Modern Web Woes - I'm mad at the internet

[Dread First]

My internet viewing habits have been pretty fucking weird ever since I was in high school. Back in my sophomore year, I was lucky enough to have a technology teacher that made us watch Eli Pariser's TED Talk on the growing presence of online filter bubbles. I was already using shit like Tor's (now-defunct) browser bundle to bypass the school's proxy so that I could watch YouTube videos in class so that TED Talk was right up my alley. Hell, I was already running Ubuntu 10.04 on my absolute potato of a PC at the time and Cyanogenmod 7 on my phone because I was an autistic faggot obsessed with "power user" shit, so I was already halfway there.

With that in mind, my internet viewing habits at the time weren't necessarily the best. I still had tons of integration on Chrome due to our class's reliance on Google Docs, I was obsessed with social media like most teenagers of the time, I purposely disabled NoScript on the Tor browser because I was too retarded to figure out how it worked, all that kind of shit. Watching that TED Talk kinda fucked with me in a way that got me to seriously think about my own internet privacy. I switched from Chrome to Firefox because back then, Firefox had more extensions relating to privacy, I started using Adblock Plus and Ghostery (at the time; I've long since switched to more efficient extensions), I started avoiding plugins like Java and Flash wherever I could, and I briefly tried to get used to NoScript before giving up on how obtuse it was.

It's so weird browsing the web now. Despite KF being my favourite site, I'm still a pretty huge normie on the internet otherwise. Using uMatrix to selectively enable/disable what I want to run basically allows me to view whatever the fuck I want without having to deal with all the noise that JavaScript creates. Of course, that begs the question: what do I want to view? So many "news" outlets are regurgitating the same few headlines hidden behind a paywall, I don't use social media anymore, and most of my favourite YouTube channels are either defunct or teetering on total lolcowdom. I could join one of them newfangled P2P/decentralised web communities, but I have the sneaking suspicion that all the autistic faggots that got exiled from /pol/, 8ch, and KF would end up shitting the place with their constant stream of diarrhoea of the mouth.

At least I still have my vidya gaemz for the time being, I guess...

 

[Rozzy]

View attachment 1758051

Privacy Badger blocks most adverts without invoking a website's anti-adblock measures.

https://privacybadger.org/

 

[AmpleApricots]

These days I just block all javascript and just enable temporarily on an as-needed basis with a whitelist of specific websites. Works suprisingly well, a lot of websites actually fall back to a less bloated version of themselves when you do this and it usually also knocks out any anti-adblock measures as a side effect. It's amazing what tremendous amount of unnecessary junk websites try to run in your browser.

 

[A Weddell Seal]

These days I just block all javascript and just enable temporarily on an as-needed basis with a whitelist of specific websites. Works suprisingly well, a lot of websites actually fall back to a less bloated version of themselves when you do this and it usually also knocks out any anti-adblock measures as a side effect. It's amazing what tremendous amount of unnecessary junk websites try to run in your browser.

What do you do to block all JavaScript?

 

[Dread First]

What do you do to block all JavaScript?

You have three options to choose from if you're an average KF user:

• Brave's built-in script blocker, however, it's very limited in functionality due to the fact that you can only turn it on or off.
  
  
• NoScript, which is the tried and true script-blocking extension touted by the likes of the Tor Project. It's definitely more robust and has a relatively mature codebase. The problem I have with it is that it's a fucking pain in the ass to configure. The UI is so obtuse to the point where the option to allow first-party scripts only is buried under piles of settings.
  
  
• uMatrix, which is made by the same guy who makes uBlock Origin. It's not just a script blocker, it's more like an all-encompassing filter that shows you all elements of a website along with what scripts/elements come from which websites. It's also a bit obtuse to set up, but the interface is much cleaner than NoScript. The Hated One made an excellent video explaining what it is and how to use it.

 

[cecograph]

These days I just block all javascript and just enable temporarily on an as-needed basis with a whitelist of specific websites. Works suprisingly well, a lot of websites actually fall back to a less bloated version of themselves when you do this and it usually also knocks out any anti-adblock measures as a side effect. It's amazing what tremendous amount of unnecessary junk websites try to run in your browser.

I've been doing this for years now. The only real pain for me is buying stuff online, where I need to enable javascript after submitting my payment details, and then after the reload, all those payment details have been cleared.

For that, I'll sometimes just open firefox in a profile without any extensions. And then I realise what a horrorshow the internet has become. Cookie warnings alone (which NoScript generally blocks) are infuriating.

It's like when you accidentally view youtube without an adblocker, and then wonder how the hell anyone puts up with it.

 

[AmpleApricots]

What do you do to block all JavaScript?

uMatrix, which is made by the same guy who makes uBlock Origin. It's not just a script blocker, it's more like an all-encompassing filter that shows you all elements of a website along with what scripts/elements come from which websites. It's also a bit obtuse to set up, but the interface is much cleaner than NoScript. The Hated One made an excellent video explaining what it is and how to use it.

The palemoon fork of it, eMatrix. Yes pale moon the browser made by that incredibly autistic furry. I don't care. I feel it's the only real firefox fork that actually removes bad things and adds some stuff, as opposed to screwing with the configuration a little and slapping a new logo on it. Also it's the only updated browser that still supports GTK2. It's pretty good, albeit it does break on some stuff. I think development on uMatrix stopped but with a bit of trickery uBlock can mostly replace it, if not completely. It's only a question of time until the big browsers don't allow such screwing with tracking and ad revenue anymore. People talk a lot about theoretical law problems with the web but nobody mentions that google has basically a monopoly on your browsing and your behavioral data.

For that, I'll sometimes just open firefox in a profile without any extensions. And then I realise what a horrorshow the internet has become. Cookie warnings alone (which NoScript generally blocks) are infuriating.

I usually run one browser instance with it's own profile over my direct internet connection for things that can be connected to my identity anyways (banking, shopping etc.) and another that runs in a linux network namespace over a tor or VPN connection for general browsing. Don't feel like sharing my general browsing activities with my ISP/the government. It's not really an attempt to be 100% anonymous, but my goal is to make the passive data hoarding of certain instances just that bit more annoying.

 

[cecograph]

I usually run one browser instance with it's own profile over my direct internet connection for things that can be connected to my identity anyways (banking, shopping etc.) and another that runs in a linux network namespace over a tor or VPN connection for general browsing. Don't feel like sharing my general browsing activities with my ISP/the government. It's not really an attempt to be 100% anonymous, but my goal is to make the passive data hoarding of certain instances just that bit more annoying.

I haven't manually configured any network namespaces before, but I'd like to do the inverse version of this: I want to connect over my VPN by default, and have a single firefox instance that goes straight over the router. Is that do-able?

 

[Never Scored]

In Firefox type about:config in the address bar. Type JavaScript in the search bar. Change JavaScript enabled from true to false. Turn it back on for sites that require JavaScript.

*Edit* In Chrominum settings, you can disable JavaScript browser wide and just enable it for specific sites that need it. I just discovered it digging through the setting as a result of this discussion and I'm considering switching to Chrominum because of it.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I haven't manually configured any network namespaces before, but I'd like to do the inverse version of this: I want to connect over my VPN by default, and have a single firefox instance that goes straight over the router. Is that do-able?

Of course. I have a similar setup, just in my setup every program goes into a "nonet" network namespace that has no network interface besides a loopback device (else some programs start freaking out) by default. (mind you, this is a loopback device created for that namespace, not the same that exists in my other network namespaces) Being moved into a namespace that allows connection to the net is an explicit privilege and requires an account with special rights. It's not hard to set up if you remember that these namespaces are inherited. The upside of this is that you don't have to rely on the program to do the right thing; if the namespace is correctly set up the network connection is only possible via that tor/vpn/whatever interface. The program in the namespace cannot use e,g, your normal network interface because it doesn't exist to it. So your browser can access kiwifarms via vpn for example, but not your LAN webserver as the route to there simply doesn't exist in the context. It helps with potential leakage problems that might arise and might compromise your privacy if your software does something stupid.

You can even expand on this and have several tor/vpn/whatever circuits at once, for example have four browser instances running, two using different tor circuits via two tor instances, one using openvpn and one via clearnet. There's no real limit to it. If you google, you can find a lot of scripts setting it all up for you but I advise reading them because it's not really all that difficult and it's good to know how it all works.

 

[Stasi]

I complained in the CPU/GPU thread about nVidia driver software now requiring signing up for an account just to update drivers (you can still do it manually thankfully) but today I came across something even more insane.

Have to print and scan some documents and can't do it at work like usual so dug out my old HP deskjet. It has a bunch of buttons on the front but shockingly none of them are a dedicated "scan" button. So I go and download the HP software, click scan and it takes me to a "sign in" page. What the fuck? Apparently you need to sign up for HP's shitty cloud service just to scan a document to your computer using your scanner. After some digging I managed to find an option in the software to scan direct to PC which is buried under 4 layers of menus. Even that though didn't work and every time you try to scan the shitty HP software locks up and spits out a "printer is busy" error.

Shockingly, using the Windows Fax and Scan software fucking worked. One click and it scans straight to your documents in a dedicated Scanned Documents folder.

What fucking clown world shit is this where the Microsoft option is the simpler, more user friendly option that actually works. Fuck you HP and fuck this trend of having to sign up for bullshit services just to accomplish basic computing tasks.

 

[Kane Lives]

I complained in the CPU/GPU thread about nVidia driver software now requiring signing up for an account just to update drivers (you can still do it manually thankfully) but today I came across something even more insane.

Have to print and scan some documents and can't do it at work like usual so dug out my old HP deskjet. It has a bunch of buttons on the front but shockingly none of them are a dedicated "scan" button. So I go and download the HP software, click scan and it takes me to a "sign in" page. What the fuck? Apparently you need to sign up for HP's shitty cloud service just to scan a document to your computer using your scanner. After some digging I managed to find an option in the software to scan direct to PC which is buried under 4 layers of menus. Even that though didn't work and every time you try to scan the shitty HP software locks up and spits out a "printer is busy" error.

Shockingly, using the Windows Fax and Scan software fucking worked. One click and it scans straight to your documents in a dedicated Scanned Documents folder.

What fucking clown world shit is this where the Microsoft option is the simpler, more user friendly option that actually works. Fuck you HP and fuck this trend of having to sign up for bullshit services just to accomplish basic computing tasks.

HP's software has been steadily growing more and more garbage, and it's really weird seeing even the older HP software that came bundled with my printer in 2010 worked out of the box better than the modern iteration.

It's all becoming so tiresome.

 

[Never Scored]

I complained in the CPU/GPU thread about nVidia driver software now requiring signing up for an account just to update drivers (you can still do it manually thankfully) but today I came across something even more insane.

Have to print and scan some documents and can't do it at work like usual so dug out my old HP deskjet. It has a bunch of buttons on the front but shockingly none of them are a dedicated "scan" button. So I go and download the HP software, click scan and it takes me to a "sign in" page. What the fuck? Apparently you need to sign up for HP's shitty cloud service just to scan a document to your computer using your scanner. After some digging I managed to find an option in the software to scan direct to PC which is buried under 4 layers of menus. Even that though didn't work and every time you try to scan the shitty HP software locks up and spits out a "printer is busy" error.

Shockingly, using the Windows Fax and Scan software fucking worked. One click and it scans straight to your documents in a dedicated Scanned Documents folder.

What fucking clown world shit is this where the Microsoft option is the simpler, more user friendly option that actually works. Fuck you HP and fuck this trend of having to sign up for bullshit services just to accomplish basic computing tasks.

Brother printers are still very good for scanning. We recently picked up a new high-end inkjet,(lol inkjet I know, but we need to be able to print on 11x17 and we need colour and don't do enough printing to warrant a $2,000+ colour laser printer that can do 11x17), and it came with scan to email where we could use our own account to send the scans right out of the box. Even the lower end Brother printers usually at least have a scan to USB option, and you can just plug in a stick and scan to it. I have a little Brother Inkjet all-in-one I only paid $150 for at home and scanned a lot of stuff this way when I was working there most of the spring.

Get this though. The printer SHOWS ADS on the touch screen once or twice a month! It's just shit like, "Click here for some great Thanksgiving templates" that you can easily ignore, but still.

 

[Ruin]

Crapple really fucked up modern web design. Every website now is just tons of blinding white blank space. It hurts to even look at that shit for long periods of time.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Crapple really fucked up modern web design. Every website now is just tons of blinding white blank space. It hurts to even look at that shit for long periods of time.

That's fine, there's always Dark Mode for that. Win10 even has a good option for this. You can turn on color filters to 'inverted grayscale' and get a much better dark mode than most browser extensions designed to do it provide.

 

[Tiggie_Tiger]

The issue I have with the modern web is the constant bad and stupid design decisions made by large companies that have ridiculous amount of control over web technologies. Also, the retarded JavaScript "developers" duct-taping everything together and have the audacity to call their shit "elegant" and "sophisticated". Whenever I touch JavaScript, HTML, CSS, web assembly or any other garbage "solution" it always feels hacky, messy, and overly complicated. I don't like the lack of control and the difficulty of writing performance orientated code. And for some reason, garbage software such as Electron or Vue are trying to bring this shit to the desktop. And those tools have serious performance, memory and bloat issues also.

I always get into debates with JS programmers about this stuff, and it always goes along the lines of: "You're just reinventing the wheel", "This isn't the 90's anymore", "Performance isn't much of an issue anymore" etc. I wish I was joking.

This mindset has created the cluster-fuck in the first place, and a lot of these "developers" have no fucking clue how computers interact with their code nor understand why properly laying out data in memory is important. A lot of applications I use are written in electron or something and consume unreasonable amount of memory, and I can't afford to constantly upgrade my computer all the time to accommodate for such shit.

This also doesn't just affect web stuff. This is an industry wide problem.

Honestly, I can't stand any more of this garbage. ALL I WANT IS GOOD HIGH QUALITY PROGRAMS THAT PERFORM WELL AND DON'T FUCKING REQUIRE A SUPER COMPUTER TO RUN! IS THIS SO MUCH TO ASK, YOU FUCKING FAILED ABORTION!

Some videos you guys may like:

 

[Rozzy]

In Linux I seem to have an annoying issue with web browsers being very inefficient at playing video, whether it be from YouTube or a local MP4 or WEBM file on the PC played in Chrome or Firefox. Playing a 1080 video with VLC uses very little CPU resources and not much more with hardware acceleration turned off, WEBM video consumes slightly more CPU than MP4 and no hardware acceleration on earlier devices. Both Firefox and Chrome use insane amounts of CPU resources sometime as much as 40% on less powerful hardware where the same video streamed or played in VLC (without GPU acceleration) will only reach about 8% max. The videos play fine otherwise it's just the CPU resources consumed when played in a browser that's concerning.

 

[Tiggie_Tiger]

In Linux I seem to have an annoying issue with web browsers being very inefficient at playing video, whether it be from YouTube or a local MP4 or WEBM file on the PC played in Chrome or Firefox. Playing a 1080 video with VLC uses very little CPU resources and not much more with hardware acceleration turned off, WEBM video consumes slightly more CPU than MP4 and no hardware acceleration on earlier devices. Both Firefox and Chrome use insane amounts of CPU resources sometime as much as 40% on less powerful hardware where the same video streamed or played in VLC (without GPU acceleration) will only reach about 8% max. The videos play fine otherwise it's just the CPU resources consumed when played in a browser that's concerning.

I like VLC. Its one of the few open-source applications that doesn't suck. A rare sight in the open-source world. There is some issues with it. However, not enough for me to complain.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Shockingly, using the Windows Fax and Scan software fucking worked. One click and it scans straight to your documents in a dedicated Scanned Documents folder.

What fucking clown world shit is this where the Microsoft option is the simpler, more user friendly option that actually works. Fuck you HP and fuck this trend of having to sign up for bullshit services just to accomplish basic computing tasks.

Yeah, it's funny how Windows Fax & Scan is simple yet very effective with what it does. That's almost out of character for the average built-in Windows app that is either watered down in some way or outright crap.

I tried to use "HP Scan Extended" thinking it would give me more options for scanning custom-sized documents. Unfortunately, it offered nothing better than what I was already getting from Windows Fax & Scan. Then again, I'm not surprised. Most of the bundled apps that come with a vendor's printer drivers prove to be useless bloatware the majority of the time.

Brother printers are still very good for scanning.

Brother printers, at least the ones I've used, are absolute workhorses. Treat them right and you can get many long years of service out of them before they finally die from old age or get rendered obsolete. The last Brother laser printer in my office lasted at least 15 years before it stopped printing one day. Its replacement is a Brother multi-function laser. Having a printer that can scan documents now is a huge plus given how many documents we handle and recent guidelines regarding which documents the office has to retain in either hard copy or digital format.

The only thing I dislike about this particular Brother printer is how small the toner cartridges are. Even an XL cartridge that lasts the longest compared to others still runs out relatively quickly even when it's not the peak of tax season. Still, I'd prefer Brother over HP whenever possible when it comes to printers.

Get this though. The printer SHOWS ADS on the touch screen once or twice a month! It's just shit like, "Click here for some great Thanksgiving templates" that you can easily ignore, but still.

Ick. Even if they're easily ignored or dismissed, that would annoy me. It's bad enough that the HP I use at home had all kinds of ads in the packaging and a sticker on the printer itself wanting me to use their monthly ink subscription where one pays a fixed amount per month in lieu of buying cartridges when needed. No thanks.
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I don't think I mentioned it yet, but I hate sites that rely on third party/external site resources. My webmail provider uses something called fontawesome and it sometimes slows down the login process while it loads from what looks like its own separate site. Looking nice may be important, but not at the expense of performance.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Brother printers have given me the least issues. Everything else has been a royal pain in the ass.