4 ms·

"Cookies & Tracking - This site has no cookies and no tracking. CSS & JavaScript - CSS, JavaScript and HTTPS are not required. This site works in text and vinta

"Cookies & Tracking - This site has no cookies and no tracking. CSS & JavaScript - CSS, JavaScript and HTTPS are not required. This site works in text and vintage browsers." Just love this attitude from a webmaster and the Discmaster site works just as expected - straight forward and eminently effective. Now I compare this with a similar archive site that appeared on HN about a day ago—one dedicated to the works of the analytical philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. This excruciatingly slow JavaScript-ridden site was so bad that I tried three different browsers before I could get to the archive files and even then I couldn't download anything if I'd wanted to. Frankly, it is horrible site, one wonders why they bother when they make the user experience so utterly bad. If one ever wants to see the damage bloated JavaScript has done to the web then there's not a much better example that to compare these two sites side by side.

toxicFork 4y ago
Can you link the other post for the lazy but curious people like me please?
- hilbert42 4y ago
  https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/a0 https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/... Sorry, I didn't have it at the time. It should be the same as the one SPBS has posted above.
SPBS 4y ago
If anyone is curious: https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/a0 https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/... (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33244723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33244723)
- HiramKHurley 4y ago
  This site won't even display anything for me, just a blank white page.
  - vsnf 4y ago
    It's a file browser implemented in JavaScript, so you'll need to turn JS on to see anything.
  - Minor49er 4y ago
    The UI is completely jumbled on mobile. I can't even tell what this page is supposed to be
sneak 4y ago
My website has some minimal cookies and js but nothing in the hot path to content or usage. I serve it over the free tier on Cloudflare’s CDN. I regularly get astounded feedback about how fast it is. The web doesn’t need to be slow and shitty, web browsers are extremely fast if you use them correctly. Static pages are your friend.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  I agree. I get similar feedback on my site and it's written entirely with React and Next.js I have fun using that text stack, and with Next every page is just delivered as static HTML.
prox 4y ago
And that’s with 3-5 year development and near to 100k in grants and development.
- hilbert42 4y ago
  Am I hearing you right? What's that about (I just took the site for what it was as a first-time visitor)?
  - prox 4y ago
    It’s basically funded by institutions in and around that department of the university. So lots of Austrian grands and stuff so people could create this system. I checked it because it happens to be I am doing research on this type of software for a client, so I was curious if there was an open source version of the software (there didn’t seem to be) and to just see what it was about. Since there isn’t an open source version, I didn’t dive deeper into the slowness of it or it’s architecture.
    - hilbert42 4y ago
      Thanks for that. (I suppose I'm a little more curious than usual as I used to live not far from that university some years back.)
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Parkinson's Law, paraphrased: "work expands so as to fill the time and budget available for its completion." I see this so many times in my line of work (software development, consultancy); companies throw millions at a solved problem like e-commerce, the over-enthusiastic engineers jump on it but won't just pick something off the shelf, they will re-engineer it in $cool_tech because just solving the problem is boring.
cyclotron3k 4y ago
That sounds a lot more like a back-end issue than a front-end issue
- hilbert42 4y ago
  As I said to prox, I took the site at face value (I didn't bother to view the source—couldn't be bothered). However, I'm now mildly curious why sites like this are so slow. Has anyone done a decent objective analysis of load speeds versus actual content versus the other extraneous dross? Clearly, it'd be easy to compare 'apples' with 'oranges' thus quite a difficult analysis to get real figures.
tonmoy 4y ago
If I were a hacker I could try to MITM this site that serves executables like games and applications and inject something nefarious. I don’t see not having HTTPS as a positive thing.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  MITM became some sort of miraculous hacker solution. To MITM you need to be on the way of the traffic, or manipulate the DNS. None is obvious.
  - Kelm 4y ago
    Just create an open wifi called „free wifi” in any crowded place…
    - z3c0 4y ago
      Too obvious - just give it the same ESSID and password as your local coffee shop's network, and let the "Connect Automatically" setting on Windows do the rest.
      - Maakuth 4y ago
        Many if not most WiFi clients send a list of SSIDs they would want to connect in cleartext in their directed probe request frames in the active scanning mode. I expect there are attackers automatically advertising these networks to lure in devices.
      - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
        This is far from being obvious to find out and hardly a scalable MITM. These are always the same tricks that work in a lab, but then when it comes to do an actual MITM on a web site - there are no solutions. If my web site is www.example.com, you would need to get very close to the site (network topologically speaking) and insert yourself in the traffic. This is in practice undoable, except if you hack the local network where the web server lives (specifically some equipment) or the server itself. Or hack the DNS server. None of these are remotely easy with basic security in place.
nfRfqX5n 4y ago
Javascript has little to do with the awful design of that site. Also, as of today, the Discmaster site is down, likely due to the design being heavily search focused.

toxicFork 4y ago

Can you link the other post for the lazy but curious people like me please?

hilbert42 4y ago
https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/a0 https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/... Sorry, I didn't have it at the time. It should be the same as the one SPBS has posted above.

SPBS 4y ago

If anyone is curious: https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/a0 https://valep.vc.univie.ac.at/virtualarchive/public/Archive/... (from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33244723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33244723)

HiramKHurley 4y ago
This site won't even display anything for me, just a blank white page.
- vsnf 4y ago
  It's a file browser implemented in JavaScript, so you'll need to turn JS on to see anything.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  The UI is completely jumbled on mobile. I can't even tell what this page is supposed to be

sneak 4y ago

My website has some minimal cookies and js but nothing in the hot path to content or usage. I serve it over the free tier on Cloudflare’s CDN. I regularly get astounded feedback about how fast it is. The web doesn’t need to be slow and shitty, web browsers are extremely fast if you use them correctly. Static pages are your friend.

selfmodruntime 4y ago
I agree. I get similar feedback on my site and it's written entirely with React and Next.js I have fun using that text stack, and with Next every page is just delivered as static HTML.

prox 4y ago

And that’s with 3-5 year development and near to 100k in grants and development.

hilbert42 4y ago
Am I hearing you right? What's that about (I just took the site for what it was as a first-time visitor)?
- prox 4y ago
  It’s basically funded by institutions in and around that department of the university. So lots of Austrian grands and stuff so people could create this system. I checked it because it happens to be I am doing research on this type of software for a client, so I was curious if there was an open source version of the software (there didn’t seem to be) and to just see what it was about. Since there isn’t an open source version, I didn’t dive deeper into the slowness of it or it’s architecture.
  - hilbert42 4y ago
    Thanks for that. (I suppose I'm a little more curious than usual as I used to live not far from that university some years back.)
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Parkinson's Law, paraphrased: "work expands so as to fill the time and budget available for its completion." I see this so many times in my line of work (software development, consultancy); companies throw millions at a solved problem like e-commerce, the over-enthusiastic engineers jump on it but won't just pick something off the shelf, they will re-engineer it in $cool_tech because just solving the problem is boring.

cyclotron3k 4y ago

That sounds a lot more like a back-end issue than a front-end issue

hilbert42 4y ago
As I said to prox, I took the site at face value (I didn't bother to view the source—couldn't be bothered). However, I'm now mildly curious why sites like this are so slow. Has anyone done a decent objective analysis of load speeds versus actual content versus the other extraneous dross? Clearly, it'd be easy to compare 'apples' with 'oranges' thus quite a difficult analysis to get real figures.

tonmoy 4y ago

If I were a hacker I could try to MITM this site that serves executables like games and applications and inject something nefarious. I don’t see not having HTTPS as a positive thing.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago
MITM became some sort of miraculous hacker solution. To MITM you need to be on the way of the traffic, or manipulate the DNS. None is obvious.
- Kelm 4y ago
  Just create an open wifi called „free wifi” in any crowded place…
  - z3c0 4y ago
    Too obvious - just give it the same ESSID and password as your local coffee shop's network, and let the "Connect Automatically" setting on Windows do the rest.
    - Maakuth 4y ago
      Many if not most WiFi clients send a list of SSIDs they would want to connect in cleartext in their directed probe request frames in the active scanning mode. I expect there are attackers automatically advertising these networks to lure in devices.
    - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
      This is far from being obvious to find out and hardly a scalable MITM. These are always the same tricks that work in a lab, but then when it comes to do an actual MITM on a web site - there are no solutions. If my web site is www.example.com, you would need to get very close to the site (network topologically speaking) and insert yourself in the traffic. This is in practice undoable, except if you hack the local network where the web server lives (specifically some equipment) or the server itself. Or hack the DNS server. None of these are remotely easy with basic security in place.

nfRfqX5n 4y ago

Javascript has little to do with the awful design of that site. Also, as of today, the Discmaster site is down, likely due to the design being heavily search focused.