Comment by tudorw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tudorw | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

If we want to win that war, we should focus on content not technology, Mosaic got a lead in the game because, despite the 'techies' seeing no use for images, image support was added, with images came the transition of media, users were au fait with articles containing text and images and could now experience similar on line, this alone was not enough, content creators starting creating content that people wanted to consume, that's what drove people to 'get online', they were missing out.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a long shot, but if an organisation could build a raft of talent, get that talent to make content that was only available on an open and progressive platform, then you might get some traction. So what might that look like, well, say I had the funds to secure 100 of the worlds best financial journalists and only delivered that content on a novel protocol, do you think I might be able to persuade some people to run a novel application to access that content, oh hang on, did I just describe Bloomberg...

I agree.

Back in the dark ages, when the battle of www vs Gopher was still on, I sided heavily on the side of Gopher because it didn't get in the way of the content. Gopher was a means to navigate the maze of content and most of the content was textual, postscript and neatly typeset. You could sit down with it and read it focused or print it out.

We've regressed to the point where 5KiB of text comes with 2MiB of crap, meaning a noise to signal ratio of 26dB which is insane!

Really Gopher is dead though. We could do with a fresh start. A search engine like WAIS, a menu system like Gopher and a standard document format that allows you to get quality content on everything from your e-reader to paper without having to read some fucked up ebook flow layout conversion. And not postscript. Something you can author by hand.

I've even had enough of building things on the web. It is a horrible horrible thing to have to do. I envy system programmers who never see the pain of trying to keep a very large web application secure at even a basic level.

> We've regressed to the point where 5KiB of text comes with 2MiB of crap, meaning a noise to signal ratio of 26dB which is insane!

Sadly the average clickbait article contains a lot less than 5000 characfters of actual text.

I don't see why these webpages need to be so huge. If websites used HTML5 properly and used CSS more extensively, a lot of the crap I feel could be removed.

Seriously, aside from graphics and video, what is taking up the size of these pages? Mountains of JavaScript?

As someone who used to work for a web optimization company, yes mountains of Javascript. Javascript for analytics, javascript for transitions, javascript for DRM, javascript for updating pricing in real time, javascript for fonts, javascript for colors, javascript to lazy load the images....six different style sheets and images that are downloaded and resized client side...and this is just the navigation bar.

Just for fun I like to pull up the browser diagnostics on pages, and watch the absurd number of requests build up. It's insane how much junk is downloaded on seemingly simple sites.

This is why I usually use just lynx.

I may be wrong, but isn't connecting to a web server by lynx illegal (considered "hacking") in some countries? I remember a case in the UK around the time of the London olympic games.

It can never be illegal to use any tool. It is the intent and action carried out with the tool that decides whether it is illegal.

Consider the difference carrying a knife, being a hunter, and carrying a knife being a bankrobber and going into a bank to use it.

Oh it most certainly can... it SHOULDN'T but it absolutely can.

Perhaps the knife was a bit exagerated. It will be considered a weapon in many jurisdictions. Lynx however will/should hardly be considered a hacking tool. curl has been in deep waters many times, equally perplexing as the lynx scenario. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warnin...

Compare Linux Reviews, "Solaris-user arrested by British Police for using Lynx" -- http://linuxreviews.org/news/2005/01/28_0001/28_0001.html.en

That is scary indeed. Was he convicted? Police do make mistakes and one can only hope that they are corrected.

I faintly recall reading (to my utter astonishment) that he was at least not freed from the accusation as you would have expected. I tried a search for any follow-ups, but to no avail. Maybe due to the "right to forget." (Information conveyed without warranty, liability or claim of correctness. It has been 12 years since, I may be in error.)

He might have never been charged, and being released without charge is rarely reported.

> It can never be illegal to use any tool. It is the intent and action carried out with the tool that decides whether it is illegal.

Since illegality is, literally, whatever is contrary to the law, anything at all can be illegal. We can hope that crazy things won't be illegal, and decry their illegality—but, since it's convenient for a government to impose sufficiently many laws that anyone can have some infraction pinned on him or her (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwsLAqjqnxo), to say that any particular thing can't be illegal is probably wishful thinking.

I'm not familiar with that case, but I don't think an accusation that using a text mode browser like Lynx constitutes "hacking" would stand up to any type of scrutiny. (I'm not a lawyer and I'm in the US; things may differ in the UK).

Lawyers will make the most egregious leaps and grasps to paint the opposing party in the worst light possible, especially in the early stages of the case, because if they don't claim that Lynx is a "hacker's tool" in the initial pleadings, then it may be looked upon with suspicion if they try to raise that point later. So they are essentially trying to reserve as many potentially beneficial claims as they can at once, including (and especially) any claim that may portend that the other party is a devious scoundrel with the worst possible intentions.

Lawyers will thus front-load with every kind of tenuous, ridiculous accusation they can (without presenting a significant risk to the licensing), expecting some of it to get "laughed out of court", just so that on the off chance that it doesn't, it will help their case.

I'm sure a real lawyer would contest that to some extent, and I'm sure there is slightly more nuance to it than that, but that is my layman's assessment and I think it is roughly accurate.

The takeaway is not to take legal pleadings too seriously, because the goal is not to find justice per se. It is for your side to win, to get what it wants, under the assumption that that automatically represents justice.

Please note that this wasn't related to some lawyer actions, but the Metropolitan Police's Computer Crime Unit acting on the basis of suspected offence under the Computer Misuse Act. The offensive act occurred while the browser was used for making a donation at a tsunami related website of the Disasters and Emergency Committee, where the browser showed up as an "unusual event" in the access logs.

I believe, the case is part of a more general theme (which is, indeed, related to the EME topic): There's a perceptible will to regulate any kind of browsing into consumer-style app usage. E.g., manually entering a URL ("URL hacking") has been considered a fraud attempt; using a browser which only supports the basic protocol set and not all of it is considered as possibly related to intrusion and terrorism (oh, that T-word again). In the end, we may wake up with the law enforcing a certain, standardized life style. We may wake up with a deregulated companies and strictly regulated citizens.

I understand you're referring to a criminal prosecution. Criminal prosecutors are, from my limited observations as a layperson with a minor interest in law, more guilty of this than anyone. They go hyper-aggressive on charges, expecting them to be pared down. Some of it is a ploy to get a quick plea. There is an element of calling the bluff, and the defendant's attorney would have to evaluate the situation and advise whether or not that was smart in the given case.

This is not to say there aren't ridiculous prosecutions that run their course, especially in niche areas that aren't widely understood and thus hard to create public outcry over, like insider trading or computer crimes. It's just to indicate that using Lynx, by itself, is not considered criminal by any sane person. It's a nit the prosecutors pick when they're trying to nail you on something larger, a detail they exaggerate to attempt to create the impression of one's villainous ways.

Just don't want people to uninstall Lynx in fear that they'll be arrested for firing it up. :)

EDIT: From re-reading your comment, it seems you're suggesting that this wasn't part of a larger operation, but that actual charges were brought because of a single aberrant entry in the access logs? I find this hard to imagine, but if true, I would guess that this is more along the lines of "abuse of police power to harass an enemy" than "literally a random dude who just visited our site in a text-based browser". I've read access logs for many years now and even small sites get all kinds of weird things in there, it doesn't seem plausible that something like that would flag off any kind of detector. Do you have a link to more details about the case?

I'd hypothesise that anyone skilled enough to be using a text browser is also skilled enough to be a "hacker" and will most likely have a computer filled with "hacking tools" and other "circumvention devices".

Basically anyone that can use a text based browser also is using some form of *nix and knows how to handle a command line application. They probably tinker with computers and so have many low level tools at their disposal.

I would but hardly anything works in it which is the problem.

It's only insane if you subscribe to the idea that the 5 kibibytes of content is the purpose of a news or other site. Maybe as a user that's what you came for, but from a business perspective the purpose of the piece is to sneak 2 mebibytes of crap into your life. The snr on that is much better.

It's only insane if you have the tools to look at what's happening under the hood. Most people don't have any idea.

Hah... the _content_ is the noise in that case!

It's insane if you're paying for mobile data.

> We've regressed to the point where 5KiB of text comes with 2MiB of crap, meaning a noise to signal ratio of 26dB which is insane!

Unfortunately that's what the average layman wants. They want the SPA experience. That's what they want to pay for. What kind of professional am I if I don't give people what they want to pay for?

> I've even had enough of building things on the web. It is a horrible horrible thing to have to do. I envy system programmers who never see the pain of trying to keep a very large web application secure at even a basic level.

I build and maintain full stack web applications for my day job. Man, is it a pain. Between the database setup, server setup, back end application, front end application, security concerns, and browser compatibility issues, I rarely get to spend any time at all working on the business logic. Seriously, modern web development is 90% chasing down bugs, security enforcement, and fixing compatibility issues. Writing the business logic is the easy part.

>Seriously, modern web development is 90% chasing down bugs, security enforcement, and fixing compatibility issues.

That's true of most modern development. It might be more painful on the web, I wouldn't know, but systems programming is not really any different.

I think the only real difference is that, generally speaking, systems programming standards and best practices don't change weekly. Or, maybe they do. I don't work in that field professionally.

> Unfortunately that's what the average layman wants. They want the SPA experience.

What about that experience do they want, and how do you know they want it? Engagement metrics can make auto-playing video look like a great idea, but people dislike it enough that browsers are starting to block it.

> And not postscript. Something you can author by hand.

How about TeX? Many sites already use js libraries that integrate latex.

I hope this was intended as a joke? Most users struggle with simple typesetting conventions like underscore/asterisk. HTML tags (or CSS) are out of reach for the vast majority. TeX isn't even part of the known universe for users!

> HTML tags (or CSS) are out of reach for the vast majority

CSS sure, but most people can learn the basic html tags in a minute. Same for the basic latex conventions.

I think this is a case where struggling == "doesn't want to learn". It's important to distinguish so you don't waste time trying to help the latter.

Not the worst idea. However not the best. Something between that and markdown.

Markdown is a bad joke.

It's really fine for casual documentation. I wouldn't write a book or a paper in it though.

R Markdown is a joy to use and people even do write books with it!

For a straight-text book, actually, Markdown is excellent. You can include images, or for technical content, tables, easily.

Technical papers with formulae and complex references are slightly more detailed, but that ends up being gloss. Even LaTeX for a simple text is quite minimal (though you need the starting template).

Source: I've made something of a hobby of marking up source docs into HTML, LaTeX, and Markdown. Of the set, Markdown would be my first go-to, and I've used it for some book-length projects.

Example here: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba

> For a straight-text book, actually, Markdown is excellent. You can include images, or for technical content, tables, easily.

I would probably use org-mode for that.

Another solid option, yes.

I don't see any way to win that war. The IP oligarchs have won it. They own the W3C now.

But there is clearly a demand for DRM-free browsers. And if the worst fears are realized, and mainstream browsers won't display media without DRM, or become snooping devices for IP oligarchs, that demand will increase.

Sure, it'll never be more than a niche, but DRM-free browsers will be there for those who want them.

I've no crystal ball, so looking back, monopolies and incumbent monoliths encounter resistance as they mature, there are more examples of the status quo being that they wither under the weight of complexity, this is certainly not over while consumers consume content, consumers own their time, content creators own their content, everything else is middleman stuff.

> But there is clearly a demand for DRM-free browsers.

There is not a demand for DRM-free browser.

I don't know anyone in the real world that demands a DRM-free browser.

They probably won't tell you what they really want ;)

This is a paranoid slippery slope.

EME existed for several years already, and was implemented in browsers. Standardization doesn't change much.

And no one except the big movie producers even wants to use DRM. If you don't watch movies on the web, you'll never see DRM.

Firefox is DRM-free by default. It will download Widevine CDM if you start watching Netflix, but you can untick a flag in the settings to completely forbid it from downloading the CDM, if you're afraid of accidentally signing up for Netflix :D

> Firefox is DRM-free by default.

It is now. But next year? In five years? And if it's gone, then what?

> This is a paranoid slippery slope.

Well, it's a slippery slope. And I do tend to plan for the worst. Plus a safety factor.

Open source software can never be completely "gone".

The "OMG EVERYTHING WILL BE DRM" panic is not new. We've had widely available DRM back when Flash was super popular. And still, to this day, the only DRM'd thing is movies.

The only thing? What about computer software?

Maybe you meant to type 'the only thing I care about'.

I actually don't care about movies, very rarely watch them at all. The vast majority of video I watch is YouTube.

I meant to type "I never actually saw DRM on the web in person".

Also, proprietary desktop software is still usually "protected" by just a serial number :D

> Also, proprietary desktop software is still usually "protected" by just a serial number :D

The ineffectuality of most DRM isn't really an argument for it (or even just an argument against arguments against it), though.

> Also, proprietary desktop software is still usually "protected" by just a serial number :D

Not really; there's a lot of sophisticated DRM going around at least since the 70's..

There's an easy way to win that war: diversify the content you consume. If you're willing to step outside of the immensely popular, there are great treasures to be found.

IP owners are protecting their assets which are worth a lot. The irony is that the value of those assets come from us content consumers. And I'll be the first to admit that I'm a lot less interested in the local amateur hockey team than the national league team I follow. I chose to consume that brand. But I don't have to.

Yes I lament the loss of a vision for free-flowing information. But the society in which we live, unfortunately, values and protects powerful asset owners. Technology cannot fix a society problem.

For individuals, sure. But the war was about norms for the Web. And that's lost. Again, by the way. The first time, as I recall, being in ~1995, when the commercial takeover really got started. So it goes.

> mainstream browsers won't display media without DRM

Seriously?

Nothing has really changed, has it? Video services want to use DRM so they developed or bought tools to do so. A de facto standard emerged around the frameworks and the W3C essentially ratified the standard. If I understand it correctly, the standard itself isn't DRM, rather it's a place where DRM controls can be installed.

I get that the EFF saw this as an opportunity to ask for a promise from DRM companies to not sue researchers and I applaud them for that. But now that they lost that battle, I think it's entirely appropriate for them to drop out and apply their resources elsewhere. For example, if they can get rid of the ability to sue researchers in the first place, then none of this really matters.

I don't think there's a demand for DRM free browsers but there is a demand for DRM free content.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com