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98% isn't much

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Re: 98% isn't much

#341

Post by benj111 »

sandspar wrote: post #274
dataviz1000 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former chef here (2 Michelin starred restaurants). 5% is beyond plenty; it is awesome! > works for 98% of the population, that means that it won’t work for ~150 million people If I can only cook for 70 people a night, I most likely can't serve the ~150 million people who do not have access to modern browsers. And, those who do have access to those browsers and choose not use those browsers likely will not enjoy my fo…

Michelin, yachts... How'd you find your way to an obscure tech forum like HackerNews?

Because they like tech? Are now working in tech?

Both fields combine creativity with technical know how. It wouldn't surprise me if there were loads of wood and metal workers here too.

Re: 98% isn't much

#342

Post by autoexec »

drdeca wrote: post #232
anoneng wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes to show you’ve never been anywhere near the actual development cycle of a real-world front-end web application. “So, there is a baseline "target subset of HTML/CSS" that gives you 100% coverage.” Oh really? Which subset? Which “HTML/CSS?” And 100%? Absolutely laughable.

Do you know any browsers which don’t support https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ (if you remove the google traffic tracking js that’s iirc tacked on at the end of the page (or maybe I’m thinking of better mfing website (which adds a tiny bit of css)? Idr.)) ? I get that asking a commercial website to be as basic/supported as that website is a big ask. I don’t think the other commenter was saying that such websites shou…

> I get that asking a commercial website to be as basic/supported as that website is a big ask.

The trick isn't to get a commercial website to accept a site that basic, it's to get the website to test for capabilities and if it can't confirm them serve only the basic version. Websites should be every bit as fancy and obnoxious as they want as long as they fail gracefully.

Re: 98% isn't much

#343

Post by autoexec »

itake wrote: post #50
wccrawford wrote: post #25

Alternatively, 98% is plenty . If your business plan requires you to capitalize on more than 98% of the market, it's already a failure. It'll never happen. As always, it's an "it depends" situation. If your userbase is largely luddites, then maybe you need to support 10+ year old browsers that can't be updated. Otherwise, you can probably just worry about people who are using computers new enough to actually update t…

Unfortunately some business are critical where is not an option or very expensive for someone to not use it. For example, Uber, a Visa immigration website, low cost air carrier booking site, etc.

uber's website already requires JS to book a ride. Fortunately taxi companies still exist and can just be called by phone.

Re: 98% isn't much

#344

Post by autoexec »

ben_w wrote: post #156
londons_explore wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people with old android phones with no free disk space using ancient browsers. There are plenty of people still using windows 10 with updates turned off or wedged for whatever reason. These people just use the sites that work. They aren't computer experts, and might not even realise why half the internet doesn't work - they just think that's the way things are.

While I agree with your general gist and definitely your final paragraph, > There are plenty of people with old android phones with no free disk space using ancient browsers. How many people have 10 year old phones? I've got an 8 year old iPhone XR which I keep around as a backup/travel device because it's not worth selling, and the battery is… not happy even in airplane mode. For me to have a 10 year old mobile brow…

I have a 10 year old cell phone that still gets regular use. Works just fine for things like phone calls, texts, youtube (newpipe), termux, and note taking. Original battery isn't great at this point, but a new one is maybe $15. Zero reason to replace it.

Re: 98% isn't much

#345

Post by autoexec »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #135
MatekCopatek wrote: post #32

While I agree with the general sentiment, the problem here isn't developers not being familiar with statistics, it's the simple fact all of this is profit driven most of the time. I tried to purchase tickets for an event last week. I had to go through Ticketmaster as it was the only official way. They forced me to verify my account using a phone number, but whoever they were using for messages wasn't able to deliver…

I think when you say “profit motivated” the underlying principle is actually utilitarianism; doing the most good for the most people, for which profit Is merely an imperfect proxy.

“profit motivated” means taking as much as possible while giving as little as possible in return. The ideal situation for a profit motivated company would be collecting all of the money people have and delivering nothing. Thieves are also profit motivated.

Re: 98% isn't much

#346

Post by mfru »

zamadatix wrote: post #271
rvba wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will Microsoft stop doing Windows 10 security updates? I have a 10 year old laptop with 32GB of RAM, GTX 970 6GB and an SSD. For many things it is better than any 16GB work issued laptop (that often come with integrated cards - so you wont be able to run any AI model on them). Although the old ssd is starting to show its age (perhaps a full system reinstall would solve this, other option is to get a new one). Th…

> When will Microsoft stop doing Windows 10 security updates? Last October, unless you are on an LTS type version - in which case somewhere between 2028-2032 (depending on the exact version). Edge will still update until at least 2028 even though the OS stopped receiving updates... though I'm not sure I would wish either of those usage scenarios on someone :). > The old laptop does not have UEFI so it could not get t…

You can update Win 10 to Win 11 IoT version for unsupported devices, by using something like massgrave

Re: 98% isn't much

#347

Post by nchmy »

bilkow wrote: post #278
nchmy wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misinterpreting the stats. Those are not "updated" - they're from Dec 1, 2025 and are the latest that are available from Android Studio (I just checked again). If you add up the distribution inclusive of Android 9 (which is what I was trying to refer to, perhaps unsuccessfully), it is 9.2%. That corresponds with the 90.7% Cumulative Distribution for Android 10 If you're arguing that it is Google who is droppin…

Ah you're right! You were actually very clear by saying Android 9 or below, but I misinterpreted while multitasking here, sorry for that. > If you're arguing that it is Google who is dropping support/making people have insecure browsers, we're in agreement. As with Safari (or at least those at Apple who control/fund Safari), the Android team is very anti-Web/Chrome. Lots has been written about all of that at https://…

Yeah it's the best web-focused blog on the web. As such, it regularly argues that the focus and battleground must be for browser access to device apis etc... Unfortunately the world is distracted by alternative native app stores.

I similarly don't think that bootloader unlocking and installing custom OSes is the solution - sure, would be nice. But it only helps like 1 in 10000 users, whereas a powerful web platform helps 100% of people.

Re: 98% isn't much

#348

Post by jeremyjh »

wccrawford wrote: post #25

Alternatively, 98% is plenty . If your business plan requires you to capitalize on more than 98% of the market, it's already a failure. It'll never happen. As always, it's an "it depends" situation. If your userbase is largely luddites, then maybe you need to support 10+ year old browsers that can't be updated. Otherwise, you can probably just worry about people who are using computers new enough to actually update t…

Browsers have been good enough for pretty much every reasonable purpose for more than 10 years, and compatibility has been really good for that long as well. Is it really challenging or costly to support a feature set that old? In 2017 an app I built worked on Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge without any effort or testing other than on Chrome. It still supports all those. At that time, there were probably more than 2% IE users on the general internet but this was B2B.

Just a couple of up-front choices regarding css frameworks and polyfill libraries were all that was required to do that.

I'm open to believing it could be costly for some projects, but I'm more inclined to believe its mostly chasing FOTM, ignorance and laziness that leads to < 98% support.

Re: 98% isn't much

#349

Post by stefan_lec »

I’m a bit skeptical of the accuracy of the traffic data claimed in this article, 30% of users not being able to use baseline widely available features is a suspiciously large number. Unless this is a very unique set of users, I doubt that it is accurate. Maybe bot traffic messing up the data?

For context, baseline widely available requires that your browser have updated at some point in 2023, which happens automatically for almost all users. For mobile devices, any device that supports Android >= 7.0 or iOS >= 17 would meet this requirement. Chrome even supported Windows 7 through Feb 2023, too.

According to this: https://www.digitalapplied.com/blog/mobile-os-market-share-2...

* iOS >= 17.0 covers 95% of global active iOS devices

* Android >= 7.0 covers at least 99% of global active Android devices

It seems reasonable to me to drop support for Windows XP, IE, and phones that are a decade or more old (iPhone 8, Galaxy S5). And if you claim to be supporting stuff that old, but you don’t test your site on it, you’re just kidding yourself.

You have to draw the line somewhere.

Re: 98% isn't much

#350

Post by abustamam »

phailhaus wrote: post #115

The broader point is that percentages can be misleading, and are often because of that. It makes things sound better. But usually, the more accurate thing to do is use odds-notation ("1 in 50" instead of 98%). Percentages have a kind of singularity at the edges, where small numerical changes have massive real effects. Going from a success rate of 98% to 99% doesn't sound like much, but that's failing 1 in 50 vs 1 in…

Tangentially, but 5-day vs 4-day workweek is somewhat similar. You've not only reduced your working days by 20%, but you've also increased your days off by 50%.
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