Comment by sd9
3 days ago
This seems like a fairly reasonable UX improvement. Unless I'm missing anything, it doesn't seem like this has nefarious intent, it's just there so that when a user clicks a link, they see the content as quickly as possible.
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It's astonishing how quickly discussion disintegrates when Musk is mentioned on HN. He really is such a divisive figure, with incredibly polarised language both in support and against him.
Normal reasoned arguments are just absent here. Sometimes when two people disagree, they can still have a nuanced conversation/argument about it. But not about Musk.
There are some opinions in this thread that I vehemently disagree with, but it's not worth escalating by adding my opinion to the pile.
It reminds me of that phenomenon where you read the newspaper and notice an article in your domain of expertise and it's riddled with errors! Then you turn the page, read an article about something else, and completely trust it. You somehow didn't transfer the knowledge that the newspaper is inaccurate to the new domain.
It makes me wonder what other discussions on HN (and elsewhere) are completely devoid of nuance and reason, but I just don't notice it.
Preloading links is often avoided because it creates a wide range of issues. Using up newspapers free stories a month on articles users never see etc. Speed just isn’t that useful by comparison.
Incompetence is obviously still a possibility, but the likely intent overcoming such issues is to make X seem to generate more traffic and thus appear to be more relevant.
Even so, Chrome has preloading turned on by default with an option for "extended preloading" which is even more aggressive. There may be some downsides, but I don't think what X is doing here is unreasonable. Speed makes a huge difference in UX.
>Using up newspapers free stories a month on articles users never see etc
Webviews are pretty quarantined from the main safari app. I don't think cookies persist, so I don't think this would be an issue.
I hadn't considered this.
>it's just there so that when a user clicks a link, they see the content as quickly as possible.
Yes and many people think that is outweighed by all the other issues raised in the larger thread here. That's "nuance and reason". Pretending it isn't there is not "nuance and reason".
Webviews have serious security issues, at least if you enter any data into them.
See this article from 2016: https://developers.googleblog.com/en/modernizing-oauth-inter...
So my worries are that someone is going to click a link in Twitter and then enter their username and password into a news website. When this happens you need to trust the app developers.
> It's intriguing how normal reasoned arguments are just absent here
No 'reasoned arguments' were provided in your take. I'll give you one against this though -- it's all fun and games until you end up on a list because of Musk's UX.
How are you supposed to have a "nuanced discussion" about a guy doing literal Hitler salutes in public?
When you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding other people's perspectives it is indeed very difficult.
Try this: steelman the argument that what Musk did all those months ago wasn't a "literal Hitler salute". If you can do that, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier to have nuanced discussions about that topic (and possibly others) going forward.
Looool is that all your argument? "Everyone hates this one simple trick against nazi: try to forget that they do nazi things, and boom!, you're no longer scared of actual nazis"
Or we could look at everything else he does, like advocate for the AFD in Germany.
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Fuck the salute. I can look at everything else he's done and still think he's a terrible individual that should not be given money or power.
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