State of web browsers in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://ferdychristant.com/the-state-of-web-browsers-f5a83a41c1cb <comment><USER2> As a Mozilla employee, speaking from my own limited perspective, it seems the company as a whole broadly agrees with this analysis even if it isn't vocalized quite this succinctly. Chrome started out being force-installed alongside Flash, and there is no solution to the bundling problem -- the problem is even larger in scale than the article suggests because of Chromebooks affecting desktop. People who use Firefox in the future will increasingly be people who do so consciously, presumably because they view Mozilla as helping them protect their privacy. Chrome is and will continue to be the default.

Eventually, Google will do something that is an abuse of their monopoly power. Either there will eventually be a privacy/creepiness fiasco, or Google will attempt to use Chrome as leverage to squeeze a competitor out of a market.

When that happens, Mozilla will be well-positioned as an alternative. The path forward in this view would look more like Mozilla as a constellation of disaffected companies and users attempting to free themselves from Google. It won't look like Mozilla on the side doing something by itself. We will largely be defined in opposition to Google.

The article correctly points out that a wiser Microsoft could have gotten a head-start on this inevitability by partnering with us early.

<comment><USER3> Arguably Google is already abusing their monopoly power but in the way that people like. I'm talking about AMP. In the future AMP/regular page boundary will blur and Chrome/GSearch/AMPpages will merge in the ubiquitous googlenet hosted on google servers (because it will work better than regular internet pages). Almost everybody will be happy after this and Mozilla will fall into obscurity.

Basically you can't create a revolution in tech by failing once and then trying harder the second time and it looks like Mozilla failed even while being better. The only way for Mozilla to win is (like linked article suggests) is to dominate somewhere else and then leverage that to push web browser. They won't do this and don't want to really.

PS: maybe they could buy/merge with other privacy oriented players in tech and create end-to-end privacy services that are usable, seemingly secure and integrated and then push this offering. But I can't see a big market today for this offer if it would exist.

PPS: also to add to less known evil moves by Google - their U2F websites refuse to work in Firefox, despite it supporting U2F for a long time.

<comment><USER4> > Arguably Google is already abusing their monopoly power but in the way that > people like. I'm talking about AMP.

 _Do_ people actually like AMP?

I hate it and strongly wish I could disable it for all Google search results. It's supposed to make pages load in more quickly, but for some reason they always seem to be _slower_ for me.

<comment><USER5> Broadly speaking, yes they do. It _is_ faster in the vast majority of cases, and non-techie friends of mine speak enthusiastically about the lightning bolt icon. Of course, they don't understand the implications of it.

<comment><USER6> > and non-techie friends of mine speak enthusiastically about the lightning > bolt icon.

Which makes me think it's just confirmation bias. They expect it to be faster, and so perceive it as faster. Just like when Windows Vista was presented to users as the new Windows 7 (only the branding was changed for the experiment), and they openly stated it was noticeably better/faster than Windows Vista.

<comment><USER4> I'm not quite so quick to dismiss this out of hand, despite my own (negative) experiences with AMP.

Google is _certainly_ capable of making mistakes, but I find it hard to believe they would invest so much into AMP without strong metrics to indicate that AMP pages load faster overall. And on a theoretical level, the explanations of why AMP _should_ be faster also make sense.

<comment><USER6> Note the phrasing, that's an important part of what I'm referring to: they're talking about the icon instead of the speed directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firefox for mobile is an excellent browser, and the only one I use. It supports extensions, such as uBlock without rooting the phone. The user interface is good, the browser is responsive and reasonably fast. Honestly, I don't know why people aren't using it.

I think most people just don't care, and just use what the system provides. As Google gets more invasive and evil, I hope that people will start to care, and Firefox and other browsers start to flourish again.

<comment><USER8> > I don't know why people aren't using it.

Like the article said: no one cares (more or less) about how good the browser is. If you have to go install a new browser, that's more work than just using the builtin one, and Google can force every Android phone to install Chrome out of the box.

Also, though I use Firefox mobile out of a desire to not be a part of the Chrome problem (even though I know it's useless and I'm not actually helping by doing so), it's not fast, and it's not nice to use. It's painfully slow, crashes much more frequently than the other browsers, has confusing settings and constantly promotes garbage like Pocket (which you can disable if you dig through the confusing settings, but you can't actually uninstall it), etc.

Until Mozilla gets the performance problems under control (and they're _finally_ attempting to do this with Quantum et al.) they won't stop the bleeding. Unfortuantely, stopping the bleeding is the easy part: getting new users is the hard part and I tend to agree with the article that they don't have a way to do that on mobile (though I know nothing about marketing, so hopefully I'm wrong and just spouting nonsense here).

<comment><USER9> _Until Mozilla gets the performance problems under control_

Performance is 1/2 of the reason that I prefer Mozilla. As one of those people that typically has 50-100 tabs open, the Firefox model for memory management is vastly superior.

The other half of the reason is TreeStyleTab, again because I'm one of those zillion-tab users. Vertically-stacked tabs in a sidebar is the only way to manage that mountain of tabs - horizontal at the top just doesn't work. And Chrome doesn't have any extensions that support this.

<comment><USER8> That's actually really interesting; I don't tend to have a ton of tabs, but coworkers always told me Firefox did a terrible job with 100+ tabs and that Chrome worked better. This always made sense to me because of the multi- process architecture of Chrome, but I've never seen it myself.

So you're suggesting that Firefox actually performs better now? Maybe all my coworkers complaining about it are just repeating lore that no longer exists?

Many tabs aside though, I still have a lot of performance problems with Firefox (although it's getting better; Quantum was fantastic, I was getting really fed up with Firefox for a while before that).

<comment><USER10> I don't understand how anyone can claim FF is faster. I love FF and I switched completely from chrome. But Chrome is far faster. I don't know maybe it is because I have an abundance of RAM (32 GB) and others don't and that's why they think FF is faster.

But for me, it's easy to test. Go to [http://addic7ed.com/](http://addic7ed.com/) and open the (very long, nearly 5k entries) [Select a TV Show] drop-down. On FF (and IE/Edge FWIW) there is a noticeable delay in opening. I'd say 200-400ms. On Chrome it opens instantly.

Next, have something playing that consumes decent amounts of CPU in a tab. I used twitch. Then go somewhere and rapidly open new links (I middle-clicked around on Wikipedia). After about 10 tabs, FF starts slowing down (opening tabs that look like blank tabs and only starting to load after a delay) and possibly interrupts playback in the background tab. IE/Edge are even worse and will start opening tabs slower than you click and keep opening for a while after you are done. In Chrome on the other hand, everything is instant.

I'm on Windows 10 and everything is up to date. I'd love for someone to tell me that it's different for them.

<comment><USER11> I have 8GB RAM. It doesn't matter to me that Chrome would be faster if it could eat 4 times the whole RAM I have - what matters is that it's not.

Also, it's a pretty weird test case to compare performance, probably not related to anything that actually matters. What's more, Firefox tries to style the drop-down to match with the system UI, while Chrome doesn't even bother.

<comment><USER10> > I have 8GB RAM. It doesn't matter to me that Chrome would be faster if it > could eat 4 times the whole RAM I have - what matters is that it's not.

I specifically said that I can see it being a problem in low ram cases.

> Also, it's a pretty weird test case to compare performance, probably not > related to anything that actually matters.

This is not some random benchmarks. Both of these problems are things that I regularly encounter on actual websites. And it's great that FF styles it, but I'd rather have performance than system appropriate dropdowns.

<comment><USER11> The only reason 8GB RAM can be considered "low" instead of "appropriate for most workloads" is Chrome.

<comment><USER10> I don't even run Chrome outside of testing compatibility. I do run Visual Studio, often multiple instances. Right now I don't, only FF, a few apps and Stellaris (which only uses around 500 MB), yet I'm still at nearly 16GB of Memory usage. 8GB might be enough for many (most?) people, but not for me, and it has nothing to do with Chrome.

<comment><USER11> I also sometimes long for more RAM, but those situations definitely aren't what can be sanely considered "most workloads".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Amazing read! Very insightful and open at the same time. I've literally highlighted every other sentence in it. Thank you, Ferdy!

I basically went through the same thinking process myself. I'm a moderate idealist and would like Firefox to succeed because it's important for the web that there's no monopoly. However, my realist soul tells me that Firefox is losing badly and it's hard to tell where it's going to end. It's a pity that Microsoft didn't choose Gecko – I wonder if they even seriously considered it.

With Microsoft joining Chromium, we're slowly entering a duopoly of WebKit and Chromium. It's still a much better situation than the dark IE6 times. However, it's hard to tell whether WebKit (AFAIU, supported mainly by Apple and Samsung) will keep up with Chromium (Google and Microsoft) in a long term. I'm afraid that it will look like a Cold War's arms race – one of the parties will invest so much that the other will just lose economically (not being able to afford that many developers). Such economical wars make developers happy, because the web progresses very fast, but I think it actually leads to a monopoly.

Anyway, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for Gecko. They do a great job there and perhaps will be able to partner with a big enough company to keep its pace and market share.

<comment><USER13> > I'm afraid that it will look like a Cold War's arms race – one of the > parties will invest so much that the other will just lose economically (not > being able to afford that many developers).

Given all the "Safari is the new IE6" posts that have been here over the past few years, that seems to be already happening.

Apple is lagging behind quite a bit with implementing newer web standards, especially in areas where they have anticompetitive interest in doing so (PWAs cannibalising native apps). Of course, they're the only game in town on iOS, so that ensures them some captive market.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure how long they can keep doing so. At what point it may affect iOS's reception in general?

From my own experience, making the app I'm working on (CKEditor 5 - a web based rich-text editor) compatible with mobile Safari is right now impossible. None of the RTEs work well in mobile Safari because of its quirks and bugs.

If Apple will overdo this (just like Microsoft did with IE6), that may affect iOS's usefulness. Sure, right now you can't build a business without your presence there, but there may be a breaking point. It's hard to imagine and I kinda doubt it will happen (I rather agree with the author of this article that Apple will invest enough to keep Safari alive), but it's a possibility. Microsoft screwed it up once, so can Apple.

<comment><USER14> If you care about iOS, you don't build a web application you build a native one (perhaps using web technologies). This ultimately benefits users and Apple so there is no incentive to improve this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If it had been introduced today, would PNaCl have been rejected which ultimately lead to a better solution (WASM), or would it have been broadly accepted since it had sufficient market reach though Chrome?

<comment><USER16> Five years on, asm.js/wasm has been completely rewritten, has almost no adoption from developers, and lacks many of the features from PNaCl ... it may turn out well eventually but I don't think it's a great success story for web standards.

<comment><USER17> PNaCl didn't have adoption either, and the entire foundation was flawed. Starting with LLVM may have made it easy to add features quickly, but the only reason to do that would have been to get early adoption at the expense of long-term engineering benefits. That bet failed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> We're getting to the point where browsers are worthy of the decades old criticism Emacs has received. They have eventually become an OS with many fine features - simply lacking a good web browser.

It's a large, sprawling project to make a good OS. Especially when the language of choice to run on it changes with such haste.

Hopefully this nth re-imagining of dumb terminals dies off over the next few years and applications go back to the OS where they belong. Otherwise thing are going to get rough.

<comment><USER19> Browsers to me are amazing. I can run untrusted code in my computer from all over the world and at least with Chrome the odds of my machine getting pwned are pretty low. The Chromium team fixes security issues quickly. For that I get this amazing environment where I can see things as incredible as Google Maps 3D, games, music apps, etc all sandboxed incredibly well.

The whole thing is far far more secure than running native apps on Windows, MacOS, or Linux, they're arguably far more secure than Android and maybe more secure than iOS.

In other words, they aren't just an OS, they're a secure OS. Something most OSes don't give me.

<comment><USER18> This is getting worse and worse though as browsers expose more and more of their host operating system's functionality. The benefits of using a website instead of a native app are quickly disappearing, while the drawbacks have only been somewhat mitigated. And this leads back to my original post.

Additionally, it promotes the software as a service milking of fees and online only access. It prevents end users from ever being able to tell what code is going to be run on this computer since it changes on a whim. No hash checking of binaries is going to help you here.

There's no doubt browsers are supremely complex, amazing things. But that isn't good.

<comment><USER19> Well to each there own. For me I'd prefer everything in the browser. I hate having to trust native software. Native software can read/upload my entire home folder, all files, .ssh keys, browser history, password database, photos, videos, etc... Websites can't. Native apps have access to every open exploit on my machine. Webapps don't. Native apps can scan my network for other exploitable devices. Webapps can't. So, more webapps for me please.

<comment><USER18> Web apps that use electron (for example, Discord's desktop client) have full filesystem access and can do just what you say. Many people think it's safe because it's 'web'. It isn't. It's worse because of the misperception.

They can just add something like require('fs').readFileSync(process.env.HOME + '/.ssh/id_rsa').toString() and send this to their servers, and you won't even notice that (since it doesn't require an update on client because the client is just a browser with full permissions that loads obfuscated code from their servers every time you launch it).

And with both remaining big browsers dev group announcing they'll be adding greatly expanded filesystem access to browsers for normal websites this will likely apply there too.

<comment><USER19> Electron is a native app. so agree, don't like it, prefer web app

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a developer and a Firefox user. I'm always a little sad when I pair with another developer, and they ask why I'm not using Chrome.

Mozilla is one of the few tech companies that care about the well-being of its users. In my opinion that is very special.

<comment><USER21> > I'm a developer and a Firefox user.

By developer, do you mean web developer?

I tried to use Chrome dev tools, and they were incredibly easy to pick up; however whenever I try to use Firefox dev tools, they feel embarrassingly awkward. Perhaps it's just the familiarity with the tools (and if so, I am very curious to hear whether you prefer Firefox dev tools over Chrome's), but have a nagging feeling that it's just an inferior developer tool.

<comment><USER22> Both have their pluses and minuses.

It was delightful when auditing the experiences from a potential new client in Firefox Dev Tools the other day, and realizing that I could see, inline to the target DOM element, JS events tied to them while looking through the source. Saved me a good amount of time.

When I'm looking for pure-play performance auditing, Lighthouse integrated into Chrome's Dev Tools are an obvious win.

So yeah, each have their strengths and weaknesses.

<comment><USER21> Also, finally they made the whole web console into an editable area, like in Chrome dev tools. I used to be so frustrated that you had only one line where to write code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reading this on FireFox mobile, I think it's the best mobile browser out there (I've tried a lot of different browsers).

Sad to see it not gaining market share. That being said, there is a way for it to pick up steam. It would just require a new platform to come a long (probably competing with Google) to use FireFox

<comment><USER24> That was precisely the point of FirefoxOS. Mozilla knew years ago that the browser wars would come to hinge upon platform defaults. If you want to have a dominant browser these days, you also need to ship hardware yourself, and you then need to convince people to use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article's assessment of Safari is way off. It's an _excellent_ browser, and my default browser as a web designer and application developer. The interface is night and day superior to Chrome, it's very very fast on macOS and iOS, and it's often been at the forefront of design-related improvements to the web.

The one area it's historically been behind on (progressive web apps) is the reason it gets knocked by people who care primarily about progressive web apps. Personally I'm more interested in the web primarily as a visual interface communications medium, and so in that sense, I'm actually _against_ a number of decisions Google has made in its development of Chromium over the past few years (because Google has also prioritized PWA over other use cases for the web).

Anyway, if you don't care for Safari, that's your jam, but to state objectively that Safari is mediocre and Chrome is much better is simply unjustifiable and reveals the bias of the author.

<comment><USER26> I haven't seen a single sober argument in favor of Safari. Even now, before writing this comment, I did a small side-by-side comparison and I can't find a single place Safari really stands out as better.

I'm not saying you're wrong - opinions about usability have some subjectivity - but the opinion that Safari is an `excellent` browser are a small minority.

<comment><USER27> > I haven't seen a single sober argument in favor of Safari. Even now, before > writing this comment, I did a small side-by-side comparison and I can't find > a single place Safari really stands out as better.

I'm not a Safari user, but for owners of Apple laptops battery life should be a big one. It's my impression that Safari is significantly more efficient when it comes to energy consumption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From TFA:

>> " _For developers, it's one less browser engine to worry about_ "

>> " _For the open web: it's complicated. If I were to put on the hat of a pragmatic developer, I fail to see the big gain in having competing browser engines._ "

The author does not understand web standards and probably doesn't remember IExplorer's monopoly and the era of " _works best in IExplorer_ " websites. And what fewer and fewer people remember is that IExplorer 5 was the best browser of its generation, the Chrome of its days.

And actually I fail to see what this article is doing on HN. Surely there must be better rants around.

<comment><USER14> The author says "Microsoft had a browser that sucked (IE6)." This is not true. Microsoft had the best browser -- fastest, most stable, and friendliest for development. They created many of the standards we now take for granted. IE was literally the Chrome of the day -- the best browser installed by default on the biggest operating system.

<comment><USER29> Then they decided to stop improving IE6 (outside security updates) because they (correctly) realized that the web was a threat to the company. IE7 was released 5 years later, literally due to the pressure of other browsers on web standards support.

That's when IE 6 sucked, and we all had to live with that suckiness for years on end because of microsofts insane backwards compatibility policies keeping deprecated software alive on life support.

Even Microsoft has a IE6 countdown timer now [https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/ie6coun...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- edge/ie6countdown/)

IE6 was an unfathomably damaging disaster for the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Personally I see the bigger issue right now as Apple. Apple basically has all their iOS users hostage to WebKit. Maybe we'll get lucky and Apple will lose the current app store case and another store will be able to allow other browser engines on iOS and hopefully that will light a fire under their butts so they start implementing all the missing APIs.

As a dev there are so many features missing from iOS WebKit and because iOS has such a huge market share I'm basically forced to design without those features.

I don't personally see the issue with one browser engine. It can be skinned differently and different features can be enabled or disabled. More people from more companies can contribute to the same basic engine. Kind of like so many Linux distros contribute to the same basic kernel.

<comment><USER17> Again: How do I get Chromium to accept our Rust code, in the world where it's the only browser engine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is a different way to interpret this: Firefox is irrelevant on mobile, but not on Desktop. Will mobile kill desktop? No, these are two different markets/use-cases/applications. Just like video didn't kill the radio*. Firefox will stay relevant on desktop a.k.a. in work environments.

<comment><USER31> > Firefox is irrelevant on mobile

That's pretty sad, considering the fact it's the only mobile browser not only with the support of extensions, but _the same_ extensions as the desktop version.

Future might not be that grim for mobile Firefox actually, with more and more modern Android smartphones and tablets support more and more RAM, and 4GB is pretty much standard.

<comment><USER32> Mobile Firefox didn't support all extensions last I checked. It at least has uBlock Origin on Android, but almost everything else I looked for wasn't available. Firefox on iOS doesn't support them at all.

<comment><USER31> I think most of extensions that are not listed as compatible with Android version of Firefox is due the developer's lazyness to test it on Android and check the additional checkbox submitting it to the store. There are some differences in API, but they are minor [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/Differences_between_desktop_and_Android)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Web developers "building for Chromium" is a travesty. It's every mistake made when IE was dominant, repeated. Just do a find and replace from Microsoft to Google. If you are a web developer, please don't do it, and don't try to convince yourselves that it's OK. It's not OK. It wasn't OK before, it's not OK now, and it won't be OK down the road. I don't care that it's expedient; like your reliance on third party tracking scripts it shows you don't respect me.

Microsoft has done us no favors today.

</comment><comment><USER34> > At least those browsers are compatible with the web. Websites will work in > them because websites are built to work in Chromium.

That is a poorly drawn conclusion. Edge is compatible with the web. Developers are solely developing for Chrome and not caring for cross browser testing. As a Firefox user I sometimes encounter this myself.

<comment><USER35> hi, I'm the author. Agree with your point when you read it like that, so I'll clarify what I meant.

"Compatible with the web" in the context of this article means compatible with the web that is primarily built to work on Chromium/Webkit. Because at this point of time, the web is Chromium.

You're right that Edge is compatible with web standards, albeit that they are lagging a bit behind in implementing newer standards. By that logic, IE11 is also compatible with web standards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> May be I am in the extreme minority. I don't have problems with Safari. ( Judging from the 170 Comments so far and not a single supporter of Safari, I really think I am )

Instead of implementing every single iteration of Web Standard that Google dished out, kill it and rework much like all of their products, Safari decide to pick it up once everything has been stabilise.

Instead of trying to turn everything on the Web as Web App and give everything on the computer a Web API, they have been perfecting the Web Pages. ( Which in terms of publishing standard is still far from perfect )

</comment><comment><USER37> Even if some web sites don't care about cross-browser adoption, it seems like the browser vendors do, including people at Chrome who propose new standards?

As long as this is the case, the web standards process is still working much as it always has. Apple and Firefox still have a veto.

<comment><USER38> As far as I can tell, people at Chrome have _very_ strong incentives to propose new standards and ship implementations of them in the browser. Incentives around then responding to feedback on those standards and getting them into a state where anyone else would implement them are much weaker. Incentives to not ship until this process has happened are nonexistent; in fact lack of interest from anyone else is very explicitly never a reason to not ship something for Chrome, as far as I can tell.

Disclaimer: I work on Firefox, but read the blink-dev list fairly regularly; the last sentence above is repeated pretty often on that list.

<comment><USER37> Hmm, what do you think of Blink's feature launch process? [1]

(I'm no expert, but to me it seems impressively bureaucratic.)

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching- features](https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features)

<comment><USER38> I think it's a lot better than not having a process, for sure! The hearts of most of the people involved are in the right place, as far as I can tell, and they do listen to feedback some of the time. That said, they feel that if they think something is a good idea then that means they should do it even if others disagree. Which is understandable, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> IMO the actual state of web browsers is: "there is NO browsers.", we have labeled as browsers awful monsters that are a sort of OS-cancer that try to reduce OS itself as a mere kernel and basic userland needed to run that monster.

Actual size of those project is so big that practically no one, their devs included, can know the entire big picture, there are so any day new critical security vulnerabilities and a constant refrain, repeated following the nazi Goebbels principles of "repeat a lie enough and it became reality", that desktop is dead and the sole possible evolution are those monsters and, of course, "the cloud", because "we need integration and the sole really integrated platforms are cloud and mobile" and other classic marketing phrases.

Unfortunately, as with physical cancers, he are in the process of succumb. And even worse there are many people happy with that, like few crazy individual happy to have AIDS "so they know that they can get nothing worse STM and they feel free"... Or like south Koreans that pay a "prison hotel" to "free them for daily life"...

I think a ~60g rifle cartridge charged with salt and a small forest can be a good playground, only I fear we may run out of salt...

<comment><USER40> Which is part of the reason for Microsoft switch. To bring new life to the desktop via vastly better electron performance.

Which can be seen as the best and worst of both world at the same time. For sure we live in interesting times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I want to switch to Firefox.

The few things preventing me seems small, but have made the transition unfriendly and/or tedious.

1\. Chromium "Multiple Users" feature allows me to separate business and personal life very conveniently. Now that I have this feature, I cannot give it up. It seems Firefox has this functionality, but it's difficult to use without additional extensions and "Import from Chrome" doesn't support it.

2\. 1Password and other extensions I use on a daily basis have inconvenient drawbacks on Firefox. For example, 1Password dropdown does not show in form fields like it does in Chromium.

3\. Firefox UX still feels... meh. The ugly dotted focus ring around any link I click stands as a good example. I don't see any preference to turn it off. Menu navigation... there's no submenu peeking-- you have to click in then click back. The whole browser feels jerky compared to Chrome.

It's easier and more pleasant for me to ignore Chrome's lack of privacy and forget about Firefox.

I think Mozilla should give some serious thought and focus on making it incredibly easy and smooth to switch to Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER42> Comparing default Chrome vs default FireFox it's easy to think they're similar, and say "Chrome is ok."

But FireFox-with-blockers is in a class by itself in terms of speed and usability on both desktop and mobile.

Most of the things that work on Chrome but not Firefox end up being blocked and I don't even notice they're gone.

The recent change to make tracker blocking default in FireFox gives me hope.

</comment><comment><USER43> I really don't find this insightful, just repeating what everyone thinks : "people don't care about privacy", "Chrome is successful because it is installed by default", etc. thx captain obvious

</comment><comment><USER44> Great article.

Discussion question - what incentives need to change to make Apple invest more in Safari? They've always been invested in native apps first and foremost, because that's where they make their money - the app stores.

The other place they make their money is hardware. And it's hard to say you buy a MacBook or iPhone because of safari. You don't.

So I just don't know what it will take for Apple to make significant investments in the web. Whereas Google makes all their money on the web.

<comment><USER45> I'm not sure that Apple specifically avoids investing in Safari… I think it's more that their vision of the web differs significantly from Google's. They still see Safari as a web browser while Google sees Chrome as a platform akin to an operating system.

Apple also just prioritizes different things in WebKit than Google does with Blink. Where Apple implements energy saver and privacy protection features, Google implements whizz-bang bells and whistles to keep the attention of front end web developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great read, although I thought it wasn't quite cynical enough about the bad things Chrome can do with Blink (is that their rendering engine? Whatever it's called, I forget, but it doesn't really matter) dominance: the article suggested that the way forward is to ensure that the standards process has equal representation, and I agree with that, but once all the other browsers are using your rendering engine you don't have to care about the standards process. Just like IE back in the day, or Netscape before that, you can introduce a blink tag and everyone else has to do it or it gets to be standardized later to be compatible with what you've done. The standards process becomes more or less useless every single time we get into this situation. Google's already doing this to a certain degree, see also SPDY and QUIC, or any of the various Chrome-only CSS things that everyone else adopts. For SPDY/QUIC they're still working within the process, but they basically get to force their baseline without any competition even so. Later they won't even have to pretend to work within the process.

</comment><comment><USER46> I stopped reading the article after the statement about Edge and FF, that a lot of sites do not work in them. I am yet to see any of those websites outside of google.com. And the author did not name any examples. That made me think the author does not know what he is talking about.

</comment><comment><USER47> As a publisher, most of us do not care about Firefox either. They have done us no good. So we don't even bother to test on it.

Their so called "Tracking Protection" is nothing more then a gimmick. It can be bypassed easily using methods other then cookies. All it did was reduce the revenue from ads because of no cookies (the legitimate way to track id's). It did an insignificant harm to Google. But it reduced the revenue from Firefox users by a huge percentage for publishers.

Firefox is losing because it favors the wrong demographics. Firefox offers nothing much exclusive to users and neither to developers. Most people using ad blockers, use Firefox on mobile.

Sad to see it the way it is. Safari did the same. But the market share is still relevant, but it is declining as well. Once it reaches a certain point, no one will bother to test for it either.

DNT was a shit show. DNT should have always required manual user intervention to be respected.

Google's interests apart from their AMP project aligns with the publishers. If we win, they win.

<comment><USER48> So Firefox's Do Not Track is harming the way you track people through advertising?

I'd say it's working perfectly, then. Maybe it is your business that is broken.

<comment><USER49> Businesses that make their money on ads have no reason to ensure their product works on a segment of the browser market that almost entirely blocks ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't understand why people don't use Firefox for Android. It's easily the best mobile browser: allows addons (like uBlock Origin) and connects with the desktop browser (share tabs etc).

</comment><comment><USER51> An on point article and excellent read, but I felt deflated by the end.

This is the end of days for the open web I'm afraid, and this article lays out the path travelled and road ahead.

</comment><comment><USER52> As good a place as any to ask something I've been wondering about: Is a Chromebook a complete computing environment now that WebAssembly is getting adoption?

<comment><USER53> Depends on your definition of "complete" \-- ChromeOS now has Android and Linux container support, so you've got options for command-line apps. Ironically, you have to run Electron apps (based on Chromium) in a Linux VM.

<comment><USER52> Interesting, thank you. I could see Electron apps replaced with WebAssembly apps eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author of this article hand-waves away the speed advantages of one browser engine over another.

I'd be inclined to agree, except, am I the only one who has seen a marked speed advantage in Firefox Quantum over other browsers? I'm reminded of how I felt about Chrome in the early days. Everything just seems to load in ever-so- slightly more quickly.

I still use Safari on macOS due to Apple's nice touchpad gestures, but on Windows I'm now Firefox all the way. Not just because I like what Firefox represents, but because I find the experience markedly superior.

<comment><USER35> hi, author checking in.

Just doubling down on my statement. I've seen hundreds of discussions and flame wars on browser performance, RAM usage, the ability to keep open 200 tabs.

I mean it when I say that I cannot reproduce any of these differences. Perhaps I could if I would actively measure things, but in terms of just experiencing the speed of all major browsers, I really do not see a meaningful difference.

It could be device related, but I'm on a 6 year old PC (a pretty sizable one though), not having any issues on my mediocre work laptop either.

Doesn't mean it doesn't matter in absolute terms, I'm just saying I don't see it. The more important point though is non-technologist do not tend to pick browsers in such rational ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This blog post was tough to read! Seems to have capped out at a 6th grade level.

Re: the topic, the author shows clear bias toward Firefox. It might be better to just acknowledge this: the best browser wins on each platform. Period.

Safari is up there because it runs the best/fastest/with least trouble on iPhones and iPads.

20/20 means PERFECT vision. Above that is 'abnormally good'.

In other words, the author has a clearly biased view, tries to figure out the obvious, and doesn't 'agree' with definitions for words. Right!

<comment><USER35> hi, author here.

"This blog post was tough to read! Seems to have capped out at a 6th grade level."

I'm not a native speaker, and this is the best I can do. I was expecting less than 6th grade, so thanks!

"Re: the topic, the author shows clear bias toward Firefox"

Yes, the article literally says I am biased towards Firefox success. You didn't discover a secret plot or anything.

"It might be better to just acknowledge this: the best browser wins on each platform."

No, the one shipped to user's home screens wins. Even crappy ones.

"20/20 means PERFECT vision. Above that is 'abnormally good'."

If it would mean perfect, there would not be a level above it. I do agree the statement isn't as clever as I planned it to be.</comment></comment>


New PC Operating System, Looking for Partners - <AUTHOR>

I wrote the LoseThos 64-bit Operating System,  http://www.losethos.com, looking for partners.  email@example.com <comment><USER2> Here's a reasonable and compassionate explanation of the author: <http://qaa.ath.cx/LoseThos.html>

Be nice and try to empathize. We're all people, some just don't use the vernacular of our times.

MusicOS, I'm very much into computer music. See my homepage for my creative projects at <http://charstr.com> . If you'd like to collaborate on audio software, please get in touch with me there.

<comment><USER3> Let me say that LoseThos is far and away the most impressive operating system I've seen come out of the hobbyist scene. I don't think anything else even comes close and for one man to do what you've done is no small feat. I'd love to help you out in anyway I possibly could, I'm no Terry Davis but If there is documentation and a TODO shoot me an email at email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the most confusing landing page I've ever seen. I honestly have no idea what to think of this person. Does anyone have any info on him?

</comment><comment><USER5> This guy seems to be mentally unstable.

<comment><USER6> His old account[1] has been hell-banned for a while.

[1]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=losethos></comment></comment>


With Today's Protests, SOPA Becomes a Mainstream Issue - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sopa_awareness_goes_mainstream.php#.TxcEvwx9Sco.hackernews <comment><USER2> Unfortunately while this is becoming a mainstream issue many news agencies are framing this as tech companies being pro-piracy. Much more unfortunately many people aren't even bothering to read the pages that are blacked out today to understand why the blackout is occurring. Looking at everything being retweeted at the below URL is a good example of this:

<https://twitter.com/herpderpedia>

<comment><USER3> That link is destroying my faith in mankind. I mean, seriously... I try not to be that person that walks around talking about how "the average American is about as smart as a bucket of rocks" or whatever. I generally try to be an optimist and assume that people are mostly capable and competent, albeit prone to the occasional fit of stupidity.

But reading those tweets (assuming they're all real, and that most of them were not written to be sarcastic), it's hard not to think "are all of these people f%!#ng stupid or what?" It says right on the Wikipedia blackout page that it's a 24 hour thing, but half these tweets are like "OMG is Wikipedia gone forever?!?"

WTF? Really? Can anybody read anymore? Does anybody _bother_ to read anymore?

<rant-over />

<comment><USER4> This is not a feature of the american mind. People just don't like reading.

People _will not read anything!_ People are governed by laziness and habit, because they are effective strategies. Modern technology only makes it worse. Being a teenager makes it even worse, and living in the richest and most 'advanced' society in the world is probably the nail in the coffin.

Lots has been written on how you can't get people to read simple instructions. That's why windows and it's cryptic dialog boxes and Yes/No questions caused so much consternation for all those years, until apple forced them to sort it out and start labelling the buttons with verbs. People might just read the headline and the verbs, but they sure won't parse the whole paragraph and decide whether they want to accept or decline the action as phrased.

The same thing goes for politics and it's obsession with soundbytes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Today, my fiancee called me and asked: "This SOPA thing. I think it's bad. Is it bad?" I hadn't mentioned it before, really. So it is definitely hitting the mainstream.

This has rekindled my hope for humanity. I used to think most people are dumb. But people are really willing to look at, think about, and act on pressing issues, if you bring it up with them directly.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's the message I posted on my Facebook page if you want to copy it to share with less technically aware friends:

\--

The largest coordinated online protest in the internet's history is going on today, with the goal of stopping legislation that threatens the internet as we know it. If you think the internet is pretty cool the way it is, take a few minutes to click some of these links or at least share this post with others.

Good video explaining the bills, "SOPA" and "PIPA": <http://vimeo.com/31100268>

An open letter written by "83 prominent Internet inventors and engineers", strongly opposing these measures with excellent explanations: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors- war...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/internet-inventors-warn-against- sopa-and-pipa)

Some of the larger sites protesting today, with more details and easy ways to take action: <https://www.google.com/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/> <http://eugene.craigslist.org/> (all craigslist sites) <http://www.reddit.com/> <http://www.wired.com/> <http://wordpress.com/> <http://www.mozilla.org/> <http://php.net/> <http://www.rackspace.com/> <http://oreilly.com/> <http://boingboing.net/> <http://xkcd.com/> <http://blog.flickr.net/en> <http://www.gnu.org/> <http://techcrunch.com/> <http://imgur.com/> <http://www.newgrounds.com/>

<comment><USER6> Formatting is bad and HN isn't cooperating with post editing right now... here is the actual FB post (it's public):

<http://www.facebook.com/zackham/posts/10100280245567546>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a key first step. Now that it has some real attention we have to work to get the right information out there. At the very least people are going to be curious, hopefully they'll be turning to nerds everywhere for an explanation.</comment>


We Asked a Military Expert if All the World's Armies Could Shut Down the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.vice.com/read/we-asked-a-military-expert-if-the-whole-world-could-conquer-the-united-states

<comment><USER2> An invasion of all world forces include Canada. And you could try to transfer troops trough the north pole (it will be a logistical nighmare) And in Canada you have the energy sources for the war effort.

I think that this "military expert" is gravely underestimating the resourcefulness and inventiveness of humanity when it comes to killing each other.

You could also do your best to blow up the Gulf Of Mexico oil infrastructure and US is on 3 month lease of life (or an year if it is stretched for military use only) which could make them move on the offence. Add some propaganda to create domestic problems at home ...

If you remove the nukes it comes down to oil and humans. US is outmatched in both.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read the first 2 sentences and decided it was little more than liberal propaganda bullshit.</comment>


Ask HN: Best DIY video surveillance system  - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, what's the best DIY video surveillance system? I plan to install one of it in my house. System should be solid, I tend to avoid low supported projects. I prefer to install video storage locally but it's not a constraint. Recordings should be available from the web (even on mobile browsers).<p>I've see Logitech Alert. Any alternative? <comment><USER2> Not really. Dropcam and the Logitech units seem to be the best-in-class.

If you're not in a hurry, wait for the camera module for the Raspberry Pi, and then for projects like ZoneMinder to adopt it. It's expected to stream 1080p30, 720p60, and full 5MP (2592x1944) resolution at at least 1fps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I think I will buy three Logitech Alert.

Other alternatives are: 1) Vuezone (but it's not suitable for 365/24 usage)

2) third party cameras with software like Bluecherry, BlueIris, iSpy.

<comment><AUTHOR> And 3) standalone DVRs / NVRs like AVERMEDIA EXR6004 for IP cameras and iCatch US411ZS D1 for analog cameras.</comment></comment></comment>


Snapchat Hiring Massive Sales Team, Said To Be Raising $100M At $1B To Pay Them - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/08/be-with-me-now-on-snapchat/

<comment><USER2> Crazy valuation, shit load of funding and no way to make money? Quick somebody should let Yahoo! know...

<comment><USER3> No "e" in the name? Check.

Yup. Meets all the qualifications for a Yahoo! purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> what kind of a mad world do we live in where an app for sending pictures to your friends with a slight twist is worth $1B? That applies to both snapchat and instagram...

<comment><USER5> What kind of mad world do we live in where a graduate from one of the top universities in the world agrees to take a first job hawking ad space for a fad-of-the-year mobile app?

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of people who graduate from top universities and end up in low-paying sales jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given the graph in the article, it wouldn't surprise me if Facebook made another get-all-users-so-it-doesn't-threaten-core-business acquisition a la Instagram.

Although in this case, Facebook tried making a Snapchat clone (Poke) and failed miserably, so such an acquisition might show a weakness in Facebook product strategy and be somewhat embarrassing.

<comment><USER8> I would love to see Facebook try to acquire Snapchat. They were so arrogant when they launched Poke, claiming they made the entire app in 12 days. I thought it was pretty low to make a full blown copy of Snapchat.

<comment><USER9> I actually wonder to what extent Facebook really planned Poke. The way it was always described, a small team built it over the course of a weekend- I can see it being a random project people decided to do that got launched without any major strategy behind it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How Snapchat will actual monetize remains a mystery, but if I had to guess I would say they are working on a paid snap system. I'm not sure how they would go about creating ads that are relevant to the user. If I got a snap from a random company I imagine it would just piss me off. Maybe they will offer an ad free version via subscription model.

</comment><comment> mc-lovin I don't see how you can base a long term business model on a technology that can easily be broken (i.e. cracking the app so that photos aren't deleted after some time like the sender intended).

I guess in the short term they can make some money and transition to some other business model, but I feel like "SnapchatKeep" is just around the corner if it doesn't exist already.

<comment><USER10> if they had a feature to upload saved snapchats online, I would do it and share it through facebook and twitter, in fact I already do [http://olaji.de/snapchat](http://olaji.de/snapchat) a lot of my friends find it hilarious and I have almost double the amount of snaps saved on my phone right now, than on the site... I plan to upload more and more while snapchat value goes up and up, I am a 20 year old college student, a lot of you older guys have trouble understanding...

<comment> mc-lovin >a lot of you older guys have trouble understanding...

Maybe when you're 30 you will be able to form a complete sentence.

<comment><USER10> sorry "understand snapchat", ojr is my snapchat, I should give you my password, you'll see a few of my college girl friends send you snaps and maybe you will be closer to undertanding...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are they selling? Ads on sexts? (Serious question it doesn't say how they intend to monetize).

<comment><USER12> Most likely ads that are actual snapchats.</comment></comment>


Parallax OS A new design for Cloud Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.returninfinity.com/parallax.html

<comment><USER2> Im thinking Parallax Inc. might not like that name: <http://www.parallax.com/></comment>


The New Nationalism - <AUTHOR> http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=250 <comment><USER2> I think that it's all over the place. It's Britain, sure, but it's also the US with Trump. It's Russia with Putin. It's even China.

Why is the world moving this direction? I think that it's because globalization hasn't delivered a better life to people. (Or at least, hasn't delivered enough of a better life to enough people for them to consider it to be a net win for them.)

<comment><USER3> This has less to do with globalization than the British irritation at the loss of sovereignty. What does it mean to live in a democracy when your vote can be overridden by bureaucrats in another country?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quick game, do a shot every time he says "nationalism" in this article but doesn't actually have a point.</comment>


An Introduction to Ray Tracing (1989) - <AUTHOR> http://www.realtimerendering.com/blog/an-introduction-to-ray-tracing-is-now-free-for-download/ <comment><USER2> [https://t.co/RHZKjvseIT](https://t.co/RHZKjvseIT)

"I've decided to make pdf's of my ray tracing books available at "pay what you want". This can include zero, which I encourage for students and any other cash-strapped people. 50% of gross proceeds will go to programming education non-for-profits."

Peter Shirley

[https://twitter.com/Peter_shirley/status/984947257035243520](https://twitter.com/Peter_shirley/status/984947257035243520)

</comment><comment><USER3> Something similar also popped up on the /r/programming subreddit today that I found very easy to follow through

Understandable RayTracing in 256 lines of bare C++ [https://github.com/ssloy/tinyraytracer/wiki](https://github.com/ssloy/tinyraytracer/wiki)

[https://github.com/ssloy/tinyraytracer/blob/master/tinyraytr...](https://github.com/ssloy/tinyraytracer/blob/master/tinyraytracer.cpp)

<comment><USER4> Wow, this is a terrific repo, props to the creator! I'm gonna try and recreate this in Golang as a learning exercise.

I think you could also submit it as a standalone post for more visibility. ;)

<comment><USER5> This came up yesterday, you'll see if it you go back a page or two, or use the search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Holy crap, I bought this book when it came out and lost it in a move long ago. I guess if I live long enough all my favorite computer texts will be available free at some point.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well that's funny.

Back around 1992 or so I picked up a copy of this book, in hardcover, from a local bookstore (Bookstar - remember them?) - still in plastic wrap.

I was like 19 and naive. I paid something like $80.00 for it.

Opened it up - tried to understand it - the math was well beyond my pay grade.

Still is.

It's been sitting on my shelf every since. Probably the worst book purchase I ever made; had it not been in plastic I could have at least leafed thru it to see that I wouldn't understand it. At the time, $80.00 was a lot for me.

Live and learn, I guess!

:)

<comment><USER8> In a nutshell, simplest form of raytracing: imagine a point where your eye sits behind the screen, throw lines from this point into the screen hitting each pixel dead center into the scene, check which objects you hit, how far away from the origin point that happens and sort by depth. Take the nearest one, render in color based on angle of incidence compared to lightsource.

That's the very simplest form of raytracing that you could do, then you can add reflection and transparency and other niceties that lead to the splitting of the rays and a summation at each hit.

This is actually reverse raytracing, forward raytracing starts from the lightsource, doing it backwards is an optimization because a lot of the light would end up hitting absorbing surfaces long before it would hit the plane of projection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A few additional ray tracing resources:

[https://github.com/melling/ComputerGraphics/blob/master/ray_...](https://github.com/melling/ComputerGraphics/blob/master/ray_tracing.org)

<comment><USER10> Might I suggest [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from- scratc...](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from- scratch/raytracing.html) (shameless plug)?

<comment><USER10> And on the other end of the scale, [http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tiny- raytracer.html](http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tiny-raytracer.html) (another shameless plug)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I quite enjoyed Ray Tracing from the Ground Up when I was learning ray tracing for the first time.

[http://www.raytracegroundup.com/](http://www.raytracegroundup.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> The linked pdf copy has kinda mediocre quality. Google's scanned copy looks a lot better. I wonder if it would be possible to get google's pdf to share instead since there is legal permission?

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh, awesome! This is the book I learned ray tracing from. The basic math is still very relevant.

</comment><comment><USER14> Quite old. Latest 2014. Still relevant?

<comment><USER15> The fundamentals of Ray Tracing are very simple and haven't changed. Most of the advances in Ray Tracing are either simulating complicated materials (e.g. skin, or perfect simulations of car paint) or speed optimizations advancing the quest for real time Ray Tracing.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Reach your daily goal one email at a time - <AUTHOR> http://mydailygoal.net

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what you get when you click the link in the daily email: [http://cl.ly/TEj7](http://cl.ly/TEj7)</comment>


Users that send bug reports are your biggest fans. Cherish that - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-shenanigans/766c9e373acc

<comment><USER2> "Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning" \- Bill Gates

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe Dave McClure also encourages you to have customers that either love you or hate you, since those are the source of real feedback. Indifferent customers are just that.</comment></comment>


Securely share files on the blockchain with IPFS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mycoralhealth/learn-to-securely-share-files-on-the-blockchain-with-ipfs-219ee47df54c <comment><USER2> so instead of sending the gpg encrypted file directly to the recipient via email it is stored in ipfs. I fail to see the use-case for this.

when you exchange gpg encrypted secrets the knowledge that there is a secret will be limited to the recipient, myself and any potentially malicious provider that snoops the mime-headers. while email has no forward secrecy and leaks metadata, I like that this method doesn't leak metadata (but you still have the problem of contacting the recipient out of band to let them know about the ipfs link. also exposing to the world that you've placed a secret on a public ledger could already be a battle half lost.

with the blockchain the file will be there for eternity, and will remain encrypted only until the cipher gets eventually broken. your plausible deniability is not only gone but depending what the file contains, your secret will be one day out in the open. (and likely within 5-10 years not 100-150 years)

so in comparison to sending the email over an anonymous email account[1] that you access via tor (and by encrypting the whole content outside the mail-user- agent ... e.g. the way it is described in the article by running _gpg --encrypt ..._ ) the proposed method will add 2 additional attack-vectors because of this blockchain.

I'm not criticizing the article which is a good explanation on how to encrypt a file with gpg and then upload it with ipfs but I fail to see any use-case that this might be valid for irl (what threat model will this help me with?)

[1] half arsed un-endorsed solution that can also easily get you owned because giving blanked advise is impossible, forward secrecy with gpg/mime/email doesn't exist, all technology is shit, people like to brag, and even the ones not bragging might be easily targeted on other side channels etc ...

</comment><comment><USER3> or gaia: [https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html](https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html)</comment>


Croydon Shut Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our-regions/southern/disruption-at-victoria-and-london-bridge/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see a post mortem made public. Also fairly well written for laymen while still retaining detail. Most rail infrastructure operators from other countries don't make this sort of info public (apart from PR type messages which typically don't explain the issue at at all and are more focused on deflecting blame etc). Kudos to Network Rail.

<comment><USER3> >Kudos to Network Rail.

This kind of jingoistic comment demonstrates how a tactical post with some technical information, can massively skew judgement. According to Network Rail, the routes in question are not only one of the most congested in the country, but have been mired with problems of under-investment and lack of desire to ease the bottleneck. Some of the routes connect salubrious stock- broker belts with the City of London, in addition to Brighton & Hove, East Sussex. Other routes traversing East Croydon, acting as a hub, also serve the mainline stations of London Victoria and London Bridge to (London) Gatwick ─ the second busiest airport in the country.

I wonder how many people will be forgiving or cheering for Network Rail and handing out accolades for their neatly constructed blogs, when they miss their flight or arrive to work late 'due to signalling problems'.

Part 1:[https://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/strong-support-for- propos...](https://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/strong-support-for-proposals-to- unblock-the-railway-bottleneck-at-croydon/)

Part 2:[https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our- routes...](https://www.networkrail.co.uk/running-the-railway/our- routes/sussex/upgrading-the-brighton-main-line/unblocking-the-croydon- bottleneck/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't mind delays very much, even long ones, as long as there is information readily available about why the delay happens and how long it is likely to last. I have very positive experience with UK railways in this regard; this post is a prime example.

Contrast with PKP (Polish rail), where it's not uncommon for a train to stand in the middle of nowhere for half an hour, without so much as a single word of explanation from staff. It's changing for the better, but slowly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Acccording to [1] just 67% of all UK trains arrived on time (no more than a minute late), with 2.8% scheduled trains cancelled all togther.

How does it fare against other EU countries? What is so different abount Japan trains, that they are just 0.7 minutes late on average?

[1] [https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1630/passenger- performan...](https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/1630/passenger- performance-2019-20-q2.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I can tell you from experience the trains in the UK are expensive and miserable.

The common theory for why is because of the mess made of privatising British Rail in the 1990s. The government did it in a way which managed to create monopolies while at the same time splitting out responsibility between different companies in such a way that millions are drained away on legal costs while the companies argue with each other about who is responsible for each problem.

There are many articles analysing the problems you can find online, here's one that turned up at the top of search: [https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2018/jan/07/railways-pri...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk- news/2018/jan/07/railways-privatisation-nationalisation) Edit: Better article: [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/why- britains-...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/09/why-britains- railway-privatization-failed/3378/)

<comment><USER7> I commute on British trains every day and have done for years.

They're not perfect but I am rarely delayed by more than a minute or two. Agree that a massive issue is the price, my train is close to £30 a day for a 50 minute ride into the city and it goes up by 3-5% every year.

The only proper delays I see are caused by unusual weather, as it's the UK - flooding or snow.

<comment><USER8> Can I hazard a guess you are doing so in the South East? Try the trains the rest (most) of us experience.

Northern Rail, Transpennine, West Coast, ScotRail, East Coast (there already) etc that have or are about to be given to "operator of last resort", i.e. renationalised -- under a Tory government --for having failed badly.

<comment><USER9> I commuted in the South East (particularly South East London which means SouthEastern trains) and it was a miracle if I was only delayed by 1 minute on a 12-20 minute journey. Coming to down the Charlton line into London Bridge almost always involved a 5-10 minute delay at (the crossover junction just outside the station that I forget the name of).

<comment><USER10> I commute there now, the past weeks have been a nightmare of cancelled trains 2 minutes before they're due while I stand at an open air station freezing my nuts off or getting rained on. If we had a little more notice id stay home where it's warm for an extra 15 minutes. The delay you speak of is still there, and it's now worsened by the fact that the new Thameslink trains are given priority to pass as we sit and wait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> OK, that's what should happen for an overvoltage. The control systems tripped offline to protect themselves, all signals went to red, and all trains stopped.

Electric railways have multiple different power systems - traction power, signaling power, and utility power, at least. The possibility of a short between systems means a conservative shutdown-on-overvoltage circuit breaker setup is appropriate.

<comment><USER12> The need to manually turn this system back on is non optimal. A control loop powered by a battery backup should have been able to reset the system once the voltage came back down.

<comment><USER11> This is a railroad signaling system. It's designed to fail safe, and that's not a buzzword. Any broken wire, go to red. Any broken relay, go to red. Any rail break, go to red. Loss of power, go to red.

If you're getting power surges in signaling power, it's time to shut down, go to red, and not reset until someone has tested the system.

<comment><USER12> The backup system can be programmed to do the same testing a human can to bootstrap the system. Another benefit is that they can simulate a surge in the system regularly and watch it recover itself versus a human running a checklist once every 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't mention a date. Presumably the "Wednesday" referred to is 18 Dec 2019.

On a previous occasion when rail equipment failed because of a fluctuation in supply voltage the electricity company was not at fault: the voltage had remained within specified limits. I find it a bit suspicious that the article doesn't mention what the change in voltage was this time, and what variation the specification allows. The penultimate paragraph is perhaps an implicit admission that the electricity supply was within its specification.

I wonder if any of this is indirectly related to the official change in supply voltage, from 240 V to 230 V, in 1995. Nah, probably not; they can't have equipment that old, can they?

<comment><USER14> It could be related to the official change in supply voltage, though not for the reason you're thinking. Although Britain's mains supply officially changed to 230V, in reality it's the same 240V as before and there's a wider tolerance band for voltages above the nominal 230V than below to make this work. So if Network Rail installed equipment that expected actual continental-style 230V, that could cause problems.

It wouldn't be the first time that rail companies not paying attention to actual grid specs caused transport chaos this year. Back in August, a power failure caused load shedding that dropped a million houses off the grid but preserved power to the rail network as intended. However, one train company had bought Siemens trains that couldn't cope and immediately shut down when they saw a dip in frequency of the level required to cause automatic load shedding, and required an engineer visit to restart. That one set of trains effectively rendered all the measures taken to ensure the rail network retained power almost useless, as they turned into immobile blocks all over the network.

<comment><USER15> > rail companies not paying attention to actual grid specs

I would give the rail companies a little slack. They did specify trains that should have handled the frequency change. But Siemens didn't build the trains to spec.

The shutdown was unexpected and entirely down to Siemens not building their power supplies the specs set out by the rail company.

<comment><USER16> This isn't accurate. Siemens delivered trains that could tolerate the power fluctuations _at the time they were specified_.

The problem was that the national grid then changed (loosened) the specification of what an acceptable fluctuation was. The trains could not tolerate this new specification.

What we can blame Siemens for is not providing an easier and quicker way to get the electrical systems back on their feet after a problem, instead relying on a specialist to physically visit a stranded train. I think they said they'd fix that one...

<comment><USER14> That's not true - the frequency spec hasn't changed in any way relevant to what happened. (I think there was some changes to rate-of-change-of-frequency disconnect specs for generators and possibly medium-term frequency accuracy, but neither of those things mattered here.) This kind of near-simultaneous failure of two large generators, tripping the low frequency demand disconnect, was always specified to cause a dip in frequency of a level those Siemens trains couldn't cope with. There was actually a very similar failure back in 2008. The only reason that didn't cause such chaos is because those trains hadn't been ordered yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not necessarily a failure when you fail.

This PM exuberates professionalism with a clear and concise message! This is an excellent learning experience, for bystanders, travelers, and employees. Seems to me that this was handled in a good way.

The issue was highly unusual and difficult to anticipate but now you know. Good luck mitigating this issue preparing for the future. You will now be better as a result of this failure.

</comment><comment><USER18> One odd omission from the article is why it took an hour to reset everything. Given that they have redundant power, I would imagine that they could remotely select which power supply to use or at least to remotely reset the breakers.

Alternatively, a good enough automatic transfer switch should transfer the power supply rather than tripping if the primary supply goes out of acceptable parameters.

(This goes to one of basics of high availability: failures, when they happen, should be short.)

<comment><USER15> Most power systems are built with a mix or clever automated systems that can self recover, along with backup dumb systems that can't.

This is done to ensure that if your smart stuff fails, you don't end up seriously damaging something.

Unfortunately the dumb stuff pretty much always has to be reset manually. Usually because the dumb stuff tripping means you've encountered a scenario that no one anticipated, you really want someone to double check that nothing got damaged before the safety tripped.

It's a little like a database starting up and discovering that part of its Write-Ahead-Log is corrupt. You really want a human to go in there and see what happened, rather than just ignoring the damage, plowing on and loosing data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In my opinion, the problem is in poor logical thinking in the design of the supply switchover systems. The article indicates there are multiple power feeds and power supplies (presumably to provide low voltage equipment power).

For a single power feed all of the following results in the loss of the output, (1) no input voltage, (2) input over voltage (under voltage also???). However, in the article it implies that switching to one of the other redundant power feeds or power supplies only happens for (1).

If the redundancy system had considered either (1) or (2) as a fault and to "find another supply, then shutdown this supply" then complete shutoff would have been avoided.

Also, since the active power supply shut down and switchover also didn't happen, there must not be any monitoring of the output of the individual supplies to trigger a switchover. To me, this suggests there is also another single point of failure in the current design.

I guess there is a market for smarter power failover systems.

</comment><comment><USER20> A 20 second overvolt period does seem exceedingly long - I'm curious to find the cause of that.

<comment><USER21> Yes I thought power surge happens in milliseconds to a second range, may be few seconds at worst, first time I ever read a double digit seconds power surge.

Luckily the system shutter itself down as intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> By reading the postmortem I got the feeling that it focuses primarily on providing a timeline of historical events without being future-looking.

I did not find any questions that would trigger a path of improvement for similar future events:

\- Why did the recovery take so long (up until Thursday morning)?

\- If the surge lasted for 20 seconds, why weren't the systems operational again 1 minute after the event?

\- Why is an on-site technician needed in order to re-activate the equipment?

\- Could we build a system that enables the reactivation remotely?

There might be very well-rooted answers to the questions above (based on how real world electrical supplies work), but if the questions aren't asked, we won't end up exploring better solutions for the answers.

<comment><USER23> _Why did the recovery take so long (up until Thursday morning)?_

Systems were up within an hour, but if you throw an hour's delay into a busy part of the rail system, you have knock on effects (trains aren't where they are supposed to be) that will basically last until the end of the service day.

 _If the surge lasted for 20 seconds, why weren 't the systems operational again 1 minute after the event?

Why is an on-site technician needed in order to re-activate the equipment?_

Basically, the breakers were flipped by the surge. Resetting such things is best done manually on site to ensure there was no equipment damage that occurred because of the surge.

 _Could we build a system that enables the reactivation remotely?_

Probably, but that strikes me as dangerous.

The article explicitly talks about investigating what can be done to make their systems more robust to such power events. I think it is very future looking.

<comment><USER24> For those unaware, Croydon is basically a massive chokepoint, with trains coming in from London Bridge and London Victoria to the North and large part of the South coast to the South.

If trains start piling up near either Victoria (and Clapham Junction) or London Bridge, it quickly causes trains to back up all the way to East Croydon, a 15 minute train journey away.

Once it does, it blocks trains towards the other line, as East Croydon only has 6 platforms and no tracks bypassing it.

Once that happens, trains can start backing up tens of miles further South, and will be out of place when things are up and running again.

Victoria is a terminus, and is at times busy enough that trains gets 'stacked' two to a platform on the platforms serving Croydon, so turning trains back quickly becomes a fun exercise... (London Bridge also has lots of platforms that terminates, but seems to have fewer platform capacity issues after the overhaul)

So even if the trains that are in position get moving again pretty quickly, untangling that and getting platform space for all of those trains in short order can compound short delays very substantially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _how we can improve their resilience so we can stop this from happening in > future_

I'm not so sure about that.

Just a few months ago a temporary power cut in London left some modern Siemens trains stuck for hours because they had shutdown do to irregular power and had to be manually rebooted.

Apparently nobody thought to investigate if the signaling system is also vulnerable to irregular power.

</comment><comment><USER26> > We are investigating whether fitting Uninterruptable Power Supplies to each > signalling location would have prevented this failure, although it is also > possible they would have had to shut down to protect themselves too, as > happened at another location during the same event.

This specific remark sounds rather amateurish. This is part of the reason UPSes were invented. A Double Conversion Online UPS would have been able to handle this situation just fine.

<comment><USER27> I worked for an ISP that was deploying switches nationwide... We got a lot of space in BT Telephone Exchanges and thought nothing more of it.

I have never seen such dirty and bad power! Literally once a week we had to go to exchanges to reset fuses that had tripped.

We then started deploying (rather entry level) UPS to all locations and the problem just disappeared completely... we then invested in more high end UPS systems, but, yeah - dirty power is a big problem and UPS help.

<comment><USER20> I'm surprised CO gear was not running on -48v rather than AC power

<comment><USER28> Is DC actually common these days? I haven't been to a physical datacenter in a decade or do, but I remember almost everything running on AC.

<comment><USER27> I'm an IT and networking guy... This is one thing that got on my nerves completely - most equipment comes as AC or DC, and I'm never sure what to order, so, I usually go for the AC one as it's the safe choice

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Rail equipment is all ancient and highly redundant for both uptime and safety.

Yet the actual system reliability and safety doesn't seem great. Signal outages happen nearly every day in the UK, and delay tens of thousands of passengers. Safety failures in signalling systems kill on average a few people per year.

How about a modern system, built with JavaScript-de-jure, running over 4G and WiFi, consumer GPS, "Download train-control from the app store", running on tablets or the train drivers BYOD phone, etc. How would it work out for safety/reliability?

I suspect counterintuitively it would work out much better. Simple cheap portable devices means a bunch of spares can be around always. "Phone battery dead? No worries, there's a tablet I can control the train from too". No WiFi? It also works with 4G or Bluetooth. Server down? It has a Peer connection backup. Hackers broke in? The system has safety logic built in to every device, and uses a consensus system so a few rogue systems can't crash trains. Power supply broken? We have 24 hours of battery, longer if I turn the brightness down.

<comment><USER30> > How about a modern system, built with JavaScript-de-jure

No thank you.

<comment><USER31> import { train } from 'lodash';</comment></comment></comment>