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chuckharmston

911 karma · joined April 4, 2011

Sr. Engineer, Firefox Test Pilot.

hi@chuck.mn

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/chuckharmston; my proof: https://keybase.io/chuckharmston/sigs/MBNuQtq7F-U4uMVVD4b4yTRzm1m0mArUcW9-DiKtH3c ]

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chuckharmston··on You probably don't want to run Firefox Nightly any more
There is: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Data_Collection
chuckharmston··on Mozilla Awards Over Half a Million to Open Source Projects
Mozilla isn't neutral politically, though there isn't a specific political alignment that is endorsed. That is, it's issue-focused, rather than partisan.

We have a strongly-worded manifesto that lays out what we believe: https://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto/

Mitchell Baker, the chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, talking about how the current political environment in America might overlay that manifesto: https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2017/03/13/the-worldview-of-...

I'm an employee at Mozilla, though am trying to set personal politics aside to present public explanation of our institutional viewpoint.

chuckharmston··on SnoozeTabs and Pulse: New Experiments Coming to Firefox Test Pilot
Followup: after using Snooze Tabs personally for a few days, it struck me that this is actually a pretty natural feature for Snooze Tabs. Filed a bug for that:

https://github.com/bwinton/SnoozeTabs/issues/208

chuckharmston··on SnoozeTabs and Pulse: New Experiments Coming to Firefox Test Pilot
Test Pilot team member here.

I don't think that such an experiment is being considered right now, but we definitely take pitches! Our Discourse would be a great place to do give one: https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/c/test-pilot/develop...

chuckharmston··on Mozilla launches new brand identity
It should be available in the next month as they finish off the brand guide. The partner type foundry is also expanding to include Cyrillic and Indic character sets.
chuckharmston··on Firefox Launches More Experimental Features
The roadmap includes support of a number of additional video providers: https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-vid/issues/6

Additionally, they're looking at supporting any old HTML5 <video> element: https://github.com/meandavejustice/min-vid/issues/331

The intent is certainly not to be exclusionary; it's just a new, experimental project with a small team.

Disclaimer: I work at Mozilla, on Test Pilot.

chuckharmston··on Firefox 48 Beta, Release, and E10S
You can check the compatibility of popular add-ons here: https://www.arewee10syet.com/
chuckharmston··on Firefox Test Pilot
A doorhanger is a term for this sort of warning notification: http://i.imgur.com/huWjWjq.png

As 6a68 mentioned, Firefox presents this doorhanger whenever any site other than addons.mozilla.org attempts to install an add-on.

chuckharmston··on Firefox Test Pilot
I agree, it is a daunting problem.

Another problem is that it's hard to experiment in the browser; the stakes are very high when bugs or poorly-conceived ideas quite literally break the internet for users. As a result, the development cycle is righteously slow (~18 weeks), the cost of landing code in Firefox is righteously high, and it's just a difficult environment to try new things.

On Test Pilot we aren't trying to build the solution, we're trying to find it. It's a different model of product development than we've historically had at Mozilla. In this case, side tabs are the start, but you can expect new features and concepts to start coming down the pipeline as we start gathering feedback and data about how people use them.

chuckharmston··on Firefox Test Pilot
Potentially!

The simple story is that the current tabbing model in was designed to save you from needing half a dozen browser window open. It just doesn't scale well past a dozen tabs or so, and we know that some users have dozens or even hundreds open at the same time. Tab Center is taking a fresh look at the problem with that in mind.

chuckharmston··on Revisiting how we build Firefox
Hmm...that doesn't sound like normal behavior; my uneducated guess would be that there's a specific webpage or extension with a leak. Next time it happens, it'd be fantastic if you could go to about:memory, save the reports, and file a bug with them attached:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox

chuckharmston··on Revisiting how we build Firefox
Firefox itself is quite fast [1]; if you're having issues, there's a good chance that it's due to an add-on [2]. A (historically; I'm unsure if this is still the case) particularly egregious offender [3] is AdBlock Plus, but µBlock [4] does come highly recommended.

[1] http://arewefastyet.com

[2] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-m...

[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/05/14/adblock-plus...

[4] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/ublock/

chuckharmston··on New Search Strategy for Firefox
Some details of the new Yahoo experience are available on their corporate Tumblr: http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313
chuckharmston··on New Search Strategy for Firefox
It's worth noting that Google isn't disappearing from Firefox; you will still be able to manage your search engines as you have before.
chuckharmston··on Firefox OS 2.0 starts emerging from its cocoon
Depending on your needs, there's a developer/reference device coming out soon:

https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/02/developer-momentum-2/

chuckharmston··on Ask HN: Looking for contributors?
We love community contributors at Mozilla!

I personally work on Marketplace [1], the app store for open web apps [2]. Our properties run client-side apps (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) with a Python/Django API server. Many other options are available depending on your skills and interests:

- If you know C++, for instance, you can contribute to the core layers of Firefox, Firefox OS, and other Mozilla products.

- If you know JavaScript or HTML/CSS, you can contribute to the front-end of Firefox, or to Gaia, the application layer of Firefox OS.

- If you know Java, you can contribute to Firefox Mobile.

- If you know Python, you can contribute to our web services, including Firefox Sync or Persona.

- If you know Make, shell, Perl, or Python, you can contribute to our build system.

- If you know C, you can contribute to a number of low-level and third-party libraries that we use as part of the Mozilla codebase.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Introduction

http://whatcanidoformozilla.org

Feel free to reach out if you're interested (email in profile), and I'd be happy to either help you find something or put you in touch with somebody who can.

[1] https://marketplace.firefox.com/

[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Quickstart/Build/In...

chuckharmston··on Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts
That's not quite accurate; Firefox Accounts uses the BrowserID Protocol, of which Persona is an implementation. That is to say, it authenticates using BrowserID assertions, but does not directly tie in to Persona accounts. Yet.

https://developer.mozilla.org/Persona/Glossary

chuckharmston··on Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts
Some background about the relationship between Persona and Firefox Accounts:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/Firefox_Accounts

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.mozillians/pv5VN2dNY...

tl;dr: it's coming, and this is an important engineering milestone on that path. I'm sure Lloyd and callahad will be chiming in with more details.

(Source: Mozilla employee, not on the Identity team)

chuckharmston··on Welcome to a New Gist
The Sublime GitHub plugin for Sublime handles this nicely:

https://github.com/bgreenlee/sublime-github

chuckharmston··on DC "Uber Amendment" would force sedans to charge 5x more than taxis
DC Uber user here. A fact that's commonly lost on people: the District itself is actually very small, just 68 square miles. Before a recent fare hike, there was a maximum intra-district cab fare of $19, so a $15 minimum Uber fare is a big deal.

Anecdote: I live on the far eastern side of downtown, near Penn Quarter, and am able to get from my apartment to damned near anywhere in town for Uber's minimum charge (the major exception being the far reaches of NW, in the Friendship Heights/Van Ness area). Looking back at my history, only 4 of my 23 fares have been more than $15—three to the airport (in Virginia) and one to Tenleytown.

You can certainly blow this argument up if you want to leave the District, but let's be real...who would want to go to Virginia? ;)

chuckharmston··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (August 2011)
Washington, DC

Threespot - http://threespot.com

Threespot is a mid-sized digital communications agency that focuses on the do-gooding world: typically nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies. We're a tight-knit bunch of whip smart folks trying to do great things through our incredible array of clients, which includes: ACLU, Amnesty International, Brookings Institution, Conservation International, Humane Society, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Park Service, Peace Corps, Planned Parenthood, and Smithsonian Institution.

In the technology department we're hiring multiple developers for two positions:

Front-End Developer: http://www.threespot.com/about/jobs/developer/ Web Software Engineer/Developer: http://www.threespot.com/about/jobs/sw-engineer/

Though we're open to candidates with all sorts of backgrounds, I think it's fair to say that we'd prefer backend folks with experience in one or more MVC frameworks, especially Django and Rails.

We're also hiring marketing folks, art directors and designers, UX leads, project managers, and more: http://www.threespot.com/about/

chuck.harmston@threespot.com

chuckharmston··on Show HN: e-Geaux (beta) - Startup + Theater + Mobile Tech
Some compadres and I have put together a unique piece of theater that will be debuting at the Capital Fringe Festival (DC) on Thursday.

The premise? We're a mobile startup demonstrating e-Geaux, our breakthrough artificial intelligence app that uses enterprise cloud technology and social media data to optimize your life. Audience members attending the show opt into our custom-developed mobile app and loan us their real, live Facebook data. We use that data in a series of improv skits ("feature demos") to create the show from scratch every night.

It's terrifying to implement, but we hope it's amazing to watch.

It's a pretty groundbreaking show: one of the first pieces of theater to leverage mobile tech and definitely the first that incorporates the audience's personal Facebook data for a unique experience every night.

We've marketed the show to the tech/entrepreneurship community as much as we have to the performing arts world, and we've the show and website have been laced with jokes that appeal to both crowds. If you're in the DC area, we'd love to have you.

chuckharmston··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (June 2011)
Washington, DC

Threespot - http://threespot.com

Threespot is a mid-sized digital communications agency that focuses on the do-gooding world: typically nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies. We're a tight-knit bunch of whip smart folks trying to do great things through our incredible array of clients, which includes: ACLU, Amnesty International, Brookings Institution, Conservation International, Humane Society, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Park Service, Peace Corps, Planned Parenthood, and Smithsonian Institution.

In the technology department we're hiring multiple developers for two positions:

Front-End Developer: http://www.threespot.com/about/jobs/developer/

Web Software Engineer/Developer: http://www.threespot.com/about/jobs/sw-engineer/

Though we're open to candidates with all sorts of backgrounds, I think it's fair to say that we'd prefer backend folks with experience in one or more MVC frameworks, especially Django and Rails.

We're also hiring marketing folks, art directors and designers, UX leads, project managers, and more: http://www.threespot.com/about/

Contact info in my profile.

chuckharmston··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (May 2011)
Washington, DC

Threespot - http://threespot.com

Threespot is a mid-sized digital communications agency that focuses on the do-gooding world: nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies. We're a tight-knit bunch of whip smart folks trying to do great things through our incredible array of clients, which includes: ACLU, Brookings Institution, Conservation International, Humane Society, Knight Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, National Park Service, Peace Corps, Planned Parenthood, and Smithsonian Institution.

In the technology department we're hiring multiple developers for two positions:

Front-End Developer: http://www.threespot.com/about/jobs/developer/

Web Software Engineer/Developer: http://www.threespot.com/about/jobs/sw-engineer/

Though we're open to candidates with all sorts of backgrounds, I think it's fair to say that we'd prefer backend folks with experience in one or more MVC frameworks, especially Django and Rails.

We're also hiring art directors, graphic designers, project managers, and more: http://www.threespot.com/about/

Cover letter, resume, and salary history to hr@threespot.com

chuckharmston··on Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?
Borrow a verse from the book of MetaFilter: people need an area for meta discussions, and it's better for the signal:noise ratio if it's in a separate but equal space.

In fact, there's lots to be learned from MetaFilter. Two long but useful videos containing Mathowie's wisdom:

- http://vimeo.com/11916466

- http://vimeo.com/21043675