> Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web
> ...
> - Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls
> ...
> So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets invented and makes things worse.
It blows my mind how many devs around here are devoted to their browser and search.
Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. FF dev tools are awesome. FF, like Wu Tang, is for the kids.
STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! Use the `!gm` google maps bang when you need it. Use the `!g` google bang in a pinch, but for all of our sake, please wean yourself off of google search.
These two steps are immensely easy to do, and yet a MAJOR investment in all of our future.
I made this move myself many months ago & never looked back. There is basically nothing I miss about dropping chrome/ google search. My web experience is indiscernible using Firefox & DDG.
One of the only minor things I've had to adjust to is prefixing searches with my local city & state when I'm searching for things in my hometown (Imagine that! My search engine website isn't tracking my physical location!). A small price to pay for a HUGE gain in privacy & peace of mind, knowing I'm no longer being exploited and rolled up into a package, sold to advertisers.
I got so sick of seeing targeted ads in EVERY website I visit. Something I searched the day before. Maybe a website I visited a few days ago. Then I have to look at ads for those things for the next week straight!? No thanks.
After making two super easy changes, Chrome -> Firefox & Google search -> DDG, I almost NEVER see creepy, annoying targeted ads anymore. It's amazing!
It might be just me but I don't get why people on here tend to be critical about DDG's usability. I made the switch a year and a half back and I seriously don't miss anything. There are some niche cases where it doesn't work, you can just use the bangs in those cases.
The trade-off, like you said, is well worth it.
(Upon typing this, I realize I'm just echoing your comment. Either way, leaving this up to provide one more voice in support.)
When I first tried DDG - more than 5 years ago - it was worse. I was unable to find the answers I needed and ended up back at google. I tried off and on a few times over the years, and about a year ago I found it good enough to switch. The few times DDG doesn't find what I need I tried google: it too failed to find what I needed.
In short, if you last tried DDG a long time ago try again, it is much better.
The few times DDG doesn't find what I need I tried google: it too failed to find what I needed.
I used to be one of those people who when I couldn't find something on the duck would repeat the search with Google. But more and more, especially in the last six months, if I can't find it on Duck, it's not on Google, either.
Duck gives me irrelevant results to those queries. Google gives me irrelevant pop-culture results to those queries.
> if you last tried DDG a long time ago try again, it is much better.
Very much true. Even moreso as of the last 6 months DDG has been even better for some things, especially if they are political in any way. You'll find some crap sites on DDG but you'll also find what you're looking for. Sometimes I want to find crap sites or non-mainstream stuff, and only DDG surfaces that. I do fear a bit tho once DDG gains more popularity, the SEO games may not be kind to DDG.
DDG is essentially Bing made more private, with a little Yandex. I use it, because I like the privacy, but I don't think they deserve the credit for search result quality.
Neither does google anymore though. Their search quality has gone hill dramatically in the last 4-5 years. It basically correlates with wikipedia no longer being the first result of most searches; it was largely replaced with commercialized garbage. Getting the highest quality, unbiased information you asked for isn't really their first priority anymore and it shows.
I tried DDG when it first came out and found it unacceptable. Currently though, it's totally usable and sometimes better than Google.
The reason Google, or search engines in general, seem to be getting worse in the eyes of some users, is not the result of the functioning of the engine necessarily, but rather of the content of the web itself.
The whole web is organized and optimized more and more for clicks and watch time. It would only make sense that the results seem to be correspondingly worse.
But somehow, Google, as their last act of "don't be evil", decided to appease SEO people (who were a fiercely vocal crowd shitstorming over every change designed to counter their tricks) rather than ruthlessly pull through with the fight for result quality. If memory serves me right they were actively promoting "acceptable SEO" to lure practitioners away from even more annoying tactics. And then they failed to adapt once three "acceptable" started to ruin result quality. It's anyone's guess (perhaps even to Googlers who were right in the middle of is) wether that happened because of the slow-boil effect, commitment to their appeasing promises or because of plain old corporate complacency.
PS: oh, and in a certain way skewed search results even help Google, it increases ranking mysticism. When one site is consistently high, their competitors cannot know wether that is because of artful SEO or because heavy ad-spending is invisibly tipping the scales. So they will fearfully carry their own advertising budget to the altar of search ranking instead of running ads on a competing network like Facebook. Who knows wether The Algorithm considers ad-spend or not, better not provoke an angry god!
This fails to consider the conflict of interest. The more 'commercialized' a site is, the more ad revenue they tend to bring in for google, so they have a perverse incentive to bring them traffic.
Are you saying Google scrapes Yandex and Bing? If not, your response isn't relavant to my comment.
Google may have gotten worse, duckduckgo may have gotten better (I use DDG for most searches, so not sure) but the case for duckduckgo doesn't involve them having a great search team, since they don't have their own index.
This is a very important fact that I feel comfortable to ignore.
One thing that I keep in mind is that Bing is not blocking DDG searches like google would, I find this commendable and, morally, a point in their favor.
I don't think it's relevant to answering the question "Should I use DDG". I do think it's relevant to know DDG doesn't provide diversity in search results.
I'm pretty sure DuckDuckGo has a contract with Bing.
> I made the switch a year and a half back and I seriously don't miss anything.
This, but more so. Starting a couple of years ago, Google search quality has fallen enough, combined with DDG's search quality rising enough, that I generally get better results from DDG than Google now.
I tried to switch over to DDG 6 months ago but wound up reverting to Google.
I sometimes end up browsing fora with poor search tools, and that is commonly when I use a search engine (that or if I'm fact checking stuff, but that's a different usecase). Duck Duck Go always ended up failing to get the results whereas Google managed to get the correct results.
I also have had similar negative experiences with DDG for searching stackoverflow. Google isn't ideal, but at least they do always end up getting me what I'm looking for. With DDG I oftentimes get completely unrelated results which just happen to match the keywords I was using.
Finally the image search would always invariably return porn on DuckDuckGo instead of things relating to the query I was looking for.
I also switched earlier this year, and my only complaint is that FF's android browser has some weird quirks with how it registers touches, and sometimes doesn't actually click a link when I tap it.
However, the value of actual ad-blocking and increased privacy far outweigh the minor frustration of this UI issue.
> FF's android browser has some weird quirks with how it registers touches
It absolutely does, and it drives me up the wall some times. In fact, try visiting this site on Firefox Android and try upvoting something. It's nearly impossible.
Double tap and swipe down to quickly zoom into the button temporarily and then zoom out again. It's fast and doesnt require two hands for a pinch gesture.
Also make sure to check "settings =>
accessibilty => always enable zoom"
Yep, same here -- switched to DDG a couple years ago and back to FF from Chrome [except when required for the job] a few months ago. Results excellent. I understand that a lotta folks are dissatisfied with DDG's search performance, but it's been plum dandy for me. In particular, since most of what I'm searching is development-related, my experience has been that DDG results are usually _better_ that goog, i.e., I find that sites with reasonable content and SO usually rank above ad-sodden or rubbish-quality-SEO-trap site.
I used DDG as the primary search engine in the past and relied a lot on bangs (!s, !g). I'm currently trying the new search from Cliqz (https://beta.cliqz.com), which is similar as it also supports some of the bangs, but I find the search results better than DDG, especially for German searches. It is still work in progress though. Spell correction, for example, is not good yet in cliqz.
> Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome.
I do not use Chrome, but I don't think Firefox is awesome. While I use FF, partly for moral reasons, my experience is average and I saw many flaws and bugs. I prefer the features of Vivaldi, which is based on Chromium, but does not phone home to Google.
> STOP USING google SEARCH!
While my default search engine is Duck Duck Go, I don't recommend it to friends and relatives. My experience is that searching in any language but English gives very poor results. Other patterns also need to be redirected to another search engine, so it's not a a smooth migration.
My estimates are that 50% of my searches are for DDG, 25% for Google, and 25% for others (Bing, Qwant), not counting specialized searches like Wikipedia. That is enough to prevent being profiled.
It's obvious that most of those random crashes are caused by memory starvation. They should have all the telemetry they need to understand and fix it, if only by popping up an error message saying 'Not enough memory to render this page' or even Safari's maddening version of the same message ('A problem occurred with this web page so it was reloaded.')
The only explanation is that they don't give a crap. Very frustrating.
Reading the bug thread cited above, it may even be a case of, "I was able to get Chrome to crash under similar circumstances, therefore it is conforming behavior. WONTFIX."
Back when I did use FF, anytime I actually tried to report bugs I would just get the canned response, "disable your plugins and reset your user profile".
> Not to mention the weird random full-blown crashes that occur when I try to use it that I can't reproduce, no point in opening an issue for those
What platform are you using? I have used FF exclusively for 10+ years on Linux. Ubuntu and OpenSUSE every day. Nouveau and i915 every day. If I said I get 3 crashes per year in the last 3-5 years that would probably be exaggerating.
True for me as well, similar setup (amdgpu, not nouveau, except at work).
The only time FF 'crashes' is when I update while it's running, and even then it gracefully degrades and lets me know I have to restart it. With the 'restore previous session' menu option (an option that only exists in piecemeal and implemented much worse in Chrome), this is a mild inconvenience.
Chromium crashes much more frequently for me on Linux.
The reason you'd want to select text is to select text... same inside a text field disabled or not as outside a form field. Unless you think they should just disable all text outside an active form field?
I'm not saying I agree with the implementation -- I think the text should indeed be selectable. But it's not what I would call a bug. I looked at the Bugzilla ticket type system and it should be an "enhancement" or "task", not a "defect".
Not OP, but here are a few simple ones I encountered that swayed me back the chrome:
1. When switching tabs (ctrl + tab), instead of simply moving there, it showed a menu. This means I need to use that tiny menu to decipher which tab I’m on, instead of the entire background.
2. When closing a full screen video playback using ctrl + w, it takes a few seconds of a black screen on Firefox vs instantaneous on chrome
3. When installing extensions, they don’t always have an icon on the top bar, this makes discovarability a pain
> 1. When switching tabs (ctrl + tab), instead of simply moving there, it showed a menu. This means I need to use that tiny menu to decipher which tab I’m on, instead of the entire background.
Now this is wonderful in my opinion because it can be configured to cycle in the order in which you visited the tab last. I currently have over 100 tabs open and it helps immensely.
I keep seeing this, but I don't think it is true today with latest FF. The recent updates they made have made FF on mac speedy and no more battery hungry than chrome. safari still beats all on batt though...
It's better then it's ever been before but it's not good enough. Maybe in another year or two it will be competitive but until then I can't say it's a viable option for mac.
I forced myself to use DDG for about 3 months as my main search engine... nearly 2/3 of the time when searching for technical queries I'd have to fall back to Google... I just switched back... I may give Bing a similar try though, I really like the UI tweaks the Chromium based Edge has done.
This has been my primary reason for resorting to Google too, and I just realized a few days ago that I don't really do that much anymore, DDG's technical results are getting much better.
There are still times DDG completely misinterprets my query and I have to clarify it or resort to !g but these times are becoming less frequent.
> I do not use Chrome, but I don't think Firefox is awesome.
I agree on both counts. If newbies ask me what browser they should use, I say Firefox. But I don't use the modern Firefox myself because I simply don't like it.
> which is based on Chromium, but does not phone home to Google
Same deal with the browser I use. My preferred UI + Chromium is better for me than FF. There are three common cross-platform browser approaches: Chrome, FF, and Chromium-based. Only one of those three offers extreme visual and feature flexibility. I sound like a broken record saying it, but FF should really invest in embeddability so we can take their engine and run.
> so why not head to the source and cut off the cancer at the root?
For me, easy consumability. I use Chromium Embedded Framework, I don't actually put the hard work into building and maintaining an API myself. I'd love a similar effort for Gecko (there was effort at one time, but nothing of late IIRC).
I want to stop using Google, but please realize that DuckDuckGo is only competitive with Google if English is your only language (maybe even only if you're American?). There are loads and loads of people on HN for whom DDG is a poor experience.
In my experience DDG is extremely poor for localized results, especially those in other languages than English. Previously I recommended StartPage.com for my fellow Europeans, but StartPage has been bought by a shady company [1] and should not be used anymore either. I have no recommendation anymore.
Indeed. Few other languages have good Google search alternative - probably only Russian, Japanese, Korean, Czech, Chinese and possibly French (I would imagine that Qwant as French company would have an ok search, but I can't be sure as I don't know French good enough). I would prefer to use just one search engine, but even using Yandex for Russian searches or Baidu for Chinese feels preferable to submitting to octopus that is Google.
How's Qwant for you? I've been using them more frequently recently. It's made in the EU (France) but as I don't search much in other languages than English I'm not sure how good they are for that.
I switched to DDG many years ago and stopped needing to use Google search for anything maybe 2 years ago. The every day experience of using DDG is so much more enjoyable than Google - made clear every blue moon when I do run a Google search and see all the ads, poorly placed results, and feel the heavy weight of Google's invisible hand.
> It blows my mind how many devs around here are devoted to their browser and search.
Are they though? Or is AMP just a storm-in-a-teacup? There a handful of people on Earth that will stop using Google search (in particular) and Chrome as a protest against AMP.
> ... and yet a MAJOR investment in all of our future.
[citation needed]
Personalized search is not inherently bad. Use Google search without being logged in if you really care. Harder to do with Chrome but Chrome is actually a great user experience. It still blows my mind that FF prompts me to restart to install an update when I start it up.
No I don't want to install an update. I want to use the browser. That's why I opened it. How many years has it been since Chrome added auto-update on restart with silent updates?
Beyond Search, GMail, Maps and Chrome though I just won't use another Google service and take the risk that some automated system will decide my account is in violation of some ToS no one has ever read and shut down access to every single Google service I use.
Whoever signed off on doing this through the Google Plus boondoggle needs to be fired (although, to be fair, I think ad accounts getting suspended arbitrarily and in some cases incorrectly was already a thing by then).
Is that bad? It seems obvious to me that some contextual information will lead to better search results. Chances are if someone searches for "plumber" they're more likely to want one in their local area and not, say, in Armenia.
So the only issue is how much contextual information you want to give Google when you search for something.
DDG is worse than Google for me and totally useless for any searches in my native language.
Firefox has 50% worse performance for me in WebGL applications. Media isn't also accelerated still on Linux. Where is the "awesomeness" in that? I really wish those caveats didn't exist for what I use daily.
Agree on ddg, for me it's fine since most of my searches are technical stuff, rest is !g
For Firefox, I don't see how these things matter in my use case. Admittedly I have no clue if any of the sites I use make use of webgl, but the overall speed and snappiness doesn't feel any different between the two browsers, and I use both on Linux.
>Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome.
I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.
I suppose my feeling is that this is the same kind of reductive reasoning behind the "same thing, both sides" mentality of American politics.
Candidate A: Multiple accusations of bribery, frequently posts racist/sexist/Anti-Semitic/Islamophobic memes on his Twitter account, and sponsored multiple pieces of reprehensible legislation during his tenure in office.
Candidate B: Refuses to tip more than 10%, ever.
One seems objectively worse than the other, and yet the average voter gets to say, "Oh, well since they're both bad in some way, I can vote for Candidate A with a clear conscience because I like his views on X."
That is in no way an objective statement on American politics and the comparison of the 2 party system.
The idea that American's issues with the Democratic canidates can be compared as "Refused to tip more on 10%", is moronic.
It is more like
Candidate A: Multiple accusations of bribery, frequently posts racist/sexist/Anti-Semitic/Islamophobic memes on his Twitter account, and sponsored multiple pieces of reprehensible legislation during his tenure in office.
Candidate B: Wants to Steal my money and give it to other people, wants to force me in to government contolled substandard health care, wants to take my core freedoms (speech, guns, and propery rights), and was to trash the economy so finding a job is hard
Candidate A: A career criminal who has devoted his time in office to mass corruption, stealing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for personal benefit. Not satisfied with creating the most corrupt administration in history, Candidate A began extorting foreign countries to make contributions to him personally, in the form of bribes to assist his campaign or else. When not stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and extorting allies to the benefit of our enemies, he is known for partying with notorious pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrews, and has over 40 credible accounts of sexual abuse or rape.
Candidate B: Believes that taxation, not monetizing debt, is the proper way to budget. Understands that the broken, bankrupting and failing healthcare system needs evidence-based reform to cost less and do more, like in dozens of other nations worldwide. Finally, Candidate B is the only Candidate at all that understands the importance of the Constitution, Rule of Law, and the freedoms of the Bill of Rights, and doesn't require special interests donations to "manage" his views on the subject. And finally, as with every politician from Candidate B's party for two generations straight, they understand how to steward an economy towards great heights not fueled by a wealthy minority getting wealthier, but by the working class getting the money and wealth they deserve.
If you're going to support a lawless, hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars stealing, Constitution-destroying, child rapist, then have the guts to call a spade a spade.
I am sure you have evidence based proof of all of this correct?
>>>Candidate B:
Don't make me laugh, Candidate B is just as corrupt, and has no concept of Freedoms. Candidate B believes the Constitution grants rights, instead of limiting government, they believe there are no limits at all to government Candidate B's party is also the source of a good chunk of the National Debt given they are the ones that create the Entitlement programs that are driving this nation to bankruptcy
All cable news is terrible, but obviously you disagree as your opinions have been written for you by Fox News opinion hosts ("Fake News"). Literally, you have expressed 0 opinions that were not written for you by Hannity or Tucker.
>I am sure you have evidence based proof of all of this correct?
Of course, if you actually followed the multiple court cases exposing this corruption, you would see the court filings demonstrating the facts of his legendary multi-hundred-million emoluments violations, enriching himself by ordering our government to spend taxpayer money at his private businesses solely for his own benefit. Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm!
The sad part is, all of this evidence is public and being blasted from the rooftops
Your statements here are a complete and total indictment of your fake news propaganda bubble, that you know none of them and have seen none of this evidence.
>Don't make me laugh, Candidate B is just as corrupt
This is called false equivalence. No politician in American history has been a fraction of corrupt as Donald Trump. Sorry if facts are triggering.
>Candidate B believes the Constitution grants rights, instead of limiting government,
This is hilarious nonsense. Not only is it false, but it's the kind of civically-illiterate nonsense that gets repeated on the right among folks who don't know better. The Constitution doesn't "limit" government when it creates a sovereign Congress which can pass any law including updating the Constitution. You're confusing the dual duties between the Constitution (defining government power) and Bill of Rights (limiting it).
>" they believe there are no limits at all to government"
Wrong! It's the GOP which is arguing for the "Unitary Executive" the King President who has no limits, who can "murder someone and get away with it". Wake up my man! Donald Trump views himself your King, not your President, and has waged a war against limited government and limited power unlike any war in our history! As Donald Trump ignores separation of powers, destroys the separation of powers, he has transformed the Presidency into a Dictatorship or Monarchy. The only party which believes there are "no limits at all" are currently trying to get away with crime based on the theory that the President is King!
Literally the GOP defense for Donald Trump's corruption and crimes isn't "he didn't do it" it's the famous Nixonian reply "When you're the President, it's not illegal". They literally spin his impeachable crime as being "OK" because when you're a Republican, you're allowed to be corrupt, to steal, to rape, as long as you remain loyal.
Stop fighting against limited government and start supporting our Constitution before it's too late!
> is also the source of a good chunk of the National Debt given they are the ones that create the Entitlement programs that are driving this nation to bankruptcy
Fact: The only President in the modern era to return a surplus to the treasury was a liberal. Reagan QUADRUPLED the debt. Bush left us with a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit, while Obama lowered it by 70% to $400B!
Your narrative is totally devoid of all facts. Every liberal President for the past 40 years has lowered spending by balancing the budgets, while every Republican has gone on a debt-financed spending spree.
I hope one day you can break away from your rancid, fact-less, evidence propaganda and learn how these little lies you are used to telling your buddies don't hold up to even ten seconds of fact gathering.
Literally, every statement you've made has been false, and you've not even attempted to provide any evidence to support it.
>>>one of his victims gave a sworn affidavit to that effect.
I see you confuse Accusation with evidence, a " sworn affidavit" is not evidence, it an an accusation of which our legal system demands we assume innocence until guilt is proven with actual evidence. Which is why those cases went no where because there is no evidence to support the accusations
>>>court filings demonstrating the facts of his legendary multi-hundred-million emoluments violations, enriching himself by ordering our government to spend taxpayer money at his private businesses solely for his own benefit.
This is where you may have a case, but do date no one has provided evidence of actual enrichment, given Trump claims to be hosting the events at cost, and often times it has been proven that comparable venues for events would be considerably higher in costs
Though it is not good from an optics stand point
>>>The corruption of Trump is at all levels, from ordering the military to drive 100 miles out of their way to spend double the market rate at his personal facilities
The story links does not claim double the costs, in fact is claims it was less than a comparable hotel, nor does it say Trump ordered the military to go there but rather the military personnel chose that on their own
Might want to read your own sources next time
>>>This is hilarious nonsense. Not only is it false,
Not it is not false at all, the entire purpose of the document was We the People were granted a limited number of powers to the government, that is why there are enumerated powers
>>>The Constitution doesn't "limit" government when it creates a sovereign Congress which can pass any law including updating the Constitution.
Congress has ZERO authority to update the Constitution, their authority only allows the Congress to submit to the States and the People Amendments to the Constitution. They have no power to amend it on their own. Zero, none, zilch
Congress is also not the only way to amend the constitution as the People, and the States have the ultimate power over the congress.
In your Federalist system the Congress is not, and should not be the most powerful branch. The States acting as a collective are, and should be.
>>>you're confusing the dual duties between the Constitution (defining government power) and Bill of Rights (limiting it).
No I am not, Article I Section 8 lays out the only powers granted to the government, James Madison predicted people would mis understand the Bill Of rights exactly as you have, stating
"I go further and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. "
The constitution defines a limited form a government and limited powers in scope. The Bill Of Rights simply codifies a few of the most important rights, while it does limit government, the constitution it self is also a limiting document
>>>Wake up my man! Donald Trump views himself your King, not your President
You have confused me for a Trump Supporter, I am libertarian. In 2016 I voted for Gary Johnson.
However I will say Trump was the lesser of 2 evils over Hillary Clinton (talk about corrupt), and based on the Front runners for 2020 for the Dems he will also be the lesser of 2 evils as there is no way Biden, Sanders or Warren will win.
>>>Fact: The only President in the modern era to return a surplus to the treasury was a liberal. Reagan QUADRUPLED the debt. Bush left us with a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit, while Obama lowered it by 70% to $400B!
Not fact.. Obama did not lower the National Debt at all, in Sept 2009 (9 mos after talking office) the National Debt was 11.9 Trillion, in Sept 2016 (3mos before he left office) the National Debt was 21.5 Trillion, so he added 7.7 Trillion in 8 years or about 960 Million per year in deficits
For Bush in Sept 2001 the National Debt was 5.8 Trillion, in sept 2008 the national debt was 10.02 Trillion, adding 4.4 Trillion or about 550 Million per year even adjusting for Inflation that is about 700 billion in 2016 Dollars, Thus Obama added considerably more money annually to the national debt that Bush did.
Since 1941 5 Presidents droped the Debt as a Ratio of GDP, and 1 lowered the Debt in real dollars.
Of those Presidencies, 3 were Democrats, and 2 were Republicans.
However Given that the Far left now believes Obama is a Conservative, I have a feeling they do not believe Bill Clinton, Truman, or Johnson to be "Liberal" enough for their wokeness
you find me a Roosevelt/Truman Democrat and maybe I would get behind the Democratic party again, Biden, Warren, and Sanders are not Roosevelt/Truman Democrats
Once again your post is mostly unsourced, evidenceless conservative propaganda and conspiracy.
It's riddled with mistakes (confusing deficit for debt) and downright nonsense (excusing the worst corruption in American history, hundreds of millions of dollars worth, while robotically repeating low-iq conservative propaganda about the orders of magnitude less corrupt Clintons) and finally, it demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of how Donald Trump has betrayed America by working with our enemies, extorting our allies, destroying the bonds of the west, and working in service to hostile interests.
I especially like you how refuse to look at deficits and instead look at debts, so you can award Obama the brunt of Mr Bush's $1.4 trillion dollar deficits. It's a really unintellectual move that defies the reality of the data but it works wonders on a specific type of biased person. Obama took a $1.4 trillion dollar GOP deficit and reduced it to $400B.
You understand that when you reduce the deficit, you are balancing the budget right? That President Obama balanced 70% of the budget after Bush's spending spree? And that Trump, the so called Conservative, immediately busted the deficit wide open back over a trillion during a boom year mainly to reward major corporations with legendary tax breaks? The economics here are stupid simple and you're breaking your back bending over backwards to deny the truth that every liberal in modern era has worked to balance the budget, and every conservative has gone on a debt-financed spending spree increasing deficits.
The way you reject the sources I gave you, the same sources which will grace American history textbooks for centuries to come, is breathtaking. It's always impressive how fast real sources and real evidence can get dismissed by someone parroting conspiracy theories and propaganda.
And for what purpose? Why reject hard sourcing while providing none if not to defend the most corrupt Constitution-shredding president in American history?
Call yourself a libertarian if it makes you feel better, but you don't support America.
Quote Madison if it makes you feel smart, but you'll have to skip over the Federalist Papers that speak at length about foreign influence in our elections as you reward Trump by repeating his lies and justifying his crimes.
"You find me a Roosevelt/Truman Democrat and maybe I would get behind the Democratic party again, Biden, Warren, and Sanders are not Roosevelt/Truman Democrats"
We both know you're going to do whatever it takes to help the most corrupt president in history, one who is violating the very bonds that hold this nation together, get re-elected.
It is what it is, but patriots stand up for our constitution, stand up for the sanctity of our elections, stand up for the rule of law, stand up for the office of the presidency and separation of powers. In contrast, libertarians parrot pitiful fake news Fox News talking points about "muh guns" and "corrupt Clintons" while fancying themselves some how above the average Trump supporter.
Find me a Republican or Libertarian who doesn't bow before Emperor Trump and his war against American democracy, who doesn't excuse the worst corruption in American history, who believes that the Rule of Law matters, and I'll be able to label you a liar.
The two-party system is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself.
The real problem is the first-past-the-post voting system. A FTFP voting system will always devolve into a two-party system. If we switched to some sort of ranked choice or approval voting, we'd see more options.
US politics can usually be summarized as the Evil Party versus the Stupid Party, and it isn't always clear which is which.
Candidate A: Openly racist and homophobic. Annoyingly pious. Secretly gay. Claimed to no longer have any association with the Klan after the investigative journalist published that one article. Inherited money; pretends to be a farmer/rancher. Leaves teaser religious tracts that look like money in lieu of tips.
Candidate B: Policy proposals completely divorced from reality. No primary-sponsored legislation has ever passed. Secretly a roofie-rapist. Does insider trading on privileged information. Incumbent in the safest district in the state. Habitual drunk driver, though never convicted.
That's just what you get (eventually) with winner-take-all, first-past-the-post elections. Even in states where the minority party essentially never wins, the party leadership can still be corrupt as Hell, and no decent person can hold their breath long enough to avoid the stench of it.
> I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years.
It kills me that someone would be pissed at Mozilla for adding pocket, Chrome comes with so many damn Google centric plugins, and one little useful utility you can remove is what makes you lose it over Firefox? Come on.
I saw way more outrage over pocket than I should of. Mozilla is a big org. They need to figure out how to generate revenue without botching it up. On the other hand, there are plenty of Mozilla based forks that do their best to respect your privacy.
From a purely philosophical standpoint, Mozilla has always been the browser of "choice". Its humble beginnings never included "world domination"... and Firefox was an extraordinarily bold attempt to unseat IE. Chrome did a lot of good things in the beginning. It brought web standards to the forefront. The past few years though, the same old tired story has played out. Company gets too much market share, and subsequently believes they should own/police/decide the future of the web. In the case of Google, naturally, their motives for web "ownership/domination" are fiscally motivated. (I'm not saying this is wrong in regard to making money for their shareholders. I am saying that this often is not what's good for their average user) But that's the issue, they never promised they were doing this for "freedom" or any other reason.
>Chrome did a lot of good things in the beginning. It brought web standards to the forefront.
To be fair to Google, I think it is important to acknowledge the good things Chrome did in the beginning. I remember when it came out, and most (non - Mac users) were still using IE, it was fantastic! I remember jumping on board immediately. But for me at this point, it has become too much to bear.
At this point they are making so much money from tracking users and selling to advertisers.. who could blame them for continuing to do so? I sure can't, haha.
But after a while, I started realizing all the intrusive & creepy advertisements I was seeing were simply a result of the browser software I chose, and the website I chose do do my searches on, so I started looking for alternatives.
I’ve seen Firefox north of 20gb on my 32gb desktop more than once, and tab crashes are a daily annoyance. Worse, it doesn’t seem appreciably faster on machines with less memory. I wish there was some config flag I could set that would put it on a diet...
"In the past"? I can reproduce this on my daily driver today.
Why do I need to change my workflow because Firefox got worse at what I've used it for for years? If I have to change the way I work, why not change browsers too? If there's a tab limit beyond which Firefox can't effectively control itself, why is that not a hard coded limit?
considering ram has always been the cheapest part of any computer for the last 2 or 3 decades, this argument is really lame. Oh no your computer needs ram? So go buy some...
> I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years.
How come this is brought up in the argument at all? Mozilla is very imperfect, but they're the only major browser vendor that doesn't have their own ad networks. Safari and Firefox are the only two options that 1) are not owned by a company working against browser user's interests or 2) inadvertently end up helping the dominance of a browser in category 1. And most people can't use Safari.
Mozilla has actively shown time and time again that they're there for the end user. You can be critical of the times when they made mistakes in that mission (plenty of times), but please realize who your real friends are.
You bring up a good point. I think the reason I feel this way is that Google's screw ups didn't inconvenience my usage of Chrome, whereas Mozilla's have inconvenienced my usage of Firefox. What made me initially switch to Chrome was the UI change in Firefox. Years later I thought of swapping back to Firefox and I found out that Firefox doesn't allow me to run my own add ons without their approval.
> I found out that Firefox doesn't allow me to run my own add ons without their approval.
This is not and has never been true. What is no longer possible is the ability to sideload extensions outside of the browser by copying files into a directory because that's how dirtbags have stuck extensions that could not be uninstalled into Firefox as part of a third-party app install.
Go to `about:addons`, install add-on from file, you're done.
Are you sure? Because I just created a barebones hello world. It works fine as a temporary add-on, but I can't install it from the file. Says the add-on is corrupted.
Then I downloaded a working add-on. It worked fine when installing from file. I removed the signing information. It installs fine as a temporary add-on, but throws the same error as the hello world.
I'm pretty sure that the add-ons need to be signed by Mozilla to install from file.
I think the larger point is, for how long? If Google keeps restricting ad-blocking even further, maybe they'll drop even more privacy options, and dumb down more APIs.
Google/Chrome/<all other services> simply do not have your interests first, so it's a choice between Google and <everyone else (who by default track you less)>.
I never used chrome because I saw no reason to switch away from Firefox. I use Firefox since 2004ish. My move to DuckDuckGo came together with my decision to delete my FAcebook profile. I use Firefox containers to keep amazon and my work google apps in check. I’m very happy with this setup.
I switch to FF a few weeks ago and (this time!) haven't looked back. It's as good if not better. I had tried to switch multiple times a year for a few years, and I think now is a good time, finally.
I was going to switch to duckduckgo as you say, to realize that OH! I had switched to duckduckgo when switching to FF but had forgotten... that's... how easy and seamless it is now, I even just forgot I was not searching on google anymore.
I would say also STOP using Google Analytics, Google CDNs, Google fonts, Youtube for hosting your content and all the spying 3rd party services. It's perfectly doable to have a commercial website without them.
I also got nothing with [0], so I unblocked JavaScript and removed /html from the URL and there's the ticker at [1]. I suppose ia= is for 'inline applet' or something.
Funny, you're justifying Google's strategy that e.g. Genius.com complained about: scrape and present the raw data that people want, and they'll be able to avoid another pageload, while the site doesn't get a visitor-- but wasn't that the point of SEO? It's like search engine means something else now.
Along the same lines, the first time I heard a TV commercial for Bing (~10y ago) I had very little idea what it even was but they happily promoted it as a 'decision engine', IIRC.
I switched back about a year or so ago. There are some nice things in the FF dev tools compared to Chrome, but on the whole, even a year later I still find myself opening Chrome to do something specific here and there in dev tools.
The real challenge here is that for the most part, AMP gives a better experience to users than publishers are willing to provide. As such, Users click on AMP links and expect good things to happen. Your pitch is, "stop using Chrome so that publishers have more options for making the web slower and instrumented because it's morally right."
That is a tough sell. Users do not really care (nor should they) what publishers want to do to make sites profitable. That space is so fraught with abuse that it's not going to get any sympathy from the user side, anyways.
it matters a lot though, because devs are an infulential bunch. when developers start using firefox, they optimize for firefox and promote firefox (has happened repeatedly in the past). They're less effective with DDG , because it isnt a great product
"Large list". There are only Google and Bing. There are no other usable search engines that do the search themselves. (Though, I guess a few days ago there was news about a third search engine trying and kinf of working.)
This is just a sliver of the perversion created when you rely on advertising for profits.
Everyone thinks free stuff is great but it means you're the product and an entire global economic ecosystem is being built on that.
Ads with audio (video without audio doesn't bother me that much unless I'm on mobile, in which case it's eating up my mobile data), ads that pop into the middle of the screen, ads that run any JavaScript, etc., are unacceptable. But a simple banner on the side, even if it's an animated GIF? I'm alright with.
Unfortunately, ad networks decided that their ads are more important than the content I'm trying to view and have brought ad blockers upon themselves. And don't get me started on malvertising...
That is not how it works for me. One of common things I might do is look up a place, like a bar or a restaurant or theater or whatever. When I do this in Google, I immediately get a link to the website, a link to the reviews, pictures of inside and outside and a link to the map. Right at the top of the page. With DDG, all I get is a link to the website if the place has one and possibly a link to a yelp page. I have to do multiple additional searches and then cut and paste the address into a separate tab to open the map to get the same result.
Not if you’re a macOS user, in particular one that cares for automation. The lack of AppleScript (the bug report that tracks it is old enough to vote) prevents people from considering it as a daily browser. And I’m not just talking about developers. I regularly steer non-technical people away from Firefox because when they ask why my tools—which they want to use—don’t work on Firefox, I have to tell them the truth: I’d like to support Firefox, but I can’t.
one of the most trivial annoying problems with switching between the two is the difference in how bookmarking works in FF vs chrome.
I have to use chrome for work cuz of a security rule of questionable legitimacy (to me).
in FF, you bookmark a page by dragging the tab into a folder.
in chrome afaik, you have to star it and then select what folder it goes into.
Ok.
Another thing, In chrome, if you context click inside of a bookmarks folder and create a new folder, it creates a nested new folder within the folder you clicked.
In firefox, thats not the case, wherever you click, i believe it creates the new folder at the top level, and then you can drag it to a sub folder. Its a small problem but if you're like me with lots of bookmarks[1], it is a pain in the ass.
[1] for example, i have a folder for every year, with a subfolder for each month, and whenever i find non-specific cool stuff, i toss the bookmark in this month/year folder. at this point i have these going back to 2016, and its become a cool sort of journal or scrapbook type thing. highly recommend this practice to ppl, and its basically the use-case of many 3rd party browser adons for bookmark management, but built into the browser by default.
Do you know if you use !g whether or not the request routes through DDG (not removing tracking, but hopefully reduce ir(?)) or it's like going on Google.com?
I use DDG and "bang" myself to better results if DDG fails me. Love the amount of features.
My only complaint is it sucks at helping me spell words, especially in other languages than English.
Sadly we use Google mail at my work so probably can't avoid it completely.
FF is significantly better on OSX battery than it was in the past (since v70 I believe).. however Safari is still king. I never fire up Chrome anymore on my Macbook
I have switched to DuckDuckGo as mt main search engine a couple of months ago, but for complicated queries I just have to go back to Google. It's that bad.
After 6-7 years of not using google, I can vouch for this. There is just no reason to use it (I am writting this on HN, you are not the case of "just another user" by just beeing here). Their search has become mediocre due to all adwords and there was never as simple to put together a nextcloud/dovecot/postfix/searx powered server. Once I have tryed to block facebook, google, amazon ip ranges using scraped data from ASNs. It is increadible what a large piece of internet those companies have took over for their own profit. Even duckduckgo wont run (probably hosted on microsoft/amazon/google cloud), yahoo redirected me to GDPR "consent" page, which was again on microsoft/amazon/google cloud. We really dont want to live in a world ruled by their advertising engines. Fight back, block ads, on premise everything, remove google/fb/... spyware from your roms and stop pretending you have friends by number of likes on facebook. Just go away from this or we will end in corporation driven distopia you really dont want to live in.
It is just too late for fashion, no time for fanboyism, we blew it. We are on limit of destroying freedom of internet (I will post facebook, google and amazon ASN based ip ranges later when I come home, so you can try it on your own, it is really hilarious, from all search engines I know, only yandex was still operational. And those are RIPE records.).
Ever ran a website through Google Lighthouse/Page Speed Insights and saw that Google recommends to set proper cache timing for Google Analytics etc.? If that's not proof enough...
It's as good as any proof. Not even Google knows how to set up their pages so they are running well and are considered to be best-practice by those checking tools.
But, to be fair: At least they don't exclude their resources from Lighthouse.
FF is great, but it's also worth pointing out that Edge has all the Google adware removed and better privacy. There was a post from Eric Lawrence detailing all the Google stuff they removed a little while back, it was about 25 separate components. There's telemetry though so make your own mind if you're cool with that.
An argument to choose FF over Edge, or other chromium based browsers is to try to maintain diversity in the browser market share. Right now Chrome dominates, but if the domination switches a split between Chrome, Brave, and Edge, there is no new diversity in the rendering and Javascript engines. Google can still push things that aren't friendly to an open and standardized web.
Did you bother to check what exactly were the components? I actually looked at the list, not related to "adware", basically stuff that Microsoft probably replace with their own stuff. (spell checking, form fill, translate etc etc.)
Call me when Edge is on OS X or Linux (and ideally open-source, like Firefox). I imagine a lot of the hn userbase, myself included, doesn't rely on Windows for their day-to-day work.
Edge is available at least on OS X, I'm currently running it on both of my Macs. Not sure about Linux though and I agree it'd be great if they open-sourced it.
The chromium base is very well supported, I like and am familiar with the dev tools, and the battery life has also been much better than Firefox on OS X. I would prefer to use Firefox for everything but I run into enough small issues that I prefer to use Edge. I'd run Chrome if it didn't have so much of Google hidden in all the nooks and crannies.
While I agree we need to stop using chrome, I don't know that FF is the path forward.
Mozilla's continued trend away from Openness and the foundation's original goals and more towards business objectives and corporate "morals" similar to those seen in google seems like we are just replacing one Corporate master for another with Modern Mozilla, inc
Long gone are the days of the Mozilla Foundation standing up for the users against the Corporate goliath Microsoft, today they simply adopt what ever Google wants them to provided Google calls them "standard" .
it is doing great now, but lost a great deal of marketshare precisely because it was a slow, bloated mess
> FF dev tools are awesome.
debatable. chrome hot code replace in debug is a great asset. mounting a local workspace to synchronize changes is situational, but when you can leverage it it's great. firefox code view's "find in files" only search linked javascript, chrome search everywhere so it can catches references in inlined javascript
I work with both regularly, for personal usage I prefer firefox, for the obvious implications, but I find a lot less friction in developing using chrome.
Do you actually use firefox for your personal usage?
FF Quantum hit the stage two years ago. Performance is now a moot point; they've had plenty of time to recoup on any market share losses from that with the new Quantum branding.
Though I really doubt Firefox's drop in market-share is that tied to performance. The story is more likely to be Chrome/Chromium as the default on Android, the release of Chromebooks, etc. Of course, this is just me interpreting facts with my feel good opinion.
Back to the main point at hand, though, Firefox is obviously not doing well today either according to that chart. But its performance and dev tools are top-notch.
performance, yes, dev tools are lacking all the listed features
historically speaking, Chrome got the share it got because Firefox was a memory hog and was running a purely interpreted JavaScript engine on top of a single threaded rendering engine in a time where core numbers and web app were becoming mainstream.
Hm, touché! That lines up with the timeline, though I still think Chrome's _sustained_ and _stark_ uptick in market share is due to their market dominance in every field of one's digital life.
I must admit that I've never used those missing dev tools in Chrome, as those issues are non-existent in a webpack environment (that's essentially what workspace mounting and hot code reloading is mirroring). And the search function works with all files, including inline code, as of Quantum as well.
> Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web
> ...
> - Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls
> ...
> So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets invented and makes things worse.
It blows my mind how many devs around here are devoted to their browser and search.
Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. FF dev tools are awesome. FF, like Wu Tang, is for the kids.
STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! Use the `!gm` google maps bang when you need it. Use the `!g` google bang in a pinch, but for all of our sake, please wean yourself off of google search.
These two steps are immensely easy to do, and yet a MAJOR investment in all of our future.