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This is both an appeal to people's universal appreciation of efficiency, and a weak denunciation of the modern web. Your argument is 1) that a website's value

This is both an appeal to people's universal appreciation of efficiency, and a weak denunciation of the modern web. Your argument is 1) that a website's value is the number of words on the page, and 2) that raw text is the highest value data that can be transmitted over the internet, and 3) that inefficiency and wastefulness of bits is a bad thing First off, you need to defend your first two assumptions. Don't websites do a lot more than display text? Does HTML/markup not have a magnitude more value than raw text? And how exactly is being inefficient with something that is abundant a tautologically bad thing?

cheezymoogle 8y ago
1. A website's value is the amount of information that it provides to the end user. I would argue that the entirety of the works of Shakespeare or the 1911 Brittanica Encyclopedia provides more information than a high-definition picture of Donald Trump grimacing at EU leaders or an autoplaying ad for Doritos Locos Tacos NEW AT TACO BELL. As far as supplemental uses, at the end of the day, people are using plaintext to communicate with other people. Images and videos are secondary. If that ever changes, then society is already doomed as literacy is fundamental to the maintenance of technology. 2. Raw text is the highest value data/information return that can be transmitted over the internet. There's a reason that Morse Code and APRS are still around: they're reliable, appropriate tech, and require little to no middlemen outside of the transceivers themselves. 3. If wantonly (namely, for no enduringly good reason) increasing the amount of entropy in the universe isn't tautologically bad to you, then I really doubt that any argument would sway you to the contrary. Concerning the relative value of HTML and CSS, yes, you could argue that UX matters in that department, but even the most bloated static HTML/CSS page is going to pale dramatically in comparison to the size of what's considered acceptable throughput today.
- fyrabanks 8y ago
  In response to #2, there is also a reason that photojournalism exists--unless you believe in a world where everyone imagines what important figures and historic events look like based solely on textual descriptions. This is completely ignoring the fact that I, nor most of society, would never attempt to receive the day's news via Morse Code.
  - cheezymoogle 8y ago
    Hint: TCP/IP & UTF-8 are fundamentally along the same principles as APRS. So yes, really you are. As far as photojournalism goes, I can think of thousands of reasons why the predominance of photojournalism has been pernicious to civil society. The strategic use of the identifiable victim effect in atrocity propaganda being the most obvious. However, with that said, I'm not arguing that visual media is entirely unnecessary, but rather against the idea that every user needs to download a 1680x1050 image when a default 600px width image or even the horror of having the image as an external link would be more than adequate for the overwhelming majority of users, particularly those in rural and developing areas that can't afford to waste their total allotment of monthly mobile data on "What Chance the Rapper’s Purchase of Chicagoist Means". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/opinion/culture/chance-the-rapper-chicagoist.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/opinion/culture/chance-th...
- _louisr_ 8y ago
  1. Well how is the format of plaintext the best method of getting information to the end user? What if you added a thin indexing layer on top of the plaintext? That would allow people to jump through huge documents with ease, but it's no longer plaintext. Sounds more valuable to me. Where is the line? What's the ideal? 2. Fair enough 3. Referencing "increasing the entropy in the universe" isn't a good argument because the amount of entropy increase due to humans is much, much less than how much entropy is increased by particles being blasted out of all the stars in the universe (unless I fundamentally misunderstand what entropy is). I think that stars blasting out particles is a much larger contributor to entropy than humans not using computer bits effectively. And also what does entropy as a concept have to do with anything, anyway? Why should human engineering tasks have such considerations? If being super efficient with an abundant resource has a large cost (of some sort), but low efficiency has no business- or environmental- downside, then why be efficient with it? In your last bit you argue that it's acceptable to send a site that is bigger than even the most bloated HTML/CSS page; I don't think that's true for any site/app that wants to be fast. It slows you down and people notice and stop using your service unless it's required of them. I think that in general things are not as bad as you make them out to be, and your arguments have some merit but are mostly revealed as nonsense when the rubber hits the road. Universe entropy is completely unrelated to modern software engineering and web sites that have a lot of devs and are not SalesForce are not _that_ bloated.
  - cheezymoogle 8y ago
    As far as #1 goes, I'm arguing that plaintext is the ideal to strive towards, not the living practical reality. As far as indexing and access, the Gopher protocol and Teletext are great options to look at. As previously noted, if you don't find that waste is fundamentally wrong on a moral level, there's no point forward from here. I view myself on a planet of dwindling resources, vanishing biodiversity, and warming at increasing rates. If you think the energy that goes into computation is free or lacking external environmental downstream effects, then at the root of it, you carelessly shit where you eat and I don't. That's a fundamental disagreement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext
kup0 8y ago
#3 is an interesting thought. So when something is abundant, inefficiency and wastefulness are fine? When it comes to bits, abundant to who? Those who can afford said abundance? Certainly not to those with bandwidth caps and slow internet access. Reminds me of a cartoon I saw once: "What if climate change turns out to be a hoax and we end up making the world better for nothing!" Since when is doing something efficiently and non-wastefully not a good idea for its own sake?
- _louisr_ 8y ago
  Since when is doing something efficiently and non-wastefully not a good idea for its own sake? I agree we should make things efficient for their own sake. But that's not what people are arguing about. They are arguing that the modern web is bad, and their reasons are weak. The modern web is terrific and we should not carelessly denigrate it, which is what I'm against. Do not denigrate the modern web in the name of efficiency when your measure for evaluating websites is wrong and you incorrectly assume that the difference between a 1mb and 10mb payload matters to the actual operation of the site and visitor satisfaction. Re: That comic you once saw. Yeah, what if we shut down all coal power plants and make the earth better? Oh wait, now we have destroyed our critical infrastructure and our government/nation has absolutely no leverage to even make decisions regarding the environment. If people would stop dumbing down these complex problems, it would be a good thing.
  - kup0 8y ago
    If those coal power plants are replaced with alternative forms of energy, I don't see the problem... Talking about just "shutting them down" with nothing to replace them has absolutely nothing to do with that sentiment or the original cartoon... it's not remotely a reasonable reading of what I was saying. Not to mention, my reply is to parent comment, not to the article in general. In no way did I say I completely agree with the author of the article- that's not what my comment was about. However, if a news article with a load of JS and ads is considered to be this "modern web" then good riddance to it. I hope it goes away. Yes, cool things can be done with the web, and some of those cool things take a lot of bandwidth or payload to accomplish- the examples (news sites, etc) are not these things. What are your reasons for thinking the modern web is terrific? I agreed with that statement when I saw it, but as I think about it, I'm not so sure I do
boomlinde 8y ago
1 and 2 are your own extrapolations and have nothing to do with the author's arguments. Please point out where the author makes these arguments in case I missed something. > Don't websites do a lot more than display text? Yes, evidently, but the author doesn't disagree with this. In fact, the entire premise of the article is that websites do a bunch of useless stuff that have nothing to do with delivering the content you are browsing them for. > Does HTML/markup not have a magnitude more value than raw text? As a universal rule there is of course no answer to this. There is a lot of absolutely worthless text on the web. Given the example, though, would you say that the markup is worth more than the text on a website whose primary attraction is written articles? Do you frequently visit websites just to admire their markup? > And how exactly is being inefficient with something that is abundant a tautologically bad thing? My time is limited. RAM is limited, CPU time is limited. My mobile data plan is limited. No one is happy with a page loading for 10 seconds for something which should take 1/10000 of that. That's not to say that this is tautologically a bad thing. The author explains why he thinks its bad and I think that people that value their time and resources should agree. If you think that an article loading for 10 seconds is a bad thing, it's bad that an article takes 10 seconds to load. It only becomes tautological once you apply your value system to it, if ever.

cheezymoogle 8y ago

1. A website's value is the amount of information that it provides to the end user. I would argue that the entirety of the works of Shakespeare or the 1911 Brittanica Encyclopedia provides more information than a high-definition picture of Donald Trump grimacing at EU leaders or an autoplaying ad for Doritos Locos Tacos NEW AT TACO BELL. As far as supplemental uses, at the end of the day, people are using plaintext to communicate with other people. Images and videos are secondary. If that ever changes, then society is already doomed as literacy is fundamental to the maintenance of technology. 2. Raw text is the highest value data/information return that can be transmitted over the internet. There's a reason that Morse Code and APRS are still around: they're reliable, appropriate tech, and require little to no middlemen outside of the transceivers themselves. 3. If wantonly (namely, for no enduringly good reason) increasing the amount of entropy in the universe isn't tautologically bad to you, then I really doubt that any argument would sway you to the contrary. Concerning the relative value of HTML and CSS, yes, you could argue that UX matters in that department, but even the most bloated static HTML/CSS page is going to pale dramatically in comparison to the size of what's considered acceptable throughput today.

fyrabanks 8y ago
In response to #2, there is also a reason that photojournalism exists--unless you believe in a world where everyone imagines what important figures and historic events look like based solely on textual descriptions. This is completely ignoring the fact that I, nor most of society, would never attempt to receive the day's news via Morse Code.
- cheezymoogle 8y ago
  Hint: TCP/IP & UTF-8 are fundamentally along the same principles as APRS. So yes, really you are. As far as photojournalism goes, I can think of thousands of reasons why the predominance of photojournalism has been pernicious to civil society. The strategic use of the identifiable victim effect in atrocity propaganda being the most obvious. However, with that said, I'm not arguing that visual media is entirely unnecessary, but rather against the idea that every user needs to download a 1680x1050 image when a default 600px width image or even the horror of having the image as an external link would be more than adequate for the overwhelming majority of users, particularly those in rural and developing areas that can't afford to waste their total allotment of monthly mobile data on "What Chance the Rapper’s Purchase of Chicagoist Means". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/opinion/culture/chance-the-rapper-chicagoist.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/opinion/culture/chance-th...
_louisr_ 8y ago
1. Well how is the format of plaintext the best method of getting information to the end user? What if you added a thin indexing layer on top of the plaintext? That would allow people to jump through huge documents with ease, but it's no longer plaintext. Sounds more valuable to me. Where is the line? What's the ideal? 2. Fair enough 3. Referencing "increasing the entropy in the universe" isn't a good argument because the amount of entropy increase due to humans is much, much less than how much entropy is increased by particles being blasted out of all the stars in the universe (unless I fundamentally misunderstand what entropy is). I think that stars blasting out particles is a much larger contributor to entropy than humans not using computer bits effectively. And also what does entropy as a concept have to do with anything, anyway? Why should human engineering tasks have such considerations? If being super efficient with an abundant resource has a large cost (of some sort), but low efficiency has no business- or environmental- downside, then why be efficient with it? In your last bit you argue that it's acceptable to send a site that is bigger than even the most bloated HTML/CSS page; I don't think that's true for any site/app that wants to be fast. It slows you down and people notice and stop using your service unless it's required of them. I think that in general things are not as bad as you make them out to be, and your arguments have some merit but are mostly revealed as nonsense when the rubber hits the road. Universe entropy is completely unrelated to modern software engineering and web sites that have a lot of devs and are not SalesForce are not _that_ bloated.
- cheezymoogle 8y ago
  As far as #1 goes, I'm arguing that plaintext is the ideal to strive towards, not the living practical reality. As far as indexing and access, the Gopher protocol and Teletext are great options to look at. As previously noted, if you don't find that waste is fundamentally wrong on a moral level, there's no point forward from here. I view myself on a planet of dwindling resources, vanishing biodiversity, and warming at increasing rates. If you think the energy that goes into computation is free or lacking external environmental downstream effects, then at the root of it, you carelessly shit where you eat and I don't. That's a fundamental disagreement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext

kup0 8y ago

#3 is an interesting thought. So when something is abundant, inefficiency and wastefulness are fine? When it comes to bits, abundant to who? Those who can afford said abundance? Certainly not to those with bandwidth caps and slow internet access. Reminds me of a cartoon I saw once: "What if climate change turns out to be a hoax and we end up making the world better for nothing!" Since when is doing something efficiently and non-wastefully not a good idea for its own sake?

_louisr_ 8y ago
Since when is doing something efficiently and non-wastefully not a good idea for its own sake? I agree we should make things efficient for their own sake. But that's not what people are arguing about. They are arguing that the modern web is bad, and their reasons are weak. The modern web is terrific and we should not carelessly denigrate it, which is what I'm against. Do not denigrate the modern web in the name of efficiency when your measure for evaluating websites is wrong and you incorrectly assume that the difference between a 1mb and 10mb payload matters to the actual operation of the site and visitor satisfaction. Re: That comic you once saw. Yeah, what if we shut down all coal power plants and make the earth better? Oh wait, now we have destroyed our critical infrastructure and our government/nation has absolutely no leverage to even make decisions regarding the environment. If people would stop dumbing down these complex problems, it would be a good thing.
- kup0 8y ago
  If those coal power plants are replaced with alternative forms of energy, I don't see the problem... Talking about just "shutting them down" with nothing to replace them has absolutely nothing to do with that sentiment or the original cartoon... it's not remotely a reasonable reading of what I was saying. Not to mention, my reply is to parent comment, not to the article in general. In no way did I say I completely agree with the author of the article- that's not what my comment was about. However, if a news article with a load of JS and ads is considered to be this "modern web" then good riddance to it. I hope it goes away. Yes, cool things can be done with the web, and some of those cool things take a lot of bandwidth or payload to accomplish- the examples (news sites, etc) are not these things. What are your reasons for thinking the modern web is terrific? I agreed with that statement when I saw it, but as I think about it, I'm not so sure I do

boomlinde 8y ago

1 and 2 are your own extrapolations and have nothing to do with the author's arguments. Please point out where the author makes these arguments in case I missed something. > Don't websites do a lot more than display text? Yes, evidently, but the author doesn't disagree with this. In fact, the entire premise of the article is that websites do a bunch of useless stuff that have nothing to do with delivering the content you are browsing them for. > Does HTML/markup not have a magnitude more value than raw text? As a universal rule there is of course no answer to this. There is a lot of absolutely worthless text on the web. Given the example, though, would you say that the markup is worth more than the text on a website whose primary attraction is written articles? Do you frequently visit websites just to admire their markup? > And how exactly is being inefficient with something that is abundant a tautologically bad thing? My time is limited. RAM is limited, CPU time is limited. My mobile data plan is limited. No one is happy with a page loading for 10 seconds for something which should take 1/10000 of that. That's not to say that this is tautologically a bad thing. The author explains why he thinks its bad and I think that people that value their time and resources should agree. If you think that an article loading for 10 seconds is a bad thing, it's bad that an article takes 10 seconds to load. It only becomes tautological once you apply your value system to it, if ever.