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Somewhat related series of PSAs: Nitter is an Open Source alternative front end for Twitter that requires zero Javascript to run, and it's really good, and is

Somewhat related series of PSAs: Nitter is an Open Source alternative front end for Twitter that requires zero Javascript to run, and it's really good, and is way nicer than Twitter's own UI, and yall should use it. I see Twitter threads hosted on HN all the time, and I kind of wish more of the posters would link to Nitter's public-facing instance instead of Twitter. I think its interface is just objectively better than Twitter's for browsing. Invidious is an Open Source alternative to Youtube that is also really good and requires zero Javascript, but unfortunately it suffers from a lot of performance problems and videos will occasionally refuse to load -- Youtube is I think more hostile about throttling/blocking that kind of stuff, and proxying videos is probably harder than proxying tweets. You can donate to Invidious though, which might help them afford more powerful hardware. In regards to Medium -- if you disable Javascript those popups will all vanish, and for the most part all you'll be missing out on is comments and occasionally a lazy-loaded image. It's amazing how much of the web (particularly news) works fine without Javascript, and getting rid of it gets rid of a lot of these annoying popups and requests. Use uMatrix, it makes it really easy to turn Javascript off by default and whitelist as necessary. And every person who disables Javascript is one more tiny audience metric to make it ever-so-slightly harder for news sites to ignore progressive enhancement.

deith 7y ago
Nitter might not require Javascript to run, but it's everything but fast. Every page that's not cached takes several seconds to generate. It's not much better to show a white page for seconds than it is to show a skeleton page and then load the data using javascript. Also they have taken the decision to proxify all images/avatars through their own servers. Why? And if you do that, at least set appropriate cache headers! Every time I visit a page inside Nitter every single image loads again even if I've seen it already.
- jonfw 7y ago
  > at least set appropriate cache headers! This seems like some pretty good actionable advice. It might be a good idea to make this an issue on their github page. https://github.com/zedeus/nitter https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
- danShumway 7y ago
  > Also they have taken the decision to proxify all images/avatars through their own servers. Why? Privacy. I trust the devs of the Nitter instance I use more than I trust Twitter, and I like that Twitter has (at least somewhat) more difficulty knowing what IP is requesting what. Better caching would be nice, but in general, I've found Nitter's speed to be fine. It's not amazingly snappy, and because it's proxying from Twitter it's probably never going to be faster than Twitter. But I've never been tempted to load Twitter to get around speed issues. Invidious on the other hand... My guess is speed might also be affected by your region? I would be very surprised if Nitter's instance is trying to set up global CDNs or anything. It's probably just a couple Linode servers somewhere.
3xblah 7y ago
An objective person reading this comment, who otherwise knows nothing about this subject, might ask "If the so much of the web works without Javascript, then why is Javascript enabled by default." Google just made changes that require users to enable Javascript in order to log on, e.g., to check their email via the web. The rationale for compelling users to make themselves easier for Google to track can be exaplained away as a "security measure". Google also recently made changes to Chrome that make it impossible to globally disable Javascript for all websites in Guest mode.
dotancohen 7y ago
> It's amazing how much of the web (particularly news) works > fine without Javascript, It's amazing that any content would require Javascript. Web applications I understand, but content (particularly news) should have no need for scripting.
- jm4 7y ago
  They use it to auto play all their shitty videos. That auto play nonsense is ruining so many things for me. I don’t want any movement or sound on a page that I’m trying to read. It’s insane that content producers think it’s a good idea.
  - t34543 7y ago
    It’s insane that a certain demographic responds positively to overstimulation, affirming these choices. I’m an avid cooker and I fucking hate the auto play video on serious eats. I like to think the people reading that content are not as susceptible to annoying webpages but I think I am wrong.
    - acheron 7y ago
      I set up a whole separate style with Stylus to get rid of the autoplay videos on Serious Eats. Also fixed up their site in a couple other ways as well.
      - square_usual 7y ago
        You can block autoplay on Firefox without having to use any extensions.
        turkeydonkey 7y ago
        I have ADHD and discovering that setting was a godsend. It's definitely reduced the number of ublock origin rules I've had to create.
    - 7y ago
im3w1l 7y ago
Invidious isn't proxying the video, just embedding it. If you block third party requests from invidio.us to googlevideo.com, you wont see any clips.
iteratorloopmap 7y ago
I'd like to add that we can use ublock origin as well with JS-Off-By-Default.
sample2448 7y ago
Bitchute seems to be best alternative to youtube for now

deith 7y ago

Nitter might not require Javascript to run, but it's everything but fast. Every page that's not cached takes several seconds to generate. It's not much better to show a white page for seconds than it is to show a skeleton page and then load the data using javascript. Also they have taken the decision to proxify all images/avatars through their own servers. Why? And if you do that, at least set appropriate cache headers! Every time I visit a page inside Nitter every single image loads again even if I've seen it already.

jonfw 7y ago
> at least set appropriate cache headers! This seems like some pretty good actionable advice. It might be a good idea to make this an issue on their github page. https://github.com/zedeus/nitter https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
danShumway 7y ago
> Also they have taken the decision to proxify all images/avatars through their own servers. Why? Privacy. I trust the devs of the Nitter instance I use more than I trust Twitter, and I like that Twitter has (at least somewhat) more difficulty knowing what IP is requesting what. Better caching would be nice, but in general, I've found Nitter's speed to be fine. It's not amazingly snappy, and because it's proxying from Twitter it's probably never going to be faster than Twitter. But I've never been tempted to load Twitter to get around speed issues. Invidious on the other hand... My guess is speed might also be affected by your region? I would be very surprised if Nitter's instance is trying to set up global CDNs or anything. It's probably just a couple Linode servers somewhere.

3xblah 7y ago

An objective person reading this comment, who otherwise knows nothing about this subject, might ask "If the so much of the web works without Javascript, then why is Javascript enabled by default." Google just made changes that require users to enable Javascript in order to log on, e.g., to check their email via the web. The rationale for compelling users to make themselves easier for Google to track can be exaplained away as a "security measure". Google also recently made changes to Chrome that make it impossible to globally disable Javascript for all websites in Guest mode.

dotancohen 7y ago

> It's amazing how much of the web (particularly news) works > fine without Javascript, It's amazing that any content would require Javascript. Web applications I understand, but content (particularly news) should have no need for scripting.

jm4 7y ago
They use it to auto play all their shitty videos. That auto play nonsense is ruining so many things for me. I don’t want any movement or sound on a page that I’m trying to read. It’s insane that content producers think it’s a good idea.
- t34543 7y ago
  It’s insane that a certain demographic responds positively to overstimulation, affirming these choices. I’m an avid cooker and I fucking hate the auto play video on serious eats. I like to think the people reading that content are not as susceptible to annoying webpages but I think I am wrong.
  - acheron 7y ago
    I set up a whole separate style with Stylus to get rid of the autoplay videos on Serious Eats. Also fixed up their site in a couple other ways as well.
    - square_usual 7y ago
      You can block autoplay on Firefox without having to use any extensions.
      - turkeydonkey 7y ago
        I have ADHD and discovering that setting was a godsend. It's definitely reduced the number of ublock origin rules I've had to create.
  - 7y ago

im3w1l 7y ago

Invidious isn't proxying the video, just embedding it. If you block third party requests from invidio.us to googlevideo.com, you wont see any clips.

iteratorloopmap 7y ago

I'd like to add that we can use ublock origin as well with JS-Off-By-Default.

sample2448 7y ago

Bitchute seems to be best alternative to youtube for now