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We used to have applications. Applications were a thing you downloaded once and ran locally. They did things offline. If you needed something extra, it could c

We used to have applications. Applications were a thing you downloaded once and ran locally. They did things offline. If you needed something extra, it could communicate with a remote host to give you the thing you needed. Eventually, packagers were created to distribute applications more easily. Then we had web pages. Web pages were supposed to enable us to browse remote documents. They worked, for a time. But then people either forgot or were annoyed by making applications. Then we had web applications. Entire systems of software development combined a web page with an application. You couldn't use it offline, and it didn't browse documents so much as allow you to use an application remotely. The browser would show you an application with which you would browse documents. And it worked, for a time. But then people apparently got tired of distributing apps over a web page. So now we have web packaging? If you wanted a universal application platform, make a less shitty form of Java or something. But stop pretending that hypertext is an application, trying to make me jump through hoops to read some text. I don't need my content proxied, prettified, modified, imaged, scripted, stylized, or customized. I don't need it faster, or better, or more private, or more anything. I really just want to read the text of the article I wanted to read. Honestly. I'm sick of new wheels. I'm sick of progress. I'm sick of advertisements, scripts, pretty fonts, pop ups, pagination, and columns of useless distraction. I'm sick of commentary by ignorant intolerant insensitive paranoid outraged strangers. I'm sick of trying to read a news article and being assaulted by the equivalent of five kinds of media warring for my attention. I'm sick of likes. I'm sick of sharing. I'm sick of people who have seemingly made it their purpose in life to annoy me. I'm sick of technology.

cromwellian 9y ago
AMP isn't being used for applications, it's being used to deliver mostly static text documents with images. It's pretty bare bones, but people didn't like Google's implementation that works on unmodified browsers, and so now there's a new proposed implementation that requires browsers to implement it natively. Most of the anti-AMP commentators keep repeating over and over again that people can make documents which render as fast, but the Redfin article essentially points out that this goes beyond stripping out all JS, and having quick HTML parsing. You could reduce parse/layout to 0 and still be slower than AMP. Do you want to install a native application just to read each article? It doesn't scale. Even simple things like DNS lookups on mobile networks can add hundreds of milliseconds delay (from 80ms at the median to 500ms at the 90th percentile), and the subjective delay causes people to feel the bad.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  It takes several seconds to load most web pages on modern browsers because modern browsers have more code in them than my operating system, my browser wants to load everything encrypted, and most web pages are designed to deliver so much unnecessary crap in such an obnoxious way as to make it take significantly longer on purpose just to get to the content. Google's response is "No worries, we'll just download it for you, screw it up, and then present it to you." Thanks, Google. I didn't ask for that, but that sure never stops you from encroaching ever more into my life. Incidentally, all ISPs could provide simple proxies that cache and return pages faster, but not with HTTPS. Google being our grand overlord and de facto tech nanny state, they would rather provide this solution themselves than allow ISPs to not do it perfectly (and at the same time siphon up any potential metadata that a carrier could use to monetize traffic going over its infrastructure) Google didn't invent advertising-driven free services, but they sure as hell perfected it. Most of the annoyances on the web are due to free services - not latency. And mobile providers could prioritize latency over bandwidth, but lower latency does not sell new mobile plans.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    We're not talking about AMP vs bloated desktop web pages, we're talking about AMP vs hand-optimized and stripped down simple documents. Yes, ISPs could provide proxies, if you want your ISPs to be able to track everything you do and then resell your behavior (https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regulations-fcc/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regul...) , or allow the NSA to snoop on your behavior. You act as if HTTPS was introduced for nefarious reasons and not as a reaction to very real attacks on confidentiality and integrity. The web isn't going to return to the world of 1994, or the idyllic pre-Morris Worm era when we just didn't care about security. You're sick that the world has gotten a lot more complicated and noisy. I am too, it's part of growing old, get used to it.
    - peterwwillis 9y ago
      I'm talking about AMP vs the news articles and cooking recipes I try to read that get intercepted by AMP. Google already tracks everything I do and resells my behavior. That is literally their entire business model. The NSA puts backdoors in hardware modules you can't remove, finds flaws in firmware, cracks crypto, and exploits mobile devices that can't or won't be updated. And HTTPS simply isn't necessary for 90% of the use cases its champions claim. I've switched my default search engine, changed browsers, unloaded most of my free hosted services to paid ones, and am paying for a newspaper subscription. I am saving money in the process by cutting unnecessary expenditures to pay for these things. I didn't have to get used to it and life is better.
musage 9y ago
You're sick of the abuse of humans via the abuse of technology, I would say. Not that I want to speak for you, or have a good way to sum up my own outlook, but I think you're kinda selling yourself short when you sum it up as being sick of technology. Maybe you're not against technology, but just also for life, something that our use of technology should enhance rather than usurp. Maybe you're just not confusing bigness with greatness or quantity with quality? At least, that's how I think of it for myself, because I still love neat tricks and insights, which forms the bases of my affinity towards "tech", like I'll always love language no matter how skillful use of it seems to regress. It's just at some point something like a monkey stacking some crates to reach a banana is both more interesting and uplifting to watch than a lot of what we do, and the shit ways we rationalize it. In a word, I feel you.
superkuh 9y ago
Websites are at least supposedly are sandboxed so they are not as much of a risk as running native binaries. But this is getting worse and worse though as browsers expose more and more of their host operating system's functionality. The benefits of using a website instead of a native app are quickly disappearing, while the drawbacks have only been somewhat mitigated. We're getting to the point where browsers are worthy of the decades old criticism Emacs has received. They have eventually become an OS with many fine features - simply lacking a good web browser. For the privacy conscious user, modern web technologies will undermine you every step of the way, or simply break if you choose to stand your ground.

cromwellian 9y ago

AMP isn't being used for applications, it's being used to deliver mostly static text documents with images. It's pretty bare bones, but people didn't like Google's implementation that works on unmodified browsers, and so now there's a new proposed implementation that requires browsers to implement it natively. Most of the anti-AMP commentators keep repeating over and over again that people can make documents which render as fast, but the Redfin article essentially points out that this goes beyond stripping out all JS, and having quick HTML parsing. You could reduce parse/layout to 0 and still be slower than AMP. Do you want to install a native application just to read each article? It doesn't scale. Even simple things like DNS lookups on mobile networks can add hundreds of milliseconds delay (from 80ms at the median to 500ms at the 90th percentile), and the subjective delay causes people to feel the bad.

peterwwillis 9y ago
It takes several seconds to load most web pages on modern browsers because modern browsers have more code in them than my operating system, my browser wants to load everything encrypted, and most web pages are designed to deliver so much unnecessary crap in such an obnoxious way as to make it take significantly longer on purpose just to get to the content. Google's response is "No worries, we'll just download it for you, screw it up, and then present it to you." Thanks, Google. I didn't ask for that, but that sure never stops you from encroaching ever more into my life. Incidentally, all ISPs could provide simple proxies that cache and return pages faster, but not with HTTPS. Google being our grand overlord and de facto tech nanny state, they would rather provide this solution themselves than allow ISPs to not do it perfectly (and at the same time siphon up any potential metadata that a carrier could use to monetize traffic going over its infrastructure) Google didn't invent advertising-driven free services, but they sure as hell perfected it. Most of the annoyances on the web are due to free services - not latency. And mobile providers could prioritize latency over bandwidth, but lower latency does not sell new mobile plans.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  We're not talking about AMP vs bloated desktop web pages, we're talking about AMP vs hand-optimized and stripped down simple documents. Yes, ISPs could provide proxies, if you want your ISPs to be able to track everything you do and then resell your behavior (https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regulations-fcc/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regul...) , or allow the NSA to snoop on your behavior. You act as if HTTPS was introduced for nefarious reasons and not as a reaction to very real attacks on confidentiality and integrity. The web isn't going to return to the world of 1994, or the idyllic pre-Morris Worm era when we just didn't care about security. You're sick that the world has gotten a lot more complicated and noisy. I am too, it's part of growing old, get used to it.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    I'm talking about AMP vs the news articles and cooking recipes I try to read that get intercepted by AMP. Google already tracks everything I do and resells my behavior. That is literally their entire business model. The NSA puts backdoors in hardware modules you can't remove, finds flaws in firmware, cracks crypto, and exploits mobile devices that can't or won't be updated. And HTTPS simply isn't necessary for 90% of the use cases its champions claim. I've switched my default search engine, changed browsers, unloaded most of my free hosted services to paid ones, and am paying for a newspaper subscription. I am saving money in the process by cutting unnecessary expenditures to pay for these things. I didn't have to get used to it and life is better.

musage 9y ago

You're sick of the abuse of humans via the abuse of technology, I would say. Not that I want to speak for you, or have a good way to sum up my own outlook, but I think you're kinda selling yourself short when you sum it up as being sick of technology. Maybe you're not against technology, but just also for life, something that our use of technology should enhance rather than usurp. Maybe you're just not confusing bigness with greatness or quantity with quality? At least, that's how I think of it for myself, because I still love neat tricks and insights, which forms the bases of my affinity towards "tech", like I'll always love language no matter how skillful use of it seems to regress. It's just at some point something like a monkey stacking some crates to reach a banana is both more interesting and uplifting to watch than a lot of what we do, and the shit ways we rationalize it. In a word, I feel you.

superkuh 9y ago

Websites are at least supposedly are sandboxed so they are not as much of a risk as running native binaries. But this is getting worse and worse though as browsers expose more and more of their host operating system's functionality. The benefits of using a website instead of a native app are quickly disappearing, while the drawbacks have only been somewhat mitigated. We're getting to the point where browsers are worthy of the decades old criticism Emacs has received. They have eventually become an OS with many fine features - simply lacking a good web browser. For the privacy conscious user, modern web technologies will undermine you every step of the way, or simply break if you choose to stand your ground.