Webpass - <AUTHOR> https://webpass.io/ <comment><USER3> Until services like this make their list of participating sites available, they strike me as amounting to a scam (regardless of how noble their intentions).

If they have no partners, they still collect money, but have no one to give it to at the end of the month, so they'll have to keep it.

I also have no desire for the entire subscription to go to a website I visit one time in a month because they're the only one participating. This is not necessarily a deal breaker, but I can't even make an informed decision without a list of participating sites.

<comment><USER4> If a subscriber doesn't visit any of our existing partners, then we don't pocket that money which was intended for websites. Instead, it's set aside as a fund for helping new websites to join, with a particular priority on those sites that our subscribers use the most.

It may not be so bad if all of a subscriber's money goes towards a single publisher. We measure rates in terms of RPM. In such a circumstance, that single publisher is receiving an excellent RPM, and that gives us a good argument for convincing new websites to join.

As you can imagine, there are many things on our to-do list -- but a list of participating sites seems to be frequently requested, so that needs to move up in priority.

<comment><USER5> A list of participating sites should be your absolute number 1 priority. Like, a call away.

It is what I buy on your page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is scary - you mean I _pay you_ to track every website I visit and you transparently pay them to not show Ads?

It doesn't say who get's what data, which sites are involved and there is no way I'm installing their browser plugin! Oh dear!

<comment><USER4> Check out our privacy policy at [https://webpass.io/privacy](https://webpass.io/privacy) for a detailed explanation of what we do with your data. If there are any scenarios that aren't clearly explained that concern you, please let me know and I can have the policy updated.

<comment><USER7> Does your service block trackers as well as ads? It's not clear at all what exactly gets blocked.

Mind you, since the service acts as a tracker in its own right, people wanting to avoid being tracked are unlikely to use it in the first place...

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the OP. I run a website that uses webpass.io. I am not posting a link to the site to avoid self-promotion but it should be easy enough to find.

With that said, here is MY implementation. Other publishers may do it differently.

Our site is a discussion forum. People can browse at will but only logged in users can post and reply to topics.

We run advertising with Google DFP. A few years back we started offering a subscription where users pay us a recurring fee and they have the option to turn ads on/off in their profile.

I myself thought of using a micro-payment service but I wanted something easy.

The way webpass works is by their add-on sending a unique token on every page request. If there's a token my code checks with their server if it's a valid token. If yes we then have two options:

\- if you are not logged in then we completely remove the ad scripts BEFORE sending the page to the browser client.

\- if you are logged in we treat your session as a subscriber session and will send or not the ad scripts based on your profile preferences. This means you can go to your profile page and turn ads on/off.

Using webpass made the experience better for our users because even those people who don't want to create another web profile and pay another subscription can still get to our site ad free.

Does it make sense now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like Google Contributor more: you as a visitor participate in the ad bidding and win the ad space if your bid wins. The website gets exactly what he would get from your visit as before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too complicated for people to understand and their funds can get depleted very quickly. Also some websites run Google AdSense as an infill, so Google Contributor doesn't really deal with publishers that have a direct sold inventory first, AdSense second policy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The webpass.io subscription service is a change from the standard consumer - publisher relationship. Instead of having to create and maintain subscriptions with different websites, consumers can subscribe to a single service and affiliated websites can check with the platform to confirm entitlement - <USER2> eliminating friction.

Depending on how websites configure the service customers don't need to create local accounts to get benefits - unless of course sites require accounts for things such as posting comments in topics and articles, or using other non- subscriber's related services.

I am not involved with the service, except as being a publisher using the platform as an alternative to ad-based revenue/subscription model.

<comment><USER9> What is your website? Did you completely remove ads from it in favor of webpass.io?

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this reply to another question, but will repost here for your benefit:

I am the OP. I run a website that uses webpass.io. I am not posting a link to the site to avoid self-promotion but it should be easy enough to find.

With that said, here is MY implementation. Other publishers may do it differently.

Our site is a discussion forum. People can browse at will but only logged in users can post and reply to topics.

We run advertising with Google DFP. A few years back we started offering a subscription where users pay us a recurring fee and they have the option to turn ads on/off in their profile.

I myself thought of using a micro-payment service but I wanted something easy.

The way webpass works is by their add-on sending a unique token on every page request. If there's a token my code checks with their server if it's a valid token. If yes we then have two options:

\- if you are not logged in then we completely remove the ad scripts BEFORE sending the page to the browser client.

\- if you are logged in we treat your session as a subscriber session and will send or not the ad scripts based on your profile preferences. This means you can go to your profile page and turn ads on/off.

Using webpass made the experience better for our users because even those people who don't want to create another web profile and pay another subscription can still get to our site ad free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh drat, another competitor. I am losing track of who I am trying to beat.

Google Contributor, Kachingle, Webpass, Brave, Flattr, Blendle and I have probably overlooked a bunch. There's also a deadpool with Sprinkepenny, Contenture, Readability and -- again -- I've probably overlooked a few.

The core problem is preventing two classes of attack:

1\. Visit multiplication by publishers, intended to over-represent them in the monthly scoring.

2\. Money-laundering of stolen cards by using bots to sign up and visit an attacker-controlled site.

There is also the matter of preventing a publisher in the middle from tracking users by piggybacking on shared identifiers.

To my very great shame, I've spent too much of my time solving these problems rather than working on the business side of things.

Edit: at least it's another Australian :)

<comment><USER4> Australian, too? Would you be able to get in touch? There are contact details on our website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tried to find the creators that have joined, but found no listing, did I miss it or is there none?

<comment><USER12> I believe it's the latter: you already have the list of creators that joined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use an ad blocker because I hate the idea being tracked. Hiding ads is simply a plus. I like the idea behind Webpass but they do nothing to prevent the tracking part of the whole ad blocking discussion.

<comment><USER4> I'm one of the co-founders of Webpass.io, and a dislike of being tracked is the primary reason why I am inclined towards using an adblocker myself. Before I realised the amount of tracking that went on, I hadn't been motivated enough to use an adblocker.

Webpass.io has been designed with this in mind. Webpass.io involves removing the advertiser from the transaction -- partnering sites remove advertisements, which should eliminate tracking by advertisers. When it comes to trackers from other sources (e.g., analytics), you can continue to use plugins like Ghostery or the EasyPrivacy list.

Webpass.io is a way for you to support websites, that is compatible with whatever means you use to protect your privacy. You don't need to opt into ads/trackers/third party cookies for our service to work. We track little from our users (check our privacy policy), and we have plans for the future to make our privacy features even stronger by offering (near) anonymous use of our system.

As for our own website, we have avoided using any code that could be used to track you by third parties -- no social media buttons that talk back to their original servers, no third-party commenting system, no third-party analytics, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The pricing page is a good example of what _not_ to do. If you're going to list distinguishing features/limits for various plans, please don't put "unlimited" on the free plan, limits on other plans, and force everyone to dig through your terms of service just to understand the real limits.

Also, a plan that automatically "upgrades" based on criteria tucked away in the ToS should probably just be called a trial, and the conditions that cause that trial to be converted to a paid plan should be explained somewhere on the pricing page.

<comment><USER15> also the .50 in a really small font, making it $5.50 not $5.00.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _> Adblockers deny money for websites without replacing it._

I hate the way this frames the debate. Ads invade my privacy, slow down my Internet browsing, and consume my network and device resources—why can't the cost for content writers, servers, etc come from some other business model than invading my privacy?

<comment><AUTHOR> The current model for alternative revenue sources is... "content". Mainly "sponsored content" where publishers post reviews and whitepapers, some times not disclosing their relationship with the advertisers. I think this is worst than ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In their code examples they indicate that this works by:

      1) plugin sets header key
      2) the site servings ads needs to hit an API endpoint to verify
         the header keys' value before rendering ads.

This seems really oversimplified since ads are spread all over most pages, so it first needs to block rendering to wait for a reply from the API, then each ad needs to be wrapped in a conditional. I wonder how well this works with the ads, since I assume they are not set up for conditional loading.

<comment><USER18> The page simply removes the ads before serving

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. In our case we check with the endpoint and if the key is correct and approved we just serve the page WITHOUT the ad scripts.

This not only make pages smaller but also reduces the amount of processing on the client browser. Overall it's as fast, if not faster, than an ad blocker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So even at the "worst" pricing of 0.15¢ per page ($3/mo for 2000 pages) and assuming a 100% payout, a big, high traffic publisher like Gawker would have made under $2m in 2014 (on 1.3bn pageviews) versus the $45m they actually netted.

The numbers would be even more awful for niche, high quality publishers (no offense to Gawker, but they're mass media).

This has no chance of replacing anyone's income, and barely a chance at significantly supplementing one, until we're talking cents per page.

<comment><USER20> I don't think you're argument is wrong overall, but I think your math is orders of magnitude wrong. 0.15c/page is a $1.50 CPM rate, and that's really is pretty low, for the web and premium publishers in particular, your math puts Gawker at $35 CPM, however I think your math is off by about a factor of by about a factor of 2-3.

Some quick googling will show the Gawker advertising revenue number is actually $30m; $15m being from ecommerce/licensing + native advertising/sponsored content.

I'm not sure where you pulled 1.3bn/yr from, but at $30m in revenue that would assume Gawker is obtaining CPMs of $23 for _all_ of it's advertising. $23 CPMs are real: in video advertising, but they are totally out of whack for display, even premium display is only commanding about half that: [http://www.mediafuse.com/resources/a-guide-to-cpm- rates](http://www.mediafuse.com/resources/a-guide-to-cpm-rates)

I don't know what CPMs Gawker is actually getting, but I think that it's likely that your traffic estimate is probably off by quite a bit since 3rd party traffic estimates are notorious for undercounting traffic.

So, Gawker probably wouldn't be excited about this, but very few people are able to monetize display at that rate, so you may find some publishers that are still interested at this rate, though I do agree that it's particularly low and is only interesting as a last ditch effort of monetizing ad blockers. Though maybe that will be useful in certain communities that heavily favor them.

<comment><USER21> Quantcasts puts Gawker Media _Network_'s traffic numbers for 2014 at 7.2b for that time period, so that would give a pre-partner (display) RPM of $4.1

3e7 / 7.2e9 x 1000

And a post partner RPM of $6.25

4.5e7 / 7.2e9 x 1000

This seems plausible.

I think it's fair to consider both since ad-blockers will pick up a bunch of the listing/affiliate code implementations for the extant partner related initiatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd be curious to know how many people would need to use such a service for the ad maker to make the same amount of money. Basically, what I'm wondering is if it would be similar to Wikipedia where a very few percentage of people need to contribute for the system to work out?

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't help myself but when I read "pure" somewhere, it smells marketing bullshit scam.

</comment><comment><USER24> Atri ([http://www.atri.me](http://www.atri.me)) does just this, but bypasses the sites and uses the Twitter Handles on the page as the creator of record.

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting concept

</comment><comment><USER26> But Adblock is free. Wouldn't a simple donate button be just as effective?

<comment><AUTHOR> Donate buttons are a joke. They don't work for publishers at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would happily pay an extra $5 a month to my ISP to have them allocate it to the pages I visit. More if they let me select a subset.

<comment><USER28> You actually want the ISPs, some of the most hated companies in the country, to "fairly distribute" that money for you?

<comment><USER27> I have an account with them. And they're already doing it for my TV channels.

They're also providing a reliable 100Mbps link 4 miles from the nearest sewer pipe. Seems like they could handle 50 lines of code to parse logs and disburse payments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I keep waiting for some serious content creator to try a bitcoin micropayment system. From there it's a small stretch to envision a third party like this one to take care of SSO and varying pay rates per provider.

<comment><USER30> Why bitcoin?

Why not 'regular money' that more people have?

<comment><USER31> It's easy to charge 5 cents to read an article using Bitcoin. With processing fees, this isn't super easy using credit cards.

<comment><USER32> Look up the current fees for bitcoin transactions; they're more expensive. Also much slower.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, but I think that largely depends on the degree of security you want to have in your blockchain. For example you could use something of a multi-party signing-scheme for consensus that regularly stamps hashes of it's own table into the bitcoin blockchain - this kind of scheme would be significantly less expensive to implement since you could pack thousands of transactions into a single bitcoin transaction. I'm not really sure micro-payments are the answer to add blocking to begin with though -

<comment><USER34> Are you kidding me? You have no idea what you are talking about. The bitcoin transaction has to come from the sender. You are dreaming

<comment><USER35> You can have multiple inputs / outputs per bitcoin transaction, so presumably that's what he's talking about.

<comment><USER33> > You can have multiple inputs / outputs per bitcoin transaction, so > presumably that's what he's talking about.

Actually that's not it. What I'm saying is that you can have any normal multi- party signature scheme, where every N signing-rounds you ensure some measure of canonical ordering by publishing the hash in the bitcoin blockchain. I think sidechains are probably formulated in a similar fashion but it's been a while since I've looked at exactly what they are doing, the trickier parts if I remember correctly are transfers of value on and off the original chain.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Firefox 59 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/59.0/releasenotes/ <comment><USER2> Firefox 59 is the first Firefox release to support SameSite cookie attribute, joining Chrome.

> Same-site cookies ("First-Party-Only" or "First-Party") allow servers to > mitigate the risk of CSRF and information leakage attacks by asserting that > a particular cookie should only be sent with requests initiated from the > same registrable domain.

I like this one!

<comment><USER3> How does this play out WRT "Block 3rd party cookies" (which wasn't on by default on Fx and Cr but was on Safari since an eternity?)

<comment><USER4> Note that the definition of "Block 3rd party cookies" in Safari is different from the one in Firefox (not sure about Chrome). Firefox blocks a lot more stuff when that option is enabled in Firefox than Safari does when its option is enabled, which causes more web compat problems.

<comment><USER5> Blocking 3rd party cookies causes very few problems. I've blocked them for many years and have seen fewer than 10 sites it caused problems with. For those you can whitelist the domain.

<comment><USER6> My experience has been the opposite. It breaks every Amazon Pay integration and a lot of Paypal integrations as well. It also breaks online banking for the two credit unions I use, both of which seem to use some 3rd party service to run their backends. And then just whitelisting the domain isn't a great solution because then that means they can drop any 3rd party cookies, not just the desirable ones. So suddenly my online banking works, but now I've got google trackers and whatever other crap they want to drop. I believe I was able to whitelist just those cookies but that was quite a few versions ago and the interface is different now so I can't find where I did it. The cookie interface is really terribe; when you go to the site information it tells you whether the site is storing any cookies, and many times it says "No" but if you click the "view cookies" link it shows a ton of them. This happens when the domain doesn't match exactly (for example www.example.com vs example.com) so you can't really trust the Yes|No info box.

<comment><USER7> > whitelisting the domain isn't a great solution because then that means they > can drop any 3rd party cookies, not just the desirable ones

Try something like uMatrix or similar add-ons. They allow you to configure rules similar to application firewalls:

      cookie * * DENY
      cookie * 1stparty ALLOW
      cookie creditunion.org finserv.com ALLOW

Great interface too, at least what I've seen on uMatrix: Most rules are configured with one click in a 'matrix' of hosts and applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article about "Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP)"is an interesting read:

[https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/off-main- thread-...](https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/off-main-thread- painting/)

Great to see so much effort being put into the fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's great that they're continuing to add back customisation to the new tab page but why am I still restricted to two rows of "top sites"? I'm on a desktop here, I'm not going to run out of pixels. Even on Android I liked having more space for quick links to websites I visit semi-regularly. In fact it was more useful there because there isn't a good way to bring order to the history panel.

Is it just to make room for "highlights"? I switched that off because it's utterly useless for me. I don't find it helpful to be shown a random selection of things I've clicked on. Besides, I am capable of scrolling.

Yes I know, there's an addon for that (probably). But it just feels like such an arbitrary restriction.

Why are only twelve "top sites" allowed?

<comment><USER10> And why can't I have my home page as my new tab page?

I don't want any of that "top sites" BS on a new tab, I want the local HTML file that I created as my home page. Why not allow it for new tabs?

<comment><USER11> I'm cursing for about a year about this. I spent days searching for workarounds and stopped short of hacking into firefox. Maybe I should just install firefox 50 and disable updates.

<comment><USER10> Only thing I've found is that hitting ALT-Home keys in the new tab will load the home page. But it's one of those tiny repeated annoyances that I'd love to avoid.

<comment><USER12> I can't really comment fairly here as I've gotten used to Chrome for the last 2+ years, but is there really not an extension in Firefox for this, even if it's not natively supported? Seems surprising to me.

<comment><USER10> Yes there are, but for some reason using a local file is a problem. Something about the ability of WebExtension to access a local file. Probably sensible, but in this case annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Added settings in about:preferences to stop websites from asking to send notifications"

Been waiting for this one.

<comment><USER14> Sites have been replacing the actual API request with a HTML5 overlay, precisely because of this - only when clicking "notify me" does the actual permission get requested, with the requisite dialog.

(The rationale is "once the permission is denied, there's no way to bring it up again; a dismissed HTML5 box can be brought up again an infinite number of times")

As for me, I went for WebAPI Manager, which blocks most of the annoyances (Vibrate API? Never saw anyone outside malvertising use _that_ ), while still allowing me to manually whitelist sites.

<comment><USER15> Right. This is also the current standard approach for asking for iOS push permissions. Without intermediary dialog, the app can't try again.

<comment><USER16> And as app builders you have to explain people how to enable the permission anyways if people try to e.g. use their current location. Luckily since a few versions now, iOS allows apps to directly open a certain settings page, e.g. location services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sadly, still unusable for me since the Quantum update.

A clean install and profile, no add-ons, and google.com/maps (for example) will max out my cpu. There must be some bug related to old hardware and OS (Macbook Pro 2009 + 10.11.x) or more people would be experiencing this.

<comment><USER18> Hi! I'm collecting profiles on cases like yours.

Here are instructions if you'd like to help: [https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7knnn4/firefox_qua...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7knnn4/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/)

<comment><USER19> Thanks, I will do so.

When Firefox optimised for multi-process, did they test for single-core? I'm on a machine released this decade - a rare instance of a single core x86_64 machine (fanless Atom NUC)

Facebook is pretty much now unusable with they do their asynchronous page loading of stories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Although its a minor thing, I'm personally delighted with drag & drop for the new tab tiles. These are the kind of little usability improvements that can tip the finely balanced scales between major browsers these days.

<comment><USER21> Tab Tiles?

<comment><USER20> Top sites tiles on the new tab page in Firefox.

[https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/home/new- tab.a1c9f...](https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/home/new- tab.a1c9f06dcebe.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> After I switched to Firefox 59 beta on Windows (7 upgraded to 10), I see the following issue all the time. When accessing finance.google.com in one tab and etrade.com (internal page) in another, if I am on finance.google.com and if it refreshes and is slow for some reason I start seeing a blank page with a spinner on that tab and while this is happening, if I switch to the etrade.com tab, I see that page is blank too and has a spinner that doesn't refresh until the finance.google.com tab comes back -- almost like the browser is stuck in a system call somewhere and all tabs using javascript are blocked. Maybe it's likely some interaction with some addons I have (mostly NoScript), but it's been frustrating and for the first time in so many years I am considering switching browsers :-(.

BTW, where is the best way to ask about issues like this regarding Firefox, it seems like Googling for Firefox issues mostly only brings up years old issues and no one is publically posting about more recent issues like this. Also it's hard to describe problems like this in a reasonable way to come up with search terms that Google likes and doesn't hit old reported problems.

<comment><USER23> Google web apps and sites don't work well in Firefox, generally speaking.

Examples where Chrome performance and functionality is superior include:

\- Inbox (try downloading attachments) \- Maps \- Analytics \- ...

<comment><USER24> > Inbox (try downloading attachments)

The only times I got issues with this on Firefox was due to some add-on (Disconnect for instance). On Firefox out of the box I haven't had issues with downloading attachments lately, even with the add-on on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Still on 56, sadly. The addons crucial for my workflow have stopped working. Shame these concerns were not properly addressed, even after months of clamour about breaking changes like these.

<comment><USER26> What add-ons?

<comment><USER27> For me it's LiveClick. [http://projects.protej.com/liveclick/](http://projects.protej.com/liveclick/)

'Display preview in live bookmark item tooltip' and 'keep menu open after middle clicking items' are worth me staying on FF 55 for the time being.

Sure I have tried upgrading and using other addons but nothing really does as well for me as this addon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Added settings in about:preferences to stop websites from asking to send > notifications or access your device's camera, microphone, and location, > while still allowing trusted websites to use these features

Good. I get so tired of having to click that little [x] on the location prompt.

However it's really just covering up a bigger issue, which is that the permissions prompts in Firefox and Chrome should be redesigned. It would be good if they were designed so that they were still noticeable, but they:

* don't cover part of the webpage

* don't cover other parts of the browser's UI

* and don't take focus away from the webpage

<comment><USER29> Yeah, why isn't it one of those thin drop down bars at the top that can be closed? Have it go away after a certain number of seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> More good news: expect to see Fx60 on Fdroid.

[https://forum.f-droid.org/t/making-it-easier-for-f-droid- to-...](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/making-it-easier-for-f-droid-to-package- mozilla-firefox/1649/14)

</comment><comment><USER31> I switched to Firefox from Chrome at 58. I've been very happy with the experience all around. Keep up the good work, Mozilla!

<comment> trevor-e I too switched for several months, but am already back to using Chrome. Even with the performance improvements, it's still noticeably slower than Chrome.

<comment><USER31> I'm curious: what OS do you use and what sites are you visiting?

I've had a stellar experience on Arch Linux. The RAM usage is down. I can't say I really ever found Chrome slow, but nor is Firefox for me. I think they're both plenty fast, but I prefer sites without lots of garbage flying around on the page anyway.

<comment> trevor-e macOS High Sierra. I generally have a lot of tabs open: two Inbox tabs, Facebook, StackOverflow chat + question pages for what I'm working on, many JIRA tickets, HN, sometimes Twitch, etc.

I think it has something to do with video rendering since opening Twitch/Youtube often causes the problems to start.

<comment><USER32> Try [https://addons.mozilla.org/ca/firefox/addon/auto-tab- discard...](https://addons.mozilla.org/ca/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/) I had been using Tab Suspender from the same author but recently noticed that it was deprecated for FF 57 or newer.

Pretty happy with it on long-running tabs I check once or twice a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Still no proper Yukikey 2FA support. Github kinda works, Gmail still completely broken. I would love to switch from Chrome for the privacy benefits, but this is an absolute deal-breaker.

Edit: There is hope for Firefox 60 or 61 -> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409573](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409573)

<comment><USER34> IIRC it's the problem of Gmail specifically, and how they implemented 2FA. Spec-compliant sites, like Giithub, work.

<comment><USER35> It's the old Microsoft strategy.

Break the standard behaviour slightly to make competitors product unusable in your products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Firefox Private Browsing Mode will remove path information from referrers to > prevent cross-site tracking

Surprised this wasn't done yet.

<comment><USER36> Well, politics. As a browser vendor, you need to provide webpage owners ways to make (more) money, especially when other browsers that users are happily voting for, do provide these ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sadly no news on the Web-extensions front. Several of my extensions continue broken.

<comment><USER38> What news are you looking for? I'm fairly sure extensions targeting the older APIs will not be supported in any future release.

<comment><USER39> Old extensions won't ever really work again, but part of me is still kind of holding out hope for WebExtensions API features for things like "allow extension on 'system' pages (new tab, settings, etc)", "focus addressbar", "hide/replace address/tab bars", etc.

Some of those are coming or pretty much ready (tab hiding, addressbar focus), and others I've almost given up on, given how Mozilla seems to have changed their philosophy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Improved graphics rendering using Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP) for Mac > users

Does this update improve its power consumption? Currently, Firefox has a significantly larger effect on my MacBook's battery life compared to Safari with similar usage.

<comment><USER41> Ya, I'm really disappointed with the battery consumption on FF, almost wanting me to move back to Chrome (shudder).

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Switched to FF Nightly from Chrome about 6 months ago because Chrome's memory usage was awful. Firefox has been much better, especially since I modified the following in about:config:

        browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers => 0
        dom.ipc.processCount                     => 1

<comment><USER43> Isn't limiting the ipc processes severely capping (CPU) performance?

<comment><USER42> I haven't really noticed much of a difference in performance but memory usage is much lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1353319](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1353319) \- RESOLVED FIXED in Firefox 59, super happy about that.

<comment><USER45> I'll save you a click:

> Render the HTML preview within the Response side-panel

> Component: Developer Tools: Netmonitor

> Reported: 11 months ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Firefox gets raving feedback here, but for me it is unusably slow on a Linux machine.

While websites do render fast, the UI is not very responsive, whether its laggy typing into the address bar [1] or the crawling devtools.

[1] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1408699](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1408699)

<comment><USER47> I switched back to Firefox for dev work on my system (Arch Linux), because Chrome would slow to a crawl with its devtools open. Firefox (since quantum) seems to fare better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> 59 is probably a bit of a less spectacula release than Quantum itself but the recent updates nonetheless bring me joy.

The "stop notifying me about permissions and just block it" is something I genuinely didn't know I wanted. Though I do hope (but will have to test later) if this also works for HTML Canvas since I use the additional anti fingerprinting.

</comment><comment><USER49> Won't be updating beyond FF 55.0.3 because 'Status-4-Evar' add-on doesn't work with Quantum. Apparently it can't be updated to work with Quantum for reasons I don't know, but was mentioned on the support forum.

Until such time as I can prevent the annoying floating URL pop-up in bottom corner when hovering over links, I won't be updating. I don't see why I can't have a harmless fixed status bar extending 100% at bottom of window. It creates a nice gap between Windows taskbar and the browser, with the URL hover text contained neatly within and doesn't appear over the page as an irritating floating layer.

Is it law at Mozilla that FF must imitate Chrome on interface style? Perhaps my choice of wanting choice is the wrong choice. Perhaps it's my fault as user, for wanting something that was taken away.

Another add-on I liked, now kaput, is Mozilla's own Lightbeam. The important list view and domain blocking function of that extension has been broken for some time. The march towards the "best browser" seems to involve breaking things and pissing people off.

<comment><USER50> Used to prefer the status bar but am sort of used to not having it now. But I think the new way is broken also. Don't see why I have to look down to see the link target. Why can't it be a tooltip at the mouse pointer, perhaps below any alt text?

<comment><USER49> I would not choose to have a tooltip link hover, but you should be allowed to have it if you want. Via options, about:config, or possible via an extension.

In UI terms, the concept of a fixed footer is well established. We see it often on sites and applications. FF allows adjustment of the millisecond delay of the link text, but no control over other properties of that element. I don't get the logic. When vendors move the furniture around in their "security updates" it makes me distrust the updates, particularly when the furniture can't be moved back to how it looked before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is allow client side decorations available yet in about:config? It was in a fedora release about 2 months ago, and it was removed because it wasn't in mainline. I have the title bar disabled for now, but that's broken in it's own way(dragging doesn't work right).

<comment> dao- No, it wasn't ready: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1440461](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1440461)

Should be part of Firefox 60.

<comment><USER51> That's a shame. Client side decoration seemed ready when it was enabled on Fedora.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> A little OT, but how can I enable/use the Screenshots feature? I cannot find it.

<comment><USER13> Right click -> Take a Screenshot

<comment><USER53> Is there a way to trigger a full screen screenshot via Selenium/WebDriver? (not a partial/window screenshot - that I can do)

<comment><USER54> If I'm understanding correctly, could you just select the body tag and screenshot that? In Selenium Python that'd be:

        # driver is a Firefox driver
        body = driver.find_element_by_tag_name('body')
        screenshot = body.screenshot_as_base64 # png bytes

<comment><USER53> Just tried this - doesn't seem to work:

\- a lot of (visible) elements are missing

\- the screenshot is still cropped to whatever viewport is used

<comment><USER54> Definitely just speculating here, but there is a `driver.save_screenshot(path)` method that would probably be worth trying.

This worked for me:

        from selenium.webdriver import Firefox
        from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options

        geckodriver_path = '/usr/local/bin/geckodriver'
        options = Options()
        options.add_argument('-headless')
        driver = Firefox(executable_path=geckodriver_path, firefox_options=options)

        url='https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16576015'
        driver.get(url)
        driver.save_screenshot('./hn.png')

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > Added support for W3C specs for pointer events and improved platform > integration with added device support for mouse, pen, and touch screen > pointer input

ohh yeah finally! I somehow missed that even though I'm following Nightly.

</comment><comment><USER56> Can't find in the release notes: Is the Android version now based on quantum as the desktop version? As it was promised a few months back:

[https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/09/26/project-quantum- enh...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/09/26/project-quantum-enhancements- wont-arrive-firefox-57-android/)

<comment><USER57> One of the major Quantum improvements, Stylo, isn't coming to Android until Firefox 60: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1366049](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1366049)

Unfortunately, it'll still be pretty slow until then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Can someone tell me what's behind "Faster load times for content on the Firefox Home page"?

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm sad to say that Firefox Quantum will remain useless to me until proper session management is restored. But without even the necessary API to enable features that were provided by the "Session Manager" add-on for many years, this still seems to be a long way off.

</comment><comment><USER60> Looks like 'client side decorations' on Linux didn't make this release?

<comment><USER61> CSDs were already in 58 (Customize, Title Bar). What didn't make this release is Wayland support.

<comment><USER60> I think that was only backported into the Fedora version?

<comment><USER61> Looks like you are right, I cannot find it in Ubuntu version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Does anyone know why Alt+D doesn't focus into the Address Bar anymore? (I thought the behavior was suppose to be like Ctrl+L) I'm on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER10> I use Firefox Focus on my phone (android). Anyone know if it tracks the full Firefox releases or is it something completely separate?

<comment><USER36> It's completely separate.

As in, it doesn't even use Gecko, it uses the native web engine of iOS/Android, so that's WebKit / Android Webview. With how many trackers and ads they block in Focus by default, they wouldn't exactly motivate webpage owners to support Gecko anyways, if they'd use Gecko in it.

This is the current release notes of Firefox Focus on Android: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/whats-new-focus- android...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/whats-new-focus-android-4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Damn I'm excited about this (specifically those damn notification popups!).

Slightly off topic: has anyone else been getting frequent crashes lately? It's as if it's running out of memory then freezing a moment. I thought it was because I'm on an older phone at first (note 3 here) but my wife said the same thing to me and she is in an edge 7.

(Kinda hoping someone knows a config fix to it haha)

</comment><comment><USER64> Off-Main-Thread Painting (OMTP) for Mac users is some good stuff. FF is now noticeably smoother. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER65> Has the issue with HSTS supercookies leaking into Private Browsing mode been fixed yet?

<comment><USER66> Relevant Mozilla and Chromium bugs:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=930638](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=930638)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1232961](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1232961)

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=104935](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=104935)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Does this include the forced collection of the user's usage data?

<comment><USER68> Better stay away from the evil Mozilla corporation, and instead use one of those other, more privacy-aware, browsers like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h It's okay to do bad things so long as your main competition is worse?

<comment><USER69> wrt to satisfying every single extant ideological constraint that determines 'good' or 'bad', yes. a pragmatic assessment is that, due to it not being possible to satisfy contradicting constraints, it is thusly 'okay' to not do the impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> cmd+f,"u2f" or "webauth"

Nothing.. I wonder when they'll ever get to fully supporting u2f (probably via webauth) so I don't have to use Chrome to log into certain websites.

<comment><USER71> Mozilla will ship the Webauthn API in Firefox 60 (May 9):

[https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/using-hardware-token- based...](https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/01/using-hardware-token-based-2fa- with-the-webauthn-api/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Congratulations!

What's the memory usage like compare to earlier versions?

<comment><USER4> Looking at that bug, one problem with implementing the nonstandard "mousewheel" event is that the browsers that implement it have different behavior in terms of what the delta value means, so sites using it tend to do browser sniffing to decide how to handle it. Which means implementing it is likely to break sites unless you exactly match the UA string and behavior of some other browser.

Given that, and given that Firefox does support the per-standard "wheel" event, what is the argument for implementing "mousewheel"?

<comment><USER73> (I think this comment was meant to be posted somewhere else…)

<comment><USER4> No, I posted it in the right place. Tepix subsequently edited his/her comment, as far as I can tell. The comment I was replying to, about "mousewheel" events, is certainly no longer in evidence.

<comment><USER72> Sorry about that, i changed my comment because it was obsolete and i could no longer delete it.

<comment><USER4> Next time it might make sense to make it clear that the comment was edited and how... ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Did they fix the bug introduced with multi-process where select lists in their popped-up state don't respect css styles?

</comment><comment><USER75> Mozilla should also be focusing on RAM utilization. If they are doing that on the back end they should explicitly mention it in the update details.

<comment><USER4> There were thousands of changes from Firefox 58 to Firefox 59 (I count > 8900 changesets, though some are merges).

The release notes only list the most visible and most unexpected changes. Ongoing memory and performance work rarely clears that bar. It's happening all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Firefox is dead to me ever since they killed their addons and marketed it as a step forward. If I wanted to use Chrome I'd use fucking Chrome.

<comment><USER77> I don't know why you are being downvoted. I have the same problem. I'm still stuck with Firefox 56 and no upgrade path in sight. I wish Mozilla declared FF 56 a LTS release for those of us who value their addons more than performance benefits of Quantum. Right now I'm still using an out-of-date release that doesn't receive critical security updates, and I have to choose between either downgrading 4 releases down to FF 52 (bad) or upgrading beyond FF 57 and losing addons that I came to rely on (unacceptable).

<comment><USER78> The thing that kept me from upgrading was TreeStyleTabs, but there is a non- XUL version of it which works fairly well.

While it is a pain, it's not as if Mozilla removed XUL support with no warning. What addons are you missing? Perhaps we can find updates or replacements?

<comment><USER79> Session manager is the main one that's missing for me. Nothing else can reliably selectively restore a session with full history and unloaded tabs on startup after a crash for me.

<comment><USER78> Interesting. I've never had an issue with the built-in session restore functionality. I'm not dismissing you, but asking what issues you've had with it (so that I can watch out for them.)

<comment><USER79> Sometimes, usually after a crash, firefox will restore an empty session. Session manager has a working backup in those cases.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hashicorp raises $100M at a $1.9B valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/01/hashicorp-raises-100-million-at-1point9-billion-valuation.html <comment><USER2> "with unconventional names like Vagrant, Consul and Terraform" But Kubernetes and Istio are a completely normal names? Welcome to open source, mainstream media ;)

<comment><USER3> Google is normal too?

If I'd named my company Orange, I would be laughed at too.

And people also got used to Ubuntu by now I guess.

And Yahoo and Bing? There's not much reason to keep surprising on new names people find.

<comment><USER4> Exactly my thoughts, and considering it's functionality I fail to see how Terraform is an unconventional name at all. It fits the product perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The interesting thing here is that Vault and Terraform Enterprise will probably be the ones for making money where the rest is their form of advertisement.

It's just that only Vault is ready and Terraform Enterprise is taking way too long, IMHO dangerously long as some it might already be too late to actually sell it.

</comment><comment><USER6> hashicorp is interesting. there's no product they have which i think i couldn't build myself, and which many SRE types couldn't build themselves. and which looking at the source code verifies.

The real magic is in hashicorp's pricing strategy then. At a glance it sounds quite high, and surely if you are capable of and if you built in-house you could build only the features you want, reducing your build cost below the sticker buy cost.

But at high opportunity cost. There are better things that your in-house SREs could be working on, than infrastructure that someone else has already done for you.

The freemium model also works quite well for them.

There's also a timing factor. Hashicorp probably couldn't have existed 10 years ago. But I don't think it's quite a case of an idea whose time had come. I think hashicorp helped create their own market.

Here's to their success!</comment>


Ask HN: Best Monitor for Programming - <AUTHOR> Now that I'm going to be working from my home office indefinitely, I was looking into upgrading my setup and getting a new monitor. Currently, I'm using a 1920x1080 24" Acer.
I'm looking for more screen real estate, but more importantly, I'd love to get the sharpness and pixel density that my Macbook's retina display has. Not terribly worried about price, but would like to say under $1000
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Had a good time with ROG Strix XG438Q</comment>


Ask HN: How to cancel a job offer finding another offer - <AUTHOR> Dear HN, I am a soon-to-be college graduate who accepted a job offer a few months ago. Just last week, I was offered a position a much more reputable company that would pay significantly higher than the previous offer. Of course, I accepted.
Now I am unsure how to contact the previous company that I made a commitment to. My question is whether this is a common scenario or was it a terrible taboo that I committed? Are they going to blacklist me from ever applying in the future or is this going to somehow bite me later on? Either way, I'm not sure how I should contact the rejected company and what to tell them (email, formal letter, phone?).
If anyone could give some advice, I would appreciate it greatly. Thank you.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the second offer came a few weeks after I had already accepted the first. So far, it seems like directly contacting my recruiter is the right thing to do. I'll be making a call tomorrow for sure.
EDIT2: I haven't yet started either of the 2 jobs. The start dates for both are in June! <comment><USER2> Once, I would have said "That is very unprofessional. Are you sure you want to do that? You'll lose karma, or something." But honestly? With darn few exceptions, employment isn't a sacred trust. It's just business. They underbid. Would they keep you on the payroll, out of a sense of fairness, if it developed that you were not the best offer? Nope. You'd be shown the door. It's just business.

I'd recommend a simple phone call. "Hiya Bob, thank you for your time in getting us to this offer of employment. Circumstances have changed and it looks like I will not be able to work for your firm. I apologize for the inconvenience. ... Yes, Bob, I appreciate that this puts you in a bit of a lurch. Please accept my apologies. Would you like me to recap this conversation in a letter? Thank you Bob. Best of luck finding a candidate."

I don't particularly suggest telling them that you're taking employment elsewhere. That's something you tell your friend. They're not your friend. If you worked there, they would still not be your friend. Bob might eventually have become your friend, but right now Bob is a corporate officer of a company which underbid for your services. You don't particularly owe them explanations or excuses.

At-will employment is a two-way street.

<comment><USER3> 'Would they keep you on the payroll, out of a sense of fairness, if it developed that you were not the best offer? Nope. You'd be shown the door. It's just business.' <\-- dead wrong.

You can't rescind an offer after extending an offer just because a better candidate showed up at your door. Because he hasnt joined yet, in most states the at-will rules dont apply. In NJ and NY, for example, the employer is legally obligated to pay damages.

After joining, the implied-contract exception to at-will employment kicks in [in most states] which would protect you in the case a better candidate came. If you actually were incompetent and demonstrated it on the job, that would be a different story, but there should be no concern about it ...

I read something from BLS about this a long time ago, and I'll try to dig out a citation.

EDIT: found citation: <http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/01/art1full.pdf>

<comment><USER4> Careful. The three exceptions in that document are:

* Public interest (clearly inapplicable)

* Implied contract

* Covenant of good faith

The latter two seem like real issues for tech companies. But the HR process of every moderately professional company in the world is designed in part to inoculate them from "implied contract" claims, so having an offer withdrawn is unlikely to leave you with a viable implied contract claim.

Eleven states, including CA and MA, honor some "covenant of good faith" process. But it's unclear to me how exposed the standard offer letter used by most companies are to "covenant" claims. For instance, most will state specifically that "Your employment with Company is at-will and either party can terminate the relationship at any time with or without cause and with or without notice."

I don't think you're right; Patrick is probably _not_ "dead wrong" that companies can withdraw offers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a tricky situation, TBH. Think about it from the other side: company invested HR and other resources to seek out talent, managed to arrange to hire you a few months ago, and assumed that you would work for them. From the company perspective, assuming they had to hire N people, you took a slot. Furthermore, because it is so late in the hiring cycle, it will prove to be hard to hire another qualified person.

It is not a terrible taboo. You are expected, as soon as you accept an offer, to stop pursuing other job opportunities. That being said, the company will be more understanding if you ended up taking an offer that was _SIGNIFICANTLY_ better than your current offer. If they have a shred of decency they will not share this information with anyone [and certain people such as COO and HR staff may be obliged not to discuss the situation as part of their contracts], so they won't hurt your chances at other firms. You can bet your bottom dollar that they won't reconsider you, though.

You should talk directly to the people who interviewed you [no email, letter, etc]. especially if the firm is much more reputable and the pay is significantly higher, they may be sympathetic.

But before doing it, make sure that is what you want to do. It may, in some circumstances, make sense to take on a job that pays less or is less reputable if you think you have a better opportunity to shine (I've turned down job offers from lots of much more reputable places in lieu of an offer that put me in a more senior position).

<comment><USER5> Yes, more money and a big name company should mean precisely zero if you are at the beginning of your career.

You should be taking the job that allows you to best practice, learn and hone your craft, whatever that is.

Big name companies are often some of the least dynamic, most boring and slow moving places to work.

Money comes later if you work hard early in your career.

<comment><USER6> A big name company with a good reputation at the start of your career is a good social proof, since you would have beaten a lot of people to the role, and have been exposed to a successful way of doing things. Other things are important too but it means far from zero.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, not zero but company name and pay should mean relatively little at the beginning of your career. Be driven primarily by challenge, fun and learning. If you get all that then use company name and salary as the next determining factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a hiring manager this is simply not a big deal. Any employee can leave at any time for any reason. I dont see anything wrong ethically with calling to turn down the original position. If they are truly good people they would recognize that it could be better for your career and be happy for you.

If it isnt truly better for your career, then they will have the opportunity to explain why or sweeten.

The only time I get upset is if someone leaves in the middle of a project without enough notice.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried hiring during a college cycle? There's a pool of people, and in general the people you want to hire will accept a job offer before may.

It is especially frustrating if you have already planned and allocated resources to hiring a candidate, and then found out that the candidate rejected an offer. At that point, some employers actually call the school and complain, and that's definitely something bad for a college grad .

Note: Again, its a general statement: there are point examples of very sharp college grads deciding to search for jobs in april, but for the most part the better people accept offers earlier in the year

With regards to your ethical query, what happens if the tables were turned [i.e. company offered and then rescinded the offer months later]? Would that be ethical?

<comment><USER7> It isnt very nice, but Im sure it happens. We would only do it if business circumstances forced us to do it (not because we found someone better). If at all possible we would pay them a "severance" probably around 2 weeks of salary.

I dont see it as unethical either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like you have not actually started work at the first job?

You call the person who recruited you personally on the telephone, don't email as a first step because that is cowardly and rude. You say to them "I'm feeling uncomfortable about this but I'm sorry I have been offered and accepted a role which pays more and is at a company that I feel is a better fit to what I am looking for. Apologies for doing this after I have already accepted a role with you. I know it is bad form."

No, you should not expect that company or recruiter to ever do business with you again, why would they? But that's the price you pay for continuing to interview for jobs after you have accepted one. You have behaved unprofessionally and were disrespectful of the time, money and resource that it took to get you recruited into the first job. But that's okay, it's not a huge sin, lots of people do it unfortunately and really you must look after your interests primarily. Sh*t happens and people sometimes find better jobs, probably because they really wanted a job and made the mistake of accepting something that they really were not so enthused about.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I have not yet started work at the first job (1st day is in June). And actually I wasn't expecting the second offer to come about, they just waited too long to call me and I didn't even think I was on their minds anymore.

I do genuinely feel bad as I did actually like the recruiter . But it looks like the only thing to do now is make a phone call.

<comment><USER5> Once you have accepted a job, as another poster points out, you are expected to take yourself off the market. It shouldn't matter that someone calls you and that you were not actively pursuing the second offer.

Having said that, as I mentioned earlier, there is no point in taking a job that you do not want.

<comment><USER8> Regardless when you get an offer, you go for the best one. Even if its your first day and you get a call from say Facebook and they want you, you gonna say no thank you, I rather stay here with less pay or name value. I don't think so. It would be nice in a perfect world. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Important question: Have you signed anything, cashed any checks, or done anything else to actually make you beholden to the first? Even if you did, it doesn't mean that you're stuck, but it will make your situation a touch stickier.

That said, this is unlikely to significantly harm you, so don't worry about it too much. It would have done you much worse to miss out on the second opportunity!

</comment><comment><USER10> anecdotally, i was blacklisted by a certain fortune 100 company because i had turned down a face to face set of interviews in the 4th round the night before. they were really pissed off, for whatever reason, i politely told them that i wasn't interested in the position any longer and that i would have to cancel the interview. i think 15 hour notice is sufficient.

anyway, the reason why i knew i was blacklisted was because i was interviewing for a post with that same company in another region several months (~6) later and as soon as the headhunter put me through to hr, they stopped all communications, no details given.

fwiw you should never burn bridges, but in this case, over time i found that this company was the complete anti-thesis of the type of company that i would want to work for and i thank their hr for donning light on that through their utter ineptitude and incompetence, not because they blacklisted me, but because they were so ridiculously disorganized. the facts: hr could not identify the exact title and position that i was interviewing for correctly, several times i would be interviewing for position x (told by hr, job description in hand), only to figure out that the interviewer was looking for position y and was considering me for position y (which was with the same division, but a different role). when doing a phone interview with the vp of the region, he didn't successfully make it until our 3rd attempt (across 3 differently scheduled days) at a conference call, various reasons which i think were ridiculous: laptop was having problems so he couldn't access the conference call number from his calendar, second time was more forgivable that something important had come up, but i was not given advanced notice, only told after waiting in the conference call for 20 minutes and after 3 emails to hr to figure out why the guy was late.

but to come back to your point, you had gone a bit further than i by accepting an offer, i'm assuming signed a contract, and only weeks later you turned them down. while i agree with some of the posts that that's life, that the company had failed to provide you with a fair valuation/compensation package, but at the same time, i doubt the original company was looking to low-ball you, that's quite possibly what they could pay you given their salary ranges. you did the right thing by not trying to re-negotiate with the first company, that would be completely disrespectful.

i highly suggest trying to bridge this relationship with the first company, tell them your intent clearly, that you're retracting your acceptance, but be prepared to answer because they will ask why. personally i usually give the truth, but that's up to you. remember, you want to treat people how you expect to be treated.

and overall, let this be a lesson learned, given that i realize the job market is not in the best shape, but i believe that you were a bit eager to take on the first company's offer. a little restraint and negotiation could let you to stretch that offer while not accepting and looking for something else that's more fitting.

</comment><comment><USER8> First off you did nothing wrong at all! Its a good thing people are after you, it happens and companies know what happens and knows the best offer wins. Nothing new here. Always pursue the best offers around, its a game these companies play, Google vs. Facebook for example.

The hiring game as nothing to do with you, its a game played between companies. Just be sure to call the person tomorrow and tell them you have a better offer. No need to feel bad, feel good people are after you. Its not the first time this happens. If they really want you they may match your other offer. Good Luck and feel good.

<comment><USER3> "First off you did nothing wrong at all!" <\-- That's a dangerous statement. He [guessing gender] did something wrong by agreeing to be in the employ of the first company and then agreeing to be in the employ of the second company without first notifying the first company.

There is nothing wrong with fishing for offers, but its wrong to accept two offers without rescinding one. Accepting two offers is like marrying two people in a country/state that bans polygyny or polyandry.

<comment><USER8> Like I said below only in a perfect world, it happens all the time. Its nothing new and just business. No hard feelings on any side, the employee and companies know all this and don't see it as anything bad or good, just the way the market is. When your in demand - your in demand. :)

<comment><USER5> You're probably too young to have had many people treat your hard work and money with disrespect. You'll think about it differently further down the track when you learn that it's worth trying to do the right thing when you can.

<comment><USER8> Nobody disrespected anyone, that's just business sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, which ever side your on you just keep going. No right or wrong here, if it was that case always do the right thing, in this case the other business just lost talent, they wanna compete they can by offering or matching it.

Just business.

<comment><USER5> Many people think that it costs nothing to anyone to recruit a person into a job. I think the recruiter would not agree with "no right or wrong" - they put in the effort to find this guy, shepherd him through the recruitment process, is now not getting paid and has missed the chance to put someone else into the job who would have stayed. I suspect that recruiter might feel somewhat less circumspect about the outcome.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Snap is laying off 100 employees mostly in advertising and sales - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/snap-is-laying-off-100-employees-in-advertising-and-sales.html <comment><USER2> Anecdata, but in my group people are using Snap less and less. Meanwhile I see more and more Instagram stories each week.

It's sad for the employees affected, but this could be a wake up call to Snap. I like the premise of Snapchat, that messages are ephemeral, but it seems like Snap the company doesn't realize that people don't use their app for sponsored stories. It's primarily a messaging tool for friends.

</comment><comment><USER3> Growth rarely lasts forever, and Snap had more employees than generally considered reasonable with such a single-purpose app. I'm surprised they aren't laying off more engineers though, personally.

<comment><USER4> I think they already had a round of layoffs focused on engineers.

<comment><USER3> It says in the article they did, yeah. Still a bizarre amount left in my opinion. I can't imagine what they do all day.

<comment><USER5> Implement new filters?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars the mistake of signing that $2 billion Google Cloud deal [1] has cost them unnecessarily and how many jobs are going to get cut as an ultimate consequence.

Their SG&A expense line was ~$450 million the last three quarters of 2017, up from $182 million in Q4 of 2016.

Daily active users only increased from 158m to 187m in that time, which should have prompted a very modest cost increase in their operating results. They added upwards of $800 million in new annual expenses that should have never been stapled on to the business. Reducing that back to where it was, would still leave them burning $150m or so per quarter in net income (maybe $100m in cash per quarter) in 2018 assuming sales hold up, but it'd be a lot closer to manageable. As it is, they're massively bleeding red ink.

Free cash flow was around negative $800m the last four quarters. Their cash went from ~$3.2 billion to $2 billion in 2017. It looks like that will be down to ~$1.2 billion by the end of 2018.

[1] [http://fortune.com/2017/02/02/snap-will-spend-on-google- clou...](http://fortune.com/2017/02/02/snap-will-spend-on-google-cloud/)

</comment><comment><USER7> My sister is in college and works at Starbucks.

She and a group of her coworkers delivered coffee to one of their offices in Santa Monica.

Their last major update really upset a lot of people, so when my younger sister ran into a Product Manager, she chatted with him and mentioned the update.

His response was, change is good, deal with it.

It really rubbed me the wrong way on multiple levels. 1) You're being a asshole, 2) you're being an asshole to your key demographic, and 3) I agree with her, the new update sucks.

There is an odd feeling I get about Snapchat, it's almost as if they are successful despite themselves.

</comment><comment><USER8> One look at the content on the "Discovery" page and you instantly understand the platform's weakness. No one is making genuine, useful, compelling content. It's almost exclusively hyper-vapid garbage.

<comment><USER9> I checked SNAP and MUSICA.LY for the first time 2 weeks ago to see what my 12 year old was seeing.

 _Hint if an adults first exposure in your app (before connecting to their existing social network) shows them pornography, or a random teenager cutting themselves... your business might not be sustainable._

I'm not saying you can't profit massively off of teenage angst. But if you LEAD with that like Tumblr and Myspace, people will grow out of your platform.

I think Reddit and Pinterest profit just as much from that questionable content without alienating the people who will ultimately be doing massive ad buys.

Also Snap tried to FORCE the Kardashians on you. They couldn't afford to have them go against the platform. They should have hired them as brand ambassadors to publish multiple times daily, and maybe even exclusively if Snap could afford it.

<comment><USER10> i think the kardashians are smart enough to not tie their brand to a single platform. it wouldn't make sense for the long term, even if they were to be paid out a lot for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like the quality of content & comments posted on HN goes down dramatically whenever the discussion is on Facebook or Snap. I understand these are hot-button companies but I think HN could do better than to have these aimless discussions on obscure things. For the vast majority of companies this news would hardly even get posted.

<comment><USER12> Sadly it seems like the comments are becoming more like reddit comments. I think more and more people are coming from there which isn't a bad thing but they are bringing that style of comments.

Niche topics will have deeper comments because the people interested typically have a deeper understanding. Then you have Facebook and Snap which everyone has an opinion on even without understanding the situation.

<comment><USER11> Very good postulation I had not thought of that. I think it will be important for HN to retain that level of quality as I think we have all benefitted from the higher-than-average level of thought that goes into an HN comment relative to other internet communities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's rarely one layoff once the momentum stops. Companies usually do the first one or two thoughtfully with good packages, but eventually it turns into just another tool for management. The irony is that management research suggests that cutting work is where the benefits come from - just cutting the people doesn't help.

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems particularly alarming for Snap - they badly need a coherent go to market strategy and client relationships.

IMO They need to work hard on a clear business model and ramp up sales against that, not fire the sales people for terrible strategy...

<comment><USER15> How should we view these layoffs in comparison to say the ones done by twitter? They did a bunch of layoffs a year or so ago and it's market cap has recovered significantly since then.

The first wave of layoffs Snap did were related to the hw engineering org. AKA those glasses they mad, right? They were a commercial failure and a distraction so I viewed that as largely a positive sign.

This wave of layoffs seems like they are trimming the fat in sales/marketing, again not necessarily a bad thing. Other companies like twitter have done this and gone on to recover.

I think the biggest problem with Snap right now is how similar it is to Instagram now that Instagram has cloned stories. Twitter served a far different use case from Facebook and they seem pretty safe now that FB is backing away from news.

<comment><USER16> The thing is stories was never Snap's core product. If you remember back when SC first came out, there were no stories at all... although they had a "select all" button for firing off snaps to your entire friends list.

Refer to Snap's S-1 filing[1]: 60% of daily active users send snaps daily, but only 25% of them post to their story.

As far as I'm concerned, Insta et al are welcome to "stories" clones. Stories aren't what I, or most users, use Snapchat for.

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564408/000119312517...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1564408/000119312517029199/d270216ds1.htm)

<comment><USER17> Right, it wasn't their core product but it was a thing that had a clearer monetization strategy.

As far as I can tell no one has figured out a way to monetize private DM/group messaging via advertising. I actually deleted Facebook messenger from my phone in disgust a while back the first time I saw an advertisement mixed in among my list of conversations; I can't even imagine what it would be like to have ads directly inserted in the messaging flow.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't be surprised if they start inserting ads the same way they do after stories now: after you finish watching a received snap (or snaps), you get a video ad immediately after (and the user builds a reflex to down-swipe within a tenth of a second).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Out of curiosity, how does a company lay off ~220 employees yet still have many open positions on its website? I looked at the jobs section for snap and it seems like they have a plethora of engineering jobs despite laying off 120 engineers. Why?

<comment><USER19> They could be cutting under-performers, replacing engineers skilled in Talent A with Talent B where Talent B isn't necessarily easy to learn, or consolidating offices.

I'm seeing all of the above at my current place.

<comment><USER20> Echoing maywittyname's response +.

they replacing Talent A with Talent A but lower pay scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, redesigning a barely useable UI, making it harder to use and prioritizes unrelated ads is bad for business?

Wow, TIL</comment>


Show HN: Easily Customizable Toggle Buttons - jQuery Plugin - <AUTHOR> http://simontabor.com/toggles/

<comment><USER2> When handling options, I quite like this pattern:

        var settings = $.extend({
          dragable: true,
          clickable: true,
          ontext: 'ON',
          offtext: 'OFF',
          on: true,
          animtime: 300
        }, opts);

The $.extend method still returns a suitable object even if `opts` is undefined.

You also might want to `return this.each` so calls can be chained.

All of this is covered here: <http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Authoring>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you Alex, I'll change it tomorrow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey guys, I did something similar but based off the styles of the jQuery UI slider plugin. I found while these types of standalone plugins looked okay, they were frustrating to customise or even to make them look PERFECT.

Check it out here: <http://taitems.github.com/UX-Lab/ToggleSwitch/index.html>

I also investigated achieving something similar using only CSS base on a :checkbox, but the browser support, even in "modern" browsers was poor: <http://taitems.github.com/UX-Lab/CSSInputs/index.html>

Thoughts and hacks on the above, here: [http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/23099016111/css3-input- stylin...](http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/23099016111/css3-input-styling-a- state-of-the-union-ux-lab-009)

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks great! One minor suggestion: make the toggle button non selectable for dragging. <http://jsfiddle.net/SWqw3/> show's a basic way of doing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These look great! Thanks for sharing.

One thing - I know the intent is that they can be easily customized, but it might be nice to have smaller options out of the box. I think I've been spoiled by Twitter Bootstrap, though, where they have a few preset sizes. My first thought was that they looked a little large.

<comment><AUTHOR> The default is actually 50x20px which is pretty small, I could possibly add it so you can specify a size for the toggle in the options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to see something like this as a jQuery plugin. It would be amazing if they could be adjusted by swiping on mobile!

<comment><USER7> I don't know about Android but you don't swipe toggle buttons on iOS.

<comment><USER8> Most users don't, but they have the ability to be swiped, and I've seen some iOS users swiping them around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like these, but how do you get the "value"? Im not a javascript guru, but is there an attribute or value I need to check?

<comment><USER10> It looks like the primary function of the button is to alter something on the page via the toggles function, but I guess you could check if it had the active class or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can either check the class of the .slide div or have it linked to a checkbox which will be checked or unchecked.

<comment><USER9> Ahh, that did it. I ended up checking for $('.slide').hasClass('active');

Thanks for this simon!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Suggestion - theme for Jelly Bean, then have option to automatically select theme for detected device (Android/iPhone)

</comment><comment><USER12> nice work! what license is this released under?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm feeling nice so MIT - will update the README tomorrow</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why don't smart routers use phones to callibrate? - <AUTHOR> I've had several band switching and high powered routers, but the problem is that they can't see the whole problem.
Switching channel based on local traffic is a reasonable idea, but it doesn't know what the conditions are like in the room/area of my house with bad reception and I'm yet to encounter one that factors in that side of things.
Surely you often want to optimise for the place with the poorest signal, which might have problematic insulation that weakens your signal, and also weakens the signal before it reaches your smart router, so it doesn't know that it's a poor band choice.
Surely an app or method using your cell phone or other wifi device would make this a more useful technology.
(and I do know I can download apps and test manually - while logged into the router admin, I already do)
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> RF propagation is complex and subtle, and many reasonable-sounding ideas for optimizing it end up not working in real life. At 5 GHz a fade due to multipath interference ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fading)) can be less than 1 mm in size, so waving a device around doesn't capture everything important about an area.

There may be a good idea there, but you'd have to build it and test under a variety of conditions to see if it really helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nah, just picking a single channel and leaving settings on static can do wonders.

Remember, everyone else's router is on automatic, switching channels and crap all the time. If you ain't dancing around like everyone else, you're helping the issue at Large.</comment>


Tesla to stop selling electric sports car next year - <AUTHOR> http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2010/01/tesla-to-drop-stop-selling-electric-roadster-next-year/1

<comment><USER2> Nearly $1/2 billion load from the Dept. of Energy is helping to keep Tesla going. That's the kiss of death.</comment>


Create and share diagrams by writing sentences - <AUTHOR> http://diagrammr.com/

<comment><USER3> May be fun to play with, but rather limited, as tools based on natural language tend to be.

For more flexible diagram work try the Artist-mode/ditaa combination (<http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/ArtistMode>, <http://ditaa.sourceforge.net>)

Or course once you get really serious you'd use Graphviz <http://www.graphviz.org>

Diagrams in text = version controlled = win!

<comment><USER4> It's just a guess but I'll bet it's using Graphviz under the covers. I wrote something similar to create ERD's on the fly from a schema.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should note the security model here sucks. You embed your diagram with the same unique Id that is used to edit it. However, editing isn't authenticated. So anyone who can see your diagram can figure out the edit page and alter it.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.websequencediagrams.com/>

<comment><USER7> I'm currently using this tool for a web application setup. It's use is invaluable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is quite cool, but I found I had to give a bit too much though to plural/singular in order to get a diagram that made sense. If it could understand that "templates" and "template" are the same thing it would make a big impact on usability.

<comment><USER4> The exact same thing happened to me. I wish that you could edit a sentence rather than delete and re-add it with corrections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool. Here's one for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

<http://diagrammr.com/edit?key=dvvAjKyVhCs>

</comment><comment><USER10> It maxed out at 18 sentences for me, but I didn't notice it was just overwriting the last one until after I had typed another 25 or so. D'oh.

Was using it to map out and notate the people I'm following on twitter: <http://diagrammr.com/edit?key=dXUsqPIKKKP>

</comment><comment><USER11> I think I just won the game: <http://diagrammr.com/png?key=dVDri1xYrbp>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also worth seeing: <http://yuml.me>

</comment><comment><USER12> Yup, I think the world of visual programming is approaching... I know we've tried and failed before, but all the new people trying again don't know that. _sssh_

Pretty cool stuff.

<comment><USER13> This is actually closer to the reverse of visual programming -- we create diagrams by providing their textual representation. I really like the idea. Every time I need to deal with some UML or diagram application I have an impression that generating diagrams from skeleton source code would be easier than the other way round. Tools like the built-in Visual Studio modeler, which updates the diagrams in real time, are also a step in good direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Very cool, one problem I found is that you can't have 2 word objects.

Example: Router connects to Web Server

It uses Router and Server as the objects with "connects to Web" as the connection. Putting the 2 word object (Web Server) in quotes confused it:

Example: Router connects to "Web Server"

It should be possible to have a 2 word object with some kind of escape character to create an object with more than one word without having it think you are supplying it with part of a connection.

</comment><comment><USER15> While very neat, I'm not sure entering these with text is the easiest approach. As soon as the automation fails to pick the right flow, you're basically stuck. A combination of text input and graphical manipulation might work better.

For a nice graphical approach, I've found <http://lucidchart.com> to be excellent.

<comment><USER16> Lucidchart is awesome. Google would do well to make an acquisition there - <USER2> really feel the pain of not having any diagramming integrated with google docs.

<comment><USER17> I agree. But then, I might be a little biased.

Ben Dilts Founder, LucidChart

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone know of anything like this for data models? I'd love to build something like:

      Customers have a name, address, and phone
      customers have many orders
      orders have many items
      items have a name, description and price

Something like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe <http://yuml.me> will help you.

<comment><USER18> yuml.me is exactly what I'm looking for. Very nice. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be great if you could export as Graphviz dot files (which it looks like it's using behind the scenes). That way it would be useful sketching out the basics but you wouldn't have to throw all that away once you needed more features.

<comment><USER4> I tend to generate my dot file from separate data anyway.

To me, this lowers the barrier on getting something out there quickly. I can think of a lot of simple improvements to what is there now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> it's like graphviz (<http://www.graphviz.org>) with natural language

<comment><USER21> I think it is obviously graphviz with a smart front end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "I ate a popsicle, which was melting into a pot of cold soda."

It thought I was melting!

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone knows how the natural language detection work (especially that fast). Resources?

<comment><USER4> It doesn't understand what you are typing. It probably just splits on words and tries to match what it has seen before. I'll bet if you abuse it you can break it.

Edit: It seems to do a split on spaces and then takes the first word and the last word as the nodes and labels the edge with what is in the middle.

<http://diagrammr.com/edit?key=dkCDRHJUJA7>

<comment><USER4> note: The diagrams are not locked in any way so my carefully crafted test is no longer there.

it was something along the lines of

      a b c
      a c d
      d ef g

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Really cool</comment>


Show HN: FREE No-code & intuitive bot builder for leadgen & customer resolutions - <AUTHOR> https://www.joonbot.com/ <comment> jack-breb Very intuitive interface guys, you did a great job! Why it's free?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Jack, thanks! Good question. It's because we are currently building the paid plan. As you signed up before we put the paid plan online, it means it will still be free for you forever with the current set of features. Cool right?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! If you have any questions! I'm here to help :)

</comment><comment><USER2> So cool, it's perfect tool i was looking for it

<comment><USER3> Glad to hear that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool tool :) Everyone should try it!

<comment><USER3> Thank you!</comment></comment>


RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook using a 1GHz OMAP 4430 processor - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/08/rims-blackberry-playbook-purportedly-using-a-1ghz-omap-4430-pro/ <comment><USER2> Do they plan on backporting some of the awesome stuff that Blackberry is announcing that the PlayBook will support? If not, I think they stand a chance of really accelerating the decline of their smartphone marketshare.

From what a colleague tells me, they may not be planning to.</comment>