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The web sucks if you have a slow connection

danluu.com

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Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#601
post #474
post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, uncanny resemblance to Giffen goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

From the wikipedia article I gather that the only Giffen goods that were actually shown to exist are the Veblen goods and thus disqualify as Giffen goods. It seems to me that Giffen goods are a theoretical thing that has never been actually shown in real world (as the article states, all of the proposed examples were discarded). The case of website cost going down and demand going up seems pretty standard.

You didn't prove that giffen goods are equivalent with veblen goods, there.

If a package of ribeye steak normally sells for $2.99 and doesn't sell well, but then its price changes to $6.99 (but nothing else changes), and demand increases, that steak is a giffen good. The ribeye steak is not conspicuous consumption (unless your definition of status is really loose and includes posting photos of your food to Instagram). What happened there is straightforward: there's an elastic demand for ribeye steak, people saw the price and assumed quality signaling. When it increased to price parity with higher end brands, people assumed quality parity as well.

Conversely, a mechanical watch is specifically optimized to be good at time keeping in the most functional and cost inefficient ways (e.g. assembled in hand in a white gold case with a hand-decorated guilloche dial and proprietary in-house movement mechanisms, etc). That is precisely conspicuous consumption, and thus it's a veblen good.

One good's demand increases because of quality signaling, the other good's demand increases due to status signaling. The point of there being two of these definitions is the nuance in why consumers would purchase luxury items. Theoretically, people don't buy at Trader Joe's just to brag to their upper class friends that they shop at Trader Joe's (this is not a good example but take away a specific brand and you get the gist).

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#602
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! A Jevons Effect[1] in a web site's bandwidth! [1] When an increase in the efficiency with which a resource is used causes total usage to increase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I'm not sure why this gets a special term. It sounds like basic supply and demand. If you decrease the price of something by increasing the efficiency of production, you will obviously capture more of the demand curve. What am I missing?

That's like saying 'deadweight loss' "shouldn't be a term, because it's basic supply and demand".

There's a clear and identifiable trend or pattern resultant of the general model, there's no reason not to assign it a shorthand way of being referred to in discussion or study.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why this gets a special term. It sounds like basic supply and demand. If you decrease the price of something by increasing the efficiency of production, you will obviously capture more of the demand curve. What am I missing?

Because it's easier to say somename effect than the half paragraph or so that describes it. This is the basic reason for naming anything after all a car is just a fossil fuel internal combustion kinetic comvertion wheeled people and goods pilotable transportation platform but saying a car is just easier :)

[deleted]

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing controversial here, it's common sense. Most web stuff is built by total amateurs figuring things out as they go.

I'd like to complement: most _stuff_ is built by total amateurs winging it.

Nonsense, email is an impressively well designed and logical protocol ;)

From

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#605
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny anecdote about the freeway system of southern California. When they were initially planning the system in 1930s, 40s, they were planning to have the system in use for next 100 years. So they built over sized roads (like 10 lane freeway, without having to stop for traffic lights, that go THROUGH center of a major city). When the system proved so car friendly, more and more people moved in and bought cars. Within…

The original designers of the interstates didn't want the roads to go through the downtown areas. The idea was for the high-speed roads to go near cities, and have spur roads (3-digit interstate numbers that start with an odd number) connect them - like the design of the original Autobahn. But there was a coalition of mayors and municipal associations that pressured Congress to have the roads pass through their towns…

> A consequence of this was the bulldozing of historically black-owned property to make way for the new roads.

Indeed. A couple years ago, the city of St Paul actually formally apologized for exactly this, destroying the primarily black Rondo neighborhood with freeway I-94.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/2015/07/17/rondo-ap...

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#606
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that you mention that, because I just wanted to have a site I could optimize to hell, and it seemed apt to make an informational site about optimization for that . AppCache is obsolete and harmful now (yes, already), and I should link to the articles that talk about that, thanks for reminding me. As for the "come browse" approach, you're definitely right, and I don't intend the finished site to look like t…

I've wanted to play around with some similar ideas for a while too, actually. I have a few loose high-level ideas - I know I want it to feel like an app, but I want to use plain JS; I want to leverage everything modern browsers can support, while remaining backward-compatible (!); I want to try odd things like using Lua inside nginx for everything (or even writing my own web server), or programmatically reorganizing…

> Do you mean in a security sense or it just being bad for performance?

It is bad for performance. I was going to link you to the article, but I figured I'll add it to the site :) http://www.lightentheweb.com/resources/

> Regarding where to start...

Ah, good idea, thank you. Yes, I'm not really in a position to rewrite content that exists (it would take too much time), but I would like to at least index it sensibly.

> nobody's done a full-stack (as in, "bigger picture") top-to-bottom "here's how to do everything lightweight

That's exactly what I'm aiming for, with clear steps and possibly a checklist (good idea!) on what to do.

> I've come across a few websites that are nothing more than a bunch of links

I think that's hard to avoid when making an informational site, but the links could possibly be embedded into article-style copy, making it not look as spammy. I'll keep that in mind, thank you.

> I was trying to demonstrate the exact opposite of the direction I would suggest you go in

Haha, yes, I know what you mean, and the links will be the "read more" material. I'd like to add some original content and non-time-sensitive guides to the fundamentals.

> Arguably microoptimization-focused, but I thought I'd mention them anyway.

Those are great, thank you!

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played MP3's on a 486 DX4/100mhz. There was a setting in winamp I had to turn on (I think it was quality related) otherwise it would stutter and be generally unlistenable. Even with that setting turned on it pegged the CPU at about 100% the computer was unusable for anything else while the mp3 was playing. Trying to seek in the track would sometimes crash winamp. My Pentium 166 on the other hand was much more capab…

I think somewhere in that timeframe, standard soundcards adopted support for hardware playback of mp3 files.

I'm not sure about that, but 'mmx' did come to fruition with early pentiums.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#609
post #601
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the wikipedia article I gather that the only Giffen goods that were actually shown to exist are the Veblen goods and thus disqualify as Giffen goods. It seems to me that Giffen goods are a theoretical thing that has never been actually shown in real world (as the article states, all of the proposed examples were discarded). The case of website cost going down and demand going up seems pretty standard.

You didn't prove that giffen goods are equivalent with veblen goods, there. If a package of ribeye steak normally sells for $2.99 and doesn't sell well, but then its price changes to $6.99 (but nothing else changes), and demand increases , that steak is a giffen good. The ribeye steak is not conspicuous consumption (unless your definition of status is really loose and includes posting photos of your food to Instagram…

The steak in your example might not be a veblen good, but it still isn't a giffen one.

The article states that a necessary condition is that "The goods in question must be so inferior that the income effect is greater than the substitution effect". The reason people are buying more when the price rises is not because of the income effect (which would be because they have less money since the price went up, so demand for inferior goods increases), but rather because they now have evidence/reason to believe that the good is quality.

That's not giffen according to the definition given, which includes a causal factor for the demand curve.

Re: The web sucks if you have a slow connection

#610
post #558
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, 3.3 parking spaces per car (citilab article). That's be some space to free up when they're self driving.

Assuming "parking spaces" include one's home space (like garage or reserved spot), 3 should be expected, at least: home, work, and wherever you're visiting.

Now assume Uber et al own fleets of self-driving 9-passenger minivans. During peak commuting hours they're completely full because they pick up different passengers who have the same commute, and that way you eliminate the parking space both at home and at work.

The rest of the day they don't actually park anywhere, they just stay on the road operating by carry one or two passengers at a time instead of eight or nine. Or half them stay on the road operating and the other half go off and park in some huge lot out where land is cheaper until demand picks up again.

Then instead of 3.3 spaces per car you can have It's actually kind of like dynamically allocated mass transit.

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