USA's EU (GPDR'ed) site is way faster

[RS Wood]

From the «web developers you all suck donkey balls» department:
Title: USA Today Serves Different Site to EU Visitors That Is Way Faster Than Regular Site
Author: John Gruber
Date: Sun, 27 May 2018 20:17:00 -0400
Link: https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000166112615714816

Marcel Freinbichler:

Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their
website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads removed. The
site seemed very fast, so I did a performance audit. How fast the internet
could be without all the junk! 5.2MB → 500KB

They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds, from 124 (!)
JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than 500 requests to 34.

The privacy implications of all the JavaScript that gets loaded for
user-tracking is alarming enough, but practically speaking the bigger problem
is that it makes the web slow. Web developers, generally speaking, are terrible
at their craft. 124 JavaScript files and over 500 HTTP requests for a single
goddamn web page is just shameful.

Again I say[1]: the web would be better off if browsers had never added support
for scripting.
★ [2]

Links:
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/06/22/navistone-form-data (link)
[2]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/27/usa-today-gdpr (link)

[Marko Rauhamaa]

USA Today [....] went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3
seconds, from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more
than 500 requests to 34.

I live in the EU and I'm seeing load times faster than a second.

Now if only Finnish web developers would take note...

Again I say: the web would be better off if browsers had never added
support for scripting.

Scripting doesn't kill the web, web developers kill the web.


Marko

[Richard Kettlewell]

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

USA Today [....] went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3
seconds, from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more
than 500 requests to 34.

I live in the EU and I'm seeing load times faster than a second.

Yeah. According to Chrome, lodaing eu.usatoday.com:
23.4 ms loading
206.2 ms scripting
137.4 ms rendering
18.7 ms paingin
111.8 ms other
which is about half a second. It’s visually quite calm, too.

Post by Marko Rauhamaa
Now if only Finnish web developers would take note...

Again I say: the web would be better off if browsers had never added
support for scripting.

Scripting doesn't kill the web, web developers kill the web.

Mobile code was going to happen one way or another, I suspect...

[Andy Burns]

Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their > website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads

removed.

First time in forever that I've seen a newspaper's website where uBlock
has found zero items to block ...

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Post by RS Wood

Post by RS Wood
Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their

Post by RS Wood
website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads

removed.
First time in forever that I've seen a newspaper's website where uBlock
has found zero items to block ...

When Brexit is complete, you can rid yourselves of the oppressive EU
regulation.

Seriously, though, I believe we are only expreriencing a lull as the
business/law alliance regroups against the consumer.


Marko

[Jerry Peters]

Post by Marko Rauhamaa

Post by RS Wood

Post by RS Wood
Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their

Post by RS Wood
website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads

removed.
First time in forever that I've seen a newspaper's website where uBlock
has found zero items to block ...

When Brexit is complete, you can rid yourselves of the oppressive EU
regulation.
Seriously, though, I believe we are only expreriencing a lull as the
business/law alliance regroups against the consumer.
Marko

Enjoy it while you can, it will probably take some time before the
idiot web designers manage to bloat the web pages as the various
frameworks create GPDR-compliant code. But it *will* happen, the lure
of spying on users is just too great.

[Mike Spencer]

Post by RS Wood
Title: USA Today Serves Different Site to EU Visitors That Is Way
Faster Than Regular Site
Author: John Gruber
Date: Sun, 27 May 2018 20:17:00 -0400
Link: https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000166112615714816
Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of
their website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and
ads removed. The site seemed very fast, so I did a performance
audit. How fast the internet could be without all the junk! 5.2MB ->
500KB

Gaurdian and Washington Post please read. :-)

Post by RS Wood
They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds,
from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than
500 requests to 34.
The privacy implications of all the JavaScript that gets loaded for
user-tracking is alarming enough, but practically speaking the
bigger problem is that it makes the web slow. Web developers,
generally speaking, are terrible at their craft. 124 JavaScript
files and over 500 HTTP requests for a single goddamn web page is
just shameful.

And of course it's 2 to 3 orders of magnitude worse on a slow
connection.

If javascript is disabled in the browser, will the browser still load
all those extraneous <LINK....garbage.js> files anyway? I haven't yet
taken the trouble MF did to determine. From the viewpoint of a
browser designer, I suppose the notions would be, "User is an idiot
and may chnage his mind and want the crap after all, the page's host
corp and the advertizers want him to have it, so shpx'rz, load it
all."

It's worse, of course, on a slow connection. Using a really old
browser with js off, <LINK... tags are unsupported as are <IFRAMEs --
all good. I'm thinking I will have to do all my webbing via a cgi-bin
perl script that fetches the base file with wget, elides all <LINK...,
<SVG..., <META..., <STYLE and <SCRIPT... tags/blocks and passes naked
result back to my desktop. I already do that individually for a few
particularly bloated sites. Sadly, too many sites are requiring the
latest TLS protocol that the old browser can't handle. But the old
browser is so terribly, terribly deprived ;-) of all the *other*
latest, kewlest features that it's pretty much immune to the cleverest
current attacks. [42] Grump.

Post by RS Wood
Again I say[1]: the web would be better off if browsers had never
added support for scripting. [2]
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/06/22/navistone-form-data (link)
[2]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/27/usa-today-gdpr (link)

[42] E.g. the "PGP/GPG email encryption broken" flap that should have
read, "Javascript & HTML insidiously subvert otherwise securely
encrypted email."

[Computer Nerd Kev]

Post by Mike Spencer
It's worse, of course, on a slow connection. Using a really old
browser with js off, <LINK... tags are unsupported as are <IFRAMEs --
all good. I'm thinking I will have to do all my webbing via a cgi-bin
perl script that fetches the base file with wget, elides all <LINK...,
<SVG..., <META..., <STYLE and <SCRIPT... tags/blocks and passes naked
result back to my desktop. I already do that individually for a few
particularly bloated sites. Sadly, too many sites are requiring the
latest TLS protocol that the old browser can't handle. But the old
browser is so terribly, terribly deprived ;-) of all the *other*
latest, kewlest features that it's pretty much immune to the cleverest
current attacks. [42] Grump.

Dillo, Links2, and if you want to rule out images as well, a whole
host of terminal based web browsers.

Dillo works great for viewing most of the links posted here (if you
don't mind scrolling past the scrambled CSS). Twitter got pretty
mangled, but this is the first time I've tried reading anything
from there in at least a year. If only shopping sites and PayPal
would work with these browsers (plus all the bloody hopeless
government websites, I suppose) then I could ditch Firefox
altogether.

[Sn!pe]

Post by Mike Spencer

Post by RS Wood
Title: USA Today Serves Different Site to EU Visitors That Is Way
Faster Than Regular Site
Author: John Gruber
Date: Sun, 27 May 2018 20:17:00 -0400
Link: https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000166112615714816
Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of
their website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and
ads removed. The site seemed very fast, so I did a performance
audit. How fast the internet could be without all the junk! 5.2MB ->
500KB

Gaurdian and Washington Post please read. :-)

Post by RS Wood
They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds,
from 124 (!) JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than
500 requests to 34.
The privacy implications of all the JavaScript that gets loaded for
user-tracking is alarming enough, but practically speaking the
bigger problem is that it makes the web slow. Web developers,
generally speaking, are terrible at their craft. 124 JavaScript
files and over 500 HTTP requests for a single goddamn web page is
just shameful.

And of course it's 2 to 3 orders of magnitude worse on a slow
connection.
If javascript is disabled in the browser, will the browser still load
all those extraneous <LINK....garbage.js> files anyway? I haven't yet
taken the trouble MF did to determine. From the viewpoint of a
browser designer, I suppose the notions would be, "User is an idiot
and may chnage his mind and want the crap after all, the page's host
corp and the advertizers want him to have it, so shpx'rz, load it
all."
It's worse, of course, on a slow connection. Using a really old
browser with js off, <LINK... tags are unsupported as are <IFRAMEs --
all good. I'm thinking I will have to do all my webbing via a cgi-bin
perl script that fetches the base file with wget, elides all <LINK...,
<SVG..., <META..., <STYLE and <SCRIPT... tags/blocks and passes naked
result back to my desktop. I already do that individually for a few
particularly bloated sites. Sadly, too many sites are requiring the
latest TLS protocol that the old browser can't handle. But the old
browser is so terribly, terribly deprived ;-) of all the *other*
latest, kewlest features that it's pretty much immune to the cleverest
current attacks. [42] Grump.

[...]

PMFJI

I find a good hosts file is really helpful; see:-
<http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm>
Using that, Adblock Plus and Ghostery, I see practically
no ads and pages load really quickly. [Safari v.11.1.1]

[Johnny B Good]

Post by RS Wood
Title: USA Today Serves Different Site to EU Visitors That Is Way Faster
Than Regular Site Author: John Gruber Date: Sun, 27 May 2018 20:17:00
-0400 Link: https://twitter.com/fr3ino/status/1000166112615714816
Because of #GDPR, USA Today decided to run a separate version of their
website for EU users, which has all the tracking scripts and ads
removed. The site seemed very fast, so I did a performance audit. How
fast the internet could be without all the junk! 5.2MB → 500KB
They went from a load time of more than 45 seconds to 3 seconds, from 124 (!)
JavaScript files to 0, and from a total of more than 500 requests to 34.
The privacy implications of all the JavaScript that gets loaded for
user-tracking is alarming enough, but practically speaking the bigger
problem is that it makes the web slow. Web developers, generally
speaking, are terrible at their craft. 124 JavaScript files and over 500
HTTP requests for a single goddamn web page is just shameful.
Again I say[1]: the web would be better off if browsers had never added
support for scripting.
★ [2]
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/06/22/navistone-form-data (link)
[2]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/05/27/usa-today-gdpr (link)

Fuck me sideways! I didn't realise just how fast my 85Mbps connection
really was until just now! :-)

I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how just a matter of mere legislation has
such a potential to cure the internet of its apparent lethargy at a
single stroke.

Well, that's the symptom cured. I wonder when they're going to treat the
actual disease and put the Maddison avenue types on notice? :-)

If proof were ever needed that it's crass commercialisation that has
sucked all the joy out of the internet experience, you need look no
further. It's there for all in the EU to see at <https://eu.usatoday.com/>