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Comment by ddevault | Hacker News Reader

Incompatibility with HTTP is a feature, and a good one at that. It's drawing a line in the sand: this is bad, and we don't want to be a part of it. We don't want a subset of HTTP. We don't want a subset of browser features. Yes, we are fully aware that it would not work with "modern" "browsers". We want something which isn't rotten from the start. We don't want to click a link and end up back on another maggot infested pile of JavaScript crap - we want a network where everyone who's playing is playing on a sane baseline.

The whole point of this project is to shrug off legacy. Yes, that means reinventing a few wheels.

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I like tiny communities as much as anyone but I personally see no need for this to exist. Firefox might consume 2GB but it is also running hundreds of tabs. 8GB of RAM was more than enough. On Linux I rarely went over 4.5GB. Worst offenders are JVM based applications. Notably modded Minecraft can consume absurd amounts of RAM.

I'm more terrified of the average electron app or java app than I am scared of a single browser tab.

Or just create a browser without javascript support.

I wonder if everyone in this thread is willfully missing the point, or else if we're just so deep into the brainwashing of the modern web that they can no longer see the surface.

Don't worry, if this were to ever catch on it would be incorporated into browsers, meaning the net effect is just to make browsers more complicated.

This! I agreed wholeheartedly!

That's the browser's problem. We'll still have a new, simpler protocol which we can use without the web stack.

> meaning the net effect is just to make browsers more complicated.

Maybe it would, slightly. But would it make the browser anymore complicated then the unessential features that Firefox has in its default build right now?

Pocket integration, FF Sync, some screenshot function?

The web is so broken that my Firefox even has some Protection Dashboard thing (about:protections). Not that I've ever used or noticed it before.

I’m just not convinced that HTML and especially HTTP are “rotten to the core”. You can make http://motherfuckingwebsite.com and the markup is all very clean.

It’s about the network, not the website.

the markup might be clean but it's pretty ugly and network inefficient because it's full of boilerplate that is only required because html also supports 1000 times more nonsense than this site uses, so you have to type <p></p> to render every line of that text, or <a href=""></a> to just render a link. you need to do <h></h> for headings. if all you want to do in your content is those things, that markup is ridiculous.

> if all you want to do in your content is those things, that markup is ridiculous.

Why? I actually think it’s pretty clean. You have a one-to-two letter opening tag and an equivalent closing one.

Markdown looks aesthetically nicer and is easier to type, but it’s less precise.

I think both. But, hey, they are paying attention, I guess?

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