Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance • Hacker News Board

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#291

Post by e12e » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 6:51 PM UTC

cddotdotslash wrote: post #202

e12e wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be much more interested in what you think personally, than what "a consumer" might think. I'm perfectly aware that a lot of the things that matter to me, doesn't seem to matter to a lot of people. Do I understand you correctly, in that: 1) You use gmail and Google calendar, therefore 2) You want your passwords, extensions, bookmarks and browser history synced by the same provider that provides your email and cale…

Well personally, I am probably not the average HN reader in that I have little problems giving up personal information in exchange for access to new services, free services, etc. So in that regard, Google more or less fits my mindset. As far as improving, I don't know - Firefox is already an excellent browser that is fast, secure, and pretty standard-compliant. It definitely beats IE. What I've been trying to communi…

I certainly appreciate the convenience of having one (service) provider. Not very important to me (I'm aware of the trade-offs involved) -- but that doesn't mean I'm blind to how most people feel. Funny that the only thing that's not (AFAIK) part of Mozilla yet, is cloud storage. With more Firefox apps, it's not inconceivable that there'll be a viable docs-alternative -- and as for phone os, there is of course Firefox OS...

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#292

Post by kevincennis » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 7:32 PM UTC

This is cool, but Firefox still feels a lot slower to me than Chrome.

I think Mozilla would get a lot of mileage out of improving the performance of the rendering engine. FF doesn't feel slow because of JS, it feels slow(-er than Chrome, at least on my Mac) because repaints and layout seem to take longer.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#293

Post by roca » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #259

roca wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also included stuff like splay-latency which explicitly tests something that doesn't matter on the Web (support for incremental GC during script execution, which doesn't matter in browsers because the effects of a script are never made visible to the user until the script ends). Guess what, V8 has that and Spidermonkey doesn't.

Can you explain more what you think is unfair about the test? I've only given it[1] a brief read and it certainly is a synthetic benchmark, but it doesn't seem absurdly artificial. I've certainly written JS that builds trees, modifies them, tears them down, and builds new ones, all within the same event loop turn, and so would certainly benefit from incremental GC in the cases when the data it's working over is very…

Your app won't benefit from incremental GC during an event loop turn, because nothing your script did before the incremental GC slice will be made visible to users until the entire event loop turn is finished.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#294

Post by carussell » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 7:49 PM UTC

nsajko wrote: post #244

carussell wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time, you could come across a post like this and confidently respond to it by pointing out that, no, Google's position as the default search engine in Firefox is not for sale to the highest bidder. So that even if, e.g.: a) the "deal" with Google had never happened, and b) Microsoft came out of nowhere and began offering to pay what Google is actually presently paying (or, let's say, just for fun, even do…

What's changed?

Well the set of Mozillians today is not the same as the set of Mozillians in 2009, which is not the same as the set of Mozillians in 2004. It's such a facile thing point out, but it has a huge impact on a project.

Then, it's another very facile thing, but a person involved with Mozilla today who was involved X years ago differs from themselves by X years of experiences. X years' difference also produce X years' worth of changes in the externalities on a project. For example, what impact did the timbre of HN alone have on Mozilla in 2011? What impact was it having in 2008?

So pick how far back you want to go, and then enumerate events that have happened since then. The establishment of Mozilla Corporation. Key developers exiting the project to go work on what would become Chrome. Working with Google on VP8 before the public announcement at Google I/O 2010. The reality of a company that had a couple hundred employees or so for years and then quickly grew to one that now has 1000+, and dealing with that. The shift in focus from the Internet to a focus on the Web, and coping with a lack of influence on the direction of both. The shift in focus on users to a focus on designers and Web developers. The not-terrible idea but also not-amazing idea to try out directory tiles, then dooming it and destroying all kinds of public goodwill in a single stroke by doing this: https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish... >. Coping with a number of other failed projects and initiatives over the years like: Theora+VP8 for free video, BrowserID, Do Not Track and changes to third-party cookie policy, and Firefox OS.

Those are some changes Mozilla has been through.

(Note that this is a list of changes Mozilla has gone through, not a "list of bad things about Mozilla". If I were trying to make that kind of list, there are things on there that I wouldn't have put there, and things that aren't on there that should be. But it's not that kind of a list.)

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#295

Post by munificent » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 7:51 PM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #249

zetafunction wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the mindset that ends up with Chrome going out of its way to swap OK/Cancel when you enable DNT? Chrome dev here. The way the Chrome settings web UI is written does not lend itself to strong consistency, just eventual, as devs notice it and fix it. Your DNT example was fixed last week in https://codereview.chromium.org/665113003 . Another example of inconsistent button ordering: the overlay for disconnecting…

Damn. I guess this just goes to show how hard it is for an external observer to judge intent. I mean, you gotta admit that between the long, scary warning and flipping the buttons around compared to other privacy related settings, it certainly seems like a dark pattern. But I've been on the receiving end of this, so I understand how frustrating this must be. "No, really, it was late and one line got pasted in front o…

> I mean, you gotta admit that between the long, scary warning and flipping the buttons around compared to other privacy related settings, it certainly seems like a dark pattern.

Hanlon's Razor is a good rule to apply here.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#296

Post by ptx » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 8:04 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #289

JetSpiegel wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lie, I have a Nokia with the S40 OS and Java apps can't just do anything they want, particularly sensitive thing like accessing contacts and making internet connections. In fact, if your app isn't signed by Nokia, you can't let an app make a request without nagging you for permission. This totally kills homebrew.

This was the "pretty much" part. But even that permission model is really really simple. MIDP 2.0 had permission domains. In practice, the permission domains were basically "want this app to let you do anything on your phone Y/N?" for a lot of phones. In the specific case of S40, Nokia's security policy came into play in 6th edition feature pack 1, or so Nokia claims. For fun, look at the deviations different carrier…

The permission domains govern what the defaults are and what permissions you are able to request, but the permissions themselves are more finegrained. And none of them defaulted to "allow" – see table linked from the page you linked to: http://developer.nokia.com/community/wiki/MIDP_2.0_API_acces...

"Trusted 3rd party domain" is everyone who gave heaps of money to Verisign. They get no permissions by default, but they can request, for example, network access and the user can then grant it once, per-session or always.

"Untrusted 3rd party domain" is the rest of us, and basically any app I ever installed, in which case the user is prevented from selecting "always allow" for network access and is prompted once per session, which was highly annoying.

So if anything, it was too secure! Sun sank their own standard by requiring expensive certificates for normal functionality. If they had used self-signed certificates they way Android does (checking on upgrade that it's the same certificate) it would have been great.

"Operator protection domain" and "Manufacturer protection domain" mighty work differently, but that's no different from the stuff that comes pre-installed on Android phones having access to everything without asking.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#297

Post by jesup » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 8:40 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #147

skrowl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reminding everyone I know who still uses Chrome to try Firefox again. Many have switched back. It's simply a better browser. One e10s is in stable, it's going to be even better. Google is a for-profit company that makes money selling your data and targeted, personal ads. Mozilla is not-for-profit and just wants to make the web better.

No, no it's not. I just spent an hour trying to figure out why ff freezes on the partner's computer. Yay 780mb sqlite wal. Who the fuck knows what that's doing. Why on earth does using a browser require vaccuming sqlite files? Dunno, because there's no good reason. If she'll finally switch to chrome I'll stop hearing complaints the internet is slow.

Try Help -> Troubleshooting -> Reset Profile (upper right). That fixes most problems of that sort with (often ancient, migrated since FF 2.0 or 3.0) profiles.

Most things are retained, even cookies. It does remove some things (often things that can cause problems, like badly out-of-date-unmaintained extensions, clears DOM storage, download history, plugin settings): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-firefox-easily-fi...

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#298

Post by jesup » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 8:49 PM UTC

SloopJon wrote: post #251

merih wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Firefox you can search among open tabs by typing % in the awesomebar, I use this everyday with hundreds of tabs open. And there is also tab groups feature (which is activated by ctrl/cmd+shift+e). I don't know why this feature is not advertised more.

The "%" search sounds really interesting, but I can't seem to get it to work. No matter what I type after the "%", it initiates a web search. This is with Firefox 33 for Mac.

Probably because you have to put a space after % (not sure why, but likely to disambiguate it from other sorts of typing).

It rocks. And I have 1200 tabs open at the moment on Linux64 Nightly (~120 actually loaded). Yes, I'm a tab-hoarder. Bookmarks are useful, but don't give me the easy "I want to come back to this" aspect - once I do close it, I'm done with it; if I bookmark it it's there forever (and the number of bookmarks became unmanagable eventually).

Every so often I do a pass and close out 50 or 100 tabs I no longer care about. Usually I sit at 900-1000; it's time to cull.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#299

Post by wlesieutre » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 9:01 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #219

mdellabitta wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is available for OS X and Windows.

Safari on Windows has been abandoned; it’s now 3 versions behind.

And since that includes security patches, probably best to avoid it.

Re: Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance

#300

Post by shmerl » Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 9:16 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #3

I have been very impressed by Firefox lately. Kudos to the whole team at Mozilla. Just about 5 years ago, it was looking to me like it was the end of Firefox. It was Chrome all the way. New features were coming out one after another. Faster rendering. Safe process isolation for each tab. Looked better. But I just switched back last month. It happened kind of randomly. Saw an announcement of a new release ( 33, I thin…

Never used Chrome for regular browsing really. Firefox was kind of behind in the 3.x days but not to the point of switching for me, especially since I value Mozilla's goals.