> I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff.
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.
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.
Otherwise, I can't believe Reddit is actually keeping it around out of the goodness in their cold, dead corporate heart.
Development is slow, but I've been happily using it since RiF was killed.
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).
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!
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.
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.
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 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.