Aug 5, 2026, 9:23 AM…The dev expectation that a phone is less than X years old actively feeds the incentive for a phone to *be less than X years old*.
Which feeds more non-metabolisable e-waste, and accelerates the fracturing of ‘critical’ metals supply chains.
This is just a small part of how very far we are from paths towards a less toxic future
Aug 5, 2026, 9:28 AM…I kind of accept, however, that even though the above should be obvious to technologists, it isn’t.
And the way we will learn to get in touch with constraints and the imperative of device longevity is to face actual shortages that become more and more persistent.
Probs coming soon
Aug 5, 2026, 9:40 AM…Well, turns out I am wrong about BBC News images.
They are in fact using `<picture>` to serve a .jpg by default, but their `<source>` alternative is a .webp (when surely a .avif would be better).
What is breaking image rendering on my phone is their incomprehensible use of JavaScript which breaks this.
I can say this because when I disable JS on my phone, all their images load.
There is absolutely no need to do what they’re doing. There is no :hover effect or some such on images…
Aug 5, 2026, 9:53 AM…What there is, though, is some of the most astonishingly extruded ‘card’ code I have seen in a while.
Some 35 elements to render
- A heading with link
- A paragraph
- An image with link
- A tag with link
- A relative publish time
…so could be accessibly done with about 11 elements
Aug 5, 2026, 9:56 AM…Anyway, the net effect on my phone is NO IMAGES until…
I tap on a link and the image becomes momentarily visible before going to the article.
Don’t fuck with its visibility. Just show it!
@urlyman the Graun uses .webp too. Similarly deep nested.
The "thumbnails" render with FF 19.1.7 guts with JS off, but the best way to see the full-size image without JS is to copy the thumb and feed it to google similar image search. Honestly. It used to be easier.
I think this is all part of policies to make unsanctioned image parsing more difficult: bots and people not accepting advertising... WHILST ... maintaining some sort of commitment to free access to their viewpoint.
Aug 5, 2026, 12:16 PM@wavesculptor ah yes, that’s plausible :(
@urlyman
See also device/bootloader locking. After researching https://mastodon.online/@Orb2069/115989738261880426
For entirely too long I realize it's impractical with a whole pile of cheap pre-5g cellphones because getting that level of access to the hardware is practically a "scaling Everest" level effort.
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