> Take Mr. X, who is outraged by Microsoft's behavior and refuses to buy Microsoft's products, tells other people about his problems with Microsoft, and tells everyone to use FOSS alternatives? Now, Mr. X also thinks that it's stupid to believe in god, and is not afraid to say it to everyone he meets. He's suddenly changed from "FOSS advocate" to "toxic workplace on legs".
What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?
> What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?
Not sure where the word "dangerous" comes from.
Just to explain things. If you tell people at work that it's stupid to believe in god, you are probably going to get fired, and rightly so. It's not dangerous, but it is toxic (belittling people for their religious beliefs).
It's like how when I "execute" a program, you understand that I am not killing the program as punishment. Even though the word "execute" has that meaning, it only applies in other contexts.
Toxicity is a serious thing. We label toxic chemicals with labels and warnings because they're dangerous. Serious business.
When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness. That's why we choose that specific, strong words with a well-known meaning.
I oppose calling "I disagree with your world view" toxic. A serial killer might deserve the term.
> When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness. That's why we choose that specific, strong words with a well-known meaning.
So, you knew what the meaning of "toxic" was all along, but you pretended to not know what the meaning was in order to make some kind of point? I would prefer a direct discussion.
> I oppose calling "I disagree with your world view" toxic. A serial killer might deserve the term.
Mr. X isn't toxic for his world view, it's his actions--his actions are to call people stupid over their religious beliefs.
Stallman isn't "toxic" for writing a couple essays or emails, but you could argue that he's toxic for the way he treated people over the past decades.
> So, you knew what the meaning of "toxic" was all along, but you pretended to not know what the meaning was in order to make some kind of point? I would prefer a direct discussion.
Yes, I knew all along that "toxic" means "dangerous". When we're not talking about eg. plutonium, we at least borrow the seriousness of that use. It's a very strong word.
> [...] his actions are to call people stupid over their religious beliefs.
I think it's a stretch to call speaking an action. Hitting religious people would be an action, calling them out really isn't.
Stallman is apparently not the most agreeable person, and possibly he's been nasty and hostile. Some people have chosen not to work with him, others have worked a lot with him. He's not killed anybody, he's not made of plutonium, there's no danger.
For this reason, verbally harassing people for their faith is IMO more toxic than "I disagree with you" or even "I disagree with you and I think you're stupid".
The UN humans rights are not law in the USA. The first amendment says that the government can't make laws about religion. In the USA, people are free to have whatever religion they want, which is great.
Pointing out that all available research points to some religious claim being wrong is not harassment.
All available research also points man and women are different physiologically, neurologically and psychologically. Yet if one goes around pointing that out to women for no good reason, some people will view such speech as discriminatory and will act accordingly. I don’t necessarily agree with these people, but that’s how it works in practice in many places.
According to US federal laws, religion is a protected class just like gender. You can’t discriminate people based on that, no matter whether you related to government or not.
That depends on the facts, context, audience and other human-related things.
As an employer or anyone at all really, ideally, you should do the right things, where “the right things” is only vaguely defined.
Some of these things are written in laws, regulations, and court decisions. They help when one doesn’t know how to handle certain citations (like this case about religious beliefs of other people): looking for that stuff and simply doing what’s written there is a good strategy to not screw up human interactions too much.
However, many other of these right things aren’t written anywhere, adult people are supposed to already know them somehow. Probably, that’s what called “cultural context”.
All that stuff is weird and often illogical, but that’s how all modern societies have been working for centuries if not millennia.
>When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness.
what makes you think so?
words means in theirs contextes whatever people attributed to them, and I've never seen toxic used in other context than somebody trashtalking somebody and being called toxic, so definitely not dangerous.
This hypothetical Mr X is going to take all of a week to get the entire helpdesk & IT procurement team (and every religious coworker) to avoid him and his need to criticize some aspect of their lives.
That's "toxic" because now you have a staff member who people won't communicate effectively with.
Now you're inventing more personality for Mr X. He doesn't like Microsoft and doesn't hide it. He thinks Santa Claus is for children and doesn't hide it. He's not the problem here.
He is, though, because his opinion on Santa Claus should be completely irrelevant to his interactions with his co-workers. But if he prioritizes being hostile by correcting and insulting people over being humble and accepting that others might believe differently, he is being toxic -- he's poisonous to be around.
There are different ways to stand by one's beliefs. One is to keep them to yourself and let them guide your decisions silently, but defend them vigorously if they are actively challenged. And one is to feel the need to rub them into everyone's face constantly, because there is only Right and Wrong and you can't deal with somebody being wrong (i.e., of a different opinion than you) without feeling personally attacked and going on the offensive.
I can agree. But this means that we can never talk about anything other than specific, technical issues at work. We can never reveal any opinion or outside fact about anything. I suppose that's a solution.
In this scenario, our guy wouldn't accept that others might believe differently, because he'd never know, because they never say. Fine by me.
> being wrong (i.e., of a different opinion than you)
That's not what wrong means. Opinions are personal and subjective and can't be wrong or right. Religious ideas a not opinions, they are fact claims about the universe.
I think the agreed-upon way of handling this is revealing personal opinions on difficult subjects very carefully to gauge the reactions, and only proceeding if doing so wouldn't disturb the peace more than what the discussion would be worth.
There are of course a ton of potentially difficult subjects, as the ever expanding "Culture War" Wikipedia article shows[1].
But after thinking about it for a bit, this approach of "tread carefully and don't disturb others" is still problematic.
Because, where do you draw the line about things that you should or should not speak up against?
My intuitive example would have been an anti-vaxxer at work, that I probably would have felt the need to criticize and correct, because their opinion might kill my grandma.
But then, militant atheists might also feel like they have to criticize believers, given the huge number of people killed in the name of one god or another.
I think a fundamental factor here is the level of confidence in one's belief that is warranted. Challenging others (especially publicly) on what they believe should only be seen as a sensible thing to do when the confidence in your opinion that leads to to that criticism is warranted.
For things like vaccinations, we thankfully have scientific evidence that would indicate that anyone who outright believes they are ineffectual or "give people autism" is, in all likelihood, simply wrong.
On the other hand, a belief in god ultimately can't ever be shown as wrong[2], so being very confident in your belief that there is no god still doesn't justify putting down others for believing the opposite.
> That's not what wrong means.
Yes sorry, that was meant fairly tongue-in-cheek, because I assumed that for a person like our Mr. X, the distinction between "of a different opinion" and "wrong" would be very blurry.
> Religious ideas are not opinions, they are fact claims about the universe.
Isn't that just a really wide-spanning opinion though? Maybe we're using the word differently and mean the same?
2: Unless we talk about ridiculous stuff like creationism, which would at least be very hard to defend if you simultaneously want to use the scientific method for anything.
Treading carefully is probably our best bet, but it's very difficult and error prone.
There are no militant atheists, in any reasonable sense of the word. If mentioning facts about the world is seen as criticism of religious people, that's a big problem. We know vaccines work, because our best research shows that. It's not controversial and we should be free to mention it. Huge parts of many religious text are factually incorrect, we know that from enormous amounts of research -- this is also not controversial and we should be free to talk about it.
> Isn't that just a really wide-spanning opinion though? Maybe we're using the word differently and mean the same?
In that case everything is opinion and we have no real knowledge of anything.
Virtually no one is an atheist, if you take the Sapiens definition of religion: “a system of human laws and values, which is founded on a belief in a super human order." (Super human orders are not the product of human whim or human agreements, unlike e.g. the laws of soccer)
https://sites.google.com/site/taborsapiens/home/10-the-law-o...
If you read the book it’s clear communism, fascism, democracy and capitalism are really religions too. They require belief in a super human order - a set of laws that exist without backing in science or human agreement. E.g. “All men are created equal”
> If you read the book it’s clear communism, fascism, democracy and capitalism are really religions too. They require belief in a super human order - a set of laws that exist without backing in science or human agreement. E.g. “All men are created equal”
I don't agree with that interpretation, someone who champions democracy just has a set of moral values they want to apply, they don't think the universe is inherently democratic or anything like that.
Likewise for your other examples. They're ideologies, not religions.
I disagree, I see it as saying "you don't know what you really want, but I can read your mind". It's disrespectful and not giving the benefit of the doubt.
>It's disrespectful and not giving the benefit of the doubt.
Unfortunately, a good number of users who post questions on StackOverflow have not earned the benefit of the doubt. Browsing the site, you will occasionally come across questions which are the tech equivalent of asking "Which screwdriver is the right size to stick in this electrical socket?"
Frame challenges are a necessary part of learning, so they belong on a Q&A site. If a user doesn't want their problem to be challenged, the onus is on them to clarify in the question why their particular approach is the necessary one. It's only possible to respond with alternative solutions when the problem is not specified enough.
> Which screwdriver is the right size to stick in this electrical socket?
Note that this is a legitimate technique in UK sockets.
The live and neutral pins have a little gate over them that is retracted when you insert the earth pin, so you need to first stick a screwdriver into the earth pin in order to get your fingers into the live pin.
I can't parse if this is humour or a mistake. Putting your fingers on the live pin is not a great idea, trying this to get an euro 15 plug into an UK socket, also not great but in a different category.
Well, there's also a mains tester screwdriver which is a legit tool that you stick into a socket and also participate in the electrict current loop for the light on it to light up.
I'm not so sure benefit of the doubt must be earned. More like, any participant in a discussion forum must show it when answering, and do proper research before asking anything. If all questions are good questions, there's no problem. But, as you say, they really aren't. I think poor question should be down voted with a brief explanation instead of trying to answer the "real" question. Or moved to a Frame challenge forum.
Are we trying to answer the question or to solve the problem?
Asking on SO is itself research. It is good to review the existing literature before taking contributors time, of course, but if the problem is not solved in the existing literature, then perhaps the framing issue isn't addressed by the existing literature either. In that case how could the learner know the best way to frame the problem in advance?
> I think poor question should be down voted with a brief explanation instead of trying to answer the "real" question. Or moved to a Frame challenge forum.
This precludes the possibility that some contributors might want to address the framing problem, whereas others might want to address the specific question as asked. They may have different opinions about whether it is framed wrong at all. It also means the OP is losing karma or getting penalized for no fault of their own.
The problem is, the answers are useful to more than just the original questioner. Sure, the questioner may be doing things vastly wrong - but the people who land on that question's page via search may have legitimate reasons for doing things a certain way.
The silent majority of viewers will benefit from an answer that does both of (1) explaining why the answer is probably not what is wanted, and (2) answering the initial question _as written_ anyway, for future viewers.
Then those other viewers will either benefit in the same way from the frame challenge as a learning experience, or they will have a sufficiently-specific problem that they can ask their own questions with more justification for taking a specific approach.
Answering the question as written has the risk that any solution will be blindly applied without appreciating why the approach itself should be avoided. This is especially true for those users who see SO as a "write my code" site, and copy-paste anything in backticks.
Strongly disagree. The point of SO is for experts to answer questions. They've learned things the hard way and would like to help others do better. They're not being paid. As such, telling the questioner that their whole approach is wrong is appropriate and even preferable.
From what I've heard Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky had different views on this and Spolsky's more tolerant, "no such thing as a stupid question" approach won out within the company, but is less popular among the people who write answers.
I don't think it is disrespectful to suggest someone is falling victim to the XY problem.
Actually I think it is a common and expected outcome that when investigating a new problem, we often get stuck in "XY problem" traps while researching the solution.
I very much value any feedback that suggests I should rethink the entire problem with a simpler model, because without experience it's hard to know what the simplest models are.
Absolutely agree. In my experience this is one of the more valuable features of asking someone to discuss a problem I'm mired in. Because they haven't been looking under every rock and studying the bark of every tree like I have, they're very likely to quickly see when I've wandered into entirely the wrong part of the forest.
unfortunately sometimes people who ask questions are really junior, and need to be told they are going to have an unpleasant surprise if they go down the path they are planning on going.
sometimes people who ask questions know the pitfalls but don't clarify that they know adequately because they are pressed for time. in this case those people unfortunately run the risk of being talked down to and they should accept that.
on the other hand if they have clarified adequately that they know what they're doing and they still want to do something that might seem weird then I agree it is disrespectful. Which is a thing you see often enough on StackOverflow to be notable.
Maybe so, but what about the non-junior person who needs to do something weird for an actual valid reason and stumbles on the refusal to answer the question years later? StackOverflow answers aren’t just for the original asker.
I think in that case - the new person should probably post a new question.
The point is that the original question - as framed - was better served by saying "if you go back a step and reexamine your assumptions, you'll find there is a better path to your intended goal".
The new person has a different goal or a different set of constraints.
Because asking new questions and getting them closed as duplicate because they sound vaguely similar to an existing question is sooo helpful an experience...
Yeah - but I'm just playing with hypothetical ideal cases here. "Annoying flawed habits of Stack Overflow moderators" isn't something that's on my list of things I'm thinking about. ;-)
EDIT - which got me thinking. Maybe the "correct" thing to do is answer the original question as asked but gently point out to the person asking it that there is probably a better solution for them if only they had asked a different question.
The original question still stands and has an answer useful for other people. The original questioner has the opportunity to learn and ask the question they should have asked in the first place.
It's going to be annoying for someone - so it should at least be the person that kicked things off in the first place.
How do you respectful tell someone you think they are mistaken? I'd rather not be pussyfooted around by someone if I'm in the role of "person who has asked a question based on a faulty assumption". Don't be rude but don't avoid trying to answer truthfully to the best of your ability.
> Well that's really the only bar we have for offensive language, isn't it?
We can construct any bar we'd like.
You seem to completely dismiss concern for the bar being too low, why is that? Lots of people might feel sort of offended by women showing their hair -- should we accept that bar?
I’m saying that the word carries intent. In part because there is a well known alternative that can be used in almost any situation if intent is not intended.
There are a few exceptional situations, but none have been noted here.
You’re either arguing that we never know intent, ever, so you can’t judge someone. Or that intent can’t be inferred from one word, not sure which one. But both seem like poor positions.
Signal, then? Your intent is irrelevant (& fairly assumed) when you use the wrong word.
It's this kind of thinking that led an ex colleague to wonder out loud whether he shouldn't seek some "desensitivity training" for the entire company (who had just reacted very negatively to a message he'd sent out) rather than communication training for him!
> Your intent is irrelevant (& fairly assumed) when you use the wrong word.
If my intent is irrelevant, why bring it up?
And this is exactly what we're talking about: Is using the wrong word bad in itself, or does there need to be some intent? Can we determine intent objectively? Fairly? Does intent matter? What is a wrong word? Who decides? What consequences do taboo words have for society?
You can't just claim "Your intent is irrelevant ... when you use the wrong word." when that's the entire question.
Your ex colleague thinks people should grow thicker skin. You think we should police language. I don't see that your idea is very developed and it certainly doesn't work very well right now.
You can try it yourself, there's subreddits for it where you can learn much more.
For CIA documentation, search FOIA reading room for "PROJECT CENTER LANE"
Here's a quote from a special access program briefing transcript[1]:
Over 85% of our operational missions have produced accurate target information. Even more significant, approximately 50% of the 700 missions produced usable intelligence.
Note that 50% is not "no better than chance" because the data produced are not binary selections, but things that other intelligence sources give, such as structure layouts, facility purposes, machine blueprints, site and personnel locations.
The FOIA documentation is overwhelming in its confirmation of this as an intelligence sensor on par with other sources, which leads me to believe that the AIR report (which you can also search for online) was partially disinfo designed to soften the blow of releasing that this is possible, and I'm quite sure that government and corporate use of psi continues to this day. Perhaps the FOIA release was also part of a limited hangout designed to yield some control over the narrative and provide a pretext for dismissal to protect ongoing classified programs.
Here's a MS Strategic Intelligence thesis from the Defense Intelligence College that gives a good overview:
The Wikipedia page on remote viewing gives the opposite impression. Wikipedia also tells me that "The Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded that it was never useful in any intelligence operation. Information provided by the program was vague and included irrelevant and erroneous data, and there was reason to suspect that its project managers had changed the reports so they would fit background cues."
I'm not really qualified to read through CIA papers. People who are seem to not agree with you.
If remote viewing works, wouldn't all major companies have departments full of viewers spying on competitors?
I'll note that the James Randi prize has not been won.
There are conflicting reports about every little thing.
I've never seen a single indication of remote viewing and I've never seen any such claims hold up. I know of no mechanism that would allow remote viewing. Null hypothesis and Occam's razor points me to dismiss claims of remote viewing.
Experts from CIA have apparently researched this, found nothing and closed the project. The James Randi prize has not been won.
If remote viewing was possible, why are we not seeing the results?
That's me thinking, like you asked for. On the other hand, I don't see any actual evidence from you. Do you have any?
It's conceivable you looked at the same data as other people and came to different conclusions. Diversity of opinions and beliefs, that's not a bad thing is it?
The Wikipedia page on remote viewing gives the opposite impression. The Wikipedia page leaves out all the supporting data and editorially takes a false stance against it. This makes it not credible, I don't think you should trust a source like this. If you choose to, it says more that you want some easy to pretend to justify your disbelief of it. Confirmation bias.
"The Stargate Project was terminated and declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded that it was never useful in any intelligence operation. Information provided by the program was vague and included irrelevant and erroneous data, and there was reason to suspect that its project managers had changed the reports so they would fit background cues." This is not the final nor the only word on it. After many reports lauding how effective it was, it was terminated? Seems more likely it continues in a special access program, and the release was either to shake up the personnel structure that controlled it, or the reason I stated in my previous comment.
I'm not really qualified to read through CIA papers. Then you're not qualified to be credible nor have an opinion, if you choose to not look at the evidence for and against evenly. This seems like a lazy pretense to avoid looking at information that challenges your preexisting biases. In other words, you're choosing to make yourself a victim to confirmation bias. That makes what you say not very credible.
People who are seem to not agree with you. I disagree, and since you're not qualified to "read" these papers (which are created by the CIA, they are from various service branches), you're not qualified to say who is or who isn't qualified, right? So...who disagrees? Plenty of people agree with me, plenty of military people with first hand experience of these results agree. So if you're standard for belief is people and "qualified" people agree with me, then you have it. This seems pretty like a pretty bogus and lazy dismissal, "invoking authority" to hide your desire to stay within your preexisting bias. Confirmation bias.
If remote viewing works, wouldn't all major companies have departments full of viewers spying on competitors? If intelligence collection works, wouldn't all major companies have departments full of corporate spies spying on competitors? Is this how it works? I think they contract it out, I guess the same for RV, but probably less because "people are reluctant to believe it" even when shown it works, as you seem to be demonstrating.
I'll note that the James Randi prize has not been won. Which may not prove anything? Why close the prize? Perhaps he didn't want to pay it. Or it could have been a charity to people like yourself who want a very comforting (but not very informative) dismissal, instead of looking at the data. I had a prize open for 10 Million dollars for the first alien life known to humankind to prove that it really exists, but no aliens came to claim it, therefore humans are alone in the universe. Correct? Of course not.
So what happened here?
You asked me do I believe RV is real. I said unequivocally yes and gave you multiple resources to not only read straight away but to find out more, including going to a subreddit and seeing regular people trying it for themselves and getting results, which I encouraged you to also do. And instead of responding to, being open to, or curious, or even doing something, about that very generous offer of information and time I made you, you decided to ignore all of that supporting evidence (under the weak and pathetic excuse of saying you're not qualified to read it ~~ then of course you're not qualified to read Wikipedia and decide against it, either right?), and remain where it seems you are comfortable -- which appears to be a preexisting bias against believing this. So what have you demonstrated with your choices here? Confirmation bias in action.
It's very common, and a very predictable reaction. It makes sense as a defensive reaction to protect you from investing time, or belief in something which you fear may not be true, and may expose you to social ridicule. But at what point does that useful skepticism reach the point of diminishing returns where you need to stick your head in the sand and live in a made up fantasy world delusion where you have to manufacture excuses just so you can ignore evidence and shut your eyes against the truth? When do you choose comfort over knowing more? Confirmation bias.
Your fear to open up to this data, and your preference to remain in your confirmation bias, does not have any relation to the reality of RV, and obviously your choice to react like that doesn't mean RV is not true. You were given evidence that supports a claim you seem to not want to believe, and you ignored it. This is confirmation bias. This means your opinions about this are not credible, and one reason they are not credible is because you have not yet invested the time in investigating them honestly.
I guess you like playing innocent and trying to pick on true believers to try to get a rise out of them, because that makes you feel people are paying attention to you? So predictable, and easy right? No skin in the game tho? The reason I didn't address your points yesterday is because it seemed to be you were just doing precisely this, so I deliberately didn't give you the reaction you wanted. And I felt satisfied when it seemed you were incensed with my refusal to play your little game, and I instead dismissed your replies with even handed positivity. Moreover, it seemed you were questioning without making the effort to learn and be open to the data I shared and without really caring about the topic, so I wasn't going to reward your dishonesty and contempt for a serious topic with more informative responses when you'd already shown your contempt for this. The reason I'm putting it here now is for other readers who drop by in future, and your future self, if you become better (or your current self, if you want to learn how to improve) :) ;p xx
It's not my problem (and it says nothing of the quality of the data or the reality of this) if you want to remain in your confirmation bias when you have evidence in front of your eyes, and refuse to see it. Neither does your keeping your eyes closed prove there's no light in the world. You can pretend that's "someone else's fault" for not "proving" it to you, when in fact that's your responsibility for refusing to see the data, and choosing to keep your eyes closed. If you're going to do that, I think you should at least own it, rather than weakly trying to blame it on someone else by pretending there's no evidence, when it's just your responsibility. And if you do want to treat your mind this way (with confirmation bias) then be careful that you don't attack other people or be mean to them just because you're choosing to stay in your preexisting comfortable bias, because that unjustified meanness would be extremely bad for your karma. Just know that it's your responsibility if you think that way, and own it and don't try to incorrectly blame anyone else. Your choice to belief. To investigate. It's your mind, I'm not telling you what to do with it, because it's your life. I'm pointing out the context, the larger context, so hopefully you can make choices that work for you better in future. All the best of luck with that and have a great and a wonderful 2021! :) ;p xx
I think this was a very logical thing for them to do.
Supporting platforms that old comes with a massive amount of headaches. It is hard enough for big teams of applications with high MRR to do, and is near impossible for a FOSS application to do in perpetuity.
Thanks, that's good. Thank you for providing this work.
I still find the terms very vague. For example:
- Who's morals?
- What exactly "spoils the image of..."?
- Illegal in what jurisdiction?
- Do I not redistribute the icons if I put them on a web site?
Thank you so much for guiding me. Hmm... okey, I need to reconsider the whole terms as actually I used a terms of a famous Japanese web site as a reference and transrated it in English...
Thanks again for your great value comment for me. Let me consider it.
You're right, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything. If we can flip a bit somewhere to save some minute amount of energy, we should do that. For example: optimize PNGs, it's easy and a one time procedure.
We can't change what's in the chair but we can change our product.
If the effect is minute enough, you might be using more net energy thinking about this, typing this comment, discussing it with others and optimizing your final png than actual energy saved for your users.
Feel-good savings are not helpful. You can do it but let's not pretend. Reminds me of an ex girlfriend that would account for coins she found on the ground in her monthly budget...
I assume they mean minute relative to cars or something, not minute in an absolute sense.
Just as a sort of thought about this, if the entire web moved to brotli over gzip, or if we introduced an even better compression algorithm that was widely distributed across the internet, what would that impact me? A 5% reduction in CPU usage for every computer loading every page? I'd be curious to hear what that would actually amount to, power-wise.
I might be cynical, but that change would work only with the assumption that what is done on the page remains constant. What I guess would happen is that it would do 5% more useless operations. The limiting factor here is user's tolerance for bullshit, not some predefined functionality.
I get your point and I agree to some extend -- a single png doesn't remove much carbon. But it's impossible to figure out where the break even point lies. It would be irresponsible to never optimize for size or cpu usage.
Where would you draw the line?
Do some napkin calculations so you get a ballpark of where the line is. That will help you discard entire categories of pointless optimizations (e.g. pictures going into a company-wide email for a 500 person company).
> For example: optimize PNGs, it's easy and a one time procedure.
And then that PNG is loaded by a webpage, which contains no HTML, but loads 28 megabytes of JS, which your browser has to parse, JIT and run, and then that triggers loading of web-fonts, and after that we create a virtual DOM, and then render that into a real DOM... (which is probably around 150kb)
And then after about 15 seconds of 100% CPU time, the browser finally has something to show... And then it loads that minified PNG.
You know what? That PNG isn't the issue. That PNG probably has a highly optimized decoder, written in native code, and the relative cost of a optimized/unoptimized PNG in this case is probably 0.0001% of the total energy we just spent getting and rendering that page, a page which more often than not contains basically static content.
If that page instead:
1. had been plain, pre-rendered HTML
2. had no JS, except if needed.
3. had no web-fonts, because the user already has 2000 fonts installed. (And you want to be green, right?)
4. And finally had that PNG.
Then optimizing that PNG would actually have an impact. On most sites today though? Not a chance in a hell.
Also: that page would render in a nano-second, so it's not just a greenification, it's an actual real world performance-optimization too.
The savings made by a single png doesn't change in this scenario, it just drowns. One thing you can do: optimize pngs. Another thing you can do: optimize js. Focusing on the largest sinner first makes some sense, but doesn't change the fact that optimizing a png will certainly save the whales.
Eh, why waste time on that when major polluters are oil, meat, packaged fast food etc.
Look up Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Gasprom, Exxon, Coca Cola, Nestle, Bayer, JBS, Tyson etc. Many of them are owned by investors. Why can't we punish investors which are very few compared to the number of web developers out there?
Maybe your hands are clean, but I'd wager most of us are customers of the companies in that list and we benefit from their behavior. Why blame the investors and not the customers?
Most of the consumers have little choice in their consumption. Investors who are putting millions of dollars knowingly into companies that harm the environment are doing it intentionally. There is no comparison here.
It's easy to change thousands/hundreds of investors responsible for these companies than billions of consumers.
We have tried putting responsibility on consumers and it utterly failed. 90% of plastic isn't recycled. Many companies which promised to take your blue bin and recycle it sent it to China and other Asian countries. Repairability has only gone down.
We all have a role to play in the fight against climate change. It doesn't help pointing the finger at another group of people and say that it's all their fault and that they have to fix it.
It's like with taxing the wealthy. Everybody agrees the wealthier part of the population should be taxed more, but no one considers himself wealthy enough to fall in that category.
> We all have a role to play in the fight against climate change.
Yes. That's why I am proposing a real solution compared to relying on billions of people changing their habits which are intentionally forced on them by the environment.
> It's like with taxing the wealthy. Everybody agrees the wealthier part of the population should be taxed more, but no one considers himself wealthy enough to fall in that category.
Not comparable. Everyone who invests in companies that harm the environment get taxed heavily on their investment to offset the carbon emissions. There is no subjective wealth factor here.
What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?