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

Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

woob.tech

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 124 posts

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#41

Post by librarianscott »

btrettel wrote: post #22

A while back I heard about Z39.50 [0], a protocol that libraries use for their catalogs. In the 90s it seems there were native clients for the protocol so that one could interact with the library catalog without using a web interface. A lot of the current web interfaces are terribly slow JS monstrosities now so I'd like to try something faster. I never did figure out if any of the GUI clients [1] are still actively d…

The most well-known Z39.50 using software that still works is a paid citation manager called EndNote (the desktop client not the web client). You can ingest PDFs with that software too. I don't think the open-source Zotero has added that feature yet. Z39.50 is clunky, and our old LMS (library management software, used behind the scenes) can pull in MARC records for our staff when we order books, but I don't even want to think about the security.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#42

Post by MaxBarraclough »

dylan-m wrote: post #31

I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. That was really the dream of the semantic web, after all. This kind of idea would be really nicely paired with good Microformats[1] support, which continues to be a very good idea. That way we can find, say, a recipe or an address on a web…

> I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source.

I'm not sure I'm interpreting you correctly here, but I think I'm on the other side of this. The problem is that many modern websites are godawful. I think the story pretty much ends there. If websites were not awful, we wouldn't find ourselves appalled by the idea of just embedding a browser.

Modern web browsers feature a 'reader mode' as a countermeasure to that much modern web design is significantly worse than having no web design at all.

If you're serious about a 'lightweight' alternative to the lumbering horror-show of the modern web, the way forward is either Gemini [0], or a formalised simple subset of HTML. [1]

> That way we can find, say, a recipe or an address on a web page in a reusable way and without needing magical heuristics.

I think the find and reusable aspects here are really two very different problems.

The reusable part is easy. HTML is already reusable. A standardised simple subset would be even more so. [1]

The find part is trickier. Discovering decent content is harder, as there's an arms race of ad-funded spammers trying to out-compete legitimate recipe sites in search-engine rankings. (There's also the possibility of search engines not being motivated to work on delivering good search results. [2])

The idea of having a choice between native GUI applications and web apps, has been with us for some time. Email is probably the best example, we've long had the choice between webmail and native email clients. Beyond webmail, these days even Microsoft Word has a web-based version. There are of course both advantages and disadvantages to web-based applications.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730408

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291392

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29772136

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#43

Post by kodablah »

I think a version of this is what the internet needs but using headless browsers from the client and with a somewhat-centrally curated set of scraper "recipes" if you will. Basically a community curated/updated set of scraper logic per site (yes some trust is required) that essentially provides JSON data and/or APIs based on the site. Even just a neutered HTML equivalent of sites (e.g. amp w/out the Google and ads stuff) would be good.

Since it is all client side, it can be dubbed a "browser" not a "scraper" and one might hope popularity is high enough that active blocking of it is blatantly user hostile. Granted one hopes that, like EasyList and uBO and others have shown, the community can outpace site owners. Not appearing headless (tunneling captchas, literal mousemove events in pseudo-random human-like ways, etc) should be doable.

It's something I have thought about and once dubbed "recapitate" (https://github.com/cretz/software-ideas/issues/82) and plan to revisit. I have seen many versions of this attempted. We need to encourage shared data extraction tools.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#44

Post by awrmc »

userbinator wrote: post #38
pjerem wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I think they are, also, just for making fun of some brands. Because, also a fun fact : this project changed its name recently, it was called Weboob before: https://weboob.org

I remember weboob, and all the amusing names of the various pieces. Unfortunate that the (French) humour was killed by political correctness.

Are you suggesting "political correctness" is the only reason someone might be discouraged from installing a program named after toilet humor and juvenile references to specific parts of the anatomy? I've let my kids watch plenty of children's movies with fart jokes in them, but I still don't want to hear more of that when I'm trying to use a tool to access a banking service. It seems there's even still a banking module with a crude poop icon: https://woob.tech/applications/bank.html

Doesn't really inspire confidence in their professionalism or trustworthiness with handling financial transactions, if you ask me.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#46

Post by vmception »

Reading the linked site and some of the discussion, I highly recommend finding your nearest Chinese friend or person and getting authorized on Wechat. Its a whole parallel other internet! Kinda similar to how a private set of Facebook pages are otherwise inaccessible with an account, except in a parellel reality where people use them for all business and have no other internet presence.

Yes, as a user another government gets to read your posts, but I mean yet another.

To get on, I literally just knocked on a few doors in San Francisco and got authorized, so many people here can too. You could probably do it at a park.

Note: Hong Kong citizens cannot do it for US citizens even I was trying. Has to be a mainland Chinese person.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#47

Post by vorpalhex »

vmception wrote: post #46

Reading the linked site and some of the discussion, I highly recommend finding your nearest Chinese friend or person and getting authorized on Wechat. Its a whole parallel other internet! Kinda similar to how a private set of Facebook pages are otherwise inaccessible with an account, except in a parellel reality where people use them for all business and have no other internet presence. Yes, as a user another governm…

Weibo is a heavily censored and manipulated platform. The CCP uses it to track dissidents abroad.

Do not install or operate on any trusted device. Do not connect to your home network. Do not store personal details on your weibo device. Do not ever send sensitive information or talk to real contacts on Weibo.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#48

Post by nope96 »

vmception wrote: post #46

Reading the linked site and some of the discussion, I highly recommend finding your nearest Chinese friend or person and getting authorized on Wechat. Its a whole parallel other internet! Kinda similar to how a private set of Facebook pages are otherwise inaccessible with an account, except in a parellel reality where people use them for all business and have no other internet presence. Yes, as a user another governm…

Wouldn't a person need to understand Chinese? or is wechat English?

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#49

Post by Qub3d »

mxuribe wrote: post #40
pavlov wrote: post #23

It's like a peek at an alternative Internet where Gopher won instead of WWW.

There has been a desire to go back to older days where text was more prevalent, and so Gemini has begin and is gaining popularity - though I'm sure very slowly. See: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Also, separately (though i wouild not be surprised if frequented by same/similar folks who have interets in Gemini), there is also the tildeverse...again, more text-heavy environments. See: https://tildeverse.org/ And, a…

The tildeverse looks pretty cool, but why does it redirect me to a Rick Roll on Firefox?

I can see the normal site just fine on Lynx browser (maybe that's the point?)

Edit: ah, I see, they're doing a JWZ and redirecting based on referral, but going a step further and setting a cookie. Cute, but also terribly immature.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#50

Post by vmception »

nope96 wrote: post #48
vmception wrote: post #46

Reading the linked site and some of the discussion, I highly recommend finding your nearest Chinese friend or person and getting authorized on Wechat. Its a whole parallel other internet! Kinda similar to how a private set of Facebook pages are otherwise inaccessible with an account, except in a parellel reality where people use them for all business and have no other internet presence. Yes, as a user another governm…

Wouldn't a person need to understand Chinese? or is wechat English?

The settings will be in English and there are pages and chat rooms you can find. It is mostly Mandarin though. If you are in any particular niche you might be able to follow since the memes and reactions are familiar. You can also chat with other people in English if they know it, some of your friends probably already uploaded your contact info there so when you make an account you’ll be connected with them even if you dont share access to your contacts - just like how Facebook and most other social apps work.
Post reply on HN