3 ms·

Sustainable Web Manifesto

48 points by matthewdumler 7y ago

luckylion 7y ago
I very much like that the site is a good example of the manifesto: very lean, still good looking.
- ksbakan 7y ago
  Not very lean to me. It lags while scrolling on my phone.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
KaiserPro 7y ago
Where are the action points? A list of sustainable hosts would be the very basic level of information surely?
winslett 7y ago
I feel like I should name drop Cloverly.com for this. It allows you to programmatically allocate renewable energy and carbon offsets for your purposes. Disclaimer: I work there.
- matthewdumler 7y ago
  Disclaimer: That’s dope!
kerkeslager 7y ago
Posting this on Hacker News seems kind of ironic to me. I can count on one hand the number of startups that even put a serious effort to live up to this, and I wonder if any exist that succeed. If you required "open" and "honest" as defined by the manifesto, almost the entire marketing industry and the industries it supports would have to shut down. Even supposedly-altruistic nonprofits are tricking people into subscribing to their mailing lists and then stockpiling the emails in opaque databases these days.
- stareatgoats 7y ago
  > whole segments of the software industry would have to close their doors. I read this more as an incentive to improve, not as a requirement to operate.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    Incentives? What incentives? Hacker news folks can just sign this for virtue signalling[1] and then go back to doing exactly the opposite of every one of the principles. The people actually fighting for these principles are Richard Stallman types that Hacker News generally considers fringe nuts. Talking about openness and honesty (as defined in this manifesto) at Hacker News is like talking about clean fuels at the place where people go to burn tires. I'm not criticizing the manifesto. I'm criticizing Hacker News and hypocrisy here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      Not my impression at all that RMS is considered "fringe nuts" here, especially very recently as folks are waking up to what this decade's megatrends (webapps, cloud, ubiquitous mobile) has done to our industry and beyond. It's also a place where sustainability (as in "economical") can be discussed, in particular wrt F/OSS licensing models.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Don't forget the biggest gorilla of them all started with "Don't be evil" as their motto. They dropped it later but it did help to give them this sheen of being "good citizens" while it lasted.
- davidivadavid 7y ago
  I think Hacker News might need to take a chill pill and stop calling complete industries dishonest with so little to back it up. Most of the marketing industry is just as honest as most of the tech industry. In fact, it's far easier to argue that many products labeled as "tech" are far more manipulative than your average marketing agency.
noobermin 7y ago
This seems good, I just was hoping "sustainable" also means less churn, because if anything contributes to the waste that makes modern IT less sustainable, it's the amount of unnecessarily changing things that work.
- matthewdumler 7y ago
  That’s closer to what I was looking for, when I came across this!
whatshisface 7y ago
This sounds like a feel-good thing and not a real plan. For example the last one, about "nourishing." Also, honesty is a virtue, but what does it have to do with sustainability? I don't want to live in a world where the profit side makes sense but the virtue side sounds like GPT-2.
kmlx 7y ago
this looks very clean, and the principles seem attainable at the least. we should be leading this fight. congrats! this being said, one minor nitpick: “The planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change” is false. and by quite a wide measure. the planet experienced far worse climate change just in the past 500 millions years: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/500-million-year-survey-earths-climate-reveals-dire-warning-humanity https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/500-million-year-sur... that doesn’t mean the situation isn’t approaching dire levels for the current ecosystem. so the current wording might be necessary. it’s just that the scientist in me picked this up.
skybrian 7y ago
Sustainable meaning centralized?
- matthewdumler 7y ago
  Dear god, no.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    It saves a lot of energy.
frenchman99 7y ago
The company behind this seems to be genuinely interested in a greener web: https://www.wholegraindigital.com/ https://www.wholegraindigital.com/ Unfortunately, I feel like lots of things can be understood in a variety of ways. Take this: > The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. What does that mean ? Should I use C to create websites, so that each web request takes less energy ? What about the energy I use to code : is that accounted for ? And this: > The products and services we provide will support an economy that nourishes people and planet. What kind of products and services does that exclude ?
- majewsky 7y ago
  > The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. The wording is unfortunate, but I understand this to mean that tools (e.g. programming languages) should be chosen with resource usage in mind. The last word, "possible", gives you an out to reasonably argue that C is not an option because of other concerns like security. But it sure means that something like Go or Rust should be preferred over something like Ruby or PHP because it allows you to run most applications on a much smaller footprint.
macando 7y ago
The initiative reminds me of this: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-... The modern web made possible to represent knowledge in completely new forms and to easily collaborate with people in your fields of interest. From your home you can now find a 3D animation of how some piece of engineering or science works. With AR and VR you can comprehend complex concepts faster. The barriers to enter science and contribute to solving big civilization issues are lower than ever. The parts are already in place. What I'd love to see is how to teach and organize people to use the existing web more efficiently.
erik_seaberg 7y ago
From the name I was hoping for something more related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712449, link rot, and open archives.

48 points by matthewdumler 7y ago

luckylion 7y ago

I very much like that the site is a good example of the manifesto: very lean, still good looking.

ksbakan 7y ago
Not very lean to me. It lags while scrolling on my phone.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

KaiserPro 7y ago

Where are the action points? A list of sustainable hosts would be the very basic level of information surely?

winslett 7y ago

I feel like I should name drop Cloverly.com for this. It allows you to programmatically allocate renewable energy and carbon offsets for your purposes. Disclaimer: I work there.

matthewdumler 7y ago
Disclaimer: That’s dope!

kerkeslager 7y ago

Posting this on Hacker News seems kind of ironic to me. I can count on one hand the number of startups that even put a serious effort to live up to this, and I wonder if any exist that succeed. If you required "open" and "honest" as defined by the manifesto, almost the entire marketing industry and the industries it supports would have to shut down. Even supposedly-altruistic nonprofits are tricking people into subscribing to their mailing lists and then stockpiling the emails in opaque databases these days.

stareatgoats 7y ago
> whole segments of the software industry would have to close their doors. I read this more as an incentive to improve, not as a requirement to operate.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  Incentives? What incentives? Hacker news folks can just sign this for virtue signalling[1] and then go back to doing exactly the opposite of every one of the principles. The people actually fighting for these principles are Richard Stallman types that Hacker News generally considers fringe nuts. Talking about openness and honesty (as defined in this manifesto) at Hacker News is like talking about clean fuels at the place where people go to burn tires. I'm not criticizing the manifesto. I'm criticizing Hacker News and hypocrisy here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    Not my impression at all that RMS is considered "fringe nuts" here, especially very recently as folks are waking up to what this decade's megatrends (webapps, cloud, ubiquitous mobile) has done to our industry and beyond. It's also a place where sustainability (as in "economical") can be discussed, in particular wrt F/OSS licensing models.
Yetanfou 7y ago
Don't forget the biggest gorilla of them all started with "Don't be evil" as their motto. They dropped it later but it did help to give them this sheen of being "good citizens" while it lasted.
davidivadavid 7y ago
I think Hacker News might need to take a chill pill and stop calling complete industries dishonest with so little to back it up. Most of the marketing industry is just as honest as most of the tech industry. In fact, it's far easier to argue that many products labeled as "tech" are far more manipulative than your average marketing agency.

noobermin 7y ago

This seems good, I just was hoping "sustainable" also means less churn, because if anything contributes to the waste that makes modern IT less sustainable, it's the amount of unnecessarily changing things that work.

matthewdumler 7y ago
That’s closer to what I was looking for, when I came across this!

whatshisface 7y ago

This sounds like a feel-good thing and not a real plan. For example the last one, about "nourishing." Also, honesty is a virtue, but what does it have to do with sustainability? I don't want to live in a world where the profit side makes sense but the virtue side sounds like GPT-2.

kmlx 7y ago

this looks very clean, and the principles seem attainable at the least. we should be leading this fight. congrats! this being said, one minor nitpick: “The planet is experiencing unprecedented climate change” is false. and by quite a wide measure. the planet experienced far worse climate change just in the past 500 millions years: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/500-million-year-survey-earths-climate-reveals-dire-warning-humanity https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/500-million-year-sur... that doesn’t mean the situation isn’t approaching dire levels for the current ecosystem. so the current wording might be necessary. it’s just that the scientist in me picked this up.

skybrian 7y ago

Sustainable meaning centralized?

matthewdumler 7y ago
Dear god, no.
- skybrian 7y ago
  It saves a lot of energy.

frenchman99 7y ago

The company behind this seems to be genuinely interested in a greener web: https://www.wholegraindigital.com/ https://www.wholegraindigital.com/ Unfortunately, I feel like lots of things can be understood in a variety of ways. Take this: > The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. What does that mean ? Should I use C to create websites, so that each web request takes less energy ? What about the energy I use to code : is that accounted for ? And this: > The products and services we provide will support an economy that nourishes people and planet. What kind of products and services does that exclude ?

majewsky 7y ago
> The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. The wording is unfortunate, but I understand this to mean that tools (e.g. programming languages) should be chosen with resource usage in mind. The last word, "possible", gives you an out to reasonably argue that C is not an option because of other concerns like security. But it sure means that something like Go or Rust should be preferred over something like Ruby or PHP because it allows you to run most applications on a much smaller footprint.

macando 7y ago

The initiative reminds me of this: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-letter-to-a-nun-in-africa/ https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-... The modern web made possible to represent knowledge in completely new forms and to easily collaborate with people in your fields of interest. From your home you can now find a 3D animation of how some piece of engineering or science works. With AR and VR you can comprehend complex concepts faster. The barriers to enter science and contribute to solving big civilization issues are lower than ever. The parts are already in place. What I'd love to see is how to teach and organize people to use the existing web more efficiently.

erik_seaberg 7y ago

From the name I was hoping for something more related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712449, link rot, and open archives.