Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

idlewords.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 88 posts

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#41

Post by DonaldFisk »

Analemma_ wrote: post #3
pdelbarba wrote: post #2

It's funny to think that Moore's has meant that applications just get less efficient but there is no such concept for internet speeds. In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases.

> In reality, it seems that people have just settled on a response time that's acceptable and devs try to stay within that window in most cases. More specifically, every time CPUs or browsers get better, publishers look at their metrics and go "Oh! PLT at 95th percentile is down! Great, now we can add more trackers while still hitting our perf target!" and so the gain is immediately gobbled up -- we're in a Red Queen…

This is Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) applied to the World Wide Web.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#42

Post by draw_down »

mwfj wrote: post #15

I first realized Javascript/Frontend/client developers were a danger to society about 10 years ago. We were trying to figure out why some particular, quite globally popular web site did not work when transcoded in our Opera Mini transcoder. The page itself looked perfectly static, no fancy effects or anything. Turns out the site had decided to re-implement the "click a link" feature entirely in javascript, down to th…

Well, my problem is you think that's JavaScript's fault.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#43

Post by charles-salvia »

Ads are definitely a huge problem, but it seems they are at least equally, perhaps even less of a contributor to bloat than the tons of off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks/libraries major websites throw in to perform analytics, or to implement stock features like user-comments, login, social-media stuff, etc.

I mean, just looking at the network resources for a fresh download of www.cnn.com, I see:

livefyre_base.js, 167KB - apparently some kind of user-comment library

cdn.optimizely.com/js/131788053.js, 93.2K - some library for user tracking/analytics or something,

controltag.js, 72K - something from a company called "Krux DMP" that seems to be yet more user analytics and tracking,

sdk.js, 61.9K - something from gigya.com, apparently some kind of login and user-preferences framework

jsmd.js, 87.5K - another analytics framework

... and various others.

I see a "pubads_impl_113.js" from doubleclick.net, which is obviously for ads, but if cnn.com is typical, then it seems that off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks for user analytics and other stock features like logins/social-media crap, etc., are just as big a factor in contributing to bloat as display ads.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#44

Post by lmkg »

charles-salvia wrote: post #43

Ads are definitely a huge problem, but it seems they are at least equally, perhaps even less of a contributor to bloat than the tons of off-the-shelf Javascript frameworks/libraries major websites throw in to perform analytics, or to implement stock features like user-comments, login, social-media stuff, etc. I mean, just looking at the network resources for a fresh download of www.cnn.com, I see: livefyre_base.js, 1…

Optimizely is A/B testing. It's not strictly analytics (in that it's not a Google Analytics replacement), but it re-implements some of that functionality for audience targeting.

Krux is an ad tracking service.

jsmd.js appears to be the homebrew analytics system of one of the media partners.

The actual web analytics being run on CNN is Adobe Analytics, which is actually fairly compact. The real problem is that every ad also includes its own analytics framework. Each of them often includes multiple frameworks, each of which tracks something different. E.g. one for demographic targeting, one for tracking across multiple ad networks, one to see if the user scrolled far enough to see the ad, and one to see if the ad loaded before the user closed the page or navigated away. It's a goddamn mess.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#45

Post by gavinpc »

They will slim down after net neutrality is over. But they'll still be user-hostile.

Ads are about tracking. The fact that you might see the ad is what we call "langiappe" where I come from.

If everyone disabled third-party cookies right now, networks would not be able to easily aggregate browsing profiles. And everything else --- the things you actually care about --- would still work.

Of course, then attention would just turn to the ISP's, who can now sell that information directly.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#46

Post by isaaclyman »

gwu78 wrote: post #31
gwu78 wrote: post #11

"This is a screenshot from an article on NPR discussing the rising use of ad blockers. It is 12 megabytes in size..." Hmmm. When I save this page from my browser it's 116k. "... in a stock web browser." Ah-ha. Perhaps the web browser I am using is not "stock". If so, I can still read the article without a "stock" browser, so not sure what is behind this "stock" idea. I am assuming reading the article is the goal? Cou…

FYI the browser I use does not download resources automatically. This way I just get the page with the content: the text of the article. That is all I want. To read articles, which are just text, I access the web in VGA textmode with a text-only browser. I never see any ads. There is no such thing as "load time" with this "UX". All pages load fast. I do DNS lookups in bulk and store IPs before doing any HTTP requests…

You, sir, are the Ron Swanson of internet consumers and I salute you.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#47

Post by toomanybeersies »

cousin_it wrote: post #22

This seems like another example of bad stuff happening for game-theoretic reasons, so individual action won't help, the only solution is regulation. Ban tracking for a start. It's similar to banning outdoor billboard ads, which many places have done with good results.

How does the USA ban tracking on a website hosted in Germany?

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#48

Post by adventured »

gavinpc wrote: post #45

They will slim down after net neutrality is over. But they'll still be user-hostile. Ads are about tracking. The fact that you might see the ad is what we call "langiappe" where I come from. If everyone disabled third-party cookies right now, networks would not be able to easily aggregate browsing profiles. And everything else --- the things you actually care about --- would still work. Of course, then attention woul…

> They will slim down after net neutrality is over.

Net neutrality - in regards to any actual implementation - existed for about five minutes. The supposed benefits were to be long term. The short term impact was next to nothing.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#49

Post by knieveltech »

exelius wrote: post #26
frogfuzion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed and up-voted. I think that is what I was trying to say in my rant. I guess as a developer though it's hard to come to terms with the fact that you are creating crap. I went through the same thing when I was a musician so it stings doubly.

The media fetishized a "techno-genius" that never really existed. Design and development are two very different skills, and it's rare to find a person who is good at both. But all things equal, a good product person can make do with shitty developers. Good developers can never overcome shitty product design. If you want to design apps, go to school for design.

Craigslist finds your argument unpersuasive.

Re: The Website Obesity Crisis (2015)

#50

Post by flukus »

knieveltech wrote: post #49
exelius wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The media fetishized a "techno-genius" that never really existed. Design and development are two very different skills, and it's rare to find a person who is good at both. But all things equal, a good product person can make do with shitty developers. Good developers can never overcome shitty product design. If you want to design apps, go to school for design.

Craigslist finds your argument unpersuasive.

Craigslist is great design. I'll take that over what "UX experts" come up with any day.
Post reply on HN