The web runs on tolerance

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/12/the-web-runs-on-tolerance/

by speckx • 8 months ago

101 172 8 months ago

sylware• 8 months ago

There are 2 webs.

web apps and web sites.

web apps require a [java|ecma]script whatng cartel web engine, more and more only the gogol one (blink) will "correctly" work (abuse of dominant position).

web sites are noscript/basic (x)html ("forms" and the <audio> <video> elements). Usually a "semantic" 2D table with proper ids for navigation.

ktpsns• 8 months ago

The older ones among us remember when XML took over the world and everyone was supposed to use strict XHTML. It turned out that the strength of the HTML ecosystem was its fault tolerance. HTML4 was the "sloppy" answer to XHTML. It brought HTML back from a data language to a markup language. Every Markdown parser is similarly fault-tolerant as HTML parsers.

However, CSS and JS are not error-tolerant. A syntax error in a CSS rule causes it to be ignored. An unhandled JavaScript exception is a hard stop. This way, web does not run on tolerance.

MangoToupe2• 8 months ago

It turned out that the strength of the HTML ecosystem was its fault tolerance.

I don't think this was a "strength" of html so much as a necessity to not break the internet. I certainly preferred the formal nature of xhtml to html 5. But, we're stuck with needing to render obviously formally-broken documents.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

So it's not a strength it's a necessity?

I'm not sure these words mean what you think they do...

sebular• 8 months ago

Nonsense. Open the console on l any mediocre webpage and you’ll see a stream of JavaScript errors. But it’s still working. One script crashes? Doesn’t matter to any other script. Unhandled exception? Rest of the app is still working fine. Hell, that button may work if you just click it again.

And CSS syntax error causing only that single line of code to be ignored while every other line of code works fine is the very definition of fault tolerance.

What else could you possibly want?

trimethylpurine• 8 months ago

All that is very good. But as a back end guy dabbling in front end, it would be more welcoming if JS was a little intuitive. I'm very thankful for LLMs now helping with that a bit, but honestly even they seem to fail at JS more so than other languages, at least in my experience so far.

re• 8 months ago

HTML4 was the "sloppy" answer to XHTML

I think you mean HTML5, which exhaustively specified how to do parsing in a fault-tolerant, normalizing way. HTML 4 (and 4.01) predated XHTML 1.0, and HTML 4.01 attempted to take things in a stricter direction, introducing a "Strict" DTD that did things like drop the tag, in pursuit of separating structure and presentation.

verandaguy• 8 months ago

Funny enough my impression of JS (the kind you'd write in 2007 more than the type you see now, mind you) is that it's remarkably tolerant; many idioms and operations which would cause, in other languages, runtime errors or compile errors, would just get steamrolled over in JS because of just how much built-in flexibility the uber-weak type system (plus liberal use of the prototype pattern in the stdlib) allows for.

- Wanna subtract a string from a number? That's not a type error, that's a `NaN` -- which is just a perfectly-valid IEEE 754 float, after all, and we all float down here.

  - Hell -- arithmetic between arbitrary data types? Chances are you get `[object Object]` (either as a string literal or an *actual* object), which you can still operate on.

- Accessing an object field but you typoed the field name? No worries, that's just `undefined`, and you can always operate on `undefined` values.

Frankly, while I haven't had a frontend focus in about 15 years, I struggle to think of any situation where calling a stdlib function or standard language feature would result in an actual exception rather than just an off behaviour that'll accumulate over time the more of them you stack on eachother. I guess calling an undefined variable is a ReferenceError, but beyond that...

(This comment shouldn't be taken as an endorsement of this school of language design)

auxiliarymoose2• 8 months ago

It is also (nearly) impossible to completely crash a web page. There isn't a main loop that can panic out. No matter where an exception gets thrown, the overall application keeps going and responding to events.

Can't access a network resource? API returns an unexpected error? Library crashes? Browser extension breaks something? Doesn't matter. The user can still view and scroll the page, and the rest of it will probably keep working, too.

chrismorgan• 8 months ago

CSS [is] not error-tolerant. A syntax error in a CSS rule causes it to be ignored.

That is error-tolerant, in basically the same way HTML is.

An unhandled JavaScript exception is a hard stop.

A more appropriate example here is that a JS syntax error stops the entire script from running. That’s the XML parser approach.

account422• 8 months ago

However, CSS and JS are not error-tolerant. A syntax error in a CSS rule causes it to be ignored.

This is good though as it provides a means for progressive enhancement using new features only when they are available and falling back on previous rules if they are not. It's very different from the syntax error -> RIP page nonsense of XHTML.

zamadatix• 8 months ago

In the CSS half, in the JS half it's really no different. Of course that's fine because "best effort logic" doesn't provide nearly as much value as "best effort layout".

Mathnerd3142• 8 months ago

But in contrast, web communities run on moderation, i.e. a sort of intolerance of bad content. The lesson is that technical issues and social issues really don't mix. You can't conclude anything from one versus the other. Case in point, cryptocurrency was supposed to be the anarchist's dream, but now it's being adopted by some central banks.

StilesCrisis• 8 months ago

Moderation isn't used for filtering out the most tolerant individuals. (Look up the paradox of tolerance sometime.)

tclancy2• 8 months ago

technical issues and social issues really don't mix

I don’t think that’s true in the least. I think it’s true there are no technical solutions to social problems, but any and all technology comes from people forming societies and seeking solutions.

This comment feels the same as people saying “Stick to sports” about athletes talking politics. Everything is political. If you don’t think something is, it tends to be because one is insulated from the politics that affect it.

bluefirebrand4• 8 months ago

Everything is political

This is such a tedious worldview

Maybe everything is political, but it doesn't have to be that way

Mathnerd3142• 8 months ago

There's a clear line, and it is when it starts to involve other people. Example: reverse engineering the firmware on your thermostat so you can use it after Google shuts down - technical problem. Not releasing it because you're worried about DMCA and/or Google lawsuits - social problem.

ffuxlpff• 8 months ago

In crypto the people who cannot grok the maths behind are incapable of being free agents in any way. They need the masters and oppression. The same goes for any community.

echelon2• 8 months ago

The internet I grew up on barely had any moderation at all. Or polarization. Or algorithms that feed on that polarization.

I grew up in a conservative, religious family. The internet, forums, and IRC exposed me to lots of ideas outside my upbringing and helped shape who I am today.

I was already starting to really dig biology, science, and evolution as a teenager. Early internet culture helped tip the scale. I'm now LGBT, moderate, atheist. I did my undergrad in molecular bio and computer science. Without the internet, I really don't think that would have happened.

Critically, the internet was not so polarized back then. Conservatives and socialists and liberal democrats (were they a thing?) could all talk amongst one another and generally get along.

There was mud-slinging, to be sure, but nothing like what we see today. The platforms today willingly feed on this hate. We reward outrage and division. We ban posts and people we disagree with and then rub it in their faces.

Freedom from censorship used to be a liberal idea. Conservative culture dominated in the 80's, 90's, and early 00's. Conservatives were the chief agents of censorship. (There were tv shows about God and Jesus on prime time TV back then! "Touched By An Angel", FFS.)

It literally "wasn't okay" until Ellen and "Will and Grace" started breaking down barriers. Until that point, it was the more liberal minded folks on the internet that espoused freedom from censorship, sharing of different perspectives, acceptance, and understanding. (Interestingly, the ACLU at that time supported both sides of the political aisle! No favoritism - our rights matter regardless of politics or beliefs.)

After Obama's win, liberal culture and values started taking over. The internet was reaching widespread adoption throughout not only America, but the rest of the world.

It was shortly after this point that "Tumblr culture" started giving platform to more extreme and less tolerant liberal ideas. The people that used to uphold the values of freedom from censorship started being overshadowed by the ones that instead weaponized censorship against political enemies at the platform level. The Obama presidency was an incubation period to normalize this. Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of other forums became dominated by liberals censoring conservatives.

The first Trump presidency flipped the pendulum back. Media censorship used against liberals. The second Trump presidency got censorship at the platform level and garnered tech company alignment.

We just need to stop.

Stop the algorithmic ranking of content. Stop the extreme polarization. Stop the tit-for-tat banning of people. The indoctrination into hating the "other side".

I appreciate that we won't easily come together and find unity. But at the same time, why use that as an excuse to stop trying? When people and ideas can freely be exchanged without folks attacking one another, there can be friendship even amongst disagreement.

If we keep building tools to censor "the other side" they will eventually be used against us.

We're building 1984 and thinking it serves us. It doesn't.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

Critically, the internet was not so polarized back then. Conservatives and socialists and liberal democrats (were they a thing?) could all talk amongst one another and generally get along

Really? 4chan has been around preaching death and hatred to all sorts of minorities for, like, 20+ yeara at this point and it's hardly the first or only.

It's great that there are better places on the web than 4chan, but those places, without exception, are better because they ban the hateful and intolerant.

The Obama presidency was an incubation period to normalize this. Reddit, Tumblr, and lots of other forums became dominated by liberals censoring conservatives

This is such a weird lie to insert in the middle of this rant and it really makes you wonder about the rest of it.

No one is required to tolerate assholes spewing hate no matter how liberal or tolerant you are supposed to be.

nicbou3• 8 months ago

I think that censorship grew because the internet did.

When the crowd grows bigger, it becomes a market. Then you get people who are only here out of self interest, and you need rules to deal with them.

When the crowd gets too big, the conversation is too loud and fast to be polite, and the loudmouths take over. Only hot takes anger people enough to speak above the miasma.

I don’t think it’s a red versus blue issue because there exist people outside of the United States. About 8 billion of them.

Imustaskforhelp6• 8 months ago

Stop the extreme polarization

LITERALLY THIS. I hope I can stress more point on it but we need to stop extreme polarization and the social media and how its centralized and controlled by a few too.

We're building 1984 and thinking it serves us. It doesn't.

You just have to convince the masses that 1984 is something that serves them when it doesn't and sell that I suppose to seize power yourself bribed by lobbying too.

nicbou3• 8 months ago

Not an intolerance of bad content, but an intolerance of bad behaviour.

Technical issues are often social issues: bad process, bad incentives, bad faith. Moderation is a social issue that people constantly fail to solve with technology, because there are rarely technological solutions to social problems. At best you can mitigate the issue with technology.

didgetmaster3• 8 months ago

This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in.

I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!'

tclancy2• 8 months ago

Two paths diverged in a wood. You took one and the Whole Point took the other here.

fwip2• 8 months ago

Do you care, then, that people are driving away contributors specifically because of their race/gender/orientation? Because without them, we wouldn't have [the stuff in the article].

stingraycharles2• 8 months ago

Yeah I think it’s quite a leap to go from “html is successful because it’s fault tolerant” to “this applies to communities as well”.

There’s obviously a case to be made for both, but they’re independent and unrelated.

argomo• 8 months ago

For me, it's an especially bad argument because the sloppy nature of HTML parsing is NOT a virtue... it's a source of bugs, vulnerabilities, and incompatibilities that provides (yet another) technical moat for existing web browsers. It's a huge tragedy that HTML5 beat XHTML.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

Except there are people right on this forum who will happily talk about how dogs deserve fewer/no rights. Do you think that this makes the "dogs" feel welcome and do you think that these words have no effect?

Like, it's cool and great that you personally are in a position where most of the ideologies of hate aren't affecting you, right now, personally, but is it too much to ask that you spare a thought for the people it does affect?

poolion• 7 months ago

That must be very rare here, if it happens at all. Such comments would be flagged.

autoexec2• 8 months ago

I'll gladly take the opportunity to avoid directly supporting a racist/bigot, or anyone who seeks to silence/oppress/murder entire groups of people for simply existing. I don't care if they're selling me an application, or a laptop, or a car, or a cheeseburger. The internet, and the world, are a lot more interesting and exciting when you get a lot of different people from different backgrounds participating. Genius and innovation can come from anywhere. Morally and practically I think we're better off being inclusive.

I may not know who on the internet is a dog, but I'm glad those dogs are out there and if somebody is a proud supporter of puppy genocide I'd rather not encourage/enable their misguided crusade so that does factor into my choices.

It isn't something that can always be avoided, or even something that needs to be avoided entirely 100% of the time (I still read Lovecraft for example) but I do think it's worth some consideration.

Imustaskforhelp6• 8 months ago

The internet, and the world, are a lot more interesting and exciting when you get a lot of different people from different backgrounds participating. Genius and innovation can come from anywhere. Morally and practically I think we're better off being inclusive

Agreed but honestly sometimes I wonder about the funding sides of things, I love tinkering with software and making (right now LLM based but I know it can be a crutch, I use it to just "test" ideas tbh) but basically my question is, I wish to do more stuff on the web but as someone from a third world country, even 30k $/year are enough to me right now.

I am extremely frugal, most of it might just go into my savings/ETF world funds but basically I worry that if I cannot earn that amount, or even if I do, I am subjected to some very high risks which scare me as I have seen its costs first hands

I want to build software which some people might even work on full time but I just don't know how to make money out of it. If I can't make money out of it, I just open source some half assed implementation of it and literally noone knows about it.

I don't know too much about marketing and monetization perhaps. I don't know how to monetize, I hate ads and don't wish to push them, most of my servers/services I create can be abused so there is an issue the server provider might block me and I don't know if people are willing to pay for the software.

I am in a unique position but honestly what most people do is that they create growth right now, then sell it or smth or take VC funding etc which might include enshittening in the future for profit.

Like I just want to build, and a sustainable/profitable business with a profitable business model but the web just lacks this ability and I think I try to see it from my lens where I am frugal so I expect everyone is so its :/

The internet is interesting if people participate from different nations but that means that I just feel like what I might do will always be risky and I always need a job to fall back upon I guess.

Maybe an compromise I think I will do is work in very adjacent industries and contact them directly and work for 30-40k$ so I can get paid "enough" for my country and basically be good to go I guess.

The thing I get worried about is that if any such business goes bad, I would be on the chopping block and that its inherently more riskier than any business here who will try to extract 10x more value out of me and be the middleman...

I wish to be a software engineer here out of my own passion but since literally everyone wants to be here, my talent literally means jackshit in colleges or their applications so Genius and innovation can come from anywhere but opportunities can have an inequality which I hope I can fix for myself and hopefully help others in solving too one day I guess Idk.

didgetmaster3• 8 months ago

But where do you draw the line? Not buying a game that was created by the Nazi party to promote antisemitism is one thing. Shunning a text editor because one of its creators once said something you disagreed with politically, is another.

d--b2• 8 months ago

Ah I knew it was about people when I saw the LGBT flag as a background.

anal_reactor• 8 months ago

I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use.

That's exactly the message that some people tried to push during the heyday of wokeism but the rest wouldn't listen.

DeathArrow5• 8 months ago

On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!'

Unless you force people to acknowledge your are a dog.

472828473• 8 months ago

I couldn't care less

You do care, otherwise you would not even have thought about it twice, let alone comment.

The most striking argument against this line of reasoning is that there is no possibility for you not to act politically. By ignoring the issue of systemic discrimination (“don’t care don’t personally discriminate”) you actively contribute to and participate in the systemic discrimination.

It’s a choice, and I find it important to leave you the choice, as I do not believe forcing anything on you will actually make you see, but it is true nonetheless that you cannot escape your responsibility: The ability to respond. “You can not not communicate.” Not responding and deciding to remain ignorant about it is also a response, and a highly privileged one.

It would be easy to at least passively support anyone’s attempt at trying to reduce systemic discrimination, but speaking out against it turns it even more into a political act supporting discrimination than doing nothing and by that delegating it to others.

vladvasiliu2• 8 months ago

I have a hard time following this line of reasoning. I don't think GP's point is to "ignore systemic discrimination". Rather, it is to ignore those things on which people are discriminated. How can you discriminate against, say, race, if you don't pay attention to the person's race?

Specifically, for tech, if you happen upon a code written by someone called "didgetmaster" on github, and the author makes no comment about who they are as a person, how does this contribute to discrimination? Isn't this the whole point of anonymous resumes and such to fight discrimination against minorities for employment?

SPICLK22• 8 months ago

As a person, treating everyone the same is an excellent response (and even a political one, if you wish) to counteract a system of discrimination.

zozbot2342• 8 months ago

The most striking argument against this line of reasoning is that there is no possibility for you not to act politically. By ignoring the issue of systemic discrimination (“don’t care don’t personally discriminate”)

This is not a very good argument, it would make the words "political" and "systemic" simply meaningless. First of all, it's implicitly assuming that the only way of effectively addressing the issue of systemic discrimination against X is to actively care about whether X is involved in the stuff we personally use. But "personal" and "systemic" issues and approaches are mutually contrary; that's what "systemic" means. Also if every social action is "political" by definition, what's even the point of resorting to the word "political" to begin with? It's not saying anything of relevance.

gjvc• 8 months ago

what he meant was he "does not care to be told about it"

liveoneggs5• 8 months ago

So systemic discrimination is an individual problem?

Silence is violence?

didgetmaster3• 8 months ago

I said I don't care about the backgrounds of the creators of tech that I use.

I do care when other people in tech insist that I should care, and that I should make decisions based on the identity of certain individuals.

arp2423• 8 months ago

He talks about "throw[ing of] slurs" and "denying rights to others", "wishing violence on people because of their heritage", and that type of thing. Does not besetting people with slurs count as "diversity" now?

Do you think these people will be able to do good technical work if they're constantly beset by this kind of thing? Or do you think they will retreat to somewhere where they don't have to do with that?

And secretively hiding who you are is not a solution. No photographs. No video meets. No YouTube videos. Can never discus anything personal. No conferences.

zozbot2342• 8 months ago

Does not besetting people with slurs count as "diversity" now?

It depends whom you ask! There are certainly some people both off- and on-line who seem to think that uniformly slurring all white, male, cis-sexual, whatever folks as "oppressors" - and even occasionally suggesting, apparently as a serious political proposal, that "Whiteness" (whatever that means) is something that should be forcibly done away with - is an effective way of advocating for diversity.

conartist6• 8 months ago

I didn't get a far as that because I just read through the massive list of enormous security problems caused by loose HTML parsing and that's the exact opposite of cultural accessibility. It requires arcane knowledge and rare skill then to be competent and safe. Tearing down those artificial barriers is how we let more people in!!

strken• 8 months ago

One of the interesting things about the internet is that almost anyone who runs a web browser on their phone is using a processor designed by Sophie Wilson, a trans woman, to run a language designed by Brendan Eich, a guy who donated money to oppose gay marriage and then lost the spot as head honcho of Mozilla because of it. I often think about this and wonder if the two of them ever met, or what would have happened if they did.

The internet doesn't run on "tolerance"; it runs on actual, real neutrality, which enforces tolerance by making anything else impossible. You cannot possibly stop gay people accessing your website any more than you can prevent homophobes or drug dealers or AI startups or North Koreans or fascists. You can ban behaviour but it's impossible to ban classes of people without real-life action.

_heimdall2• 8 months ago

This will all go out the window if and when we need a state issued ID to access the internet.

akimbostrawman3• 8 months ago

I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person

But that makes you a bigot and you know what happens to bigots so put on the shirt, label in your bio and change your speech or HR will have a field day with you. Welcome to the "tolerant" side.

N_Lens• 8 months ago

I think the Author diverges from the main point - that web standards and browsers' interpretation rules are loosely held (tolerance), towards indirectly attacking the current US administration which is allegedly trending towards intolerance and isolationism. Bit of a weird tangent (Though not inaccurate).

shakna• 8 months ago

Allegedly...? They're quite explicit about it.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

It's literally a metaphor about the benefits of tolerance.

whycombinetor3• 8 months ago

What a bizarre bait and switch. Starts talking about browsers allowing malformed HTML and uses that to draw conclusions about allowing certain types of people.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

My god, and we thought those english teachers were idiots when they insisted we should learn things like reading comprehension and metaphors.

whycombinetor3• 8 months ago

It's a poor metaphor. Real tolerance necessitates intolerance - see Marcuse. What is a browser going to do, send malformed HTTP requests and name-and-shame any server who refuses to respond? Servers vs. browsers is not the same type of relationship as people vs. people.

Not to mention that the author's metaphor is implying that certain types of people are malformed.

nicbou3• 8 months ago

I understand what the author is trying to say, and I agree with the second half of the text, but the link between both halves is tenuous at best.

arp2423• 8 months ago

So these certain types of people should not be allowed? Or what are you trying to say here?

IAmBroom2• 8 months ago

They are saying the logical structure is ill-formed.

charcircuit3• 8 months ago

But the web works because browsers are tolerant.

This is more of an artifact of needing to be compatibile with other browsers and more of an arbitrary decision where once one browser starts allowing all sorts of input than everyone else may start needing to if content starts relying on it.

But the world is better for it.

It makes compatibility between different browsers more complicated due to adding a ton of edge cases that all need to be handled the same way as opposed to following a standardized way of writing pages.

The user experience of XHTML was rubbish. The disrespect shown to anyone for deviating from the One True Path made it an unwelcoming and unfriendly place.

The UX could be improved along with developer tools making it harder to mess up and easy to spot mistakes. For example many internet forums have similar requirements of needing to match formatting tags and those have work successfully despite being strict. I think the real issue was that XHTML was introduced too late. Trying to fix things in a decentralized ecosystem is an extremely big uphill battle. If you don't fix things at the very start things can grow out of one's control.

The beauty of the web as a platform is that it isn't a monoculture.

There is also beauty in that there is a standard that everyone can follow to ensure that pages written can work the same in all browsers.

I cannot fathom how someone can look at the beautiful diversity of the web and then declare that only pure-blooded people should live in a particular city.

The way people interact with each other in the real world is very different than the way browsers render pages. I do not think such a comparison makes any sense to make.

How do you acknowledge that the father of the computer was a homosexual, brutally bullied by the state into suicide, and then fund groups that want to deny gay people fundamental human rights?

Just because someone was in the right place at the right time does not mean that they are of perfect moral character. It's similar to the quote to never meet your heros. The people you may look up to in regards to some achievement may not be the best of character and keeping a distance from them may be the best else your opinion of them may be tarnished.

When you throw slurs and denigrate people's pronouns, your ignorance and hatred does a disservice to history and drives away the next generation of talent.

I disagree that this happens. At best it discourages a subset of the next generation, but it is not a subset I would like to work with. These kinds of people could also drive away other potential talent too. Simply increasing the number as opposed to trying to build a positive, healthy, culture and growing it I don't think is the best idea.

This isn't an academic argument over big-endian or little-endian.

It could be about these 2 choices. For example x86 processors were able to be extremely successful despite not being tolerant between big and little endian. By picking a single one and running with it, it's been able to help unify computing on little endian.

fwip2• 8 months ago

I disagree that this happens. At best it discourages a subset of the next generation, but it is not a subset I would like to work with.

The subset most discouraged is likely those targeted by discrimination - women, minorities, gay people. Not a great look to say you'd rather not work with that subset.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

>When you throw slurs and denigrate people's pronouns, your ignorance and hatred does a disservice to history and drives away the next generation of talent.
I disagree that this happens. At best it discourages a subset of the next generation, but it is not a subset I would like to work with.

Tell me more about this subset you wouldn't like to work with.

charcircuit3• 8 months ago

I do not want to work with people who are obnoxious, mentally unstable, love stirring drama, self centered, controlling, etc.

These attributes can make it hard to work with others, or waste time that could have been spent actually building a good product for end users. Of course people are not robots, they have emotions and attitudes that are variable so some people will exhibit these qualities some of the time, but I believe it's important to build a culture that can withstand these rather than amplify them.

mvdtnz3• 8 months ago

This author needs to either be specific about who and what they're talking about or not bother. I don't have the context to understand their specific complaints and I'm not motivated to seek it out.

edent10• 8 months ago

The author (me) wasn't writing for you.

If you haven't been paying attention to the various bigots trying to rouse hate from their position of technology prominence, then I don't think my post will convince you of anything

mvdtnz3• 8 months ago

You strike me as a deeply unpleasant person.

lelanthran5• 8 months ago

If you haven't been paying attention to the various bigots trying to rouse hate from their position of technology prominence, then I don't think my post will convince you of anything

You think your post is not one trying to rouse hate against specific people?

You ever come across the word thoughtcrime? You think telling perhaps 50% or the population they "have no business being here" is inclusive? A large number of the classes who you pretend to be representing actually don't buy into oppression olympics.

You want to write a screed against the owner of X? Sure, go ahead. But your screed is against anyone who doesn't care about verifying a person's race, gender or sexual orientation.

You're presenting an extremist "you're with us or against us" view; some of us who aren't racist, sexist, misogynist, etc also don't want to have to pass your purity test.

Some people just want the puritannicals to leave everyone alone.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

I too celebrate my own ignorance and trumpet my lack of curiosity. At last I have found my home!

lone-cloud• 8 months ago

When I finished reading it I thought it was an anti-Trump piece, but the author also wrote: "That's why it baffles me that some prominent technologists embrace hateful ideologies.". Was Trump a techie too? He must have been behind the creation of JS.

"The ARM processor which powers the modern world was co-designed by a trans woman." This is not factually correct. Roger Wilson was one of the designers of the processor, but he didn't transition to become Sophie Wilson until 9 years after the first release of ARM1 according to Wikipedia.

marcus_holmes2• 8 months ago

Interesting point: was she "trans" before she transitioned, or only afterwards?

Lots of queer folks are pretending to be straight. Or do they only become queer when they emerge from the closet?

jdpage• 8 months ago

Yes, the understanding is that trans people were always trans. It may have taken time for them to understand that and perhaps more to decide to adopt that identity publicly, but they're not "not trans" before that. Other queer identities are generally thought of the same way in queer communities: many people have early experiences (e.g. fixating on same-sex characters in fiction the way peers might opposite-sex characters) that they later realise were early expressions of their orientation.

edent10• 8 months ago

The author (me) is one of literally dozens of people who doesn't live in the USA. We don't all obsess over a foreign politician.

As for Sophie Wilson, I suggest you speak to your trans friends about whether they were trans before they publicly transitioned.

If you don't have any trans friends, perhaps reflect on why that is.

mvdtnz3• 8 months ago

Man you realize your real name is attached to your incredibly obnoxious snarky replies right?

wentick• 8 months ago

The transgenderist stance is that once a man announces he is a woman, then he was always a woman and always will be. Unless he detransitions of course. Then he was always a man and always will be. Same for when a woman declares that she is a man.

So a man who builds his entire career as a man, with all the privilege that brings, as Wilson did, can identify as a woman and these prior achievements now all become that of a woman. Even if this stretches plausibility, what with the sexism of the industry at the time. He can even receive accolades reserved for women, as if he had to work ten times as hard to be taken seriously in a male-dominated field.

This rewriting of history is also why, for example, film credits listing Ellen Page have been retrospectively updated to Elliot Page even though there was no Elliot Page at the time of filming.

simianwords• 8 months ago

XML exists so infinity migration should be allowed?

Nextgrid• 8 months ago

The right-wing extremism we now have in the US is the expected knee-jerk reaction to the left-wing extremism that came before it.

In both cases there's a few true believers and a lot of opportunists who use the cause as a way to further their own agenda. It happened with the left (the master branch rename being the stupidest example), it's now happening in the right, with big words and performative actions such as ICE raids while the root cause of the problem is not addressed (industries reliant on large-scale illegal immigrant labor are left alone).

The right answer is somewhere in the middle of the two camps. Unfortunately until then people suffer on both sides while opportunists use the conflict for their own interests.

wredcoll10• 8 months ago

Good point dude, a few super online people writing forum posts about changing the default name of the main git branch is exactly equivalent to launching gestapo style terror raids on the population at large while ignoring the consitution and due process.

Tomato - tomahto am I right?

edent10• 8 months ago

The idea that the US has experienced anything even close to moderate left-wing policies is - from the perspective of an outsider - laughable.

I'd love to know what extreme positions you think US politicians have enforced and what the moderate position is.

amatecha2• 8 months ago

What left-wing extremism was that, exactly? Extreme upholding of human rights and equality? Extreme kindness and respect for fellow human beings? Extreme acceptance of people from all backgrounds, religious beliefs and sexual orientation? Extreme letting people live their damn life in whatever way they want as long as it doesn't harm others? Yeah, who wouldn't want to push back on that, sounds terrible eh?

So on this so-called extreme left, what exactly was/is so bad? You are expected to be nice to people when you meet them? You should consider the feelings of other human beings before you act? You had to rename a git branch because most of the people on your team agreed it's kinda lame to use a reference to slavery in a technical term? I've always wondered what people think the "extreme left" is and why they even remotely think it's somehow just as bad as the fascistic bullshit that sadistic, fear-driven socipaths keep working towards.

akimbostrawman3• 8 months ago

Extreme kindness and respect for fellow human beings?

I hope not towards people that disagree with you or are labeled with an ism since they are monster.

Extreme acceptance of people from all backgrounds, religious beliefs and sexual orientation?

Does that include Jihadists and child molester/groomer?

So on this so-called extreme left, what exactly was/is so bad?

That is left as an exercise for the reader if you manage to answer truthfully.

gaigalas• 8 months ago

Dude.

HTML4 era was full of parser hacks. Increasingly more and more parser hacks.

XHTML tried to solve that, and make HTML parsing more acessible to everyone. It's not about rigor, it's about making it simpler.

HTML5 goes in the other direction. It formalized all those hacks into very, very strict parsing rules. It's super strict and specific, to the point that only companies with large resources can realistically invest in a proper HTML5 engine.

So, the metaphor does not hold.

You actually don't need a technical-aspect analogue to advocate for better, more inclusive human behavior. It's much better if you don't rely on those. People should not need a spec as a mirror to understand that.

bonesss• 8 months ago

Well put. In that broken metaphor we’ve seemingly enter into a web ‘inclusiveness’ discussion focused on pronouns over, say, accessibility for visually impaired readers and readers reliant on tool-based assistance…

Degenerative diseases and chronic functional limitations are super, duper, inclusive to start with.

From SGML and crystallizing the dreams of archivists, librarians, and academics for centuries we’ve ended in a place where actual Microsoft has to use other companies’ web engine because “too ‘spensive” and the ability to even copy text from a website isn’t a guarantee. If you can even see the text under the ads, inline ads, the cookie popup, the delayed email list popup, and then the helpful ai chat agent pop-up.

Stricter markup yields simpler tooling yields better accessibility and transformations. Letting the public web degenerate hurts humanity, every race and creed included.

Incipient3• 8 months ago

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong.

It had an intolerant ideology.

Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiring exactly 1 inch plate is intolerance!! You can't discriminate against different thicknesses, all thicknesses are equally valuable!"

What a useless position to hold.

raincole3• 8 months ago

Thank you. These are right out of my mouth. I mean I'd have made a similar comment if I didn't worry the strong words would get me flagged.

The whole article is weird af. How are tolerating XHTML syntax error and tolerating different sexualities remotely comparable? The metaphor stretches itself so thin that you can see the fallacies beneath.

csallen• 8 months ago

Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiring exactly 1 inch plate is intolerance!!

The Brooklyn bridge is a singular piece of infrastructure that millions depend on. I think it makes for a bad analogy.

A better analogy would be something more like websites, where people can tinker and create and contribute without much consequence. For example, the local community garden's board saying, "Requiring a precise and strictly uniform planting layout and soil composition is intolerance!" Well... that'd be quite reasonable?

nish__• 8 months ago

It's bad because it makes it harder to implement a browser so the "spec" just becomes whatever the leading implementation supports.

When I clicked on the article, I thought it was going to be about how the web gives a space for all voices even the marginalized or minorities to be seen/heard. Not this nonsense.

dang• 8 months ago

This comment breaks HN's guidelines in many ways. Can you please review them and stick to the rules? We're trying for something quite different here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. If you meant your comment as an amusing meta play on intolerance, then I'm sorry for misreading. That would of course be much better, but after a bit of wavering I concluded that you actually meant what you were saying here.

Incipient3• 8 months ago

Apologies, guidelines noted. Upom reread of my comment, it was less constructive than intended.

edent10• 8 months ago

Thank you very much for your constructive criticism on my writing. I appreciate the candid feedback.

I must take one small issue though. Every engineering project I've worked on has very definitely specified a tolerance. Something may be X cm ± Y mm.

Tolerance is essential to engineering.

Incipient3• 8 months ago

As pointed out my comment was not as constructive as it could have been, apologies for that.

It was a bad morning. I do appreciate being called on it.

However my less dramatic point, that precice protocols and exact requirements is what makes technical projects successful, is what I could have conveyed.

dokyun• 8 months ago

What the web runs on is freedom, the freedom to express and disseminate any information one pleases with impunity. That prominent figureheads embrace the hateful ideologies that you speak of is merely a tide of the current times, and will change as soon as they become unpopular, just as they had quit embracing this "tolerance" which was in full force a few years prior. Because they are not about a hate of people, but hate of freedom: hate is merely a pretense, a convenient vehicle through which freedoms can be taken. I think freedom is the most important thing worth fighting for, and you had my support up until now. But then you go on to say that those outside your own window of ideology have no place here. It's much the same methods that the people you complain of employ: to be disingenuous about what you really want-- it's your inability to force your will upon others that you're frustrated with. You have missed the forest for the trees, and the context has already been created for you: you are projecting a battle for the rights of certain groups onto a battle against the rights of all, and you've been turned against yourself. Freedom is something, if you believe in it, you must believe in in its entirety: not almost-freedom, or a convenient sliver of freedom that fits into your own ideological window. You lack the qualifications to exercise tolerance.

WhyOhWhyQ• 8 months ago

Well that took a surprising turn. (1) Friendly dunking on someone named todepond. (2) Interesting ideas about xhtml... looks like I'm going to learn something here. (3) Ideological conflict.

Is there a backstory here? Or is this just random venting?

Anyways, I reject the idea that loose programming is more "tolerant" in any sociological manner.

gldrk2• 8 months ago

You can make your HTML as malformed as you like and the web-browser will do its best to display the page for you. I love the todepond website, but the source-code makes me break out in a cold sweat. Yet it renders just fine.

It renders just fine because it is syntactically valid HTML. HTML is not and is not supposed to be XML. It is originally an SGML application described by its Document Type Definition and SGML Declaration (https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/HTML4.decl). HTML uses and has always used many SGML features not found in XML, such as tag inference (<html><title> becomes <html><head><title>, becomes ). Some of these, like SHORTTAG, were never even implemented in browsers. These days HTML is defined by the WHATWG ‘living standard’, which largely just restates the SGML DTD rules in plain language.

(Okay, https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.todepond.... shows a few minor errors, bet you couldn’t spot them.)

This is independent of the fact that browsers do try their best to render objectively broken markup, usually by ignoring the broken parts. In principle they could do the same with XHTML, but someone decided it would be ‘helpful’ to show the parser’s diagnostic output instead, and the rest is history.

raincole3• 8 months ago

that browsers do try their best to render objectively broken markup

And it's a cancerous engineering principle. People say NullPointerException is the one billion error, but (the misuse of) Postel's Law on web frontend is a multi-billion error. Once one mainstream browser decided to "tolerate" an error, websites would start relying on that behavior, making it a permanent feature of web.

If browsers were less tolerant the whole frontend development would be much smoother. The past decade of JavaScript framework farce would have probably never happened.

The proper way to deal with syntax is making better tools: linters, interpreters and compilers that spew clear error messages. Not trying to 'tolerant' errors.

tadfisher2• 8 months ago

The tolerance is now precisely specified in the HTML5 parsing algorithm, far from "try their best". This is good, because browsers fail in mostly the same ways as each other, humans do not need a CS degree to handwrite Web content, and your tools can still write perfectly valid HTML5.

gldrk2• 8 months ago

Postel’s law allows a degree of forward compatibility. This was important before continuous software updates were practical. User-facing code is the best place to apply it: I want my text editor to highlight invalid source code on a best effort basis, whereas the compiler should promptly bail out.

tadfisher2• 8 months ago

More than that, HTML5 specifies how browsers handle "broken" HTML. There's a super-precise algorithm that dictates what to do for unclosed tags, how to fix up the DOM for incorrect nesting, specific fallbacks/behavior for invalid attributes, and so much more. I would say this algorithm, along with its element/attribute-specific components, are where most of the HTML5 effort was applied, and continues to be such for newer Web APIs.

Browsers "trying their best" was like half of the Browser Wars, and what HTML5 was largely created to address. The other half being nonstandard ActiveX crap and IE-specific JavaScript.

blitz_skull• 8 months ago

Who, exactly, is this guy angry at?

groby_b• 8 months ago

Postel was wrong, and it's got nothing to do with tolerance of other people, and everything with solid engineering (or encouraging the absence thereof). It mattered for rapid adoption, it is the curse of any stable system.

But if we must make stretched analogies, I'll give you instead "The Standard You Walk Past" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_TfZdIhIgg

It's making a pretty compelling case that keeping standards matters, "anything goes" is a bad idea, and it does all that in the name of tolerance towards other humans.

bitwize2• 8 months ago

Postel's Law was one of those Great Mistakes of computing, alongside null pointers, fork(2), and well, C in general. Conform to the spec or be in error. If you allow for sloppiness, you create a problem because different implementations will tolerate different kinds of sloppiness, yielding incompatibilities and horrors like "quirks mode".

XHTML tried to rein this in but by then the cat was out of the bag, and every Tom, Dick, and Mary who was trying to learn HTML was used to the mire tolerant behavior.

Artoooooor3• 8 months ago

Maybe developers should be held to stricter standards than their users. I can demand developers to close tags they are expected to close. But users should be allowed to provide their document numbers as "12345" "123 45" or "12-34-5" if all these notations are used in their country.

bitwize2• 7 months ago

Then specify the accepted forms and specify a canonicalization algorithm to translate the acceptable forms into some base representation. Don't just leave it up to implementations.

d--b2• 8 months ago

I mean no offense but comparing fault tolerance to being tolerant with other people only works because it’s the same word that’s used for both meanings. But that has absolutely nothing to do.

If it weren’t the case, you’d argue that people pushing XHTML were intolerant bastards.

curtisblaine• 8 months ago

This article is a prime example of false equivalence. The cool thing about false equivalence is that, when you throw the laws of logic out of the window, you can prove pretty much everything. Anyone can write a specular article proving that intolerance is actually good since very stricter programming languages (like Rust and its borrow checker) are inherently safer.

Imustaskforhelp6• 8 months ago

I agree, thank you for giving me the word to this and giving an explaination too

I just believe that there are ways to systemetically prove both of these things independently and I am not sure about the XHTML and other debate but here is my thoughts on "tolerance" itself

I don't think that there is an inherent purpose is life, we have to build one for ourselves, what is the most rare thing in the universe, its not any material or power or anything worth having but rather friendships and enjoyments and treating people as the ends and not means to something. (My own summary-ish from Everything is fcked by Mark manson, not the best writer but I was young when I read the book and so maybe I can recommend it)

Then reading about how to win friends and influence people, One of the key points I took from it is to be more agreeable and try to find common points you can work upon and set aside the differences and thus tolerance and there are 10 s of example from the book where I can share but basically debates help noone if they become petty, if we have disagreements they should be respectful in a way...

These are my views on how to treat everyone equally I guess which I might wish to be applied to myself too so thats why I apply it too others or try to in a way too

Personally I hate extremism from both sides since I feel that its bad but I can understand why people can get extremism from both sides and I try to give them chances to try to improve the situation from mediocre opinions if someone is too extremist from any side if I can be honest.

I think extremism in general is bad I guess tho. Fck social media for making everyone nowadays so extremist tho. The only people I am extremist towards is big tech when you realize that facebook targets young girls and sees if they delete their photos, they are insecure and shoves beauty ads on their face.

This behaviour is really sickening and I think we can all agree that.

karlkloss• 8 months ago

My tolerance for online ads is zero. Do I break the web?

Artoooooor3• 8 months ago

Maybe you are hateful and intolerant to ads!

akimbostrawman3• 8 months ago

So he better stops because as we know hate is always bad and often even illegal. Love the ads now!

DeathArrow5• 8 months ago

Cherry picking examples from science, technology or other fields to support an ideology isn't going to attract external supporters to that ideology but to make the bias stronger for the people who already believe in that ideology. Also, I rather read more "hacker news" and less ideological ramblings.

DeathArrow5• 8 months ago

Just imagine if financial software would run on tolerance. Or medical software. Or software controlling planes, trains or nuclear power plants.

Imustaskforhelp6• 8 months ago

Denying rights to others is poison. Wishing violence on people because of their heritage is harmful to all of us.

I think this is true for all cases, the author gives us example of trans co creator of arm architecture and alan turing and how their contributions in the web mattered

But I think quite frankly, even if that might not be the case, there STILL ISNT any reason why we should discriminate and I feel like some part of the intepretation I got was that we should be tolerant to all communities currently still persecuted because some part of them contributed to us...

But what about communities that did not support you because they weren't in the shape of? I feel like we should be tolerant to them.

I tend to stay less political nowadays but just look at the case of sudan. Its state is atrocious. I am not sure if sudan contributed quite heavily on the web or not so pardon me but even if they might not have, We should still be tolerant and like stop the atrocities happening there in my opinion.

Basically the point I am trying to make might be obvious but with or without the creations of alan turing, and co creator of arm, We should still be tolerant to each other as long as they are tolerant to us, thus a tolerant society.

I like referring to the paradox of tolerance as its a key of literally every problem in my opinion and this time tho its actually as clear as day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I think what we as a society need is to look at if we are infighting with each other over petty differences created by spews of lies by people in power to stay in power so that we infight. The british used conquer and divide on India and africa which I am not going to lie, still impacts these countries.

I am pretty sure that people do divide and conquer on their own people too, Power and the Powerful don't discriminate in this sense.

TLDR: We should be tolerant of each other as a whole even if there might not be any web contributions simply because being kind is mostly good I guess but also we should be intolerant to the true intolerant of society which try to create this divide from (both sides) imo and just try to remove any type of extremism and actually focus on class issues too.

DeathArrow5• 8 months ago

To credit a technical advance to a person's identity is to commit the 'Correlation is not Causation' fallacy. While diversity in a technical pool is interesting, the technical merit of the contribution must stand alone, independent of the contributor's personal characteristics. Shifting the focus from 'Does it work?' to 'Who wrote it?' is fundamentally anti-meritocratic and undermines the value of the technical discussion.

The health of a technical community like this one depends on its ability to separate the merit of the work from the moral character of the contributor. This is a necessary separation to preserve the integrity of the technical commons. For instance, a paper on a secure hash algorithm should be judged only on its mathematical proof, regardless of the author's personal life. Any attempt to link the two injects ad hominem fallacy into a technical evaluation.

edent10• 8 months ago

You'll notice that the author (me) didn't actually credit the invention of the computer to Turing's sexuality.

But it is an undeniable fact that he was gay.

If the British government had banned him from working at Bletchly Park because of that, would the computer still have been developed? Certainly he wasn't the only one working on it, but historians and computer scientists seem to agree that he was a key figure.

The health of a technical community depends on its ability to attract contributors from a wide variety of backgrounds.

We agree that the result of the work is what is important. I'm arguing that Stephen Hawking can't participate unless you install wheelchair ramps.

Artoooooor3• 8 months ago

The disrespect shown to anyone for deviating from the One True Path made it an unwelcoming and unfriendly place.

Standards are the One True Path. That's why they are standards. I see no disrespect in enforcing them. Even more - the ones not following them and forcing users to burn additional CPU cycles because browsers have to assume they may be parsing crap are the disrespectful ones. Come on, it's not that hard, especially with help of IDEs.

liveoneggs5• 8 months ago

The web is built on standards/RFCs (laws) + implementation and enforcement of those standards (executive). The citizens of the web are just as apathetic/short-sighted as your average voter and will embrace the walled garden (authoritarianism) if it fits their current narrative.

account422• 8 months ago

History shows us that all progress comes from the meeting of diverse people, with different ideas, and different backgrounds.

Maybe don't discard people as "hateful" just because you don't agree with their ideas then.

The web runs on tolerance

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