is there an decentralized org to ensure that all of the js css we use today remain backward compatible decades from now? or are we just at the whim of these browser vendors?
For some part, W3C is supposed to serve this role, so to the extent that WHATWG controls the web platform, yes, yes we are. Part of the problem is, it’s not clear who exactly is supposed to participate in that hypothetical “decentralized” organization—browser vendors do consult website operators, but on occasion[1] it becomes clear that they only care about the largest ones, whose interests are naturally quite different from the long tail (to the extent that it still exists these days). And this situation is in part natural, economically speaking, because of course the largest operators are the ones that are going to have the most resources to participate in that kind of thing, so money will inevitably end up being the largest determinant of influence.
That's an unfair characterization. WHATWG doesn't version the spec like W3C did, but it's no less backwards compatible. See their FAQ [1], or just load the 1996 Space Jam site [2] in your modern browser.
Thus far, WHATWG has mostly behaved benevolently, true. But because they have stayed benevolent for now doesn’t mean we’re going to be any less at their mercy the moment they decide not to. As the recent XSLT discussion aptly demonstrates, both browser vendors and unaffiliated people are quite willing to do the “pay up or shut up” thing for old features, which is of course completely antithetical to backwards compatibility.
And if it couldn't, you could run these old programs in a VM, and I expect that to continue essentially forever, so I see no future problem viewings these browser files.
The browsers and standards groups do prioritize backwards compatibility and have done a very good job at it. The only real web compatibility breakages I know of have to do with pre-standardized features or third-party plugins like Flash.
The engines are open source, no? I don't think we should break websites on purpose but keeping everything backwards compatible does seem untenable for decades to come.
The main draw for me with elysia was that it maintains bun's perf benefits unlike express. When I got into the weeds of the documentation, their abstractions could use a lot of polish. The lifecycle of a request is not that clear imo and all the hooks you put into it look like hacks rather than integrations.
i also do the sit down a calculate exercise. i always end up down a rabbit hole of how to make a viral site as cheaply as possible. always ends up in the same place: redis, sqlite, SSE, on suspended fly machines, and a CDN.
i forgot what year but the year the spurs won the championship against lebron would be unusual today. tons of passing not necessarily for the 3 but to just dislodge the defense enough for a guaranteed bucket
i don’t think there’s any other input type you can apply the one million schtick to except color. i was thinking of squared shaped browser native color pickers on a 1000x1000 or 10k x 100 non responsive grid. but after seeing the infra and bandwidth costs from the guy who did checkboxes i don’t think my stack of choice could keep up (RoR) i was really looking forward to utilizing fly’s pause/resume feature
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The idea of a massive grid of color pickers is intriguing, though the infrastructure demands, as you've pointed out, are significant. I am currently using Laravel and VueJs hosted on a DigitalOcean VPS, which has been manageable so far.
I'm impressed a single individual got to 600K MRR by himself. Only a few people can say that they've done that. Who knows when shopify would've taken their checkout experience seriously were it not for this guy. you can have interesting experience, build temporary things, be proud of it, and move on to the next thing.
i haven’t, was going to start trying to make some attempts this year, static sites like istheshipstillstuck and howmuchtoiletpaper. also i don’t know how to answer the monetization question for new sites that pick up traffic quickly
monetization comes later. the initial viral nature has to be converted into retention. what i am looking for is less of istheshipstillstuck and more of gas app type growth. if that makes sense.
I think gas app type growth was cool, but I cannot imagine being on that hamster wheel long term. the goal would to have an exit at the peak and not be like snapchat. that said, I do admire blue chip sites that go viral simply b/c it feeds a global demand very simply (ie., sudoku.com); if wordle didn't sell, they could've easily surpassed their purchase price in a few months.
They did sell to discord and Facebook before that. The point is to sell but reach at least a few million users fast but those users come back and spend some time on the app. Otherwise it is not monetizable.
