Chutten
chuttenblog.wordpress.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2016
Chutten, a Mozilla data engineer, writes about Firefox telemetry, data science pitfalls and the end of Firefox support for Windows XP.
What HN saysHN commenters cite his post on Firefox removing ALSA support after telemetry showed no users, which was skewed by users who disable telemetry.
17HN people shared it
2linked it in comments
18stories submitted
217story points
5 years agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Data Science Is Hard: ALSA in Firefox5 people · 11 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
- 2Firefox Windows XP Exit Plan2 people · 6 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 3Data Science Is Hard: Dangerous Data2 people · 6 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 4Why are there so many Canadians in India?1 people · 141 points · first shared 2021 · 122 comments on HN
- 5The End of Firefox Windows XP Support1 people · 26 points · first shared 2018 · 8 comments on HN
- 6Windows XP Firefox Users1 people · 13 points · first shared 2016 · 3 comments on HN
- 7Data Science Is Hard: Anomalies and What to Do About Them1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 8When, Exactly, Does a Firefox User Update, Anyway?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 9Firefox on Windows XP: End of the Line1 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10Firefox’s Windows XP Users’ Upgrade Path1 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 11Doubling the Speed of Windows Firefox Builds using sccache-dist1 people · 2 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 12Data Science Is Hard – Case Study: Latency of Firefox Crash Rates1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 13Firefox Telemetry Use Counters: Over-Estimating Usage, Now Fixed1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 14C++: How to use dtor order to detect temporaries1 people · 1 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
thristian · 2020-11-10
A related anecdote: Firefox disabled ALSA support because their telemetry showed nobody was using it, but it turned out that the kind of people who use ALSA are also the kind of people who disable as much telemetry as possible:
https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is-hard-alsa…
Disabling telemetry is like refusing to register to vote: you minimise the chance of people doing bad things to you, but you also minimise the chance of people doing good things for you. Maybe that trade-off is worth it for you, maybe it isn't, but don't complain that the trade-off exists and don't get annoyed that other people choose differently.
rockdoe · 2021-04-08
Reminds me of this: https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/05/data-science-is-hard-alsa…
tl;dr Telemetry indicates ALSA is no longer used. Firefox removes ALSA. Said Firefox version reaches release. Audio completely stops working for all users of some distros...that were yanking out the Telemetry.