Code bloat? Try web bloat ...

2 points

17 years ago

A recent article submitted here to HN caused my browser to crash. (Don't ask) As a result I did this:

    curl "http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=837790" | grep -o "http[^\"]*" | grep wsj

and hence this:

    curl "http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125354895752528171.html#mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness" | less

I could then read the text. but it struck me just how much other crap there was, so I save the text:

    curl "http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125354895752528171.html#mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness" > wsj0

and edited out everything except the byline, text, and legal phrasing at the end. I stored the result in file wsj1.

The result:

    # ll wsj?

   -rw-r--r--  1  RiderOfGiraffes  users   126701 2009-09-22 21:41 wsj0
   -rw-r--r--  1  RiderOfGiraffes  users     5042 2009-09-22 21:44 wsj1

Yup. 5K of text in 125K of page.

I'm glad I don't use dialup anymore.

And the article wasn't worth reading anyway.