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

stuartbreckenridge.net

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

#371

Post by notepad0x90 »

PhilippGille wrote: post #43
notepad0x90 wrote: post #26

we need some sort of a universal crowd-sourced site rating system. Things like user experience, scamminess, user-hostility, site ownership-affiliations,etc.. all opt-in by users of course, you setup the criteria that is important to you and the browser displays different ratings or blocks certain sites (like scammy/fraudulent ones) out right. The reputation providers would also be selectable like search engines. I'd…

On Kagi you can increase/decrease a domain's ranking for your personal search results, and they make the aggregated stats public, showing for example Pinterest as the most blocked site, which matches part of what you're looking for: https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights

I'm hoping/dreaming it would be browser-standard, as a protocol. Kagi would be one of the reputation providers in that scheme.

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

#372

Post by mvdtnz »

neya wrote: post #209
__natty__ wrote: post #147

It's not just "PC Gamer" but people making decisions behind as always. Three first people from their "Meet the Team" page [0]: Tim Clark — Brand Director (@timothydclark), Evan Lahti - Strategic Director (@elahti), Phil Savage — Global Editor-in-Chief (@Octaeder). Hopefully they can see this HN thread and people complains and do "something" about that. [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/meet-the-team/

I have professionally dealt with these types of people in my career (not these exact 3) in similar settings and I can tell you - they don't care. They care only about revenue numbers. You can walk up to them, show them this article and even this HN thread and their first question will be "how does it affect our revenue?" They don't see it as money made through ripping off users without their consent - they think they…

I think this is extremely uncharitable and while there may be people this is true for, it is not at all the general case for people with job titles like "brand director" or "editor in chief". In fact I think it's obnoxious to tar specific named people with such a false generalization.

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

#373

Post by saghm »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #298
navigate8310 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money wasted by the user on a data contract is a gain for the carrier.

That’s a low bar. Like crypto mining for the power company or throwing extra food out at the end of the day is revenue for the trash pickup company!

Agreed, this is almost a textbook example of the Parable of the Broken Window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

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

#374

Post by hn_acc1 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #302
lazide wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won’t be marginalized if we don’t shit on them somehow .

Unless we nut up and ban gambling, there will never be a shortage of broke motherfuckers who should be able to make ends meet with their job but simply never will be able to. You have no idea how badly gambling suppresses a large subset of the working class.

I'm not really affected by it yet (I've been able to resist gambling more than a self-imposed $20 at a time, which I can afford, and one time I realized I wanted to break my limit, I realized it was an important moment to nut up and walk away). But I understand that there are people it's really affecting. So I'm all in favor of "NO more gambling".

But even if that wasn't a thing - the way it's ruined watching sports now, with the constant odds flashing, etc, I'd ban it JUST for that, on top of all the detrimental effects on society.

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

#375

Post by hn_acc1 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #248
strken wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps works okay on slow connections if you download the tiles for the city you're in beforehand (not that non-technical unemployed people should be expected to do that). The worst thing is load balancers with a 10 or 20 second timeout, because there's almost nothing you can do other than use Opera Mini or something.

> Google maps works okay on slow connections if you download the tiles for the city you're in beforehand At that point, why would you use Google Maps at all? Osmand will do the same thing, and requires no connection.

Because Google Maps is all they know? I've been on the web for 30+ years (wrote my own html home page by hand in 1995 while doing my master's) and have just now heard of "Osmand" for maybe the 2nd time in my life. The other being a few months ago. If I haven't heard of it, how would anyone else who isn't technical hear about it?

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

#376

Post by mrguyorama »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #374
mikkupikku wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless we nut up and ban gambling, there will never be a shortage of broke motherfuckers who should be able to make ends meet with their job but simply never will be able to. You have no idea how badly gambling suppresses a large subset of the working class.

I'm not really affected by it yet (I've been able to resist gambling more than a self-imposed $20 at a time, which I can afford, and one time I realized I wanted to break my limit, I realized it was an important moment to nut up and walk away). But I understand that there are people it's really affecting. So I'm all in favor of "NO more gambling". But even if that wasn't a thing - the way it's ruined watching sports…

Which, as a reminder, was the status quo just a decade or so ago.

I don't remember "I can't throw money away on this football play" being a massive society wide problem that needed fixing in 2010, pretty sure everyone could bet with their friends already.

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

#377

Post by arghwhat »

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.

Could also be looping videos - some browsers had bugs whereby looping videos would continously redownload.

I recall some years back having corporate IT ask me why I was downloading terabytes off this weird website called "imgur" that they didn't know about. Realized I had a tab open with a stupid jackie chan mp4 a few seconds long on some background workspace, and that had just kept downloading over and over and over and over...

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

#378

Post by mikkupikku »

mrguyorama wrote: post #376
hn_acc1 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really affected by it yet (I've been able to resist gambling more than a self-imposed $20 at a time, which I can afford, and one time I realized I wanted to break my limit, I realized it was an important moment to nut up and walk away). But I understand that there are people it's really affecting. So I'm all in favor of "NO more gambling". But even if that wasn't a thing - the way it's ruined watching sports…

Which, as a reminder, was the status quo just a decade or so ago. I don't remember "I can't throw money away on this football play" being a massive society wide problem that needed fixing in 2010, pretty sure everyone could bet with their friends already.

What's more, betting with friends is vastly less harmful than betting at casinos (digital or otherwise.) When you bet with friends, your loss is their gain and their loss is your gain, the money more or less sticks around, the community as a whole isn't impoverished by it. But when people are gambling away their days wages playing rigged slot machines on their phone, that money might as well have been set on fire. It goes into the pockets of investors who might as well be on the other side of the planet and in the long run it will never be won back. The community as a whole is impoverished by this kind of gambling.

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

#379

Post by iberator »

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.

2G (EDGE, EDGE+) doesn't allow you to do a job search.

In reality this is like 16kb with speeds similar to 56k modem. No modern JS website works. Ssh, irc works and thats about it. Modern stuff like certificates also slows it down.

I'm talking here about real life - not some emulated 2G in your browser.

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

#380

Post by thaumasiotes »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #375
thaumasiotes wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google maps works okay on slow connections if you download the tiles for the city you're in beforehand At that point, why would you use Google Maps at all? Osmand will do the same thing, and requires no connection.

Because Google Maps is all they know? I've been on the web for 30+ years (wrote my own html home page by hand in 1995 while doing my master's) and have just now heard of "Osmand" for maybe the 2nd time in my life. The other being a few months ago. If I haven't heard of it, how would anyone else who isn't technical hear about it?

> If I haven't heard of it, how would anyone else who isn't technical hear about it?

If you assume that mapping services on a low-to-no bandwidth connection are important to them, they'll hear about it through word of mouth. Anything that solves a real problem will spread that way.

Contrapositively, we can conclude that mapping isn't much of a problem for these people.

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