Post #1471260

2026-04-20 15:56 UTC

@UlrikeHahn I have recently read blog about a solar driven server. And the blogger showed that using black and white raster images instead of Jpeg was much smaller. All images as well as video stills could be replaced by these raster images, avoiding strong data traffic during scrolling, and only shown on demand. I think I'm actually not interrested in 90% of the images in my timeline

Replies (1)

@philcowans@universeodon.com 2026-04-20 19:38

@olibrendel @UlrikeHahn - is https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ the site you were reading about? One thing I find impressive is how fast it is. For me, with all caching disabled, it loads in 2.3s, transferring 490kB over 21 requests. For comparison, the BBC news homepage takes 5.0s, transferring 5.61MB over 117 requests, and even that's by no means the worst by modern standards. Preferring text over images and images over video will help, as will removing as much clutter (and tracking tech, etc.) from the UI as possible. I use tools I've written myself to consume Mastodon content, and one feature of those is that attached media is never automatically downloaded. The Fediverse culture of providing alt text really helps with that, so I only download what I already know I want to see. Keeping things simple also probably means more users per server as things need to scale. One thing which I'm guessing will also make a difference is retaining compatibility with older devices, so there's less pressure for users to replace them every few years. Finally, it's probably worth considering static publishing models such as RSS and Org Social alongside ActivityPub and AP - they're certainly technically much simpler, although less feature rich, and I suspect other things about them (such as the need to poll) could work in the opposite direction.

Open ##1471262