Text-only CNN • Hacker News Board

Re: Text-only CNN

#221

Post by AndrewCHM » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

dom0 wrote: post #130

jordache wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF? why any JS at all for something that's pure content?

Because this site is clearly in need of 250 KB surveillance JavaScript. So even this "plain text" site still transfers ~98 % bloat and just ~2 % content.

transfer is different from filesize

its more around 90% JS, 10% content

After the first page load (with scripts cached) its around 87% content (unfortunately they don't seem to be caching CSS)

Re: Text-only CNN

#222

Post by driverdan » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

Osiris wrote: post #19

The absolute worst thing about cnn.com is the auto-playing videos. I've been in quiet places and clicked a CNN news link only to have a video start blasting on the speakers. It's not only annoying but a huge waste of mobile bandwidth. Now I just need an extension that rewrites all CNN urls to this site.

I use uBlock Origin's element blocker to block these terrible news autoplay videos. I don't understand why news sites love them so much.

Re: Text-only CNN

#223

Post by sotojuan » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 1:49 PM UTC

thunfisch wrote: post #156

This is what the world needs. Seriously, I hate this trend to bloat up websites with the rage of a thousand suns. There is absolutely no value, but it increases bandwith usage, load times and CPU/RAM usage. News websites having "fancy, modern" websites actually make me think less of them. Fuck this web-bloat shit. The web is broken.

I wonder how many HN readers would be unemployed if the world went this way. It's pretty interesting to think that a good chunk of the people you comment with are the ones coding bloated websites (most likely not because they want to!).

Re: Text-only CNN

#224

Post by chrissnell » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 1:52 PM UTC

aiyodev wrote: post #193

jackschultz wrote: post #189

Someone pointed out below, but in a comment way down in the thread, but CNN is actually who's behind this: https://twitter.com/CNN/status/906821174805630976 I'm not sure if the reason behind this is because of possible weak phone connections or that the hurricane is a good way to promote the text only site, but either way, huge shoutout to CNN for going forward with this themselves. I've thought for a while about scr…

This is what CNN looked like on 9/11: http://i.imgur.com/tqnVwp6.jpg All the major sites switched to something like this when the internet slowed to a halt. I assume they've always had a minimal version ready in case something like it happens again.

I was working at AOL Time Warner on 9/11 and our team helped out the CNN team to keep that site online. It was a crazy experience. I recall that Sun Microsystems had provisioned a huge datacenter room full of gear for another AOL project as a sort of "try before you buy" deal. We spent the afternoon kickstarting those machines and bootstrapping them as CNN content servers. It was a huge struggle just to keep everything online, given the massive surge in traffic that we were seeing. America had never seen an event like this since Pearl Harbor and most people didn't know what to do besides standing in front of a TV or--if you were at work--refreshing CNN all day. The idea of infra capacity to handle a news event of this magnitude wasn't something that had even been considered prior to 9/11.

Re: Text-only CNN

#225

Post by amptorn » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 1:55 PM UTC

MikkoFinell wrote: post #131

buro9 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame that thin.npr.org does not have HTTPS

Why do you need to encrypt your connection to that site? No sensitive info sent.

It's nobody's business what stories I read.

Re: Text-only CNN

#226

Post by bradleyankrom » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

mattwoodnyc wrote: post #217

thunfisch wrote: post #156

This is what the world needs. Seriously, I hate this trend to bloat up websites with the rage of a thousand suns. There is absolutely no value, but it increases bandwith usage, load times and CPU/RAM usage. News websites having "fancy, modern" websites actually make me think less of them. Fuck this web-bloat shit. The web is broken.

This format is ideal in this context, but the web is far larger than a digital ticker tape dispenser. Some publishers are seeking to create a modern version of Life magazine. What do imagine that would look like? How about National Geographic? I love, for example, what the teams at The New York Times are doing to enhance stories with creative uses of the modern web. The web is not broken, it’s simply revealing that t…

Agree that some sites are producing some really high-quality work leveraging the modern web. The problem, for me, is that many sites think of everything as _content_ that must be flashy (but hopefully not Flash-y). If I click to read an article about the devastation in Barbuda, I don't necessarily need the full production of related content to be thrown in my face along with the text that I really want to read.

Re: Text-only CNN

#227

Post by knz » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 2:02 PM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #200

aiyodev wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what CNN looked like on 9/11: http://i.imgur.com/tqnVwp6.jpg All the major sites switched to something like this when the internet slowed to a halt. I assume they've always had a minimal version ready in case something like it happens again.

I'd pay $5/month for a reputable news site to provide this all year long.

http://www.npr.org ?

It's not text only but it's considerably more minimal than most news websites, loads almost instantly, doesn't have auto play content, and is considered a reputable source.

The BBC used to be similar but their international website is awful now (slow to load, more adverts, and less emphasis on actual news).

Re: Text-only CNN

#228

Post by Mariehane » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #133

SubiculumCode wrote: post #41

When Google first came out and we tried it there were two things we liked about it. The first: Good search results. Yeah everyone knows that right. But young people today might have forgotten the second reason we liked Google search back then: The Second: A clean page with a single logo and search field. It loaded quick. There were no banners everywhere, no bs. HackerNews has that feel. It is clean, information dense…

The Swedish public broadcaster still keeps their Teletext[0] service running. One of the cleanest way to get your news (especially on a TV where load times are zero). You can access it on the web as well https://www.svt.se/svttext/web/pages/100.html [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

Might as well drop in the danish one here: http://ttv.tv2.dk/

Re: Text-only CNN

#229

Post by jccalhoun » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 2:07 PM UTC

thunfisch wrote: post #156

This is what the world needs. Seriously, I hate this trend to bloat up websites with the rage of a thousand suns. There is absolutely no value, but it increases bandwith usage, load times and CPU/RAM usage. News websites having "fancy, modern" websites actually make me think less of them. Fuck this web-bloat shit. The web is broken.

I think there is a happy medium. For my tastes, I think the text-only cnn is too bare. I don't need pictures but I could use a one or two sentence summary of the stories to give me more of an idea whether I want to read the whole thing or not.

Re: Text-only CNN

#230

Post by JetSpiegel » Sun, Sep 10, 2017, 2:10 PM UTC

sogen wrote: post #52

midnitewarrior wrote: post #37

...and the World Wide Web goes full circle and mimics the service it replaced. #gopher2017

a 16GB RAM machine to run something that ran on 16MB

So that you can open 1024 pages before swapping to disk.

People asked for hundreds of open tabs, they got it.