It's not a false choice. Anti nuclear is pro-fossil-fuel.
I've been hearing the pro-fossil-fuel misinformation that nuclear is 10 years too late for the past 20 years at least. Many of the same people saying this were also the ones 5 years ago insisting that coal was dead and renewables killed it.
Take a look at thermal coal prices, https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/coal and look up global coal consumption and realize we may not even have hit peak coal yet, let alone any real prospect of a massive short term reduction rather than a very long slow decline.
If you think there's no prospect of coal consumption going down, then we're headed for global calamity.
Knowing that it's a likely scenario that the world becomes wildly unpredictable, it's not responsible to also build nuclear reactors that require stability and maintenance to be safe.
Coal might be around peak just now, but it's largely been squeezed by oil and gas, not renewables. Which are at least better than increasing coal usage, but not solving the problem. Coal prices have also been strong in part due to rising oil prices making coal more viable. This does not look like an energy source that has been destroyed by renewables as we had been promised 5-10 years ago. Just continuing to claim renewables will solve everything without actually asking what went wrong with the earlier claims, and continuing to ignore nuclear which has been a proven solution to the problem for 50 years, is a huge, arrogant gamble when we are facing as massive a problem as climate change.
There is also a very real possibility of just no viable shift away from fossil fuels and coal, or at least a very long tail of decades more of greenhouse gas emissions that exceed even today's record numbers. 2050 net zero is widely claimed by many big polluters, but there is a real question of whether they are willing or able to actually meet it, and apparently already signs its just kicking the can down the road.
The problem with all the "stick" approaches is that nobody really wants to do them. Yes renewables are great and improving, and maybe they continue to make breakthroughs soon enough to the point most countries are willing and able to replace all fossil fuel electricity in the near future. It's crazy to make such a risky gamble though, in my opinion.
I don't think there is no prospect of coal consumption going down. I think the safest and least risky path to shrinking the carbon footprint of electricity generation as fast as possible while supporting growth and additional electrical demand from decarbonizing other industry includes nuclear.
"I don't think there is no prospect of coal consumption going down."
I mean already only 40% of millenials (according to a recent report) have the prospect to own homes, let alone financial security, or having kids.
None of the devices use power if the people cannot afford to do so, and usage doesn't nominally raise unless either tech demands or population increase. By what proportion depends on into which economy you are born, but this is tangential to the point - supply will not grow without demand.
Nuclear is not safe for people, period, non stop. Solar, wind renewables are not solutions either. Fossil fuels are just status quo, and only increase the general state of fucked up ness. Electric-only vehicles are a non starter, not only because they are so late as to be primarily luxury items for the priviledged elite, but because they produce worse issues than gasoline did, namely a rise in the use of coal, massive battery waste, and massive overuse of unsustainable "sustainables".
People who are serious about using fewer resources are proponents of geothermal, or space based tech (such as e.g. a nuclear plant next to the sun), interested in plastic conservation and alternative manufacturing, and interested in modularity, reusability, over what power source they happen to be using at the time of driving.
You could make the exact same argument about nuclear energy. The same promises were made, and it has failed to deliver.
It doesn't address the main issue of nuclear — it's incredibly dangerous. For nuclear to be safe you need human security, human experts, funding, you need to not have tsunamis, earthquakes, pandemics, wars, terrorism, economic collapse.
That's not a promise nuclear can make — especially given that we've almost certaintly have passed tipping points that will make unrest and extreme weather likely.
At this point it's not about stopping the climate crisis, it's about limiting the damage, and preparing society for the inevitable consequences.
> You could make the exact same argument about nuclear energy. The same promises were made, and it has failed to deliver.
No, you couldn't. That is not my argument! My argument is that nuclear is a proven technology to be able to replace carbon based electricity generation on nation-wide scale. France. It's electricity is cheaper and lower carbon than comparable countries in Europe. By 2050 France's electricity generation is actually forecast to increase in carbon intensity by almost 20% due to shutting down of nuclear
reactors!
Why do you think the "environmentalist" / fossil fuel proponents have been repeating for the past few decades "oh well nuclear would have been great 10 years ago, but now it doesn't make sense"? It's because nuclear is proven, they know it, they can't address it (except by baseless fearmongering), and so they're misdirecting to keep fossil fuels on top. Why would France's emissions intensity of generation increase that much by 2050 if renewables were strictly superior to nuclear? Doesn't make any sense does it?
> It doesn't address the main issue of nuclear — it's incredibly dangerous.
That's just denial of reality. The facts aren't on your side I'm afraid. Nuclear is safer even without looking at the effects of carbon emissions.
> At this point it's not about stopping the climate crisis, it's about limiting the damage, and preparing society for the inevitable consequences.
That doesn't seem to add anything to the discussion. I don't know what you're getting at. At this point it is about reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere, as it has been at previous points, and as it will be in future points. Fossil-fuel industry talking points aside, that clearly calls for nuclear electricity generation.
No, it's a denial of reality to point at "facts" cherry picked among reports which are made with exactly one goal in mind, to promote nuclear production.
Its then a red herring argument to presume that a worse option such as coal power is what is argued for...
Nuclear is not safe for people, I don't care how safe it "could be made" by throwing a shit ton of concrete on top of it and hooking fancy sensors up to it. Coal is also not safe for people, I mean we could just build big giant fancy air cleaners to clean it all up right? But you stick someone's head into a smokestack and they will die within an hour.
But I mean maybe you still disagree, I have a nuclear reactor I can throw you in where you can live out the rest of your pitiful half life :)
But back to the point, the "facts" don't support the logistical costs of nuclear. It is the exact same folly as letting coal go because we can "scrub the air", or pretending lithium ion battery waste and pollution is OK because we can throw that in a dump.
Facts are not reality, only a badly skewed vision of it.
Your baseless assertion that nuclear power is incredibly dangerous is what sounds like a conspiracy theory. Certainly it's not based in any facts or science.
It’s not dangerous?! Somebody tell the nuclear power companies. They’ll save so much money on security and safety. They could have a side hustle doing tours for school kids.
Of course it’s safe! This explains why Fukushima has such a thriving beach front community — and why three-mile island is such a tourist hot spot.
I guess that means dirty bombs aren’t dangerous? I guess nuclear weapons aren’t dangerous either!! Someone tell the CND, they’ve been wasting all their time protesting.
Wait, this is huge, the biggest conspiracy of all time. what about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they must be in on it too. Did they fake it?! Was the Cuban missile crisis an inside job? Is the Bikini atoll an advertising ploy for two-piece swimwear?
Does e=mc^2 or are Oppenheimer and Einstein sipping mojitos in the Bermuda Triangle with Elvis and Tupac?
As the world gets more unstable due to climate change — an increased risk on pandemics, civil unrest, extreme weather events — do we really want abandoned nuclear power stations added to the mix?
So, don’t do either. use way less energy, rely on renewables and batteries for the rest.
Also a nice perspective: We'd have to allow developing countries and those with terribly corrupt/inefficient governments and regulatory regimes to use nuclear power.
I don't even like China engaging in large scale nuclear engineering, particularly because of how they screw up other sectors of industry.
I don't understand this "we'd have to allow developing countries" argument. How do people in developed countries allow or stop developing countries with corrupt/inefficient governments from doing whatever they want? If they can afford it, accept the risks and have the knowledge and physical requirements, how does anyone stop them?
By diplomatic pressure for example, or by withholding the development aid and technology necessary. Or by assassinating the nuclear scientists and later bombing the shit out of the facilities.
All of which has happened. In my opinion, the risk of nuclear power in its current form can't be computed, even within a robust regulatory environment. Without a robust regulatory environment, or even instable regimes and regions, I don't think there is even a question to the answer of: No, please don't.
Well I suppose you can assassinate nuclear scientists, bomb the shit out of the facilities, and withhold development aid and necessary technology regardless of whether you have nuclear technology. Once bombs are on the table, boundaries are out the window.
I can't tell to what extent you're being sarcastic. Your final sentence seems to have suffered during editing, but I gather you hold it as absolute that no unstable regime should have access to nuclear power, and that it is impossible to determine the difference between the risk of an unstable regime and a stable regime holding nuclear power, from which I infer that you hold it absolute that stable regimes should also not have access to nuclear power.
Are you seriously saying that someone wanting nuclear power is legitimate grounds for war? If you were the leader of some country that would have about a 50% chance of success, would you declare war on Australia, now that they've announced they intend to pursue (limited, though surely particularly risky) nuclear power?
I don't know if you know the relevant history, but I am specifically referring to the precedent of Israel bombing the Iraqi reactor. Gaddafi also had a nuclear program that would have gotten him in trouble if he hadn't stopped it in time.
I don't want to categorically endorse nuclear weapon programs (or even civilian programs) as a reason to go to war, but I can understand why some countries believe so. Particularly in the case of Israel, when countries like Iraq and Iran have specifically and repeatedly said they want to destroy Israel. The nuclear programs in the hands of Iran, Pakistan and China are already troublesome. Their current governments might seem relatively "rational" about the whole thing, but they are authoritarian and who knows what will happen with their next crop of unelected leadership.
In less egregious cases, highly radioactive material is sufficient to build dirty bombs. A simple regime change, civil war or whatever in an unstable region with nuclear power could lead to a nightmare. Even less sinister, simple incompetence can lead to a mismanaged reactor or waste disposal, which in turn can have wideranging and catastrophic consequences.
I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it.
Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.
If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, simply say it’s a moral issue, nobody wants to know.
>Deleting WhatsApp, [...], has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.
This practical application of your advice depends on where a particular person sits in their social hierarchy.
E.g. an influential person that's a "hub" or "connector" in their social circle can switch from WhatsApp to Signal ... or insist on email only ... or insist on no email and only hardcopy snail mail (Donald Knuth) -- and others will follow their lead or accommodate them.
On the other hand, if you're one of the folks at the "spokes" or "edges" of social graphs... being defiant by deleting WhatsApp doesn't accomplish anything because others don't care to switch to reach you.
The above difference in social influence happens in Asia countries where many use WhatsApp beyond personal relationships for business to sell items or find work. If the business contacts you depend on for getting income use WhatsApp, you deleting WhatsApp just means you get $0 because they'd rather deal with other vendors who don't force them the hassle of switching to Signal. Power and leverage in social graphs matter.
> because others don't care to switch to reach you.
I don't think it is worth holding contact in that case. Contrary to popular belief is that you don't miss out on anything.
Business contacts are another matter, but every professional understands if you want to use other channels. Same principle applies. If they don't make the effort, it wasn't a good contact anyway, although there are side effects because convinience is important. A bit of excentricity isn't a deal breaker, on the contrary.
Clout chasing is exactly the angle social media tries to satisfy.
>I don't think it is worth holding contact in that case.
That's a common counterargument that's similar to "then I guess they weren't very good friends, were they?!?" -- but oversimplifies the complexity of social life. It's not a simple binary dichotomy between "very good friends" and "no friends".
These types of relationships are more fragile and easier to "lose" by putting up barriers to communication. It's not realistic to impose a condition of "either you follow me to the Signal network or you weren't really my friend at all" on the whole world. Everybody doesn't have same weight of importance to everyone else and that's ok. Dunbar's Number may also be relevant here.
>, but every professional understands if you want to use other channels.
No they don't if you're one of hundreds of "disposable vendors" in Asia or other parts of the world using WhatsApp for business. The other business professional (with more leverage) just ignores your excentricity and works with others who don't inconvenience them.
>, although there are side effects
If the "side effects" are $0 income, that's a really big deal. It seems like you swept this aside.
>Clout chasing
It's not about about chasing "clout". Unfortunately, I used the word "influential" and I forgot that it has been tainted by recent phenomenon of "social media influencer". I couldn't think of a better word for "significant connector node on a social graph" other than "influential". (I think it's irony that by Donald Knuth insisting on USPS snail mail for correspondence -- and people actually getting past that friction to contact him -- that actually proves he has clout.)
In any case, I think your perspective is shaped by your experience in Western Europe so you really can't empathize with how some people (farmers, etc) depend on WhatsApp for their livelihood. They don't use it like a TikTok type of social network.
I’m no influencer, but i do have a big family and lots of very close friends. I’m very lucky.
Many people are isolated and struggle to make and maintain friendships — especially over the last year. They don’t have the luxury of being able to take a stand.
>So you prevent them from recording your conversations with friends by having no conversations and no friends.
You're absolutely right. Because there's no such thing as other messaging apps, email, social media platforms, SMS/MMS, telephone, written correspondence or discussion over a beer/coffee/meal. Only WhatsApp exists.
Gee, I wish someone would invent some or all of of those things -- I'm so lonely! /s
You aren't asking your contacts to delete WhatsApp as well in solidarity or to fully "switch", you are asking them to simply use Signal to communicate with you. If you mention you are uncomfortable using WhatsApp, and they aren't willing to use Signal to message you, they likely aren't worth talking to.
I deleted Facebook/Messenger awhile ago, and asked that people use Signal to communicate with me. All of the people I cared to speak to use Signal to message me, and many of them have used it for other purposes as well. That hasn't precluded them from using whatever they were using before. This only applies to the personal sphere of my life, conducting business with WhatsApp may be a different issue entirely.
I have (and have always had) a dumb phone so obviously no Whatsapp. I don't really undertstand its appeal. Being part of tens of groups that sends you notifications constantly because someone's posted a picture of their cat but you don't leave not to offend anyone does not sound a cool thing to me.
If people need to send me some information they text me. If sending a text is too much for them maybe I did not really need to know what they wanted to send. If I want to communicate with my friends and family I call them like we used to do in the 20th century.
This is so strange, no one in my social circle uses WhatsApp or has ever asked me to use it to talk to them. It’s all iMessage, Snapchat, and a growing group of people on Signal.
Messaging clients tend to be regional. WhatsApp is massive in Europe. From what I gather WeChat is dominant in mainland China but Hong Kong still used WhatsApp (though I think they might be coming round to Signal?) and the US, who have a higher ratio of Apple users vs the rest of the world, tend to use iMessage a lot more.
Interoperability between these systems should be a public policy goal. I don't have to buy an AT&T phone anymore to call my friends; not sure why I have to buy iOS to chat with them.
I agree with you but this is a problem that date backs to the 90s (anyone remember Bitlbee, Trillion, Pidgeon, etc?). Unfortunately incompatibility is seen by businesses a feature rather than a flaw -- despite the annoyances it causes for users.
There's been a few open standards. The problem isn't that standards exist, it's that walled gardens are generally more profitable.
In fact Google Talk, Facebook Messenger and Skype were all either based upon, or supported XMPP...and now don't. Slack used to support IRC and not doesn't. There's a term often credited to Microsoft that also applies here: embrace, extend, extinguish.
I don't mind the interoperability. Take email for example. Even if you avoid Gmail/Google, so many people do, so Googs eventually gets your email anyway. So we chat, even if you don't use FB, if someone you chat with does, they still get that conversation. So the interoperability provides a buffer or insulator between you and the company you are wanting to avoid.
Then again, I've kinda given up on email privacy since at least half of my emails go to Google's servers anyway. I'm not sure if we can avoid Facebook having my IP address (or whatever future attack vectors are found after the protocol has been standardised) if I message WhatsApp users from my Signal account.
Interoperability is tricky when one set of apps has end to end encryption as a requirement, and the other set has absence of end to end encryption as a requirement.
You're completely right that messaging clients is regional, but it's even more regional than just "Europe". I'm always confused when people claim that WhatsApp is huge in Europe, because I know literally only two people who use it. They only use WhatsApp because they have friends outside Europe.
I think we need to think in terms of single countries when talking messaging apps. Again take WhatsApp. Pretty big in Germany and Spain, but almost non-existing in Denmark (who instead rely more on Facebook Messenger or iMessage).
I assume you're in the US. In most of Europe Whatsapp is the main communication platform. SMS is dead and Android is more popular than iOS, so no iMessage either.
In the UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc), it's almost impossible to live without WhatsApp since almost every business does customer support using it.
Want to get a delivery? You'll be told about it via WhatsApp. Want to order food online? WhatsApp. Want to pick up your laundry? WhatsApp. etc. It's everywhere here and totally dominant. Deciding not to use it would make your life significantly harder.
I tried to precipiate a shift away from Whatsapp the last time they did a privacy grab a year or two ago. But so many people use it for group messaging. The gravity around Whatsapp is enough to prevent people swapping to Signal in my circles.
Now I've got so many messaging apps. I just want one. Only one.
It can depend a lot on where in the world you and your friend group are or are from. It's quite popular with the Indian H1B contractors in my office in the US for example but not too many of my US friends use it. Same story with my fiancé and her lab groups which have a lot of European grad students and post docs, it's quite common there too.
Generally it's no zippy one-liner putdowns, more than no humour. I think the general idea is that if you want to criticise something, you should directly write out an argument against it.
In this case the joke wasn't even related to the discussion, since neither Signal[0] nor Telegram are self-hosted anyway.
[0] You can sort of self-host Signal, but last time I looked there was no way to change the URL in the client without rebuilding it, and it's not federated, so that's pretty pointless unless you also get all your friends to install your new version too.
Some people are shallower and less humorous than the others, and can't get the reference and joke where others can. I am fine with that, not that I want to be king of HN with best karma of them all. I just like to hang around bright humorous people, not shallow smugs.
The discussion was about some people getting offended because some other people don't have whatsapp accounts.
I selfhost xmpp (ejabberd) and matrix (synapse) servers for my friends and family. When someone asks - and this happens fairly often - how come I don't have [insert evil big tech IM company here] account, and how can I be contacted, I say I can be contacted by means of open federated protocol like xmpp or matrix, using open source apps like conversations or element, having account on one of many xmpp or matrix servers, including ones that I administer.
Most people say 'ok whatever man', but some say tell me more and get to get in touch with me.
Because of my knowledge and skill to avoid Evil Greed, and because I am actively working on liberating people from it, I think of myself as a better man than those who argue whether Signal is better than WhatsApp or Viber or whatever. And at the same time I remind myself I am no better than anyone or anything else in the Universe. And I am quite auto-ironic about it.
Not GP commenter, but I suspect you're mistaking a functional issue (not wanting to use Whatsapp's applications) from a moral issue (not wanting to use the Whatsapp platform).
Somewhat you are right - but it is difficult to differentiate between the two: I don't want to use Whatsapp for moral issues, but I also a) don't want to loose connections to people who still use the platform and b) I don't believe in actiely convincing peole of anything. They have to reach these conclusions themselves - until then, I can choose mautrix to stay connected, limiting my interaction with the platform to the bare minimum.
Why isnt it possible to delete amazon account permanently ? Amazon still doesn't give option to delete purchase history which is kind of super annoying.
I think Amazon is actually a different story to a certain extent. Sure, you can delete your account, but at the end of the day you've transacted with them and they can keep a record of who they've transacted with, right? Personally I think it would be unreasonable for me to demand that a shop I buy from delete the record of who purchased it.
I don't think "need" matters here. They have a record of a transaction, and they want to keep that record. I don't think I have a right to demand that they delete that data.
The GDPR/CCPA/etc. likely has different requirements here, and probably requires deletion after they're no longer needed (for tax purposes or whatever).
But I personally have financial records going back decades, so I can't fault a company for wanting to do the same thing.
Also at least in the EU you're legally mandated to keep transaction history along with customer information for some number of years iirc. Don't know how that combines with gdpr.
Actually the GDPR is very clear about this.[0] Instead of setting an arbitrary limit, it says it should be the shortest period necessary in the context of other laws and requirements. So if you need to keep the records for 5 years for tax reasons, you should delete them after 5 years.
Yes, and one of the cost of the implementation was actually the justification of keeping data, and segregating said data. We had some data we could keep 10 years, some (most) only two, some had to be deleted once the client left.
Because Amazon still has to have a record of the purchase. It's part of routine recordkeeping laws while running a business.
They could unlink it from your purchase history, but they would still have to maintain the record of the purchase. I believe this is effectively what 'Archiving' order does.
> If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, simply say it’s a moral issue, nobody wants to know.
Is this really true? I do a smattering of weird/non-conformist things for moral reasons, and people are always _overly_ interested. IME, if you say "I don't do X for moral reasons" to someone who does X, they take it as a personal attack. It's closely related to the concept of "anticipated reproach". While they may pay lip service to it, most people aren't fundamentally able to understand the concept of moral pluralism/relativism, and won't be satisfied with "I think it's wrong but it's no black mark on you if you don't think it is".
I mostly agree with your comment, having deleted WhatsApp myself this spring. However I have a problem with that.
> many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent
Did you not use the same network effect to get people to join Signal/Telegram? While I agree that Signal is morally better (being a non-profit and all), it is still a closed garden, which makes such network effects possible. And this in itself is a moral issue, I think. Personally I would like to use a system like, where everyone can choose his own server. But nobody in my social circle uses it, so I'm stuck with walled gardens...
In Europe, people just assume that you have it. I often get the first contact from pensions and airbnbs on WhatsApp. I convinced a few people to switch to Telegram, but there are still a few stragglers on WhatsApp and even Facebook Messenger.
I'd say in parts of Europe. E.g. in Slavic regions Telegram is popular. In other regions Signal. Among my circles FB messenger seems to be the most popular.
Do you live outside the US? I always hear how popular WhatsApp is on here but honestly I don't know a single person who uses that app in the US. Or any chat platform for that matter. Everyone just texts and calls at least in my younger millenial circle. I guess in other countries they still charge for texts and calls like its 2002 and maybe WhatsApp is more popular there to get around paying for each text message?
I live in the US, and there are 4 or 5 people I talk to via WhatsApp as our primary communications channel. I'm also a member of 2 or 3 group chats that are used occasionally that I get value out of. I managed to move one group chat over to Signal, but the others didn't budge. I also find that WhatsApp is often the go-to for short-term ad-hoc group chats, like for a bunch of people who are on a trip or vacation together.
> Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.
Network effect is irrelevant for pure messaging services. If someone needs to talk to you, they'll send a pigeon if they have to.
You underestimate the power of convenience. It doesn't bother me much, but I've lost friends because we couldn't keep in touch anywhere other than facebook and whatsapp. Eventually, anyone can stop needing to talk to you.
>You underestimate the power of convenience. It doesn't bother me much, but I've lost friends because we couldn't keep in touch anywhere other than facebook and whatsapp. Eventually, anyone can stop needing to talk to you.
Then I guess they weren't very good friends, were they? If they were, they might make an effort, no?
I find Whats App to be the easiest of the 3: Whoever has WhatsApp has a mobile phone. So, it's just a matter of sending them SMS instead of WhatsApp. The odd situation is when contacting companies via WhatsApp, but most companies usually have alternative methods of contact.
Simply put, because they can. They may have a monopoly or near-monopoly on SMS service, so they can do what they want.
That was the state of affairs in the US until fairly recently; most carriers (in the US at least) offer a pretty standard plan that includes unlimited texting.
It's not that you're old - you simply are not that poor.
WhatsApp first value proposition has been to enable cheap ("free") messaging while, at least here in Argentina, SMS would still cost a lot of money. The Android SMS experience is bad, too - or at least it's not a nice one.
Add groups, multimedia, audio calls with no long-distance fee, or even video calls (I don't think the phone system offers an alternative, at least here), and all of that being "cross-manufacturer" (we have 92% Android users here, so you still don't want to leave your two iOS friends out) and it's pretty much clear why WhatsApp works best.
Signal & Telegram could have make it, too - but WhatsApp was probably first, and they offered support for some feature phones back then when they still were around.
As others have mentioned, dithering doesn't really play well with compression; it adds lots of fine detail noise, while lossy compression tends to smooth things out. Also modern compression like AVIF doesn't understand palette color formats (iirc avif generally uses yuv), so that kinda loses the only thing that dithering has.
I've tried it out, I'm still getting smaller AVIF files with dithering. Not like the saving you get by using a dithered png instead of a jpeg.
Depends on a lot of factors. You can keep turning the quality down on avif and get it lower than a dithered image. At some point I'd prefer the crispness of a dithered image over a blurry full color image.
Also, avif seems to do a really good job of lossy compression on dithered images.
It completely depends on what kind of dithering you do — ordered dithering with a small color palette will give you a much smaller file size than a full color jpeg.
WebP and AVIF also support lossless compression and can be used for even smaller file sizes using dithering.
Depends on the quality level. In my test, recompressing the original as JPEG quality 12 (with ImageMagick) gives approximately the same size as your 12 color 4x1 dithering, but at better quality (though it's miscolored in places). Webp quality 11 also gives approximately the same size, but looks way better.
I suppose you can argue whether the JPEG artifacts look better or worse than the dithering, but WebP definitely looks better.
If you try to use lossy compression on a dithered image it will increase the file size. Using dithering and saving in a compressed lossless format will have drastically different results.
Exactly, that was my point. That difference wasn't mentioned in the post, and you have to have some knowledge of how image formats work to realize why it's so.
So, if I read this correctly, there's no way to modify the results of a request anymore? I can just redirect to a new URL, block or allow? I' m not even sure, upon reading that, if I can use JS to redirect based on the full URL not just the matching snippet to a new URL.
Anyway, the whole point is to allow people to get out of addictive loops, to take control of how they use the web, and most people aren't that tech savvy — they deserve to not be addicted to facebook too.
it's the opposite way round. png is especially good at compressing dithered images.
It's a reduced color palette, (in this case just black and white) so there's lots of repeated sequences. Which works very well with lossless compression.
The carbon emmissions of the internet are often simplified to more data = more carbon — making streaming video the worst offender.
Streaming video happens most on fast, more energy efficient networks — so I think we overstate it's effect, compared to say a website with lots of images and scripts hosted on different servers, and accessed over 2g.
I'd love to hear from anyone with experience in this area who can suggest a place to learn more.
It’s a false choice, we can choose to not use fossil fuels, and decrease the risk of nuclear meltdowns and dirty bombs at the same time.