Solar-powered, Self-hosted Low-tech Magazine (opens in new tab)

Either HN re-organizes the whole system so that "nothing can be lost" to the careful user - maybe in an encyclopedic txonomical tree -, or threads will be lost. This Solar powered etc. initiative is new to me, for example.

I don't care how often it's reposted (within limits), this is a really cool site. Stuff like this needs more exposure.

The funny thing is that every time it's reaches the frontpage, the HN rush will probably cause it to burn through the battery quite quickly.

Thankfully it's very sunny right now in Spain.

Still puts a smile on my face every time I see it posted.

xkcd 1053

I tried to do a comparison once.

It was approximate, because I didn't have the original images (Or I only had one), but IMO JPEG looks better per pound of bits than dithering. At the same bitrate as their dithered images, it looks a bit crummy, but you can still pick up details that the dithering loses.

They won't admit it's for the aesthetic. If dithering looked as good bit-for-bit as JPEG, independent of aesthetic, nobody would have invented or adopted JPEG.

I sent them a email about that (to their comments email) and never got a response.

> WebP

No to webp as it's a still vp8 video frame meaning an image codec is burdened with a huge video codec dependency.

Have you not tried?

A 4-cols PNG can be halfish a JPEG.

Of course, a ~10% quality JPEG can be one fifthish of the original, and present more apparent information than the PNG - but it will look dirty.

For Slack we post whenever it is down and for Low Tech Magazine we post whenever it is up. :upside-down-smiley-emoji:

By contrast this discussion thread is 7 KiB.