webp: it's fine, actually
i do wish i had more software support for jpeg XL so i could fuck around with it
anyway i'm serious. gripe about webp being Bad because software doesn't support it yet but it's genuinely a very cool image format
lemme boost the parboiling thread...
anyhow sometimes i just see anti-webp things on the internet and i have to go "hang on, i know it was made by google and it's a mild annoyance, but there is actually good reason this exists and it's pretty cool and it's a format that can effectively replace jpeg, png, and gif all in one"
@manifold ...wait, how does webp replace webp?
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@Felthry i mistyped and meant PNG! oops
@manifold oh that makes more sense
honestly the big thing we don't like about webp is how... quiet its introduction was. it was just suddenly this thing you saw places, there weren't any widespread articles or discussions about it like there were for gif and png back in the day, it was just kinda suddenly There
I don't like things that are just kinda suddenly There without explanation.
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@Felthry that does make sense! i think this partly stems from the fact that the primary usage has been aimed at web dev, and, like, it was developed by google
so there's a twofold niche. most people using the internet don't really neeeed to know about webp except when they save an image off a wiki and it turns out to be in a weird format, and we run in very anticapitalist circles that aren't likely to go "oh wow cool look at what's on the google developers blog!!"
@Felthry i mean, honestly, i didn't even know the google developers blog properly existed in the form i saw it in when i was looking up stuff about webp initially lol
@Felthry point is it was announced, just not to end users
@manifold i mean, the primary purposes of gif and png were web-oriented (gif being a format that works well on low-bandwidth connections, and png being "hey what if gif but *not* patent-encumbered, and maybe better in a couple ways too")
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@Felthry well, yes, but GIF was developed in 1987, and PNG in 1997. these technologies were created in an era where "using the internet" meant "making your own website" a LOT more than it does today
@manifold i don't generally like how much the general perception of people using the internet has changed
like it feels like it went from "anyone can learn this" to "you don't have to learn this" and it lost a lot along the way
the assumption of the average user has gone from "understands at least a bit of what they're doing" to "completely clueless" to "completely clueless, and big companies take advantage of that"
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@manifold i want to encourage people to have a baseline level of tech literacy again, i want them to stop walling things off and hiding the more "technical" stuff from users, don't encourage people's ignorance, encourage them to learn
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@Felthry that's fair and an agreeable frustration!
@manifold it feels too much like all the random social conventions that were just suddenly There and we were expected to Know Them and Follow Them despite never being told about them
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