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The 49MB web page

thatshubham.com

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Re: The 49MB web page

#171

Post by username223 »

hilbert42 wrote: post #11

These days the NYT is in a race to the bottom. I no longer even bother to bypass ads let alone read the news stories because of its page bloat and other annoyances. It's just not worth the effort. Surely news outlets like the NYT must realize that savvy web surfers like yours truly when encountering "difficult" news sites—those behind firewalls and or with megabytes of JavaScript bloat—will just go elsewhere or load…

The NYT is comically bad. Most of their (paywalled) articles include the full text in a JSON blob, and that text is typically 2-4% of the HTML. Most of the other 96-98% is ads and tracking. If you allow those to do their thing, you're looking at probably two orders of magnitude more overhead.

Re: The 49MB web page

#172

Post by FabHK »

6510 wrote: post #168
KronisLV wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once spent around an hour optimizing a feature because it felt slow - turns out that the slower simulated connection had just stayed enabled after a restart (can’t remember if it was just the browser or the OS, but I previously needed it and then later just forgot to turn it off). Good times, useful feature though!

I wonder if that works beneficial on old computers that freeze up when you try load the GB js ad-auction circus news circus website. I want to browse loaded pages while the new tabs load. If the client just hangs for 2 min it gets boring fast.

Datapoint: During the pandemic, I had to use an old 2004 Powerbook G4 12" (256 MB RAM, OS X Leopard). Everything sort of worked and was even reasonably snappy. But open one website, and the machine went down. Unusable. Even if, indeed, I just wanted to read or look up a few kB of text. So painful.

Re: The 49MB web page

#173

Post by socalgal2 »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #20

Our developers managed to run around 750MB per website open once. They have put in ticket with ops that the server is slow and could we look at it. So we looked. Every single video on a page with long video list pre-loaded a part of it. The single reason the site didn't ran like shit for them is coz office had direct fiber to out datacenter few blocks away. We really shouldn't allow web developers more than 128kbit o…

this is a general problem with lots of development. Network, Memory, GPU Speed. Designer / Engineer is on a modern Mac with 16-64 gig of ram and fast internet. They never try how their code/design works on some low end Intel UHD 630 or whatever. Lots of developers making 8-13 layer blob backgrounds that runs at 60 for 120fps on their modern mac but at 5-10fps on the average person's PC because of 15x overdraw.

Re: The 49MB web page

#174

Post by hax0ron3 »

ray023 wrote: post #9

I think it's a GOOD thing, actually. Because all these publications a dying anyway. And even if your filter out all the ad and surveillance trash, you are left with trash propaganda and brain rot content. Like why even make the effort of filtering out the actual text from some "journalist" from these propaganda outlets. It's not even worth it. If people tune out only because how horrible the sites are, good.

I think that unless one is well-connected or is willing to pay significant money, time, and/or effort to obtain high-quality information, one will still generally get more accurate information about the world by reading between the lines of the propaganda than one would by not reading the propaganda at all.

Re: The 49MB web page

#175

Post by alanning »

FabHK wrote: post #172
6510 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that works beneficial on old computers that freeze up when you try load the GB js ad-auction circus news circus website. I want to browse loaded pages while the new tabs load. If the client just hangs for 2 min it gets boring fast.

Datapoint: During the pandemic, I had to use an old 2004 Powerbook G4 12" (256 MB RAM, OS X Leopard). Everything sort of worked and was even reasonably snappy. But open one website, and the machine went down. Unusable. Even if, indeed, I just wanted to read or look up a few kB of text. So painful.

One tool I've found useful in low-power/low-bandwidth situations is the Lynx web browser [1]. Used to be installed by default in most Linux distributions but I think that's probably not the case anymore. Wikipedia says its also available on OSX and Windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)

Re: The 49MB web page

#176

Post by gzread »

aprentic wrote: post #109
Aurornis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely news outlets like the NYT must realize that savvy web surfers like yours truly when encountering "difficult" news sites—those behind firewalls and or with megabytes of JavaScript bloat—will just go elsewhere or load pages without JavaScript. They know this. They also know that web surfers like you would never actually buy a subscription and you have an ad blocker running to deny any revenue generation opport…

I'm about to go full cycle. For a while it looked like companies were going to offer a good product at a fair price. I started getting a few subscriptions to various services. Then all of those services got enshitefied. I got ads in paid accounts, slow loads, obvious data mining, etc. Paying for services now often offers a degraded experience relative to less legitimate methods of acces.

What is your most hated service? There must be people here looking for a new product to create.

Re: The 49MB web page

#177

Post by mattnewton »

KronisLV wrote: post #86
vunderba wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PSA for those who aren’t aware: Chromium/Firefox-based browsers have a Network tab in the developer tools where you can dial down your bandwidth to simulate a slower 3G or 4G connection. Combined with CPU throttling, it's a decent sanity check to see how well your site will perform on more modest setups.

I once spent around an hour optimizing a feature because it felt slow - turns out that the slower simulated connection had just stayed enabled after a restart (can’t remember if it was just the browser or the OS, but I previously needed it and then later just forgot to turn it off). Good times, useful feature though!

sounds like the MacOS network utility. I've been bit by leaving it on after testing ios apps :D

Re: The 49MB web page

#178

Post by rho_soul_kg_m3 »

snickerer wrote: post #107

Allowing scripting on websites (in the mid-90s) was a completely wrong decision. And an outrage. Programs are downloaded to my computer and executed without me being able to review them first—or rely on audits by people I trust. That’s completely unacceptable; it’s fundamentally flawed. Of course, you disable scripts on websites. But there are sites that are so broken that they no longer work properly, since the deve…

Why can't MY browser send some random JS to THEIR website? If it's safe for me to run some stranger's code, should it be safe for strangers to run my code?

Re: The 49MB web page

#179

Post by hibikir »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #20

Our developers managed to run around 750MB per website open once. They have put in ticket with ops that the server is slow and could we look at it. So we looked. Every single video on a page with long video list pre-loaded a part of it. The single reason the site didn't ran like shit for them is coz office had direct fiber to out datacenter few blocks away. We really shouldn't allow web developers more than 128kbit o…

You don't even need video for this: I once worked for a company that put a carousel with everything in the product line, and every element was just pointing to the high resolution photography assets: The one that maybe would be useful for full page print media ads. 6000x4000 pngs. It worked fine in the office, they said. Add another nice background that size, a few more to have on the sides as you scroll down...

I was asked to look at the site when it was already live, and some VP of the parent company decided to visit the site from their phone at home.

Re: The 49MB web page

#180

Post by jszymborski »

RajT88 wrote: post #160
keane wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to beat https://lite.cnn.com and https://text.npr.org (I imagine their own employees likely use these as well) or https://newsminimalist.com

Love both of them. CNN has become a bit "left-leaning Fox News" for my taste, though. If Al Jazeera or BBC had a similar text only site, that would be best. I really love the different perspectives. I mostly use brutalist.report to find the articles, then deal with them on a case by case basis.

> CNN has become a bit "left-leaning Fox News" for my taste, though.

Don't worry, it'll be just like the real Fox news after the Paramount merger.

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