4 ms·

I was going to comment on the Terence Eden excerpt quoted by the author about the woman researching housing benefits on an old PSP browser, when I noticed that

I was going to comment on the Terence Eden excerpt quoted by the author about the woman researching housing benefits on an old PSP browser, when I noticed that you (the OP) are Terence himself. It's strikingly powerful, and a reminder of the duty we have in building our infrastructure. > Of course, your javascript-based analytics package doesn’t see the users you are bouncing because of javascript failures. It is frightening to think of how many people are alienated from critical systems every day because of this bias reinforcing the idea that they do not exist.

genewitch 4mo ago
just use firefox with an adblocker like adnauseam and a fairly decent chunk of the internet stops working, including chase.com and several other massive corp sites. I can't imagine trying to use links/lynx or a browser with less market share than FF that isn't based on chromium.
- nunez 4mo ago
  Chase works with ad blockers, though. It doesn't work if you disable JavaScript...but it wasn't always this way! They had a mobile version of their online banking service at https://m.chase.com https://m.chase.com that was EXTREMELY FAST and did 85% of what you need to do in an online banking portal (check balances, transfer funds). They scrapped it when they moved to their current bloated monstrosity of the portal that they have today. It was a big reason why I moved to a credit union (who outsources their online banking services to Alkami, which maintains a very tight portal and supports 2FA AND passkeys!).
  - genewitch 4mo ago
    i am unclear on if it's because of the adblocker (specifically i use ad nauseam which does block some JS. some.) or because of firefox. I can load it on edge every time it fails on firefox. last week, chase.com worked fine on firefox. the previous 15 months where i needed to log in, it did not. Someone at chase isn't checking their work on firefox.
    - nunez 4mo ago
      When I have to log into Chase on my computer, I do via Firefox, and it works fine. Maybe you flipped something on in about:config that's breaking it?
      - genewitch 4mo ago
        i love that i'm holding it wrong. thanks, HN.
    - enlightens 4mo ago
      FWIW I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and Enhanced Tracking Protection, and use Chase's website almost weekly. No issues that I've noticed on MacOS or Windows
    - dlcarrier 4mo ago
      CDNs like Cloudflare will often block traffic if you don't leak enough data to differentiate yourself from a bot. It's usually not very transparent either, with vague error messages. They've given up on just throwing up a captcha then letting you proceed, because bots are much better than real people, at solving them.
    - genewitch 4mo ago
      for the record i don't let firefox auto-update, so it is possible my firefox is "too old" to properly log in to chase. I generally update firefox once every month or two, manually. It's just how i roll. it seems to bug a lot of people that i don't want to be bleeding edge. i don't particularly mind that.
natbobc 4mo ago
And that is what pixel tracking is for. :)
- kristianp 4mo ago
  What's wrong with web server logs? That would give you the number of visitors, if not the pageviews on an SPA.
kristianp 4mo ago
The PSP has 32MB of RAM plus 4MB of embedded RAM, upgraded to 64MB of RAM in later models, the browser also is limited to only a subset of that. I wonder how old the anecdote is? It's hard to imagine any websites now working on that. It does have javascript, but a version shipped with Netfront browser from 2011 or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Web_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Web_brows... Nice to see that Astro supports non-js browsers. Perhaps website developers, especially ones needing to develop for government services, should use 1GB Raspberry Pis for testing, but that would still have modern javascript. I got a 1GB RPi 4 in about mid-2019 and was rudely reminded of how much memory Chrome used even back then. More than 1 tab open and it would be killed. The Eden quote is here https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven... and it has some stats of gaming consoles using uk government sites.
- dlcarrier 4mo ago
  I used PSP browser a lot in the mate 2000's, and don't remember having much trouble. It could even display pages that, at the time, ware pretty bloated, like the Flash-based Homestar Runner cartoons.

genewitch 4mo ago

just use firefox with an adblocker like adnauseam and a fairly decent chunk of the internet stops working, including chase.com and several other massive corp sites. I can't imagine trying to use links/lynx or a browser with less market share than FF that isn't based on chromium.

nunez 4mo ago
Chase works with ad blockers, though. It doesn't work if you disable JavaScript...but it wasn't always this way! They had a mobile version of their online banking service at https://m.chase.com https://m.chase.com that was EXTREMELY FAST and did 85% of what you need to do in an online banking portal (check balances, transfer funds). They scrapped it when they moved to their current bloated monstrosity of the portal that they have today. It was a big reason why I moved to a credit union (who outsources their online banking services to Alkami, which maintains a very tight portal and supports 2FA AND passkeys!).
- genewitch 4mo ago
  i am unclear on if it's because of the adblocker (specifically i use ad nauseam which does block some JS. some.) or because of firefox. I can load it on edge every time it fails on firefox. last week, chase.com worked fine on firefox. the previous 15 months where i needed to log in, it did not. Someone at chase isn't checking their work on firefox.
  - nunez 4mo ago
    When I have to log into Chase on my computer, I do via Firefox, and it works fine. Maybe you flipped something on in about:config that's breaking it?
    - genewitch 4mo ago
      i love that i'm holding it wrong. thanks, HN.
  - enlightens 4mo ago
    FWIW I use Firefox with uBlock Origin and Enhanced Tracking Protection, and use Chase's website almost weekly. No issues that I've noticed on MacOS or Windows
  - dlcarrier 4mo ago
    CDNs like Cloudflare will often block traffic if you don't leak enough data to differentiate yourself from a bot. It's usually not very transparent either, with vague error messages. They've given up on just throwing up a captcha then letting you proceed, because bots are much better than real people, at solving them.
  - genewitch 4mo ago
    for the record i don't let firefox auto-update, so it is possible my firefox is "too old" to properly log in to chase. I generally update firefox once every month or two, manually. It's just how i roll. it seems to bug a lot of people that i don't want to be bleeding edge. i don't particularly mind that.

natbobc 4mo ago

And that is what pixel tracking is for. :)

kristianp 4mo ago
What's wrong with web server logs? That would give you the number of visitors, if not the pageviews on an SPA.

kristianp 4mo ago

The PSP has 32MB of RAM plus 4MB of embedded RAM, upgraded to 64MB of RAM in later models, the browser also is limited to only a subset of that. I wonder how old the anecdote is? It's hard to imagine any websites now working on that. It does have javascript, but a version shipped with Netfront browser from 2011 or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Web_browser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Web_brows... Nice to see that Astro supports non-js browsers. Perhaps website developers, especially ones needing to develop for government services, should use 1GB Raspberry Pis for testing, but that would still have modern javascript. I got a 1GB RPi 4 in about mid-2019 and was rudely reminded of how much memory Chrome used even back then. More than 1 tab open and it would be killed. The Eden quote is here https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven... and it has some stats of gaming consoles using uk government sites.

dlcarrier 4mo ago
I used PSP browser a lot in the mate 2000's, and don't remember having much trouble. It could even display pages that, at the time, ware pretty bloated, like the Flash-based Homestar Runner cartoons.