This is one of the reasons I like Jekyll. No PHP, no bullshit. It's fast, pre compiled pages. You can use web fonts if you like, or keep it all local. Speed usually takes a hit with websites when people try to monetize or add fancy features..
The Bullshit Web
141–150 of 568 posts
Re: The Bullshit Web
#142I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Moby Dick is 1.2mb uncompressed in plain-text. That's lower than the "average" news website by quite a bit--I just loaded the New York Times front page. It was 6.6mb. that's more than 5 copies of Moby Dick, solely for a gateway to the actual content that I want. A secondary reload was only 5mb. I then opened a random article. The article itself was about 1,400 words long…
I like this rant, you should go the next step: All you need to 'fix' this is a fast loading news website that gets enough paid subscribers to earn enough margin from subscriptions that you can pay for a news staff, an office, and various overheads. That is a longish way of saying that 99.9% of the overhead in any modern web site can be traced almost entirely to the mechanisms by which that web site is attempting to e…
Hence the rant mentioning Molochian economy, under which we operate. And that reference explains in depth why this is a very hard problem.
I like the rant too. Except maybe the bit about sending content at the speed of humans - I for one would like to take lightweight, bullshit-free content as fast as it can be sent, to pipe it to further processing on my end, in the never-ending quest to automate things in my life.
Re: The Bullshit Web
#143Unpopular opinion alert: Maybe the "bullshit" is only bullshit to you, the thorny tech-savvy reader. Maybe businesses have tried the plaintext approach, and their business was improved by adding fonts, stylesheets, API calls, spinners, scripts, high-res images, and god knows what else. Maybe speed improvements are not important beyond a certain point. Maybe 5MB doesn't matter to most people. Maybe micro-optimization…
By the same token, maybe the automobile and oil industry really care a lot about the environment, but the only way to produce a safe, affordable and performing car is their tech savvy way refined for a century.
Or maybe they just don't give a shit, and the current status quo allows them to make money without caring about the consequences, until we as an informed community demand a better way.
Re: The Bullshit Web
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> NYT needs to know how long you spent, on which articles, etc. They need data to produce the product and you can only achieve that with javascript tracking pixels (Server logs aren't good enough). No they don't. They really don't need to know any of that. They don't even get a pass on tracking because they're providing a free whatever - I pay for a subscription to the NYT. The business, or a meaningfully substantial…
Except that the content is directly related to user behavior. If they see no one reads the style section, they'll cut it and move resources to financial news. If they didn't have tracking they'd never know that, be wasting resources and having a comparatively inferior product. They can't do UX anaylsis, nothing.
> They can't do UX anaylsis, nothing
They could, but that would require paying people and firms like Nielsen to gather data. Instead they engage in the same freeloading that the industry derides users for.
Re: The Bullshit Web
#145I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Moby Dick is 1.2mb uncompressed in plain-text. That's lower than the "average" news website by quite a bit--I just loaded the New York Times front page. It was 6.6mb. that's more than 5 copies of Moby Dick, solely for a gateway to the actual content that I want. A secondary reload was only 5mb. I then opened a random article. The article itself was about 1,400 words long…
I just loaded up a nytimes[1] article too - and only weighed in at 1.0MB. For a 1000 word article. Subsequent reloads dropped it to ~1000KB. I don't think that's too bad, considering there are images in there as well. Now of course, I'm running an ad blocker. I assume the remaining MB that you noticed had come from advertising sources. In which case, bloat isn't the issue, ads are. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/…
weighed in at 1.0MB. For a 1000 word article. Subsequent reloads dropped it to ~1000KB.
You really can't beat savings like that.
Re: The Bullshit Web
#146I've said this before, but it bears repeating: Moby Dick is 1.2mb uncompressed in plain-text. That's lower than the "average" news website by quite a bit--I just loaded the New York Times front page. It was 6.6mb. that's more than 5 copies of Moby Dick, solely for a gateway to the actual content that I want. A secondary reload was only 5mb. I then opened a random article. The article itself was about 1,400 words long…
I like this rant, you should go the next step: All you need to 'fix' this is a fast loading news website that gets enough paid subscribers to earn enough margin from subscriptions that you can pay for a news staff, an office, and various overheads. That is a longish way of saying that 99.9% of the overhead in any modern web site can be traced almost entirely to the mechanisms by which that web site is attempting to e…
Hilariously, the New York times tries both: you get five or so article reads (with shitloads of tracking), and then you have to pay to read more per month.
But if you're paying, the pages don't load any different. You're paying to be mined.
Re: The Bullshit Web
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you'd prefer comparing the code of a website to the amount of useful content on the website, which OP also did. Taking "I'm downloading 100mb worth of stuff (83 Moby-Dicks) to read 72kb worth of plaintext" at face value, we could also say that 0.072% of the data transferred is useful, or, equivalently, that 99.928% of it is crap.
You don't have to download the typography of a physical book but it still plays a huge role in the readability and enjoyment of it. So I guess the typography of websites is "crap" because it has to be downloaded? It's a ridiculous apples-and-hammers comparison thinly veiled as an intelligent critique.
Exactly, it’s not the NYTs fault that plain text compresses well compared to jpgs.
Also, is a world where he NYT is subscriber only really preferable?
Re: The Bullshit Web
#148the web was born, and everyone was happy for this new thing. then advertisement came along and poisoned that too, just like tv, just like radio. we just can't have nice things because someone somewhere wants to squeeze all the pennies out of your pockets in whatever medium you use.
obligatory links for website obesity and bullshit web:
Re: The Bullshit Web
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe you'd prefer comparing the code of a website to the amount of useful content on the website, which OP also did. Taking "I'm downloading 100mb worth of stuff (83 Moby-Dicks) to read 72kb worth of plaintext" at face value, we could also say that 0.072% of the data transferred is useful, or, equivalently, that 99.928% of it is crap.
You don't have to download the typography of a physical book but it still plays a huge role in the readability and enjoyment of it. So I guess the typography of websites is "crap" because it has to be downloaded? It's a ridiculous apples-and-hammers comparison thinly veiled as an intelligent critique.
How much of the data downloaded is actually for typography?
Also, browsers have good enough typography by default, which can be controlled with CSS.
Re: The Bullshit Web
#150I've read others comment on the lack of empathy for publishers. 10$ that the author doesn't blame them.
That said, this is a weird situation, to which I became allergic. To the point I started r/vanillahtml to stack websites that gave me that feeling of fat-free moment.
One thing you should do, is install dillo, and enjoy the web. It's usually faster than elinks, chrome whatever. Sure you'll get horrendous css rendering, no javascript. Still, it's worth seeing in person how instant a click / request / render can be. Also 10 tabs in dillo is probably 2MB.
# tech momentum
There were logical reasons to what we're in today. I was in there too at first. I wanted hyper dynamic webpages, more capable css, more live scriptability. But along the way I started to feel the unintended consequences. long loading, idiotic user interactions, regression in basic ergonomics, huge resource consumption, and worst of all, the twist it put on webpage producers. Open a 2000 webpage you'll see 20% chrome, 80% content. Now on average it's the opposite, not really 80/20, more like 50/20 with a bonus 30% popups (gdpr, cookies, newsletters, ads). Tech didn't provide value, it's root for pollution.
# societal re-rooting
old web was a side game, people got into it for the thrill of it, it gave a lot of interesting subtle and dense content. Now it's all business trying to live in the web era, it's a competition thing, with all that it entails. The web today looks like main street. Neon signs, noise, .. ugh.
also with real-time social platforms you see how most websites are low value, and reactive. It's changed a bit, people noticed that there was a need for less shallow, but it seems rare. Although to be honest I stopped monitoring if there was more of them today.
I agree with people comparing a website today with other kinds of texts. I feel super void when I read most of the web, and usually, a .txt file is a high guarantee that I'll find something more personal or technical than anything on the web. And it's near free. If the web was caring about communicating, we'd just have to extend SMS to 640kB with a streaming protocol in case you're reading wikipedia.
ps: oh and I love these https://lite.cnn.io/en (was trying to make a repository of them), so much love to those who push that kind of idea