LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs • Hacker News Board

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#381

Post by hollerith » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:13 AM UTC

apatheticonion wrote: post #376

This is the part about the "wasm won't replace JavaScript" argument I see being slept on and why I am so disheartened about how practically no progress has been made on it. Most trivial apps don't need to be optimized, and for them, JavaScript is fine. But for complex interactive web applications - it really fuggin matters. Think; - vscode - facebook - jira - linkedin - reddit There's no reason these applications sho…

I'm going to resist wasm as much as practical. At least that is my current intention based on what I have learned from being a web user for the last 33.5 years.

First of all, wasm won't run in my browser (I determined that by evaluating `typeof WebAssembly` in the console tab of Developer Tools), a choice made not by me, but by the maintainer of my browser (Trivalent) -- probably for security reasons. I trust the maintainer of my browser about security-related decisions.

Besides security, another reason I am going to resist wasm is that it gives the site owner more power at my expense. The way it is now, I can modify web sites using extensions. For example, for years, I ran an extension that deletes "fixed elements" from web page (which didn't work on 100% of sites with fixed elements, but was still a welcome assistance to me because it worked on about 70% of sites). Wasm would make it more difficult for an extension to modify a site in ways that users with various preferences and various disabilities might want -- because code is more difficult to modify than data is, and the way web pages are now, there is a lot of data in a web page stored in 'locations' that an extension can programmatically find and modify.

In summary, site owners already have too much control over my experience (relative to me and authors of software such as a browser extension acting on my behalf), and wasm would give them even more control.

It would be one thing if I used the web mainly to run sophisticated applications. I do not: I use it mainly to find simple data resources, mostly text and URLs, written by ordinary people such as yourself. When anyone anywhere wants to get some information out to the world and consider how best to do that, 99% percent of the time, the first thought that comes to mind is to put some text or maybe a video or some other kind of data on the web. I see sentiments like the one you expressed just now as interfering with the flow of this text or other kind of data to me -- by making the process more complicated, less customizable by the user and giving "middlemen" like advertiser more ways to profit from this flow.

Again: I never wanted or asked for a platform for the delivery of sophisticated applications over the internet (using web protocols) to get all mixed up and combined with the world's most important and most convenient platform that ordinary users (i.e., not site owners or professional technologists for the most part) use to publish and consume simple data objects like text and URLs and such.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#382

Post by Hobadee » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:19 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #370

eximius wrote: post #177

Let's be real, LinkedIn is full of LinkedIn Lunatics but pretty much all mainstream social media is pretty shit. They're just different flavors of shit. LinkedIn: bad. Facebook: bad. Twitter: I literally think it contributed to the collapse of discourse and rise of shallow thought / rejection of expertise. I'm not going to list more because the theme is, you guessed it, they're bad. Google+ had promise in that the ma…

> Google+ had promise No ads was a huge plus. Take away the financial incentive and you get rid of most of the worst behavior.

Facebook didn't have ads when it started either.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#383

Post by MintPaw » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:26 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #381

apatheticonion wrote: post #376

This is the part about the "wasm won't replace JavaScript" argument I see being slept on and why I am so disheartened about how practically no progress has been made on it. Most trivial apps don't need to be optimized, and for them, JavaScript is fine. But for complex interactive web applications - it really fuggin matters. Think; - vscode - facebook - jira - linkedin - reddit There's no reason these applications sho…

I'm going to resist wasm as much as practical. At least that is my current intention based on what I have learned from being a web user for the last 33.5 years. First of all, wasm won't run in my browser (I determined that by evaluating `typeof WebAssembly` in the console tab of Developer Tools), a choice made not by me, but by the maintainer of my browser (Trivalent) -- probably for security reasons. I trust the mai…

> The way it is now, I can modify web sites using extensions

This isn't related too directly to WASM, what you want is DOM rendering only, you would theoretically reject canvas and WebGL rendering I imagine. But you could create DOM nodes with WASM. The only difference is that WASM is not as easy to decompile, but I can't imagine you're really unminifiying and patching Javascript are you?

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#384

Post by apatheticonion » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:37 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #381

apatheticonion wrote: post #376

This is the part about the "wasm won't replace JavaScript" argument I see being slept on and why I am so disheartened about how practically no progress has been made on it. Most trivial apps don't need to be optimized, and for them, JavaScript is fine. But for complex interactive web applications - it really fuggin matters. Think; - vscode - facebook - jira - linkedin - reddit There's no reason these applications sho…

I'm going to resist wasm as much as practical. At least that is my current intention based on what I have learned from being a web user for the last 33.5 years. First of all, wasm won't run in my browser (I determined that by evaluating `typeof WebAssembly` in the console tab of Developer Tools), a choice made not by me, but by the maintainer of my browser (Trivalent) -- probably for security reasons. I trust the mai…

1) Wasm wouldn't prevent you from running those client scripts (e.g. remove fixed elements). That would still just be a script that modifies the DOM from an extension after the page is rendered/dom mutations occur.

2) wasm makes serving static content practical as server side rendering is economical. My previous employer, for instance, spends tens of millions of dollars every year running SSR servers - almost all of that would be eliminated if the backend could just run the client as wasm.

3) Scrapers (think puppeteer) would be faster and more resource efficient because they wouldn't need to start a JavaScript runtime to load a page.

4) You don't use Electron apps?

5) You may not, but everyone else uses rich interactive web applications. Think of the energy usage and cost savings there would be to the world.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#385

Post by computomatic » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:47 AM UTC

jasonfarnon wrote: post #360

stackghost wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do we get to gigs? Microsoft, who has owned LinkedIn since 2016, has recently been making headlines because recently they fired a lot of their engineers and QA staff and are now essentially vibecoding huge chunks of their enterprise. What's more, Microsoft never paid the really big bucks like the FAANG companies, and so it's more or less an open secret that at the height of the tech hiring frenzy Microsoft had t…

"What's more, Microsoft never paid the really big bucks like the FAANG companies" I never knew this open secret. In my day msft was very glamorous and I guess something like oracle played the role you're ascribing to msft now. I wonder what their strategy was? (I tend to doubt this was a careless/unexamined decision.) Maybe they figured that paying extra for individuals doesn't get you much if you have enough structu…

I only have my own observations of their products and secondhand info but my understanding is Microsoft simply doesn’t care about engineering. They have a sales pitch (product idea), then they build and ship the MVP that can earn money. If something sells, they figure they can solve scaling by throwing enough money at it. Classic b-tier tech company (and startup) garbage. They never work out the unit economics, etc.

FAANG (at least the few I’m familiar with) tend to be engineering companies. They hire talented engineers who can work from first principles and build products with profitable unit economics that solve interesting new problems. I don’t think Microsoft even knows what software engineering would mean.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#386

Post by hunterpayne » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:49 AM UTC

kulahan wrote: post #379

saltyoldman wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't they just put a lead plate around the computer? That can't cost 100k in 70s

Lead makes things worse, not better. High-energy particles go straight through a couple mm of lead no problem, and lead itself is radioactive anyways. The problem is when a particle punches straight through a chip, leaving some energetic charge behind. You won't stop that with a paper-thin layer of lead. Also, lead is extremely dense.

"and lead itself is radioactive anyways"

Um, I guess in that there are naturally occurring isotopes of lead that are unstable. But those are very rare and can be removed. By this standard, the chips themselves are radioactive since they are made of silicon. By this standard, you, everything you eat, every plant and animal is radioactive since there are trace isotopes of carbon that are radioactive (that's how carbon dating works). And sunlight is very radioactive by this standard.

However, the materials we actually use in chips is highly processed and radioactive isotopes will likely be removed if a centrifuge was used in any step in concentration process. Likewise the lead used in a space shield will probably have similar processing of the material

"Also, lead is extremely dense."

This is the real reason lead isn't used. There are plenty of other elements that shield ionizing radiation quite well and are less dense. However, they are also more expensive than lead which is why we use lead on earth for shielding (its cheap) and use something else in space (where density is more important than price).

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#387

Post by hollerith » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

MintPaw wrote: post #383

hollerith wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to resist wasm as much as practical. At least that is my current intention based on what I have learned from being a web user for the last 33.5 years. First of all, wasm won't run in my browser (I determined that by evaluating `typeof WebAssembly` in the console tab of Developer Tools), a choice made not by me, but by the maintainer of my browser (Trivalent) -- probably for security reasons. I trust the mai…

> The way it is now, I can modify web sites using extensions This isn't related too directly to WASM, what you want is DOM rendering only, you would theoretically reject canvas and WebGL rendering I imagine. But you could create DOM nodes with WASM. The only difference is that WASM is not as easy to decompile, but I can't imagine you're really unminifiying and patching Javascript are you?

Yes, I disabled WebGL many years ago (and Flash many years before that) when I was running Google Chrome. These months, I run Trivalent, which has it and WebGPU disabled by default.

I'm not a web dev, so maybe directing my hatred and resentment at wasm like I did in my first comment is a mistake. I don't like the idea of a site that draws its whole UI to a canvas (for reasons you can probably understand) and I have been assuming that that is impractical in just Javascript and that in practice, wasm is needed for that.

According to one of those services that gives fast answers to questions, Vanadium (the browser of the GrapheneOS project, which I also trust to give security recommendations) has wasm enabled, but that is a new development. Before late 2025, wasm worked only when JavaScript JIT was enabled, and the default was to have it disabled, which is how most users left it. It was possible for the user to enable it only on a few sites chosen by the user (per-site configurability).

I did not mean to broadcast misinformation, and will be more careful in the future. I do know that when the web gets new capabilites to make it a better application-delivery platform, my experience of the web strongly tends to get worse. The introduction of HTML5 and other technologies circa 2006 for example was a very salient example of that.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#388

Post by hunterpayne » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:01 AM UTC

salawat wrote: post #220

mahirsaid wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im pretty sure that is the current sentiment amongst the judicial body at the moment, Meta and Google have been taking blows left and right. They are also not allowing else to take shape that might make their business model obsolete. With all that we have more and more laws that are redistricting the use of social media by their own bad doing. So if another company wants to offer something innovative, now they have a…

When your definition of innovation includes "move fast, break things, ignore regulations until you can scale big enough for the lawyers hopefully to outpace the legal system" it is arguable that any of that should be allowed at all. There's room for leniency for innovation sake, then there's building the wrong damn thing and not taking no for an answer when you should. Tech is beyond that point by leaps and bounds.

Counterpoint, Meta just shutdown its VR project. And with all the data gathering, you aren't the customer, you are the product. You just don't realize that the market (marketing departments) said yes. Your vote is to either use a specific service or not. And if enough people vote yes, it stays even if you or me don't like/use it.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#389

Post by hunterpayne » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:05 AM UTC

fritzo wrote: post #221

eximius wrote: post #177

Let's be real, LinkedIn is full of LinkedIn Lunatics but pretty much all mainstream social media is pretty shit. They're just different flavors of shit. LinkedIn: bad. Facebook: bad. Twitter: I literally think it contributed to the collapse of discourse and rise of shallow thought / rejection of expertise. I'm not going to list more because the theme is, you guessed it, they're bad. Google+ had promise in that the ma…

Sorry for my ignorance, but what exactly is the distinction between hn and social media? Is it the personalization that distinguishes the two? Does "social" mean "feed depends on graph neighborhood"? So collaborative filtering + ranking algorithms + moderation is not social media until you add graph neighborhoods?

In social media the algorithm determines what you see. On forum boards, everyone sees the same set of posts. I do think it is an important distinction but I understand if others don't. At least we are all in the same reality on a forum board when we post. On a social media site, we see different sets of posts.

Re: LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs

#390

Post by hollerith » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:09 AM UTC

apatheticonion wrote: post #384

hollerith wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to resist wasm as much as practical. At least that is my current intention based on what I have learned from being a web user for the last 33.5 years. First of all, wasm won't run in my browser (I determined that by evaluating `typeof WebAssembly` in the console tab of Developer Tools), a choice made not by me, but by the maintainer of my browser (Trivalent) -- probably for security reasons. I trust the mai…

1) Wasm wouldn't prevent you from running those client scripts (e.g. remove fixed elements). That would still just be a script that modifies the DOM from an extension after the page is rendered/dom mutations occur. 2) wasm makes serving static content practical as server side rendering is economical. My previous employer, for instance, spends tens of millions of dollars every year running SSR servers - almost all of…

>You don't use Electron apps?

I've tentatively concluded the I should stay away from them for security reasons. That is what the Secureblue project recommends. I like vscode, but have no current need for it, so I did not install it the last time I installed an OS. If I ever start coding full time, I'd need something vscode-like and would try to make do with Github Codespaces. I've already made sure Codespaces runs in my browser (Trivalent with wasm, webgl and webgpu disabled) and have found a way to use it without a browser's tab bar and location bar taking up valuable screen real estate.