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: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)
The amount of pure waste due to bloated websites like reddit is insane. Like 4 mb per site hit. Compare i.reddit.com with old.reddit.com with the (imo unusable) www.reddit.com.
The people running these websites are some of the most climate polluting at earth.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday September 16 2019, @06:04PM
Okay, sure, we scorched the planet, but look at these 0.3% higher engagement numbers when infinite scrolling was enabled!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Fishscene on Monday September 16 2019, @05:12PM (5 children)
DTN (Disruption/Delay Tolerant Networking) might be a welcome technology in scenarios such as this. Instead of refreshing and hoping the cache will store something (some websites out-rite disable caching of their website), DTN would transmit the packets whenever it could, using a "Custody" method where the packet is held by the custodian router until it can successfully transmit to the next node, which then has custody. This continues until the packet reaches its destination. Sure, it might be slower, but it's built to be tolerant of delays and disruptions - with some implementations allowing weeks to go by before the packet expires.
It's seriously fascinating tech and currently being tested by NASA as well for space applications: https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn/ [nasa.gov]
Unfortunately, aside from NASA working on it, everything else appears to be academic or hobbyist.
Here's the latest IETF draft that I was able to find a few months ago, in case anyone is interested in helping to develop this: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dtn-bpbis-14 [ietf.org]
(Note: I'd love for this to be implemented on Cell phones for disaster scenarios as well)
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Monday September 16 2019, @06:30PM (2 children)
A similar strategy could be built in to the browser where the browser would remember the parts of a web page that it has already downloaded and keep retrying the other parts until the page has been completely rendered. This could obviously give wrong results for sites that change contents rapidly but overall it would be a better strategy than to re-download the whole page repeatedly. In Firefox (and possibly other browsers), if you — instead of pressing Ctrl-R to refresh — press Alt-D (highlighting the web address) and then Enter, it will download the parts of the page that have not previously been loaded and keep the parts that have — provided they are marked cacheable (I think). This will often save a lot of time on slow connections as it hopefully reduces the amount to update at each Alt-D+Enter cycle.
A lot could be achieved if the HTTP standard allowed continued downloads of any item, meaning that the browser could say "Oi, I've already got the first 200 bytes of this thingamading, give me from byte 201 and onwards, please."
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday September 16 2019, @07:45PM
If a resource is cacheable, HTTP allows byte range requests. However, dynamic resources tend to be less cacheable, and some publishers make some pages on some websites deliberately not cacheable even if only to rotate out the ad unit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by julian on Monday September 16 2019, @08:03PM
That's essentially just caching, which we can already do but most of us have disabled it because it's used to track us against our explicit wishes. Half of the features of the modern web have to be deliberately crippled or disabled because I can't trust that they'll only be used in good-faith. I ran without JS enabled for a long time but finally had to give up years ago. Now I'm just highly selective on what scripts get to run and from where they can be loaded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:57PM
Why stop with cell phones and disaster scenarios? I want to see this bloat cut back all the time on everything, from cell phones and tablets to laptops and desktops. And, make no mistake, the people who curate these websites know exactly what they are doing. For example, I notice that lately CNN has gotten into the habit of making a lite version of their website available for people who are hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters. They can moderate their behavior; they just choose not to. Bastards!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @10:53PM
Would this overcome the China firewall?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @05:14PM (23 children)
As a bonus, sites that allow Facebook and Google to track you can no longer do so, since you aren't downloading the stupid tracking/sharing icons.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter won't let you in, which is a violation of the ADA, but I consider no Facebook a bonus.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @06:07PM (22 children)
Images, yes, they can be rather stupid. But JS? It's vital for any sort of real application. It certainly does not have to be bloated to work correctly. A fullscale Angular app maybe 400kB and is data driven interface. You can interact with it without reload the page, only a few bytes of data. You just can't do that on server-side. A well designed single-page site could be saved to disk and then loaded back up with only remote API data calls. Of source, for that you now need a caching proxy instead because "reasons", but that's another rant.
For example, there is no reason why this site couldn't be much more responsive without the need to refetch 20 to 40kb just to do a preview or post something.
Anyway, what fucks up the entire web is not JS or even images. It's *ads* and everything around them.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @06:29PM (5 children)
No, it is not. If you want to use my cpu cycles, you must pay me. I will block any and all javascript, since it is evil.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Monday September 16 2019, @07:49PM (3 children)
We pay you valuable consideration in exchange for your turning on JavaScript. This valuable consideration is the use of the application on our server.
Think of it this way: If you don't own a Mac, how is a native client application for macOS better than a JavaScript web application? Or if you do own a Mac, how is a native client application for Windows better than a JavaScript web application?
(Score: 5, Touché) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @10:48PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday September 16 2019, @11:27PM (1 child)
Corrected to reflect the average today.
If you have a site I need to use (such as my bank) then I will allow enough of your scripts to get my work done (if I need to allow anybody els's I'll find another bank).
Otherwise, if I need to allow scripts to see your site I'll usually give it a miss.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:03AM
I'm interested in how you would design a web-based whiteboard program not to need script.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:00AM
That's utterly ridiculous. Javascript is wonderful. Great language.
Now, Javascript in the browser? That's evil.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SemperOSS on Monday September 16 2019, @06:53PM (15 children)
It is a common misconception that JavaScript is required for any sort of real application, it is not. By using a reasonable amount of CSS and some applied HTML, a huge amount of functionality can be achieved without a single line of JS. I implemented a site once with drop-down menus, slide shows and other fancy things without a single line of JS. Even a pop-up calendar to choose dates from could be done in pure HTML/CSS. It takes time and effort to do this but the attitude of most web designers these days is that as long as it works on my computer using these select few browsers, then everything is honky dory. That is obviously a blasé attitude showing a blatant disregard for quite a few people that — due to no fault of their own — are lacking internet speed or sufficient computer power.
And no, ads are not the main culprit. My bank's internet banking site is ad free but so riddled with JavaScript that I cannot use it properly from my previous laptop (waiting f o r e v e r) and not at all from my old ASUS Transformer tablet where the website's timeout kicks in before the page has been rendered completely.
I cannot remember what company, that forced their developers to not use the most modern, fast computers when testing their code to give them a realistic picture of what their users would actually experience. I think that every web developer should be forced to access their pages through an old 56k modem!
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Pino P on Monday September 16 2019, @08:16PM (5 children)
"Huge" doesn't necessarily imply "comprehensive." One counterexample is a web-based whiteboard application. Say you want to let the user draw curves on a canvas. With JavaScript, you can have the user drag over the path of the curve. With HTML and CSS without JavaScript, you instead have to use a server-side image map and require the user to click at every point along the curve, causing a form submission and page reload after each click, and then click somewhere else to end the curve. Another is making nontrivial functionality available while the user's device is offline.
How is that done? The <input type="date"> element doesn't work on all browsers, particularly not Internet Explorer for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 or Safari for macOS. Even current Firefox doesn't support type="datetime-local", type="month", or type="week". Or do you have it reload the page each time the user navigates to the previous or next month or the previous or next year?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:03PM (2 children)
You have to remember that clicking the right thing interacts with the DOM. So if you get creative with the hiding and showing of elements, then you can do a full blown calendar. Between HTML, CSS, and user interaction, you can code any program you'd like into CSS. The real question is how complicated you'd like it to be, especially with other choices available. A calendar isn't that hard in its basic form, really its just how complex you want to make it.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:46AM (1 child)
I'd like to see a demo of this covering multiple years without needing to reload the page.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:47AM
Uhh, just stuff more elements in there? All the text can be labels and all the dates radios, then affect visibility based on year and month selection. Yes, it will be unwieldy, very unwieldy, but that doesn't mean impossible.
After all, you could code a browser or OS in Brainfuck; that doesn't mean it will be readable or particularly fun to do, but it is possible. Same goes for HTML with CSS, especially CSS3: just because there may be a better language for your project, doesn't mean other languages can't do the same thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:06AM (1 child)
If you look at the examples of pure HTML/CSS calendars, they use really sophisticated CSS tricks. e.g. https://codemyui.com/pure-css-calendar-widget/ [codemyui.com]
But the important point is that the number of websites that actually need Javascript is incredibly small. Shops, blogs, discussion boards of all kinds, movie sites, music sites, news sites - they don't need it. Sure it would be awkward to implement something like Google Docs or Etherpad in pure HTML and CSS - if nothing else, you lose the autosave feature. So that's an exception. But it's a rare one.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:00AM
As for shops, the last time I wrote mark-up for a brand new shop site was a decade or so ago, when people were complaining at me for not supporting IE 7.
As for discussion boards, I've used discussion boards without script (such as phpBB) and discussion boards with script (such as Discourse), and I'm curious about how to implement some features that Discourse has and phpBB lacks without script. How does a discussion board notify the user of a reply that someone else has posted since the last page load? How does a discussion board offer live preview of the translation from BBCode or Markdown to HTML, or would the user have to submit the form using the Preview button to update the preview? How does a discussion board let a user track how far into a thread the user has scrolled? I guess that's sort of like the autosave feature of Google Docs though.
As for movie sites, do you mean a review site or an actual subscription video on demand service?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday September 16 2019, @11:00PM (5 children)
Can CSS + HTML sort the words entered into an input box? Tell you how many words there are. How many letters in total. How many words were repeated. How many letters per word (average, mean, and mode).
Can CSS + HTML compute the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle given height and base? The inner angles?
Can CSS + HTML verify the dates in two date fields are properly formatted and also that the 1st date precedes the 2nd? Limited to a two week span.
Can it be done remotely efficiently or intelligently?
I think web developers should be forced to test the access of their pages on the lowest end systems they are targeting; that's good policy.
But I recently worked on a web application where the target user would have an i5 CPU and 8GB RAM with at and HD screen resolution or better and it requires a modern release browser (current iteration of Edge/Firefox/Chrome/Safari are supported).
It wouldn't make sense to use it on $50 used android on bad cell connection; so we wouldn't test that.
I have also worked on projects specifically where being able to support a user with a dodgy cell connection WAS a consideration, and we built and tested to that.
But the idea that every site on the internet needs to cater to the lowest denominator is missing the point.
Websites, like video games are generally targeted to pre-determined baseline system(s). At one point supporting Netscape 4 and IE 3.0 on MacOS7.3 and Windows 98 was important. Now, for most sites, it's NOT.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:03AM (4 children)
The calculator in my phone can do square and cube roots, as well as the full tan/arc tan/coding/whatever, no web browser needed.
The activity app can tell me at a glance whether any two dates are x number of days apart, so I won't even need to look at my laptop. wc gives me the number of words and lines, a simple regex splits the word list into letters, run through sort, then a one-liner to get the total for each letter. So anything you can do on the web app I can do on my laptop Wii's web browser.
Same as anyone else who cares to set up their computer to do similarly silly things.
Web browsers can disappear tomorrow and the world won't stop. There's absolutely nothing a web browser can do that can't be done without one, except run malware.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:13AM
As of 2019, the web browser with plurality usage share in the United States (my home country and SN's) is Safari for iOS (and other browsers for iOS using the same WebKit engine). iOS isn't made for end user scripting. As far as I'm aware, scripting is considered a "truck" feature in the late Steve Jobs's analogy [macworld.com]. Swift Playgrounds exists as a rudimentary scripting environment, but last I checked, Swift Playgrounds was made for iPad, not for iPhone. So this means a lot of people are "doing something wrong" by this metric, and many of them could be your customers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:08PM (2 children)
facepalm
I'm not suggesting you need a webapp to calculate tangents. Do you really think anyone here would suggest that?
I'm suggesting a webapp that does something useful might need to calculate tangents as part of its actual functionality; and that pure HTML+CSS while great for what it is, is not sufficient for a proper application. Those were not examples of applications those were examples of tiny bits of functionality that an application might need.
An app that lets you plan a route on a map interactively on a map might report all kinds of route information, distance, elevation changes, maximum incline. It might let you drag points around. It might show hover information about the point under the cursor (elevation, terrain, long+lat, points-of-interest tag info, etc. Save the route; share it with your run/cycle/hike buddies, coordinate meeting up. And record your metrics while you complete it.
Deliver the same above interactive route planning app to androids, linux, windows, macs, ios. Run without additional local installation or permission steps, and inherently always be running the current version.
There's not much if anything that HAS to be a web-browser application; but web delivered applications simplify a lot of issues with deploying and maintaining and updating traditional applications. And web delivered applications will need more functionality than HTML + CSS provide.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @08:40PM (1 child)
.tan {
--tan-term1: var(--angle);
--tan-term2: calc((1/3) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle));
--tan-term3: calc((2 / 15) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle));
--tan-term4: calc((17/315) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle) * var(--angle));
--tan: calc(var(--tan-term1) + var(--tan-term2) + var(--tan-term3) + var(--tan-term4));
}
The fact that people here only seem to claim things can't be done due to their own incredulity is fascinating. HTML\CSS is very powerful, the fact you don't use that power doesn't change that.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday September 23 2019, @04:21AM
Meh, even when I'd posted it, i already had a table lookup solution in my head. (much like how kids did trig before calculators in the 60s... using the sin/cos/tan chart ).
Second, to do this, may be interesting on an academic level; but anyone suggesting ACTUALLY doing this; or that thinks its a GOOD IDEA to do this needs to have their head examined.
Magic the Gathering is Turing Complete. The fact that you don't write software in it doesn't change that. But it also doesn't make it a good idea.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:49AM (1 child)
I think that every web developer should be forced to access their pages through an old 56k modem!
On a 486...SX! And 4meg of RAM, I'm being generous.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @02:45AM
I think the web developer's BOSS should see it that way...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:53PM
Very curious what you think about an application that I wrote in JavaScript (and HTML, CSS, SVG). It's a calculator that finds optimal real world resistor values that create a voltage divider closest to a certain user-specified ratio. https://slugrustle.github.io/voltage_divider.html [github.io]
Originally, I had written this as a command line C++ application, but I wanted to share it with people at work. I decided on the browser + JavaScript because everyone at work has a browser and knows how to open it. Not everyone is as familiar with the command line, and I had a lot of trouble finding a lightweight GUI framework for C++.
JavaScript + HTML + CSS + SVG worked quite well for this. The program is a single .html file with all code and graphics inlined. It works without an internet connection.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @05:17PM (1 child)
The author really should put a publication date on his articles or at least fix the http modified header. Also, for an essay on web bloat to load Google Analytics is remarkable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:59AM
According to https://urlscan.io/result/b98d302d-9473-40cd-9a68-ed135e4eea65#transactions [urlscan.io] loading Google Analytics increases the bytes transferred by over 138% and increases the load time on the page by 50%.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @05:25PM
Bloat Is Good.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @05:36PM
Bloated post complains about bloated web that everyone already knows about.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Monday September 16 2019, @06:12PM (2 children)
He's not wrong. I do consulting work for a bank and their homepage is 4.6mb. IIRC, in my modem days that would have been about 20 minutes.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @06:40PM
> I do consulting work for a bank ...
Well there's your problem. Stop trying to shove your Microsoft crap down their throats and they'll have a much less bloated site. Anything served up by your crap is going to suffer from bloat as well as have poor stability and worse security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:03AM
Thank you.
That is a big reason I do not do internet banking.
This site is one of very few that still work for me.
I often visit here just to check if I am still connected to the net when on my cellphone. It's almost two years old.
I have about come to terms that the modern corporate webmaster codes for his executive superior using the latest technologies and dedicated high speed executive ISP service, not for people like me.
I mean does some executive paid millions give that much of a damm where I shop? That's kinda the realm of the little guy who needs some of the big guy' s market share. And the big guy is kind enough to shoo his customers their way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @06:44PM (2 children)
For those of us that actually care about the impact of bloat in general from bottom to top and not just at the level if the Web, there's a really good talk on YouTube by Casey Muratori [youtube.com] about how deep the problem goes. We're piling chairs on top of chairs, but we can't slow down now, and presumably nobody really cares anyway.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @07:50PM (1 child)
Discussing web bloat ... YouTube video ... um, okay ...
Megabytes to say what can be done in kilobytes of simple searchable, cut-n-pasteable text. Oh, the irony ...
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 18 2019, @05:29PM
barbara hudson after seeing you blow it on C\C++ null-terminated string buffer overflows security issues and slower string performance both have and pascal doesn't https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33430&page=1&cid=889635#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] don't ever speak about code. You are a blundering idiot that was also caught red-handed stalking apk who totally destroyed you in that link easily hahahaha.
(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]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Monday September 16 2019, @07:15PM (23 children)
This has given rise to a generation of 'web developers' that should never be allowed anywhere a computer again, but are nonetheless gainfully employed doing evil 24/7.
And the herd continues to moo in bliss.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @07:44PM (21 children)
Just chiming in to remind you that excessive cynicism and a false sense of superiority are terrible for your psyche.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @08:05PM (20 children)
The simple fact is that was touted as the information highway has turned into the 21st century equivalent of a bat mobile - a bloated car with terrible suspension and lousy performance that even an Escort could beat.
Kind of like today's Harley's, that still can't go as fast as a Stanley Steamer could before there were proper roads.
First, we get rid of all the social media circle jerkers,?the full-stack web development monkeys, and the UX wannabe experts.
And, of course, everyone who hired them.
Then we can talk progress in the web becoming part of an information highway where people actually read instead of mindlessly forwarding posts 59% of all forwarded links were never read by the person doing the forwarding. And when you ask them why they forwarded shit they couldn't bother to read themselves - "I didn't have time to read it."
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @10:20PM (17 children)
But when it's not quite true, it's false.
'JavaScript in browser' delivers what decades of programming failed to deliver: the ability to write a single cross-platform code that can be updated to all its users at the moment of publishing of a new version, even without the user knowing. A very valuable technology in many contexts, especially for business-like applications
This being said, it is a technique very poorly suited for distribution of content and I'm deploring the (ab)use of it in this context, just like any tech-aware person does.
But it's no less stupid to blame a tool because other stupids are misusing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @10:48PM
"But when it's not quite true, it's false."
technically correct is the best kind of correct.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @11:09PM (7 children)
There's no point including images for people who can't see them, same as it's braindead stupid to have JavaScript load a captcha or images, and an ICON to click if you can't see the images. Obviously not tested on real users with visual handicaps.
You want it to work like an application , then learn how to write an application. That's what Java is for. I hate Java, but it's sure a hell of a lot better than JavaScript +browser. Of course, Java is beyond web monkeys. Or just download a pre-existing application. There's plenty of calendar applications that don't need a web browser. Same with spreadsheets. Text. Email. Drawing. Think of it - your web browser isn't written in JavaScript for a reason - it's shit.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @11:23PM (4 children)
Who/what doesn't deliver?
False. It was XML that was supposed to do that (with the help of CSS).
HTML is based on an early standard** which does not have the content/presentation separation as a purpose.
This is why you still have pure-styling elements like <b>, <i>, <strike>, <span> and plenty others.
--
** for those not old enough to have something to remember, it was SGML [wikipedia.org] - it was based on a work as old as 1960-ies
Which I already admitted as true.
And also pointed that, in spite of the above being true, it doesn't make the use of "Javascript in browser" a bad thing in all contexts - there are circumstances when the "Javascript in browser" combination is extremely useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:25AM (2 children)
It can render a paragraph as text, as audio, as a series of hieroglyphics - the spec is silent. There's no need to underline links - they can be rendered as buttons, plain text, what're. The "em" tag can be rendered as bold or italic or larger font or in a box - or ignored. It would still comply with the spec, because rendering is up to the user agent, and different people might have different needs. And the shitfest that's XML? Should be dropped because it was never needed, and is crap looking for a problem that was already solved. If you're using it for controlling how information is displayed, you're doing it wrong... Same as emojis should be dropped.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:29AM (1 child)
Here's the 1995 spec of HTML [ietf.org]. You may be interested in Section 5.4 - Headings: H1 ... H6 [ietf.org] which describes how the heading should look like ("H1 - Bold, very-large font, centered. One or two blank lines above and below.", etc).
But you are right, the earliest HTML spec did not prescribe the rendering, just didn't abstain from describing it. You will find quite a number of examples, including
---
Starting from HTML 3.2 [w3.org] - when the W3C consortium took over HTML spec, the number of thingies added for the sake of standardizing the presentation exploded:
---
It needed 3 more years, to the version 4.0 for HTML (1998), to anchor the idea of 2.4.1 Separate structure and presentation [w3.org]
And even when the idea was floating (with the CSS 1 (1996) [w3.org]), the actual industry support lagged behind by at least 4 years [wikipedia.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:20AM
Early HTML, with its SGML [coverpages.org] roots, was intended to be in the direction of keeping structure and presentation separate. In the "browser wars" that M$ started and Netscape allowed itself to be dragged into, all kinds of misfeatures were piled on, especially elements for typgraphic markup. HTML 3.2 was at the peak of that and a cap. It may have looked like a train wreck but it was marking an end point of that mess and signaled a turn back towards separating structure from layout/presentation which we started then to get with HTML 4.
Now that the W3C is fully out of the hands of academia and in the hands of the likes of Facebook and Microsoft, the standard will turn into another trainwreck.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:28AM
The best I can tell the reason this changed is because there was too much reliance on funding from advertisers, and they preferred to have it the way it is for obvious reasons; while the browser developers no doubt found making a proper display engine a tougher nut than initially imagined. By fundamentally abandoning the concept of a web browser they avoided most of the work involved in developing one. Their funders were happy and the vast majority of their users didn't even notice anything going wrong until years later.
"there are circumstances when the "Javascript in browser" combination is extremely useful."
Kind of like being able to send emails anonymously, this is one of those ideas that seemed to make sense back in the days when the internet was a community and we all knew and basically trusted each other. Pre september. Today, it's utter insanity.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Tuesday September 17 2019, @01:18AM (1 child)
I doubt Java will solve the five-platforms problem. A Java program does not run on iOS or iPadOS, and the UI library in Android is completely different from the Swing library in Java for desktop.
There's a lot more friction in downloading and installing a native application than in navigating to the URL of a web application. Besides, many applications don't even exist for iOS because of the content restrictions in Apple's App Store Review Guidelines.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Tuesday September 17 2019, @02:38AM
in summary, the real problem is that Apple's platform is intentionally crippled
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:20AM (7 children)
"'JavaScript in browser' delivers what decades of programming failed to deliver"
Wisely refraining from delivering poison is NOT a failure.
"the ability to write a single cross-platform code that can be updated to all its users at the moment of publishing of a new version, even without the user knowing."
Like the death penalty, this is quite simply too much power for anyone in the real world to be allowed to hold.
Cross-platform code is great, we've had it for many, many decades now. But it does require compilation, which is a pain in the butt if you're trying to propagate malware, I know.
Simple solution; don't propagate malware.
Automatic updating is the epitome of insanity. It means that you have not only no guarantee but no expectation whatsoever that your computer works the same way today it did yesterday. It means that some unknown and likely unexamined third party - or anyone that can impersonate them to the computer - can change any aspect of your system without so much as a warning, at any time. Any system that does this must be treated as completely compromised and completely untrustable.
"valuable technology"
Valuable to *whom* though?
Personal computing should provide value to the user. Not to somebody that makes their living by tracking him or her and selling personal info.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @04:57AM (5 children)
That's, like, your opinion, man.
There are such things in which not having your entire (in-house) userbase updating to the latest version of app from one day to the other can spell millions in loses (I had a friend writing trading software at JPMorgan, used by human traders; upgrade-fast was one of the governing principles around which their projects were organized. It may be that the HFT may have diminished that pressure nowadays, but I don't think it eliminated completely)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday September 17 2019, @05:34AM (4 children)
OK. So what? They can still do that either way.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @05:45AM (3 children)
This means there are cases in which Javascript in browser delivers better** than any other solutions.
Which means: "Javscript in browser is always the evil-incarnate" is not quite true.
They can do it "the cross-platform native app way" iff they accept a higher dev cost and/or the potential risk of loses (because delays) and/or the extra cost of asking users (their employees) to take care to stay up-to-date.
** All the above translate in a cost they don't encounter on a "Javascript in browser" solution - therefore they actually can do it solely in the "Javascript in browser" way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday September 17 2019, @06:36AM (2 children)
No, it doesn't.
"They can do it "the cross-platform native app way" iff they accept a higher dev cost and/or the potential risk of loses (because delays) and/or the extra cost of asking users (their employees) to take care to stay up-to-date."
Claiming the costs are higher only makes sense if you're setting an unreasonably short time span.
"All the above translate in a cost they don't encounter on a "Javascript in browser" solution"
But that "solution" has incalculably high costs.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @07:34AM (1 child)
And you think you can dictate the reality to reject the necessity of "unreasonable short time span" from everywhere, right?
Darn bold and powerful of you, if I may say so.
It seems unfortunate that JPMorgan and their ilk think differently, manage to maintain their needs above your boldness and make money out of it. Maybe that's the reality and you are wrong in your boldness?
Well, "winning an argument" on Soylentnews is not something that I desire, thus I'll let the decision which of the two is true as your problem. Over and out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday September 17 2019, @08:11AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday September 17 2019, @05:16AM
Too bad computing in this world is not limited to just personal computing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:18AM
Those are just the real-life shade tree knockoffs. The "real" (Hollywood fantasy) Adam West Batmobile had jet power with afterburner, and some of the later feature film props seemed to perform rather well, however:
I'd say that Web Bloat is just another tragedy of the commons effect similar to SPAM - it costs the perpetrators almost nothing, so they have almost no incentive to stop doing it and various marginal small incentives to make it worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 18 2019, @04:43AM
Offtopic but - can we all just take a moment here, to note the irony in this speaker issuing this statement? I have a big grin on, as if I'd been watching Laurel and Hardy.
Yes, BH, it is indeed what it is. Heh! Thanks for brightening my day!
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday September 16 2019, @08:42PM
Baabaaaaahh!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Interesting) by CheesyMoo on Monday September 16 2019, @07:51PM (12 children)
I was traveling through Central America recently and was on some pretty slow, or laggy connections. At times it was impossible to check my bank account or book hotels online because the web sites would time out of certain requests while trying to load their unnecessary animations and promotional BS
At the same time I impressed with what is possible in a browser nowadays (WASM, web workers, rtc/audio/MIDI/etc APIs) it is obvious that the browser is replacing the desktop in many ways, and I am excited about this for cross-platform accessibility. But what does this mean long term? Seperating client from server, UI from backend, can be really useful. But do we want that client and UI to be a webpage? If we were to design a new framework to handle these problems, how would it operate?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @08:17PM (9 children)
And WHAT, specifically, is the purpose of that - EXCEPT running unapproved code on user's computer?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Monday September 16 2019, @08:20PM (8 children)
It means you don't have to develop and deploy five different versions of an application, one for each major desktop and mobile operating system, and you don't have to have a platform curator (such as Apple) approve them before they go out to the public.
Unapproved by whom? And on what basis does this person ordinarily approve code?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @08:38PM (7 children)
Have you used a non-Chromium-based browser on a non-Windows, non-Linux OS lately? Websites don't work well, (rapidly-changing) standards be damned.
We haven't achieved write-once, read-anywhere. Instead we're returning to a monoculture.
Except this time Google is the gatekeeper.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Pino P on Monday September 16 2019, @08:43PM (2 children)
I regularly use Firefox for X11/Linux and Firefox for Android.
No, I don't regularly use an Apple device. Which OS did you have in mind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 16 2019, @09:39PM
Forgot Apple was technically BSD-derivative, even though I was thinking about BSDs specifically.
I've found that almost all sites with CAPTCHAs require me to do Google's homework by default, and many even refuse to serve me the CAPTCHA. This behavior goes away if I switch to a Google-owned browser.
It's also interesting that in my mind Firefox is so deeply in Google's pockets that I forget they still have a different back-end.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 16 2019, @11:11PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday September 16 2019, @08:52PM (3 children)
I seem to recall this problem getting "solved" once. Sun's would develop the JVM that provides a unified platform for all developers to program against. From remote control to super computer, it would all supposedly run the same code without refactoring. Thus, Java, the second most hated programming language was born.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday September 16 2019, @08:56PM (1 child)
Two things make WebAssembly different from Java: a C-like memory model for a wider variety of source languages, and lack of legal encumbrance by One Rich American Called Larry Ellison.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday September 16 2019, @09:06PM
Well, but Java was originally the province of Sun. So being once owned by someone with reasonable ethics isn't proof of what will happen. And Java-the-language (including the parts call Jakarta) is being released into the open source (possible Free Software) world, with Oracle only holding onto the trademarks.
I still don't like Java because of the limited data types (I really use uint64 a lot), and that you can't do much with them, not even store them in maps. Only Objects can be stored. And I despise utf-16 as worse for all purposes (except interfacing with MS) that utf-8 and utf-32. And byte aligned structs are very useful. And...
But you still need to be fair.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday September 16 2019, @11:01PM
At *least* twice. The UCSD P-system [wikipedia.org] existed long before the crapware called Java.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 16 2019, @10:59PM
With a nod to competing standards [xkcd.com], let me remind you of:
- "write once, run everywhere" (Java)
- Java applets vs Flash Player vs JavaFX vs MS Silverlight vs Above/Apache Flex
- QT vs wxWidgets vs GTK+ vs Java AWT/Swing vs JWT vs FOX toolkit vs plenty of others
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 17 2019, @12:21AM
X-Windows 2022 edition. Brought to you by Google on their Chromebooks. Wait, what was Fuschia again?
🌻🌻 [google.com]