Aside from the fact it allows you to work with Starlink to buy more fast speed, it also allows core stuff to continue to function (e.g. basic notifications, non-streaming web traffic, etc).
When on cellular, I like to call that "HN-only mode." It is one of the few web properties that is entirely usable at 2G speeds.
Development is slow, but I've been happily using it since RiF was killed.
Otherwise, I can't believe Reddit is actually keeping it around out of the goodness in their cold, dead corporate heart.
no lite version as far as I know.
Counterpoint, HN is notoriously hard to use on mobile (still better than some, but it's clearly designed for desktop, and not super responsive).
But agreed, that's independent of the slim nature of the webpage (which is still possible with a good mobile UX).
No it's not, it's perfect on Vanadium with the zoom set to 125%. Much better than some bloated Javascript monstrosity.
Even though I usually prefer mobile websites to apps, most of the time for HN I browse using Octal instead of the website because the website is such a pain. And it wouldn't take very much to make it better, which makes it so annoying that people have knee-jerk anger to the prospect every time the subject comes up.
And lose even more precious space for reading? No thanks. Zoom in before you vote if it's a problem for you. You might say "how about drag up/down?" but then you can't scroll reliably on the page.
Or some of the buttons on a comment could be hidden until you tap the comment. (And you can do it in CSS if div toggle is an offensive amount of javascript.)
There are some low-hanging fruit that would make the experience better. It's fine but it's not great.
This is exactly what makes me nuts about this whole debate: the complete lack of empiricism or nuance. People would rather just have their knee-jerk outrage about JavaScript or web design fads, instead of actually checking whether the things they’re saying are true.
But you could move the arrows to be to the right of the [-] and space them out a bit, sure, so they're easier to touch.
Sometimes I manage to hit the updoot or downdoot buttons incorrectly, but that error happens so rarely that I'm amazed at my success.
Responsiveness is very good, as well. Loading is lightning quick in all but the very worst network environments.
It's not perfect by any means (the text box I'm writing this into really should be resizeable, for instance), but it's not bad at all...for me.
HN in reader mode would be a such hugh blessing!
For a proper HN technical-solutions-only response, have the rewrite functionality reside in a WASM module cached locally and run in the browser, with a transparency ledger proving everyone sees the same WASM modules. This way any MitM attempts by the service are reproducible and undeniable.
The outrage is threefold, because there is no viable alternative, because it infantilizes users, trampling their agency, and because it clearly serves corporate interests at the expense of the user.
As to your proposed solution - the rewriting needs to happen on a separate device in order to avoid pushing extra data across the network. If you're already self hosting that service then there's no need for a transparency ledger.
The html itself is rarely a lot of data, most things in this space remove or resize images etc.
My thinking is that we're getting tons of bad articles now that it's so easy to make a bad article that, when skimmed, looks good, and is a good jumping off point for comments.
I think in the past it was somewhat high effort to make such an article, so most articles that look good when skimmed actually WERE pretty good. But now it's trivially easy to make an article that looks good when skimmed, and so we're getting a lot of articles whose only value is a jumping off point for comments.
Starlink is offering 1Mbps here, which is enough for a normal internet experience. It's enough to stream video at 480p or 720p depending on the exact content and encoding settings.
My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something.
In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.
Not sponsored or anything, just a happy customer.
It's perhaps worth noting for others that there are 3 different tiers of service with Visible, ranging from $25 to $45 -- although all 3 are "unlimited."
(I can't tell the difference between them, myself, with my phone in my use.)
Or am I way off and you hit the cap every month?
150GB-200GB ~15 USD
400GB-450GB ~19-20 USD
Unlimited (without throttling) ~21-27 USD
This is the price after the new client ~20% discount expires (generally 6 months). The unlimited and higher tier usually include stuff like Amazon Prime Videos subscriptions, local IPTV or roaming gigs. All plans obviously include calls and texting.
So telcos can advertise "Up to 200Mbps" for their package.
But then if they have a 2GB cap, they also need to say, "Caps at 80 seconds of usage".
Because that's what you're paying for at that speed, 80 seconds of usage per month.
Sure, you're not always (or indeed never) doing 200Mbps, but then you're not getting the speed you paid for.
But that doesn't change the reality that it matters to me that a 20 GB video that a friend took at my wedding downloads in just 2 minutes rather than the ~30 minutes it would take if I had a 100 Mbps connection.
Your cap is over 150 times that equivalent. If you had an 80 second hard cap, you couldn't even download that 20GB video.
And are you poor?
My 40GB plan is 12$ a month.
As long as I can still browse a little bit on the go, use WhatsApp to send and receive messages, photos, and videos, and I can watch a few TikTok and YouTube videos on the go, I’m happy.
My 2GB/month mobile data plan costs 179 NOK per month (~17.71 USD/month), plus I pay an extra monthly charge to use eSIM instead of physical SIM.
Chilimobil seems to be the cheapest in Norway looking around, 1GB for 119, 2GB for 139, 6GB for 199 20GB for 249. Also unlimited plans capped on speed.
I have been using 5-10GB a month on my plan. (Cant use WIFI at work)
Anyway =￣ω￣=
It was actually a bit ironic that, at the time, you could burn through the whole high-speed quota in seconds or minutes, if you went to the wrong web page. Most carriers would stop or bill you an arm-and-a-leg after.
At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
At that price, I dunno why they offer it at all. Are they just hoping to sue someone to get their whole house because they once watched some netflix overseas and forgot to use wifi?
A better limit I think is to limit the user to 10 kbps over a rolling 24h window, 100 kbps over a rolling 1h window, 1Mbits over a rolling 1 minute window, and 10 Mbits over a 1 second window. That way they can quickly check an email or load a web page... But it quickly slows down if they try to (ab)use it for hours on end.
Bandwidth is use-it-or-lose-it. If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything. And during high demand traffic shaping hopefully gives their traffic even lower priority.
On networks I manage, there are clients who pay for large quantities of super low priority capacity - eg. for moving scientific data around, or backing up stuff that only needs to complete sometime in the next 30 days.
That means there is no such thing as unused bandwidth - almost every link is 100% full of paying customers data, and anyone using more displaces one of those low priority customers.
Also dropping all the way to 10kbps with enough use would just suck. It's effectively unusable and it would be extreme penny-pinching to make sure the maximum 24/7 user can't squeak out more than 3GB extra on their 100GB plan. You get more variance than that from different month lengths.
I used to use Inmarsat BGAN. BGAN would top out at around 250Kbps on a good day, and cost a few bucks per MB on a terminal that cost almost ten times as much as a Starlink Mini.