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The 49MB web page

thatshubham.com

271–280 of 389 posts

Re: The 49MB web page

#271

Every time some site or person tries to make me feel bad for using AdGuard DNS, ad blockers etc. I read an article like this and I feel fine. I see three options: 1. Show me reasonable ads and I will disable ad blocking 2. Do the crap described in this article and don't complain when I arm myself against it 3. Do a hard paywall and no ads; force me to pay to see your content

It's my device. I decide what I download, execute and display on my device. A website is free to offer me to download an ad and I am free to decline that offer. Demanding me to download anything on my device or even worse execute someone else's programs [JS] and claiming that I have a moral obligation to do so is deeply creepy.

Re: The 49MB web page

#272

Author here. Woke up in today to see this on the front page, thank you to the person who submitted it! Initially, my biggest fear was the HN "Hug of Death" taking it down. Happily, Cloudflare's edge caching absorbed 19.24 GB of bandwidth in a few hours with a 98.5% cache hit ratio, so the origin server barely noticed. The discussions here about DNS-level blocking and Pi-hole are spot on. It's interesting that the bur…

I have done minor experiments with disabling javascript, it works most publications are far more readable with javascript disabled, you miss carousels and some interactive elements but overall a much better experience.

Re: The 49MB web page

#273

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…

If scripting wasn't allowed, we'd probably all have a different browser that allowed it - probably wrapped in a Flash wrapper.

Re: The 49MB web page

#274

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…

> 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…

> They know this. They also know that web surfers like you would never actually buy a subscription ..

That's not true I had a subscription for multiple years. I canceled it because they

A. Kept trying to show me bullshit ads, B. The overall deterioration of the quality of the content especially the opinion section.

Re: The 49MB web page

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does playing fair mean in this context? It would be one thing if you were a paid subscriber complaining that even paying sucks so you left, but it sounds like you’re not.

I am a paid subscriber to NYT and have been reading it paper / internet for 30+ years. It is an Enshittification winner in terms tracking and click bait. It doesn't feel like a serious news outlet anymore, feels like Huff Post or similar.

Yes this, I was a subscriber for about a decade even back then an adblocker was required for sane reading even with a subscription. I cant imagine what it looks like without an adblocker these days.

Re: The 49MB web page

#278

It would be less hypocritical if that critique of the situation wasn't posted on a website that itself loads unnecessary 3rd party resources (e.g. cloudflare insights). Luckily I use a proper content blocker (uBlock Origin in hard mode).

Even with ad blocking, it's transferring over 200KB of data, half of which is to load a couple of fonts. Not terrible but the basic HTML is only 17KB.

Re: The 49MB web page

#280

> I don't know where this fascination with getting everyone to download your app comes from. Apps don't have adblockers.

Most in-app Ads can be blocked with simply changing your dns.

And most people don't even use adblocker when browsing normal site. I kind of had to tech my surrounding people to use adblocker.

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