It used to happen sporadically but now it is a daily experience. As I am browsing the net I click on a link (usually a newspaper website). The page starts to load. Then I wait. And I wait. And I wait. It takes several seconds.
Once loaded, my patience is not rewarded since my MacBook Air mid-2011 seems to barely be able to keep up. Videos start playing left and right. Sound is not even turned off by default anymore. This shitshow festival of lights and sounds is discouraging but I am committed to learn about world news. I continue.
I have the silly idea to scroll down (searching for the meaty citations located between double quotes) and the framerate drops to 15 frames per second. Later, for no apparent reason, all fans will start running at full speed. The air exhaust will expel burning hot air. MacOS X’s ActivityMonitor.app reveals countless “Helpers” processes which are not helping at all. I wonder if the machine is going to die on my lap, or take off like a jet and fly away.
This happens even on my brand new laptop or my crazy powerful custom PC. This short article is basically a reply to the article we talked about earlier this week, and I’m pretty sure this is a subject we won’t be done with for a long time to come.
Firefox with uBlock Origin and if something gets out of hand block it and it is never a problem again. Sad we have to do this yes, but if your browsing a free site chances are you are the product.
More than that, it’s functional. However, I have never encountered the issues he mentions with any of my computers. The reason? I manage what loads. The author writes: “I am well aware there are many elements between a file on a server and the eyes of a reader.” To which I add that many, perhaps most elements don’t make it to my browser.
Everyone reading here knows how it’s done: First you block the ads. Then you control the Javascript. This can also involve the caching of needed third party requests via an add-on like Decentraleyes. The Web then is fast enough in 4GB Celerons. With an i3, it flies.
Many sites will blocks access if they detect an adblocker. Disabling javascript will prevent many sites from working properly.
If enabling Javascript but keeping ads blocked doesn’t allow them to work, those are the sites that aren’t worth the cost.
But then how do you know which sites respect you by having only moderate amount of ads?
There’s a uBO filter list that kills most of those, and you can always block the anti-adblock JS.
And guess what, few of those sites are really needed in real life. If they don’t want me, then often I don’t want them.
Edited 2018-09-29 04:02 UTC
This very page of comments was blank for 15 seconds while god-knows-what javascript loaded in the background (and I’m on a gigabit link!). Even as I type into this textbox to post this comment I’m staring at a “Connecting to cdn.optkit.com…” tooltip at the bottom of the page and the loading icon on the tab is still spinning.
This is likely because I’m using Privacy Badger, which is blocking access to tag.crsspxl.com, tags-cdn.deployads.com, and partner.googleadservices.com.
So despite all of Thom’s ranting about bloated sites and privacy violating software, OSAlert has a deep problem with this, too.
Edited 2018-09-28 00:35 UTC
I use Noscript and block every third party Javascript request on this site. OSAlert works fine without them. Privacy Badger just doesn’t go far enough in this case.
Yes, I know Optkit may or may not be a tracker across the Web, but it sure tracks what you do on OSAlert.
OSAlert uses some sites incl:
googleadservices.com
deployads.com
so Thom STFU and don’t complain about the ads
all of them blocked by uBlock origin of course.
I don’t have these problems with OSAlert unless one of the ad network sites is on the fritz.
Perhaps your blacklisting of the ad sites is being done badly, and you’re experiencing timeouts while depriving Thom of his minimal ad revenue.
Of course, I’m equally hypocritical– OSAlert has never been over abusive with ads, but some time ago I finally hit my limit and installed adblock plus. I just now realized I’ve been blocking ads on OSAlert.
For the record, I just whitelisted OSAlert.
You’re a brave individual. I don’t whitelist anything not because I don’t want to support content, but because you do not have a clue what third-party crap those ad networks will serve. No one at OSAlert can guarantee that those networks won’t serve a malware payload. Minimal ad revenue is not worth risking my safety or that of my network.
Not really. I only browse the internet from within linux, from a non-privileged account.
Historically, Thom has been pretty good at shepherding the ads on his site, and they’re pretty well behaved, so I don’t mind supporting him.
grat,
The issue for me isn’t osnews’ own trustworthiness, but rather the trustworthiness of the 3rd parties including google. I won’t whitelist them because I don’t want *them* tracking me, it has nothing to do with Thom/osnews.
My gripe is specifically with the huge ad networks that infiltrate billions of web pages with trackers. I’ve said it before, but if osnews would run first party ads directly without 3rd party ad agencies running tracking code in my browser, I would be supportive of that.
Of course I realize that fighting the google monopoly is pretty much futile at this point, but that’s my position.
At least OSAlert provides the option of an ad-free (and presumably tracking-free) version if you’re willing to pay up-front.
http://www.osnews.com/subscribe
flypig,
Yea, I think that business model has fallen by the wayside because people tend not to pay.
Another point is that as is, I can’t complain too much about osnews because I don’t have to pay. I may be guilty of overentitlement here, but if I did pay, a part of me would kind of expect more: original content and not just the quotes from 3rd party news articles that we get today. I’ve made suggestions on improving osnews over the years, but my ideas would only cost them more money to implement. So it keeps coming back to business models, which is something I think the entire news industry struggles with. I don’t have the answers. Despite the fact that most people don’t like it, advertising seems to have won out.
Hm, but I didn’t even remember about the subscription / there doesn’t seem to be a link to it on the main page, and “sample”/demo link of that functionality gives 404.
.. is it still available?
I’d say OSAlert is very decent / it respects its readers / I don’t block anything on it.
Maybe it’s time to change browser from Microsoft edge?
Hey now, even Edge has uBlock Origin now!
– Posted from Firefox
From a technology point of view, everything that goes on inside a web browser is a complete desaster.
Solution is quite simple: use Lynx (or any other fork there is). Links2 is great as it includes basic graphics. eLinks has some advantages too.
No videos, no ads, no sound… only news and information. Sometimes you have to scroll down a bit but it is worth it.
It covers about 90% of my needs.
You sound like the sort of person who’s use a typewriter because your printer is slow.
and in javascript dependent websites – no content.
In fact, elinks can support (some) javascript
There’s no way around it, websites are a shitshow. Always have been. Always will be.
In the 90’s, we had the joys of Geocities, “Under Construction” GIFs that would be there for all eternity, neon purple and yellow themes, and Comic Sans everywhere. The visuals were shocking, and the underlying code wasn’t pretty either.
In the early 00’s, we had the joys of IE6. Remmeber IFrames? ActiveX plugins? Flash on everything? That anticipation you get as you wait for the java app to load? The visuals were getting better, but with the introduction of Flash and Java elements, and Javascript for client-side interactivity, a web designer needed to be fluent in at least 3 different languages (HTML, CSS, a scripting language). A lot of these web programmers were fresh out of school and clueless, so of course the web was a mess.
In comes the late 00’s and early 10’s. IE6 is finally replaced by IE7, Firefox’s marketshare skyrockets, and Google decide to build a browser called Chrome. Businesses who built their web portals on IE6 find their ActiveX plugins won’t work on these new browsers, and the sites won’t render properly either, so they stick to XP and IE6 for years (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it). Apple decide that Flash is horrible and insecure, so they never add support to that newfangled iPhone (it’ll be a flop, i swear!) and java is getting caught up in the bad rap that flash is getting too. At this time the internet is in turmoil, with businesses using outdated and insecure browsers to support their 6 year-old web portals, and browser companies are trying to secure their browsers for the general public. The internet starts to become fragmented.
To cure this problem with insecure plugins, in the early 10’s the browser makers decided to come up with a modern standard. HTML5. This is great in theory (and good in practice) but is slow to be adopted. It’s improved in the last few years, but we’re still in the midst of an internet fragmented in time, with browsers trying to be reasobaly good at rendering sites designed from 1995 to today.
And you are seriously wondering why websites are so bad?
Web 2.0 was full of bloatware but after the GDPR even relatively “clean” sites become a pain in the A like slashdot, instructables unless you want to keep your browsing history and cookies forever. All the sites blocks you right away with huge popups for accept this and that which is obviously TLDR so I just yes them all.
I wish back the 90s html web, Todays technology especially javascript is abused the hell out to destroy our web experience. Webmasters are more money hungry than ever to make profits. The problem is that ADs are paying so low fee it will never pay you back a server hosting for 900-1200 eurs per year unless you push it to the break to have paid clicks, buy traffic, load the page with blotware and ads, block adblock using clients, install miner javascript code to your page, pay people for promoting it on social media and then you might be able to pay for your server.
It would solve a lot of problems if people would stop making webpages for profit and start making them for good content (cough cough on medium and alikes).
Hi,
> This short article is basically a reply to the article we talked about earlier this week, and I’m pretty sure this is a subject we won’t be done with for a long time to come.
I agree (I’m pretty sure this is a subject that will never go away); but…
I think that for this case (web pages) a major part of problem is business models (and that it’s not just web developers themselves).
Specifically, for a lot of sites there isn’t a viable business model. Most people won’t pay subscriptions (where the hassle of piddling about with tiny payments is far more disincentive than the price) so they resort to “spam as a business model”, but to make that work they need to cooperate with third-party spammers; and it’s these third-party spammers causing the majority of the problem (bandwidth consumption, additional “round-trip” latencies, scripts, privacy issues, …).
What I think we need is a system of micro-transactions; where if you go to some sites (e.g. osnews.com) a tiny “micro-charge” is sent to your ISP, and your ISP adds these charges to your regular account that you’re paying anyway; and then once a month the ISP sends larger payments out (all tiny fees from all of the ISP’s customers combined) to site owners. That way we’d be able to get rid of all the spam and all the advert blockers (and all the “throttling” that’s ISPs in the US have started doing) with zero extra hassle, while providing a usable business model for sites that provide content to use.
Of course I’m far too sceptical to think anything like this will ever happen. It’s taken about 20 years so far just to try (and mostly fail) to switch to IPv6, and that’s much easier, so it’d be silly to be even a tiny bit optimistic about anything harder.
– Brendan
Holy crap. You’d put the ISP in charge of billing us for transactions we may not even know about until after our bill arrives? What could ever go wrong?
Hi,
Yes; but with appropriate safeguards, including support in browsers for some kind of “allow/disallow” permission, some kind of app to see your “currently owed” transactions whenever you like, sane government regulation (e.g. voluntary industry code of conducted backed by telecommunications ombudsman), and healthy competition between ISPs.
There’d also be bunch of technical problems to overcome (security/encryption/authentication in all directions).
The alternative is that most content providers die because everyone blocks their spam and there’s no effective alternative (while ISPs happily screw everyone anyway).
Note that you’re already being billed for the bandwidth you consume downloading spam you don’t want, often having to pay in advance before you download it, and even if you never download it. The ISP just builds it into their fees so that you pay (e.g.) $50 per month without having any clue why.
– Brendan
Like the appropriate safeguards we have on our phones to protect us from fake international phone calls driving up our cost? Or our do not call registry? Or how about those so-called 900 calls you didn’t actually make? I see little difference between phone carriers and ISPs, nor do I see any incentive for them to be extra careful to protect their customers. After all, I’m sure they’d end up with a fraction of any microtransactions which get processed through this system anyway. And then you’d depend on web browsers to make you aware of the microtransaction, at which point you end up with dialog fatigue on the users’ part–think the new MacOS privacy protection dialogs multiplied. And all an ad network would have to do is offer website owners an incentive to keep the ads on their page. After all, they could easily put themselves on the microtransaction model. Double, tripple, or even a quadruple charge whammy at that point is highly likely.
Hi,
I think you’re misplacing blame (blaming the technology when the main problem is poor governance/regulation and/or poor competition) while conflating problem in old technology (that was never designed with security in mind) with a system that would have to be designed with security in mind.
Note that most of the problems you mention don’t exist here (Australia), and I doubt they exist in more civilised countries either (e.g. EU, Japan, etc). They’re the sorts of things that only happen in third world countries (e.g. the USA, where they don’t even have basic stuff like net neutrality because their government puts company profit ahead of the people).
– Brendan