"I felt like, 'Whoa!'"
October 28, 2015 8:28 AM Subscribe
This....is a staggeringly good idea.
posted by eriko at 8:31 AM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by eriko at 8:31 AM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
(I bet it boosts productivity for people slacking on other sites too.)
AHEM it's called market research!
posted by eriko at 8:31 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
AHEM it's called market research!
posted by eriko at 8:31 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Soon to be known at "Telecommute Tuesday."
posted by dortmunder at 8:34 AM on October 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
posted by dortmunder at 8:34 AM on October 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
“To write fast code, use a slow computer” —someone else.
posted by migurski at 8:35 AM on October 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
posted by migurski at 8:35 AM on October 28, 2015 [36 favorites]
This is just like making hits in the recording studio in the old days. We'd play the song back not just on the studio's high-end speakers, but on a shitty little speaker, to see how it would sound on the radio, in the shitty little speakers people had in their cars back then.
posted by kozad at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2015 [30 favorites]
posted by kozad at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2015 [30 favorites]
I'm sure they'd be welcome to open offices in Vermont.
Just kidding, 2G implies you have cell service. And really, it is jarring to have affordable gigabit hard line to the home in the same city where there are neighborhoods I can't even reliably get a cell phone call even when standing in the middle of the street.
posted by meinvt at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Just kidding, 2G implies you have cell service. And really, it is jarring to have affordable gigabit hard line to the home in the same city where there are neighborhoods I can't even reliably get a cell phone call even when standing in the middle of the street.
posted by meinvt at 8:39 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Let's not be too effusive, lest the mods get the idea that they should not moderate for an hour a week just to remind us what the rest of the Internet is like.
posted by Etrigan at 8:41 AM on October 28, 2015 [69 favorites]
posted by Etrigan at 8:41 AM on October 28, 2015 [69 favorites]
I do some web design and I was glad when google said they were going to start penalizing pages with slow load times. I work hard to keep my pages lean, and it was the failure of ad networks to do the same that finally got me to embrace ad blockers. If your page weight isn't under 1mb you are doing something wrong. This is why I hate sites with auto-play anything with a passion. I won't even go to CNN anymore.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2015 [19 favorites]
posted by cjorgensen at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2015 [19 favorites]
Let's not be too effusive, lest the mods get the idea that they should not moderate for an hour a week just to remind us what the rest of the Internet is like.
Mod-free Monday!
posted by cjorgensen at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Mod-free Monday!
posted by cjorgensen at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
dortmunder: Soon to be known as "Telecommute Tuesday."The program doesn’t last all day, and is opt-in. If Facebook employees choose to give 2G a shot, it’s only for the first hour or so they’re logged in.
posted by brokkr at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
This sounds like a good idea, but I just remember the Android app getting terrible shortly after they announced a similar program to force employees to use Android.
posted by ckape at 8:45 AM on October 28, 2015
posted by ckape at 8:45 AM on October 28, 2015
If the result is anything like the times I've demonstrated/imposed speed constraints to devs and even project owners for their sites, the result will be doubling-down on rationalizations for why their own work is except from download/parse/render speed issues. Usually starting with assertions that their particular domains of responsibilities are so important that the users will forgive the "momentary" waits necessary.
posted by ardgedee at 8:52 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ardgedee at 8:52 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
lest the mods get the idea that they should not moderate for an hour a week
At some point I suggested to the mods that they stop modding on April Fools' day and see how long it would take people to figure it out. Then I realized that 1) people would figure it out in two seconds and 2) it would be a general clusterfuck for all sorts of reasons.
posted by Melismata at 8:53 AM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
At some point I suggested to the mods that they stop modding on April Fools' day and see how long it would take people to figure it out. Then I realized that 1) people would figure it out in two seconds and 2) it would be a general clusterfuck for all sorts of reasons.
posted by Melismata at 8:53 AM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
(See analogous rationales for all-user accessibility. "Blind people don't use our site" is rarely true, even if your site is a photo gallery.)
posted by ardgedee at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by ardgedee at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
If you read The Verge's terrible, terrible article about how the mobile web sucks, I hope you had a fast uncapped data plan to read it on your phone, because it took 90 network round trips and 7 MB of data to read those 1600 words, and if that's a problem for you, they either didn't know or didn't care. The complete absence of self-awareness or accountability there was kind of amazing.
This is an outstanding idea, because it really highlights where the power of choice lies in that relationship. The developer has extremely granular control over what happens on their site; the user (generally) has the choice to either use it or not use it, and that's it.
posted by mhoye at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2015 [29 favorites]
This is an outstanding idea, because it really highlights where the power of choice lies in that relationship. The developer has extremely granular control over what happens on their site; the user (generally) has the choice to either use it or not use it, and that's it.
posted by mhoye at 8:54 AM on October 28, 2015 [29 favorites]
Then on Wednesdays, Facebook only allows employees to view facebook.com plus a small handful of partners, and forces them to call this "the Internet". It also replaces all instances of the word "monopoly" with "net neutrality".
Because that's what it's pushing in India.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:57 AM on October 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
Because that's what it's pushing in India.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:57 AM on October 28, 2015 [18 favorites]
Is this so they can simulate their internet-is-facebook charidee initiative to gather personal data provide the internet to the world's disconnected?
posted by davemee at 8:58 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by davemee at 8:58 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Web-free Wednesdays? Everyone go home and enjoy life!
posted by kokaku at 8:59 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by kokaku at 8:59 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's just the latest development in the Slow Internet Movement
posted by ericbop at 9:06 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by ericbop at 9:06 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
"Hotel Wifi Wednesdays" -- wait, that's too cruel.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2015 [25 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:08 AM on October 28, 2015 [25 favorites]
This is something I've asked people to do since the beginning of the web. When I started making websites I wrote a proxy server that limited my download speed to dialup modem speeds. It is very easy to make nice snappy apps when you're on a wired ethernet connection to a server 5 feet from you. The proxy server is a better idea than just overall limiting their internet, because it's selective - I can make *just* certain sites use the slow version. The rest of my internet is fine.
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:09 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by RustyBrooks at 9:09 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
[Deleted a few comments. Too substantial and not inflammatory enough. Happy April Fools' Day! --taz]
posted by Rangi at 9:10 AM on October 28, 2015 [19 favorites]
posted by Rangi at 9:10 AM on October 28, 2015 [19 favorites]
I remember (yeah I'm old) in the transition days of getting away from dialup. I had a blazing fast 1 MB connection at work and a nominal 58K (i.e. 11-23K) connection at home.
At home was where I found out what I had done wrong...
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
At home was where I found out what I had done wrong...
posted by randomkeystrike at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Your favorite app is slow because it requires fifty-eleven layers of bloated tech to get its ass out of bed and some of the layers require blood sacrifices and worship the outer gods.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:25 AM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:25 AM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
The Chrome devtools have a network emulation mode that lets any normal user experience the blazing-fast speeds of 2G connectivity.
I'm also really curious how they're implementing this, because it's decidedly non-trivial to throttle connections on a per-workstation level, and I'd imagine that bad things would happen if you put certain server or developer boxes behind a 2G connection...
posted by schmod at 9:25 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm also really curious how they're implementing this, because it's decidedly non-trivial to throttle connections on a per-workstation level, and I'd imagine that bad things would happen if you put certain server or developer boxes behind a 2G connection...
posted by schmod at 9:25 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
They could just switch to CenturyLink.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:40 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:40 AM on October 28, 2015 [5 favorites]
I'm also really curious how they're implementing this, because it's decidedly non-trivial to throttle connections on a per-workstation level.
For them, it's just a step above trivial.
I mean for Facebook (and Google and I think Amazon now?) to get where they are isn't trivial at all, it was really very difficult - they run their networks on their own, made-in-house hardware - but now that they've done that, changes of this kind aren't a big deal.
posted by mhoye at 9:42 AM on October 28, 2015
For them, it's just a step above trivial.
I mean for Facebook (and Google and I think Amazon now?) to get where they are isn't trivial at all, it was really very difficult - they run their networks on their own, made-in-house hardware - but now that they've done that, changes of this kind aren't a big deal.
posted by mhoye at 9:42 AM on October 28, 2015
Unfortunately, it's not just the connection. A 'flagship' smartphone or a high-end developer machine is going to run resource intensive apps much better than an older and/or low-end phone. Try the Facebook app on a Galaxy S6, with its 8-cores and 3 gigs of ram and then compare that experience to something lower end, like a Moto E, with 2-cores, and 1 gig of ram.
If you're targeting a nation thats 2% as wealthy by GDP per capita compared to the US, what grade of cellphone do you suppose is going to be more popular?
Facebook's app, which should be no more complex than any other feed reader, has so much bloated tracking crap that they had to hack Android to be able to load more crap into their app.
Opt-in, only on Tuesdays, and only for 1 hour thing might as well be hidden in the basement behind a sign that says 'beware of tiger' though.
No idea what they're using, but 'tc' can easily simulate a slow connection and workstation IPs are going to be fairly static, and are going to be on separate VLANs from important servers anyway.
posted by fragmede at 9:50 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
If you're targeting a nation thats 2% as wealthy by GDP per capita compared to the US, what grade of cellphone do you suppose is going to be more popular?
Facebook's app, which should be no more complex than any other feed reader, has so much bloated tracking crap that they had to hack Android to be able to load more crap into their app.
Opt-in, only on Tuesdays, and only for 1 hour thing might as well be hidden in the basement behind a sign that says 'beware of tiger' though.
No idea what they're using, but 'tc' can easily simulate a slow connection and workstation IPs are going to be fairly static, and are going to be on separate VLANs from important servers anyway.
posted by fragmede at 9:50 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
from reading just the headline I thought it was just a lowering of internet speeds so the employees could get a feel for life in India. Thought it was some phony feel-good thing. Now that I read the article and comments and see it is to help build better product that will work for people around the world it does seem like a great idea
posted by 2manyusernames at 9:55 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by 2manyusernames at 9:55 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
Framing this issue with India as an example is a very wise thing to do, because nothing says "incentive" like almost 1 billion potential customers who just need and efficient way to use your product. It's great to see large companies educating their designers and programmers about this, because it seems to be that when designers and programmers try to convince companies about it, it's often dismissed as not being worth the time and money.
You don't need to go all the way to India to find a low-bandwidth emerging market, just check out the abysmal speeds many people in the rural US are stuck with. Even for those who are able to get 4G/LTE internet connections for their home still have to deal with monthly data caps, and it can considerably limit what they can do on the internet (for example, basic residential Comcast service caps at 300GB, while basic 4G/LTE service plans cap at anywhere from 3-10GB/month). I know a few people for whom 56k dialup is still the only viable option. While this is an ISP problem much more than anything else, it affects internet-based companies directly by limiting the total amount of customers able to use their services.
So I think the whole idea is great not just for emerging markets around the world, but that it has the potential side-effect that if this starts to be seen as a standard practice, over time will make domestic low-bandwidth internet just a bit less painful.
posted by chambers at 9:55 AM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
You don't need to go all the way to India to find a low-bandwidth emerging market, just check out the abysmal speeds many people in the rural US are stuck with. Even for those who are able to get 4G/LTE internet connections for their home still have to deal with monthly data caps, and it can considerably limit what they can do on the internet (for example, basic residential Comcast service caps at 300GB, while basic 4G/LTE service plans cap at anywhere from 3-10GB/month). I know a few people for whom 56k dialup is still the only viable option. While this is an ISP problem much more than anything else, it affects internet-based companies directly by limiting the total amount of customers able to use their services.
So I think the whole idea is great not just for emerging markets around the world, but that it has the potential side-effect that if this starts to be seen as a standard practice, over time will make domestic low-bandwidth internet just a bit less painful.
posted by chambers at 9:55 AM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]
The developer has extremely granular control over what happens on their site
The developers that you're talking about at the Verge have very little impact on the page load time or weight, unless they've done something very, very wrong. It's business development/AdOps signing up with multiple ad networks, each of which claims they can boost advertising revenue by n% that ends up proxying to three or four other advertising networks and loading a single news story now requires over a thousand http requests.
Facebook is a little different, in that they handle a lot of the ad stuff themselves, so this reality check does potentially reveal things developers can fix.
posted by Candleman at 10:01 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
The developers that you're talking about at the Verge have very little impact on the page load time or weight, unless they've done something very, very wrong. It's business development/AdOps signing up with multiple ad networks, each of which claims they can boost advertising revenue by n% that ends up proxying to three or four other advertising networks and loading a single news story now requires over a thousand http requests.
Facebook is a little different, in that they handle a lot of the ad stuff themselves, so this reality check does potentially reveal things developers can fix.
posted by Candleman at 10:01 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Facebook's app, which should be no more complex than any other feed reader, has so much bloated tracking crap that they had to hack Android to be able to load more crap into their app.
In fairness to facebook, the issue is mechanically generated proxy objects and the limit of 64k methods in a single Android DEX file. And apparently crashing dextopt.
I loves me some Android, but man, the decision to have a hard limit on methods in Android apps was terrible. Like, Bill Gates 640K terrible.
posted by GuyZero at 10:02 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
In fairness to facebook, the issue is mechanically generated proxy objects and the limit of 64k methods in a single Android DEX file. And apparently crashing dextopt.
I loves me some Android, but man, the decision to have a hard limit on methods in Android apps was terrible. Like, Bill Gates 640K terrible.
posted by GuyZero at 10:02 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
If you are looking at a bandwidth throttler to see how pages load at slower speeds across multiple browsers and will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux , Charles Proxy might be a possible solution that should not interfere with other network traffic.
Note: I have not yet tried it, but it looks like I will have to now that my two go-to tools in the past, the Speed Limit mac app has been abandoned and Firefox Throttle has been removed by the developer.
posted by chambers at 10:16 AM on October 28, 2015
Note: I have not yet tried it, but it looks like I will have to now that my two go-to tools in the past, the Speed Limit mac app has been abandoned and Firefox Throttle has been removed by the developer.
posted by chambers at 10:16 AM on October 28, 2015
kozad: This is just like making hits in the recording studio in the old days. We'd play the song back not just on the studio's high-end speakers, but on a shitty little speaker, to see how it would sound on the radio, in the shitty little speakers people had in their cars back then.
This is still how it's done AFAIK 8)
posted by gucci mane at 10:19 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is still how it's done AFAIK 8)
posted by gucci mane at 10:19 AM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
Kinda ridiculous that this is an "idea" and not just part of code validation. I mean, back when I was writing my HTML by hand, this non-programmer would "serve" web pages to the other computer in the office via a handicapped modem as part of my test regimen.
Have we really gotten that bad at maintaining compact code?
(best trick for tiny image file sizes: 1px gaussian blur, shrink to final size, 1.3px sharpen.)
posted by notsnot at 10:32 AM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
Have we really gotten that bad at maintaining compact code?
(best trick for tiny image file sizes: 1px gaussian blur, shrink to final size, 1.3px sharpen.)
posted by notsnot at 10:32 AM on October 28, 2015 [7 favorites]
ckape: "This sounds like a good idea, but I just remember the Android app getting terrible shortly after they announced a similar program to force employees to use Android."
Shouldn't be an issue then - Facebook is ALREADY terrible. For so many reasons.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:46 AM on October 28, 2015
Shouldn't be an issue then - Facebook is ALREADY terrible. For so many reasons.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:46 AM on October 28, 2015
I've gotten to live "2G Tuesdays" about half the time, when I'm in rural California. My network was limited to 1Mbps. That's a lot more than 2G but it's amazing how much of the web works poorly at that speed. That 7MB page The Verge talks about takes a full minute to load, for instance. Anything with auto-loading video is right out. And if anything else at home is using the network, say a background software update or someone else also loading a web page, it just goes to shit. Fortunately I've recently upgraded speeds and it's like night and day. But it's not just rural India that's limited to slow speeds; America too.
Metafilter here is a lovely lightweight site. I fear that's more a consequence of it being old fashioned Web design than pb's brilliance, but I do appreciate the site's continuing to stay fast.
posted by Nelson at 11:25 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Metafilter here is a lovely lightweight site. I fear that's more a consequence of it being old fashioned Web design than pb's brilliance, but I do appreciate the site's continuing to stay fast.
posted by Nelson at 11:25 AM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Metafilter here is a lovely lightweight site. I fear that's more a consequence of it being old fashioned Web design
Hey, those are fighting words! I prefer "classic and timeless".
I know you meant it fondly. :)
posted by cynical pinnacle at 11:30 AM on October 28, 2015
Hey, those are fighting words! I prefer "classic and timeless".
I know you meant it fondly. :)
posted by cynical pinnacle at 11:30 AM on October 28, 2015
I was in India last year and the only things that worked on 2G proxying satellite internet (floods knocked out the only wire to the town) were WhatsApp and Metafilter.
Luckily nothing more is necessary
posted by doiheartwentyone at 11:42 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Luckily nothing more is necessary
posted by doiheartwentyone at 11:42 AM on October 28, 2015 [4 favorites]
Even Cleartrip couldn't handle it. timeouts everywhere, and that's an Indian developed app. (as far as I can tell)
posted by doiheartwentyone at 11:45 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by doiheartwentyone at 11:45 AM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
eventually cutting-edge web design will come back around to privileging unstyled black text on grey backgrounds with blue links, and I'll finally feel at home on the web again.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:01 PM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:01 PM on October 28, 2015 [9 favorites]
mhoye: "For them, it's just a step above trivial.
I mean for Facebook (and Google and I think Amazon now?) to get where they are isn't trivial at all, it was really very difficult - they run their networks on their own, made-in-house hardware - but now that they've done that, changes of this kind aren't a big deal."
In the datacenter, maybe, but I hope to god that their corporate offices are using commodity networking hardware to support their office workers and developers. There's absolutely no reason why a normal switched network would be insufficient for that sort of use.
Of course, a little bit of googling shows that Cisco has managed switches that do allow per-port throttling, which is a crazy bit of voodoo that I didn't switches were fundamentally capable of.
posted by schmod at 1:37 PM on October 28, 2015
I mean for Facebook (and Google and I think Amazon now?) to get where they are isn't trivial at all, it was really very difficult - they run their networks on their own, made-in-house hardware - but now that they've done that, changes of this kind aren't a big deal."
In the datacenter, maybe, but I hope to god that their corporate offices are using commodity networking hardware to support their office workers and developers. There's absolutely no reason why a normal switched network would be insufficient for that sort of use.
Of course, a little bit of googling shows that Cisco has managed switches that do allow per-port throttling, which is a crazy bit of voodoo that I didn't switches were fundamentally capable of.
posted by schmod at 1:37 PM on October 28, 2015
On OS X Network Link Conditioner sets performance rules for everything: browsers, iOS apps, etc.
On Windows, Fiddler can be used to add rules for simulating slow / unreliable network conditions for anything which supports a proxy.
posted by adamsc at 3:28 PM on October 28, 2015
On Windows, Fiddler can be used to add rules for simulating slow / unreliable network conditions for anything which supports a proxy.
posted by adamsc at 3:28 PM on October 28, 2015
This actually reminds me of what I've heard lately about some Apple engineers being required to use older iPhones as their personal phones to motivate them to make the newer iOS versions run better on older hardware.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:32 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:32 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
I am rural, with a dial-up connection and a monthly 5 GB cap. I would dearly love for more websites to care about bloat. Oh, and Metafilter? I dearly love you.
posted by acrasis at 4:30 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by acrasis at 4:30 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
Facebook in Europe does the same thing, so that people in Europe can see how shitty bandwidth in the US is...
posted by Chuffy at 4:42 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Chuffy at 4:42 PM on October 28, 2015 [1 favorite]
You know how sometimes you use the Google front page to test if your internet is working? I use Metafilter.
posted by littlesq at 5:42 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by littlesq at 5:42 PM on October 28, 2015 [3 favorites]
As an iPhone 4 user*, I've accepted that half of the internet doesn't really want me visiting their sites. They have so much crap on their sites that even if I'm patient enough for everything to be loaded (which takes way too long, even on WiFi), scrolling up and down a page is nearly impossible. Clearly something is wrong with how these sites are put together.
*And I will be until it falls apart or Verizon figures out another loophole in my grandfathered unlimited data contract.
posted by clorox at 5:53 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
*And I will be until it falls apart or Verizon figures out another loophole in my grandfathered unlimited data contract.
posted by clorox at 5:53 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
beware of the leopard.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:05 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:05 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is a great idea.
I was at a workshop here in Australia on android development and they had a guy from Google flown over to train us. He started by asking us to brainstorm ways in which mobile internet was fundamentally different and needed consideration when creating mobile apps. Someone said speed, and he was all, "exactly! Mobile internet is much slower and you have to account for that."
And we all laughed and clarified that no, here in Australia, unless you are really lucky, your desktop internet connection will be noticeably slower than 3g. Until we were lucky enough to move to a house that can get broadband I used to have to tether to my mobile if I wanted to be able to stream YouTube.
In an ideal world he would have passed that info on to the YouTube people when he got back to Google, but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen.
posted by lollusc at 11:20 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
I was at a workshop here in Australia on android development and they had a guy from Google flown over to train us. He started by asking us to brainstorm ways in which mobile internet was fundamentally different and needed consideration when creating mobile apps. Someone said speed, and he was all, "exactly! Mobile internet is much slower and you have to account for that."
And we all laughed and clarified that no, here in Australia, unless you are really lucky, your desktop internet connection will be noticeably slower than 3g. Until we were lucky enough to move to a house that can get broadband I used to have to tether to my mobile if I wanted to be able to stream YouTube.
In an ideal world he would have passed that info on to the YouTube people when he got back to Google, but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen.
posted by lollusc at 11:20 PM on October 28, 2015 [2 favorites]
acrasis, nice to know I'm not the only dialup user left in this thread.. I think.
The compressed size of the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is 1 mb. So, I count web page bloat in trilogies and give up after 3 trilogies or so. The bloat is astounding.
posted by joeyh at 11:50 PM on October 28, 2015
The compressed size of the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is 1 mb. So, I count web page bloat in trilogies and give up after 3 trilogies or so. The bloat is astounding.
posted by joeyh at 11:50 PM on October 28, 2015
Unfortunately, it's not just the connection. A 'flagship' smartphone or a high-end developer machine is going to run resource intensive apps much better than an older and/or low-end phone. Try the Facebook app on a Galaxy S6, with its 8-cores and 3 gigs of ram and then compare that experience to something lower end, like a Moto E, with 2-cores, and 1 gig of ram.
The other thing, is that besides their battery sucking issues in the background, facebook is a REALLY low performance app even on impressive hardware. It's a laggy, stuttering mess. It's been a laggy mess since almost when it launched, and has been the app me and my friends agreed was the crappiest one we regularly used since... the iphone 3G? The only worse modern app performance wise i can think of is snapchat(which is TRULY a garbagecan of an app, holy shit).
I have a motorola droid mini laying around, and some other lower-midrange phones like a ZTE zmax and truly low end stuff now like an original galaxy S.
And let me tell you, the performance of facebook on something like an android one phone, or another truly cheapo phone is AMAZINGLY bad. And this is facebooks fault, not androids fault or the hardwares fault. There's plenty of other apps that run perfectly fine on these meh phones.
Part of it is that their android app is even worse than the iOS one, and consistently lags behind it. I have an iphone 3GS here* and the facebook app runs ok, but it runs about the same as it does on something with beefy specs like an LG G3.
Why is their app such a bloated garbage can? It's like, windows ME levels of software bloat and fail. Years and years of crappy code and stupid decisions piled on top of eachother.
Simple web pages sucking down 8-30mb of data for no reason just to show some text with some css color swatches around them because tracking and ads are another problem, but here's the thing, those old phones can handle that stuff fine. Even something like an iphone 3G is still an ok pocket web browser. And stuff like the cheapo xiaomi phones or android ones that suck up most of the market share in india actually have awesome browser performance. It's shitty apps that suck.
I had an iphone 2g. I actually used it right up until the iphone 4 launch after i busted my iphone 3G(which i never had 3g on, just edge, because i had tmobile). Edge is not what makes performance feel like shit here, it's shitty laggy badly designed apps. It's one thing to have the app/interface still smooth but be waiting for a progress bar. It's another to have it constantly hanging for a few seconds for no discernible reason and stuttering terrible even when there's only 4 comments on the screen and there's barely any scrolling to even do.
I would call the way the facebook app performs on the best hardware available "acceptable i guess" on a $60 phone like the original moto G or moto E on sale is now. On something like an S6, or my iphone 6 that costs $5-600 it's bullshit. It STILL doesn't run completely smoothly on an iphone 6S! And that's a phone which is widely regarded as having double the fucking CPU power of any other pocket computer available.
They should let their devs have 10gbps fiber and wireless AC all the time, but force them to use at the absolute max like... an iphone 5s, and a motorola G to develop on. And whatever the CHEAPEST windows phone is now(lumia 530 i think?). They can test for bugs on newer hardware(or in androids case, software if the hardware doesn't support 6.0), but general development should be on whatever the minimum-spec currently for sale model is from major brands. You don't get a galaxy S6... Looks like samsung is still selling the S3, congratulations!.
/rant
*Yes, i have like 20 outdated/crappy smartphones. Every time the thrift store near my house has one i don't have i pick it up for $10 or whatever. When i'm bored i play around with them, or go on XDA and try and load more modern versions of android on them, or whatever. If i brick one or ruin it using it to play bluetooth music in the steamy bathroom... who cares?
posted by emptythought at 5:06 AM on October 29, 2015 [3 favorites]
The other thing, is that besides their battery sucking issues in the background, facebook is a REALLY low performance app even on impressive hardware. It's a laggy, stuttering mess. It's been a laggy mess since almost when it launched, and has been the app me and my friends agreed was the crappiest one we regularly used since... the iphone 3G? The only worse modern app performance wise i can think of is snapchat(which is TRULY a garbagecan of an app, holy shit).
I have a motorola droid mini laying around, and some other lower-midrange phones like a ZTE zmax and truly low end stuff now like an original galaxy S.
And let me tell you, the performance of facebook on something like an android one phone, or another truly cheapo phone is AMAZINGLY bad. And this is facebooks fault, not androids fault or the hardwares fault. There's plenty of other apps that run perfectly fine on these meh phones.
Part of it is that their android app is even worse than the iOS one, and consistently lags behind it. I have an iphone 3GS here* and the facebook app runs ok, but it runs about the same as it does on something with beefy specs like an LG G3.
Why is their app such a bloated garbage can? It's like, windows ME levels of software bloat and fail. Years and years of crappy code and stupid decisions piled on top of eachother.
Simple web pages sucking down 8-30mb of data for no reason just to show some text with some css color swatches around them because tracking and ads are another problem, but here's the thing, those old phones can handle that stuff fine. Even something like an iphone 3G is still an ok pocket web browser. And stuff like the cheapo xiaomi phones or android ones that suck up most of the market share in india actually have awesome browser performance. It's shitty apps that suck.
I had an iphone 2g. I actually used it right up until the iphone 4 launch after i busted my iphone 3G(which i never had 3g on, just edge, because i had tmobile). Edge is not what makes performance feel like shit here, it's shitty laggy badly designed apps. It's one thing to have the app/interface still smooth but be waiting for a progress bar. It's another to have it constantly hanging for a few seconds for no discernible reason and stuttering terrible even when there's only 4 comments on the screen and there's barely any scrolling to even do.
I would call the way the facebook app performs on the best hardware available "acceptable i guess" on a $60 phone like the original moto G or moto E on sale is now. On something like an S6, or my iphone 6 that costs $5-600 it's bullshit. It STILL doesn't run completely smoothly on an iphone 6S! And that's a phone which is widely regarded as having double the fucking CPU power of any other pocket computer available.
They should let their devs have 10gbps fiber and wireless AC all the time, but force them to use at the absolute max like... an iphone 5s, and a motorola G to develop on. And whatever the CHEAPEST windows phone is now(lumia 530 i think?). They can test for bugs on newer hardware(or in androids case, software if the hardware doesn't support 6.0), but general development should be on whatever the minimum-spec currently for sale model is from major brands. You don't get a galaxy S6... Looks like samsung is still selling the S3, congratulations!.
/rant
*Yes, i have like 20 outdated/crappy smartphones. Every time the thrift store near my house has one i don't have i pick it up for $10 or whatever. When i'm bored i play around with them, or go on XDA and try and load more modern versions of android on them, or whatever. If i brick one or ruin it using it to play bluetooth music in the steamy bathroom... who cares?
posted by emptythought at 5:06 AM on October 29, 2015 [3 favorites]
whoa, thrift store smart phones. that's a good idea.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:00 AM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:00 AM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
beware of the leopard.
I was going to say that but didn't know if people would get it ...
posted by Melismata at 11:16 AM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I was going to say that but didn't know if people would get it ...
posted by Melismata at 11:16 AM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
I’m in Nepal, and accessing Facebook is not a problem.
(Trying to log in to f’ing SquareSpace however can take over an hour of trying to load/re-load the login page (tonight I gave up after two hours)—come on SquareSpace, wtf?!)
posted by blueberry at 12:59 PM on October 29, 2015
(Trying to log in to f’ing SquareSpace however can take over an hour of trying to load/re-load the login page (tonight I gave up after two hours)—come on SquareSpace, wtf?!)
posted by blueberry at 12:59 PM on October 29, 2015
emptythought: the Facebook app has been terrible for years even on the flagship iPhones, which have been leading on single core performance for that couple years. Too many kids trying to show off without asking whether anyone really wants that virtuoso hack.
The mobile web site, however, works quite well and even has a few disappeared features like the ability to sort the timeline chronologically. Just visit the website and use “Save to homescreen…” and the experience improves dramatically.
posted by adamsc at 6:22 PM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
The mobile web site, however, works quite well and even has a few disappeared features like the ability to sort the timeline chronologically. Just visit the website and use “Save to homescreen…” and the experience improves dramatically.
posted by adamsc at 6:22 PM on October 29, 2015 [1 favorite]
chambers: "While this is an ISP problem much more than anything else"
I feel like the lack of internet infrastructure and ISP competition in the US is much more a failure of proper regulation and lack of investment in the commons. The USPS, our highway system and the telephone infrastructure would never have happened if we approached it the same way as we do the internet today.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:39 PM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
I feel like the lack of internet infrastructure and ISP competition in the US is much more a failure of proper regulation and lack of investment in the commons. The USPS, our highway system and the telephone infrastructure would never have happened if we approached it the same way as we do the internet today.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:39 PM on October 29, 2015 [2 favorites]
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posted by maryr at 8:30 AM on October 28, 2015 [6 favorites]