To use a good point of reference that I've seen others also start using lately, an installation of Windows 95 is roughly 40MB, so in loading that page you've downloaded approximately one Windows 95 installation. Then another 10+ times with the 500MB more that came after.

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Aurornis 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think comparisons to native compiled code for old low resolution computers are all that valid for multimedia websites.

I can take a single photo with my iPhone that is larger than a Windows 95 installation depending on my output settings.

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edoloughlin 5 hours ago | parent [-]

And that’s fine because that photo (probably) has some utility to you.

The 39.99MB of ads accompanying the 2KB of text you want to read possibly has less utility to you.

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jojobas 5 hours ago | parent [-]

As you might be aware, you're not the one paying for it so your utility is not really on the table.

Also consider the utility of an ad blocker.

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toast0 4 hours ago | parent [-]

A lot of people are paying for their data. If a web page uses 40 mb and you have 4GB of data quota per month, you can only load 100 pages per month. Apparently the article text describes the page actually using 500 MB over 5 minutes, which means a 4GB quota can be used for less than an hour of reading.

Maybe it's different if advertisers or publishers are paying viewer's data costs. But some amount of restraint might be nice. Personally, I don't use a lot on my phone when I'm out and about, other than chat apps, hn, text NPR and lite CNN, cause I used to be on a plan with a hard cutoff. But then, I have unmetered networking at home.

	▲	jojobas 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I mean, the utility that matters is the utility for PC Gamer of showing everyone the ads vs some people refusing to read them over data concerns. You might be paying for data, but you're not paying PC Gamer for reading them, so your opinion only starts to matter when you quit reading them over how much data they use.

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dehrmann 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's not a fair comparison. A desktop wallpaper could be 8 MB for a modern OS just because of screen resolution. A 4-minute music video would probably be 100 MB.

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abustamam 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But PC gamer isn't downloading 8mb wallpapers or 100mb 4k music videos. They're downloading ads and and other nonsense.

Plus, if I decide to download a music video, that's on me. I chose to download a 100mb file.

If I just want to read what amounts to a few paragraphs of text with some branding, I don't think it's fair to say that I'm also choosing to download 40+mb of nonsense that isn't text. Maybe in this new modern web, that is a conscious decision I make by clicking on any link anywhere, but I think the point of the article is that it shouldn't be the case.

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joquarky 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They need to have more ads so that they can afford to pay for the bandwidth used by all of the ads.

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pas 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

not using an adblocker is also on the user

yes, it would be better if all ads were text only, so there wouldn't be this adtech fucking warfare for people's attention

	▲	abustamam 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The casual user likely doesn't know what an ad blocker is, and many who do likely have one of those ad blockers that may reduce the number of ads displayed but collect everything about your browsing habits. It's very likely that ad providers expect that.
	▲	userbinator 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't mind small non-animated banners either, but anything animated or even audio is a hard DO NOT WANT.

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userbinator 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's still useful for comprehending the scale of volume. The useful part of the article is a few KB.

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zahlman 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Put another way, the initial page would barely fit (by itself) on the first hard drive I ever used.

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throwaway5465 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Windows XP + Encarta.

The future is today!

	▲	vitaflo 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Windows XP install disk is 600 MB, so pretty close to that on this website already.
	▲	reaperducer 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Encarta You can still subscribe to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. It's one way of avoiding AI garbage.