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The "Cheap" Web

potato.cheap

191–200 of 230 posts

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly That's exactly where the hate comes from: I don't want you, the web designer, to have the power to create experiences, because you (collectively) use that power to force experiences on me that I don't want to have.

How is that different from native apps. I'd take the imposition of a website over the imposition to download a mobile app anytime

That's actually a matter of taste: in many cases I prefer desktop applications instead.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, that decision to run Javascript without a prompt was probably a huge step forward for the security of most users. The 'do you trust this' model of security doesn't work well in practice once you can download programs from the internet - there's too much stuff you need to or want to trust to get on with things, and even if it's not actively malicious, it may be vulnerable. Because Javascript can run in the…

This argument makes sense for the security angle. At least as it pertains to getting malware on your local machine. But what about all of the "not security" but bad things that happen because we allow people to run code we have no choice over on our computer. The attention tracking features marked as tools to understand user intents are exfiltrating information from you perhaps when you don't expect. Are you happy fo…

That makes sense. But I think that's a money problem, not a technology problem - if the money was sloshing around desktop applications, I think we'd get a lot of locked down desktop applications tracking us. We kind of have that on mobile, indeed. Sometimes there are nice community built alternatives, but not that often.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix Homeservers like Synapse can run on anything now, and there is conduit which should be lighter too.

Matrix is not lightweight or simple.

Matrix shifts much of the burden to the server so that clients can be simpler (except for e2ee, which has to be done clientside).

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#194
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the problem is everyone and their mother are "creating experiences" instead of giving me the info I'm actually looking for...

Honestly, I don't understand what you're referring to: are you intentionally visiting websites "you hate" ? I mean, there are a lot of good websites out of here that aren't proposing an experience and that allows you to read text properly, no ?

When I search for something I visit whatever I can find, no? Until I find what I'm looking for.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#195

> If you are spending less than $1 per hour on your entertainment (podcasts, videos, articles, games, books, etc.), consider finding ways to support creators and the infrastructure that supports them. So I should send them extra money because I keep using it? I bought the discography of a band (0.2665 € / hour according to last.fm so far, obviously falling), should I now set up a monthly donation just because I keep…

According to this blog, I owe Trent Reznor hundreds of dollars for a second hand Nine Inch Nails CD I got for $5

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#196
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard markdown referred to as unnecessarily complex before. Genuinely curious, what features / complexity would you strip out?

I’d prefer everything to have the same syntax, like in HTML (or I should better say XML). When every feature has different syntax, like in Markdown, it makes parsers much larger and leads to an extreme amount of edge cases that every parser has to handle. For example, when you see an asterisk, you have to decide whether it denotes italics, bold or a bulleted list, which might not be trivial. Generating correct Markdo…

Yeah, I guess that's a really good point. I've never thought much about it before, but you're right that the simplicity of markdown is probably more from the point of view of the human writer/reader, and is really just passing the complexity down to the parser.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#197
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix is not lightweight or simple.

Matrix shifts much of the burden to the server so that clients can be simpler (except for e2ee, which has to be done clientside).

Which if true is still a burden that prevents simple self-hosting. You can (& I did briefly) install an XMPP server on a 10-year-old smart phone with postmarketOS on your network & have a reasonable experience.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#198

I've had this idea for something in between Gemini and the modern web that's essentially supposed to capture how the web was in the late 90s/early 00s. Basically just HTML/CSS with GET and POST, no scripting at all. I don't have the expertise to write this, unfortunately.

That's literally just "writing basic HTML and not using Javascript."

You can still totally just do that, no one is stopping you.

But even if you went the whole Gemini route and published a custom protocol to be explicitly incompatable with HTTP and a spec supporting only early HTML, you still wouldn't be able to capture the early web, because it isn't the 1990s anymore.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#199

This is the standard tirade^W manifesto about how web users forced corporations to ruin the Web. Oh no. Why did you patron Walmart when you could have gone to your local mom&pops. That but for the Web. Petite bourgeoisie sentiment.

What the hell does "petite bourgeoisie sentiment" even mean?

A sentiment coming from the petite bourgeoisie or those of that viewpoint.

Re: The "Cheap" Web

#200
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from native apps. I'd take the imposition of a website over the imposition to download a mobile app anytime

That's actually a matter of taste: in many cases I prefer desktop applications instead.

Do you sandbox them? I wouldn't trust random apps running on my PC
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