Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc3 | Hacker News Reader

We had some storms and network outages yesterday. I was down to 3G, it seemed like dialup speeds. Hacker news faithfully loaded after 30 seconds (I think most of that time there was zero connection, so when a few bytes could fly through it loaded up).

I couldn't get any other site to load. Not even google.com.

It made me want to create a website called "lowbandwidthsites.com" or similar that is itself minimal and just lists the sites that you can load when there is low bandwidth for news etc.

A low bandwitdth read-only repeater for sites like reddit.com would be handy. Or maybe a general purpose low bandwidth repeater that can take any site - a bit like outline.com/mysite.com but even lower fidelity - just returns the markdown!

Edit looks like it has been done: https://www.textise.net/

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Not criticizing, just mentioning ...

> I was down to 3G, it seemed like dialup speeds.

Sounds like first-world problems! :)

HN works great on my EDGE (2G) Blackberry 8700g (2006) with Opera in SF. Handy on the Muni. Basically no other site is usable at this point unless it's HTML-only.

However, I understand that telcos are attempting to not support 2G any longer, so don't plan on that working much longer. T-mobile still has fairly good urban EDGE coverage, except for SF FiDi.

> I couldn't get any other site to load. Not even google.com.

The google UI appears minimal, but they're loading a ton of javascript.

Is that blackberry your daily driver? Why? Just broadly curious! :)

Yeah it said "3G" but it seemed more like 33.6kbps dial up speeds of yore based on the experience. I've gone through extended periods of using both 3G and 33.6kbps to know the feel!

But still 1st world problems. A CB or ham radio would have been nice though!

> It made me want to create a website called "lowbandwidthsites.com" or similar that is itself minimal and just lists the sites that you can load when there is low bandwidth for news etc.

It wouldn't even be about "when there is low bandwidth" for me. I'd love to see a network of sites and blogs that stick to minimal/simple design.

Maybe a website that consists of a Medium-clone but super lightweight (allowing users to have their own blogs without the bloat), plus a directory of external sites that stick to the same ethos. Throw in a feed showing you new blog posts and directory links (maybe also pull in posts from the external sites via RSS), and that pretty much sounds like heaven to me personally.

I hate browsing the modern web. It's like wading through a sewer looking for treasure.

There's always text.npr.org for news. The home page weighs in at a little over 2kb.

Reddit in particular has https://i.reddit.com. I don't know that it's quite light enough for a situation where even Google.com is too much, but it's pretty darn lean.

Rhode Island?

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