[Mercenary]

For the last few years I have noticed that the internet is becoming a lot slower. Meaning websites take a much longer to open and load fully, and clicking through to the next pages without waiting ages seems to be an ongoing problem.

Now, I know that there is much more data, videos, gifs, popups and especially relentless advertising then there was 5 or 10 years ago, but despite having the most up to date browsers and computer, there are still mainstream "normal" websites that freeze my computer or cause my browser to crash....even if I only just have 2 tabs open.

The worst offenders seem to be the mainstream media news websites. Now I know they are the ones with the most cash flow difficulties and many of them are near bankruptcy, but the amount of useless shit on their webpages (mostly gifs and autoplay video advertising) and the difficulty in opening them without crashing or freezing has actually made it impossible to read a lot of news anymore. I am actually less informed now, because I can't open links to news stories I want to read about. Even Breitbart News, which is supposed to mirror many of our viewpoints here, seems to have this problem.

Anyone else here notice how much slower internet browsing is compared to 5 or 10 years ago ?

[cascadecombo]

Do you use ad blockers? Also, when was the last time you upgraded your pc or reformatted?

[Columbo]

It's all the porn guys are watching 24/7. Get off internet bitchez!

[262]

Came into thread expecting a laugh, but I agree with OP.

Might reinstall NoScript (Google it).

[Thomas the Rhymer]

These days, it's quiet possible that your computer has been infected with military grade malware and is hijacking your internet signal for its own ends.

Plus, a lot of software these days has built in internet connectivity added to it. Stuff like Windows and Adobe are now actively sending info back to their corporations about your behaviour, and that also hijacks a lot of your internet signal.

Auto-updates are also horrendous. Windows auto-updates can destroy your connection, and most programs these days will auto-update without letting you know.

But yes, there is also an enormous amount of bloat on the web these days.

[DJ-Matt]

Adblock plus + Disconnect browser addons seem to have sped things up for me. Although sometimes disconnect actually interferes with normal operation of a web form (buttons and stuff).

[The Beast1]

Merc, ping me bro.

[Plus Oultre]

+1 for AdBlock

[RoastBeefCurtains4Me]

I see this as well. Newspaper and TV channel websites are often completely unloadable. As mentioned, Breitbart is guilty of this, and Instapundit is very bad too.

A lot of these sites work better on my phone. The PC browsers seem to allow more abuse. I haven't bothered with adblocker up to now, but I think I'll try it.

[DaveR]

(10-27-2016 08:28 AM)Mercenary Wrote:  

The worst offenders seem to be the mainstream media news websites.

Here's what your computer has to load when you visit https://www.washingtonpost.com/

   

uBlock Origin will clean all of that up (block most of it) for you. It may break sites occasionally, but on the whole will speed things up considerably.

Here's the same matrix after installing uBlock Origin:
   

(10-27-2016 09:37 AM)262 Wrote:  

Might reinstall NoScript (Google it).

Try uMatrix... it offers more fine-grained control. But it's only useful for very technical users, and even for most of them it's too much effort.

[debeguiled]

The Daily Mail can shut down my computer anytime it wants.

[XPQ22]

Install the latest Xubuntu and Chrome with Adblock on a three year old $150 laptop, and you can have 25 tabs of modern garbage-plugin-filled websites up with no trouble at all, and your chances of being pwned by 'sploits are slim to none, even with no additional effort. Slap a $49 256 gig solid state drive in there and enjoy going from cold to a fully functional desktop in about 12 seconds.

Unless you do music production or graphic design, or play a ton of vidja games (which you really shouldn't), there isn't much reason to use Windows anymore. And it's easy to set up a dual boot if you absolutely must sometimes.

[Chowder Head]

I've notice streaming sites like stream2watch having been lagging alot lately. That shit better be corrected by the McGregor fight.

[Tigre]

Yeah, Breitbart was always slow to load for me and tied up my browser a lot.

Switching out an old fashioned hard drive for an SSD should make a big difference. The SSD is mostly important for the operating system - you can still keep a hard drive in there too for storage.

[Foolsgo1d]

Actually adblock may not be the solution and could actually be conspiring against you, as well as your browser. I've noticed in the past year sites which have adverts or some form of scripts running will not load or be a lot slower if you block ad scripts and images.

Load up your browsers without ad blocking software and see the difference.

[fortysix]

Zerohedge was becoming insanely slow for me and then I learned something which changed my life:

On chrome:

Goto settings // advanced // privacy // content // javascript // manage = block javascript on newssites you visit.

OMG what a world of difference!!!

[DaveR]

(10-27-2016 07:32 PM)se7en Wrote:  

Zerohedge was becoming insanely slow for me and then I learned something which changed my life:

On chrome:

Goto settings // advanced // privacy // content // javascript // manage = block javascript on newssites you visit.

OMG what a world of difference!!!

That's what uMatrix is for... you can choose what to allow/block on a per site, per source(domain), and per category (js, images, css, plugins, frames, etc.) basis. See the matrices I posted above for the Washington Post.

(10-27-2016 07:10 PM)Foolsgo1d Wrote:  

Actually adblock may not be the solution and could actually be conspiring against you, as well as your browser. I've noticed in the past year sites which have adverts or some form of scripts running will not load or be a lot slower if you block ad scripts and images.

Load up your browsers without ad blocking software and see the difference.

The problem there is that Adblock/Adblock plus are inefficient and can't handle the number of entries that blocklists have grown to. If you don't want to give up list-based ad blocking, a better option would be to use uBlock Origin.

[ivansirko]

Its possible if you are using an older version of Windows it is filled with malware. Format and Reinstall. Ublock Origin is awesome. Clear your browser cache? Get a better router?

[la bodhisattva]

I've noticed that ROK runs like shit on Chrome (yes, Chrome, I know). DailyWire and Breitbart also lag like hell. It's made me suspicious.

[Latinopan]

Depending on the browser you use, you can make Adobe flash ask for permission before it runs, many websites mostly news have small videos reproducing around the page, prevention flash from running free can save data because every video reproducer needs to get permission from the user before playing.

[Irenicus]

(10-27-2016 05:07 PM)Tigre Wrote:  

Yeah, Breitbart was always slow to load for me and tied up my browser a lot.

Switching out an old fashioned hard drive for an SSD should make a big difference. The SSD is mostly important for the operating system - you can still keep a hard drive in there too for storage.

On Firefox it is slow as fuck. For example, when I open multiple tabs when browsing Breitbart, Firefox crashes.


Switching to Chrome alleviated all issues. No lagging whatsoever. It is not because of Flash, as I originally thought. Firefox is to blame.



Firefox, you are fired!

[weambulance]

I keep hearing about how great Firefox is... yeah, maybe 10 years ago. It's sucked since about 2009 as far as I can tell. For years at a time Firefox would crash and exit any time Flash turned up on a site.

Not that Chrome is all that great either. Even idling in the background with just a few tabs it will knock 1/3 off my laptop's battery life. Also, really shitty memory management and background tab grouping. No, I don't care if google sees how perverted I am by tracking my viewing habits.

Brave isn't there yet for my needs on my Windows machines but I have high hopes for it. I do use Brave on my Linux boxes and it's better than anything else I've tried there.

The fundamental problem with the modern internet, though, is just shoddy web development practices. Breitbart loads like 40 scripts in the background. Other news sites are often worse. Plenty of sites are just terribly coded and will slam one of my CPU cores to 100% for 30 seconds every time I load a page without noscript. Shitty web developers who don't understand why it's bad to make calls to fifty different servers every time the site loads a page, or site owners who want infinite analytics but who don't understand how that affects performance? Can't say for sure. I doubt it's going to get better any time soon, especially with the proliferation of frameworks that have baked-in efficiency problems.

[ivansirko]

(10-27-2016 09:25 PM)weambulance Wrote:  

I keep hearing about how great Firefox is... yeah, maybe 10 years ago. It's sucked since about 2009 as far as I can tell. For years at a time Firefox would crash and exit any time Flash turned up on a site.

Not that Chrome is all that great either. Even idling in the background with just a few tabs it will knock 1/3 off my laptop's battery life. Also, really shitty memory management and background tab grouping. No, I don't care if google sees how perverted I am by tracking my viewing habits.

Brave isn't there yet for my needs on my Windows machines but I have high hopes for it. I do use Brave on my Linux boxes and it's better than anything else I've tried there.

The fundamental problem with the modern internet, though, is just shoddy web development practices. Breitbart loads like 40 scripts in the background. Other news sites are often worse. Plenty of sites are just terribly coded and will slam one of my CPU cores to 100% for 30 seconds every time I load a page without noscript. Shitty web developers who don't understand why it's bad to make calls to fifty different servers every time the site loads a page, or site owners who want infinite analytics but who don't understand how that affects performance? Can't say for sure. I doubt it's going to get better any time soon, especially with the proliferation of frameworks that have baked-in efficiency problems.

Firefox is good for its customization. The problem is what you install may be total crap or even harm you.

Brave has about a year. They also want to allow micropayments. We shall see.

[Kona]

Try getting your own modem, if you are using the one from the cable company. That thing somehow gave me all kinds of adds.

I have this satellite service also that is super fast.

Aloha!

[IvanDrago]

There are so many variables going on here. This is a retarded thread.