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from the things-expand-to-exceed-the-space-provided dept.
A couple years ago, I took a road trip from Wisconsin to Washington and mostly stayed in rural hotels on the way. I expected the internet in rural areas too sparse to have cable internet to be slow, but I was still surprised that a large fraction of the web was inaccessible. Some blogs with lightweight styling were readable, as were pages by academics who hadn't updated the styling on their website since 1995. But very few commercial websites were usable (other than Google). When I measured my connection, I found that the bandwidth was roughly comparable to what I got with a 56k modem in the 90s. The latency and packetloss were significantly worse than the average day on dialup: latency varied between 500ms and 1000ms and packetloss varied between 1% and 10%. Those numbers are comparable to what I'd see on dialup on a bad day.
Despite my connection being only a bit worse than it was in the 90s, the vast majority of the web wouldn't load. Why shouldn't the web work with dialup or a dialup-like connection? It would be one thing if I tried to watch youtube and read pinterest. It's hard to serve videos and images without bandwidth. But my online interests are quite boring from a media standpoint. Pretty much everything I consume online is plain text, even if it happens to be styled with images and fancy javascript. In fact, I recently tried using w3m (a terminal-based web browser that, by default, doesn't support css, javascript, or even images) for a week and it turns out there are only two websites I regularly visit that don't really work in w3m (twitter and zulip, both fundamentally text based sites, at least as I use them)[1].
More recently, I was reminded of how poorly the web works for people on slow connections when I tried to read a joelonsoftware post while using a flaky mobile connection. The HTML loaded but either one of the five CSS requests or one of the thirteen javascript requests timed out, leaving me with a broken page. Instead of seeing the article, I saw three entire pages of sidebar, menu, and ads before getting to the title because the page required some kind of layout modification to display reasonably. Pages are often designed so that they're hard or impossible to read if some dependency fails to load. On a slow connection, it's quite common for at least one depedency to fail. After refreshing the page twice, the page loaded as it was supposed to and I was able to read the blog post, a fairly compelling post on eliminating dependencies.
[1] excluding internal Microsoft stuff that's required for work. Many of the sites are IE only and don't even work in edge. I didn't try those sites in w3m but I doubt they'd work! In fact, I doubt that even half of the non-IE specific internal sites would work in w3m.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 16 2019, @06:48PM (23 children)
Even if you are only interested in the articles, the advertisers want to throw HD video at you, the trackers want full database analytics of every mouse and keyboard interaction you make (they want eyegaze tracking, they're not getting it yet, at least not on every simple webpage...)
Another phenomenon at work is the continued push for broadband rollout to the rural areas - which isn't a bad thing, but... if 99%+ of the text content of the web were accessible from the sticks, there's be less of a push to get the bandwidth fixed.
I wonder... how much of the time does the ISS make do with a low bandwidth connection?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:43PM (17 children)
From the what??? Perhaps you meant the Styx? [wikipedia.org]
What the hell do they teach you kids in school these days? And, while we are at it, get off my lawn!!!
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @10:03PM (15 children)
"From the sticks" = "from the countryside, far from any city, possible in a forest".
You know? The places where the Internet is delivered by smoke signals.
I find it weird to see someone pretending to know 'the old ways' but not knowing the expression. Might be the AC poster is just a poser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @10:55PM (5 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @11:28PM (3 children)
(was about to make a joke on the line of "Sears catalogue? You hipster", but then I checked what was the date of the oldest Sears catalogue and decided that is old enough)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 16 2019, @11:56PM (1 child)
Our local Sears finally died - it was walking dead for the last 5 maybe 10 years, amazing that they kept the doors open so long when they were so obviously hemorrhaging money.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:25AM
Our local Sears is still open, somehow.
I can't figure out how they do it.
I went in for some simple hand tools. They had so many games going on involving cashbacks - in points - and all sorts of terms and conditions, expiry dates, exclusions, minimum spend amounts to meet, and that seemed only the start of it, that buying a socket wrench would trip off paperwork like getting married.
Fuhget it... Walmart is just down the street.
So is Harbor Freight and Home Depot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:13AM
I remember the disappointment Grandma experienced when Sears started using that glossy clay paper in their catalogs.
It did not wipe right. It was painful to use, and just smeared the crap all over her hiney.
Grandpa often had to sacrifice his paper. Which was a treasured commodity on the farm.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:12AM
Hipster Troll, checking in from BFE...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:33AM (8 children)
Yes, I'm well aware of what you were trying to say, but you said it poorly. In the process you showed yourself to be illiterate. Next time, try harder. You and all the rest who piled on. You're welcome.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:43AM
Or a non-native English speaker, knowing good enough English to be able to... ummm... stick with the facts.
Which is good enough for me not to try any harder, no need to thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:18PM (6 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @03:43PM (5 children)
Why? Is c0lo considered beyond reproach around these parts? Please do tell.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:03PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @10:51PM (3 children)
I can troll from my single account well enough to my needs, but thank you for considering them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 18 2019, @04:17AM (2 children)
But of course. It *nudge* *nudge* would be rude *wink* *wink* to suggest otherwise, knowwhatImean?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 18 2019, @04:47AM (1 child)
(Advise between friends: you try pushing in places I have no buttons in. If unconvinced, count the English language and phrasing mistakes between the two posters)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 18 2019, @12:34PM
Say no more! SAY NO MORE! *nudge nudge* *wink wink* KnowwhatImean?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @11:56PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boondocks#Expanded_meanings [wikipedia.org]
> ... Similar slang or colloquial words are "the sticks", "the wops", "the backblocks", or "Woop Woop" in Australia, "the wop-wops" in New Zealand, "bundu" in South Africa (etymologically unrelated to "boondocks" or "bundok"), and "out in the tules" in California.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday September 16 2019, @11:34PM (4 children)
But low bandwidth will slow down distro hopping...
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 16 2019, @11:58PM (3 children)
Dear God, our corporate network is so packet filter throttled that it took me 30 minutes to download flipping Raspbian (2GB) at work today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:42AM (2 children)
It took me a week to download the offline OSMand set of street maps to my phone at the local coffee shop. I was getting about 20KB per sec as measured by "GasFlow", an Android internet connection speed monitor app.
Is your corporate site showing up at that speed?
Would this same business hire salesmen that take forever and a day to say something, hard of hearing, and walk away from customers?
My guess is most corporate CEO have no idea what an exasperating experience their website is to those who do not have executive resources to see it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:24PM (1 child)
The issue has been raised with our local site head of R&D, who has escalated it with me to corporate IT, who have dicked around for nearly a year now doing nothing helpful but proposing several stupid ideas like blocking Facetime (which field support staff use in actual product support capacity...)
The hope is that in the next round of "upgrades" this open complaint ticket might sway a decision or two toward higher performance.
The reality is: I stay home to do a lot of my work - and that's not a bad thing from my perspective.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday September 19 2019, @12:20AM
I hope my unsolicited post can help you convince management that a lot of us out there do not have the latest hardware and software tech.
Just yesterday, I had a very exasperating experience trying to buy tires on a website. My local wheel alignment business had directed me to that site, told me to pick out some tires, and he would mount and do an alignment. Everything worked, but the website.
I kept getting hung up. On JavaScript. To places having nothing to do with tires. Facebook, Pinterest, and scores of others. Both my phone and laptop were overwhelmed. Like a DOS attack. Flooded with crap.
I need special load rated E, 10 ply tires. God knows how bad I wanted to say "screw it", and go to WalMart. Just to avoid having to deal with that business website. When my mechanic saw how exasperated I was getting having to deal with it, he tried to help me. He couldn't get the order to take either before the fields went dead. On both my phone and laptop.
My mechanic went old school, got on the phone to them, and got the tires, at the special web price.
I almost had to take what WalMart had in stock so that the Corporate Webmaster could insist on ramming stuff in me than I could take.
I have to remind myself that in todays high tech world, I am the least important part of the business experience....I am the customer. At least I was important enough to my mechanic to keep me.
Most internet business would say I wasn't good enough for them. Close the door in my face. Call me an invalid. Let them worship their server, which is rude as hell to me, then wonder why WalMart and Amazon is making all the money.
Incidentally, Amazon works fine for me. So does AliExpress, eBay, WalMart.
It's just got so I really hate dealing with business websites. Not all of em, but some can really have me climbing the walls.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]