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I actually use this feature for a VR app I'm building. I'm so sick of the privacy fetishism. You're fingerprintable, ok. You're so fingerprintable that to make

I actually use this feature for a VR app I'm building. I'm so sick of the privacy fetishism. You're fingerprintable, ok. You're so fingerprintable that to make you not fingerprintable, we'd have to make browsers only do static document retrieval. Oh, wait, no, not even that would really be enough. Your IP address plus the pages you visit at which times of day is enough. The browser hasn't been a document-reading platform since CGI was invented. What is that, 30 years now? You don't like that apps are built in browsers? I don't care. Functionally nobody cares. If we couldn't, we'd be building Java apps instead, someone would have invented an open source, live, searchable, distributed system for finding apps, and then you'd still be fingerprintable. Go sit in a cave if you don't want anybody to know who you are. The rest of us have work to do.

seniorgarcia 6y ago
And I do not get this at all. For my desktop you would get 12, I'm on a i7-8700k with a base frequency of 3.7GHZ and a permanent boost of 5.1GHZ. This rig runs Oculus VR/Steam VR all the time. If I ran that site from my Surface laptop the response would be 12 as well. The 12 cores on my surface boost is 12 1.3GHZ cores though if they boost. The cooling might work out to boost 2 cores to 1.9GHZ. Or however the Intel boosting works out in this thermal constraint. So, what is the useful info you get for your VR app from these values?
- Sephr 6y ago
  Your native VR games need to know how many CPU threads you have to efficiently allocate game processes. Some processes can run at a lower priority, and your OS scheduler figures out the rest. I can assure you that most of your VR games are using this same data.
  - seniorgarcia 6y ago
    But how is my CPU count useful to you in that situation? My i7-8700k has 12 threads, my Surface book 2 pretends to have 16 threads, my iPad Pro pretends to have 16 cores, my iPhone pretends to have 12 cores. What is the API I can use to map that to any sort of useful 3D performance? How are 3d game processes using this data to evaluate what they are supposed to be doing?
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      Never said it was for the 3D rendering. If all my app did was 3D rendering, it wouldn't be an app, it'd be a tech demo.
      - seniorgarcia 6y ago
        So, considering the amount of responses for thread count that you can not count on for any sort of performance, why do you need the thread count? Since you already answered downstream, I'll spare you the bother of doing it here... >You don't need it. I do. blabla, it makes it easier for me blabla native apps are tracking you as well
        moron4hire 6y ago
        Do you... Do you maybe not know how concurrency works? It's not about hitting a minimum threshold of performance. It's about achieving the best possible performance for whatever system it's running on. Maybe you think because I said VR it must mean I need to be running on massive gaming rigs. We run quite nicely on 5 year old smartphones, too. We run a pancake mode for people without VR. We run on every headset on the market, and we don't have to pay a lick of attention to what Facebook or Google or Apple thinks should and should not be in their app stores. And we can do this because of the broad range of browser APIs.
        seniorgarcia 6y ago
        Maybe you do not know what words in the English language mean? I have a Quest and an Oculus VR and a Samsung Gear VR and a shitty cardboard daydream. I get how concurrency works. I do not get how you get any sort of useful information from my desktop claiming 12 threads, to my phone claiming 8 threads, to my quest claiming 6 threads, to my ipad/samsung tablet claiming however many threads over webxr. I do not see how you can do anything useful with the thread count which is what I have been disputing. CPU thread count seems especially useless since it has no relation to VR performance.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  How many concurrent operations I can run. I use it to download and decode textures and audio data. Without it, you're waiting 15 second between scene transitions, massively dropping frames all the while. With it, is 1 second and there is never a hitch.
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  If I spawn 8 threads to do some kind of processing while you have 12 logical cores, I am missing out on a 50% performance boost (assuming the work is CPU bound). If I spawn 20 threads when you only have 4 logical cores, they will just stand in each other's way (caches, context switches, etc.) and possibly eat 5x as much memory as needed on top of that. I don't want to skirt the HN rules, but let me be clear that your replies appear as aggressive and incendiary while hinting at a lack of understanding for basic concurrency concepts. I don't know whether that's what it actually is or whether there's some miscommunication happening, but either way you're coming off as an ass. Be kind.
andrewzah 6y ago
Let's avoid straw man arguments. There is nothing wrong with wanting to reduce the amount of information collection possible to the absolute minimum. You don't need all, or even most of that information either. Reducing information down to IP address and window size would be a significant win.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  You don't need it. I do. I use a ton of the browsers APIs. Every single one of them improves the experience in some way. Several of them that people poo pop the most would make the apps I make fundamentally impossible. What is so special about the browser that this one place you don't want apps to function? If I couldn't do it in the browser, then I'd have 5x more work to build my app for all the platforms I support. It wouldn't stop my app being made, it would just cost more. What possible purpose is there to artificially inflate the cost of development? Or are you under some illusion that native apps are not tracking you?
  - mopsi 6y ago
    > Every single one of them improves the experience in some way. As would a full read-write access to the system, no doubt.
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    What's stopping someone from forking Firefox and making obfuscated local APIs for it? Things like core count, history length and amount of memory are all arbitrary, so there's no reason a website wouldn't work if I randomized them each time I visit a site.
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      "Haha! I lied to you on this form about how many fingers I have! I actually have 10! Now you can't pick me out of a crowd!" "You're the only person here, and I can clearly see your face, Jerry. And now I need to make you a new set of gloves."
  - 6y ago

seniorgarcia 6y ago

And I do not get this at all. For my desktop you would get 12, I'm on a i7-8700k with a base frequency of 3.7GHZ and a permanent boost of 5.1GHZ. This rig runs Oculus VR/Steam VR all the time. If I ran that site from my Surface laptop the response would be 12 as well. The 12 cores on my surface boost is 12 1.3GHZ cores though if they boost. The cooling might work out to boost 2 cores to 1.9GHZ. Or however the Intel boosting works out in this thermal constraint. So, what is the useful info you get for your VR app from these values?

Sephr 6y ago
Your native VR games need to know how many CPU threads you have to efficiently allocate game processes. Some processes can run at a lower priority, and your OS scheduler figures out the rest. I can assure you that most of your VR games are using this same data.
- seniorgarcia 6y ago
  But how is my CPU count useful to you in that situation? My i7-8700k has 12 threads, my Surface book 2 pretends to have 16 threads, my iPad Pro pretends to have 16 cores, my iPhone pretends to have 12 cores. What is the API I can use to map that to any sort of useful 3D performance? How are 3d game processes using this data to evaluate what they are supposed to be doing?
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    Never said it was for the 3D rendering. If all my app did was 3D rendering, it wouldn't be an app, it'd be a tech demo.
    - seniorgarcia 6y ago
      So, considering the amount of responses for thread count that you can not count on for any sort of performance, why do you need the thread count? Since you already answered downstream, I'll spare you the bother of doing it here... >You don't need it. I do. blabla, it makes it easier for me blabla native apps are tracking you as well
      - moron4hire 6y ago
        Do you... Do you maybe not know how concurrency works? It's not about hitting a minimum threshold of performance. It's about achieving the best possible performance for whatever system it's running on. Maybe you think because I said VR it must mean I need to be running on massive gaming rigs. We run quite nicely on 5 year old smartphones, too. We run a pancake mode for people without VR. We run on every headset on the market, and we don't have to pay a lick of attention to what Facebook or Google or Apple thinks should and should not be in their app stores. And we can do this because of the broad range of browser APIs.
        seniorgarcia 6y ago
        Maybe you do not know what words in the English language mean? I have a Quest and an Oculus VR and a Samsung Gear VR and a shitty cardboard daydream. I get how concurrency works. I do not get how you get any sort of useful information from my desktop claiming 12 threads, to my phone claiming 8 threads, to my quest claiming 6 threads, to my ipad/samsung tablet claiming however many threads over webxr. I do not see how you can do anything useful with the thread count which is what I have been disputing. CPU thread count seems especially useless since it has no relation to VR performance.
moron4hire 6y ago
How many concurrent operations I can run. I use it to download and decode textures and audio data. Without it, you're waiting 15 second between scene transitions, massively dropping frames all the while. With it, is 1 second and there is never a hitch.
MauranKilom 6y ago
If I spawn 8 threads to do some kind of processing while you have 12 logical cores, I am missing out on a 50% performance boost (assuming the work is CPU bound). If I spawn 20 threads when you only have 4 logical cores, they will just stand in each other's way (caches, context switches, etc.) and possibly eat 5x as much memory as needed on top of that. I don't want to skirt the HN rules, but let me be clear that your replies appear as aggressive and incendiary while hinting at a lack of understanding for basic concurrency concepts. I don't know whether that's what it actually is or whether there's some miscommunication happening, but either way you're coming off as an ass. Be kind.

andrewzah 6y ago

Let's avoid straw man arguments. There is nothing wrong with wanting to reduce the amount of information collection possible to the absolute minimum. You don't need all, or even most of that information either. Reducing information down to IP address and window size would be a significant win.

moron4hire 6y ago
You don't need it. I do. I use a ton of the browsers APIs. Every single one of them improves the experience in some way. Several of them that people poo pop the most would make the apps I make fundamentally impossible. What is so special about the browser that this one place you don't want apps to function? If I couldn't do it in the browser, then I'd have 5x more work to build my app for all the platforms I support. It wouldn't stop my app being made, it would just cost more. What possible purpose is there to artificially inflate the cost of development? Or are you under some illusion that native apps are not tracking you?
- mopsi 6y ago
  > Every single one of them improves the experience in some way. As would a full read-write access to the system, no doubt.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  What's stopping someone from forking Firefox and making obfuscated local APIs for it? Things like core count, history length and amount of memory are all arbitrary, so there's no reason a website wouldn't work if I randomized them each time I visit a site.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    "Haha! I lied to you on this form about how many fingers I have! I actually have 10! Now you can't pick me out of a crowd!" "You're the only person here, and I can clearly see your face, Jerry. And now I need to make you a new set of gloves."
- 6y ago