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

PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

stuartbreckenridge.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 417 posts

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#91

Post by tormeh »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
qingcharles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a lot of people at the bottom end of society in the USA. They are given government provided phones they can use so they have access to Google Maps, email, job search apps etc. These phones come with 3GB of regular data per month. After that they drop down to 2G speed, but not in a way that will allow anything to actually load. Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste.

> Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste. If someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose. It would be great if they got higher days caps, though, because let’s be realistic in acknowledging that they’re not only going to use it for Google Maps, email, and job search apps.

Email and chat apps will work, but everything else will slow to a crawl at best and time out at worst.

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#92

Post by acheron »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #32

The person who wrote the article and the people in charge of the site are different.

The writer chose to write for PC Gamer and sign their name publicly to an article on the site. You don’t get to just say “oh, wasn’t my decision, tee hee” when it’s your name on the article.

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#93

Post by reaperducer »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
qingcharles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a lot of people at the bottom end of society in the USA. They are given government provided phones they can use so they have access to Google Maps, email, job search apps etc. These phones come with 3GB of regular data per month. After that they drop down to 2G speed, but not in a way that will allow anything to actually load. Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste.

> Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste. If someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose. It would be great if they got higher days caps, though, because let’s be realistic in acknowledging that they’re not only going to use it for Google Maps, email, and job search apps.

If someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose.

Guess how I know you've never actually tried this.

Part of my job is testing the web sites I build in the terrible real-world conditions where our customers are. Places like machine rooms, deep basements, and small towns with only municipal or small-carrier 3G cell service. (In spite of what HN believes, there are plenty of places in America with 3G or even zero cell service.)

2G speeds will not work. The device or one of the essential thousands of processes in it will time out because they were designed by tech bubble tech bros who never use their apps in the real world.

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#94

Post by OptionOfT »

MBCook wrote: post #17

The title buried the lede. > In the five minutes since I started writing this post the website has downloaded almost half a gigabyte of new ads. I’m guessing this is due to autoplaying videos. *500 MB* in 5 minutes. 37 MB is petite compared to that.

It is absolutely disgusting that even today it is impossible to stop video autoplay on Safari on iOS. I can't image the data wasted.

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#95

Post by m0llusk »

mnkyprskbd wrote: post #78

At this point, if you browse the internet without an adblock; it is on YOU.

When sites show me a bunch of ads and slow my machine with tracking then I just close the window. They don't want me to read their articles anyway. When a company shows you who they are ...

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#96

Post by doubled112 »

thevinter wrote: post #79
qingcharles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with a lot of people at the bottom end of society in the USA. They are given government provided phones they can use so they have access to Google Maps, email, job search apps etc. These phones come with 3GB of regular data per month. After that they drop down to 2G speed, but not in a way that will allow anything to actually load. Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste.

I lived for months with a 4GB roaming plan. Given, I was not using it at home since I had a wifi connection, but I rarely came close to using all my data unless I was watching YT videos when traveling or something. I share your sentiment and I agree we should be more mindful of people with metered/slow connections, but the last statement feels blown out of proportion.

I had a 200MB data plan until ~ 2018.

I had data turned off most of the time. At home and in the office I had WiFi. Loaded the map before I left home.

Most other places I was too busy doing whatever I was doing to use a phone. Since upgrading, I guess I can look products up in stores now. That's about it.

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#98

Post by reaperducer »

abustamam wrote: post #70
bethekidyouwant wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 4g of data and never go over. I use it for maps, email even hn.

Do you have a stable internet connection that is not your phone data plan? Many people in the lower economic class don't have that and their 3gb data plan may be the only 3gb they can use for the internet in any given month.

Many people in the lower economic class don't have that and their 3gb data plan may be the only 3gb they can use for the internet in any given month.

And poor people often share one phone for an entire family, or even one phone among two or three neighboring households. These are a lot of the customers I serve, and it has a lot of unique challenges around accounts, privacy, and yes data use.

HN has no idea was poverty looks like.

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#99

Post by simonw »

simonw wrote: post #19

This is so upsetting. No wonder people spend more time in mobile apps than they do using the mobile web - the default web experience on so many sites is terrible .

I had Claude Code profile the page (using headless Chrome) to see what was going on, here's the resulting report: https://github.com/simonw/research/blob/main/pcgamer-audit/R...

Re: PC Gamer recommends RSS readers in a 37mb article that just keeps downloading

#100

Post by pkaye »

qingcharles wrote: post #60
timpera wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading 500 MB in 5 minutes in the background of a random article is really disrespectful to readers on low-end devices or metered data plans (and these two groups are often the same people!). What a waste of ressources.

I've worked with a lot of people at the bottom end of society in the USA. They are given government provided phones they can use so they have access to Google Maps, email, job search apps etc. These phones come with 3GB of regular data per month. After that they drop down to 2G speed, but not in a way that will allow anything to actually load. Three days into the month these phones are just ewaste.

Our Comcast plan has a monthly data usage of 1.2TB. We rarely go over 600GB in any month but month we nearly hit the limit. I was looking through the router logs to see what was going on and it turned out that somehow one particular Instagram video my spouse was watching would consume huge amounts of bandwidth when the channel was live streaming!
Post reply on HN