[HN Gopher] Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed
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Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed
Author : agumonkey
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-11-07 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.w3.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.w3.org)
| tsobral wrote:
| I hope they're successful. I think the web really needs some
| "decluttering". The ratio of processing power by useful payload
| nowadays is unsustainable. For example any news website, in order
| to read some text, you need to load a ton of JavaScript, ads
| (some even video) that add zero value to the intended purpose. My
| nostalgia wants some of the early 00s web again, but I believe in
| something between. Which consumes far less watts and potentially
| reducing many tons of e-waste globally.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| I'm skimming the linked Web Sustainability Guidelines. It's
| pretty much the normal stuff HN-types have been banging on
| about in every thread on webdev for the last decade or two. I
| don't really see how this will change anything.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Now it can carry a weight similar to WCAG levels, which means
| that product managers and customers might pay more attention
| to these requirements, especially if they like ticking boxes.
|
| "Our new update means we reach WGAC 2 Level AA to > 90% and
| WSG to 60%, next release we aim to reach WSG to >70%" might
| be something we hear next year.
| zelon88 wrote:
| Do you really think the same news organizations that send
| the user 4mb worth of cross origin Javascript just to show
| 6kb of text is really gonna back track like that?
| solarkraft wrote:
| I think that it will make it easier for people to justify
| efforts they already want to do. And that's something, I
| guess.
| compressedgas wrote:
| I looked to see what those guidelines had. It has nothing
| about pages actually having contents if JavaScript isn't ran
| or CSS isn't supported.
| Theodores wrote:
| This is a brilliant initiative. I think that less is more.
| Recently I was trying to inspect Twitter/X to obtain a video. You
| would not believe how many nested 'div' elements it was buried
| under.
|
| I also had to do a X icon to replace the Twitter bird. So I went
| to get the official one and make it into my lean SVG. Again, you
| would not believe how much bloat was in what should have been a
| very simple file.
|
| This is no rant about Twitter, the web in general is 99% bloat. I
| don't believe Google have 'stewarded' the web well enough to keep
| it lean.
|
| If we go with the icon example, an icon has to be simple or else
| it is not an icon. Yet we have huge icon sets as fonts with
| excessive bloat. This is why I end up having to hand-carve SVG
| assets on the regular.
|
| This aspect of simplicity applies to web pages too. Style sheets
| should not be thousands of lines. Content does not need to be
| nested in a billion divs, particularly since no div elements are
| needed now we have content sectioning elements and CSS grid
| layout.
|
| The leanness of a website should be important as an expression of
| brand values for companies. For example, if your business is
| making cars, your website should be the fastest loading one to
| reflect your 0-60 times.
|
| Hopefully we will get metrics for efficiency as one of things
| like accessibility that people strive for in varying degrees,
| with this efficiency being good for SEO. As it is, Google prefer
| data to be poorly structured as wading through rubbish is what
| their business depends on. If all content was well organised
| without the bloat then others would be able to do search to
| compete with Google. Hence we have a sea of divs on every web
| page, even though MDN docs says the div element is the element of
| last resort.
| longtimelistnr wrote:
| Twitter regularly changes the location of source videos because
| as X they now charge for the ability to download them directly.
| I've also noticed on iOS, if you attempt to screen record a
| video the app essentially crashes or glitches the video player.
| rozap wrote:
| As with many things, the solution is ffmpeg. After I got that
| upsell thing when I tried to download a video about a week
| ago, I found the correct ffmpeg incantation, mostly out of
| spite for Twitter. If you find the m3u8 request in devtools
| on a tweet, you can use something like the following:
| ffmpeg -i 'https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1846357395959
| 615488/pu/pl/ecNx-sTzYA9doHYO.m3u8' -analyzeduration 5G
| -codec:a libmp3lame -b:a 96k output.mp4
|
| (if anyone runs that command...you're welcome for the meme,
| unfortunately I don't know where it came from)
| Y-bar wrote:
| I like this, hope it results in some actionable recommendations I
| can use to avoid "yet another JS library that achieves the thing
| that we can already do with modern HTML+CSS" (if only my
| colleagues were willing to learn anything besides React that
| is...)
| zelon88 wrote:
| From the manifesto...
|
| > The products and services we provide will use the least amount
| of energy and material resources possible.
|
| Is this from the same W3C that has been pushing us all since 2013
| to upload our locally hosted files to one of 3 major cloud
| providers who just happen to be megadonors to W3C? Funny now that
| we have to send our personal files across the internet. I wonder
| what the sustainability "under/over" is gonna be when I have to
| send packets around the world to retrieve the files that used to
| live on my computer.
|
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/wiki/Cloud_Computing_Accessibility...
| nox101 wrote:
| Are you suggesting we'd use less energy and materials if we
| stored things on physical media and when we needed to share
| something we send a physical copy via snail-mail or courier?
| mihaaly wrote:
| I believe he suggest to establish a chain of smoke signal
| towers transmitting the bits of our holiday photos to our
| distant relatives. During the day and when there is no wind
| of course.
|
| There is no alterntive between storing everything in the
| cloud and smoke towers.
|
| (still, I assume not the cloud storage is the most energy
| intensive thingy out there - but perhaps the processing of
| those for whatever agenda, and else - but the w3 signals are
| mixed the least. Perhaps this is from some sort of common
| corporate script book distributed in the MBI courses, from
| the chapter "how to pretend being serious environmentalist",
| mixed with the other one "deflect inconvenient/expensive
| steps into the infinite future or never by forming an
| interest group")
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Probably suggesting that cloud storage and cloud server
| products use energy less efficiently than a more simple setup
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm confused by this comment and the accompanying link. This is
| a wiki page that was _created_ in 2013 and hasn 't been touched
| since. It contains no recommendations, just some random
| thoughts that look like they were written spur of the moment
| and then forgotten about.
|
| Oh, and it starts with a giant disclaimer that says "This Wiki
| page is edited by participants of the RDWG. It does not
| necessarily represent consensus and it may have incorrect
| information or information that is not supported by other
| Working Group participants, WAI, or W3C. It may also have some
| very useful information."
|
| Do you have anything else to point to to suggest that the W3C
| is "pushing us all since 2013" towards 3 cloud providers?
| vegadw wrote:
| What, uh, do they think they're going to do? Tell people "Static
| sites are cool actually.".
|
| ""the IG plans to liaise with regulatory bodies to improve
| compliance targets""
|
| Regulatory bodies absolutely do not care about W3C. Hell, they
| barely care about the IETF, IEEE, ICANN, etc.
|
| I'm all for pushing for sustainability, but look at the other
| interest groups. For example, privacy. Cloudflare just published
| an article talking about post-quantum crypto [1] where they talk
| about how wild a percent of traffic would be just cert exchange
| (and, currently already is). There will always be competing
| interests, so a body that only exists to _checks notes_ talk
| about ""sustainability"" on the web feels moot.
|
| They explicitly say hardware is out of scope. Cool. So software.
| The only way to help sustainability is to use less or make it
| more efficient. Less never happens, and efficiency isn't a
| concern above ad revenue for literally anyone.
|
| Honestly, I'm inclined to see this as actively harmful more than
| anything. Putting out statements about sustainability just
| dilutes the waters on web issues they might have real pull in,
| like standards for user privacy that DO help with sustainability.
| For example, making it easier to choose what content gets
| delivered _cough_ DNS blackhole adblock _cough_ means less data
| being transfered.
|
| I still wish this group the best and hope that they can discuss
| actions of other groups (Such as the Media and Entertainment
| Interest Group) in context of their choice of standards impact on
| processing power requirements.
|
| Honestly, reading the manifesto [2] just makes me more angry. It
| doesn't say _anything_. Go read some solar-punk manifestos by
| people on the Indie Web or in Solarpunk culture. Those at least
| say something. This is just marketing fluff for the sponsors at
| the bottom of the page.
|
| [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/another-look-at-pq-signatures/
| [2] https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com
| Y-bar wrote:
| > Regulatory bodies absolutely do not care about W3C.
|
| I suspect it will come as news to you that many governments do
| base laws and regulations on W3C
| https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/ including EU and US Department
| of Justice https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/
| kokanee wrote:
| > What, uh, do they think they're going to do?
|
| They published a charter. They're going to establish guidelines
| for sustainable web development and tools for measuring your
| impact. Yes, static architectures will probably be one path for
| improvement.
|
| > There will always be competing interests, so a body that only
| exists to checks notes talk about ""sustainability"" on the web
| feels moot.
|
| I'm not following this point. The existence of entrenched
| interests means that no opposing interests should be
| researched? Why is "sustainability" in quotes, is it not a
| legitimate pursuit, or are you implying that they have ulterior
| motives?
|
| > They explicitly say hardware is out of scope. Cool.
|
| Hardware is out of scope "unless related to hosting &
| infrastructure," AKA the cloud. That is an absolutely massive
| scope within the hardware realm.
|
| > Honestly, reading the manifesto [2] just makes me more angry.
| It doesn't say anything.
|
| It sounds like you're looking for the guidelines that this
| group aims to publish. A manifesto in this context is not
| intended to be a solution or a prescription; it's a framework
| for alignment towards a goal. The concrete solutions are the
| goal of the group.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a group in my neighborhood that adopts public sector
| projects and runs them all from a small cluster that they
| operate.
|
| I keep thinking they would do better if they got ahead of
| things and suggested a toolchain for future projects, that
| would increase the odds that they get adopted.
|
| Getting a few groups of volunteers together to learn a handful
| of LTS technology stacks instead of a cartesian product of all
| of them that grabbed two people's fancy three years ago and now
| they're bored/out of money. It would make it a lot easier to
| get to a more PBS-adjacent model of internet for the public
| good.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > The guidelines are best practices based on measurable,
| evidence-based research; aimed at end-users, web workers,
| stakeholders, tool authors, educators, and policymakers.
|
| Was I the only one thrown momentarily by the use of "web worker"
| to refer to a human?
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| This is coming from the same W3C, Inc. that used to publish HTML
| standards, or at least review spec snapshots created by (the
| loose group of Chrome devs and other individuals financed by
| Google called) WHATWG, but stopped doing so finally last year
| ([1], or actually already in 2021) to focus on delivering more
| totally unbloated and sustainable CSS instead.
|
| [1]: https://sgmljs.net/blog/blog2303.html
| palsecam wrote:
| Related:
|
| -- "The leanternet principles" <https://leanternet.com/>
|
| -- "The 250KB Club - The Web Is Doom" <https://250kb.club/>
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(page generated 2024-11-07 23:00 UTC)