Why do you use Firefox? - <AUTHOR> http://www.agmweb.ca/2017-02-05-why-do-use-firefox/ <comment><USER2> \- not owned by a corp

\- I am used to the way the software feels (the way it hangs up or freezes... but at work I use Google Chrome because of the proxy and being used to it in that specific place it's firefox I can't stand... with the exception of the company issued laptop on which I installed firefox (no proxy)). Psychosomatic ? Very much, yes.

\- free software

\- I like the logo and the name (I am a minotaur and phoenix early adopter and moz before that)

\- I think they are good people and were there when I (as a user) needed them. I know chrome or IE is there to suck out my soul and my data (yuck).

<comment><USER3> > I am a minotaur and phoenix early adopter and moz before that

Interesting, I had never heard of Mozilla Minotaur before. I can't find many details online, other than it was a new mail client before Phoenix was renamed Firefox. Was Minotaur an early version of Thunderbird?

<comment><USER2> Yes, Minotaur was the name of the project to make a stand alone mail client out of the Mozilla suite.

[http://www.internetnews.com/dev- news/article.php/2190891/Moz...](http://www.internetnews.com/dev- news/article.php/2190891/Mozillas+Phoenix+Minotaur+Get+New+Names.htm)

[https://tech.slashdot.org/story/03/03/26/055232/new- mozilla-...](https://tech.slashdot.org/story/03/03/26/055232/new-mozilla- based-mail-client-minotaur)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No processes. No hangouts. No index service started without asking. Chrome on Windows is a pig. Back when I was using it then nonstop then 25% of CPU usage was pegged to Chrome. I gave up trying to manage Chrome and switched to Firefox.

Recently Firefox said they were moving away from threads to processes. I think that's a mistake. Killing Chrome was a pain at times because when it does hang all the child processes had to be killed independently. It was possible to restart Chrome with orphaned processes. What a mess.

Also, I like the implementation of profiles in Firefox much better. I have a different profile for work, home and various side jobs. Very nice.

Chrome developers are crap developers and they hide behind processes because they don't have the chops to do threads. I hate to see Firefox move in that direction. Maybe Firefox needs to since Firefox is adopting Chrome extensions. But I refuse to use Chrome because it has crappy performance and usability. Hopefully Firefox doesn't move in the same direction.

<comment><USER5> >No processes

From my understanding, the initial rollout of multi-process has a single render process (in addition to the main browser process). There are ongoing experiments to determine the optimal number of processes, so it's likely to increase soon. In the future you can force this to 1 by using the "dom.ipc.processCount" pref if you don't want your process manager to resemble Chrome.

<comment><USER6> I feel like that defeats the point of multiprocess; on Chrome at least, the one-process-per-tab model is intended to isolate tabs from one another without having to duplicate a bunch of work that the OS does already.

<comment><USER5> You're correct that it defeats one of the points of multiprocess, but you still get parallel performance gains trivially that will scale well as more cores are added as well as isolation of crashes where it doesn't kill your whole session.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > vast majority of users could switch to Chrome and get all the same > extensions with almost identical functionality [4]

On desktop, maybe. On mobile, definitely not. Chrome for Android does not support extensions at all.

Firefox, on the other hand, does. If you want uBlock, Ghostery, whatever on your mobile browser, you don't have other choice than Firefox. And if you like your bookmarks synced between mobile and desktop, that makes Chrome on desktop no-go option too.

<comment><USER8> >And if you like your bookmarks synced between mobile and desktop, that makes Chrome on desktop no-go option too.

The extensions/ad blocker argument is 100% legit, but unless I misunderstand you, Chrome has had history and bookmark sync across signed-in platforms (mobile/desktop) for a very long time!

<comment><USER9> I think he means that since you can't use chrome on mobile because of lack of extensions, you can't use it on desktop unless you want out of sync bookmarks.

<comment><USER7> Exactly! Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- I've never felt coerced into creating an account to sign into or felt like I was tying myself to a system built around the goal of selling me ads.

\- I can disable EME and choose not to install Flash, and that applies to most other features that I don't want to use.

\- I started using it around Firebird _because_ of its nature as a lightweight browser that provided extensions to let me pick and choose my functionality. I think of Firefox as a piece of software that says "yes" to the way that I want to do things more than it says "no".

</comment><comment><USER11> Generally speaking, I use Firefox because I've always used Firefox. At no point have they ever done something that's made me upset enough with my browsing experience to jump platforms entirely.

It's familiar, it has the extensions I need and it hasn't buggered up in any significant way that I uninstalled it from frustration.

<comment><USER12> It's a similar situation for me. I've used Firefox for a long time, and it currently gives me the least-worst experience of the major browsers. That's probably the only reason I still use it.

I wouldn't say I like using Firefox, though. In fact, I think the user experience has gotten a lot worse for me over time. On more than one occasion I've wanted to move away from it.

Really the only thing that keeps me using Firefox is that none of the other major browsers offer a significantly more compelling experience at this time. I find all of the major browsers to be mediocre at best.

If a better non-Firefox browser did come along, I'd likely switch away from Firefox as soon as I found out about the alternative. I have no real ties to Firefox itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Goodwill, as I like Mozilla much more than Google. I kind of dislike the Chrome UI, but that's a minor point.

A lot of FF is hare-brained, though. E10S solved the unresponsive UI for me, but for the life of me, I don't know how to enable it on my touchscreen Dell. There is no indicator in preferences that tells me whether it is on or off and no button to simply force it.

Javascript-heavy websites tend to burn through the CPU of my Macbook Air, but I don't know how to throttle background tabs. Or at least profile which tab gobbles my cycles. About:performance is not that helpful. Ideally, there would be some indicator if a background tab eats more than x% CPU.

<comment><USER14> I spoke with a Firefox dev, I was told that due to accessibility settings, multithreading with touchscreens wouldn't come until the current Beta build is released to stable. Technically it should already work on the beta build but it doesn't seem to work for me.

<comment><USER3> AFAIK, accessibility support, including touchscreens, should be enabled in Firefox Beta 52 now:

[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis#Schedule)

In the meantime, you can force Firefox to enable multiprocess, even if you have a touchscreen by creating a new about:config pref "browser.tabs.remote.force-enable" = true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the argument misses the point. Most of the people who are using Firefox without extensions are doing so because someone who likes the freedom of the browser -- including the ability to run all current extensions -- suggested it.

>> In fact it's insulting to all those contributors who work so hard on Firefox to say that extensions are the only thing keeping them from switching to Chrome.

The ability to run extensions is just the most popular manifestation of a browser that has always valued user freedom. So my question is, why are they stopping with that mentality? Why blame the victims of such a poor decision? Taking away my option to use extensions seems like the insulting choice to me.

<comment><USER16> _> why are they stopping with that mentality?_

Because, in practice, officially giving unfettered access to Firefox's internals to third-party developers makes changing anything in the Firefox codebase a potential quagmire. It's taken five or six years for electrolysis to begin seeing the light of day, and that's because such a drastic rearchitecture of the browser ended up breaking basically every popular addon in the wild. In the meantime, the inability to evolve the browser has hampered its ability to compete with Chrome, whose deliberately-specified addons API leaves it with no such baggage. Not to mention that the greater scope of Firefox addons has more severe implications for user security, which means that Mozilla has to spend resources to further vet every addon on AMO, which leads to even more complaints at the sluggishness of the apparent bureaucracy.

Addons were absolutely a great way to differentiate Firefox from IE back in the day, but in the context of modern web browsing having such a free-for-all addons interface is a lose-lose proposition. It's absolutely a shame, but the market of browser users has been inexorably making this decision for years now.

<comment><USER15> That was well said. But at the end of the day doesn't it remain an argument that users shouldn't be able to run the extensions that have been freely available, aka "we know better than you." Breaking Firefox to turn it into the browser they wished they had made _will_ be disastrous, I'm afraid. It seems to me there are any number of "middle paths" (or dual paths) that Mozilla could take, but they don't want to do anything to jeopardize their consolidated user base.

<comment><USER16> _> But at the end of the day doesn't it remain an argument that users shouldn't be able to run the extensions that have been freely available_

I'm unsure what you're arguing here. Their goal is not to abandon addons for the sake of abandoning addons. On the contrary, Mozilla has been sweating blood for years to strike a balance between 1) making the vast architectural changes that will keep them competitive with other browsers and 2) keeping as few addons as possible from breaking with each release. And rarely do they ever get kudos for their efforts in keeping up this balancing act--instead they just get panned both for not being as fast as Chrome and then breaking some subset of addons anyway. So we've at last reached a breaking point: between electrolysis and project quantum, Mozilla is at last forced to choose between being a slow browser with powerful addons or being a fast browser with limited addons. I'm sure there are plenty of folks on HN who will wish they had taken the former path rather than the latter, but the problem is that Mozilla's mission of influencing web standards depends on having sufficient market share to afford a seat at the standards table, and I happen to agree with Mozilla that there are more people out there who want a fast and secure browser than who want an extensible browser (and I say that as someone who's been using Firefox with addons since version 1). (And for all that the point might still be moot: maybe Chrome with its marketing momentum and Safari and Edge with their platform advantage really are unassailable regardless of which path is taken here.)

In any case, as unhelpful as it may sound, the idea that users won't be able to "run the extensions that have been freely available" is false. Old versions of Firefox will always exist, and every component is thoroughly open source, so if a community (or company) sees a demand for a fork of Firefox with legacy addons support then the opportunity is ripe.

<comment><USER15> >> that will keep them competitive with other browsers

I understand that is the hope. In reality it does represent a step away from the approach that has made Firefox popular. I would say it's a guess, at best, that Firefox is suffering because it is not moving towards a Chrome-like model fast enough... versus that Firefox suffering because of the move towards a Chrome-like model.

As far as "striking a balance", no that would be something like allowing users who want to keep older extension models do so by agreeing to a dialog box, and then offering to turn such extensions off in case performance problems actually arise.

<comment><USER16> I still think you're underestimating the difficulty here. This would effectively involve keeping a fork of Firefox in-tree, and trying futilely to keep those two implementations bug-for-bug compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Because it's not owned by Google. That's why!

</comment><comment><USER18> For me it's a combination of extensions and philosophy.

Philosophy is pretty clear, but extensions that I find necessary are:

Tree Style Tabs (Chrome does not have a good replacement, I've tried them all) DownThemAll LastPass with better functionality Mouse gestures (this is HUGE for me, I want to be able to lazily browse with my mouse when I please, open/close and switch tabs with just a right-click and a flick)

<comment><USER19> The Tree Style Tabs author is quite active[1]. I knew, he had a really great, and funny, site[2] for XUL lovers out there.

I was about to make a snarky comment about how filthy rich should he be, based on how TST is always praised everywhere, so I went to look for a donation button to link to my planned snarky comment.

I didn't find any donations button, so I dug a bit more and found this[3]: 'I am an incumbent IT engineer, but apart from my company's work, I'm serializing articles in the manga format entitled "Cis Tube Girls" in the monthly magazine on Linux related technology called Nikkei Linux.'

Seriously, check this comic: [http://system-admin- girl.com/about/](http://system-admin-girl.com/about/)

I love Firefox, Tree Style Tabs, Google Translate, and the Internetcetera. I love you Piro, thanks!!!

[1] [https://github.com/piroor](https://github.com/piroor)

[2] [http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/xul.html.en](http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/xul.html.en)

[3] [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpiro.sakura.ne.jp%2Flatest%2F&edit- text=&act=url)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1\. Addons. Google has censored YouTube Center because it allows people to download youtube videos. Pentadactyl is also important and not really possible to such a depth in Chrome (though I will admit I haven't had it installed in a while due to constant breakage). Tab groups is another that is unlikely to be available in WebExtensions, at least for a while. Call it insulting if you will, but it is the reality.

2\. Open Source, both in long-term direction and not just code. Recent moves have dampened this though (Hello, Pocket, blocking addons from outside AMO, unsigned extension blocking)

3\. I don't trust Google. Once upon a time, this was not the case.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's not owned by an advertising company, and it's the only full-featured browser I'm aware of that has great ad blocking on Android.

<comment><USER22> 100% the same - Chrome might be the faster browser, but it doesn't matter when it's hobbled with ads. I imagine that's even more significant when you have an older phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > only about 38% of Firefox users have an extension

What? You can't describe 38% of your user base with the word "only". This should read "a whole 38% of Firefox users ..."

I use Firefox because I trust it better than chrome, but I need those extensions I am using.

<comment><USER24> Yep. If you make a change that upsets nearly 40% of your userbase, can you really act surprised when you hear people complain about it? Even if you go with the comparatively tiny 5% estimate of users who are 'unable' to switch, that's still a number that's in the millions.

This is the sort of thing that Google does all the time - optimize for the 90% at the expense of the remaining 10%. I think a lot of the more extreme backlash is because of that vocal (but not insignificant!) minority which is disappointed by the perception that Mozilla is going down the same route as Google (and all the other tech behemoths before them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I genuinely just like it better than Chrome or Edge. I think Chrome is an excellent browser, and for about a year I used Chrome instead of Firefox (due to Firefox really not working anymore, having to restart the thing several times a day -- I also tried Opera, but it didn't fare any better) but I never liked using it as much as I liked Firefox. So at some point I tried Firefox again, and it has stuck so far. It's probably still not the most stable browser, or the fastest per se, but I generally like Mozilla's design decisions a bit better than Google's, and, well, it's super subjective but between Google and Mozilla, I have a bit more sympathy towards the latter (without hating the former or anything). I also use Firefox on my Android phone. I like that it can synchronize my profile, and it's also quite usable. Frankly I'm reasonably happy about the state of browsers (there have been times where, in my role as web developer, I wasn't quite so happy ;)) overall: seems like everybody's made at least a decent browser. I'm glad I can pick whichever browser I like best, not whichever one sucks the least. :P Also, I've been using it since 0.4, the first browser that could replace IE6 well for me, at that time (compatibility was still an issue -- am I old?)

</comment><comment><USER26> In approximately this order:

1\. Trust and privacy issues (limited phoning home, separate search/address bars, etc. plus generally promoting a more open Web)

2\. Stability and reliability (in the sense that things continue to work over time)

3\. Gets updates (but doesn't force them unexpectedly)

4\. Large and flexible add-ons ecosystem (and I'm already familiar with it)

5\. Momentum/habit

In practice, 1-3 rule out Chrome as my everyday browser choice, while 1 and 3 rule out IE, so today Firefox basically wins by default on my Windows 7 PCs.

If Mozilla rearranges or breaks too many things and if it's then no longer possible to have a secure version of Firefox without getting those other changes, most of the above points will become deal-breakers for Firefox as well. In that event, I'll mostly likely switch to something like Pale Moon for my own use and just keep the big names around for testing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Chrome feels invasive to me.

It's always wanting me to sign in to my Google accounts and sync everything. Why would I want to sign in to a browser?

It wants to run extensions as background processes (wtf?). Why would I want my browser to run "apps"?

It's like it wants to be an OS wrapped in an OS. Why wouldn't I just use my OS?

At this point, it just feels like bloat to me. I want a browser. That's all. I guess I use Firefox for what it _doesn 't_ try to do.

<comment><USER28> I use Chrome apps for long-running things that are actually like apps. Gmail and Hangouts for example. It's nice to have a separate icon for them too. But I still do all my regular browsing in Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Firefox's address bar is much more intelligent than Chrome. The moment i type a keyword it shows me the sites i visited from the past that has this keyword.

Firefox also supports flick gesture from my Wacom tablet on my Windows machine to scroll up/down webpages.

<comment><USER30> I thought I was the only one - chrome's address bar is unusable for me.

<comment><USER31> Chrome's address bar is almost _obsessed_ with considering everything you type into the bar being a Google search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Personally, I disliked the fact that Chrome would spawn so many processes. This has become less of an issue (as each process is no longer as heavy), but was a big deal previously as other people at work would constantly complain about their computers being slow.

Call me old school, but I actually like the fact that the URL bar and the search bar are two separate things and that I can actually have a menu bar. I find the way that Chrome handles its navigation a little annoying at time and I don't see a big deal about losing a few hundred pixels to FF's chrome.

I actually like the way that Mozilla communicates information about Firefox (less automated).

Aside from that, unabashed fanboyism.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use Firefox because it works fine and doesn't appear to be trying to exploit me.

I don't know what "WebExtensions" are or how they differ from regular extensions, but if Firefox breaks all the adblockers and scriptblockers that I depend on to make the web tolerable, I'm going to have to downgrade that "works fine" rating.

<comment><USER28> WebExtensions are going to look a lot like Chrome's extensions, to the point that many addons will be compatible between the two. So, speaking loosely, anything Chrome addons can do now will be supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've switched back and forth over the years.

I'll never switch again.

I prefer noscript to scriptsafe, I refuse to browse without a whitelister. I like the fact that the mobile version supports the extensions I see as vital.

Chrome has one thing going for it, market share. which is why I keep Chromium installed for when I can't log into citibank to pay a bill, etc.

Also, when I was a teenager without my own computer, my mother used to think Firefox was a virus. She'd tell me "uninstall that mozzarella foxfire virus IMMEDIATELY!"

that always makes me laugh.

I guess Mozzarella Foxfire hasn't burnt enough of their goodwill to scare me off for good the way Google has.

</comment><comment><USER35> Firefox is fully open source, does what I want it to. Syncs where I want it to if I choose to sync it. Allows me to run extensions on my Android device (Chrome doesn't). Is more customizable. And it works better portably (not installed into ProgramFiles running from a USB device or synced cloud folder).

Chrome on Windows locks all your saved passwords, extensions, and extension settings to your current OS. If you upgrade to a new PC and copy your APPDATA over, Chrome will unceremoniously delete all your passwords and extension data with no warning.

Chrome on Windows also allows any website to download infected DLLs to the local machine's download directory without prompting. If you then download a trusted digitally signed installer and run it from that download directory, it'll use those infected DLLs unless it specifically hard codes their locations (newer versions of NSIS are safe from this, older versions of NSIS - which are much more common - are vulnerable).

IE and Edge... no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER36> The main reason I use Firefox over Chrome is that the Chrome devs are very against users having a choice on how the browser operates. They also tend to over-engineer solutions to problems.

Here's an example. There has been a bug report asking that Chrome ask to overwrite files instead of silently adding a number to the filename. Instead of making Chrome operate like every other browser and every other program out there they instead came up with a scheme to track all file downloads in the download history and if etags and dates match to "snap" to the location where the file already exists on the user's drive.

Countless of users have said they don't want that. All they want is to be asked to overwrite. Nope, not going to happen. So give us an option in the settings. Nope. Apparently too many options is a bad thing to have.

That's why I don't use Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER37> From habit, and to do my part keeping the Web from becoming a single-vendor standard.

I also use Edge on my Surface tablet, for the same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER38> NoScript and uBlock Origin, both running at once, for an almost completely ad- free Web.

<comment><USER39> Is this not available under Chrome for some reason? Or was it not available when you made your switch (or original browser choice)?

<comment><USER38> NoScript is mentioned in the article as not being available on Chrome, and I've heard that Chrome ad-blockers still show ads. Google being an ad company, I wouldn't expect them to allow particularly thorough ad-blocking.

<comment><USER40> I'm not one to defend Chrome, but the functionality of uBlock Origin you get on Firefox is the exact same as what you get on Chrome. Same filters available and everything.

If you still see an ad in Chrome with uBlock Origin installed, it's likely that the filters haven't updated to block that particular ad yet. Moreover, you'd likely see the same ad when browsing with the equivalent Firefox.

<comment><USER38> That's true enough; but uBlock Origin is my second line of defense -- the main one is NoScript. It requires quite a bit of savvy to navigate modern websites that way, but if you can work it out it's pretty powerful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I don't worry about the browser collecting usage information to sell to information brokers. I have a lose trust in the Mozilla foundation to do the right thing.

</comment><comment><USER42> Tree Style Tabs is the only reason left for me at this point.

<comment><USER43> We may be the 1% or some other fringe but this is also my reason.

Except for the UI, Chrome is generally ahead. It's not insulting to Firefox contributors. Competing with Google is hard.

<comment><USER44> I came here to make sure that Tree Style Tabs was represented, and I see that it's already been mentioned several times. Why wouldn't Chrome build this in? It seems like they could grab a decent number of power users that way — and presumably make some of their other users happy along the way.

I will note, however, that because of TST on Firefox, I keep way more tabs open there than in Chrome (20x, I'd guess). Based on the few times when I've had more than 15 or 20 tabs open on Chrome, I could imagine that it would bog down most machines. Perhaps they're not building it in because it would encourage people to browse with many tabs open, which would suck up lots of memory?

<comment><USER45> I can imagine that's the case. Chrome with just moderate number of tabs open (under 100) already becomes unusable, both from UI and performance perspective, while Firefox many times worked fine for me with thousands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Because Firefox Add-ons allow more browser-enhancement than Chrome.

An example - TileTabs. Not only can you show any number of tabs in a grid like layout one one screen (so helpful for work), but it can compress them all into just one tab.

Chrome's extensions are allowed an icon in one of two places.

</comment><comment><USER47> Technically I feel Firefox is good enough, it supports the browsing I do.

From a non-technical PoV, I use it because I feel that Mozilla genuinely care about their users, their privacy and making a better WWW experience.

Chrome on the other hand gives the impression having one single purpose, harvest as much user-data they possibly can while protecting their business interests. Although I understand it, I don't agree with it and don't think it'll be good for an open and free internet in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER6> For me, it really is the extensions. Specifically, it's Tree Style Tabs. Very few browsers seem to offer even just having tabs along the side of the window instead of at the top, let alone the actual tab tree. XUL also enables some neat Firefox-based browsers like Conkeror to exist.

Hopefully something can be worked out so that similar functionality can be implemented in Firefox even after the death of XUL. Else, hopefully there can be some Firefox equivalent to CEF so that I or someone else can build a Firefox-based browser with an alternative UI.

Else, I'll likely start browser hopping again - something I hoped to avoid by switching from Chrome to Firefox in the first place. I'll certainly still use Firefox on Android, since it's a fantastic little browser that has a somewhat- usable tab interface that doesn't become completely worthless beyond the 10-tab mark (I've got 52 open on this phone right now). For desktop, though, my hopes are on NetSurf to become reasonably usable (the recent Duktape integration is a nice start).

Basically: I just want a browser that's FOSS and that doesn't shove all my tabs into the top of the window end-to-end like a goddamn maniac. That's really all I ask.

</comment><comment><USER48> Tree Style Tabs

<comment><USER49> [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree- styl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style- tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo) or [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs- outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl)

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately those replacements just don't cut it. They're too separate. Tree Style Tabs is irreplaceable for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> A bunch of people have already mentioned a few extensions, like Tree Style Tabs, that I consider important, but there is another big thing keeping me on Firefox: inertia. I have been a user since it was "Phoenix". If I wanted, I could change to another browser, but for now I would rather not have to go through the trouble. I have everything as I like it, more or less, so I will continue using FireFox ESR until it is impractical.

</comment><comment><USER51> I use it because I don't want google to snoop on my browsing habits, and Firefox is the less shitty FOSS browser to my knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't feel like I am being data mined when I use Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER53> > vast majority of users could switch to Chrome and get all the same > extensions with almost identical functionality

I'm surprised this isn't a more _worrying_ point!

> In fact it's insulting to all those contributors who work so hard on Firefox > to say that extensions are the only thing keeping them from switching to > Chrome.

But that's your most _distinguishing_ feature. Ok, you have the stats to show that most people don't even notice. I think that's more insulting than us diehards who are actually using your product to its fullest. I love Firefox for the power it gives (extension) developers. Now you're telling me is that you're putting in a lot of work towards taking something away that I've used for over a decade. Don't expect those diehards to be happy about it.

</comment><comment><USER54> While I long upgrade from Firefox, I imagine most don't change because people hate change. I remember back when I switched I noticed all the little tiny differences, and while there were different and in most cases better ways of doing that in Chrome, I was use to my current way and any change slowed my productivity down. In the long run, I knew Chrome would be a better solution when I finally dove two feet in. But for many they are happy with what they have and while Chrome would offer a superior experience, the change wouldn't be worth it for many. And the rest I imagine fall into the category of I hate company x, so don't want to use it and then end up sticking with company that they believe on the surface is more inline with their values.

<comment><USER55> what do you mean "on the surface"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Tab Mix Plus for Multirow tabs

I guess I'm in the 5%.

I have been responsible for a lot more installs than just my own -- lots of those people with little to no extensions. But in the last year or so I've switched to giving people Chrome (it just makes more sense these days) and when I'm no longer using Firefox I will definitely have no reason to advocate for it.

But I understand, I'm on the losing side. The way that I've used the web for the last decade is going to be obsolete and I will have to suffer with whatever I can scrounge together to continue to work effectively. Whatever browser I can make that happen with will be the one that I use. If a lot more people had learned how awesome some of these add-on provided features are, they would have continued to be supported.

</comment><comment><USER56> I use firefox because despite all the missteps that mozilla takes; I still like the company. I fell like mozilla have their heart in the right place and that they try (sometimes against all odds) to do the right thing. I want to support mozilla and that's why I use firefox.

</comment><comment><USER57> \- TreeStyleTabs \- Vimperator

The Chrome alternatives for both of these do not compare well. Cvim, vimium, etc lack a lot of depth like .vimperatorrc (a config I can track in Git!).

The TreeStyleTabs alternatives in Chrome require a separate sidecar window in Chrome! This mikes window management a nightmare. Sigh.

<comment><USER50> cVim does have a cvimrc file. You have to use the `configpath` and `localconfig` settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> It's not Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't understand Chrome's split personality (Chromium). While you could theoretically get a version that is disconnected from Google, does one actually exist?

There is also this issue [1] that's been open since 2011 that won't let me implement an extension similar to something like "Self destructing cookies". Looks like it doesn't align with Googles interests.

[1] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=78093](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=78093)

</comment><comment><USER28> Chrome is all about delivering web content to the user, as the web page developer designed it. Firefox moves the balance of power closer to the user. And not just with extensions, but by building in Readability mode and letting users pick fonts, sizes, colors etc. Even though Firefox is going to move away from their old addon model, they are constantly pushing to standardize more functionality in the new model. They really want users to experience the web on their own terms, even when that means putting a lot of extra work into the core framework of the browser.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm trying it out for a while, having mostly used Chrome in recent years. Perhaps oddly it's climate change that has prompted this. Where I live each summer is hotter than the last, and Chrome's persistent high cpu use this year has been making my macbook worryingly hot. Safari is more efficient but lacks many useful extensions.

Firefox is pleasing so far. The laptop is far quieter and cooler. I've found all the extensions I need. I like not being bound to an ad company's product. The one thing I do miss is good support for keyboard shortcuts.

<comment><USER3> Which keyboard shortcuts do you miss from Chrome?

<comment><USER60> Two which spring to mind:

(1) Email link. It has a menu item (File -> Email link) but no shortcut. Perhaps worse, the standard OSX means of adding a shortcut to a menu item (via System Prefs -> Keyboard) doesn't work with firefox. An assigned shortcut will very briefly flash the menu name, but doesn't then select the item.

(2) Chrome has a general dialogue for assinging keyboard shortcuts to extensions. As firefox doesn't, the user is at the mercy of extension developers, many of whom seem to be mousers.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't currently support OS X's custom keyboard shortcuts for menus other than the Firefox application menu.

I found a Firefox extension to customize keyboard shortcuts (ported from a Chrome extension). Unfortunately, the extension doesn't work in Firefox 51 or later (due to some unfortunate version checking logic in the extension itself). I left a message on the extension page, so perhaps the developer will update their extension.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shortkeys- cus...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shortkeys-custom- shortcuts/)

<comment><USER60> Thanks. I'll keep an eye on that extension.

Do you happen to know if there's a bug logged for the custom keyboard shortcut lacuna? And/or for there not being a preset shortcut for emailing links? (Yes I'm being lazy here and will look myself if you don't know).

The above two were top-of-mind examples, but, particularly with extensions, the lack of keyboard shortcuts does add quite a bit of friction to FF use for me. Perhaps not enough to send me back to Chrome (though today it cropped up often enough that I was tempted).

Another example is I haven't found a satisfactory way to add a link to Pinboard from the keyboard. There are a bunch of Pinboard extensions, but the one I like best so far ([https://github.com/Cito/Pinboard- Pin](https://github.com/Cito/Pinboard-Pin)) doesn't support shortcuts. In Chrome I would have been able to add my own.

<comment><USER3> > Do you happen to know if there's a bug logged for the custom keyboard > shortcut lacuna? And/or for there not being a preset shortcut for emailing > links?

This is Firefox Bug 429824 - User-defined (custom, System Preferences) shortcuts don't work

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429824](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=429824)

I found this extension that lets you add or custom keyboard shortcuts for many Firefox menu items. It mentions the Email Link menu item, but I didn't dig much deeper.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/my- keyboard-n...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/my-keyboard- navigator/)

Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to assign shortcuts to extensions.

<comment><USER60> Thanks. I'll keep an eye out on 429824. Actually I'll need to as it turns out after a few hours more use that emailing links is something I use too much in the course of work to be willing to reach for the mouse (and the 'My Keyboard Navigator' doesn't work for this purpose on the mac). I wouldn't have known this without a few days experimentation, which in itself says something interesting about UX & (my) self-knowledge.

For now, it'll have to be back to Chrome, with Safari as a back up for hot days.

<comment><USER3> I use the official Pinboard extension, which overrides Firefox's bookmark keyboard shortcut (Cmd+D) to use Pinboard:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard- exte...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pinboard-extension/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Pentadactyl beats most of Chrome's vim-like keybinding extensions.

<comment><USER50> I use Pentadactyl, but cvim for Chrome, a relative newcomer, is also very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Does someone has also issues with heavy-loaded JavaScript pages, e. g. using React or Angular? It's a pain to use/scroll on those sites. The most awful website I know using it is Facebook. It is so damn laggy, even with uBlock and Disconnect enabled. When I start having more than one Facebook tab open (together with WhatsApp Web) I sometimes grow the will to switch to Chrome. I could resist yet because I don't like Google's approach for restrictive extension web store.

</comment><comment><USER63> I used to use Firefox way back in the day before Chrome was a thing, then once Chrome existed and run pretty fast I moved to that for many years. Now I'm back to Firefox almost entirely due to the absurd 'Web Bluetooth' BS from Chrome's Update 56.

It's noticeably more sluggish than Chrome even with little or no addons and tabs, but I'm far more ready to put up with that after the last few Chrome updates.

<comment><USER64> You might want to read [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13577670) then ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Honestly, I just couldn't bear Chrome dev tools UI, thankfully firefox dev tools have a firebug ui option which I find just about perfect.

</comment><comment><USER66> I could switch to Chrome but I have Firefox set up already and know how it works.

I sincerely hate the Firefox developers for breaking addons constantly and now making it so I can't even edit addons without a painful signing process.

Addons in Firefox seemed more powerful in the past but I'm confident WebExtensions will remove this advantage.

<comment><USER16> _> I sincerely hate the Firefox developers for breaking addons constantly_

Exhibit A for why it's a good idea to allow addons only through a specified addons API (i.e. how Chrome does it): your users won't hate you merely for daring to make normal changes to your codebase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> A browser that performs what I want rather than what some second or third party wants. A true _user_ agent -- not some commercial agent increasingly modified to shovel corporate-ware and corporate spying at me.

Extensions currently being a central piece of this.

Kill my extensions, and I've a lot less reason to stay with you.

</comment><comment><USER68> I would prefer to use Chrome because of the process per tab model, but the second time a Chrome update started the browser intermittently crashing, I ran out of patience and switched to Firefox as my primary browser.

</comment><comment><USER69> I use it as my "IRC" browser because it supports whatever audio APIs Discord uses for chat. Slack goes on the same browser window because it's similar to Discord.

I use Safari as my main browser, though.

</comment><comment><USER70> I use it because it's the only browser that supports my old computer.

</comment><comment><USER71> In addition to things already mentioned: * Doesn't put all extension icons in menu or toolbar, without option to hide them. * Empty page on new tab.

</comment><comment><USER72> Two reasons: There's a number of extensions I want to keep using. Those are not available on Chrome. And I fear for my privacy when using Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER73> Might be worthwhile having a survey asking what browser HN users use most of the time (I use two, but one dominates quite a lot; neither are FF).

</comment><comment><USER74> Need something other than Chrome and IE that has decent plugin support.

</comment><comment><USER75> Because I can't have a browser consume all of my memory.

</comment><comment><USER76> about:config

I enjoy having the ability to tweak some tiny little settings that help my workflow here and there.

</comment><comment><USER77> Freedom.</comment>


Better Beer Through GPUs: How GPUs and AI Help Brewers Improve - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2015/09/02/beer/

<comment><USER2> Very cool! I thought it was interesting that you're getting good, usable data despite using untrained tasters - have you ever experimented with using some kind of calibrated tasters, like BJCP judges or something? Do you think it would lead you to get the same kind of data, but with a smaller sample size? Or would it not really make a difference?

EDIT: never mind, I just saw in another comment that you're using your own, trained staff - I miss-read the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use our own staff for R&D (training the models), but semi-trained tasters are reviewing the product at the brewery;

we weight individuals on a verity of factors and have a pre-processing method that controls for experience level in expected flavor perception per flaw.

So experience level is important, but we often have to work around it. Most of the employees of a brewery or other beverage manufacturing are relatively experienced anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds a very interesting idea!

I'm curious what kind of volume of tasting data you're processing out of interest?

Also do you use textual reviews from beer rating sites too?

If the main idea is to detect flaws in beers, I'm wondering if you could also use mass spectrometer data, [https://nextglass.co/science-of- satisfaction/](https://nextglass.co/science-of-satisfaction/) seem to be using them to compare the similarity of beers, although thinking about it, people's perceptions of different chemicals may vary widely.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a couple thousand reviews per style, so its really fat-data not big data. (in the tens of thousands for some styles)

The main difference is that we take a complete sensory profile from every review, and join that with environmental and personal effects, such as time of day, day of week, temperature, altitude, etc and learn the reviewers preferences and sensitivities over time. We take about 600 variables per review in total.

From that data, we're able to generate a much more actuate and actionable analysis (at a cheaper cost) than a GC/MS or HPLC could - just consider, your mouth is a perfect tool for tasting the compounds that matter to you when deciding what you like and dislike. This is modified by your environment, and we need to control for how your perception of flavor will change over time with age, exposure, and experience.

I believe that a GC is a waste of money for 90% of breweries.

<comment><USER4> Is "GC" short for gas chromatography?

If so, "MS" is probably "mass spectrometry" and "HPLC" means "high performance liquid chromatography".

Those were rather opaque to me, so I had to look them up, perhaps it saves someone the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, 2 articles published about us in a day!

also being discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159852)

</comment><comment><USER5> How much of what you do is limited to being beer-centric? I run a small artisan cheese company, and having data like this would also be helpful at refining our make processes, as well as detecting seasonal preferences in both the milk we produce, and the cheeses that are derived from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Sprocket!

We can do any homogeneous product made in batches - so cheese may be a good fit!

We've done some yogurt and cheese reviews in the past to test the system but nothing extensive.

Send me an email at JasonCEO [at] Gastrograph [dot] com and we'll see what we can do?

Cheers! \- Jason

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> JasonCEC -- Just a question about the tasting protocols: where does the sampling and tasting take place? Is it local to the brewery and/or distribution areas?

Really fantastic idea and looks like a great implementation!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi gballard!

The tastings are done in-house by the companies production team. There are no samples to ship, and the sensory system is easy enough that just about anyone in the industry picks it up there first 4 - 8 times (its often more in-depth then they're used to!).

Thank you for the kind words!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should we make a standard throwaway account like whos hiring account? - <AUTHOR>

It feels as though every day there's a bunch of newly registered account made for the sole purpose of asking one question because people don't want to use their main account and it happens so often that I wonder if its worth it just to consolidate and let people use one account with a known login and username just to post from.<p>Not that it really matters (other than HN db being litered with one off accounts and random usernames being taken) but just thought of it because of the who's hiring account suggestion a couple months back. <comment><USER2> What exactly is the problem? Too many throw away accounts?

</comment><comment><USER3> There also could be an option like Quora have where you can submit anonymously, where instead of it saying "by USER" it says "by anon" with no link to a users profile etc.

However, I don't think that it really makes a big difference either way but it is a nice idea.

<comment><USER2> The problem with that approach is that the asker needs to post follow ups and respond in thread. I don't know how Quora handles it, but it sounds like more work than PG would like to put into any feature with such little benefit.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: FreeBSD or Illumos for Postgres DWH? - <AUTHOR>

Looking to implement a platform with a native ZFS port to run PostgreSQL DBs on. These databases support analytic workloads (OLAP), and initial testing with ZFS On Linux (ZoL) is promising[1], but I have encountered some issues that are driving me to investigate a "built-in" implementation.
Coming from Linux (CentOS), I find FreeBSD to be very friendly. From installation to adding apps via ports or pkg, FreeBSD was a snap to get started with.
Some in the PostgreSQL community favor Illumos derivatives, OmniOS for example. Initial explorations show it is a greater deviation from the familiar, and will require more time investment before we are proficient enough for production.
This said, are there any significant advantages that an Illumos platform has over FreeBSD, when looking at a host that will principally run PostgreSQL databases? Performance? Stability?
The only other workloads will be Python based ETL processes - I have found Pandas and similar run fine on BSD, not yet sure about OmniOS.
[1] I have great hopes for the OpenZFS project, and eventually ZFS On Linux. Other data platforms I use such as Vertica are not supported on BSD, and ZoL brings ZFS to a lot of new platform possibilities.
Edit: It turns out I asked this two years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5665800), but perhaps new perspectives will be added. <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work at Joyent, the company behind SmartOS, an illumos distribution.

I would say that you've made the right choice with ZFS (natch). I think FreeBSD, OmniOS and other illumos distributions like SmartOS are all good choices for Postgres on ZFS, albeit for different reasons -- and it will depend on things such as comfort level, the need for other technologies like zones, etc. One additional option to be aware of: we in the illumos community are very actively working on a Linux personality for illumos[1], allowing virtualized Linux to be run within an illumos (SmartOS, OmniOS, etc.) zone. This technology is quite far along (e.g., [2]), and we at Joyent intend on deploying it into production this quarter. It might not match your timeframe, but it's something to keep an eye on: it gives you the repo of record for ZFS but with the same comfort level that you have with Linux -- and features like DTrace and mdb as gravy.

[1] [http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos- lx](http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx)

[2] [https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/555143487482368000](https://twitter.com/bcantrill/status/555143487482368000)

<comment><AUTHOR> In my case, a Linux personality is not a terribly interesting feature. All of my existing code and apps run on BSD, and FreeBSD is comfortable enough.

What I am looking for is a solid ZFS implementation, a stable OS, and performance (IO and CPU). Jails may not be of too much use in my particular scenario.

Data warehousing means aggregation queries running over large sets of on disk data, which is the area I need best of breed support for.

<comment><USER2> Then I think you want to look very seriously at illumos: the ARC alone is a huge win, and it remains the repository of record for both ZFS and DTrace (which, if you care about performance, is important to you).

<comment><AUTHOR> Any input on which distro? SmartOS is interesting, but seems to be more of a hypervisor / container for multi-tennancy?

Looking for a single server implementation with good package support. OmniOS / OpenIndiana / ... ?

<comment><USER2> OmniOS should be perfect for you: designed for traditional server installs and with good package support. Hit me (@bcantrill), @postwait or @danmcd up on twitter or drop into #illumos on Freenode if you run into turbulence!

<comment><USER3> > good package support

I'll admit my OmniOS experience is quite minimal, but this was one thing I found frustrating about it. IMO the SmartOS packaging situation, with ~13,000 binary packages available via pkgsrc/pkgin, is a lot nicer. OmniOS seems to have <1k packages available via IPS, and be more geared towards the kind of corporate scenario where you install the base OS and then build/deploy your own in-house set of application packages. (That's a perfectly legitimate scenario too, but pretty different from the pkgsrc/ports/apt style.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can the Joyent package repo be added to OmniOS?

[http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/installing.html](http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/installing.html)

<comment><USER3> Ah that's a good point, I hadn't thought to try that. It looks like Joyent makes sure to build their binary packages so they're self-contained and will work on any Illumos distribution, which is pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Out of curiosity - what kind of hardware are you running on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Production would be Supermicro servers (8-16 CPU, 48/96/128GB RAM), with either banks of 10K RPM SATA drives, or a mix of SSD volumes and HDDs. All RAID-10.

Some servers are SSD only (< 8TB) that are used for current period (month / quarter) for add-hoc queries of actively changing data.

The mixed configs use the SSD volumes for staging and ETL processing (aggregation for storage into fact tables), as well as frequently queried current period data.

As data periods age, they are migrated to HDD volumes which hold more data at a lower price point. My budget does not yet support 20+ TB of all SSD storage.

<comment><USER4> Thanks!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Curiosity due to ... ?

Implementing something similar?

<comment><USER4> I work on similar problems on the software side. Trying to setup a home lab to do some experiments and was curious on what kind of hardware people are using.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture? (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-word-begins-with-y-and-looks-like-an-axe-in-this-picture <comment><USER2> I was intrigued, since it was mentioned in the answer that a HN commenter had helped, meaning it was on HN before.. previous discussion (from 30 June 2017) here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14670306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14670306)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have no idea why someone suggested the swedish word for axe. That would make a whole lot of the other letters not match their pictures.

<comment><USER4> Dan Bron's accepted answer is rather lengthy and surprisingly interesting, given the subject matter. I find it very persuasive.</comment></comment>


The New York Times Website is Down - <AUTHOR> http://nytimes.com/

<comment><USER4> They're providing updates through the twitters, though not terribly informative ones...

@nytimes: Part 1/3: As you are undoubtedly aware, we are experiencing a server issue that has resulted in our e-mail and Web site being unavailable.

@nytimes: We believe the outage is the result of an internal issue, which we expect to be resolved soon. (2/3)

@nytimes: We will communicate further when we have more information. - <USER3> @NYTimesComm (3/3)

</comment><comment><USER5> From the NY Times Twitter account, [https://twitter.com/nytimes](https://twitter.com/nytimes)

"As you are undoubtedly aware, we are experiencing a server issue that has resulted in our e-mail and Web site being unavailable."

"We believe the outage is the result of an internal issue, which we expect to be resolved soon."

"We will communicate further when we have more information. - <USER3> @NYTimesComm"

</comment><comment><USER6> Yet if you browse to the IP's directly, it is up...

[http://126.96.36.199](http://188.8.131.52)

<comment><USER7> "Wednesday, August 14, 2013 Last Update: 11:07 AM ET" 2 hours ago as of this post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had no issues loading nytimes.com from multiple internet connections and various browsers. So not really down, maybe not updated, but definitely not down. I suppose they had it mostly resolved by time I tried browsing there, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I looked into it earlier, their zone file was pretty empty except for some ns records and www. I'm assuming that something cleaned it out a bit as even the root record didn't resolve.

</comment><comment><USER10> nslookup nytimes.com

Server: 127.0.1.1

Address: 127.0.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:

Name: nytimes.com

Address: 188.8.131.52

Name: nytimes.com

Address: 184.108.40.206

going to [http://22.214.171.124](http://22.214.171.124) works but going to nytimes.com doesnot work. Whats going on here?

<comment><USER11> Funny, using [http://www.rexswain.com/cgi- bin/httpview.cgi](http://www.rexswain.com/cgi-bin/httpview.cgi) to look at the site, I get the NYTimes' homepage. Using Chrome, I get: Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

<comment><USER11> Nevermind! It works now. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this get to the frontpage of HN?

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know on what's going on?

<comment><USER14> An internal issue, not a cyberattack as previously reported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's back up, mostly.</comment>


Docker Datacenter – develop and manage apps at any scale - <AUTHOR> https://www.docker.com/products/docker-datacenter <comment><USER2> Between this, Kubernetes, Marathon, Amazon's container service, the tooling is overwhelming. I really have no clue how it all fits together and what a complete setup looks like (dev -> testing/CI -> prod). I'm using Docker for development, but that's where it ends for me.

<comment><USER3> Those are too low level for most users and you'll eventually end up (poorly) re-inventing a PaaS if you need things like configuration, authorisation, scaling, routing, rollbacks, etc. I've found Deis ([https://github.com/deis/deis](https://github.com/deis/deis)) to hit the sweet spot between flexibility and convenience.

It is built on top of docker and Kubernetes (CoreOS/fleet in v1), and lets you deploy docker containers natively and/or automatically builds those for you using Heroku buildpacks or Dockerfiles when doing git push deployments. You can also drop down to the Kubernetes level if you need to for things that don't really fit the 12-factor app model without breaking Deis.

That being said, I'm totally biased as I wrote an Heroku-like UI for it ([http://deisdash.com/about](http://deisdash.com/about)) and using it for our infrastructure at work. Other similar alternatives are [http://pivotal.io/platform](http://pivotal.io/platform), [https://flynn.io/](https://flynn.io/), [https://www.openshift.com/](https://www.openshift.com/), [https://github.com/dokku/dokku](https://github.com/dokku/dokku) (for single server), etc.

<comment><USER4> I'd respectfully like to submit my project, Convox, into the discussion of not reinventing a PaaS:

[http://convox.com/](http://convox.com/)

[https://github.com/convox/rack](https://github.com/convox/rack)

Convox is another open source PaaS, but we're building it entirely on top of AWS services like CloudFormation, ECS, ASG, etc.

This means it's only suitable for teams that have 100% bought into AWS. If that's you, we make all the hard parts of operating a distributed deployment system Amazon's problem.

There's another project in this same space, Empire: [https://github.com/remind101/empire](https://github.com/remind101/empire)

If 100% AWS is not you, Docker Datacenter / Swarm, CoreOS, Deis, CloudFoundry, etc. are doing incredible work.

It's amazing how these sophisticated tools are available to all of us.

<comment><USER5> I think Empire or Convox will be the right tool for us.

Flynn and Deis etc all seem to be writing their own schedulers and routing layer, where Convox and Empire just reuse AWS components. This to me is a huge plus, since those problems are already solved and rock solid.

But as a developer, I just want to push a docker image some where and scale it up later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to this intro [https://docker.wistia.com/medias/mdseh9gv6v](https://docker.wistia.com/medias/mdseh9gv6v), 200 out of 230 people working for Docker Inc are engineers. I like the ratio.

<comment><USER7> This "Universal Control Plane" thing looks pretty enterprisy. I have to imagine they are ramping up an enterprise sales team now, with all the org changes that come along with that. This product sort of reminds me of Citrix and Xenserver.

<comment><USER8> I signed up for UCP and was contacted by a few guys at Docker to go over the features. It was an hour-long presentation. They wanted something like ~$1,500 per node. I'm still not exactly sure what a `node` entails. The salesman seemed extremely technical and was able to answer all of the questions I asked. Too bad their website isn't able to give me the directions for using UCP without me clicking on the "sign-up" button (which now doesn't work because I've already signed up), or else we might be using it to deploy at Adobe.

<comment><USER9> Hi, I'm the founder of Docker. Sorry that you had an issue on the website. I warned the team of your comment, feel free to email me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com and I'll put you in touch.

Note that the price you mention is yearly. A node is anything you can install Docker Engine on. Typically it's a physical or virtual server. All nodes are combined into a swarm, which you can manage from the control plane.

<comment><USER6> Pricing is more than reasonable. If you add a backup into the UCP, it will be a steal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also [https://blog.docker.com/2016/02/docker-datacenter- caas/](https://blog.docker.com/2016/02/docker-datacenter-caas/) (via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158909)).

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great, but I fear trying to compete directly against software like Kubernetes and Mesos, Docker isn't going to have a ton of luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> What's the difference from their own Docker Cloud (ex tutum)?

<comment><USER13> Docker Cloud (formerly Tutum) probably only duplicates the control plane aspect of DDC. It's also "in the cloud" versus hosted inside of your own enviroment - which a lot of people with big builds want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it basically an UI, the newest Registry iteration, authentication and Docker's Swarm - as a service?

<comment><USER15> It's not a service as I would think of it. You download and install it on- premise as far as I understand.

I know they call it "CaaS", but I guess they are comparing it to using other PaaS's that can be installed on-premise, such as Cloud Foundry. Personally I find the term confusing, as I'm not sure who the consumer of the service is meant to be (developers creating containers? ops who get a platform for running them?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In my opinion it require lot of learnings to put Docker Data Center into production and it is still in the early stage. It is a good alternative for companies following everything DIY approach even for creating, deploying and managing containers. But for enterprises who really care about applications and looking for simple, steady and mature option for container based platform cloud foundry is a good alternative. It is more structured and matured platform compared to Docker+Kubernetes as well as Docker+Docker Data Center+UCP combination.

</comment><comment><USER6> Docker UCP. What database does it use to store historical container statistics?

</comment><comment><USER17> you should try moblyapp.com, a fabric client. It has answers & custom events too. check it out. #mobly</comment>


TextExpander 6 or How Not to Launch Your SaaS - <AUTHOR> http://rhymeswithdiploma.com/post/142315992434/textexpander-6-or-how-not-to-launch-your-saas <comment><USER3> I recently started using PHPStorm for some of my PHP coding. They have an interesting hybrid purchase model that I consider very fair.

The way it works is that there's a monthly subscription to start using it. While you're paying monthly, you get every update included. The twist is that, after 12 months of payments, you obtain a perpetual license. If you decide to stop the subscription at any time, you're able to continue using up to the most recent update before you canceled.

<comment><USER4> That is not the model they use, you fallback farther than you think sometimes.

[https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en- gb/articles/207240845](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en- gb/articles/207240845)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this link. I don't particularly like it but this is the clearest explanation that I've seen.

On the plus side, it does encourage them to have a major release every year so they can keep resetting that 12 month clock.

And if it's a trivial "major" release, then you can fallback to the last version without much loss. If it's a useful major release, it's motivation for you to hang around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hadn't heard this news. I'm sure it's not as insane as it sounds, i.e., I'm sure they must have their reasons for thinking this is the way to go, but as a long-time TextExpander user I'm disappointed. I would _never_ pay $5/month for TE. I bought it, and paid for upgrades, because it suits my need as an individual user. I have no need for "team" features and their decision to intentionally break existing sync functionality in order to force users to accept their new pricing scheme borders on extortion. I'll continue to use TE5 for the time being while I investigate other, more reliable options.

<comment><USER7> Curious, as someone in a similar position as Textexpander: Don't you think TE will be able to provide with more, stable updates thanks to the stable income a subscription provides? Selling software is a lot like living under the gun constantly . The sentiment seems to be that people use TE a lot, daily. Why not support the developer(s) behind this service?

<comment><USER6> TextExpander has been around for a long time. I'm using version 5, i.e., the fourth major version upgrade. There's little or nothing else that needs to be added to the product at this point.

They charged an upgrade fee for new major versions. IIRC, it was $19.95 to upgrade from v4 to v5. I didn't mind paying that, even if the new features were minor (I can't even remember what they were -- and I think I actually upgraded only because v4 wouldn't work anymore on a newer version of OS X, though my recollection could be wrong).

That's the life-cycle of software products sold on the traditional model. At some point you need to realize you've wrung all the money you can out of upgrades, and if the revenue from new sales and (increasingly rare) major upgrades isn't enough to live on, well, you better develop some new and different products. Of course it's better for you as a developer if you can convince people to pay you $60 per year in perpetuity for your small utility app, rather than just collecting a one-time $30 sale and occasional upgrade fees, but just because that's your super-dream-fantasy business model doesn't mean it makes any sense for customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TextExpander has always been straddling the markets of "casual consumer with $20 to spend on an app that reduces pain" and "professional customer willing to spend $199 to reduce major time costs." It looks like they've decided to focus on their professional customers... I hope that this works out well for them.

As someone who doesn't need $5/month of TextExpander services, this also leaves me in the market for a new solution.

<comment><USER9> Give Keyboard Maestro [1] by Stairways Software (headed by Peter Lewis, author of Anarchie) a try.

No connection, just a happy user.

[1]: [https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/](https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/)

<comment><USER10> Just to chip in as another very happy user of Keyboard Maestro here - I have been using it for text expansion as well as more general macros and it has made switching to a Mac full time a pleasure. Combined with Alfred it takes 'power user' to another level.

I use it for as much friviolous stuff as serious things ([http://i.imgur.com/YgE82eP.png](http://i.imgur.com/YgE82eP.png)) - <USER2> never used TextExpander, I've not had any problems with the text replacements. It's possible to open dialogs and very quickly make UIs too for more involved stuff.

<comment><USER11> Does Keyboard Maestro support text fields where it prompts you for input before sending the completion? For instance, TextExpander and aText let you write something like:

      :foo expands to

      Dear [name], thank you for buying our stuff. We like you, [name]!

Then, when you type ":foo", it prompts you for "name" and fills out the template with "name" inserted everywhere it's mentioned. This is enormously useful for form letter types of things, or even more esoteric uses like expanding HTML tags ("<[tag]>[content]</[tag]>").

<comment><USER12> There are a number of ways to do this. Native to Keyboard Maestro are:

 _Prompt For User Input_ [1] is the easiest method and allows you to build a form fully within the KM's GUI.

 _Custom HTML Prompt_ [2] lets you make a full HTML/CSS/JS form. I have never had need of this, but in principle you can leverage any web browser tools such as jQuery and Bootstrap to make a complex form.

Check out the KM forums for examples. KM also allows you to fully integrate AppleScript and shell scripts, so you could do all sorts of other crazy workflows.

[1] [https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/action/Prompt_for_User_Inpu...](https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/action/Prompt_for_User_Input)

[2] [https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/action/Custom_HTML_Prompt](https://wiki.keyboardmaestro.com/action/Custom_HTML_Prompt)

<comment><USER11> Thanks to you (and everyone else) for the clarification. That's my single biggest need from a TextExpander replacement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was talking about this on Twitter yesterday, on the whole of it, I agree with TJ's critique -- this was NOT launched well. But I do sympathize with how difficult it is to move a product -- especially a well-loved product -- to a different model.

I use TE dozens of times a day and although I could use an alternative (there is Keyboard Maestro which I also use, but for different stuff, aText and a host of others), I'll just pay the $48 a year or whatever (I think it's $24 for the first year for existing customers) for the solo version. Simply put, I've received enough value from the app over the years to make it worth that to me.

That said, I don't think they have the right pricing. I think $5 a month for single users is too high.I think $10 a month per users for teams is too high too.

But the broader move to a SaaS in this case to me is troubling because my instinctive response is, "Smile is doing this because they have to" \-- and that says a lot about the current state of indie software, that a subscription model is the only way forward. I've seen this with other Mac apps I enjoy and in most of those cases, I don't use them enough to make the jump. With TE, I do, so I will. But I do wonder how many will follow.

<comment><USER14> > _But I do sympathize with how difficult it is to move a product -- > especially a well-loved product -- to a different model._

If it's well loved, then why move it to a different model?

<comment><USER15> Because they haven't been getting very much money any more from all the customers who have it, and love it. They've probably come close to saturating the market for people who would want the capability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I make very good bank writing software an selling my services. I certainly would not miss this trifling monthly expense. As a business owner I can write it off. I absolutely LOVE TextExpander, it makes my life better.

No way in hell I'm paying $5 per month for it though. If I don't, hard to imagine many who will. What idiots!

Also, now we'll see what Katie and Macsparky are made-of, won't we? I imagine the hitherto well deserved fawning over an excellent, #winning product is going to end PDQ. We'll see.

I expect an expeditious climb-down from whatever the folks at Smile have been perching-on.

And what of PDF Pen? That's also a massively interesting question.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm a TextExpander user since 2010. I have been buying "major upgrades" as they came out, without caring much for the features.

I would be very happy to switch to subscription-based pricing. I think we should finally abandon the idea that software can be "purchased" once and used forever. It's unrealistic. Developers need money to fix bugs and adapt the software to new operating systems and environments. Users will not keep the current OS version forever. And yet we still play that silly game where developers have to announce "major features" in order to justify getting some money once every several years.

There are several essential utilities that I'd gladly pay a subscription fee for. I don't want new features, I just want the software to be regularly polished, I want bugs to be fixed and I want it to work with newer OS versions.

That said, I consider $48/year to be too high a price. I'd be willing to pay $20/year for TextExpander. So for now I'm not subscribing, and I'll see what happens. If the price doesn't come down, I'll have to look for other solutions.

<comment><USER18> > think we should finally abandon the idea that software can be "purchased" > once and used forever.

I certainly hope not. If I as a consumer want to use a certain software version locally then I should have that right. Why should I pay for developers to make features that I don't need / want?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always liked the Tinderbox pricing scheme. You pay X amount for a year of updates. It's not super cheap. You get your year of updates, and then you coast on the last version you got, until the next time you decide to shell out for a year of updates. If you like the software you can pay every year on the dot, and always be up to date. If you're ambivalent you can pay for one year every five years, and just accept the fact that you're using out-of-date software for four years. Or mix and match. Seems pretty reasonable.

[http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/](http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/)

</comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of an app called "Spendee", a expense tracker. I bought it in it's previous version and was very happy with it. Then they decided to release an update with a subscription based model ([http://www.spendeeapp.com/spendee- pro](http://www.spendeeapp.com/spendee-pro)) instead.

I can still use the free version which is very similar to what I bought before but I think it is ridiculous to note what they give you for $2/month: Multiple wallets, share wallets, syncing and budget planning.

Multiple wallets and budget planning should have been a one-time purchase. Syncing built in. I just don't understand why I should pay a monthly fee for the ability to create multiple wallets.

Then on the other hand there are apps like parcel ([https://parcelapp.net](https://parcelapp.net)) that charge you $2/year for having a tracking server that pushes parcel updates to your phone. I would have been easily ok with spending more on it.

<comment><USER21> The same thing happened to YNAB([http://www.youneedabudget.com/](http://www.youneedabudget.com/))

I understand the reasons for moving to a subscription model. It just doesn't sit well with some customers though(that includes me).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> At what level of pricing does a Netflix-style service for indy mac developers work? I would guess the judging who gets the money will be just as fun as streaming music, but I am honestly wondering if we have hit death by a hundred $5 subscriptions. Its a real shame we never got to the frictionless / no-per- transaction fee micropayments.

<comment><USER23> Eww what a horrible idea, I hope it dies quickly. It will bring in bundling (more eww) and the idea that you need to keep paying $10/month for "$600 a month of value" when all you really need is one or two little utility apps that should have cost a one-time payment of five bucks. From the greedy business side, this sounds like a great deal, but for users, it's a really bad deal, and their choice is diminished to the extent that any software gets swept into this kind of system.

Part of the problem is software developers (I'm one) who feel entitled (I don't) to a lifetime of full income for one project. TextExpander seems a textbook case of what should be a light utility becoming a hungry beast of a business that needs constant feeding, at the cost of its users.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure its any worse for the consumers than Netflix itself. I'm also a software developer on the side and looking at the landscape right now, I cannot help but think the App Store concept has failed. I don't think the average user would stick to 1 or 2 utility apps if given a choice of having an App Store worth of content to play with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very late, but I just got an email from the 1Password gang. They've also adopted a subscription model, with the key difference being that it's 100% optional. The free version still gets you a completely usable product complete with syncing through iCloud, Dropbox, etc.

For about the same annual fee (actually less because 1Password gives you a permanent upgrade discount), I can share Netflix passwords with my kids and bank passwords with my wife. That's tremendously more valuable than the possibility of sharing a email signature snippet with her, and 1Password didn't gut their app to force upgrades on anyone.

Two companies launch subscription plans, for the same price, at the same time. One is universally praised and the other widely trounced. Some b-schooler will be writing a compare-and-contrast case study on this in the very near future.

</comment><comment><USER24> For a relatively simple service, I'd instinctively be happy paying $5-10 per year.

To ask that per month is going to be difficult.

</comment><comment><USER25> No mention of Typinator? I switched to it a few years ago because the performance on some version of OS X (don't remember which) was way better than TextExpander's. It does its job, so I've never bothered to try out anything else.

<comment><USER26> I use Typinator too, for similar reason (had some trouble with TextExpander many versions ago). So far, Typinator's not given me any trouble to justify switching to anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> They should consider using maintaince instead of versioned licensing model for TextExpander like PhraseExpress is doing now since Phraseexpress v10. See [http://www.phraseexpress.com/maintenance.htm](http://www.phraseexpress.com/maintenance.htm) to find out more about the maintenance license PhraseExpress uses.

</comment><comment><USER28> The author confuses subscription pricing with the increased cost in this essay. If TextExpander 6 had a one-time cost of $60 (3x increase), or a SaaS pricing model of $1/mo (about the same cost), I couldn't tell which of those the author would pay. I can imagine different objections to each.

<comment><USER29> I think he's trying to focus on the model, not the price. I'm not sure why you think he'd object to a $60 base price or what that has to do with his point.

<comment><USER28> I agree the gist of the article is about the model. About half of the essay deals with price relative to value, which gets into the actual costs in that model.

 _" Is TextExpander worth ½ of Office 365?" "I don't see anything that I really need in TextExpander version 6." "TextExpander makes things a little easier, which was enough to justify the initial price of TextExpander and upgrades, but not a monthly fee."_

I think the author would object to a $60 base price based on those comments. Since Smile effectively made two pricing changes at once when they switched to $60/year, it's hard to consider one of them independently.

What does this have to do with his point? He may have been harsher on the subscription model than he intended and other developers with a low-cost, one- time fee model might not understand why. I think the essay illustrates why a company should consider trying hard to make only one pricing change at a time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The Hit List, a list app for OS X and iOS did this a while ago. I actually stopped using the app for years because of the fee but looking again now, the syncing service has been made free and is included with subscriptions!

</comment><comment><USER31> Check out Dash. Primarily feature is offline docs searching, but includes text expansion and snippets as a side feature, but does them pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER32> This caused me to investigate the native text substitution on OS X and I found it that it is actually OK for most basic needs.

</comment><comment><USER33> Are there any open source text expanders? I guess even a blog on how to build one would be helpful.

<comment><USER34> It's not really germane to this discussion as it is Windows only, but there is AutoHotKey:

[https://autohotkey.com/](https://autohotkey.com/)

(It does a lot more, but configuring text replacements is straightforward)

<comment><AUTHOR> Was about to reply that the URL is actually _ahkscript.org_ , but it seems like the current developers finally got a hold of _autohotkey.com_ last year:

[http://ahkscript.org/foundation/history.html](http://ahkscript.org/foundation/history.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> To answer the author's question, TextExpander is asking 5$ a month because you're lazy and can afford it, or convenience as they call it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why would I pay a monthly fee to expand text snippets when yasnippet[1] exists? It's weird the things people pay for. Why, I've heard some folks buy operating systems for their computers!

[1] [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Yasnippet](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Yasnippet)

<comment><USER37> It's not really the same product. TextExpander works globally not only within Emacs.

<comment><USER36> > TextExpander works globally not only within Emacs.

That's why we emacs users like to do all of our typing in a single environment. It really is an OS sometimes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If you don't find value in a product, don't pay for it.

If you find value in a product and they charge for it, pay for it.

Bitching about how someone shouldn't charge for a service they created is juvenile. I suggest OP a) finds another service which has a price they can agree with or b) build their own since it's so trivial.

<comment><USER29> They're doing exactly what you recommended by speaking with their wallet and letting others know about the bad business decisions.

There's nothing juvenile about sharing an opinion.

<comment><USER39> +1 In fact that's probably one of the greatest gift of the net, wide ranging (business) recommendation. Invaluable imho.</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix cancels 'Altered Carbon' after just two seasons - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/netflix-cancels-altered-carbon-203546958.html <comment><USER2> Not surprised, season 2 was rather lacking, especially after the amazing first season.

If you liked the story and idea I would recommend breading the Novel trilogy it's based on. Season 1 was fairly close to the first book while the second one was a really weird and IMHO badly done mix of the later two.

<comment><USER3> Wow. I'm amazed you thought season 1 was even vaguely close to the book.

I never even tried season 2, they diverged so much (and so irritatingly!) from the books in season 1.

<comment><USER4> My comment wasn't on the book or the show's relation to the book, just the Netflix series.

Is it a good book/series?

<comment><USER5> IMHO, much like the show it started spectacularly and spent its fuel too soon. I thoroughly enjoyed all 3 books, but there were definitely diminishing returns.

I will say even at its worst the trilogy is still better than the show (at least season 2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Season 1 was fantastic. Season 2 was meh. I would have been surprised if there was a third, not only because S2 was lacklustre but because Netflix is known to cancel after 2 seasons from a cost perspective. It turns out they don't do S3s because contracts are up for renegotiation and they repeat their formula on a new and different show. It's purely optimising cost and investment on a show.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can watch pretty much anything with a spaceship in it. You put it a spaceship, it's like i'm 60 IQ points dumber (if we believed that IQ points were a real thing and the intelligence can be measured on a one dimensional objective scale). If there's a spaceship I will tolerate bad dialogue, cardboard characters, absurd plots even absurd lack of plots. I'm willing to give you spaceship show makers a budget of 60 IQ points worth of stupid, but why? why do you need it?

<comment><USER8> The good writers have no shows and the shows with great budgets appear to not have writers.

<comment><USER9> Frustratingly, the books had a brilliant set of concepts for them to work with --and even tweak, a bit! But they diverged so crazily from that in S2 to go off in a "Netflix tries to create 3am Syfy" direction.

Even with reliable material, Netflix finds a way to make it disappointing.

<comment><USER10> Seems to be an incredibly common problem. TV writers don't seem able to make good stories, perhaps the skills needed are quite different. It's notable that nearly all high budget TV serials in recent years are adaptations of books. Knowing the books were successful surely reduces the risk, but then having found a winning formula the TV firm wants the series to last forever. They run out of book material and then the story goes off the rails as the TV writers can't match it. GoT being a classic example.

I suspect the issue is timelines. TV projects are managed with tight deadlines because they expect a new series within a year. A book can be released more or less whenever the writer wants, as they answer to nobody unless they signed some sort of multi-book deal which is rare. Writers take more of the financial risk on themselves, whereas in TV it's the TV firm taking all the financial risk. So you get whatever plot they could come up with in 6 weeks or however long they have, and it can't match the quality of a story where perhaps the writer spent a year on it.

<comment><USER8> It also appears that society as a whole is over-optimizing using clustering in a low dimensional space. It is quite ironic to me that I will say this, as I love animation as an art form, it can convey abstract ideas that are almost impossible in any other medium. But, the world is becoming more cartoonish and flat as PCA and k-means amplify the dimensions that optimize the outcomes. Equivalence is skin deep, we wrap things in a veneer of chrome, carbon fiber and hardwoods. The message is 100% medium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sucks, I'd like to see them stick with and develop a good show for a while. Many older shows didn't get really good until the third season. Orange ITNB survived a bad season.

Re Altered Carbon, I loved S1 because of the mystery. A minor reason was because I wasn't familiar with any of the actors, makes it easier to get immersed. Didn't like S2 as much, partially because of the new leads, who tended to be folks from other shows... the Avengers guy, the lady cop from Luke Cage, and Damian Dark. I think I let out an audible grown when he came onscreen.

I'd rather watch fewer higher quality shows than the next one, they will now produce instead. I suppose my new strategy is to not start a Netflix show until it hits its third or fourth (cough Daredevil+) season.

<comment><USER12> They broke too much of the universe in the first season. The second and third books are largely unworkable after the changes they made. Like the envoys being revolutionaries in the show but being ultra competent UN soldiers who terrify planets due to their personalities and training in the books. Or Quellcrist Falconer being turned into his girlfriend as opposed to a historical figure. Or not having the retired envoys turned surf bum bank robbing gang.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not supprised. Season 2 had clearly outlived it's premise and had nothing more to offer around the whole body swapping concept. Season 1, while not perfect, made a good contribution to small screen sci-fi and had nice thematic and stylistic elements.

<comment><USER14> As usual, budget constraints ruin all artistic visions.

<comment><USER8> Because writers demand such large salaries, if only they would lots it over the rest of society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I watched Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), The Expanse, Orville, Continuum, Altered Carbon S1, Farscape, Firefly, Travelers, Dark, and even Stargate Universe.

What do you recommend watching next?

<comment><USER16> Fringe, Stargate, Stargate Atlantis (though Rodney's constant yelling gets annoying, sort of like Scott Bakula's of Enterprise; neither are great actors). Dark Matter is good too, but it ends abruptly after 3 seasons without an ending.

Fringe gets a little lame/silly when the alternate universe starts getting featured in the later seasons, but at least it does have an actual ending.

I really hate that aspect of the new TV programming models: studios don't even have the courtesy to write a few "wrap up" episodes at the end. Instead, they show a preview of the next season, then have no problem with just canceling it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did the show have a good ending (ie no cliff hangers?) It is on my watch list, but not if everything is unresolved...

<comment><USER18> Watching S1 is worth it in my opinion, it wraps up the story line but still leaves a lot unanswered. S2 might as well be a different show and I wouldn't bother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> SOB I was just finishing up Season 2.

</comment><comment><USER20> yea I trudged through season 2.. season 1 was great and had all sorts of good stuff going on with it... I kind of want to watch season 1 again to try to figure out what went wrong..

</comment><comment><USER21> this was my favorite show by far!</comment>


Ask HN: What's the difference between ICO and selling shares? - <AUTHOR> I've not been following the coin hype too closely, but cursorily, it looks like an ICO (like, for example, the XRP from Ripple) is no different than a company issuing shares. The latter, of course, is heavily regulated; but there's nothing regulating the former.<p>So: is there a difference between the two? I'd love to know. <comment><USER2> The shares model is over-regulated and does not allow you to easily buy lambos rekting investors.

The ICO is optimized for rekting: anonymous, liquid, no consequences.</comment>


Make a Lisp in Nim - def- http://hookrace.net/blog/make-a-lisp-in-nim/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought it could be interesting to see ratio of program performance to its length. If I didn't make any mistake it looks like that:

                  perf3                   perf3 /
                  macros      chars       chars * 100
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      scala       15963       24885       64,15
      nim         11121       20263       54,88
      java        17969       53223       33,76
      ocaml       7063        24371       28,98
      coffee      2326        15653       14,86
      racket      2461        17229       14,28
      cs          5414        45039       12,02
      clojure     1174        10099       11,62
      ruby        1255        13247       9,47
      go          3048        36321       8,39
      vb          4523        58099       7,78
      rust        4084        56516       7,23
      js          1726        26437       6,53
      c           3649        73047       5,00
      haskell     1163        30115       3,86
      python      304         19632       1,55
      forth       563         44715       1,26
      php         331         27332       1,21

<comment><USER2> What is perf3?

Also, which specific interpreters/AOT compilers/JIT compilers are being used for each language being measured?

<comment><AUTHOR> Look at the original blog post. I just added third column to show ratio between given data.

<comment><USER2> I will do it at home. Currently behind a corporate firewall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are your graphs up to date ? Seems just an hour ago [1]:

> Rust: build with --release. 10X performance boost!

That might mean that Rust would top the charts instead of Nim.

[1]: [https://github.com/kanaka/mal/commit/434516e0d172904e06b05f6...](https://github.com/kanaka/mal/commit/434516e0d172904e06b05f6dee83ce2e7859b950)

<comment><USER4> It's weird that people that make benchmarks don't investigate which flags to pass for getting the most optimized build. Many compilers don't do max optimization by default. In particular, people making benchmarks with rust code seem to tend to forget or be unaware of the `release` flag.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this is happening again and again in Rust: people publish Rust benchmarks without optimization on. In fact, we just decided this week to change "Compiling" to "Compiling (Debug)" in Cargo if optimization isn't turned on to address this problem. It's sad :(

<comment><USER2> If it helps it doesn't happen only to Rust but to all languages.

There is this misunderstanding between implementations and languages where people equate whatever they have installed on their computer with all implementations of the said language.

Also not knowing about profilers and optimization flags.

So yeah, it is sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain the huge performance difference between nim and C? I though nim compiled to C, therefore I would think that good handwritten C would more or less be the upper performance bound for nim.

<comment><USER7> Here's a similar, comically pathological, example:

"Haskell compiles to C therefore good, handwritten C ought to upper bound performance for Haskell"

        main :: IO ()
        main = do
          x <- return ([1..100000001] !! 100000000)
          putStrLn "done"

As Haskell is lazy and pure it "automatically" eliminates the `x` and returns nearly immediately avoiding all work. The correspondingly written C code would do much more work despite its waste.

Of course, the human writing the C version might automatically perform this optimization, but similar things can arise in far less obvious locations in a more genuine compilation.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that distinction matters.

Any C compiler worth using will optimize out 'x' in that case. The details of why (laziness vs code analysis saying it's unused) is pretty much irrelevant.

Saying "the human writing the C compiler" is an odd way to put it. It's "the human writing the Haskell compiler" deciding it shouldn't be evaluated in Haskell, too. Totally meaningless distinction.

<comment><USER7> Freudian slip, I meant "C version". It was only meant to illustrate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had this idea as well (after seeing Make a Lisp on HN). Anything that you found challenging in porting the Python version to Nim?

<comment> def- It wasn't a direct port of the Python one. Instead I mostly followed the guide and looked at the Python code when something was unclear to me. Nim being statically typed meant I had to create many MalTypes instead of just using the built in Python ones. But nothing particularly challenging.

<comment> def- Now that I think about it, I could have used implicit converters to make it look more like Python, but that would probably lead to confusion.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Automate your Twitter management with Perks (My new project, thoughts?) - <AUTHOR> https://www.perksapp.com/

<comment><USER2> Is there a "read only" feature that lets you approve every decision made by the app? I'm thinking of direct message sending.</comment>


South Park: Freemium Isn't Free - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium_Isn%27t_Free

<comment><AUTHOR> I see that this has been posted several times already, but after watching it I can see why. IMO one of the more entertaining episodes of a brilliant show.</comment>


A Peek into Einstein's Zurich Notebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Zurich_Notebook/ <comment><USER2> Note: Exempt the University of Pittsburg web site, in web browser extension "HTTPS Everywhere", to prevent redirection, from [http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Zurich_Notebook/](http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Zurich_Notebook/), to [https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Zurich_Notebook](https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Zurich_Notebook). The latter seems to generate error "Page Not Found"...possibly due to mixed content http/https HTML (?) Browser: Google Chrome, 48.0.2564.109 m.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating look at failure, which I think is pretty common to math at this level. Yet in the end once he eliminated all the failure genius appeared.</comment>


Show HN: Look mom No code - <AUTHOR> https://lookmomnocode.com/ <comment><USER2> All the demo sites are blank without js...

</comment><comment><USER3> 113 dollars for the template</comment>


A Note to the CEO: Drive the Board of Directors | Kellblog - <AUTHOR> http://kellblog.com/2011/02/03/a-note-to-the-ceo-drive-the-board-of-directors-2/ <comment><USER2> I have a feeling that if a first-time ceo purposed the game-points system he'd be laughed out of the room and that he's not ready to play with the big boys. If you have experience you could throw your weight around and make it work, but I'm unsure about a rookie doing that.

I really like his last section about framing the relationship and making it deliver value.</comment>