OK, so earlier this afternoon I had an idea for solving web bloat that is so out-of-the-box (crazy) it may even work. Check this out: _serve your content over VNC_!
This was inspired by the WebBS index from the other day. While the author of that page talks about imagemaps, what we should actually do is just go full retard, render everything on the server and pust the result over VNC. It improves on the current state in almost every respect:
The developers can put WHATEVER they want on the page. There is no tracking because VNC clients don't send any hidden information to the world. They only send their IP address and the stuff the user types in or moves the mouse or copies into the clipboard. There is almost no fingerprinting of the client because all the funky caching, rendering, processing and screen-size handling is done on the server (you could fingerprint encoding metadata and such but there is very little to go with). There is little option for automated crawling because everything is a picture (and pictures can be hardened against OCR). There is honesty between the publisher and the user because the only things transmitted are things the user is aware are being transmitted (no funny background AJAX requests with harvested information, no stupid tracking pixels). All sites that want to track the users pointer as that pointer is being moved around the page can do that with VNC. All sites that want to paywall their stuff can do that. All sites that want to know the size of their users underwear can still do so (provided they ask the user nicely). Facebook will still be able to outrage and depress their users. YouTube will still be able to radicalize their users. Google might actually have to find a way provide value again. And Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia can get filthy rich for the second time, by selling processing time on their servers. There is no risk of clicking on the wrong link and having your computer taken over by malware because there is no automated downloads and no hyperlinking with VNC (and if there is hyperlinking, it is there because the publishers put it there and it's their problem then). No clickjacking, XSS, CSRF or whatever else "cross" because all content is guarantied to come from the same source. No request validation (to an extent). The developers won't have to do mental gymnastics trying to figure out what elements come in from where to render a page. No service worker woes. No more JavaScript framework [CENSORED]! 5 times lower bandwith (presumed, on average). Massively better latency and click responsiveness! (I mean, if my brother can play video games on Nvidia cloud thing with little or no image degradation across WiFi, I don't see why VNC can't be optimized to have near-unperceptive latency.)
It's a total win! It synergises perfectly with Gemini/Gopher. If you want to publish text, use Gemini/Gopher. If you want to publish screamsheets, use VNC. And if you happen to be among the 0.1% of people that actually use the Web to collaborate (it's original intended use), than - and only then - do you keep using the Web. The only thing which might be a problem is if people want to upload cat pictures onto these sites. But I see there are versions of VNC software that allow file transfer - so that can be taken care of as well.
I propose we call these sites served like this cyberpanels. xD OK, maybe something else (cyyyyyber...), but I think "panel" is a good name for this resource that is being served over VNC.
C'mon, @Lunduke , you know you recently did a podcast on "technology gets replaced regularly", you gotta like this! xD
