> By default, all browsers look for a file /favicon.ico in a site's root directory.
That must be a drop in the ocean compared to all the requests for non-existent favicons thanks to this behavior... (Which can be prevented via [2], apparently!)
> 180x180 is the largest icon size any iOS device requires. Other devices will downscale the image to fit.
Using more data (which uses both energy and is often still paid!) and some compute resources to downscale, which wears out the battery of mobile devices, requiring a swap or incentivizing people to upgrade sooner than they otherwise would. Better reason about the externalities thoroughly when throwing out vague statements like "more environmentally friendly websites"!
By the same author: "why lowercase letters save data" [1], "Show you how I came to the conclusion that title case on hacker news emits the equivalent yearly carbon as a car driving the width of Sri Lanka." – featuring sub-headlines rendered using some squiggly font effect powered by an SVG filter that probably uses enough collective renderer CPU/GPU cycles to drive the same car to the moon and back.
I get and applaud the desire to make the world a better place. But something that people seem to overlook too often with short-sighted initiatives such as this is that one of the most finite resources is human attention. Making somebody feel good about having spent time and effort to implement symbolic/effectively useless measures means that that time and effort won't be available elsewhere. Efficiency matters even in saving the world. (On the other hand, I guess this stunt did get me thinking, proving once again that one of the most efficient ways to find a better solution is to put a wrong statement on the internet :)
> A single .ico file can contain multiple icons with different dimensions.
and as far as I know, no browser will download partial ico files. So the bytes saved by not including a link tag is immediately reversed by the browser having to download your 16x, 32x, 64x, 128x and 256x ico when it only wants the 16x
> By default, all browsers look for a file /favicon.ico in a site's root directory.
That must be a drop in the ocean compared to all the requests for non-existent favicons thanks to this behavior... (Which can be prevented via [2], apparently!)
> 180x180 is the largest icon size any iOS device requires. Other devices will downscale the image to fit.
Using more data (which uses both energy and is often still paid!) and some compute resources to downscale, which wears out the battery of mobile devices, requiring a swap or incentivizing people to upgrade sooner than they otherwise would. Better reason about the externalities thoroughly when throwing out vague statements like "more environmentally friendly websites"!
By the same author: "why lowercase letters save data" [1], "Show you how I came to the conclusion that title case on hacker news emits the equivalent yearly carbon as a car driving the width of Sri Lanka." – featuring sub-headlines rendered using some squiggly font effect powered by an SVG filter that probably uses enough collective renderer CPU/GPU cycles to drive the same car to the moon and back.
I get and applaud the desire to make the world a better place. But something that people seem to overlook too often with short-sighted initiatives such as this is that one of the most finite resources is human attention. Making somebody feel good about having spent time and effort to implement symbolic/effectively useless measures means that that time and effort won't be available elsewhere. Efficiency matters even in saving the world. (On the other hand, I guess this stunt did get me thinking, proving once again that one of the most efficient ways to find a better solution is to put a wrong statement on the internet :)
[1] https://endtimes.dev/why-lowercase-letters-save-data/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705304