Interactive Linear Algebra - <AUTHOR> https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/ <comment><USER2> So far I think I prefer the visualizations in [http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html](http://immersivemath.com/ila/index.html)

For pure visual intuition, I prefer 3blue1brown's Essence of Linear Algebra on Youtube ([https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2x...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)). Even though they're not interactive, the visualizations themselves are the most compelling and insightful.

Has anyone used both interactive texts? My initial impression is that the GA Tech text starts with matrices and applications to systems of equations (like Strang) while the immersive math one seems to start more focused on vectors and geometry with computer graphics applications.

Neither seems to have supporting exercises yet which I think really limits their use as primary texts.

<comment> sh-run I took linear algebra after college (I hold a non-technical bachelors) through a local community college.

3blue1brown is what made linear algebra really click for me. My professor also gave us some jupyter notebooks to play around with that really helped. Unfortunately he developed these himself and I don't believe they are publicly accessible.

I also purchased 'Coding the Matrix' by Philip N. Klein, which gave me another perspective on Linear Algebra. I primarily used it as an additional reference. I've been meaning to do a front to back reading of the text, but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's got some pretty decent exercises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lex Friedman interviews Gilbert Strang this week:

[https://youtu.be/lEZPfmGCEk0](https://youtu.be/lEZPfmGCEk0)

Gilbert's Linear Algebra course:

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear- algebra...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra- spring-2010/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is based on Mathbox which is... brilliant. Here's the demo blog post that shows off what it can do: [https://acko.net/blog/mathbox2/](https://acko.net/blog/mathbox2/)

<comment><USER5> I normally skim through these types of articles but the visualization that s/he demos is so captivating and hypnotizing

<comment><USER6> Acko is Steven Wittens[1]; no need to use a pronoun when we have a name :)

[1][https://acko.net/about](https://acko.net/about)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks outstanding.

I am a math professor, and I need to choose a book next time I teach linear algebra. It may well be this one.

If anyone has in-depth experience with the book, I'd be grateful to hear about it.

<comment><USER8> It covers most of the standard material in an introductory Linear Algebra course. There is one large omission: the textbook completely ignores the notion of change of basis. There is no explanation why this was done, and a guess is that it was overlooked. The book is also very streamlined, and does not have much outside of the standard curriculum (which might be a plus).

<comment><USER9> Change of basis is covered in section 5.3 on "similarity". See in particular the subsection "Geometry of Similar Matrices".

<comment><USER8> Aha. It appears it was just skipped in the curriculum rather, [http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cjankowski3/19f/m1553/webpage...](http://people.math.gatech.edu/~cjankowski3/19f/m1553/webpage/2019f-schedule.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love how approachable the writing style is. It's very easy to write a technical introduction that assumes a lot of pre-existing knowledge of the reader. So far it's a great read for someone like me who got discouraged by notation and cloudy terms before.

Looks like it's on pair with the Book of shaders.

<comment><USER11> The Book of Shaders is half vaporware, or am I missing something?

<comment><USER12> yeah seems like they never finished it :( first half is great though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also great resource: [https://aiprobook.com/numerical-linear-algebra-for- programme...](https://aiprobook.com/numerical-linear-algebra-for-programmers)

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of the Nicki Case tool:

[https://ncase.me/matrix/](https://ncase.me/matrix/)

</comment><comment><USER15> From [https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/overview.html](https://textbooks.math.gatech.edu/ila/overview.html)

> Most engineering problems, no matter how complicated, can be reduced to > linear algebra.

Most problems... except a problem of too much linear algebra.

<comment><USER16> Everything is linear when plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good stuff.

One point of feedback: when making a widget fullscreen and then pressing the back button, you're back at the previous chapter, rather than scrolled at the position you left in the current chapter.

I see now there's also a "make small again" button far down in the bottom right, but it's still a trap.

Probably it's solved either by having the back button close the widget, or alternatively make the widget look more like an overlay and less like a new page (plus closing with "esc" would also help)

</comment><comment><USER18> _Linear: having to do with lines, planes, etc._

This definition makes me worry that the book is going to operate entirely in R^n. Is there anything here about substantively different vector spaces?

<comment><USER19> Is it a real concern or are you humble bragging about the lack of advanced math in an introductory text on _linear_ algebra?

<comment><USER20> No, that's a legitimate concern. It may or may not be relevant for what you specifically care about, but it's definitely a legitimate thing to ask about.

It's not uncommon for even undergraduate linear algebra to cover abstract spaces and notions of linearity which generalize beyond _R^n_. For example, the function space _P_n_ consisting of all polynomials with degree less than or equal to _n_. Hoffman-Kunze, Halmos, Axler and Friedberg-Insel-Spence are all examples of undergraduate textbooks which cover this material.

This isn't just theoretical. Function spaces like _P_n_ are useful in applied mathematics. And even if you don't use function spaces, it's very common for engineers, physicists and applied mathematicians to work in the complex space _C^n_ rather than _R^n_.

<comment><USER21> This is just the first semester course. In my experience teaching it at GT, it is mostly taken by freshman, and I'm not sure how many majors require it but my students have come from a huge variety of majors. I'm not sure that abstract vector spaces is that useful for, say, psychology majors. There is a second semester course that usually uses Axler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wonderful! I remember struggling to make it through linear algebra in college because the teaching style was so unapproachable and disconnected from real applications. It wasn't until I took computer graphics that I really grasped a lot of the concepts.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is really neat, and it's clear a lot of work went into the polish and interactivity. I'd love to see the elimination examples extended to show how LU factorization falls out of those steps. It seems like a key thing to grasp and lays the groundwork for understanding of related matrix factorizations like symmetric, QR and singular value decomposition.

</comment><comment><USER24> I had one of the authors (Dan Margalit) as a prof when I was a math undergrad at Georgia Tech. Cool guy and a great instructor.

</comment><comment><USER25> If anyone is interested in a similar intuitive or geometric guide I open sourced my own notes and you can find them here: [https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Overview-of- Linear-...](https://github.com/photonlines/Intuitive-Overview-of-Linear- Algebra-Fundamentals)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is our (my company) take on Linear Algebra, but then with exercises:

[https://app.bolster.academy/courses/chapters/en/6](https://app.bolster.academy/courses/chapters/en/6)

</comment><comment><USER27> This extensively uses the American Institute of Math's knowls[0], which I think is excellent for math documentation.

[0] [https://aimath.org/knowlepedia/](https://aimath.org/knowlepedia/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Awesome for reference and understanding. Anyone know of good practice material? Or maybe thinking of a way of generating practice material that exercises the component skills needed to do/understand Linear Algebra?

</comment><comment><USER29> I got an A- in linear algebra in college without learning _anything_ , via multiple choice tests and pattern recognition. Recently, it's started to seem like a metaphor for the state of AI.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is there anything like this for other areas in mathematics such as Number Theory?

</comment><comment><USER31> Good job. Thank you very much.

</comment><comment><USER32> Thank you</comment>


Fairy tales in password hashing with scrypt - <AUTHOR> http://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2014/04/fairy-tales-in-password-hashing-with.html

<comment><USER2> I'm confused. Why is he using scryptenc_buf when crypto_scrypt does what he wants?

I gave him a toolbox which contained a screwdriver and a hammer, and he seems to be complaining that the screwdriver isn't very good at hammering nails.

<comment><USER3> Maybe because people frequently reference scrypt as a password hashing function, but when you download the source and look in the top level, what you get is an example of an encryption utility and no documentation other than a man page for said encryption utility?

Taking a look at the distribution, I can imagine being confused, as there's nothing to indicate that crypto_scrypt is what you want to be using.

Remember, not everyone who uses your library is a security expert, or will spend the time to read all of the code; they may be someone who has heard "you should use scrypt, it's the strongest readily available password hashing function", so they downloaded it and built it, but may not know where to go from there, so they take the most visible code, main.c, and use that as their example starting point.

Here's an example of something you could write in a top-level README to make this a little more clear. Feel free to use if you feel like, or reword as necessary. The main point is just to point people who are looking for a password hashing function to the right place, as that is what a lot of people looking at this may be looking for, and may not find immediately from the example given.

      This project provides the scrypt utility for performing password based symmetric
      encryption, as well as libscrypt for using the functionality in your own software.
      See scrypt.1 for details on use of the scrypt encryption utility.

      libscrypt implements the scrypt PBKDF, which can be used to derive a symmetric
      encryption key for a password, or can be used as a password hashing function for
      storing hashed passwords in a form that will make them more difficult to guess via
      brute force.

      To encrypt and decrypt files or buffers using a symmetric cipher with a key derived
      using the scrypt PBKDF, use the functions declared and documented in
      lib/scryptenc/scryptenc.h.

      To implement a password hash, or use the scrypt PBKDF directly to derive a key for
      some other purpose such as use with a different symmetric cipher, use crypto_scrypt
      defined in lib/crypto/crypto_scrypt.h

<comment><USER2> _Maybe because people frequently reference scrypt as a password hashing function, but when you download the source and look in the top level, what you get is an example of an encryption utility and no documentation other than a man page for said encryption utility?_

You mean the code which is labeled on the website as "A simple password-based encryption utility is available as a demonstration of the scrypt key derivation function"?

 _Remember, not everyone who uses your library is a security expert, or will spend the time to read all of the code_

I know people won't read all the code... but you'd think that people would at least read the comment directly above the function prototype

        * Encrypt inbuflen bytes from inbuf, writing the resulting inbuflen + 128
        * bytes to outbuf.

and realize that this doesn't even sound remotely like what they were looking for.

 _sigh_

I've added a warning to the top of scryptenc.h which will hopefully help to point people in the right direction.

<comment><USER3>
      You mean the code which is labeled on the website as "A
      simple password-based encryption utility is available as
      a demonstration of the scrypt key derivation function"?

Think of this from the perspective of someone who's looking for a password hashing function. Remember that a lot of people are fairly unclear on the idea of password hashing vs. encryption; lots of people say things like "the password database was encrypted" when they mean "the password database was hashed." For someone who is a bit fuzzy on the idea, but has been pointed to scrypt as the solution for secure password storage, they may just think "oh, it encrypts the passwords, OK" and go ahead and use the encryption functions.

The additional note is definitely helpful; I still think it would be good to put something at the top level which points people in the right direction.

As is, if someone wants to figure out what to do for password hashing, they have no documentation at the top level. The most promising thing to try, main.c, just uses the encryption functions. If they then jump to the definitions, your note is over 50 lines above the declaration of scryptenc_file, well outside of what will normally show up in their editor window. Yeah, they will probably have to scroll up a little to find the definitions of parameters and return values, but it's possible to do that and miss the note.

I know, people should read the whole documentation, but it's probably easier to just point them in the right direction from the start than to convince people to read the full documentation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Anyone could sign in to anybody else's accounts using any passwords.

This is a good test to write: create two users, and see if one can log in using the other's password. (There are lots of ways this could go wrong, not only by using a 0-length password.) Basically, if you don't want something to happen, write a test that fails when it does.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a password hashing competition going right now that will hopefully result in some more state-of-the art primitives available through a suitable interface.

[https://password-hashing.net](https://password-hashing.net)

</comment><comment><USER6> > If I develop a crypto library, I'll conduct user studies like how they do it > in usability research. Give developers the library and ask them to conduct a > specific task. Rinse and repeat until nobody would misuse it.

Yes! User testing is often ignored even by application developers who should really know better; it's practically unheard of to perform user testing on APIs, but it makes so much sense. The world would be a better place.</comment>


Reflections on Node.js Knockout Competition 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://catonmat.net/blog/nodejs-knockout-2011/

<comment><USER2> Interesting project, but based on the title of the post I expected more thought and analysis about the challenges of building an application in 48 hours. It'd be interesting to hear about the experience from that perspective, especially for those of us working on weekend or side projects who try to get a lot done in a short period of time.

<comment><USER3> Hey dan, a member of the team here. Id like to proudly say we were very free- form in development and informed each other what we're doing and pushed to our own forked repos and then merged changes periodically. I think there was an intuitive sense that letting everyone doing what they are best at doing and periodically regrouping gets the most done.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: You can automatically donate 0.5% of your Amazon purchases to the ACLU - <AUTHOR> https://smile.amazon.com/<p>(Or any charity of your choice) <comment><USER2> Euuggkjb</comment>


Show HN: Synt – Find similar functions and classes in JavaScript/TypeScript code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brentlintner/synt <comment><USER2> I've just put this up on [https://twitter.com/javascriptdaily](https://twitter.com/javascriptdaily) to hopefully spread the word a bit more :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Thanks. :-)</comment></comment>


MongoDB's New Query Matcher - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongodb.org/post/51574091391/mongodbs-new-matcher

<comment><USER2> I wish the 10gen folks would do some work on various issues that have been in MongoDB for a long time. For me the most serious one is data size. Storage is pretty terrible, especially compared to CPU these days. I would far prefer the use of more CPU in order to reduce storage.

Records in a collection mostly use the same set of keys. Every record includes the full key which makes the storage that much larger. Strings can interned and replaced with a far smaller numerical token to reduce storage. (I'd be happy for it to be attempted for string values as well.)

The other is compression which is a straight forward cpu versus storage tradeoff.

<https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-863>

<https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-164>

<comment><USER3> Until they do, you could always write a thin wrapper over the client driver to gzip/gunzip non-indexed fields. Something like Google's Snappy would be well suited to that.

<comment><USER4> That sounds great if you've got large fields with lots of redundancy. In fact, we do this.

But small fields won't compress so well on their own. Often there's a lot of redundancy across records for the same fields which is great for compression. This might be a great way to achieve the benefits of field name tokenization too (which is similar to part of how most compressors work). I'd like to see block compression, rather than field compression .

<comment><USER3> Hmm...interesting. I don't know if this will work, but you could try storing your MongoDB database on a compressed ZFS partition. Since MongoDB uses mmap, this would have the nice side-effect of your working set remaining uncompressed, and only being compressed when written to or read from disk.

<comment><USER4> you're not the first person to suggest that to me :) although I haven't thought about using ZFS for this. You're not the only one to suggest ZFS. Why that and not compression in btrfs (or something else entirely)?

_hopefully_ the mmap interface would provide the best of all worlds: mongodb continues to be simple with respect to how it handles getting data from disk and the kernel/fs can do it's magic behind the scenes of mmap. Of course, it could be that mmap + compressed filesystem leads to some unexpected (and bad) perf results. But then again, I've never tried :) have you?

<comment><USER3> No reason for ZFS in particular -- I was just unsure about how stable btrfs currently is. I haven't tried this out, but I think I might. Email's on the site in my profile if you beat me to it. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a large commercial user of MongoDB (almost 300 instances of it running in production), I've seen some big shifts in 10gen's focus lately. They've really ramped up the customer service, and they are making more regular releases that seem like improvements.

Unfortunately, the better customer service doesn't provide better answers or solutions to problems, and the improvements aren't targeting long standing, basic issues with the platform.

This feature announcement fits the pattern: an improvement, but not in a critical area like indexing, or document-level locking, sharding stability, etc. There are basic fundamentals that need addressing like overcoming the 20K maximum connections per server, or mongos CPU usage. These are the things I deal with in production and that are business critical, but those feature requests sit untouched in JIRA for months or years.

This feature seems interesting, but it solves a problem I don't have. I'd prefer them to solve real world problems.

<comment><USER6> Why do you need > 20k connections to your database?

<comment><USER5> Because I want to run more than 100 instances of a webserver per mongos process, but I can't because it causes the connections per server to go over 20K.

Right now my application stack is woefully under utilized due to this completely arbitrary decision on their part not to allow the end user to set the connection limit. They've even admitted that they just picked that number four years ago and haven't looked at it since.

Just like they limit replica sets to 12 members maximum. What if I have higher read requirements than that limitation allows? Well, too bad.

I think this points at a fundamental issue with MongoDB at the design level - they don't allow end users to make any decisions about how to configure the product, even if those decisions might turn out bad.

Every Enterprise-level DB allows end user tuning of parameters, so clearly MongoDB isn't Enterprise-level.

<comment><USER7> The 20,000 connection limit was removed in 2.5: <https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-8943>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My name might be "Mud" a a previous client because I recommended MongoDB and implemented a first-rev persistence interface based on my presumption that this issue would be fixed in the near-term:

<https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-3253>

To be fair, I educated the client on the alternatives should 10Gen not improve the aggregation framework so that it could do arbitrary transforms without failure should the output size exceed 16MB. [Use other MongoDB mechanisms, custom compilation with higher per-document size cap, etc.] What annoys me is that 10Gen did not mention this incredibly important limitation when they were touting the planned features of 2.2. My client would not have minded had it simply been the case that queries with large result set sizes were somewhat slow. What this client could not tolerate were failures to deliver any results at all. In retrospect, I wish that I had pushed harder for a solution based on the Hadoop stack. While it seems to have its own demons, at least there is an ecosystem dedicated to fixing the most blatant of limitations.

</comment><comment><USER9> Do I regret choosing MongoDB a couple years ago to augment Postgres for several data analysis applications? Not really. But I do wish Mongo has been more mature. I'm happy to see each step forward taken, but it does bother me that often serious issues get overlooked for press-friendly feature additions. Until Mongo adopts some form of compression I won't be using for new projects aside from personal ones where development ease trumps everything else.

<comment><USER5> How about compression on the replication links?

When I inquired about that, they suggested using an ssh tunnel. I can see why they like mmapped files for storing data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use MonogoDB. I hope they will be able to manage the technical debt and stay competitive with newer alternatives. Seems like this is a step forward.

<comment><USER11> Just out of curiosity. A real live application or a personal project. ?</comment></comment>


Launched: Multi-Sig Ethereum Web Wallet with 2FA - <AUTHOR> https://www.ether.li <comment><USER2> Would be better to share a link to the source somewhere on the website.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haha honestly, what is this?! I have no idea!

<comment><USER4> Isn't it obvious? … oh wait, I think it's a digital currency wallet</comment></comment>


Dow Slides Nearly 1,400 Points, Enters Bear Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestreet.com/markets/stock-market-today-dow-jones-nasdaq-coronavirus-03112 <comment><USER2> Commentary from the financial press is very interesting to read. On the one hand, these writers exude confidence like scientists in natural sciences. On the other hand, they act like sports commentators on ESPN with all jargon (yields, technical analysis, p/e, libor, etc); these guys are ready to any justification/explanation to whichever way the market winds blow. Lots of post-hoc explanations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has Robinhood crashed again?</comment>


Apple hit with lawsuit over the new macbook keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/12/apple-hit-with-lawsuit-over-the-completely-reinvented-macbook-keyboard-it-rolled-out-back-in-2015/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17054710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17054710)</comment>


Try Haskell: An interactive tutorial in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://tryhaskell.org/?

<comment><USER2> I tried this to see if I could recommend it to coworkers. When you are in tutorial mode, it explicitly expects you to type into the interpreter what the tutorial tells you to type in. If you don't, you get a compiler error message. This means you cannot experiment with variations of ideas presented in the tutorial. The tutorial itself is arranged like a 20 minute sitcom where a drama is resolved in a single sitting at the computer. Alternative tutorials should require at least some thinking; I will resist calling such tutorials 'better' and placing a value judgment on Chris's work, since I am sure some will find it useful.

I do like how the tutorial initially hides the output of the type of the expression, to avoid having to explain erroneous details, though.

<comment><USER3> Actually, you CAN play around. If you got a compiler error message is because you probably typed something wrong.

And at later levels the tutorial asks you to make your own commands, giving spoilers if needed, so it's not all that bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks. I really like these collection of online interpreters. I have just been trying to decide on a new language to play around with (ruby being one of them) and it's great to run through these tutorials and get a good basic feel of the language.

Also may have found a small bug:

In Functions [of a Geisha] when I did the final example ((1,"George")) it does not advance, however clicking and hitting enter seems to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the author (just the submitter), but I did try the example you mentioned and it worked fine for me. Are you sure you typed everything exactly as it was listed? If so, I'm sure the author would appreciate the feedback. You can find his contact info here: <http://chrisdone.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What modules are loaded? Can I load more? It would be nice to, say, code up a quick Parsec parser to show to coworkers.

(OK, I just use my local ghci for that... but still...)</comment>


Self: The Power of Simplicity - b-man http://research.sun.com/techrep/1994/smli_tr-94-30.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> The best link for this paper is the version in the list of published papers (<http://selflanguage.org/documentation/published/index.html>) in the documentation section of the Self website (<http://selflanguage.org>) (where, incidentally, you can download a version of your own for Linux or Mac)

<comment> b-man Hey, thanks for the pointing out. Very nice bib there.

Keep on the good efforts man, I think the immensity of JS will eventually spill out some deserved attention to Self.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Please edit your entry to include an additional "[pdf]" type designator since the link is directly to a PDF document and not to a web page nor a Scribd embed.

<comment><USER3> I would like to add:

Thank you for posting the PDF instead of some lame Scribd version. I still don't really get _any_ reason for Scribd to even exist.

Yeah I realize they're YC, and I realize the Scribd guys probably lurk (or post) here, but can someone please explain the raison d'etre for the whole thing?

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised if some Windows users prefer Scribd over the bloated Acrobat Reader. Scribd is pretty useless on the Mac, though.

Honestly the Scribd whining on HN is really old. Auto-Scribd-ization has been in HN for a long time, people have been complaining about it the whole time, and pg probably isn't going to change it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Self is fun but the X-Windows powered GUI is dated and hard to use. I'd love a modern version.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working on it. Want to help?

(Oh, and on MacOS X the GUI is Quartz not X btw)

<comment><USER5> Holy awesome, I'd never seen the Quartz version. It works great! I love that my mouse works the way I expect it to :)

I may just start playing with it again. Thanks for responding.</comment></comment></comment>


Is LMDB a LevelDB Killer? - <AUTHOR> https://symas.com/is-lmdb-a-leveldb-killer/

<comment><USER2> LMDB isn't discussed much on HN. Sounds too good to be true, what's the catch?</comment>


Microsoft Edge and open source collaboration - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2018/12/06/microsoft-edge-making-the-web-better-through-more-open-source-collaboration/ <comment><USER2> I'm still shocked that they went the Chromium route here. This would have been their chance to really, well, for lack of a better way of putting it:

 _stick it to Google [0]_

I think it would have been far, far more impressive to use Quantum ([https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Quantum)) or WebKit ([https://webkit.org](https://webkit.org)), with the added benefit that nw.js is already up and going for the Webkit engine (and likely would have sufficed as an Electron replacement that they could drive forward, but I suppose they own Electron now with Github acquired)

For its not Apple anymore and certainly not Mozilla that is the prime competitor nowadays to Microsoft, its Google (With Chromebooks in the schools, and their small business and cloud offerings) and Amazon's Web Services division that are their main competitors now.

While I don't know how all the business logic went into this and ultimately came up with this being the best calculation at hand, I think this would have played better in the media too (especially if they leaned on Mozilla)

[0] I know Chromium != Google, but its pretty hard not to see that most of Chromium's development is downstream from Google and Google employs and/or otherwise has had some direct influence over the core team

<comment><USER3> One thing that's worse than Microsoft not adopting a technology is Microsoft adopting a technology.

Historically, they've used the "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy quite often, and maybe that's what's happening here. But maybe I'm being overly skeptical/borderline cynical...

<comment><USER4> The opposite is happening. They have such a small market share that developers didn't have enough incentive to actually support/test on their browser so all their work was just trying to get edge to be chrome-compatible. Turns out making your browser a chrome clone is an easier way to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm assuming I'm not the only one who's afraid of Blink becoming the new Internet Explorer; instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome-compatible.

It's still better because Chromium is open-source, but I do worry that we're going to have a problem in the future with a lot of broken sites (YTMND- style).

<comment><USER6> > instead of people following a web standard, they'll follow what's Chrome- > compatible

The browser vendors taking the lead over standards committees is how we got this far into HTML5, especially including Apple's/Safari's decision to ditch flash, and the WHATWG actually moving us forward vs the W3C.

Unless Blink has a history or an expectation of deprecating serious functionality in the future, is it really so bad if websites follow what's Chrome-compatible instead of 'a web standard'?

<comment><USER7> This is a good question. Let me give you an example.

Let's imagine for instance that Google develops something called "Google Pay". Let's now imagine that WHATWG works on something called "WebPay".

In a multiple-engines world, there would be pressure for Blink to support (and keep supporting) most major credit cards & payment mechanisms to let users pay using WebPay.

In a single-engine world, one single manager at Google will have sufficient power to decide that WebPay supports only Google Pay.

Feel free replace Google Pay and WebPay by any other technology strategic to Google.

<comment><USER8> Let's not get confused. Blink is a rendering engine and not an API server.

<comment><USER7> This kind of thing has stopped being true a long time ago.

For all intents and purposes, web browsers are operating systems running web applications, taking care of security, etc.

And all these Chromium-derived browsers are skins and utilities on top of Google's browser/OS.

<comment><USER8> It's still true and always will be. Blink is not a browser any more than the Linux kernel is a standalone operating system by itself with no attached software or applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If Microsoft knew that Edge in its current state is inferior, why did they try so hard to make every windows user switch to it? I mean there was this "startup growth hacking" kind of craziness from a corporation and sudden admittance of defeat... It's very confusing.

Edit: We all know why they want everyone to switch don't we, but think about all the now admittedly false marketing! It's not like they stopped the aggressive marketing for a few years and now saying that they can no longer keep up. They probably are doing it now still and implying that Edge is better. Is the marketing really so uninformed about such big decisions?

<comment><USER10> Microsoft is trying to drive traffic to Bing (and their other services). The rendering engine doesn't actually matter. Microsoft could just bundle Chrome with Windows but instead they are specifically taking the Chromium engine and putting it in an Edge shell. The only reason for that is to maintain control over the user to drive them to Microsoft properties.

<comment><USER11> > The rendering engine doesn't actually matter.

It does matter. From the comment above "browser vendors taking the lead over standards committees" means influence on where the technology is heading, specially for rendering engines. Remember how long it took IE to implement canvas? This was a way to avoid a new "OS" over a OS (Windows)

<comment><USER10> This decision is perfectly in line with Microsoft's shift in focus -- Windows is no longer the hill they want to die on. Microsoft is all about services.

Also I suspect Microsoft will have far more actual influence by driving development of Chromium than with their own rendering engine. It's pretty hard to drive new standards when you are barely achieving the current ones. Microsoft's focus on Electron for cross-platform development kind of informs this move as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Man, this sucks. I really wish they had open sourced their new engine and stuck with it. I would have volunteered time porting it to Linux/POSIX as well.

<comment><USER13> This is probably going to get a bit "rant-ey", it's not directed at you, but at the ecosystem at large (and kind of at myself).

Everyone keeps saying this, but nobody is actually doing anything about it. People (myself included) talk about how a monoculture is bad, but we still don't use Edge. We talk about how more competition in the browser space is a good thing, but we still complain when the latest features or security benefits are missing from a browser. And then when the feature lands, nobody cares.

We complain about how bloated and slow browsers are getting, but completely ignore those which are/were slimming that down. And we talk about how Chrome and V8 are taking over the world, but we won't use tech like node- chakracore[1] despite it being a very positive experience when I last used it.

I'm assuming that Microsoft is spending a shitload of time and money on their browser engine, and it was still getting very little usage. They have great performance, some really cool security features, lots of great user-oriented features, and it very rarely gave me issues as a developer, but still nobody (again, myself included) used it. Can you blame them for not wanting to continue?

I feel the same as you, this sucks. But I can't blame anyone but myself, because I don't use Edge (despite using Windows as my daily-driver), and I most likely won't switch to it, and it has very little to do with its capabilities as a browser, and more to do with network effects (i'm used to chrome, my information is in chrome, I'm used to the dev tools in chrome, and I personally and selfishly have no reason to switch to Edge, even if it's technically better)

You can't blame the company for not wanting to continue pouring money into something which is getting very little usage or return on investment at all. At least by working with Chromium more people are going to get the benefits of their work.

[1] [https://github.com/nodejs/node- chakracore](https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore)

<comment><USER14> > (i'm used to chrome, my information is in chrome, I'm used to the dev tools > in chrome, and I personally and selfishly have no reason to switch to Edge, > even if it's technically better)

Yep, the same can be said for Firefox. There are hundreds of threads with hundreds of comments on places like Hacker News and Reddit and Ars Technica, all grousing about how Google is the behemoth that is taking over, Chrome is bloated and slowing down and e-mails all of your personal bits to Google, oh woe shouldn't there be a equal competitor in the market, blah, blah...

But too few people actually put their clicking where their talking is and switch to any other browser. People seem hardwired to say "yeah I know it sucks but I want to use Google and thus I want to use Chrome."

Far fewer people with software development skills--that I sorely lack--bother to contribute to Firefox (or, heaven forbid, Thunderbird) development to _fix_ those problems.

Meanwhile, I hug Firefox just a little bit closer every year, wondering if this year is the year that the project fails or simply stops moving forward or whatever. I'm thrilled that companies like Privacy, Krypt.co, and even Capital One still make Firefox extensions and I use them daily. But for how long, when every technology-oriented person on the planet seems hell-bent on using Chrome, outcomes be damned?

<comment><USER15> It's also hard. Despite the complaints of Google dominance, Chrome is just a really good browser.

I tried to switch to Firefox Quantum earlier this year as my daily driver. I had some minor annoyances, but I ended up switching back to Chrome for the devtools.

<comment><USER14> Web dev tools are something I have to take people's word for (and, to be clear, have no reason to doubt) since I don't do that kind of work so I have no clue what makes for good tools versus bad ones. But, my overall point still stands: If this is such a major failing in Firefox, is there nobody passionate enough to help keep a browser--that lots of people claim to want to use but for those tools--up to par with the competition?

<comment><USER16> Firefox' devtools live in GitHub these days and can be patched without needing to build Firefox. I'm sure they'd welcome contributions from passionate developers.

[https://github.com/devtools-html](https://github.com/devtools-html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit sad by the announcement. I quite like edge, and now the browser ecosystem is getting narrower.

What should Mozilla do now? Should they just give up? Now that everywhere except ios/macos is blink (and v8 i think, i'm not sure after reading the announcement) why should anyone care for firefox?

Should also Mozilla start using chromium as a base? Mozilla will still be able to add quite the value in term of functionality, and with a bigger focus on privacy than google. I'm honestly not sure anymore.

Maintaining a browser is a hard work and it's getting harder, so it's (i think) unlikely a new player will ever enter the game, and having one engine where to test thing will make the job of creating websites and webapps simpler, on the other hand a monopoly can be a very bad thing for the web.

I like firefox a lot, and it's my daily driver, but if tomorrow they change the engine, i probably won't even notice, and not having to maintain the entire stack may allow them to better focus on other area, like decentralization, privacy, addons and services (firefox send is amazing), and may even allow a easier experimentation with new webapi.

I'm really not sure how to feel about this...

On a side note: I really do hope they make chromium and especialy CEF more modular. it's amazing to embed a web browser inside a app, but it's very hard to override some of his behavior, for example: while it's easy to have a custom cookie management system, there are no api to override localstorage or the chronology, only some workaround.

In a past work project we needed to build a thin client for a intranet and one of the requirement was, basically, an encrypted browser profile, custom CA management, client certificate and some other things, doing that using cef was very hard and it used a lot of hacks.

edit: correct some grammar

</comment><comment><USER18> Honest question: what is the population of committers (not contributors) on Chromium? Is there any significant number outside of Google?

Is Chromium de-facto controlled by Google, or more community driven?

<comment><USER19> Considering that Samsung Internet, Brave, Opera, Electron etc is based on Chromium and at least Samsung Internet adding new features of their own to it, there are at least many other people working on the code base.

I would guess that Microsoft would keep using Chorus rather than adopting V8, but if they aren't, then V8 has contributions from eg. Node.js

And as states in the article: Edge on Android and on ARM seems to already be Chromium based

<comment><USER18> There's a crucial difference between "working on the code base" and having commit access. The committers are the gatekeepers and the steamrollers.

What I'm effectively asking is this:

1\. If Google opts to steer Chromium in a way that the community finds objectionable, could the community stop it?

2\. If the community opts to steer Chromium in a way that Google finds objectionable, could Google stop it?

<comment><USER20> > " _1\. If Google opts to steer Chromium in a way that the community finds > objectionable, could the community stop it?_ "

The answer to that is obvious. Of course not.

Google owns Chromium's repository. Even if the "community" decides to fork Chromium, Google owns Chrome, so any fork of Chromium is completely irrelevant. That's because people download and install Chrome and not obscure Chromium forks.

And that is why web standards are important ;-)

<comment><USER19> "Obscure Chromium forks" – like Samsung Internet and Edge?

Remember: Chromium itself is an "obscure fork" of WebKit...

<comment><USER21> Don't forget Opera is a re-skinned Chrome.

<comment><USER22> I mean it's re-skinned in the same way as Samsung Internet and I believe Edge will be: a totally different browser UI implementation around the same browser engine.

<comment><USER19> Samsung Internet has their own implementations of quite a few web standards - calling it a reskin isn't very accurate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A lot of you guys are lamenting this decision.

I'm insanely excited about it!

I've been working on a new reader and documentation manager for PDF and cached web content:

[https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

It's based on Electron and targets Chromium.

What I'm hoping happens here is that this means more focus on Chromium and potentially more work on Electron + Carlo.

Electron is amazing but it's pretty bloated per app. If it's made lighter weight and something like Carlo can just use the OS installed browser in an isolated process you'll have the best of both worlds.

You can use web standards to build your apps and at the same time dock into native OS features without the massive bloat.

Right now Polar is about 100MB to download and uses about 200MB of RAM. Not the end of the world but also not super fun.

There's the issue of one central monoculture but there's still the opportunity to fork if chrome/edge gain too much market share.

<comment><USER24> The fact that projects choose to target a specific rendering engine as opposed to just writing web standards compliant code and having it work in any browser that follows those standards is precisely the reason why people (me, at least) are lamenting this decision.

With Edge, Blink, and Webkit competing for marketshare, app developers are forced to at least think about sticking to web standards or risk losing a chunk of potential users. In a world where only Blink exists and all developers care about is that things work in Blink, any new browser entering the market now not only has to worry about compliance with official web standards, they also need to worry about emulating the idiosyncratic behavior of Blink that developers have discovered and started abusing or taking advantage of. The actual standards essentially become moot and Blink becomes the real standard. And while, sure, Blink/Chromium is open source, with both Google and Microsoft heavily invested in its development and direction, who do you think is going to have all the power in making the important decisions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like I should be happy as a web dev to hear that I no longer have to support a browser engine made by Microsoft (which has been a huge pain and despite this will be a huge pain for a while due to people still using old browsers) but this feels bittersweet. It feels like we're taking the engineering out of everything because companies can make more money by not innovating.

<comment><USER19> They want short term wins and gives away long term ones.

I guess the Chrome team itself aren't happy about this. Will make standards work harder for them. Better to have the Edge team build alternative implementations of standards in their own engines than to implement even more stuff in Chromium.

Chrome already has a hard time not running ahead of the rest of the web, they don't need more people to speed it up even further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a new GitHub repository for Microsoft Edge:

[https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge](https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdge)

The readme goes into more detail than the blog post announcement, including emphasis on Windows on ARM, information about WebRTC for UWP, and explicit confirmation that they plan to bring Edge to Windows 7 and 8 as well as macOS.

Also, looks like they're using the MIT license.

</comment><comment><USER19> Will Microsoft use V8 as the javascript engine then as well or continue to use Chakra?

If they won't continue to use Chakra, what happens to that project then? It is open sourced and there's work to make Node.js use it: [https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore](https://github.com/nodejs/node- chakracore)

All the more important to support Servo and Gecko – we can't have all browsers be of WebKit origin – we rather need more initiatives like Servo, that reinvents the engine from scratch, optimized for modern environments.

<comment><USER19> I opened an issue to ask: [https://github.com/nodejs/node- chakracore/issues/611](https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore/issues/611)

<comment><USER27> They will be using Chromium (blink+V8) but intend to continue the open source development of chakra, but I suppose edgehtml is dead.

Source: [https://twitter.com/bterlson/status/1070754781822574592](https://twitter.com/bterlson/status/1070754781822574592)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When Microsoft released Edge, they claimed bugs plagued IE because they couldn't update IE without OS updates. Edge as a "store app" would receive frequent updates, independent of Windows OS updates. They ended up tying Edge to Windows. And kept promising but never delivered. Instead of small frequent browser updates, we got large frequent OS updates. Maybe now that Edge's dead, they'll slow down the frequency of Windows update a bit.

In the beginning, IE was speedier than Edge. Had more features too. Edge was fragile and froze often. Updates fixed some of the speed issues. I froze my windows update so, I don't know how it stacks up right now.

To increase Windows store usage, MS also decided to tie Edge extension to the Windows store. This wouldn't have been a problem. In fact, I like the idea of getting all my stuff in one place. However, MS decided to create the annoying store app. I'm on a desktop, a real computer. Why on earth can't I open the store on a browser and have the installer do its work in the background? This is where I drew the line with Edge.

I'm not surprised that Edge's marketshare declined with increased Windows 10 marketshare. Edge is Microsoft's second Windows 8. They are both PC software designed to please mobile users and infuriate PC or touch-less users. And both hide settings - make it a chore to change minor settings.

I believe throwing Windows Phone under the bus has come back to bite Microsoft in the ass and Edge is just a trailer.

Microsoft is still gutting Windows 10 - turning it into a phone OS for desktop users, replacing working software with incomplete toys.

As far as I'm concerned, Google didn't beat MS in the browser game. MS simply frustrated IE users over to Chrome by forcing Edge on them.

Windows is the next software MS will abandon for Google's alternative. All Google has to do is not mess up android.

If you remember Nokia/MS's failed fork of Android you'll feel the chill. Microsoft now sells android smartphones in both its online and retail stores.

I predict MS is not done with Edge. At the end, they'll abandon that too for Chrome. And all they'll do is change the default search engine to Bing.

<comment><USER29> > MS also decided to tie Edge extension to the Windows store.

I think this was a big mistake. I hope they mirror what Google is doing with the Chrome store. As a developer, I had to: 1) Port my Chrome extension into a UWP app 2) Embed another win32 exe to read/write SQLite databases because UWP don't do that. 3) Pay $100 to open a developer account 4) After compiling the extension, reading blogs to figure out how to even upload the correct files 5) Have Microsoft deny my extension because it required special permissions (the win32 exe) 6) Still no extension uploaded.

<comment><USER30> Microsoft.Data.SQLite [1] is baked into the UWP for reading/writing SQLite databases, and has been since the Fall Creators Update last year (and that library exists in a backwards compatible way all the way back to the 2015 November Update if you have LTS support needs).

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/data- access/sql...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/data- access/sqlite-databases)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Funny that minor side project of KDE is now responsible for the vast majority of today's Internet traffic. Did the original authors of KHTML ever receive a single dime for their work?

<comment><USER32> > Did the original authors of KHTML ever receive a single dime for their work?

Why would they? That's not how open source works. If the KDE devs that made Konqueror wanted to capture value or do it for monetary gain they would have made a closed source browser and I doubt Apple would have then picked it to build WebKit.

Apple is what made WebKit predominant, the KDE devs simply did a great job and should be very proud of what they've done, but it doesn't make sense for there to be policy change around open source for recompensating devs when their projects take off.

<comment><USER33> > Why would they? That's not how open source works. If the KDE devs that made > Konqueror wanted to capture value or do it for monetary gain they would have > made a closed source browser

Making something open-source does not mean you don't want to make money off it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> EdgeHTML is also used for embedding HTML into UWP, and controls have been released for WPF and Win32. I wonder what will be the story of that. Will that be transparently changed to Chrome, can it be changed to Chrome or will EdgeHTML be used only for that?

<comment><USER10> I suspect the rise of Electron apps, including Microsoft's own applications like Visual Studio Code, are actually driving this decision. Effectively within Microsoft, Chromium has already won over EdgeHTML for desktop applications.

<comment><USER35> This is so important to consider, chromium is more than a browser these days

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> On one hand, this creates a platform that is more or less the standard of the web. On the other hand, this only gives Google more control of the web.

I really wish that instead of doing this Microsoft would just stick with EdgeHTML and maybe open-source it.

<comment><USER19> The monoculture is the main issue here.

Google should not be happy about this.

Makes it harder for them and everyone else to push web standards forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What I find a bit curious is that's a fully Chromium based browser, it's not simply based on the Blink rendering engine. So, it will be much closer (probably) to Chromium/Chrome than other blink-based browsers like Brave or Opera.

I'd really like to understand the rationale behind this choice. What they'd like to leverage from Chromium that Blink alone wouldn't have?

<comment><USER38> Opera and Brave are both chromium-based, rather than just using the blink engine. The official webdriver plugin for opera [1], published by opera, refers to their browser as "chromium based". The brave browser [2] is open source and you can see it syncs from Chromium

[1] [https://github.com/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver](https://github.com/operasoftware/operachromiumdriver)

[2] [https://github.com/brave/brave-browser](https://github.com/brave/brave- browser)

<comment><USER22> Opera's built on top of the Chromium content API (approximately Blink plus things like networking, some OS integration stuff, etc.), rather than a fork of all the UI code; the UI is a completely separate implementation and shares nothing (and this is very obvious if you look at early releases of Chopera, with it having much fewer features than Chromium of the same period).

<comment><USER39> > UI is a completely separate implementation and shares nothing

Not completely true, many "model" part is shared with Chromium code (given the liberal license) while "view" part can be different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's crazy! This is not the Microsoft from ~5 years ago. They have really changed! Opening up to linux, cross-platform apps, open sourcing tech, open sourcing their patents(!), and now using open source chromium for MS Edge? Dam. I never thought I'd see the day...

<comment><USER41> It is an interesting time to be alive, that is for sure.

<comment><USER40> Agreed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Could this be a bad thing for Firefox? Seems like Microsoft + Google is quite a rival to go against?

<comment><USER43> Firefox (by that I hope you mean Mozilla Project) cares about diversity and choice. Our Mozilla Manifesto [0] describes our vision of the balance between corporate and civic value of the Internet.

I speak for myself - I believe that decrease in diversity of implementations of the Web standard and drift toward a monopoly is harmful to our vision of the Internet and ultimately will hurt the Open Web.

[0] [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/about/manifesto/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/)

<comment><USER44> I mean, in all honesty, EdgeHTML wasn't ever really an engine that had much hope. IE has always been loathed, Edge just continued that trend. Their marketshare wasn't great, and tying browser updates to the OS as they did with IE was irresponsible for how browsers are shipped these days.

If Edge had 35% marketshare I'd be more concerned, but nobody was using it, and web developers _hated_ trying to make their sites compatible.

Good riddance to IE/Edge of old :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Excellent news. Google mostly does not have their own desktop OS to "protect", so they are probably incentivised to make the browser and the apps running in it feel as "native" as possible, with proper access to important local resources when relevant. Considering how Apple is dragging their feet with service worker and offline support on Safari (where they have a monopoly on iOS), this is probably a good thing overall. Fingers crossed!

<comment><USER20> > " _Google mostly does not have their own desktop OS to "protect"_"

But they do and they are actually Microsoft's biggest competitor on the desktop:

[https://www.google.com/chromebook/](https://www.google.com/chromebook/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> In short. Edge engine is dead. Based on Chromium. Not an UWP. Will be on Windows 7 and Mac.

<comment><USER47> I didn't see any mention of Windows 7 or that it won't be a UWP on Windows, are there more details somewhere?

<comment><USER48> Agreed. I see zero chance that Edge will suddenly be ported back to Windows 7. And it would be almost as big of a shock if the Chromium-based Edge is not UWP.

<comment><USER48> I stand corrected--this is exactly what they're going to do. Take Win32 Chromium, rename it Edge, and build it for Win7, 8, and 10. What a huge blow to everyone at MS who believes in UWP.

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128648/microsoft- edge-c...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128648/microsoft-edge-chrome- chromium-browser-changes)

<comment><USER49> > What a huge blow to everyone at MS who believes in UWP.

That may be so, but is there anyone outside of MS who believes in UWP? Not even stalwart MS exclusive devs seem to do so.

<comment><USER50> Adobe XD is a UWP app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Aww man... I can't help but reminisce about how it would've been if they'd decided to become significant contributors to Gecko.

</comment><comment><USER52> So the web is now going to be even more Chrome-centric than it is...

I wonder if they thought about picking Gecko instead.

</comment><comment><USER53> Another "if you can't beat them just join them"? In fact Edge is 99.9999% irrelevant at least to me, all my time with Edge added up to be less than 5 minutes over the years, I only need it to download chrome(or firefox).

</comment><comment><USER54> This is actually great for the web. Having two competitors like Google and MS contributing to a single rendering engine, and competing on the actual browsers means less fragmentation without the single-entity-control problem.

</comment><comment><USER55> I think Microsoft made already a deal with Google about the control of chromium. It would be endless naive otherwise.

Do not forget that this is a full development stack within Windows. UWP has a JavaScript/HTML runtime and Microsoft's recent pwa visions both need to earn money.

My bet is that Google will announce in the next weeks or at the next io a foundation for dealing with chromium. The only thing which itches me with that a bit is ChromeOS. But maybe that is more a plugin thingy.

</comment><comment><USER56> Some people are saying this is not good for competition.

I see it as a positive for keeping Google in check.

Chrome's marketshare is insane. Google could autoupdate Chrome overnight push out some wild update like requiring you to sign in to use their browser or something else like default rendering everything to AMP wrappers for example... who knows / tinfoil hat time.

Now there's a solid and non-disruptive quick switch default that is already installed (sorry FF, Brave) on Windows machines similar to what Apple has with Safari.

</comment><comment><USER57> Wasn't an original idea of Edge that it would have several different quirks modes where it would use the old IE renderer to work with old corporate websites and such to be extremely backwards compatible? Could this break things for some companies with old IE-only internal websites etc? (Not that I don't think these should have all been made to work with chrome long ago.) If they are going to try to maintain some kind of quirks mode, would that be open sourced?

<comment><USER34> IE only websites are added to the Enterprise Site List[0] by the sysadmin and will be opened in IE11, just like now. Edge has never dynamically switched engines, it just opened IE.

[0]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/deploy/emie-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/deploy/emie-to-improve-compatibility)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm wondering why they decided to keep the Edge brand. It seems dropping it and the "e" logo all together would be ideal. The logo beit IE or Edge has negative emotions for many users. I am excited for this though, because I will probably make the Microsoft browser my default once it launches since it will finally have access to the vast Chrome extension library. But, I still think they will struggle with adoption just from a branding standpoint.

<comment><USER59> There was a blog post I can't find now when they announced Edge that they had to pick a E- name and an E logo otherwise literally millions of people would no longer know how to access "the internet".

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Really wish Microsoft would open source the Edge renderer.

</comment><comment><USER61> Good development. Now we need more open source collaboration in MS gaming branch. Let MS back Vulkan instead of continuing DX12 lock-in.

</comment><comment><USER62> I am super excited about this. I work on an open source tool to automate chromium browser [https://github.com/getgauge/taiko](https://github.com/getgauge/taiko) and the Chrome Devtools protocol makes it really easy to do so. With edge using chromium Cross browser testing will suck less.

</comment><comment><USER63> Recipe for success: Take chromium and make it super private. Put a moat up for identity, add a VPN (if that makes some people feel better), encrypt traffic etc.

You could even charge people for the heavy duty version that might use some Azure services. The only issue with this is charging people requires tying their browser to the payment method.

</comment><comment><USER64> I hope this move changes the hostile amount of google services that are baked into Chrome and Chromium. Not saying MS is any better, but at least there will be more choices for users and where before everything was hardcoded, now there will be an option to select and potentially expose more customization for us morals.

<comment><USER18> Which Google services are baked into Chromium?

<comment><USER64> There are several services and binaries. Some examples are Google host detector, Google URL tracker, Google cloud messaging, Google hotwording, Safe browsing, password saving feature naggs you to sign-in, translation etc. There are also a lot of binaries that are bundled, but im not really an expert on those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> WebKit Scrollbars by attrition rather than specification is an odd way to go about things, but I for one will take it!

</comment><comment><USER66> They could've chosen to go with Safari webkit. Since on the desktop it's pretty standards compliant. & it's pretty fast & power efficient too. But they chose Chromium, because they now own Electron. Also fuxk apple for having Safari on iOS being shitty, but good at protecting privacy

</comment><comment><USER67> My problem with Edge is not the rendering engine, it is the application it self, it is clunky & buggy, after a while with multiple application windows with multiple tabs, shortcut keys just stop working in some windows & some windows just freezes for a while.

</comment><comment><USER68> Any chances that with this move, Windows adopts Chromium instead of Internet Explorer as embedded browser for Windows applications?

That will remove plenty of IE rendering issues and also the need to link a whole CEF to get Chromium rendering in your application.

</comment><comment><USER69> Wow a new Microsoft web browser for the Mac! Haven't seen one of those in 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER70> No offense meant to anyone, but don't engineers at Microsoft feel humiliated over the fact that their employer chose an open source project that was started by their rival viz. Google?

I am just curious how competitiveness works in FAANG.

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know what the extension ecosystem of this new Edge will look like?

</comment><comment><USER71> It's funny that when you go to select your country, depending on the privacy laws in said country you have to agree to their terms of service using a checkmark/no checkmark.

</comment><comment><USER72> This announcement is about 6 years late, but yeah, it makes sense!

Now, there may be some point in the future where I open a Microsoft browser and do more than barf on myself and download Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER73> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595069](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595069).

</comment><comment><USER74> Hey Joe, can't you just stop nagging users to use your browser and stop overriding the users choice of browser? No need to repackage anything, just move on.

</comment><comment><USER75> This bit is probably the most interesting to me:

> We also expect this work to enable us to bring Microsoft Edge to other > platforms like macOS.

</comment><comment><USER76> The most exciting thing here is that, hopefully, we will get a version of Chromium on Mac without spyware.

<comment><USER41> Can't you just run vanilla Chromium without the Google stuff on macOS?

Honest question, I don't think I ever looked, and now I am back on GNU/Linux.

On Windows, there is no build of vanilla Chromium, as far as I could find out. Then again, I did not try very hard, because I started using Firefox back when it was still called Firebird; the only incentive I had to check out Chromium on Linux were some web sites that did not work very well with Firefox (VPS console on Vultr, Netflix).

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Will Mircosoft use V8 or Charka Core?

</comment><comment><USER78> it seems like a lot of people don't know this but the current Edge engine is Open Source. look here [https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore)

<comment><USER41> Chakra is "just" the Javascript engine, the HTML render engine used by Edge is not open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I would rather not install Chrome at all on my windows machine. I use Brave (a chromium based browser) and with right extensions, I can see myself using the new Chromium based Edge. I bet that will be the thought process for a lot of general people using browsers. Chrome will loose its market share to Edge for sure.

</comment><comment><USER80> If the UI is going to be just as terrible as it is now, I will still refuse to use it.

</comment><comment><USER81> Whilst this basically declares the Browser wars over and crystalizes Chromium as the Web's browser engine it's reassuring it's in the hands of the company with infinite resources, talent and a vested interest in seeing the web platform succeed with Google benefiting when more people spend more time on the Web (essentially the business case in starting Chrome to push the web forward, quicker). The only rendering engine that stands a chance at competing against Chrome is Safari/WebKit (thanks to iOS) and Apple would rather see native iOS Apps succeed to re-enforce their walled garden they have complete control over.

So whilst it's a dark day for browser engine diversity, I don't see it as a blow against the Web overall (i.e. as a popular platform to develop for) as Google/Chrome is the driving force behind making Chromium more powerful to close the experience vs native Apps with initiatives like PWAs of which a side-effect is we'll be able to use new APIs sooner and increase web developer velocity by having 1 less browser engine we need to test against.

A lot of people see browser wars as a gauge for the health of the Web but I consider the biggest threat to the "open web" is native mobile Apps which needs to become more capable in order to be able to deliver the same integrated experiences. In that light I don't see the competition of more browser engines making the Web better. Chrome wasn't created in reaction to competition, it was created because there was none left with MS leaving IE6 (and the main interface into the Web) to wither and die. IMO competing browser engines are holding the Web back with not being able to use new APIs as they're available, needing to cater for the lowest common denominator and having to test and support against a matrix of different browser engines and versions.

It would be a different story if I thought Google would pull back investment in Chrome after they achieve total dominance, but I don't see that, their current strategy is winning where they benefit in a faster, stronger more popular Web and have been lifting the state of the art browser development since Chrome/V8's inception. Of course we now have to worry about Google thwarting the direction of Chromium to their benefit to the detriment of their users, the best way to minimize that is to have multiple collaborators committing to the Chromium project like MS Announces suggests they're doing. IMO it would be in Firefox's best interest to also switch to and collaborate on Chromium as well. Their market share is fading into irrelevance and after Edge/Chromium I see less developers investing their time to test on FF. I believe their efforts would be best spent on innovating on the browser's UI and function as I don't see how maintaining an alternative browser engine is a competitive advantage, IMO it's one of the reasons for their decline in market share. They should still be able to achieve their objectives the same way Vivaldi and Brave are doing with their added privacy protections in their Blink forks.

</comment><comment><USER82> Are they gonna put chakra into chromium or use v8?

<comment><USER83> yeah - I am also curious about this considering there are projects like ChakraCore and node-ChakraCore out there.

Would seem like a shame to lose the work done on that project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> The name.... reminds me of <blink>Annoying Text</blink>

</comment><comment><USER85> So, Microsoft finally realized that they can't develop the web browser inside the single company.

I wonder what they realize the next. A Compiler?

</comment><comment><USER86> I always though Mozilla should be the one doing this, let google do all the hard work and focus their resources in increasing market share and having better privacy, if they have the resources to maintain firefox then they have the resources to maintain a chromium fork.

</comment><comment><USER87> This is HUGE!

Microsoft throwing away the IE engine in favor of one more or less standard rendering engine is a huge win for web developers everywhere!

It's also something that would have been unimaginable in the Steve Ballmer era.

Thank you!

<comment><USER88> > A huge win for web developers everywhere!

And a huge loss for users everywhere. Now that Chrome is becoming the main web target, Google (an adtech company) basically controls the internet.

<comment><USER89> I don't really get this. Edge was only available to Windows users. This is only a loss to those users. On the other hand Chrome and Firefox are available on all major (for some subset of all) platforms. (Yes, I'm aware iPhone Firefox is hobbled bc of Apple policies).

If you want to push competition and choice, encourage everyone to use Firefox (or Safari if they only use macOS).

<comment><USER90> > Edge was only available to Windows users.

And still, it was some competition to Chrome and Firefox.

> encourage everyone to use Firefox.

Which can be done while also lamenting the loss of a Firefox competitor, especially when said loss gains Firefox nothing.

<comment><USER89> MS could have chosen to base their platform on Firefox, but they chose to go with Chromium.

We can lament the passing of Edge, but I wonder how people would have felt if instead of Edge they just had this announcement as the replacement for IE. Would we have cared? No one seems to miss IE.

<comment><USER91> > MS could have chosen to base their platform on Firefox...

There actually might have been an outcry over this. I'm not aware of any Firefox forks, for example, that aren't focused on privacy. MS would have been the first to fork FF and undo lots of the privacy features in the browser (engine).

With Chrome/Chromium, there's a reluctant acceptance of data-harvesting and (unethical) tracking.

I wonder if MS gave the above scenario some thought...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> > As part of this, we intend to become a significant contributor to the > Chromium project, in a way that can make not just Microsoft Edge — but other > browsers as well — better on both PCs and other devices.

"Embrace, extend, and extinguish"? At this point, with google, I'm not even sure if it's a bad thing, if true.</comment>


"Shockingly reasonable" cell phone policy announced by D.C. police chief - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/dc-police-chief-announces-shockingly-reasonable-cell-camera-policy/

<comment><USER2> They should be doing this everywhere in the USA. Every Law Enforcement Officer costs money, and they are wasting it detaining bystanders. Unless there is evidence of crime then the police force is wasting money by allowing the employees, the LEO's, to engage in activities not in accordance with the mission of the organization. Budgets are overstretched enough as it is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really something for HN unless someone is thinking about doing a startup for recording-equipment to monitor police interactions :p

But very nice change of policy. As it should be!

</comment><comment><USER4> Let's just see how it plays out in the field when alpha male cops of both sexes are high on self importance and adrenalin.</comment>


Close encounter with UFO off Irish coast leaves pilots wondering - <AUTHOR> https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/close-encounter-with-ufo-off-irish-coast-leaves-pilots-wondering-884774.html <comment><USER2> I'm not a believer in this sort of stuff but this is so cool.

<comment><USER3> It was confirmed by multiple aircraft on Shannon ATC. It's certainly real and happened, but UFO is any unidentified flying object.</comment></comment>