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Comment by Pete_D | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you'd prefer comparing the code of a website to the amount of useful content on the website, which OP also did. Taking "I'm downloading 100mb worth of stuff (83 Moby-Dicks) to read 72kb worth of plaintext" at face value, we could also say that 0.072% of the data transferred is useful, or, equivalently, that 99.928% of it is crap.

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You don't have to download the typography of a physical book but it still plays a huge role in the readability and enjoyment of it. So I guess the typography of websites is "crap" because it has to be downloaded?

It's a ridiculous apples-and-hammers comparison thinly veiled as an intelligent critique.

I can put raw text on a kindle and read it. In fact, I frequently do. Comparing digital text to digital text is not apples-and-hammers.

Exactly, it’s not the NYTs fault that plain text compresses well compared to jpgs.

Also, is a world where he NYT is subscriber only really preferable?

This is a textbook definition of a false dichotomy. There are other distribution models for digital news services. There are other methods for transmitting digital content. It's not an either/or situation.

Fair enough but these rants on HN about publishers never seem to contain any examples of publications that are both successful and delivering pages that weigh scarcely more than their plain text equivalent.

I think you invite the “false dichotomy” by making the comparison between plain text Moby Dick and the front page of one of the most successful newspapers in the world in 2018. I agree with many of your points but find the way you make your argument to be full of comparisons of apples and oranges while avoiding proposing any kind of solution.

Did you read the article I posted? I definitely put forward both an acknowledgment that media firms won't change and ideas towards reducing usage where possible.

Again with your post I see many more words about Moby Dick and nostalgizing for a past that no longer exists then words about a possible solution, and while your solutions are better than the typical “just move to a susbscription model,” I can’t see how we would generate the political will for anything other than cheap internet. We can’t even agree to tax carbon emissions yet. How are we going to tax bandwith and convince everyone to accept a low bandwith internet?

I don’t have any great ideas myself, but part of me sees the Americans with Disabilities Act as a model for getting this done.

I really don’t like AMP because of the Google Cache and the potential for google to bias their search results page to emphasize AMP pages over similarly performing non AMP pages, but it’s a better thought out attempt to fix “the Bullshit Web” than anything else I’ve seen, and it has been extremely successful in decreasing payload size for many readers of sites like NYT and other major publishers.

> Fair enough but these rants on HN about publishers never seem to contain any examples of publications that are both successful and delivering pages that weigh scarcely more than their plain text equivalent.

Examples would be the same publications 10 or 20 years ago. They weren't exactly plain text but they were a lot lighter and the content has not improved measurably in that time.

Here's one from the 70's that's still going: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

I don't care about examples from 10 or 20 years ago, I want examples from the current market.

Minitel isn't a publication? I'm familiar with Minitel, I've read a book on it, but I don't know what you're trying to insinuate by linking it here in a discussion about publishing.

Also, "still going strong?" Minitel was discontinued, in 2012. Because France has the modern internet now.

How much of the data downloaded is actually for typography?

Also, browsers have good enough typography by default, which can be controlled with CSS.

Everyone's favorite example of that kind of "brutalist" design:

http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/

https://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB

A++++++ would inspect elements again.

Aww! Thanks ;-)

Came looking for motherfuckingwebsite.com & find an even better site to reference now instead. Kudos!

Bad design because of the low contrast text. There used to be a superior version at https://bestmotherfucking.website/ , but it isn't loading correctly for me on Firefox.

I've already downloaded everything I need for perfect typography. I can apply it to most websites with Firefox's Reader Mode. Websites cannot possibly improve on this, because the best and most legible typography is the typography you're most familiar with. I don't care about branding or image or whatever bullshit "designers" use to justify their jobs. Web fonts and CSS have negative value to me. I disable them as far as possible.

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