desktop or mobile Fennec only, obviously): Dark Background and Light Text [0]

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark- backgrou...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-background- light-text/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Meanwhile Mozilla is attempting to prevent users with administrative access from installing private extensions in the release version of Firefox, extensions for which the source code has not been handed over to Mozilla for signing.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1514451](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1514451)

<comment><USER16> Yes whenever Mozilla announces something exciting that could get some positive feedback, be sure to use the opportunity to complain about something unrelated.

<comment><USER34> Locking down Firefox to not allow installing private extensions is not unrelated to extension support.

<comment><USER35> So install the developer edition? Yes it's a little more annoying for people who want private extensions but you're forgetting that we're in a small minority and this change is a massive win for security and privacy overall.

This site is full of threads talking about how friends, family, and coworkers' browsers are riddled with badware that was installed behind their backs.

<comment><USER34> Again, this change prevents _regular_ users from configuring Firefox the way they want. We should not need to install the developer edition, which is based on Firefox Beta, or an unbranded build that does not auto-update to be able to run local extensions in our browsers.

Not even Google is this heavy-handed, they allow installing local extensions in Chrome after users enable an option, although a warning is shown on browser restarts about the presence of external extensions, which can be dismissed.

Why not have sensible defaults, then educate and warn users about certain actions, instead of treating them like cattle?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can load local extensions in Firefox as well with warnings: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/about:debuggi...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/about:debugging#This_Firefox)

And has been pointed out in most of these threads, the reason for not allowing people to circumvent some things is because that also allows malicious software to circumvent it.

<comment><USER34> > You can load local extensions in Firefox as well with warnings

Extensions loaded in about:debugging are not persistent, they are removed at the end of the browsing session.

> And has been pointed out in most of these threads, the reason for not > allowing people to circumvent some things is because that also allows > malicious software to circumvent it.

Yes, and the discussion mostly ends after people point out that malware if free to circumvent extension signing in any number of ways when it has root access on the device.

The threat model is flawed, or at the very least they're placing _minimal_ security benefits above important user liberties.

Forcing extension signing by default is a great initiative, but we must be given ways to override defaults, guarded by administrative access and appropiate warnings, and be able to install local extensions in the browser we love, and that is the release version of Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> > when it has root access on the device.

But that's a big if. Extensions can be installed without root access, and can wreck a lot of havoc. I'd also dare to state the the organisation with the best insight into the extent of security benefits is the organisation that has data on the number and nature of exploits, i.e. Mozilla.

> we must be given ways to override defaults, guarded by administrative access > and appropiate warnings, and be able to install local extensions

Guarded by administrative access sounds reasonable, and I think that's even already possible with Firefox ESR? I'd also consider an unbranded version of Firefox equal to the branded one, with the unbrandedness being an "appropriate warning". It does need to support auto-updating first, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Volset – smart multimeter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tomwang/voltset-worlds-smartest-multimeter-for-smart-devic

<comment><USER2> I've seen a couple of items like this using bluetooth rather than a wired connection, which to me would seem like the smart choice. Especially since mobile phones are not made with having all kinds of voltages attached to probes galvanically connected to them.

Like these guys: (2011)

[http://www.wired.com/2011/05/idvm-turns-your-iphone-into- a-m...](http://www.wired.com/2011/05/idvm-turns-your-iphone-into-a- multimeter/)

Given how sue happy Fluke is I'd remove that Fluke image and replace it with one that does not come with a target painted on it for overzealous legal eagles.</comment>


New Tools and Runtimes for Any Platform or Device - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2015/04/29/new-services-for-intelligent-apps-tools-and-runtimes-for-any-platform-every-device/

<comment><USER2> This is a great day to be a developer. We can create solutions on the platform of our choice without worrying about the compatibility of our dev tools.</comment>


Drop ACID and Think About Data - The end of good old RDBS? - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/drop-acid-and-think-about-data <comment><USER2> 'the end of RDBS' is a gross overstatement. ACID and RDBMSs are a combination that is ideal for the _vast_ majority of applications. You get flexible query and excellent data security, and the scaling issues associated with ACID only become significant when you're working on truly huge amounts of information.

BASE is more appropriate for eBay or Amazon, but your average startup is better off with a mature, easy to code for ACID solution.</comment>


On Hansen et al: Critical response to recent sea level rise publication - <AUTHOR> http://icarus-maynooth.blogspot.com/2016/03/on-hansen-et-al.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I have a lot of sympathy for what Hansen is doing. He absolutely is going out on a limb, scientifically speaking, and using PR tactics to generate mainstream media coverage for his research.

At the same time, nearly all the critical responses here acknowledge what he is saying is within the realm of possibility. They mainly argue it's not a proven or likely outcome. Which may be true.

But I think climate science, maybe science more generally, needs to ask itself some existential questions here. We're not talking about the need for 5-sigma confidence before announcing the Higgs Boson here. We're talking about the future of the planet and human civilization. So to what extent should climate scientists do their best to really hammer home to the public the range of possible outcomes, and specifically how bad things conceivably could go, how much we can't say for sure?

In part I think climate scientists specifically have learned to be extremely cautious in what's stated publicly, because of the amount of firepower directed towards discrediting them.

But what Hansen himself stresses is that "the major scientific issue that exists is how rapidly ice sheets can respond to the unprecedented human-made climate forcing, not whether they will respond. In our present paper we present substantial, compelling evidence that the ice sheet response will be non-linear and more rapid than has generally been acknowledged."

This statement I think is much harder to argue, and almost certainly most climate scientists who have studied the issue would agree, if only in private, that the IPCC predictions for sea-level rise are likely to be far more conservative and linear than what emerging science regarding paleoclimate, ice sheet dynamics like hydrofracturing, the geomorphology of Greenland and WAIS especially, ocean circulation, etc are indicating will actually happen.

The ice sheet melt rate was predicted to be relatively linear prior to detailed modeling of the specific dynamics in play. The more we understand about the details, the worse the situation looks, and Hansen is one of the first to try to pull those threads together and look anew at the big picture.

<comment><USER3> The piece linked to seems to tear apart the paper based on specific assumptions Hansen et al took to arrive at what seems to be the preferred result.

> So to what extent should climate scientists do their best to really hammer > home to the public the range of possible outcomes, and specifically how bad > things conceivably could go, how much we can't say for sure?

To take this to its logicl conclusion: feel free to lie as long as it is for the greater good...

Not sure I want to follow you there. Scientists, engineers and a few others are supposed to tell the truth, not just what "management" or the public wants to hear.

<comment><USER2> Did you read his actual reviews? It's not exactly "tear apart":

[http://www.atmos-chem-phys- discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15...](http://www.atmos-chem-phys- discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015-RR1.pdf)

[http://www.atmos-chem-phys- discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15...](http://www.atmos-chem-phys- discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015-RR1.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I would also highly recommend reading through some of Thorne's detailed review comments[1]

It's clear he thinks the paper is extreme but nowhere near ridiculous, perhaps except regarding the "boulder" issue (which seems his best argument, but tangential). Specifically the Eemian, the IPCC/AR5 defenses, the non- linearity. A lot of it is disagreement over tone and maybe Hansen dialing things to 11 instead of an 8 or 9.

I sort of agree with both of them, but the larger issue is the public sees this whole thing as maybe a -3 to 2 level of severity and they're arguing over 9 or 11.

[1] [http://www.atmos-chem-phys- discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15...](http://www.atmos-chem-phys- discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015-RR1.pdf)

<comment><USER4> The public seeing something as a -3 to 2 level of severity while scientists seeing something as a 9 or 11 seems to be the standard way science and public policy interact.

1\. Scientists potentially find $somethingBad in the world.

2\. The world mostly doesn't pay attention, especially if the $somethingBad makes someone money.

3\. More scientists investigate and start fleshing out the $somethingBad as a genuine concern.

4\. Industry related to $somethingBad dumps money into science that refutes $somethingBad. Such science seems to be unable to refute $somethingBad completely, so it start nit-picking and fostering doubt.

5\. $somethingBad becomes a political issue, with industry calling for more study and focusing on doubting the severity of $somethingBad.

6\. Hollywood makes a movie about $somethingBad. It wins an award despite taking creative liberties in describing $somethingBad. Those creative liberties are lampooned by those who don't think $somethingBad is real.

7\. Politics either continues at step 5 or finally manages to pass some laws.

We've seen this with leaded gasoline, clean air/water, endangered species, tobacco, marijuana prohibition, asbestos, seatbelts, etc.

Maybe it's just the way democracy handles it. The downside is that scientists who overstate the case with conviction tend to garner more of the headlines.

The probabilistic truths of science just don't survive the onslaught of criticism from entrenched interests.

</comment></comment><comment> semi-extrinsic TL;DR:

This blog post gives a review of the many good scientific criticisms of the Hansen paper, and also highlights the poor responses of Hansen et al.

Basically, the paper starts with the assumption of exponentially increasing melting from Greenland and Antarctica, modelled simply as C _e^(a_ t) liters of fresh water added to the ocean per year. The weird thing IMO is that this (liquid) fresh water is injected at -18 C (weird model), so they've effectively removed the latent heat but not the sensible heat, for some reason; the latent heat is 10x the sensible heat here, so why neglect the big one and include the small one? They conclude that dramatic sea rise occurs (duh). Perhaps the most important takeaway from the critique in this blog post:

""" [The paper predicts that] basically many areas, in Europe in particular, enter a period at least as cold if not colder than the little ice age. The associated rainfall changes are equally as impressive. This would lead to large-scale challenges around provision of food, services etc. for global society and large-scale disruption of ecosystems. It is also entirely opposite to the direction of climate change that policy makers are currently planning for on this timescale. """

So, if the paper's conclusions are correct (and the blog post author and many others apparently think it's not), we're basically doing everything wrong in preparing for the consequences of climate change.</comment>


18 of the top 25 Facebook games lost significant monthly active users  - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidesocialgames.com/2010/07/01/top-25-facebook-games-for-july-2010/

<comment><USER2> this seems like a recurring theme every month.</comment>


The Concorde Fallacy and why people make bad decisions - <AUTHOR> https://creativesamba.substack.com/p/the-concorde-fallacy-and-why-people-22e <comment><USER2> Sunk cost fallacy is real, but sometimes ambitious pursuits accidentally end up making the world a better place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once Concorde went live it was making an operating profit of £30-50 million a year.

Clearly it wasn't going to pay off the investment, but it didn't make sense to retire it while it was making some profit to recoup on the losses.

During development it was assumed that demand would be much higher, so you can only say that they should have stopped with hindsight. To be honest the value proposition seemed pretty good on paper - half the journey time for 20% more cost compared to a first class ticket, at a time where first class was the market trajectory.

<comment><USER4> The planes were facing expensive maintenance costs, the operating profits weren't going to last. Plus the planes were very unsafe., and couldn't be easily brought up to modern safety standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think the Concorde was purely a financial decision. I think they also wanted to show they they could make a great plane (even if it cost them to do so).

It's pretty depressing to make every decision on what makes the most money.

<comment><USER4> They only sold 14 Concordes and if they had invested the same time and energy in a more economically sound airplane design they could have sold hundreds or thousands and created far more highly skilled jobs fir much longer periods.</comment></comment>


Spotiamp – Long live the Llama - <AUTHOR> http://news.spotify.com/int/2013/12/20/spotiamp-long-live-the-llama/

<comment><USER2> Of course the irony is, when Spoify goes under you will be loosing more than just future updates to a piece of software that will continue to function forever ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows only and closed source. Sad times, this would be a lot of fun.

Can we have a version of soundcloud that looks like the old mp3.com so I can fully pretend it's 1997 again?

<comment><AUTHOR> We did not have the resources to make a Mac and Linux version unfortunately.

<comment><USER4> What would it take? Maybe a kickstarter campaign is in order :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just seeing the screenshot put me right into nostalgia mode, looks like they really nailed the interface.

Such a shame this isn't available for OS X, as I'm already a Spotify premium subscriber, and I loved Winamp.

Can anyone confirm if the EQ on this actually works? As I've never noticed an EQ in the standard Spotify app.

<comment><USER5> yes, the eq works just as you'd remember it, presets are even there.

also, apparently although I've not tested it yet, the visualisation plugins work too!

<comment><USER4> Oh wow, think I might have to install this on the GF's Windows laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparantly, Winamp might not be dead after all: [http://tech2.in.com/news/software/winamp-may-not-be- killed-b...](http://tech2.in.com/news/software/winamp-may-not-be-killed-by- aol-today-after-all/923790)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice bit of marketing from Spotify. I can't see myself using it but if it really is a lot more lightweight than the Spotify client it could be a great alternative for those on low powered machines.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow. Just Wow. As much as I love Spotify for its music, I have long missed the minimalist winamp interface. This is now my default spotify player. Amazing. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nicely done Spotify.

</comment><comment><USER10> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice!

</comment><comment><USER12> so awesome</comment>


Netflix Reaches 60M U.S. Subscribers with Disney+ and Price Hike Coming - <AUTHOR> https://thestreamable.com/news/netflix-reaches-150-million-subscribers-with-price-hike-going-into-effect-next-month <comment><USER2> I think Disney+ will be a good counter to the content offering from Netflix. The current issue I have with Netflix original content is that at any point the shows can transition into a porno. Their content seems to be unnecessarily crude and grotesque at times. For example in Sacred Games there are scenes, shown with details, where a guy's finger is chopped off or when a guy in a wheel chair is run over by a truck. This becomes super embarrassing when you have friends over and just put on something on the TV. Disney's family friendly approach should appeal to the demographic of people watching content with larger groups of people.

</comment><comment><USER3> I actually cancelled my Netflix due to the price hike. I like the channel services that some streaming providers are offering now, although they can easily be more expensive than a Netflix subscription. I would like to see Netflix offer some customization of content and work to get agreements to help find content that people like.</comment>


NJ's Debt Crisis: SEC charges NJ, first of many? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theconglomerate.org/2010/08/new-jersey-at-the-frontier-the-approaching-wave-of-municipal-securities-litigation.html

<comment><USER2> A lot of this began with the Corzine administration. That's what you get when your State is run by a corrupt, high-order plutocrat.</comment>


I was not hired because I speak slowly. - <AUTHOR>

I was interviewed 2 days ago for a software engineer position and though I'm very confident of my technical skills, the main reason I was rejected is that I speak slow.
As far as I know, I was speaking at a reasonable pace, I was keen at answering all the questions and I elaborate my answers further so that I can express my message clearly. I wasn't trying to answer the questions without even thinking about it so I was careful and keen.
How do you find the interviewer's decision? even if I speak slowly do you think that it is justified for a company to reject their candidate based on how fast one can speak? <comment><USER2> Interviews suck. You could get turned down for speaking too fast, too!

Anyone who thinks they're making sane hiring decisions based on conventional job interviews with developers is deluding themselves.

From just the circumstances you've described, obviously they made a dumb decision. They're allowed to make dumb decisions, though, unless your slow speech is related to a disability.

<comment><USER3> _Anyone who thinks they're making sane hiring decisions based on conventional job interviews with developers is deluding themselves._

So for example Google, Facebook, Microsoft, are all deluding themselves? Would they be not any worse off if they replaced interviews with say rolling dice?

<comment><USER2> Yes. That's what I'm saying.

I'm _not_ saying that (eg) Google has a better option than conventional interviews; Google has unique hiring problems. That doesn't make the interview system they use better. (Also, I don't have great intel on how Google interviews work; nothing better than you have. Maybe they've solved this problem in other ways... though, I'm skeptical.)

Startups, though, have no excuse.

<comment><USER3> So do you believe that if you take a random sample of (eg) Google engineers, and a random sample of all software engineers, there will be no difference in ability between the two groups? Or do you think there would be a difference but attributable to something else than their hiring practices?

<comment><USER2> I think conventional job interviews do allow you to target a broad range of competence, with a large margin of error, so if you were to compare Google employees to, say, State Farm line-of-business .NET application developers, sure, the Google engineers would outperform.

It's an interesting question whether a random sampling of Google engineers would outperform a random sampling of tech industry product developers from other companies. I don't know.

The bigger is, within the broad set of candidates that an interview process selects for, the conventional job interview is arbitrary bordering on capricious; it's inhumane for no business benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> eh....companies say the darndest things.....I was rejected for a job a while ago because I preferred VIM over Sublime Text during my pair coding interview. Apparently, I didn't have the "right experience with their toolset". c'est la vie. Sometimes they just need "a reason" to not hire you because they just don't think you'd fit in.

</comment><comment><USER5> It depends on how it came off. If it sounded like you were talking slowly as a way of talking down to them, I probably wouldn't want to work with you either. A lot of developers can come off as demeaning, and this can be compounded by insecurity by the interviewers (if they think you're a better developer then they'll be more sensitive to you being uppity).

Otherwise, it could just be that you seemed like you were too slow moving for a fast paced environment. If I pop my head into your door and say "Hey, how do you feel about XYZ?" (looking for a one or two word answer) and you take 10 minutes to answer, that's not ideal.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry this happened, but I have an anecdote that might cheer you up. A friend was flown out to Silicon Valley and put up in a hotel after completing their programming challenges. He was rejected because of just how bad his anti-social mannerisms were. Well that hurt him a lot, but a few months later, he did find a job.

If your speech is the type of thing you can work on, work on it. If it is something more medical that you can't control, think about mentioning it up front. I'm sure you'll get a job in a month or so if your technical skills are there. Don't sweat it, even if this seems is an utter kick in the gut.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interviews are the sole reason I started to do consulting. Guess what? Three times the money, more flexibility, and less headaches.

<comment><USER8> How did you get your first clients? Did that lead to more clients? What did you start consulting?

<comment><USER7> Advertising on various internet forums (such as YC). These days, I offer my complete marketing system to others. Shoot me an email if you want to learn more. (:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The company told you that?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was previously a New York based startup that is now fully based in Singapore.

My english is fluent and compare to Singaporean english it was excellent, considering that majority of their employees are Singaporeans, they might have preferred Singlish speaking candidates.</comment></comment>


You don't even know what you like - <AUTHOR> http://fennb.com/you-dont-even-know-what-you-like

<comment><USER2> _the twitter website is as fast as ever_

Actually, last year Twitter launched a JavaScript-heavy rewrite that was much slower to load and interact with than it was previously. It seems to have improved since then, but at the time it was fairly tiresome to use.

<comment><USER3> Try using the mobile Twitter site: <http://m.twitter.com>

It's a bit bare-bones, but IMO totally makes up for it in raw plain-HTML speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This example is perhaps better than they meant, because reading twitter from a phone is nearly impossible due to their stupid mobile interface rewrite. (Edit: I see the first commenter on their post wrote a similar thing.)

I just timed it: after turning off the wifi, clicking my bookmark of a saved twitter search on a Nexus S took _10_ seconds before it showed the centered twitter logo (presumably that ajaxes in the rest of the page?) and another two or three before showing search results.

Frequently it's long enough that my phone turns off the screen while I'm waiting for it to load, at which point I usually give up.

(Yes, this is the wrong place to complain. I am only a very casual consumer of twitter -- don't even have an account myself -- so I don't know the appropriate tech support channel. Perhaps because of my casual usage they in fact would prefer to discourage users like me.)

<comment><USER5> that's strange, I got no performance or usability problems with twitter, and I got a htc wildfire.

I'm talking about the app, not the page, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I struggle with the notion of friction on our site. It is easy to talk about and very hard to action. For example, I can use optimizely to tell me which approach I'm considering my convert better, and there is no way to know what the baseline outside of my site looks like, nor what the best approach is. The information available is so limited that much of what passes for customer experience design is just a collection of guesses back by a small amount of relative data and reinforced by appealing design. Perhaps this is just obvious and inherent in commerce in general, but I find it very challenging knowing that everything I'm considering might be substandard :)

</comment><comment><USER7> The performance thing is definitely something I notice from time to time. That I can feel either really positive about my app or really negative depending on the performance of the network I'm using it on. Losing that immediacy in actions and results does make things feel worse to use even if you can't put your finger on it at first.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought this post was one of the few on HN main page that was _not_ about Apple, disappointed I am...</comment>


Ray tracer benchmark and language comparison - <AUTHOR> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/languages/ray_tracer/benchmark.html <comment><USER2> Unfortunately this doesn't seem to have been updated since 2007.</comment>


BleedingBit: The hidden attack surface within BLE chips [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://go.armis.com/hubfs/BLEEDINGBIT%20-%20Technical%20White%20Paper.pdf <comment><USER2> Crap... CTRL+F Nordic .... Whew! Seems like this is mainly in relation to the Ti CC26xx series. I'm using the Nordic right now and the only time it's mentioned here is the Over The Air update service.

For that that might not know, Ti the approach that some others (not Nordic) does where they give you an ARM Cortex M4 to put your code on and have another Cortex M0 that runs the ROM based BLE Stack. This drove me away from many of the Ti offerings because while you can't mess them up, the BLE Stack is typically not upgradable. With the launch of BLE 5 and it's mainly software upgrades it was important to us to have that ability. So here is an issue with the shared que between the two chips - I'm not sure if this will be patch-able all applications.

The hack to get console on the Aruba device is pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> Do you really think there is no such things (unpublished) in the Nordic BLE stack?

<comment><USER4> There are _definitely_ (unpublished, and possibly unfound) vulnerabilities in the Nordic stack. The point (IIUC) is that the Nordic stack can be fixed once those vulnerabilities are known. The TI stack, on the other hand, is in ROM; if^Wwhen it's broken, it's broken forever. (And that appears to have happened just now.)

<comment><USER5> I can't speak to the CC26xx series specifically, but normally deeply embedded cores running a ROM stack like that have some additional SRAM which can be loaded at boot for firmware patches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is also yet another reason as to why ditching the headphone jack on phones is so brain-dead.

Bluetooth seems to be quite hard to secure (or am I mistaken?), is there any decent (simpler) alternative available or on the horizon that could become ubiquitius?

<comment><USER7> Phones without headphone jacks have digital wired interfaces to which headphones can also be connected.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but that's not a worthy solution to a portable device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do bugs nowadays have to have a name and a website?

Are they security researchers or posers?

<comment><USER9> Security researcher A opens a bug report on a tracker and writes a technical description and it sits there for five years and it gets zero replies and nobody cares.

Security researcher B hires a designer, makes a logo, catchy name and a website and it gets upvotes on HN and Reddit and media picks it up and the whole world gets a day-worth of drama from it, emergency meetings are held and things get fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone offer a TLDR summary? Any good open-source atacks out there?</comment>


The JVM Language Summit 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://olabini.com/blog/2010/07/the-jvm-language-summit-2010/ <comment><USER2> Can someone explain the java/clojure code in the article? I'm assuming the jvm is able to make some sort of optimization because o was set to null which it wouldn't have been able to do otherwise?

<comment><USER3> The goal of this trick is to reduce the memory required when the argument to the count function is a lazy sequence. When iterating through a lazy sequence, the items in the sequence are realized and retained by the sequence.

The code clears the stack slot for the count method argument. If the object referenced by the argument is not referenced elsewhere, then the object is eligible for gc during the execution of the count method. In the case where the argument is a lazy sequence, this changes the memory requirement from the entire realized sequence to a single item in the sequence.

This trick is employed everywhere in the Clojure implementation where a lazy sequence might be retained. It's not specific to the count function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Another funny anecdote was when Doug Lea pointed out that if you use > fibonacci to test performance against yourself or others,

... then it means you're completely disconnected from reality?

Edit: Can a down-modder make a convincing argument that a performance benchmark using Fibonacci is even useless, rather than worse than useless by being an appealing lure toward optimizing the wrong things?

<comment><USER5> What do you propose as an alternative? A two-line function that tests arithmetic and recursion is useful.

<comment><USER4> > What do you propose as an alternative?

Something useful that uses recursion, perhaps. A DFS comes to mind, or countless other common real-world algorithms.

When do you ever care about recursion performance in the context of a function that does nothing but one addition? You might as well compare languages on how well a billion iterations of an empty loop performs.

<comment><USER6> If you don't care about the performance of recursion in that context, why do you care about it in any other context? Recursion doesn't magically become different when there are file system calls involved. Surely adding other things to the function would only confuse the benchmark.

Your objection is like looking at a floating-point benchmark and thinking, "No real program just crunches doubles. It should include networking code and exception handling."

<comment><USER4> It should crunch doubles in a way typical to what a real-world program would. I'm fine with a ray tracer or something like that.

The point is I don't care about the performance of recursion for its own sake in a context for which there is no serious use. You might, but then you are disconnected from reality, as I said. That isn't an insult, it's just true from the definition.

<comment><USER6> The point is that the performance of recursion is not very context-dependent, and more complex contexts are less capable of accurately measuring the performance of any single operation — you don't know what elements of the function are slow or fast unless you measure them in relative isolation. Like, OK, so it runs that function fast — that tells me nothing about how any other function will perform, because you haven't determined what's fast and slow.

Doing "benchmarks" with huge functions that do a lot of unrelated things is like "unit testing" a program by running it and seeing if it crashes. It tells you something, but that something is pretty vague.

<comment><USER4> Why would the performance of recursion not be very context-dependent? I would expect it to be extremely context dependent depending on how much memory is being put on the stack, cache hits and misses, and so forth. I can easily imagine optimizing performance for an unrealistic micro-benchmark that would actually hurt overall recursion performance. If there are any famous last words in optimization it's that something isn't very context-dependent, no?

<comment><USER5> Of course it is not perfect, but it is one of the best ways to get a quick idea of the speed of a language. For example if we do it in OCaml we get native machine integers and cheap function calls. If we do it in Ruby we get expensive integers and heavy weight procedure calls.

> I can easily imagine optimizing performance for an unrealistic micro- > benchmark that would actually hurt overall recursion performance.

I can't. Can you explain this and give an example?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will these talks be available online?

</comment><comment><USER8> You can find some of the notes from the Summit here - <http://wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/Main_Page>

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that the post is from future as of now... (21:04 July 29th, CEST).

<comment><USER10> Is it the 30th in another time zone yet?

<comment><USER11> yes

(This post was made at: 7:05 AM 30th July 2010 Sydney)</comment></comment></comment>


Myth of Decline: U.S. Is Stronger and Faster Than Anywhere Else - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/29/myth-of-decline-u-s-is-stronger-and-faster-than-anywhere-else.html <comment><AUTHOR> I dislike the rah rah USA tone, but the facts are certainly interesting.</comment>


Riak CS is Now Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://basho.com/riak-cs-is-now-open-source/

<comment><USER2> Erlang has been my latest hobby language, and while I'm not very deep into it yet I'm having fun looking through the source code here to see what "real Erlang" looks like.

<https://github.com/basho/riak_cs>

If any experts happen to notice particularly good or heinous examples in this source code, it'd be interesting to point them out.

</comment><comment><USER3> We've been pretty happy users of Ceph for months now, but it's great to now have a second S3-compatible solution for distributed storage.

<http://ceph.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Mildly-shameless plug here: Riak CS will a big topic at RICON EAST this May in New York City (in addition to Riak and other distributed systems goodness). You should all attend.

\- Conf info: ricon.io/east.html \- Tickets: <http://ricon- east-2013.eventbrite.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> This is excellent news. Questions though...does Riak CS need its own dedicated Riak cluster or can you use "its" Riak nodes directly in the usual Riak fashion? If so, is it possible to access the CS-created chunks directly? (Not saying that is a good idea...just trying to understand how Riak and Riak CS fit together.)

<comment><USER6> Riak provides key-value services for Riak CS, and there's nothing stopping you from configuring the same Riak cluster for both the Riak CS application and another application.

Riak CS doesn't use any Riak functionality you can't use yourself, so accessing Riak CS-created chunks is easy because that's what Riak CS itself does. The source for how this works is at <https://github.com/basho/riak_cs/tree/develop/src> in case you want to play and have fun with that.

<comment><USER7> This is true, but Riak CS has special configuration requirements for the backing Riak cluster that might make it not the best choice for combining with your typical Riak applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> +1 on the excellent news, makes it especially easy for hobbyist like myself to mess around with this sort of thing.

Awesome to see use of vagrant to get started quickly!

</comment><comment><USER9> Does Riak CS support static web site hosting ala S3? I checked the docs and didn't see anything specifically about that so I'm guessing no.

<comment><USER10> It does not yet, but it's on our TODO list. API compatibility details can be found here: <http://docs.basho.com/riakcs/latest/references/apis/storage/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Mark, does CS fulfill the role Luwak formerly did? What's better and/or different about CS vs Luwak?

<comment><USER12> In a sense, yes. Luwak was just basically plain-old Riak with some support for huge files. CS is a full solution for storing large assets, along with multitenancy, role management, reporting, monitoring and pretty much anything else you'd expect from a cloud store like S3.</comment></comment>