6 ms·

During Helene, I just wanted a plain text website

346 points by CqtGLRGcukpy 9mo ago

alisalemx 9mo ago
https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
- frm88 9mo ago
  Beautiful.
tanduv 9mo ago
Rich from a site that loads 4 trackers
- cutler 9mo ago
  ... and is built with Next.js including no less than 12 enormous x-font-woff2 chunks of data at the top of the source code and another big __NEXT_DATA__ JSON chunk at the bottom. Hardly lean, vanilla HTML and CSS.
treesknees 9mo ago
Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.
- bryant 9mo ago
  I miss RSS.
  - bigyabai 9mo ago
    I still use it. RSS is dead, long live RSS.
  - silon42 9mo ago
    And Javascript free web... IMO, we need a RSS optimized browser that would also block Javascript before user interaction (or even more).
    - Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
      How would "RSS optimized" work in the context of a browser?
- joshribakoff 9mo ago
  Thanks for sharing, i almost was not sure if the last part was sarcasm. Html itself was the standard, then when it got bloated we got rss. This seems like it’s not a problem of a lack of standards. It’s the company choosing not to promote it.
  - johncolanduoni 9mo ago
    RSS is just a list of links to webpages, maybe with summaries. The readers generally fetch those webpages and filter out the text, but every browser has equivalent functionality now. You can do it with literally any HTML page, though some websites try to fight it (since depending on the reader, it neuters ads).
    - what 9mo ago
      RSS feeds used to contain the full article. That changed when everyone wanted to monetize their blogs.
      - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
        RSS still contains full articles on a lot of personal sites. As you said, it’s about monetisation and control and when you’re writing with no plan to monetize there’s no point in not serving full content.
      - johncolanduoni 9mo ago
        Yeah, and that’s my point. The problem is not technological, you can make a super readable HTML site by just putting text in <p> tags, and RSS readers for blogs that didn’t rug-pull their content still work fine. People lost interest in giving out something for nothing, so now the web is an ad-infested mess. If someone makes a new tech that makes that impossible, 10 principled FSF-enjoyers will write content for it and nobody else. Web standard bloat is bad, but it didn’t cause this problem, and you can’t fix it by creating a new spec.
  - treesknees 9mo ago
    I suppose I meant more of a best practice - if every news site could be found at the subdomain of lite.XYZ.com, or perhaps some way for the browser to request specifically no images or styles, it’d be easier for the end user to find. RSS is a good point that I didn’t consider. Although it tends to be a summary and hyperlink to the main site.
- dddrh 9mo ago
  Using the lite subdomain is a great way to read all the subscriber articles as well. Was reminded of the lite site during some annoyingly aggressive A/B testing CNN was doing a few months back.
- Dwedit 9mo ago
  I looked at a CNN "lite" article, and it includes 560KB of stuff (lots and lots of CSS declarations) in addition to the actual 11KB of article content.
  - zamadatix 9mo ago
    While still wasteful, CSS is one of those things you can do astronomically wrong before it starts being noticeable. Case in point here: inlining 560 kb of CSS with the page and just sending it with the entire HTML file each time is only ~61 kb of actual network transfer to load the article (due to brotli encoding).
  - sva_ 9mo ago
    For me in Firefox it only loads the article's HTML (50-70kb) and the favicon (7kb). Are you sure it isn't some addon you have?
    - pandemic_region 9mo ago
      It could be the cookie banner appearing.
      - IanCal 9mo ago
        It is, the content loads first, then the js for the cookie banner, then the favicon. If the js fails to load (I blocked the request as a test) the page loads just fine, it isn't blocked by that.
    - reddalo 9mo ago
      I bet you're using uBlock Origin
    - zamadatix 9mo ago
      The articles HTML is ~60 kb compressed and ~10x that uncompressed, which accounts for both apparent sizes.
  - iberator 9mo ago
- amelius 9mo ago
  Maybe there could be a service which translates any website into a trimmed-down text-only version.
  - jayknight 9mo ago
    Firefox's Reader mode is pretty great. Doesn't reduce network traffic but makes almost any page more readable.
- arianvanp 9mo ago
  In the Netherlands the public broadcaster still publishes news through Teletekst: https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-teletekst-de-nos-over-het-gloednieuwe-oude-systeem.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-...
  - Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
    Which is cool but it's not web, and few people have working TV reception that supports it at the moment. The web version of Teletekst (https://nos.nl/teletekst https://nos.nl/teletekst) is over 3 MB in size.
    - kqr 9mo ago
      Are there no APIs with smaller and faster responses? The Swedish equivalent has --even a fairly respectable terminal client.
    - arianvanp 9mo ago
      It's better than web! You don't usually view it with Internet. You view it with either an antenna or with broadcast cable. It's up even when the Internet is down.
- webdevver 9mo ago
  > https://wttr.in/ https://wttr.in/ didnt load for me
  - ultratalk 9mo ago
    Me neither.
  - Y_Y 9mo ago
    Did load for me. Closing.
- ashu1461 9mo ago
  Google also used to have a go app which they deprecated later on, while now i think about it what is the use of having a go app, if the websites which are shown in search results are not optimised for slower networks.
  - ultratalk 9mo ago
    DuckDuckGo has a js-free version of their website at https://html.duckduckgo.com/ https://html.duckduckgo.com/
- The_Double 9mo ago
  That CNN website is great, except it still has a huge cookie banner. Looking at the cookies of the site, I think the only cookie it sets is that i clicked on the banner. Most of the size of the page is also related to the banner it seems.
  - transcriptase 9mo ago
    You can’t put a price on some round-rim glasses wearing EU bureaucrat named Klaus-Dietrich von Regulieren sleeping soundly because of that banner.
    - phantasmish 9mo ago
      If I’ve understood the grandparent post correctly, they don’t need the banner. They wouldn’t need it if the only cookie they set were a functional 1st-party cookie, and since that sole cookie is just to track cookie banner status, they especially don’t need it.
      - miningape 9mo ago
        But taking the time to investigate that, get it approved by legal, etc. all takes longer than just slapping a cookie banner component on it. This is why people complain about the unclear and bureaucratic nature of these laws, it leads to an over complicated investigation and compliance isn't always simple - meaning the safest option is to comply at the highest level and degrade the user experience.
        Macacity 9mo ago
        But it is not. the text of that legislation is very clear.
        reorder9695 9mo ago
        Yes but the only thing better than being compliant is being compliant twice over so there's absolutely no debate about compliance.
- ignoramous 9mo ago
  > great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found Too bad Google sunset Chrome Flywheel (likely after AMP?): https://research.google/pubs/flywheel-googles-data-compression-proxy-for-the-mobile-web/ https://research.google/pubs/flywheel-googles-data-compressi... Opera Mini Turbo was equally popular during 2G/Edge era.
- sdeframond 9mo ago
  Well, there is RSS.
- ignoramous 9mo ago
  https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite
- imgabe 9mo ago
  In terms of a standard, it would be nice if "reader mode" were standardized to request a text-only minimal formatting version of the site.
  - rglullis 9mo ago
    Oooh... can you imagine if servers actually took the hint and sent only text if the client provided Accept: text/markdown, text/plain headers?
    - nektro 9mo ago
      > Accept: text/markdown funnily enough, the rise in agentic coding has actually made this on the rise
- Fnoord 9mo ago
  $ ssh teletekst.nl
  - paulcapewell 9mo ago
    oh my god.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
  I view every website as text-only I can reformat the text any way I like
kevin_thibedeau 9mo ago
What you really want is a (mostly) JavaScript-free website. Run NoScript and cut out all the data broker bloat, allowing just a limited number of critical scripts to run. Adding LocalCDN will further reduce wasted transfers of code that you do allow. Then you can decide if you want to show images. The web will be much faster on a fast or slow link.
405nm 9mo ago
check out reticulum and nomadnet, they meet these needs perfectly!
- getpokedagain 9mo ago
  Thanks !
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
october8140 9mo ago
CMSs should normalize having a text only version of your website. I think with a little effort they could make it pretty frictionless for their users who it turn would be happy to provide it.
defrost 9mo ago
As a mild lifelong disaster "junky" (grew up in remote areas, dealt with cyclones, floods, droughts, fires, monsoons, coup d'etats, unannounced atomic tests etc during decades of global field work) this description: As a web developer, I am thinking again about my experience with the mobile web on the day after the storm, and the following week. I remember trying in vain to find out info about the storm damage and road closures—watching loaders spin and spin on blank pages until they timed out trying to load. reminds me why we (locally) still rely on AM radio day in day out and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
- genewitch 9mo ago
  so during hurricane Laura the NWS transmitters ceased functioning. The southern one i can pick up was uncrewed and stopped working during, and the northern one, i don't remember, but it went down about 2 hours later, well before the storm was upon them. up to that same storm i was a gung-ho let's go ham enthusiast. up to. I lived in a more direct path relative to where most of the repeater users were, so they were complaining about how hard it would be to find ice the next morning than relaying potentially life-altering information about storm tracks or whatever. I explained to everyone as sternly as i could that this was literally an emergency, which was the primary designation of the tallest repeater in the county, and if they wanted to chit chat with chet they should move to one of the 3 other analog or 2 other digital repeaters in the same area. nothing doing. I was the arrl tech specialist for my state, too. I completely pulled out of the hobby. I might dabble in the future with low power or beacons or whatever, but VHF/UHF i'm done with local usage. i know you specifically said AM; however i didn't have an AM radio "handy" during the storm and power outage, etc. 9/10 the NOAA/NWS weather radio service suffices.
  - defrost 9mo ago
    That's the deal with Ham radio; amateurs, enthusiasts, former SE asian jungle operators, occasional NASA relay operators, etc. Good fun - not much chop for keeping the general public informed via cheap transister radios (although, who has those anymore?). Our state emergancy services broadcast locally (and at strength from outside affected areas) when updates are required - they have dedicated bands and they routinely interject on the major broadcast radio networks - where fires are, when and where cyclones are expected to cross the coast, etc. Our very local area volunteer fire units use the equivilant of ham and CB bands with reduced licences - they broadcast lightning ground strikes (at this time of year) and fire / tender / tanker updates as the season progresses (which is right now, harvest time, a lot of equipment out in tinder dry conditions subject to highly active evening lightening storms). The iPhone / WiFi stuff is great .. but it hasn't yet passed into "considered reliable" in local culture - the networks have crashed under stress and nobody wants response to grind to a halt if a tower goes down, etc.
mikelitoris 9mo ago
"The last couple times I used my dental insurance website, it was completely not mobile responsive, requiring the old-school pinch zoom to even get to anything on the page." And yet you probably didn't change your dental insurance based on this, because most likely there are more important issues that matter (e.g. you are given a single option by your employer). This is exactly the reason why that company is not likely to fix it, because the lousy website's effect on their bottom line is nearly zero. (Note that I don't like this either)
cadamsdotcom 9mo ago
[flagged]
- netsharc 9mo ago
  It's not really written there, but how about a loading experience that gives you the important information, and then loads the bells and whistles as the JavaScript gets loaded and run. First make sure the plain text information gets loaded, maybe a simple JPEG when something graphical like a map is needed, and then load the Megabytes of React or Angular to make it all pretty and the map be interactive...
  - McGlockenshire 9mo ago
    Just as server side rendering was reinvented from first principles by the current generation, now they have rediscovered progressive enhancement! There might be hope for us yet!
- getpokedagain 9mo ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Are you implying we should not design our technology around serious edge cases that humans encounter in life? Why wouldn't we target people in crisis when we design crisis management information sites?
  - cadamsdotcom 9mo ago
    I’m saying no one will unless incentivised to.
    - getpokedagain 9mo ago
      Oh yes absolutely.
- McGlockenshire 9mo ago
  This is the same attitude that results in modern developers ignoring low end consumer hardware, locking out a customer base because they aren't rich enough. Get some perspective. Some of us have to live on 500kbit/s. The modern web is hell, and because it doesn't impact anybody with money, nobody gives a shit.
tehwebguy 9mo ago
Other Helene stuff I took note of: - AT&T was completely down for us but Verizon and its MVNOs were up - I had a Verizon MVNO secondary e-sim that came free with a home internet plan, unused until the hurricane hit - It worked pretty well! - The day the Verizon disaster internet trucks showed up at the police station in our town my Verizon MVNO internet went down Non-internet learnings: - Fill up your vehicle’s fuel or battery before any big storm, we spent a lot of time siphoning and otherwise consolidating fuel to get ourselves and neighbors out of town, particularly because we didn’t know how far we’d have to go to find a gas station with electricity
- rationalist 9mo ago
  I have a dual-SIM phone with AT&T and T-Mobile lines (a Google Pixel). I wish they had a triple-SIM phone, then I could add Verizon. Now that I think about it, I think you can have multiple eSIMs, but only one can be active at a time.
  - OptionOfT 9mo ago
    iPhones support 8 (or more): https://support.apple.com/en-us/118227#:~:text=You%20can%20have%20two%20eSIMs,changing%20your%20selections%20in%20Settings. https://support.apple.com/en-us/118227#:~:text=You%20can%20h... Unsure why they say 'or more' and what makes that happen. 2 can be active at the same time. I can't find how many a Pixel can store at the same time though.
    - sokoloff 9mo ago
      eSIMs are variable sized.
      - genewitch 9mo ago
        like the Sony™ PlayStation© save memory cards that held 8MB and games like hexen took all the "slots" available?
  - sva_ 9mo ago
getpokedagain 9mo ago
One thing that I would also suggest folks who are resonating with this piece consider... Local copies of important information on your mobile device. Generally your laptops are not going to see much use. Mobile apps tend to fake local data and store lots of things to the cloud. We tend to ignore such things like backups and local copies nowadays. Most of the time we can get away without any worry here but consider keeping a copy of things like medications and their non commercial names for situations like this as well.
- safety1st 9mo ago
  Syncthing is the way! Along with the Material Files app from F-droid, I finally get to have a file based workflow on Android.
  - subscribed 9mo ago
    You'll probably want to add localsend to the mix.
  - nicbou 9mo ago
    Syncthing is also great
hahajk 9mo ago
> I was struck by how something as simple as text content could have such a big impact. Truly a sign of our times
parallax_error 9mo ago
Reading this on airline wifi right now makes me realise just how unusable some stuff becomes with choppy internet. E.g. I can’t change settings on the LinkedIn app because the request to load the settings page fails :/.
loktarogar 9mo ago
Some things you don't know people need until you're directly affected. For me, it was an injury related light sensitivity that made me realise dark mode isn't just a frivolous addition for looks
- tsumnia 9mo ago
  May I interest you in my doctorsensei.com/how-to-get-off-the-internet.html page? tl;dr Use dark mode and set f.lux (or the equivalent) to Cave Painting. Helped me out a lot
neilv 9mo ago
One way to get to this is to start with almost-'94 HTML: <!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>Some Topic</title> </head> <body> <h1>Some Topic</h1> <p>Information goes here.</p> <p>Information goes here.</p> <p>Information goes here.</p> </body> </html> Then add a little non-'94 CSS styling. If you decide to add an off-the-shelf wad of CSS, like Pico.css, consider hosting it alongside your HTML (rather than turning it into another third-party dependency and CDN cross-site surveillance tracker). Minified, and single-request.
- divbzero 9mo ago
  This should be every web developer’s first webpage. No npx create-react-app ... or pip install django or any other layers in between.
- valadaptive 9mo ago
  I always include `<meta charset="utf-8">`. Is that still necessary?
  - kxrm 9mo ago
    if the server supplies this as a header, it's not necessary.
  - genewitch 9mo ago
    you don't even need `<!doctype html>`. I'm sure it's easy to look up when that was added/recommended, but i've never used it when i do a 94 html page/site like this. html head title /title /head body /body /html 'sit
    - neilv 9mo ago
      That particular doctype is HTML5. I was making a too-subtle joke about slapping it on '94 HTML.
    - qznc 9mo ago
      Minimal valid HTML5: <!doctype html> <title>Hello</title> <h1>Hello World</h1>
firesteelrain 9mo ago
Author should look into WinLink. There is WinLink Wednesdays where WinLink is practiced. A lot of reports come out of WinLink and it’s all text. Of course need to be an Amateur Radio Operator Many years ago, Google had a service I would use pre-Smartphone days to search when I was away from the PC and needed info for like a restaurant’s number. You would text 46645 and it would send you search results. It was useful during hurricanes.
kristianp 9mo ago
A related article I read yesterday lamented that 1GB of RAM isn't enough to run a graphical browser anymore (1). Sure JavaScript runs fast now, but at the cost of the code size of the average website being unnecessarily large. This is because speedy js and speedy network connectivity allows for more code, more network requests. Another example of Wirth's law. This was the case when I got a Rapberry Pi 4 with 1GB of RAM about late 2019. You could run one tab of Chrome, but any more and it would be killed. (1) https://log.schemescape.com/posts/hardware/farewell-to-a-netbook.html https://log.schemescape.com/posts/hardware/farewell-to-a-net...
rsch 9mo ago
Oh for the time when chairs were still for sitting and PDFs were still for printing. Restaurant websites mentioned — the majority of restaurant web sites I’ve encountered were much more annoying and difficult to read than a PDF, even on a small phone screen. Or should I say, especially on a small phone screen. Some would make a 32 inch monitor feel cramped.
olowe 9mo ago
It's stuff like this that makes me want to scurry right back into the SRE/sysadmin space. Currently back in webdev after a few years out. I just feel like I'm being a pain in the arse to comment "could just write the HTML...?". This very article loaded 2.49MB (uncompressed) over 30 requests. It's served using Next.js (it does actually load fine with JS disabled). Ironically this is a great opportunity for the author to have made a stronger point. It could have gone beyond the abstract desire of "going back to basics" to perhaps demo reworking itself to be served using plain HTML and CSS without any big server-side frameworks.
valadaptive 9mo ago
The header image in the article is a 2400x1600 PNG that is 500KB large, apparently due to subtle dithering making it hard to compress. Converting it to a visually-identical .avif (quality 90, 12-bit color depth) takes it all the way down to 15KB.
- sva_ 9mo ago
  Indeed, the website transfers 1.18mb (compressed) to deliver 6.7kb of text. Kind of ironic.
- throwaway2046 9mo ago
  I'm guessing it could be even smaller if it was designed as a SVG file. Although the glow effect with the fading colors would probably need to be simplified.
- latexr 9mo ago
  For an image which isn’t even interesting or illustrative of the issue. Hero images on blog posts have run their course, I can’t remember the last time I felt anything positive by encountering one. They make the page load longer, force us to scroll to start reading, and are forgotten as soon as they go out of sight.
userbinator 9mo ago
Plain HTML and forms for interactivity can be very effective. In fact, for a long time web forums were largely entirely usable without JS. See the degradation of GitHub for a great example. You used to be able to interact with most of it without any JS at all; browsing the code repositories, reading and replying to issues, etc. Now it barely shows anything without JS. Of course, I suspect in that case it's deliberate so they can trick you into running a few more tracking and analytics scripts...
bdcravens 9mo ago
I think many of us in the web space that are old enough were shaped by the "mass outage" that happened on 9/11 when pretty much all news websites went down while we were looking for information. Slashdot was fighting valiantly to say up and was one of the few sites one could find information on the events (if you were in a spot without access to a cable TV, you were very much in the dark). The web and the infrastructure are substantially different than they were 25 years ago, but I still get a bit of "what if" in the back of my head (not that I work on anything of that level of significance).
- zoobab 9mo ago
  When the Yahoo news website was not responding, my reflex was to do a traceroute. The last hop was not resolving, and it was arriving Somewhere in NY. Guess what, they were hosted in the tower. It took a while to get redirected to the West coast.
iberator 9mo ago
Check this out youngsters: <html> <pre> TEXT </pre> </hml>
firefoxd 9mo ago
I have a tab on sublimetext that has been opened since the pandemic and I think it's safe to share my idea since I'm not gonna do it. *4KB webpage files* So a website where each page does not exceed 4KB. This includes whatever styling and navigation needed. Surprisingly you can share a lot of information even with such constraints. Bare bone html is surprisingly compact and the browser already does a whole lot of the heavy lifting. Why 4KB? Because that used to be the default page size in x86 hardware. So you can grab the whole thing in one chunk. This whole comment is not 1KB.
- xavdid 9mo ago
  Not all the way down to 4KB, but https://512kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ matches this vibe
- nicbou 9mo ago
  You should aim for the size of a single network packet instead
avhception 9mo ago
I'm on 600mbps fiber with low latency. Some times, I can't be arsed to load the websites linked on HN and simply head straight into the comments. For example, when it's a link to Twitter, I get an endless onslaught of in-site popups. Cookie banners, "sign in with google", "sign in to X", "X is better on the app" and so on and so forth. Meh. I'll sometimes just stick to HN, especially when I'm on my phone on the sofa or something. Give me a minimal / plain text website every day, it's not just the link speed.
mmoustafa 9mo ago
I built a connection to a web-powered LLM over SMS/iMessage for literally this purpose. While traveling I’d have really bad or sparse service but still needed to find my way around.
- bdavbdav 9mo ago
  That’s neat - have you considered publishing it?
  - garyfirestorm 9mo ago
    Doesn’t ChatGPT have WhatsApp access?
    - copperx 9mo ago
      Not anymore. Meta didn't want competitors.
  - mmoustafa 9mo ago
    I did, it's available at olly.bot :)
- arianvanp 9mo ago
  I use WhatsApp's built-in LLM to read news when I'm on long flights that only give messenger access. It's great
danielfalbo 9mo ago
Prepend 'pure.md/' in front of any url. I'm sure there are more proxies around.
- aembleton 9mo ago
  Thats brilliant. For example: https://pure.md/sparkbox.com/foundry/helene_and_mobile_web_performance https://pure.md/sparkbox.com/foundry/helene_and_mobile_web_p... Now the favicon (5.92KB) is larger than the article (5.16KB). Much better than the original (4.11MB)
zkmon 9mo ago
> As a web developer, I am thinking again about my experience with the mobile web on the day after the storm In some villages, where plenty of stone is available, people used it for everything - roof slabs, pillars, walls, flooring, water storage bowls etc. Also, villages which had plenty of wood around, they used it for everything. As techies, we say there is an app for everything, or there is a web-technology for everything. When you have a hammer in hand, everything looks like a nail.
- rationalist 9mo ago
  We also generally have large screens, faster processors, more memory, faster internet, etc.
leonc28 9mo ago
Actually, there are readily available tools that can do this. Many websites have implemented accessibility features for the blind, allowing users to read all text information on the screen, as well as alt text for accompanying images. This feature might be hidden, and many people are unaware of it.
leftbehinds 9mo ago
Giving weather fenomenons a human name is the silliest thing humanity have invented.
- amelius 9mo ago
  Can't they just reuse Ubuntu version names?
- piker 9mo ago
  On the contrary, it helps underscore a storm's significance and allow for memetic spreading of information around the storm. You obviously didn't grow up in a hurricane-prone area.
  - tsumnia 9mo ago
    Likewise, we've always liked to "name things". My personal desktop is named "Foundation" (first built PC) and my car is named "Big Boi" (first adult purchase). Generic names are fine for operational equipment, but no one wants to refer to natural disasters as "HURR-2026-EC02". That's why COVID is "COVID" instead of "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2".
pif 9mo ago
> I was struck by how something as simple as text content could have such a big impact. The fact that he was struck by such an evident truth means that he is (hopefully: was) part of the problem.
jasongormanuk 9mo ago
There's a good talk from Jeremy Keith about building resilient websites: 1. Identify core functionality. 2. Make that functionality available using the simplest technology. 3. Enhance! https://youtu.be/T55Z3VlG43g?si=bJnsv2smKChO9y6q&t=2101 https://youtu.be/T55Z3VlG43g?si=bJnsv2smKChO9y6q&t=2101
nicbou 9mo ago
Vaguely related anecdotes: - I got caught in the mountains for a few days due to landslides in Nepal. The only available information was relayed by phone between locals. People had no idea of what was going on and their vacation ended on the day the road reopened. It caused a pile up of cars where the road had slid off a few days prior. In some parts, rocks still fell from the cliffs above. We flagged a passing car and asked them to keep us updated on WhatsApp instead. We could have all stayed put if we had that information before. - During covid I maintained a page with simplified local restrictions and a changelog of new restrictions. The alternative was to follow press conferences and re-read the entire regulation the next day, or keep checking the newspapers. Mine was just a bullet list at a permanent location. - During the invasion of Ukraine, refugees have set up the most impressive ad hoc information network I have ever seen. It was operational in 24 hours and kept improving for weeks. People sorted out routes, transport, border issues, accommodation, translation and supplies over Telegram, Notion and Google Docs. Information propagation is critical during emergencies, and people are really bad at it. Setting up a simple website and two-way communication channels makes a huge difference.
- aitchnyu 9mo ago
  Why does Ukraine trust Telegram so much? Seems they share intelligence-worth stuff there.
  - dolia 9mo ago
    Few reasons: 1. Habit. We're used to use Telegram for everything: news sources, social network, messaging, memes. Telegram has more capabilities than other apps. You can't realistically move your family and friends to another messaging app because of all of that and the network effect. 2. General attitude of all people towards privacy and sharing data: they don't really care. It's "Who would even care about my data?" and "I've got nothing to hide" all the way. I doubt most of people ever thought about the topic of trusting a messaging app. It's not the framework they operate in. There are two global psyops done by I don't know who: 1. That Bitcoin is safe and anonymous. 2. That Telegram is super safe for whatever shady or private stuff you want to do. One of the best marketing campaigns ever. I would also want to use this chance to alert everyone who uses Telegram that: 1. It's not e2e by default. 2. They use proprietary encryption protocol. You don't have access to code. 3. I don't think Telegram is profitable, I don't know how it can be with that scale. Which makes you wonder. 4. If you open in-message links, you have a chance of losing your account to hackers thanks to the old vulnerability that hasn't been fixed for years. You literally have to check the list of devices connected to your account every 12 hours if you want to be safe.
nickdothutton 9mo ago
I now use a text only CLI utility to read the BBC news. It is (for me) a greatly improved experience.[1] 1. https://github.com/hako/bbcli https://github.com/hako/bbcli
- dredmorbius 9mo ago
  Interesting, and arguably useful, but I really have to push back on the whole notion of site-specific readers. I have a text-only CLI utility to read BBC news: the w3m terminal-mode Web browser. (Substitute Lynx, links, elinks2, or any other TMWB of your preference.) The experience is, unfortunately, kind of shit, because BBC (as with far too many other websites) fails to display well in a terminal-mode browser, but it at least works. And I can use the same browser on any other website. The problem with site-specific tools, which includes of course mobile apps, is that now instead of invoking a general-purpose reader on any site, you have to choose both the site and the reader, and are dependent on that reader application / utility being continuously updated as the site itself changes. (And, yes, I've written my own site-specific renderers, including one which produces a "newspaper"-formatted page based on the CNN "lite" website, which I've discussed on HN and elsewhere: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723661> Longer description and screenshots: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122> The page takes about 10 minutes to generate (a bunch of serial article requests), but makes for good offline reading.
- mxuribe 9mo ago
  This is a really cool tool! And, not to diminish the work put into this tool...but at a glance at the code, it appears to be a specific RSS reader for the BBC (see: https://github.com/hako/bbcli/blob/709c6417c8dc4ffd4f7d5f5b42b2672c68f4c8d1/src/feeds.rs#L16 https://github.com/hako/bbcli/blob/709c6417c8dc4ffd4f7d5f5b4...)...so if i'm correct, why not simply use a cli-based RSS reader....so can review other sources beyond BBC? Again, not trying to diminsh the goodness here...But that, a more general tool might be just as good, and a bit more flexible, eh? :-)
David_Osipov 9mo ago
I'm not a web developer, but a product manager, and recently I've created my own website using Astro. I do support the point, that its better to have a relatively simple static website - it's really fast and lightweight! An average Wordpress website would weight 1 MB+ in best case, in worst case - 4 MB+. I don't know how people think it's a good idea to have a compressed webpage to be 4 MB!! Let's KISS
maelito 9mo ago
For https://cartes.app https://cartes.app, I'm planning to code an extremely light version of the map tiles. Based on initial network speed, decide to load this style first, that just lets the user see the streets and and important places. Then load the rest. This initial map style would be the equivalent of a "text-only" website. Blocked by Vercel's turbopack bundle analyzer's bugs though, because before optimizing the tiles, I need to optimize the JS that loads the tiles. I haven't figured a way to load a Maplibre map server side, so the JS must be ready before the map starts to get loaded. https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/86731 https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/86731
aydin212 9mo ago
This should be required reading for anyone building government or emergency sites. During any crisis, people have spotty connections, dying phones, and zero patience for loading spinners. A plain HTML page with bullet points would save lives over a fancy React app that needs 5MB to render. The irony is we have better tools than ever to build fast sites, yet the average webpage keeps getting heavier. Somewhere we forgot that the web worked fine before JavaScript frameworks. That bulleted newsletter list being the most useful thing says everything.
hxii 9mo ago
I remember complaining about this around five years ago [^1], and it looks like not much has changed since, save for the amount of people complaining about websites being full of garbage that serves no purpose or static resources being bigger than the should be. [^1]: https://0xff.nu/speed-pt3/ https://0xff.nu/speed-pt3/
dmillar 9mo ago
https://plaintextsports.com https://plaintextsports.com
japhyr 9mo ago
I live just south of Asheville in NC, and we were completely isolated after the storm for a few days. The only reason we were able to get out after a few days was that a fire truck had been abandoned at the bottom of our driveway as trees fell around it, so they came back as soon as they could to get that resource back. People just the other side of those trees were unable to get out for about a week. Our best source of information, even after we started to get a bit of service, was an inReach. I messaged a friend far from the region and asked them really specific questions like, "Tell me when I can get from our house to I-26 and then south to South Carolina." Yes, absolutely, emergency information sites should be as light as possible. And satellite devices are incredibly useful when everything local goes down.
hasanhaja 9mo ago
It's hard to understand the privilege bubble you're in unless you actively try to live like your users. My read of the current trend [1] is that building for your marginal users isn't prioritized culturally in orgs or within engineering. Unseating those ways of working in my experience has been immensely challenging, even when everyone can agree on methodologies to put users first in theory [2]. [1] https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-2026/ https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-... [2] https://crukorg.github.io/engineering-guidebook/docs/frontend/choosing_your_stack https://crukorg.github.io/engineering-guidebook/docs/fronten...
MarkusWandel 9mo ago
This used to actually work, at least on some sites. The text would load first, then it would reformat as the fonts and CSS assets are loaded. Ugly and frustrating, which is probably why, now you don't get content until the eye candy is all ready. But the progressive, text first loading, would be readable from the get go, even if further downloads stalled.
MORPHOICES 9mo ago
[dead]
- kvgr 9mo ago
  The nature of most businesses is that they dont care about this.
reality_inspctr 9mo ago
nice work. dealt with same issue during helene. would be interesting to do things like convert to morse code or convert to modem-over-walkie low baud rate. I built this repo as a Helene response repo, trying to use an llm to help get resources over text message. https://github.com/realityinspector/supply_drop_ai https://github.com/realityinspector/supply_drop_ai wonder if you could get to news over sms, use an llm to compress to minimum viable text?
stmw 9mo ago
Perhaps this is something FEMA could try to encourage and lightly enforce. No new technologies needed, just a mandatory "old web" option for key .gov, state and news sites.
rp888pro 9mo ago
[dead]
claudiulodro 9mo ago
Interesting. For Hurricane Helene specifically, my team at Newspack actually worked with Blue Ridge Public Radio and a number of other news organizations in the affected area to set up text versions of their websites for low bandwidth readers[1] and get info to 10s of thousands of people[2]. In fact, it was so successful (maybe not at reaching you specifically though), that we got a grant to roll out a general purpose plain text web solution for breaking news situations to news organizations across the country![3] So I think there may have been a mismatch in that you didn't know about all of the plain text versions of news sites available in your area during the disaster -- that's something we'll have to keep in mind. [1] https://text.bpr.org/ https://text.bpr.org/ [2] https://awards.journalists.org/entries/hell-or-high-water-bpr-coverage-of-hurricane-helene-2/ https://awards.journalists.org/entries/hell-or-high-water-bp... [3] https://opennews.org/blog/press-forward-release/ https://opennews.org/blog/press-forward-release/
- DauntingPear7 9mo ago
  I mean I regularly read the news and I didn’t know CNN has a lite version
butz 9mo ago
I want a plain text website every day, period. I'd even like to have a text site summarizing video from youtube.
rickcarlino 9mo ago
Check out Newswaffle on Gemini:// protocol. The web could in theory support text-first content, but it won't. The Gemini protocol, though not perfect, was built to avoid extensibility that inevitably leads us away from text. I long for the day more bloggers make their content available on Gemspace, the way we see RSS as an option on some blogs. The web will continue to stray from text-first content because it is too easy to add things that are not text.
hackerbeat 9mo ago
Talking about text-first sites: https://wordgag.com https://wordgag.com brings me a lot of joy everyday. They also update their funny quotes collection regularly.
- bienstar 9mo ago
  That site prompted me to watch an ad in order to access it; I don't think it's a great example of what we're talking about
trashb 9mo ago
There is a movement supporting small websites. The links below may inspire those interested in text or small websites. https://no-html.club/ https://no-html.club/ https://no-js.club/ https://no-js.club/ https://nocss.club/ https://nocss.club/ https://1kb.club/ https://1kb.club/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231208000921/https://10kbclub.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231208000921/https://10kbclub.... https://250kb.club/ https://250kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ https://1mb.club/ https://1mb.club/ I find that the sites designed around being small are usually nice to read since the effort is put in the content not the layout. Additionally a lot of great sites can be found through something like https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/ or different protocols like gopher or gemini.
- soldeace 9mo ago
  You forgot to mention https://smolweb.org/ https://smolweb.org/
exabrial 9mo ago
Yeah, you don't get one. The purpose of modern web development is to make sure the developer is intellectually satisfied in over-engineering something that should be relatively simple, justifying their pet projects. If any useful work gets done, that's a side-effect and most of times an accident. (Just try to use StateFarm's website as a great example).
bazzargh 9mo ago
It's been shared here many times, but Terence Eden has a great anecdote about how the UK's GDS standards - lightweight, simple html - meant the site was usable even on a crappy PSP https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...
reasonundefined 9mo ago
I can relate to this post. During the fires in Southern California last year it was confusing and frightening to know that you're surrounded by fire but you can't get any news or information due to degraded cell networks. We had no power and were just trying to load pages to figure out whats going on and if we should evacuate. There were either no emergency alerts, or emergency alerts for irrelevant things. Another endlessly frustrating aspect is unfortunately Facebook. For better or worse, it's become a hub of emergency information using local facebook groups. In an emergency you want a feed of chronological information and facebook insists on engaging you by showing 'relevant' posts out of order.
1970-01-01 9mo ago
W3C did this https://www.w3.org/Mobile/Specifications https://www.w3.org/Mobile/Specifications
flanbiscuit 9mo ago
Nice to see other fellow Western NC folks commenting here, I'm in Asheville. I did not know about all of these text only version of major news sites. I'm going to bookmark them. What saved us from a news deficit after Helene was that we had 2 portable AM/FM radios. Both of the radios took batteries and one of them you could even charge via a hand crank. I highly recommend having a portable AM/FM radio of some kind. Blue Ridge Public Radio (our local NPR) was amazing during this time. Their offices are located right in downtown, which never lost power, so they were able to keep operating immediately after the storm. I also feel this pain of bloated sites taking forever to load when I'm traveling. I'm on an old T-Mobile plan that I've had since around 2001 that comes with free international roaming in 215+ countries. The only problem is that it's a bit throttled. I know that I could just buy a prepaid SIM, or now I can use an eSIM vendor like Saily, but I'm too cheap and/or the service is just good enough that I'm willing to wait the few extra seconds. Using Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin helps some, but not enough (also I just switched to iPhone last month). I've definitely been on websites that take forever to load because there's just so much in the initial payload, sometimes painfully slow. I don't think enough developers are testing their sites using the throttling options in the dev tools.
KomoD 9mo ago
> 66 requests > 5.1 MB transferred Ironic.

346 points by CqtGLRGcukpy 9mo ago

alisalemx 9mo ago

https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

frm88 9mo ago
Beautiful.

tanduv 9mo ago

Rich from a site that loads 4 trackers

cutler 9mo ago
... and is built with Next.js including no less than 12 enormous x-font-woff2 chunks of data at the top of the source code and another big __NEXT_DATA__ JSON chunk at the bottom. Hardly lean, vanilla HTML and CSS.

treesknees 9mo ago

Several news sites offer text only versions. https://lite.cnn.com/ https://lite.cnn.com/ https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/ https://wttr.in/ https://wttr.in/ More listed at https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites It’d be great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found, and supported on the local news sites.

bryant 9mo ago
I miss RSS.
- bigyabai 9mo ago
  I still use it. RSS is dead, long live RSS.
- silon42 9mo ago
  And Javascript free web... IMO, we need a RSS optimized browser that would also block Javascript before user interaction (or even more).
  - Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
    How would "RSS optimized" work in the context of a browser?
joshribakoff 9mo ago
Thanks for sharing, i almost was not sure if the last part was sarcasm. Html itself was the standard, then when it got bloated we got rss. This seems like it’s not a problem of a lack of standards. It’s the company choosing not to promote it.
- johncolanduoni 9mo ago
  RSS is just a list of links to webpages, maybe with summaries. The readers generally fetch those webpages and filter out the text, but every browser has equivalent functionality now. You can do it with literally any HTML page, though some websites try to fight it (since depending on the reader, it neuters ads).
  - what 9mo ago
    RSS feeds used to contain the full article. That changed when everyone wanted to monetize their blogs.
    - manuelmoreale 9mo ago
      RSS still contains full articles on a lot of personal sites. As you said, it’s about monetisation and control and when you’re writing with no plan to monetize there’s no point in not serving full content.
    - johncolanduoni 9mo ago
      Yeah, and that’s my point. The problem is not technological, you can make a super readable HTML site by just putting text in <p> tags, and RSS readers for blogs that didn’t rug-pull their content still work fine. People lost interest in giving out something for nothing, so now the web is an ad-infested mess. If someone makes a new tech that makes that impossible, 10 principled FSF-enjoyers will write content for it and nobody else. Web standard bloat is bad, but it didn’t cause this problem, and you can’t fix it by creating a new spec.
- treesknees 9mo ago
  I suppose I meant more of a best practice - if every news site could be found at the subdomain of lite.XYZ.com, or perhaps some way for the browser to request specifically no images or styles, it’d be easier for the end user to find. RSS is a good point that I didn’t consider. Although it tends to be a summary and hyperlink to the main site.
dddrh 9mo ago
Using the lite subdomain is a great way to read all the subscriber articles as well. Was reminded of the lite site during some annoyingly aggressive A/B testing CNN was doing a few months back.
Dwedit 9mo ago
I looked at a CNN "lite" article, and it includes 560KB of stuff (lots and lots of CSS declarations) in addition to the actual 11KB of article content.
- zamadatix 9mo ago
  While still wasteful, CSS is one of those things you can do astronomically wrong before it starts being noticeable. Case in point here: inlining 560 kb of CSS with the page and just sending it with the entire HTML file each time is only ~61 kb of actual network transfer to load the article (due to brotli encoding).
- sva_ 9mo ago
  For me in Firefox it only loads the article's HTML (50-70kb) and the favicon (7kb). Are you sure it isn't some addon you have?
  - pandemic_region 9mo ago
    It could be the cookie banner appearing.
    - IanCal 9mo ago
      It is, the content loads first, then the js for the cookie banner, then the favicon. If the js fails to load (I blocked the request as a test) the page loads just fine, it isn't blocked by that.
  - reddalo 9mo ago
    I bet you're using uBlock Origin
  - zamadatix 9mo ago
    The articles HTML is ~60 kb compressed and ~10x that uncompressed, which accounts for both apparent sizes.
- iberator 9mo ago
amelius 9mo ago
Maybe there could be a service which translates any website into a trimmed-down text-only version.
- jayknight 9mo ago
  Firefox's Reader mode is pretty great. Doesn't reduce network traffic but makes almost any page more readable.
arianvanp 9mo ago
In the Netherlands the public broadcaster still publishes news through Teletekst: https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-teletekst-de-nos-over-het-gloednieuwe-oude-systeem.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/11700/hoe-werkt-het-vernieuwde-...
- Cthulhu_ 9mo ago
  Which is cool but it's not web, and few people have working TV reception that supports it at the moment. The web version of Teletekst (https://nos.nl/teletekst https://nos.nl/teletekst) is over 3 MB in size.
  - kqr 9mo ago
    Are there no APIs with smaller and faster responses? The Swedish equivalent has --even a fairly respectable terminal client.
  - arianvanp 9mo ago
    It's better than web! You don't usually view it with Internet. You view it with either an antenna or with broadcast cable. It's up even when the Internet is down.
webdevver 9mo ago
> https://wttr.in/ https://wttr.in/ didnt load for me
- ultratalk 9mo ago
  Me neither.
- Y_Y 9mo ago
  Did load for me. Closing.
ashu1461 9mo ago
Google also used to have a go app which they deprecated later on, while now i think about it what is the use of having a go app, if the websites which are shown in search results are not optimised for slower networks.
- ultratalk 9mo ago
  DuckDuckGo has a js-free version of their website at https://html.duckduckgo.com/ https://html.duckduckgo.com/
The_Double 9mo ago
That CNN website is great, except it still has a huge cookie banner. Looking at the cookies of the site, I think the only cookie it sets is that i clicked on the banner. Most of the size of the page is also related to the banner it seems.
- transcriptase 9mo ago
  You can’t put a price on some round-rim glasses wearing EU bureaucrat named Klaus-Dietrich von Regulieren sleeping soundly because of that banner.
  - phantasmish 9mo ago
    If I’ve understood the grandparent post correctly, they don’t need the banner. They wouldn’t need it if the only cookie they set were a functional 1st-party cookie, and since that sole cookie is just to track cookie banner status, they especially don’t need it.
    - miningape 9mo ago
      But taking the time to investigate that, get it approved by legal, etc. all takes longer than just slapping a cookie banner component on it. This is why people complain about the unclear and bureaucratic nature of these laws, it leads to an over complicated investigation and compliance isn't always simple - meaning the safest option is to comply at the highest level and degrade the user experience.
      - Macacity 9mo ago
        But it is not. the text of that legislation is very clear.
        reorder9695 9mo ago
        Yes but the only thing better than being compliant is being compliant twice over so there's absolutely no debate about compliance.
ignoramous 9mo ago
> great if there was some standard that allowed these to be easily found Too bad Google sunset Chrome Flywheel (likely after AMP?): https://research.google/pubs/flywheel-googles-data-compression-proxy-for-the-mobile-web/ https://research.google/pubs/flywheel-googles-data-compressi... Opera Mini Turbo was equally popular during 2G/Edge era.
sdeframond 9mo ago
Well, there is RSS.
ignoramous 9mo ago
https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite https://lite.duckduckgo.com/lite
imgabe 9mo ago
In terms of a standard, it would be nice if "reader mode" were standardized to request a text-only minimal formatting version of the site.
- rglullis 9mo ago
  Oooh... can you imagine if servers actually took the hint and sent only text if the client provided Accept: text/markdown, text/plain headers?
  - nektro 9mo ago
    > Accept: text/markdown funnily enough, the rise in agentic coding has actually made this on the rise
Fnoord 9mo ago
$ ssh teletekst.nl
- paulcapewell 9mo ago
  oh my god.
1vuio0pswjnm7 9mo ago
I view every website as text-only I can reformat the text any way I like

kevin_thibedeau 9mo ago

What you really want is a (mostly) JavaScript-free website. Run NoScript and cut out all the data broker bloat, allowing just a limited number of critical scripts to run. Adding LocalCDN will further reduce wasted transfers of code that you do allow. Then you can decide if you want to show images. The web will be much faster on a fast or slow link.

405nm 9mo ago

check out reticulum and nomadnet, they meet these needs perfectly!

getpokedagain 9mo ago
Thanks !

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

october8140 9mo ago

CMSs should normalize having a text only version of your website. I think with a little effort they could make it pretty frictionless for their users who it turn would be happy to provide it.

defrost 9mo ago

As a mild lifelong disaster "junky" (grew up in remote areas, dealt with cyclones, floods, droughts, fires, monsoons, coup d'etats, unannounced atomic tests etc during decades of global field work) this description: As a web developer, I am thinking again about my experience with the mobile web on the day after the storm, and the following week. I remember trying in vain to find out info about the storm damage and road closures—watching loaders spin and spin on blank pages until they timed out trying to load. reminds me why we (locally) still rely on AM radio day in day out and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

genewitch 9mo ago
so during hurricane Laura the NWS transmitters ceased functioning. The southern one i can pick up was uncrewed and stopped working during, and the northern one, i don't remember, but it went down about 2 hours later, well before the storm was upon them. up to that same storm i was a gung-ho let's go ham enthusiast. up to. I lived in a more direct path relative to where most of the repeater users were, so they were complaining about how hard it would be to find ice the next morning than relaying potentially life-altering information about storm tracks or whatever. I explained to everyone as sternly as i could that this was literally an emergency, which was the primary designation of the tallest repeater in the county, and if they wanted to chit chat with chet they should move to one of the 3 other analog or 2 other digital repeaters in the same area. nothing doing. I was the arrl tech specialist for my state, too. I completely pulled out of the hobby. I might dabble in the future with low power or beacons or whatever, but VHF/UHF i'm done with local usage. i know you specifically said AM; however i didn't have an AM radio "handy" during the storm and power outage, etc. 9/10 the NOAA/NWS weather radio service suffices.
- defrost 9mo ago
  That's the deal with Ham radio; amateurs, enthusiasts, former SE asian jungle operators, occasional NASA relay operators, etc. Good fun - not much chop for keeping the general public informed via cheap transister radios (although, who has those anymore?). Our state emergancy services broadcast locally (and at strength from outside affected areas) when updates are required - they have dedicated bands and they routinely interject on the major broadcast radio networks - where fires are, when and where cyclones are expected to cross the coast, etc. Our very local area volunteer fire units use the equivilant of ham and CB bands with reduced licences - they broadcast lightning ground strikes (at this time of year) and fire / tender / tanker updates as the season progresses (which is right now, harvest time, a lot of equipment out in tinder dry conditions subject to highly active evening lightening storms). The iPhone / WiFi stuff is great .. but it hasn't yet passed into "considered reliable" in local culture - the networks have crashed under stress and nobody wants response to grind to a halt if a tower goes down, etc.

mikelitoris 9mo ago

"The last couple times I used my dental insurance website, it was completely not mobile responsive, requiring the old-school pinch zoom to even get to anything on the page." And yet you probably didn't change your dental insurance based on this, because most likely there are more important issues that matter (e.g. you are given a single option by your employer). This is exactly the reason why that company is not likely to fix it, because the lousy website's effect on their bottom line is nearly zero. (Note that I don't like this either)

cadamsdotcom 9mo ago

[flagged]

netsharc 9mo ago
It's not really written there, but how about a loading experience that gives you the important information, and then loads the bells and whistles as the JavaScript gets loaded and run. First make sure the plain text information gets loaded, maybe a simple JPEG when something graphical like a map is needed, and then load the Megabytes of React or Angular to make it all pretty and the map be interactive...
- McGlockenshire 9mo ago
  Just as server side rendering was reinvented from first principles by the current generation, now they have rediscovered progressive enhancement! There might be hope for us yet!
getpokedagain 9mo ago
I'm not sure I understand. Are you implying we should not design our technology around serious edge cases that humans encounter in life? Why wouldn't we target people in crisis when we design crisis management information sites?
- cadamsdotcom 9mo ago
  I’m saying no one will unless incentivised to.
  - getpokedagain 9mo ago
    Oh yes absolutely.
McGlockenshire 9mo ago
This is the same attitude that results in modern developers ignoring low end consumer hardware, locking out a customer base because they aren't rich enough. Get some perspective. Some of us have to live on 500kbit/s. The modern web is hell, and because it doesn't impact anybody with money, nobody gives a shit.

tehwebguy 9mo ago

Other Helene stuff I took note of: - AT&T was completely down for us but Verizon and its MVNOs were up - I had a Verizon MVNO secondary e-sim that came free with a home internet plan, unused until the hurricane hit - It worked pretty well! - The day the Verizon disaster internet trucks showed up at the police station in our town my Verizon MVNO internet went down Non-internet learnings: - Fill up your vehicle’s fuel or battery before any big storm, we spent a lot of time siphoning and otherwise consolidating fuel to get ourselves and neighbors out of town, particularly because we didn’t know how far we’d have to go to find a gas station with electricity

rationalist 9mo ago
I have a dual-SIM phone with AT&T and T-Mobile lines (a Google Pixel). I wish they had a triple-SIM phone, then I could add Verizon. Now that I think about it, I think you can have multiple eSIMs, but only one can be active at a time.
- OptionOfT 9mo ago
  iPhones support 8 (or more): https://support.apple.com/en-us/118227#:~:text=You%20can%20have%20two%20eSIMs,changing%20your%20selections%20in%20Settings. https://support.apple.com/en-us/118227#:~:text=You%20can%20h... Unsure why they say 'or more' and what makes that happen. 2 can be active at the same time. I can't find how many a Pixel can store at the same time though.
  - sokoloff 9mo ago
    eSIMs are variable sized.
    - genewitch 9mo ago
      like the Sony™ PlayStation© save memory cards that held 8MB and games like hexen took all the "slots" available?
- sva_ 9mo ago

getpokedagain 9mo ago

One thing that I would also suggest folks who are resonating with this piece consider... Local copies of important information on your mobile device. Generally your laptops are not going to see much use. Mobile apps tend to fake local data and store lots of things to the cloud. We tend to ignore such things like backups and local copies nowadays. Most of the time we can get away without any worry here but consider keeping a copy of things like medications and their non commercial names for situations like this as well.

safety1st 9mo ago
Syncthing is the way! Along with the Material Files app from F-droid, I finally get to have a file based workflow on Android.
- subscribed 9mo ago
  You'll probably want to add localsend to the mix.
- nicbou 9mo ago
  Syncthing is also great

hahajk 9mo ago

> I was struck by how something as simple as text content could have such a big impact. Truly a sign of our times

parallax_error 9mo ago

Reading this on airline wifi right now makes me realise just how unusable some stuff becomes with choppy internet. E.g. I can’t change settings on the LinkedIn app because the request to load the settings page fails :/.

loktarogar 9mo ago

Some things you don't know people need until you're directly affected. For me, it was an injury related light sensitivity that made me realise dark mode isn't just a frivolous addition for looks

tsumnia 9mo ago
May I interest you in my doctorsensei.com/how-to-get-off-the-internet.html page? tl;dr Use dark mode and set f.lux (or the equivalent) to Cave Painting. Helped me out a lot

neilv 9mo ago

One way to get to this is to start with almost-'94 HTML: <!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>Some Topic</title> </head> <body> <h1>Some Topic</h1> <p>Information goes here.</p> <p>Information goes here.</p> <p>Information goes here.</p> </body> </html> Then add a little non-'94 CSS styling. If you decide to add an off-the-shelf wad of CSS, like Pico.css, consider hosting it alongside your HTML (rather than turning it into another third-party dependency and CDN cross-site surveillance tracker). Minified, and single-request.

divbzero 9mo ago
This should be every web developer’s first webpage. No npx create-react-app ... or pip install django or any other layers in between.
valadaptive 9mo ago
I always include `<meta charset="utf-8">`. Is that still necessary?
- kxrm 9mo ago
  if the server supplies this as a header, it's not necessary.
- genewitch 9mo ago
  you don't even need `<!doctype html>`. I'm sure it's easy to look up when that was added/recommended, but i've never used it when i do a 94 html page/site like this. html head title /title /head body /body /html 'sit
  - neilv 9mo ago
    That particular doctype is HTML5. I was making a too-subtle joke about slapping it on '94 HTML.
  - qznc 9mo ago
    Minimal valid HTML5: <!doctype html> <title>Hello</title> <h1>Hello World</h1>

firesteelrain 9mo ago

Author should look into WinLink. There is WinLink Wednesdays where WinLink is practiced. A lot of reports come out of WinLink and it’s all text. Of course need to be an Amateur Radio Operator Many years ago, Google had a service I would use pre-Smartphone days to search when I was away from the PC and needed info for like a restaurant’s number. You would text 46645 and it would send you search results. It was useful during hurricanes.

kristianp 9mo ago

A related article I read yesterday lamented that 1GB of RAM isn't enough to run a graphical browser anymore (1). Sure JavaScript runs fast now, but at the cost of the code size of the average website being unnecessarily large. This is because speedy js and speedy network connectivity allows for more code, more network requests. Another example of Wirth's law. This was the case when I got a Rapberry Pi 4 with 1GB of RAM about late 2019. You could run one tab of Chrome, but any more and it would be killed. (1) https://log.schemescape.com/posts/hardware/farewell-to-a-netbook.html https://log.schemescape.com/posts/hardware/farewell-to-a-net...

rsch 9mo ago

Oh for the time when chairs were still for sitting and PDFs were still for printing. Restaurant websites mentioned — the majority of restaurant web sites I’ve encountered were much more annoying and difficult to read than a PDF, even on a small phone screen. Or should I say, especially on a small phone screen. Some would make a 32 inch monitor feel cramped.

olowe 9mo ago

It's stuff like this that makes me want to scurry right back into the SRE/sysadmin space. Currently back in webdev after a few years out. I just feel like I'm being a pain in the arse to comment "could just write the HTML...?". This very article loaded 2.49MB (uncompressed) over 30 requests. It's served using Next.js (it does actually load fine with JS disabled). Ironically this is a great opportunity for the author to have made a stronger point. It could have gone beyond the abstract desire of "going back to basics" to perhaps demo reworking itself to be served using plain HTML and CSS without any big server-side frameworks.

valadaptive 9mo ago

The header image in the article is a 2400x1600 PNG that is 500KB large, apparently due to subtle dithering making it hard to compress. Converting it to a visually-identical .avif (quality 90, 12-bit color depth) takes it all the way down to 15KB.

sva_ 9mo ago
Indeed, the website transfers 1.18mb (compressed) to deliver 6.7kb of text. Kind of ironic.
throwaway2046 9mo ago
I'm guessing it could be even smaller if it was designed as a SVG file. Although the glow effect with the fading colors would probably need to be simplified.
latexr 9mo ago
For an image which isn’t even interesting or illustrative of the issue. Hero images on blog posts have run their course, I can’t remember the last time I felt anything positive by encountering one. They make the page load longer, force us to scroll to start reading, and are forgotten as soon as they go out of sight.

userbinator 9mo ago

Plain HTML and forms for interactivity can be very effective. In fact, for a long time web forums were largely entirely usable without JS. See the degradation of GitHub for a great example. You used to be able to interact with most of it without any JS at all; browsing the code repositories, reading and replying to issues, etc. Now it barely shows anything without JS. Of course, I suspect in that case it's deliberate so they can trick you into running a few more tracking and analytics scripts...

bdcravens 9mo ago

I think many of us in the web space that are old enough were shaped by the "mass outage" that happened on 9/11 when pretty much all news websites went down while we were looking for information. Slashdot was fighting valiantly to say up and was one of the few sites one could find information on the events (if you were in a spot without access to a cable TV, you were very much in the dark). The web and the infrastructure are substantially different than they were 25 years ago, but I still get a bit of "what if" in the back of my head (not that I work on anything of that level of significance).

zoobab 9mo ago
When the Yahoo news website was not responding, my reflex was to do a traceroute. The last hop was not resolving, and it was arriving Somewhere in NY. Guess what, they were hosted in the tower. It took a while to get redirected to the West coast.

iberator 9mo ago

Check this out youngsters: <html> <pre> TEXT </pre> </hml>

firefoxd 9mo ago

I have a tab on sublimetext that has been opened since the pandemic and I think it's safe to share my idea since I'm not gonna do it. *4KB webpage files* So a website where each page does not exceed 4KB. This includes whatever styling and navigation needed. Surprisingly you can share a lot of information even with such constraints. Bare bone html is surprisingly compact and the browser already does a whole lot of the heavy lifting. Why 4KB? Because that used to be the default page size in x86 hardware. So you can grab the whole thing in one chunk. This whole comment is not 1KB.

xavdid 9mo ago
Not all the way down to 4KB, but https://512kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ matches this vibe
nicbou 9mo ago
You should aim for the size of a single network packet instead

avhception 9mo ago

I'm on 600mbps fiber with low latency. Some times, I can't be arsed to load the websites linked on HN and simply head straight into the comments. For example, when it's a link to Twitter, I get an endless onslaught of in-site popups. Cookie banners, "sign in with google", "sign in to X", "X is better on the app" and so on and so forth. Meh. I'll sometimes just stick to HN, especially when I'm on my phone on the sofa or something. Give me a minimal / plain text website every day, it's not just the link speed.

mmoustafa 9mo ago

I built a connection to a web-powered LLM over SMS/iMessage for literally this purpose. While traveling I’d have really bad or sparse service but still needed to find my way around.

bdavbdav 9mo ago
That’s neat - have you considered publishing it?
- garyfirestorm 9mo ago
  Doesn’t ChatGPT have WhatsApp access?
  - copperx 9mo ago
    Not anymore. Meta didn't want competitors.
- mmoustafa 9mo ago
  I did, it's available at olly.bot :)
arianvanp 9mo ago
I use WhatsApp's built-in LLM to read news when I'm on long flights that only give messenger access. It's great

danielfalbo 9mo ago

Prepend 'pure.md/' in front of any url. I'm sure there are more proxies around.

aembleton 9mo ago
Thats brilliant. For example: https://pure.md/sparkbox.com/foundry/helene_and_mobile_web_performance https://pure.md/sparkbox.com/foundry/helene_and_mobile_web_p... Now the favicon (5.92KB) is larger than the article (5.16KB). Much better than the original (4.11MB)

zkmon 9mo ago

> As a web developer, I am thinking again about my experience with the mobile web on the day after the storm In some villages, where plenty of stone is available, people used it for everything - roof slabs, pillars, walls, flooring, water storage bowls etc. Also, villages which had plenty of wood around, they used it for everything. As techies, we say there is an app for everything, or there is a web-technology for everything. When you have a hammer in hand, everything looks like a nail.

rationalist 9mo ago
We also generally have large screens, faster processors, more memory, faster internet, etc.

leonc28 9mo ago

Actually, there are readily available tools that can do this. Many websites have implemented accessibility features for the blind, allowing users to read all text information on the screen, as well as alt text for accompanying images. This feature might be hidden, and many people are unaware of it.

leftbehinds 9mo ago

Giving weather fenomenons a human name is the silliest thing humanity have invented.

amelius 9mo ago
Can't they just reuse Ubuntu version names?
piker 9mo ago
On the contrary, it helps underscore a storm's significance and allow for memetic spreading of information around the storm. You obviously didn't grow up in a hurricane-prone area.
- tsumnia 9mo ago
  Likewise, we've always liked to "name things". My personal desktop is named "Foundation" (first built PC) and my car is named "Big Boi" (first adult purchase). Generic names are fine for operational equipment, but no one wants to refer to natural disasters as "HURR-2026-EC02". That's why COVID is "COVID" instead of "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2".

pif 9mo ago

> I was struck by how something as simple as text content could have such a big impact. The fact that he was struck by such an evident truth means that he is (hopefully: was) part of the problem.

jasongormanuk 9mo ago

There's a good talk from Jeremy Keith about building resilient websites: 1. Identify core functionality. 2. Make that functionality available using the simplest technology. 3. Enhance! https://youtu.be/T55Z3VlG43g?si=bJnsv2smKChO9y6q&t=2101 https://youtu.be/T55Z3VlG43g?si=bJnsv2smKChO9y6q&t=2101

nicbou 9mo ago

Vaguely related anecdotes: - I got caught in the mountains for a few days due to landslides in Nepal. The only available information was relayed by phone between locals. People had no idea of what was going on and their vacation ended on the day the road reopened. It caused a pile up of cars where the road had slid off a few days prior. In some parts, rocks still fell from the cliffs above. We flagged a passing car and asked them to keep us updated on WhatsApp instead. We could have all stayed put if we had that information before. - During covid I maintained a page with simplified local restrictions and a changelog of new restrictions. The alternative was to follow press conferences and re-read the entire regulation the next day, or keep checking the newspapers. Mine was just a bullet list at a permanent location. - During the invasion of Ukraine, refugees have set up the most impressive ad hoc information network I have ever seen. It was operational in 24 hours and kept improving for weeks. People sorted out routes, transport, border issues, accommodation, translation and supplies over Telegram, Notion and Google Docs. Information propagation is critical during emergencies, and people are really bad at it. Setting up a simple website and two-way communication channels makes a huge difference.

aitchnyu 9mo ago
Why does Ukraine trust Telegram so much? Seems they share intelligence-worth stuff there.
- dolia 9mo ago
  Few reasons: 1. Habit. We're used to use Telegram for everything: news sources, social network, messaging, memes. Telegram has more capabilities than other apps. You can't realistically move your family and friends to another messaging app because of all of that and the network effect. 2. General attitude of all people towards privacy and sharing data: they don't really care. It's "Who would even care about my data?" and "I've got nothing to hide" all the way. I doubt most of people ever thought about the topic of trusting a messaging app. It's not the framework they operate in. There are two global psyops done by I don't know who: 1. That Bitcoin is safe and anonymous. 2. That Telegram is super safe for whatever shady or private stuff you want to do. One of the best marketing campaigns ever. I would also want to use this chance to alert everyone who uses Telegram that: 1. It's not e2e by default. 2. They use proprietary encryption protocol. You don't have access to code. 3. I don't think Telegram is profitable, I don't know how it can be with that scale. Which makes you wonder. 4. If you open in-message links, you have a chance of losing your account to hackers thanks to the old vulnerability that hasn't been fixed for years. You literally have to check the list of devices connected to your account every 12 hours if you want to be safe.

nickdothutton 9mo ago

I now use a text only CLI utility to read the BBC news. It is (for me) a greatly improved experience.[1] 1. https://github.com/hako/bbcli https://github.com/hako/bbcli

dredmorbius 9mo ago
Interesting, and arguably useful, but I really have to push back on the whole notion of site-specific readers. I have a text-only CLI utility to read BBC news: the w3m terminal-mode Web browser. (Substitute Lynx, links, elinks2, or any other TMWB of your preference.) The experience is, unfortunately, kind of shit, because BBC (as with far too many other websites) fails to display well in a terminal-mode browser, but it at least works. And I can use the same browser on any other website. The problem with site-specific tools, which includes of course mobile apps, is that now instead of invoking a general-purpose reader on any site, you have to choose both the site and the reader, and are dependent on that reader application / utility being continuously updated as the site itself changes. (And, yes, I've written my own site-specific renderers, including one which produces a "newspaper"-formatted page based on the CNN "lite" website, which I've discussed on HN and elsewhere: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723661> Longer description and screenshots: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122> The page takes about 10 minutes to generate (a bunch of serial article requests), but makes for good offline reading.
mxuribe 9mo ago
This is a really cool tool! And, not to diminish the work put into this tool...but at a glance at the code, it appears to be a specific RSS reader for the BBC (see: https://github.com/hako/bbcli/blob/709c6417c8dc4ffd4f7d5f5b42b2672c68f4c8d1/src/feeds.rs#L16 https://github.com/hako/bbcli/blob/709c6417c8dc4ffd4f7d5f5b4...)...so if i'm correct, why not simply use a cli-based RSS reader....so can review other sources beyond BBC? Again, not trying to diminsh the goodness here...But that, a more general tool might be just as good, and a bit more flexible, eh? :-)

David_Osipov 9mo ago

I'm not a web developer, but a product manager, and recently I've created my own website using Astro. I do support the point, that its better to have a relatively simple static website - it's really fast and lightweight! An average Wordpress website would weight 1 MB+ in best case, in worst case - 4 MB+. I don't know how people think it's a good idea to have a compressed webpage to be 4 MB!! Let's KISS

maelito 9mo ago

For https://cartes.app https://cartes.app, I'm planning to code an extremely light version of the map tiles. Based on initial network speed, decide to load this style first, that just lets the user see the streets and and important places. Then load the rest. This initial map style would be the equivalent of a "text-only" website. Blocked by Vercel's turbopack bundle analyzer's bugs though, because before optimizing the tiles, I need to optimize the JS that loads the tiles. I haven't figured a way to load a Maplibre map server side, so the JS must be ready before the map starts to get loaded. https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/86731 https://github.com/vercel/next.js/discussions/86731

aydin212 9mo ago

This should be required reading for anyone building government or emergency sites. During any crisis, people have spotty connections, dying phones, and zero patience for loading spinners. A plain HTML page with bullet points would save lives over a fancy React app that needs 5MB to render. The irony is we have better tools than ever to build fast sites, yet the average webpage keeps getting heavier. Somewhere we forgot that the web worked fine before JavaScript frameworks. That bulleted newsletter list being the most useful thing says everything.

hxii 9mo ago

I remember complaining about this around five years ago [^1], and it looks like not much has changed since, save for the amount of people complaining about websites being full of garbage that serves no purpose or static resources being bigger than the should be. [^1]: https://0xff.nu/speed-pt3/ https://0xff.nu/speed-pt3/

dmillar 9mo ago

https://plaintextsports.com https://plaintextsports.com

japhyr 9mo ago

I live just south of Asheville in NC, and we were completely isolated after the storm for a few days. The only reason we were able to get out after a few days was that a fire truck had been abandoned at the bottom of our driveway as trees fell around it, so they came back as soon as they could to get that resource back. People just the other side of those trees were unable to get out for about a week. Our best source of information, even after we started to get a bit of service, was an inReach. I messaged a friend far from the region and asked them really specific questions like, "Tell me when I can get from our house to I-26 and then south to South Carolina." Yes, absolutely, emergency information sites should be as light as possible. And satellite devices are incredibly useful when everything local goes down.

hasanhaja 9mo ago

It's hard to understand the privilege bubble you're in unless you actively try to live like your users. My read of the current trend [1] is that building for your marginal users isn't prioritized culturally in orgs or within engineering. Unseating those ways of working in my experience has been immensely challenging, even when everyone can agree on methodologies to put users first in theory [2]. [1] https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-2026/ https://infrequently.org/2025/11/performance-inequality-gap-... [2] https://crukorg.github.io/engineering-guidebook/docs/frontend/choosing_your_stack https://crukorg.github.io/engineering-guidebook/docs/fronten...

MarkusWandel 9mo ago

This used to actually work, at least on some sites. The text would load first, then it would reformat as the fonts and CSS assets are loaded. Ugly and frustrating, which is probably why, now you don't get content until the eye candy is all ready. But the progressive, text first loading, would be readable from the get go, even if further downloads stalled.

MORPHOICES 9mo ago

[dead]

kvgr 9mo ago
The nature of most businesses is that they dont care about this.

reality_inspctr 9mo ago

nice work. dealt with same issue during helene. would be interesting to do things like convert to morse code or convert to modem-over-walkie low baud rate. I built this repo as a Helene response repo, trying to use an llm to help get resources over text message. https://github.com/realityinspector/supply_drop_ai https://github.com/realityinspector/supply_drop_ai wonder if you could get to news over sms, use an llm to compress to minimum viable text?

stmw 9mo ago

Perhaps this is something FEMA could try to encourage and lightly enforce. No new technologies needed, just a mandatory "old web" option for key .gov, state and news sites.

rp888pro 9mo ago

[dead]

claudiulodro 9mo ago

Interesting. For Hurricane Helene specifically, my team at Newspack actually worked with Blue Ridge Public Radio and a number of other news organizations in the affected area to set up text versions of their websites for low bandwidth readers[1] and get info to 10s of thousands of people[2]. In fact, it was so successful (maybe not at reaching you specifically though), that we got a grant to roll out a general purpose plain text web solution for breaking news situations to news organizations across the country![3] So I think there may have been a mismatch in that you didn't know about all of the plain text versions of news sites available in your area during the disaster -- that's something we'll have to keep in mind. [1] https://text.bpr.org/ https://text.bpr.org/ [2] https://awards.journalists.org/entries/hell-or-high-water-bpr-coverage-of-hurricane-helene-2/ https://awards.journalists.org/entries/hell-or-high-water-bp... [3] https://opennews.org/blog/press-forward-release/ https://opennews.org/blog/press-forward-release/

DauntingPear7 9mo ago
I mean I regularly read the news and I didn’t know CNN has a lite version

butz 9mo ago

I want a plain text website every day, period. I'd even like to have a text site summarizing video from youtube.

rickcarlino 9mo ago

Check out Newswaffle on Gemini:// protocol. The web could in theory support text-first content, but it won't. The Gemini protocol, though not perfect, was built to avoid extensibility that inevitably leads us away from text. I long for the day more bloggers make their content available on Gemspace, the way we see RSS as an option on some blogs. The web will continue to stray from text-first content because it is too easy to add things that are not text.

hackerbeat 9mo ago

Talking about text-first sites: https://wordgag.com https://wordgag.com brings me a lot of joy everyday. They also update their funny quotes collection regularly.

bienstar 9mo ago
That site prompted me to watch an ad in order to access it; I don't think it's a great example of what we're talking about

trashb 9mo ago

There is a movement supporting small websites. The links below may inspire those interested in text or small websites. https://no-html.club/ https://no-html.club/ https://no-js.club/ https://no-js.club/ https://nocss.club/ https://nocss.club/ https://1kb.club/ https://1kb.club/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231208000921/https://10kbclub.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231208000921/https://10kbclub.... https://250kb.club/ https://250kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ https://512kb.club/ https://1mb.club/ https://1mb.club/ I find that the sites designed around being small are usually nice to read since the effort is put in the content not the layout. Additionally a lot of great sites can be found through something like https://wiby.me/ https://wiby.me/ or different protocols like gopher or gemini.

soldeace 9mo ago
You forgot to mention https://smolweb.org/ https://smolweb.org/

exabrial 9mo ago

Yeah, you don't get one. The purpose of modern web development is to make sure the developer is intellectually satisfied in over-engineering something that should be relatively simple, justifying their pet projects. If any useful work gets done, that's a side-effect and most of times an accident. (Just try to use StateFarm's website as a great example).

bazzargh 9mo ago

It's been shared here many times, but Terence Eden has a great anecdote about how the UK's GDS standards - lightweight, simple html - meant the site was usable even on a crappy PSP https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...

reasonundefined 9mo ago

I can relate to this post. During the fires in Southern California last year it was confusing and frightening to know that you're surrounded by fire but you can't get any news or information due to degraded cell networks. We had no power and were just trying to load pages to figure out whats going on and if we should evacuate. There were either no emergency alerts, or emergency alerts for irrelevant things. Another endlessly frustrating aspect is unfortunately Facebook. For better or worse, it's become a hub of emergency information using local facebook groups. In an emergency you want a feed of chronological information and facebook insists on engaging you by showing 'relevant' posts out of order.

1970-01-01 9mo ago

W3C did this https://www.w3.org/Mobile/Specifications https://www.w3.org/Mobile/Specifications

flanbiscuit 9mo ago

Nice to see other fellow Western NC folks commenting here, I'm in Asheville. I did not know about all of these text only version of major news sites. I'm going to bookmark them. What saved us from a news deficit after Helene was that we had 2 portable AM/FM radios. Both of the radios took batteries and one of them you could even charge via a hand crank. I highly recommend having a portable AM/FM radio of some kind. Blue Ridge Public Radio (our local NPR) was amazing during this time. Their offices are located right in downtown, which never lost power, so they were able to keep operating immediately after the storm. I also feel this pain of bloated sites taking forever to load when I'm traveling. I'm on an old T-Mobile plan that I've had since around 2001 that comes with free international roaming in 215+ countries. The only problem is that it's a bit throttled. I know that I could just buy a prepaid SIM, or now I can use an eSIM vendor like Saily, but I'm too cheap and/or the service is just good enough that I'm willing to wait the few extra seconds. Using Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin helps some, but not enough (also I just switched to iPhone last month). I've definitely been on websites that take forever to load because there's just so much in the initial payload, sometimes painfully slow. I don't think enough developers are testing their sites using the throttling options in the dev tools.

KomoD 9mo ago

> 66 requests > 5.1 MB transferred Ironic.