I agree. Is valuable information see the _rejected_ items.
I make a year list of movies that I personally recommend [1], and that is why I start to add a full list with 1-10 points of all the movies that I watch (the "rejected" or "not recommended" are the 6/10 and below). I think this make the list more interesting and highlight my personal taste.
I understand why this spark conversations about the current Firefox market share situation.
But I also believe that Firefox's dominant past plays against when it comes to analyzing the product right now.
Firefox is amazing, it works wonderfully, it continues to improve, respects privacy, adopts Mozilla's ethical values.
Yes, not many people use it, but criticizing this point so aggressively I think it is also influenced by the culture aiming at hypergrouth, dominance, monopoly, "Move fast and break things".
I am very happy with what Firefox does for me right now. Imagine a situation in which Firefox does not exist and today the product comes to light, it would be a great celebration, and the market share would be zero.
Thanks Firefox, I love you very much, although there are few of us who use you and maybe that doesn't change.
To be precise, it was 289 million on July 1st 2018, and 248 million on July 9th 2019. It was 239 million on August 24. Yes, the numbers are huge. Any product that has this many users would be considered a major success, but the trend is still troubling.
Why would the typical user make the effort to download Firefox when they're already happy with Chrome? The typical user isn't on HN with strong opinions on privacy, has little notion of what constitutes a tech monopoly, covets convenience, and has already configured their one browser extension but doesn't remember how (and it turns out that same browser extension isn't in Firefox).
For most people, they can already see the internet in Chrome, or Safari, or maybe even Internet Explorer. Why would they switch when they don't even know what they're switching to or why?
Meanwhile Chrome has the full force of Google behind it, and Chrome is actually one of their important projects that they aren't going to abandon any time soon. It's really Chrome vs. the world, and Chrome is winning.
Firefox 57 launched at the end of 2017 and was very much a love-it-or-hate-it change. Some people saw a significant performance improvement and that was important for them. Other people didn't have a problem with its performance anyway but saw the entire ecosystem of extensions that made Firefox different thrown under a bus.
I'm firmly in the latter camp, and if it weren't for the security implications I'd still be running pre-57 Firefox with the full set of extensions I found useful. If I didn't need to use all the major browsers anyway because of my web development work and I wasn't so untrusting of Google in terms of privacy, I might easily have decided at that point that Firefox no longer had any compelling advantage over Chrome and switched. Presumably some people did.
I prefer firefox, but I'm on a mac and it runs pretty hot. I believe they're improving this though. Once performance is solved it'll be my default browser.
I’m pretty sad that it took a long time to solve this. I know there was a lot of work put into bringing Firefox back up to snuff, but this single issue seems to have caused a lot of trouble. This Bugzilla link is light grey for me, so I’ve visited it before, most likely a year or two ago. Since then I’ve been running Firefox with the gfx.compositor.glcontext.opaque flag set to false, which doesn’t even cause any issues aside from sharp corners on browser windows, and HTTP auth prompts having a black background instead of a nice macOS blur. That was the best workaround available, one I almost wish they could have made some compromise to enable by default in the meantime. I’m glad it’s been sorted now, but this seemed like it should have been a release blocker to me when I first started switching back to Firefox during the Quantum betas.
It only really affects Retina Macs, which are a small fraction of the total userbase [1]. I understand that it's frustrating, but it would have been doing a disservice to the vast majority of Windows users to block a release on Mac power improvements. Especially since graphics power management on macOS isn't a new issue by any means; Quantum didn't introduce it.
I've seen thousands of Chrome ads in my life. On TV, on FB, on other ads on other websites, etc. I really don't think I've ever seen a FF ad. At least, I really can't recall seeing one. From what I've seen, the public has just not really heard of them. It's mostly just us geeks. It's hard to get market share when your audience doesn't even know you exist. And then you have Android, which comes with Chrome and has a much larger worldwide audience than iOS. I don't know how this is different than windows shipping with IE in the 90s, except Alphabet is allowed to continue while MS was not. Android has about 76% of the world market compared to iOS's ~22%. iOS has been in a slow decline most of this year as well, while Andoid is going up by as much. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide
I'm sorry, what? It was either the underdog of MSIE or of Chrome, it never was dominant the way the actual dominant browser at the time was dominant. The peak was 30%, and when Chrome took over from MSIE, it had 21% with MSIE and Chrome at 30% each.
You have a short memory. Netscape Navigator 3 had a >75% market share. Mozilla, which became Firefox, was a total rewrite, but that rewrite was done by the same people and was released as Netscape 6 - 9.
A majority of early adopters (of computers and internet connections in general) running some early version of this doesn't seem very relevant. I really don't think this ancient history (browser history does not go back much further than this) is working against Firefox today.
And when browsers will protect users against activity recording without consent?
For example Hotjar [1], I did a review [2] of the product a year ago and I could not believe the creepy surveillance level of this tool.
For me, manually disable JS or install content blockers will not get mainstream appeal for the regular users who just want to browse the web (and didn't know that maybe are being recorded).
This should be blocked by default on every browser.
It's hardly new back in 2008, I worked for a company that used Tealeaf, a proxy that intercepted all web traffic before it even hit the load balancer, to record every click and request. It was used by the help desk and, when they couldn't figure it out, the Tealeaf session and player were forwarded to the devs. (This was a company under HIPPA, so a bunch of that data was related to personal health records).
In 2012, I worked at a University with analytic tools that showed a color map indicating the average scroll speed for pages on our website and heat maps indicating how long different users hovered over a section.
It's creepy indeed. Not only do they collect all your actions (key presses included) but I believe they also send the activity to their servers via HTTP, rendering the SSL on the page that includes their script, useless.
Modern browsers should block all backend/javascript http communication if the main request is made over HTTPS, unless you specifically disable it with a Content Security Policies.
Better to just disable javascript altogether. Sure, there's no dynamic loading of garbage, but I didn't want that anyway. If your back-end server can't render HTML then you need to build an app.
At least with native desktop apps I can put that garbage into a VM or container. Load whatever you want. I can then apply my own firewall/containerization/VM rules.
Not an expert, but if you add "The Best Cheap" [1] at the beginning of every title tag of your product pages I guess Google bot will think is something shady.
My understanding is _a lot_ of stuff in Nvidia drivers isn't _technically_ owned by them. As in they license out A company to make Y thing with Z license. After 20+ years of legacy those weird licenses add up, and no-one feels comfortable with releasing the code. Whether or not that's true? Hard to say... For comparison AMD has been (since 2015) working hard to make nearly all parts of their drivers upstream in some fashion (amdgpu). While that's not a 1:1 comparison there (AMD has less capital than Nvidia) it shows it _is_ possible to free these drivers.
The real answer is that releasing source code means uncovering (some of) their cards. The company, that relies on selling identical hardware under vastly different prices, won't ever do that. Using game-specific speed-hacks to "fix" games, purposefully written to violate standards, is another issue. Especially, when those games were made with help of Nvidia engineers. Why give up such ability?
I also suspect, that they make use of multiple patented technologies, both in hardware and software. When Java has been re-licensed to GPL, one of the most prominent pain points, that caused endless whining on part of OpenJDK users, happened to be it's font renderer. And we all know, that font smoothing is tricky business, and all font-smoothing tech in existence is patended by MS/Apple/Adobe. When you start replacing closed-source code with free replacement, those patented pieces tend to quickly come up — especially when open-source projects go to great length to work around patent issues instead of shoving them under the carpet.
I have the same concerns with Google Analytics and tried to install Matomo [1] for my personal website [2] few months ago, seems a more robust tool than Countly [3] to me, maybe I'm wrong.
But I had an error installing Matomo and got not help in the official forum [4], if someone here can help me I will appreciate it, I'm not a developer (I'm also considering get rid of analytics tools for good, anyone?). Thanks.
I have to agree that one should be using PHP 7.2. It also gives a nice performance boost to Matomo.
The required PHP version for Matomo is shown in [1] (5.5.9 or greater)
Can you please send me a link to the FAQ page mentioning 5.3 (e.g. to lukas@matomo.org) so they can be updated?
My mistake, I was skimming the docs only but overlooked the specially linked requirements. I would go further though and remove outdated PHP versions from that page and only recommend maintained versions.
Additionally, the error described by OP looks like autoloading is broken.
I ask about renaming the product back in 2016 [1] and the author response was:
I won't change the name -- it is too well established now.
It's unfortunate that ublock.org causes confusion, but in the end he is hurting himself more in the long run than he is hurting uBlock Origin, it's a conscious choice he made to scam people,[1][2] he will have to deal with whatever consequences there is doing so.
I did not know that. Well, I am sorry that he has to deal with this BS. These kind of issues drains a lot energy especially when it comes to OS software.
Got a cheap HostGator shared hosting and host low traffic websites for some clients (static/WordPress).
As a designer with no advanced knowledge in hosting/IT/domains/backend, it was pretty easy and no complications, I can't complain.
Now planning to move from HostGator to DreamHost because HTTPS is expensive in HG and free in DH (also using the free Netlify plan for static sites, HTTPS free).
How much to people pay you for hosting one such site? The idea to design and host simple sites sometimes crosses my mind when I go to some restaurant that doesn't have a working site.
One thing that always I feel on discussions about AMP is that is something that is going to happen, and is not, is happening right now, regular users are already having better and great experiences on mobile.
That is the good side that I see of the project, Google was capable of do that in about 2 years. Pushing development best practices seems that was not enough, companies stills doing awful job on the performance side of their websites.
AMP was like force companies to do other version of their websites with limitations that prevent doing stupid development and design decisions like js/css/html bloat, repeat components and more.
You like that beautiful readable and organized Medium post?, is a good experience right?, well, it happens that the editor has a lot of limitations like only let you choose 3 text hierarchies, 3 image sizes, one font family, no colors, etc. For me AMP is something like that but in the development side instead on the visual design side.
The terrifying part is that Google has created a parallel version of the web who fill their needs, a stripped down version[1] that feels like an authoritarian power blocks the freedom that the "native" web always has, also happens that this parallel version has some advantages and people are loving it.
I was just getting to know the world of computers, I think it was the year 97, I had 13 years old and my first PC, Pentium 200mhz with Windows 95, I thought the games were fabulous! Quake 1, Duke Nukem, Carmageddon, Moto Racer.
But one day I bought the Diamond Monster 2 with a Voodoo 2 chip and 12MB Ram (3DFX accelerator card), I put that thing on my PC and it was like traveling to the future, the games looked amazing and I had a performance boost.
I think the game that impressed me most at the time was Need For Speed 2 Special Edition, before the card I had it installed and played, but the "Special Edition" was for being compatible with 3DFX and adding additional features, in addition to the smoothed textures, in a track mosquitoes were sticking to the screen, I do not remember what other special features.
Moto Racer, Descent Freespace and Tomb Raider 2 come to my mind now as others that I feel huge visual gap between regular graphics and 3DFX.
Then came Quake 3 Arena in 1999 and it blew my mind, I think that in 2000/2001 I upgrade to a Pentium 4 and maintain the legendary Diamond Monster 2 because it was still kicking ass. Awesome card, it has a place in my heart.
> I think the game that impressed me most at the time was Need For Speed 2 Special Edition, before the card I had it installed and played, but the "Special Edition" was for being compatible with 3DFX and adding additional features, in addition to the smoothed textures, in a track mosquitoes were sticking to the screen, I do not remember what other special features.
I think NFS2SE had transparent glass if you had a 3DFX card, or maybe that was NFS3, I remember wishing I had one either way!
I remember playing Need for Speed: High Stakes with a 4MB Permedia 2 card, and the game was clearly supposed to have alpha-transparent textures on some lights, but my card couldn't handle it and I got opaque textures with big black borders around all the streetlight lens flares etc.
The worst was the Dolphin Cove track where beautiful shafts of sunlight were meant to lazily filter through the tree canopy onto the road. On my screen, they appeared as fully opaque walls blocking any view of the track ahead.
I remember I bought a TNT card instead of a Voodoo for my first computer because it had a nicer looking box in the advertisement from the local electronics store. I didn't have internet at that time, so I used box art instead of user reviews for deciding on purchases. I think the box had a fighter jet.
> I put that thing on my PC and it was like traveling to the future,
Yes! It was 1998 or 1999. I remember coming home from Micro Center, installing the Diamond Voodoo2 card and trying Descent Freespace on it. I think it came with it as a demo or even a full version. Then lots of hours playing NFS as well. It was the future.
I make a year list of movies that I personally recommend [1], and that is why I start to add a full list with 1-10 points of all the movies that I watch (the "rejected" or "not recommended" are the 6/10 and below). I think this make the list more interesting and highlight my personal taste.
[1] [redacted]