Live data from Hacker News

I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

howonlee.github.io

401–410 of 448 posts

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#401
The article mentions that he has "Withdrawn mostly from Reddit in favor of early 2000’s style forums".

Which good ones are still around that are not specific to a certain topic? I am interested in this.

Since he said "that I pay money for", I'm assuming somethingawful maybe? Are there any others that are still good and active?

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted a jab at reddit, cuz this week I can't even browse it because "this community is available in the app" (after years of marke... mental abuse of asking me to use an app). Nothing against the guy, he used "we", I used "you", I'm sure he is a cool guy, and I hope its the charitable interpretation.

I wouldn't even mind using the app if it didn't chew data like it does. When I had it installed (up to last week) it was using more than 10x anything else on my iphone. I was definitely not using reddit enough to justify that.

There are multiple third-party apps that are way better than the official one.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#403
post #401

The article mentions that he has "Withdrawn mostly from Reddit in favor of early 2000’s style forums". Which good ones are still around that are not specific to a certain topic? I am interested in this. Since he said "that I pay money for", I'm assuming somethingawful maybe? Are there any others that are still good and active?

I'm also curious about this. I frequently find myself wishing for a Reddit alternative but haven't been able to find something worth switching to.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#405
post #33

This is brilliant! I've been suffering from work related anxiety for years which I've learned to douse with Youtube, Reddit or HN. This became a huge problem for me recently and so I had to try to break my habit loops (Cue -> Action -> Reward). I cannot quit cold-turkey because all the methods that I can think of to block the websites I can undo in the mania of anxiety. Youtube always gives you an option to look for…

> I cannot quit cold-turkey because all the methods that I can think of to block the websites I can undo in the mania of anxiety.

I had this same problem, and I found a solution that worked for me: I gave up sudo. I use my computer with an unprivileged account, and I have to ask my partner to get the admin password. (And then I have all these access rules etc that I can't modify.) This isn't feasible for everyone's usage patterns, but it is for me, and has really helped me manage different addictive behaviors.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#406
post #140

I ran a website for youngsters several years ago. One of the duties to maintain it was to moderate discussion boards. Some kids were difficult to manage and would not accept to be banned (via email/IP/or whatever solution) and would keep recreating profiles. Ultimately I dealt with those ppl by “greylisting” them. Added a sleep() prior each page rendering of 5 to 25 secs (actually it was more sophisticated and would…

This is clever and an effective way, but has a downside: it's like death penalty. You're giving the person no chance to improve, and there's risk ruining experience for someone who didn't deserve it.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#407
post #406
post #140

I ran a website for youngsters several years ago. One of the duties to maintain it was to moderate discussion boards. Some kids were difficult to manage and would not accept to be banned (via email/IP/or whatever solution) and would keep recreating profiles. Ultimately I dealt with those ppl by “greylisting” them. Added a sleep() prior each page rendering of 5 to 25 secs (actually it was more sophisticated and would…

This is clever and an effective way, but has a downside: it's like death penalty. You're giving the person no chance to improve, and there's risk ruining experience for someone who didn't deserve it.

But it's not life and death, it's like a private club. There's not much to be gained by assuming someone will change their ways and then become a member of the club who gives back.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#408
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure it has at times even said browsing will be faster in the app than in mobile browser. It wouldn't be surprising if that Very dark pattern was applied as part of pushing the app.

Let the users decide for themselves then.

Adding dark patterns and then telling the users to decide for themselves is itself a dark pattern: it's not actually letting users decide for themselves, it's instead punishing users who actively chose not to do what the site wanted them to do.

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#409

My internet addiction was at least 90% as bad even when I only had dial-up. Unfortunately, tabs make the latency thing an ineffective deterrent. (In the dial-up days, before tabs, my workaround was to have 20 IE windows open.)

The Crackbook Revival chrome extension he mentions restarts its timer if you switch tabs, so at least it remains effective despite tabs

Re: I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit

#410
I’m still surprised that this type of findings hasn’t had more of an impact on commercial design. It is not uncommon to find Fortune 500 sites with load times over 20 seconds. I get it that it is hard to write and maintain clean code, still, repeated studies have shown the value proposition is there.

Here is a little proof of concept I did awhile back to see how tight I could make a responsive page with a good amount of graphics. The whole page is two server calls (one is for the fav icon). It loads in about 400 ms total from github or in less than 200 from Godaddy shared hosting: https://pbskidd.github.io/cockenoe

Post reply on HN