5 ms·
You got nerd sniped by the HTML vs. PDF format thing and missed the entire point of TA: > Isn’t it a good thing that we enjoy rapid progress? To the extent tha
by camgunz 5y ago
You got nerd sniped by the HTML vs. PDF format thing and missed the entire point of TA:
> Isn’t it a good thing that we enjoy rapid progress? To the extent that we get to enjoy things like YouTube and sandspiel, yes! But to the extent that we want the internet to be a place where we can work and live and think and communicate free of malware, surveillance, dark patterns and the insidious influence of advertising, the answer is, empirically, sadly, no. The web has become ad-corrupted hand-in-hand with growth in technological capability, and the symbiotic relationship between web and browser means they feed on each others’ churn. Ads demand new sources of novelty to put themselves on, so the web expands continually, the specs grow in complexity, the browsers grow in sophistication, the barrier to entry grows ever higher, the vast cost of it all demands more ad revenue to fund it... and thus the perpetual motion machine is complete.
- cxr 5y agoThe author does identify a problem, and so you want to focus on that. That's fine. There is the issue of triviality, however. The problem described is widely felt, and also widely discussed. We already know this stuff to be a problem. For the piece to be worthwhile, then, it should do something that is not present in the other instances where the topic has been raised. It should articulate (or at the very least exhibit, without necessarily articulating) a solution for us. It doesn't. A bad remedy to a genuine problem does not yield a solved problem.
- slashdot2008 5y agoThe author brings a solution, it is to publish documents in PDF instead of HTML.
- apotheon 5y ago"A bad remedy to a genuine problem does not yield a solved problem."
- tovej 5y agoWhy do you feel PDFs are a bad remedy? PDFs are the usual way I absorb information.
- slashdot2008 5y agoPDF is a great way to publish documents. which is what the web originally was. The web has become a bad remedy to some distributed software problems.
- camgunz 5y agoThe article is called "Deurbanising the Web", and its thesis is: - Publish in static file formats. - Date and hash your work. - Stop spying on your users. HN is a discussion forum, not project planning software. Not everything has to "yield a solved problem". Are you really setting the bar at "design a technology stack for replacing HTML/CSS/JS"? That's way, way too high.
- apotheon 5y agoThose points can be trivially met with static HTML and something like IPFS, and you can still download HTML for local storage and viewing. You can even print to PDF if you really want to do so. Meanwhile, PDFs also allow dynamic files, don't require dating and hashing, and can be used to spy on users or deliver malware. EDIT: Oh, yeah, and static file formats doesn't necessarily have to mean static document formatting when viewing -- unless you're using PDFs, which tends to break useful stuff like reflowing for paginated documents (one of the worst things about even simple PDFs).
- bccdee 5y agoYou say that its thesis is (in part) to generally publish in static file formats, but that's not quite accurate. The piece specifically touts PDF/A as the best format and makes several arguments against the use of html/css. I agree that they're making a broader point than just "use pdf," but "use pdf" is definitely a large part of it.
- xialvjun 5y agoipfs solve this well.
- prophesi 5y agoNo, the entire point of the article is to convince people to use PDF/A. Which I find comical since you have to go out of your way to check if a PDF is PDF/A compliant. If the web was run by PDF's, there's no reason why any big corporations would abide by those rules, and it'd be just as messy as HTML is today.
- camgunz 5y agoYou've also been nerd sniped. TA goes on and on about surveillance capitalism and the attention economy. Weird, for an article that's supposedly convincing engineers of the merits of one file format over another.
- prophesi 5y agoDid you read beyond the "How did it come to this?" section? TA goes on and on about web standards and the need for PDF/A. Edit: If the article _was_ all about surveillance capitalism, then it wouldn't be worth upvoting as actionable solutions are much more valuable than preaching to the choir.
- camgunz 5y agoIf you don't think it's clear that the author's advocacy of PDF is a means to an end, subservient to their desire to dismantle surveillance capitalism and the duopoly that Google/Apple have on the web, I don't know where to go from here.
- 6510 5y agoThe classic mistaking the example for the topic.