The INTERNET is killing old PC hardware

[@Vorticough]

this is another reason why ad blocking is important ads significantly impact performance

[@miekkb]

blocking itself already uses some resources....

[@Vitis-n2v]

​@@miekkbblocking is invoked on page load and then on events. It's not some constantly running code in the background. Yes it's extra code that runs but it blocks way more code of the ads from running

[@Vorticough]

@@miekkb if you use ublock origin that'll pretty much never be a problem even the lower quality adblocking extensions will probably be less detrimental than the ads

[@mudi2000a]

That's actually how I got into Ad blocking in the first place. One time I noticed that on some web page, the loading was always slow. When I took a closer look, I found that it is only caused by loading ads. As then Ad blockers were already present (maybe one of the earlier versions of what later became Adblock Plus), I gave it a shot and was amazed how fast everything loaded suddenly. I have never ever browsed the web without ad blockers ever since.

[@kaidanalenko5222]

@@miekkb find the youtuber who are threatened with adblocks

[@BrilpoetsdoekjePSN]

The modern internet is an embarrassment. Abandoning forums and personal websites in favor of centralised places like reddit, facebook and youtube has been a disaster.

[@itsallminor6133]

Somewhat true. The forums had script and ads as well. But yes, maybe less of them

[@AndrewBuckleBookReviews]

I agree but then again, the search results often mean personal sites are just not seen. Used to get personal sites with decent pages near the top of google etc but now it seems to be just youtube or reddit etc and site visits gets reduced to a trickle and therefore abandoned. SSL etc also just an extra cost with zero benefit for many sites.

[@igortube]

all part of the plan, centralized, more control, less levers to pull, also f reddit. 🥸

[@paulstubbs7678]

Yes, however I regard KZbin as used in it's original guise as a video distributor, as good, as long as I ignore all the bling like shorts etc. and any 'social' aspects, just use it like a good old video rental store. I miss my personal website, it was a freebee tiny 10MB from my ISP, but they dropped it. yes I could not put much up, however as a point for a pile of links and notes etc, nice. It was as a way around my dynamic web address, as it could hold a constantly updated link to a terabyte of stuff on a home server, without using a dodgy ad infested dynamic DNS provider. Now some ISP's are dropping email - what's the world coming too.

[@alexale5488]

True. Wanted to be a part of the community? You'd have to earn your right to be there. Moderators also used to be better, because their immaturity alone could bring an entire forum down. On reddit, some people don't make a difference between reddit moderators or community moderators and they ignore their abuse as "deserved" or "it is what it is".

[@TommyViper]

The internet is full of bloat and unoptimized code. Even something that looks super simple like the Google homepage has gotten more complicated than it was say 20 years ago. I miss the days when the internet had quality content, not flashy and fancy looking websites that have about 4 times the amount of code than they actually need to have.

[@andrewszombie]

it's always been like this though. it's not that it's old, it's that they don't have enough cache. I had a celeron D with 256KB of cache in the 2000s and it was slow with any sort of web media would make my system instantly unusable. even when technology improved with 4-cores around 2010 systems still struggled because the CPUs were getting faster but the RAM wasn't developed quick enough to process web content and media.

[@MR_BANANA_FTF]

I remember first using the Internet with Lynx and Archie lol.

[@carlosdasilva2409]

The sad part is that programmers nowadays don't know about optimization or are discouraged against doing this process as the notion that reigns technology is "Unused resources are wasted resources". Basically translates as "You should make your/people's PC run at 100% at all times" I've met programmers that say things like "It's optimized! The more you have, the more it uses!" And try to do as many mental backflips to the point the discussion stops making sense. I would say this whole thing is to push newer and newer devices OR to de-place the computer market and favor the phone one instead. (Which is less expensive to upgrade every 2-4 years like it is common for people to do now). I would much prefer to keep my devices for 12 years.

[@syrus3k]

@@carlosdasilva2409 I also live in this painful world. I come from a place where people made great things with 48k of ram. I get that it's time consuming to write everything in asm these days but the waste with javascript frameworks and the way people use them is just totally bonkers.

[@Shadaole]

Same problem happened in game development.

[@jackfroste]

I still remember when websites that offered a lite version of their site for people with slow connections

[@TJCarterNYC]

yes...so do I. I don't remember the date but Gmail "recently" retired it's HTML version (for slower hardware) and that pretty much concluded the "usefulness" of my AspireOne Netbook with Linux. Today it's speed is similar to what dial-up was like 1999.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

Then you could get away with the mobile version but even that is heavy now with inline video ads, etc.

[@csh9853]

Yes back in the dial up days.

[@mal2ksc]

But they _didn't_ have to worry about offering a mobile version. It looks like there's only economic room for one alternate version as far as most sites are concerned, and "mobile" is a more lucrative demographic than "15 year old PCs".

[@luigi55125]

​@@TJCarterNYC What year aspireone? I have a 2012 with linux lite that's still chugging along. It's not happy about it, but it's going.

[@knightsofnee8626]

We've reached an age of non-optimized media everywhere. Videogames, websites, office apps etc. Devs seem to be rushed to release software products instead of optimizing and stabilizing them.

[@erkinalp]

Wirth's law

[@luisapaza317]

The monopolies of the IT industry. From the USA and beyond

[@dand337]

​@@luisapaza317I mean they just know that modern cpus should handle it so they don't have to waste resources on optimizations.

[@edunet-lk507]

Don't degrade, they are called "rich" media. 😀

[@NafanyaZX]

optimization cost is exported to our hardware now. But that aside, the forced 60 frames for 720p/1080p video is what's most infuriating to me.

[@randomuser9249]

Old smartphones have same problem.

[@mistersync100]

I like to install a custom operating system like lineage os or kai os Also install differt laucher like the evie launcher and simple keyboard Remove moving animation in developer moder

[@jkhuv87t5]

Yeah, I've noticed that my 8 year old Samsung phone, which just a few years ago was still easily usable has gotten quite a bit slower when loading websites nowadays.

[@Michelmoe2]

I'll still use the same phone for 10 years and download custom APK's for apps, downside is original browser on phone, other lightweight browsers are available. Just like Firefox for windows, it works with smart phones as well.

[@eda2000-r8h]

​@@mistersync100Custom kernel for extra performance :v

[@pedretejb2492]

I've got an old Samsung Galaxy and it doesn't let me install apps. I tried to install F-Droid but the Security system didn't let me because "the security system doesn't work since it's outdated" wtf

[@Akahigep]

Honestly, modern hardware needs adblockers too

[@1pcfred]

I need an ad blocker just for my own personal sanity. Scammer please.

[@n8chz]

Bloat is like a gas. It expands to fill whatever container it finds itself in. In small/old systems, of course, it applies an explosive level of pressure.

[@Max_Mustermann]

@@1pcfred Same. I'm really not interested in learning a foreign language in two days using one simple trick.

[@yosefmacgruber1920]

@@1pcfred I listen to conservative talk radio in the car, but I don't like all the noise at home, and the ads are so incredibly stupid. I would much rather stream my truth channel on my Linux computer once I get home.

[@yosefmacgruber1920]

@@n8chz I think a lot of the problem is lazy programming, in which browsers or OSes manage their limited memory very poorly. Why is such shoddy programming done, which invites bloat to cause problems? If programming was done very well, then an OS should be able to run for years without ever a reboot, without continually running low on memory or enduring memory leaks or fragmentation. Yet the more RAM that the latest computers have, the more that the software manages to waste and ever demand more. Why should 100+ open window tabs slow down Firefox on Linux? If running low on memory, why then are non-visible tabs eating up memory? A smarter OS or browser should shut down the old window tabs memory usage after non-use, especially if not playing background music, however when the smart-phones do that, the reload of the tab often may not work, because of dynamic webpages that were created on demand and no longer exist so as to be able to reload. I recall looking at the ROM coding on my 1985 Apple //e, and they would make a byte squeak trying to save a byte. That was back when the entire OS and disk operating system only used but 12K to maybe around 30K total, and could run okay on a mere 64K Apple ][ computer. Error messages were stacked so that the last letter of one was also the first letter of the next. Today's programmers are lazy, and rely upon too many levels of abstraction/compilers and upon high speed and massive memory size to compensate for their lousy programming. I could not even read how the Monitor (a popular machine programmers tool back then that actually used but a tiny fraction of the ROM memory space) interpreted commands, it was too efficient or something, so when I wanted a table list of the commands, rather than try to decipher the Disassembly code and try to figure out what it was doing, I just wrote some machine code to brute-force try every possible 1-letter command, and if it was rejected by the algorithm, it simply went on to the next. If accepted, it printed me out the command and the ROM memory address that then handled that command. That way, I did not have to wonder just what percentage of the available commands did I so far know of? If program coding was a lot more efficient, then it could easily handle a lot more "bloat" without issues. Did you know that most all modern computers tediously draw every character letter pixel-by-pixel? Very inefficient and slow much? Back decades ago, that could have been called "unnecessary bloat". Today, most every computer and phone is so incredibly fast, that it is not an issue anymore. The entire screen routinely draws in well under a second, if the data is already loaded. And "drawing" text in graphics mode, is very much necessary, to prevent what happened to me once when I was testing at a temporary jobs agency for job skills, and I had to underline some text. When I did, the text turned green. Anti-intuitive much? Why wouldn't it simply draw a line underneath, like the most simple Macintosh computer would routinely do? I recall hearing that when people had the Apple IIGS, that had better graphics than my 1st computer the Apple //e, rather than run AppleWorks GS, they ran standard AppleWorks, because boring 80-column text was so much faster than "drawing" fonts onto the graphics screen. I suppose back then that the new way could have been called "bloat"? Of course now "bloat" seems to refer to annoying ads and probably poorly-coded websites.

[@danielktdoranie]

The modern web is ridiculously bloated. 95% of the data pushed when loading a website is crap. The “smol web” movement, Gemini, Gopher, are solutions. Also, IRC, FTP, email, work great on “old computers”. Corporations have ruined the internet

[@RealMakarov]

and hd icons everywhere

[@account-now-closed]

Crazily, my old core 2 duo pc can actually game faster (modern games, mind you), than it plays youtube videos

[@9852323]

KZbin is so beyond bloated it’s insane. Facebook too, Facebook changed their website back in 2020 and ever since then it’s been a pain to use and the new UI is trash anyway, they seem to have followed the trend of making every button and UI element grotesquely huge. Not a fan.

[@acoresbrasil]

Yeah, a Core 2 Duo still can run very well an adjusted and tweaked Windows 10, 4GB of RAM (if you can) and an SSD.

[@Smougda]

I have an old laptop with 4GB RAM and probably a 2.3ghz cpu (not sure which one) that i use to browse the internet casually and watch anime on pirate streaming sites and it works pretty fast, but i can't even open KZbin, if i have to watch KZbin i have to use a frontent like invidious because is slow as fuck. And the computer. Literally a pirate streaming site works faster and is less bloated than KZbin (i don't use adblocks on the pirate sites but i do on youtube, which is even funnier). Using linux mint, is sometimes even faster than my windows pc with better everything.

[@asrr62]

Yeah right! Sure.

[@klaas1]

It's because that A4 1200 was really bad, even when it came out too.

[@antenna_prolly]

we should've kept mid-2000s internet with today's hardware

[@AirCicilia]

The more powerful they make the hardware, the less effort is put into coding and code optimization. So don't call the old processors slow, call the new developers lazy.

[@kevinpaulus4483]

Absolutely we haven't improved the desktop in 20 years or so but the hardware is at least 20-30 times more powerful on average.

[@omarjimenezromero3463]

hey developers are not the culprits in this, they work for a company and the company put those products and deadlines, developers are like builders, they just go there and do what they can with the company tools, and for the budget of the company, the ones to ensure bad sofware are product managers, CEO's and the board of directors, you can still find solutions in low hardware like the inclusion of micro-python to program arduino devices, or lua to program esp32, and you can still find people programming in C and in C++, so sure devs are not the problem here.

[@JNJNRobin1337]

​@@omarjimenezromero3463how unstable is a skyscraper built in a day? we might get to find out

[@guntcheck]

It isn't the devs, it is management adoption of agile methods.

[@AirCicilia]

@@omarjimenezromero3463 You're right. Commercial interests are the cause of a decline in quality. So not individual developers are to blame, but the corporations they work for and the competitive arena of profit maximizations. In other words: Capitalism!

[@DM-20XX]

Javascript was a mistake

[@yoshi314]

javascript IS a mistake

[@stevedegeorge726]

Such an underrated comment.

[@EleanorMcHugh]

It’s less JavaScript that’s the problem than the constraints within which most web development takes place. Most page scripts are written using frameworks which focus on developer productivity rather than runtime performance. Most developers are working in companies where pushing out new features is prioritised over client-side performance tuning. And they’re usually working on hardware that’s only a couple of years old with current browser builds so runs JS without breaking a sweat. Add to that the advertising bloat, the tracker cookies, the use of graphics for ‘aesthetic’ rather than functional purposes, the pervasive use of SSL for content which doesn’t need encryption…

[@dh2032]

@@EleanorMcHugh racker cookies, are getting insain, the there 30+ on almost every webpage you visit, today, and there doing apserlutly nothing for the end user

[@sheep1ewe]

@@EleanorMcHugh Absolutely, that is my experience too from the time when it was more widely introduced. I did try it, but for formal webpages, like the local communal instances i always used handwritten HTML in order to speed up the loading process, but also beacuse it was easier to maintain the site for people with limited knowledge of the basic of scripts. I made textblocks which where easy to change and also hidden instructions in the script so the person maintaining the site would see what everything did in the script according to my instructions and it could easily be done in notepad or any similar text editor and then just copy and paste if they needed to change anything. Also i made the text format and the choose of letters, contrast colours, etc pretty much as the instructions for army printings, in a way even elder people could easily see and read the pages and see where they was internaly linked, etc. And also with letters most people had as default on a regular home computer. As booring as they where, There was no complains about those... ha ha

[@OceanusHelios]

The browsers are also the issue. In Linux you can search youtube from the terminal and play the video bare. I use ytfzf which is youtube fuzzy fetch which lets me do just that. It cuts out the middle man. It just gives me the video by itself.

[@lucasance6076]

In Windows too

[@darkprinc979]

Another option is vlc player. I've never tried it myself but it's supposed to be capable of playing youtube videos.

[@1pcfred]

Well done. Sticking it to The Man!

[@RogerioPereiradaSilva77]

Yes, personally I am very fond of SMTube that gives a new lease of life to these old computers by simply browsing a simplified version of KZbin and passing the video URL directly to a local player, bypassing all the javascript nonsense and the hungry video players that browsers rely on these days. Also people underestimate how much more resource heavy it made by having TLS enabled everywhere for everything. These old computers just can't cope with having to decrypt TLS and all that Javascript nonsense that the modern web demands nowadays just to render a simple page.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

@@darkprinc979 I haven't tried recently, but VLC did work in the past. KZbin routinely changes its interface in a way that breaks third party applications, so I wouldn't be surprised if it works off and on.

[@k62627]

Remove all the trackers and bloatware from the websites and 80% of the issue is resolved immediately. When the internet moved away from hobbiests to businesses trying to bleed every bit of ad space or data reaing opportunities out of their visitors, that's when the issues started.

[@TheSimoc]

More accurately, it happened when the business got centralized into handful of monopoly giants. Ads and data collection was done well in the era of 56kbps modems and barely three-digit MHz processors. Problem is in the inefficient code and frameworks, applying both on ad engines and payload of the websites.

[@hermanodelalmasinpar828]

Not long ago, people used to say "my grampa just needs and old PC to browse the internet and check e-mail". Well, now he needs something much better.

[@speedysandisk78]

KZbin's mobile version of the site got unnecessary transparency effects recently which can't be turned off, effectively making it unusable on old android devices

[@trackingdifbeatsaber8203]

And hurts battery life on new devices as well

[@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge]

I stopped using the App these days and just play youtube from an Adblocking browser. Sure, it takes some time to get used to it, and it doesn't have some features the Desktop or App have, but the benefits far outweigh the cons.

[@Mo4Honesty]

What is this feature? I'm not familiar with anything new unless I just didn't notice the change.

[@CamelCasee]

I remember when youtube worked fine on a single core early 2000's system, then suddenly it needed a dual core and progressed from there.

[@sihamhamda47]

It's because KZbin at its very early age was very simple, they use basic HTML that's extremely light on CPU and GPU, and most video streams back then only use H264 codec that's easy to run on basically almost any hardware Until around 2014 when KZbin finally deprecated its basic HTML stuff and then started to go full JavaScript mode, it's only getting more and more resource heavy from there

[@CamelCasee]

@@sihamhamda47 2014 that was around the time it choked older systems of the time if I recall, worked better after I upgraded them to dual core processors if supported.

[@anidnmeno]

yes. i watched my first yt video on a 32 bit athlon

[@JacobJohnson-lh4gx]

True back then KZbin ran great, the only problem you have to deal with were the abysmal internet speeds which makes pages load slower, and the YT player load/buffer a lot. I remember we had a old Dell Dimention 4600 that had Windows XP installed on a clunky 120 IDE HDD, with 4GB RAM and no dedicated GPU card during the late 2000s to 2013. We used it to browse KZbin and Myspace (which had a ton of looping gifs, bakcground music, and multiple youtube videos playing in the background) and it ran fine.

[@CamelCasee]

@@JacobJohnson-lh4gx I forgot about slow internet speeds back then, youtube needed buffering with basic 512kbps adsl we had back then.

[@YouTubdotCub]

the NoScript extension is NECESSARY, not just adblockers but full on script blocking that breaks website functionality so you can turn scripts on and off and figure out what's essential for functioning and what's useless bloat

[@TheSimoc]

Kinda yes, but nowadays you can pretty much assume that disabling any script that hogs resources, disables the site functionality entirely.

[@YouTubdotCub]

@@TheSimoc that's why I don't assume! I default leave NoScript on and test which scripts do what, and you'd be surprised how functional a website is, even a fairly bloated website, when you disabled the vast majority of the scripts and just enable the few that render it functional, and it hogs way less of your resources

[@TheSimoc]

@@YouTubdotCub Good for you, I have just came into such assumption after having no such luck with trying..

[@MillywiggZ]

Of course it’s ads that are destroying the internet…

[@TheSimoc]

It's not ads. It's code bloat. We had ads all over websites (and popups!) in 90's with 56kbps modems and barely 3-digit MHz processors and 2-digit MB RAM. I could gladly watch even more ads if we could regain such a professionality and efficiency in website and software development.

[@JamesTDG]

@@TheSimoc Ah, but ads are a contributor to code bloat. Try reading an article without an adblock and you're just lambasted with ads every second, and that thing will absolutely kill performance, ESPECIALLY since these ads want to be animated and play audio, and some want to do even more on your device. I miss when they would just pay flash devs to make a new game to advertise their products, because at least then, it was out of the way, and fun...

[@TheSimoc]

@JamesTDG Sure, I'm with you. Ads have got bloated and are part of the problem. I just meant they are just part of it, and they could be even tolerable *if* debloated. 90's non-bloated ads, with animations and, aah.. flash games, can rather be missed 😅

[@Patrick1985McMahon]

Would be cool to build another sub-internet that is designed for 90s and early 2000s computers. Or maybe people just need to build better websites that don't eat up so much resources.

[@JamesTDG]

Honestly, I would be all for it, if it weren't for the fact that people who have jobs or schoolwork can't have that luxury... Even my college's assignment software SUUUUCKS, I have to use a more recent computer to turn stuff in because they can't get their JS to be optimized for shit.

[@Patrick1985McMahon]

@@JamesTDG Building a alt-network and restoring old sites from the internet arcives wouldn't take that much work. I setup localized internets all the time. This would just be a scaled up project and using older software.

[@JohnMiller-mmuldoor]

Frogfind by the guy who does action retro KZbin channel

[@tiaanbasson9092]

As a C/C++ programmer I've been raising the issue of how poorly designed internet technology is and that the constant push for new hardware is detrimental towards the development of people in poorer developing nations. I've come across people here in Africa still running Pentium 4's and Core 2 duo's, I recall that hardware being able to run KZbin, now they can barely open normal web sites. It's developers who are at fault and poor decisions. The low spec hardware demo scene proves that amazing software can be written when properly programmed.

[@2000freefuel]

I've been speaking with friends about the need for man in the middle proxy servers for older hardware, this video cements the need for such a device in my mind.

[@YuNherd]

Is this related to KZbin hiring content stream companies acting as somewhat a cache to improve streaming?

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

I had the idea for something like Pi-hole, but even after removing ads, pretty much every major site still utilizes a ton of scripting for dynamic objects, infinite AJAX scroll, etc. I don't know what options there are for proxies serving dynamic content and, presumably, shouldering the load.

[@itsallminor6133]

They'd want money. Man wants to be paid either way

[@shortcat]

These exist, WebOne for instance.

[@TheSimoc]

@@2000freefuel It would be better than nothing, but kinda defeating the purpose, if we need additional new powerful devices (server) to allow using old devices. Somehow its costs must be covered too. The only real solution is to somehow pressurize the website devs to debloat and lose their constant changes into new compatibility-issued technologies.

[@AutisticFloppa]

back when i was a kid i remember how optimized websites where. youtube especially.

[@TheSimoc]

@AutisticFloppa Yep, just like Google Search, Gmail, Google Chrome, and even the first versions of Android!

[@erenoz2910]

The internet is basically unusable without adblockers at this point.

[@erichill414]

Even the FBI recommends using an ad blocker.

[@MrThebigcheese75]

And Google and hobbling them every chance they get.

[@FirstYokai]

Because you made it like this. The ads increased when people started using adblockers.

[@Alan_Skywalker]

So we have those new technologies, new processors and larger dram, which costs much more to produce than before, just so that they can add more ads to our devices.

[@TheSimoc]

Nope. We have no more ads than we had on 90's websites. Just the inefficiency in coding, ie. code bloat, has gon insane, applying both ad engines and actual site content. I would happily see double amounts of ads if just the code bloat could be slimmed down to the level of 90's. Another infuriating thing is the constant change for sake of change, introducing more and more frivolous new web technologies, requiring new browser versions - themselves containing huge bloat.

[@Alan_Skywalker]

@@TheSimoc This is a factor. And the bloating doesn't only happen on coding level, but on design levels. Countless special effects, animations and HD quality ads are eating up resources too.

[@TheSimoc]

@@Alan_Skywalker That's right, my point was just that they produce more advanced hardware not even to add more ads but to add just merely more bloat..

[@JamesTDG]

@@TheSimoc You sure about that? I got old snapshots of 90s sites I can look up right now, and let me tell ya, compared to a modern news page, it is far, FAR worse now. Sure, there may not be as much ads compared to some 90s sites, but what that makes up for is the amount of CLEARANCE these ads consume. Also, please, do NOT say that you will accept double the ads, they will go back on the promise of optimization for the sake of quicker money.

[@TheSimoc]

@@JamesTDG You may be right, amount of ads is very site-specific. But my point, there were sites in 90s having more ads than today's mainstream ones, yet even them were literally 1000 less bloated in resource hogging.

[@TheCrazyErrorLion]

Whenever I think my processor is slow, I'm going to watch this video again.

[@jklax]

I've noticed this after upgrading a 10 year old laptop. 16gb of ram and an ssd drive, but the CPU is getting hit while idle on a website.

[@samsunggalaxynote3868]

Amd e1?

[@asumazilla]

Just what are these websites doing? Monitoring everything they possibly can with our resources?

[@HristosTrUK]

Not so long time ago, laptops like this, was advertised as laptop for light use - internet surfing and watching videos.

[@AlphaLiu]

For that A4-1200, I can guarantee that it was stuck at 100% CPU usage when it was new...

[@kaminekoch.7465]

I was not expecting much, but that A4-1200 is less than half of the speed of entry level Core2Duos of 2007. It's trading blows with Pentium D 805 from early 2005 or mobile Pentium 4s from 2004. It's 20-times slower than Ryzen 3 1200 and 40-times slower than Ryzen 5 1600. Maybe it's worth proving your point on CPU that wasn't equal to two decades old entry level CPUs.

[@jackmcslay]

I don't remember the exact CPU but I installed Debian on a netbook from around the same time and it worked ok - until you tried to browse the internet.

[@TheRealNightShot]

No, it wasn’t.

[@SirWolf2018]

Yeah, this video features the wrong extreme of the examples. It should show a perfectly capable hardware that MS simply does not support anymore.

[@MasticinaAkicta]

Oh yes the AMD A4/A6/A8 line... such a sluggish processor.

[@joepike1972]

This reminds me of "please update your browser" campaign decades ago. I always felt that is represented a bad norm taking over the coding/webpage community.

[@vytah]

To be fair, IE was simply bad. It implemented things wrong, so developers essentially had double the work to make websites work. Good riddance.

[@hipidipi20157max]

Corporations have destroyed the internet. I miss the 90s when websites were simple html with underlined links and no sponsored sites, no ads, no paywalls and lots of blogs with free stuff from independent people. Even Linux Mint or Ubuntu now requires much power. My PC is from 2010 intel i3.

[@Jayteaseepiirturi]

This is something I noticed some years ago when toying with my Acer Aspire One. I could do plenty of things with it... but KZbin, for instance, killed it completely.

[@TJCarterNYC]

Agreed....youtube and the discontinuation of Gmail (html version).

[@Jayteaseepiirturi]

@@TJCarterNYC And so many other things. It often occurs to me that, Internet doesn't have to be this heavy.

[@mal2ksc]

Anything 32 bit is a toy at this point, unless you can invent and implement a very specific use case where it shines.

[@Sumire973]

@@mal2ksc Even then they're starting to killing early 64 bit devices, e.g, on the x86 side, there are more programs and operating systems requiring higher feature-levels than baseline x86-64, such as x86-64-v2, v3 or v4. In other words, it's no longer enough to have just a 64-bit computer.with a x amount of RAM, now your CPU needs to support specific instructions in order to run your desired apps.

[@00Klingon]

One way to make old laptops useful is if you have a more powerful computer, say a desktop but want to use it somewhere else in the house. You can install a remote desktop tool on the old laptop and connect to the more powerful computer making the laptop more like a terminal of sorts. Some remote desktop software will even allow you to access your desktop anywhere you have internet on the laptop.

[@JamesTDG]

That's how I'm trying to circumvent using win 11. I am required to keep a windows machine at my house to run some of my college's software, so instead of having to directly use it, I just remote into win 11 whenever I want to do something there

[@AshJeepWolf]

As a fellow enjoyer of older/obscure/weird hardware, I definitely know what you mean. It's been a decent while since I've been able to truly mess around with older hardware due to space constraints of the last 6 or so years, but recently upon firing up some older hardware I was a bit saddened that now a Core 2 Duo is no longer sufficient for internet browsing. I know it's an old CPU but a few years ago it was still perfectly happy with web browsing. Now, the Core 2 Quad is on the edge of usable. I'm sure a large part of this is that processors that old are missing a great many instruction sets that have now been used for 10 years or more, but it seems really lame that just displaying text and basic graphics and extremely low bitrate video would require a 4th gen i5 or better.....

[@mal2ksc]

My AM3 system lost the ability to run AAA games a few years back because they all require SSE 4.1 and 4.2. I could have swapped out the 1090T for an 8-core FX and gotten the instruction set problem sorted, but it was cheaper to just buy a whole used office PC and strip it for parts. I ended up harvesting a motherboard, i5-8500, and 16 GB of RAM from a machine that cost me $120 (and a SATA SSD and a DVD burner, neither of which I used). It now has 48 GB of RAM, an RTX 3060, and an NVMe SSD. Running Cyberpunk 2077 is not an issue, and it's also quite capable (though slow) at generative AI tasks, especially FLUX. I wouldn't have 48 GB of RAM if not for FLUX, I'd probably have "only" 32. However I think it has more to do with insufficient RAM to accommodate modern websites and modern user expectations, in the case of web use. 4 GB just doesn't go very far any more. The old AM3 had 16 GB and was mostly happy, but I don't regret the change.

[@AshJeepWolf]

@@mal2ksc I loved the Thuban processors, the 1090T was a beast for its price range for a good long time, and at many tasks still competed with the FX-8xxx CPU's as far as raw compute power goes. I tried to keep on Thuban as long as I could because I really did not enjoy the FX processors....however the good thing about FX is even today they still have many of the modern instruction sets in use but....they get stomped by even 4th gen Intel. The good thing about the 8th gen stuff like ya got are it is Windows 11 compatible (yes I know, I daily drive Linux but still require Windows for a couple things) and that system should be able to take at least an i7-8700 and maybe even a 9700! Plus you got the benefit of NVMe now.

[@iRelevant.47.system.boycott]

Wasn't it also something with Ajax? and shifting the processing load onto the client side of things ? Working in such a way that the increased processing load isn't felt so heavy on the server side ?

[@user-lh3uz1cp7y]

I'm watching this comfortably with an experience I'm satisfied with on a core 2 duo and my core 2 quad machine runs way better than a new windows machine. I'm using Debian 12 with icewm as the desktop environment on my core 2 duo and my core 2 quad machine is using cinnamon.

[@johnmeneses7039]

@@user-lh3uz1cp7y Well done!! I actually have Windows 11 tiny running (also debloated) on a core2Duo which is pushing it. I am currently experimenting on an old AMD dual core laptop to run Bodhi Linux. It's toooooo slow for Windows 11 tiny even. Good Luck with your experimentation.

[@AlexandreD30]

You need an ad blocker..... even on good pcs blockers are a must.

[@1pcfred]

Ad blockers consume a lot of resources themselves. It's a lot of work to block all of that nonsense.

[@CentreMetre]

@@1pcfred at least its using those resources for something good

[@mal2ksc]

@@1pcfred It's still a lot less resource-intensive than actually loading all that nonsense and letting it run.

[@1pcfred]

@@mal2ksc perhaps.

[@copernicofelinis]

Is the host file still a thing? I remember it helped speeding up web browsing by killing a lot of secondary sites.

[@peterpramshafer933]

Don't forget about the operating systems like windows that's killing old hardware too

[@CommodoreFan64]

That's the biggest thing killing a lot of older hardware, but switching to a good lightweight Linux distro like Solus Budgie, or Manjaro Gnome as long as it's 64bit hardware, and has at least 8GB of RAM, 120GB SSD, and a is a strong dual core CPU for comfortable usage can be saved, and made very usable if you don't mind watching something like KZbin at 720p without a 1/2 decent dedicated GPU, or strong iGPU.

[@zoomosis]

@@CommodoreFan64 Even 4 GB RAM is plenty for most things. Back in the Windows XP days PCs had much less and most things ran fine. It's just modern web browsers (and Electron apps) that are eating all the RAM.

[@mal2ksc]

@@zoomosis 4 GB isn't enough though even if you could go back and use the old browsers, because the content itself is much heavier (there's a price to video codecs improving, and it shows up here) and our expectations have changed. Most people would barely use the tab feature back in the day because the machine just lagged too hard with more than one website trying to load at the same time. Now people have so many tabs open at once that we require ways to search them!

[@zoomosis]

@@mal2ksc Modern video codecs don't use gigabytes of RAM though. And obviously if you only have 4 GB RAM you'd lower your expectations and not have twenty tabs open.

[@Sumire973]

@@CommodoreFan64 GNOME is anything but lightweight though.

[@necrosx1872]

This was a problem a decade ago, there's just so much bloat on the internet, bloat that includes 'spyware' or as companies would like to call them as 'trackers' or 'needed cookies'.

[@guntcheck]

I was a software engineer for 21 years. I wrote everything from code for missiles, to code for MRI machines, to MOM engines and even web. I noticed a flood of pseudo engineers around 2008-2010. Web developers mostly. Very inefficient code. That is the main reason for this. The second, is widespread adoption of agile.

[@IzanatoN]

My old laptop from 2016 struggling in running apps, it's not even 10 years old yet. We are living in the era that does not support anything outdated, has to be "fully online" and "you own nothing but should be happy"

[@user-lh3uz1cp7y]

Meanwhile here I am on a 17 year old dell latitude d630 watching this video comfortably running debian with icewm as the desktop environment.

[@xgui4-studios]

8 years is still very old for a laptop thought... phone got obselete in less then 5 years... a normal laptop lifespan is 3-5 years ...

[@IzanatoN]

@ So I have a 2013 xbox one, which is 11 years old now, and it runs apex legend and fortnite at 60fps (kinda surprise to see that) while my msi from 2016 cannot runs fortnite at 60fps without hiccup or lower the resolution, apex crashes every time I try to open the game. It's a weird commparison but to see a 2013 console can run the most up to date games is already awesome. While my laptop used to able to run those games but now have trouble.

[@user-lh3uz1cp7y]

@@IzanatoN The reason the console runs those games so much better is because those versions were written for that specific hardware configuration therefore an original xbox would run it as well as any period game if it were written for it. On PC on the other hand, they do such a poor job optimising software that a game that looks no better than a game in 2001 requires extremely high hardware specifications for what it is. That's one of the reasons I find modern gaming not worth it anymore other than taking up other hobbies instead.

[@user-lh3uz1cp7y]

@@xgui4-studios A 3-5 year lifespan is completely unreasonable in today's day and age with how computers are not changing as much as most people think and replacing hardware every 3-5 years is extremely wasteful. My laptop is 17 years old and I have none of the problems the computer in the video or the original comment because I'm running well optimised software which is the key to preserving hardware as long as possible, especially since it still does what it did when it was new decades later outside of the internet which is still not too heavy for it.

[@TeionM83]

I set up my old Lenovo G50-45 for my father. It has an AMD A6-6310 APU with Raedon R4 (Beema) graphics and 8GB DDR3 RAM, and runs deepin 23. Browser of choice is the latest stable Mozilla Firefox with uBlock Origin and Consent-o-Matic. Performance is surprisingly good.

[@Jim-be8sj]

Thanks for mentioning the Consent-O-Matic. I didn't know about it before and just added it to my browser. :)

[@fredfinger7092]

I also had never heard of Consent-O-Matic. Thanks!

[@RetroActiveGM]

Likewise re. Consent-O-Matic - the EU come up with some really daft laws.

[@TeionM83]

@RetroActiveGM I wonder just how effective GDPR is. I know it _should_ be effective and that any company who disrespects it is fined, but I still find apps on Google Play that don't work without collecting and selling your personal data. Sure, you _can_ opt out of it, but then the app stops working until you consent to it again.

[@michaelelkin9542]

Ads are an issue even on the latest and most powerful machines. I have seen 400%+ (4 full cores or more) cpu usage and 10GB+ memory usage minutes after regular Google browsing. The problem is the site bloat and/or the browser, not the system itself. I love the demonstration though.

[@eklipsegirl]

Finally someone admits this! All the “just install Linux” people overlook this issue. No matter how supposedly faster Linux is, there is literally zero speed gain when using modern Internet.

[@RetroActiveGM]

This is completely untrue. I'm using a 2014 AMD laptop which came with Windows 8.1 - even with Firefox + uBlock Origin, it was sluggish as hell. It couldn't play KZbin videos above 480p or even load Reddit. I put Linux on it. It can now load Reddit and play KZbin videos up to 4K. The OS matters A LOT. You don't realise how badly bloated Windows is until you use Linux.

[@alexjenner1108]

I'm browsing this with my 2012 Linux desktop with Firefox and uBlock Origin, seems to be working fine. Of course I'm running more than 4GB RAM and have a better CPU than the machine in this video. One of the main benefits of Linux is regular security updates for a machine that came out 10+ years ago, without being told you have to pay for an expensive upgrade (windows), or perhaps there is no upgrade available at all for your hardware (macOS).

[@Luke357]

@@RetroActiveGM Your CPU has to reach a certain spec to begin with though. An AMD A8 can do it but something like the A4 he has will be slow with web browsing no matter what. Unless sites get lighter or he only uses lightweight sites to begin with he will have this problem. I have an Athlon X4 880K and it works fine on Windows 11 IoT but full Windows 11 is a bit much for it. Linux works the same for web browsing as Win11 IoT (Linux is slightly faster for gaming) but I need Windows for my application, so I have to stick with it unfortunately.

[@RetroActiveGM]

@Luke357 Bro I'm literally using an A4 and it's fine 🤣

[@Luke357]

@@RetroActiveGM You might be full of shit then because this dude is showing that there are significant performance issues and I've seen them like this personally.

[@mickeythompson9537]

"Traffic expands to fill the roads available." So the problem isn't the internet, it's the shite being forced upon us through it. Adblockers are essential, for so many reasons. Also 12ft Ladder to get a clean web page. (As I type this, I notice YT has defeated the current adblocker... for now. I'm watching in Share/Embed mode.)

[@JamesTDG]

Brave fixed the problem day 1

[@ihazcheese]

Been waiting for someone to jump on this sort of video. Would have done it myself if I weren't so tied up with other things. Thanks for bringing attention to this, it's maddening!

[@pamus6242]

Javascript is an abomination that has gone unchecked.

[@Dumb_Killjoy]

As someone who took JavaScript in college, I fully agree

[@monotematico]

There's an article from a few years back that deplored how, in order to serve a simple short article, Wordpress used more data than the whole Doom videogame.

[@youranonymous931]

Link to article? Seems interesting

[@TheSimoc]

Yep, that's pretty obvious today, even UT99 and UT 2003 worked blazingly on machines that cant open most mainstream websites today.

[@JamesTDG]

I REALLY want to read this article

[@TheSimoc]

@@monotematico Pretty obvious, UT99 and even UT2003 played blazingly in computers that today can't open mainstream websites.

[@jackochainsaw]

I took a course in some web programming in 2022. The level of complexity in some of the code that runs a website server side is distinctly overpowered in areas. Part of old machines struggling is having to run/interpret that code. Some browsers are better than others but some websites are behemoths when it comes to the code running behind them. Some code is not well written or optimised.

[@clack1]

The other issue is the world abandoned low voltage/low clocked processors that you found all over smaller cheaper laptops from 2010+(like yours). These got popular for a time but even back then using the internet with javascript heavy websites or script heavy in general would bog these computers down. Most web pages prior to 2008 worked on a wide range of hardware and didn't require a processor at 2.8 GHZ just to scroll up and down. Developers got lazy because most phones/computers have an 'excess' of power so they just brute force it all.

[@wintermute740]

I try to keep old PCs in mind any time I redesign my own website(s). I don't even force https because it breaks too many old browsers.

[@cjay2]

My website stays at HTML 2.0, with a couple of css files.

[@xgui4-studios]

but http is way too much insecure ....

[@wintermute740]

Is security really needed for a static website with no login?

[@darkijah-andersjehovahsn7893]

Yea all that security drives me nuts. Sick and tired of it. They made it a hell to make your own website.

[@feywerfolevado6286]

I’m so used to people working and computing within limits and constraint - it made people extremely efficient with code and software etc.; and often think outside the box on ways to “get the most of” memory etc. We are truly spoilt with our absolutely insane memory availabilities and hard-drive sizes. For me, computing never changed, so I still use a laptop from 2003. I see no need to keep adopting ever-increasing (and with price as well) computing requirements. The operating systems and software nowadays are pathetically un-optimized and sloppy. And don’t even bring up “subscription” software, bah! Absolutely ridiculous.

[@kahvikissa_]

yeah its incredible in a way. a lot of tasks we do today are the same that we did in the past but now doing them takes far more resources. even a simple calculator would nowdays be some 100mb web wrapper app

[@CheezMonsterCrazy]

@@kahvikissa_ The windows calculator app uses 50MB of RAM.

[@J_SavedbyGrace_Eph28]

Enter FOSS lol. Linux is an absolute dream these days. Ain't no reason not to use it. So much compatibility as well. Mint is 👌

[@yancgc5098]

@@CheezMonsterCrazy That is still too much for a calculator

[@TheSimoc]

@@J_SavedbyGrace_Eph28 I'm all in for Linux, but unfortunately even its mainstream distros have gone bonkers in bloat.

[@leskaighin8903]

Sometimes it is an MS service that uses all the cpu capacity. That has been my experience. When that service finishes what is doing things speed up.

[@1pcfred]

Linux has those services too. Stuff related to freedesktop like dbus. I've run into issues with it. An arcane incantation like this can fix it dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY Because of course that's what any reasonable person would think to do.

[@chucklesdeclown8819]

This is what i like to call optimization creep. cpu, gpu, and other devices have become so fast that a lot of optimization has been thrown out the window, most people upgrade their pcs every 5-7 years so as long as websites(and other programs for that matter) can stay ahead of the curve(so to speak) then for the large majority of people its no problem but for people that dont upgrade it becomes harder to well...keep the old hardware up and running. Whats funny is the more we put off bad optimization the more that starts to bite us in the ass even with modern hardware(i mean just look at the gaming industry and thats just one example). Eventually they'll have to optimize im sure its just today is definitely not that day.

[@kahvikissa_]

seeing todays software makes it hard to believe that not that long ago just a couple megahertz of cpu and a couple kilobytes of memory was more than enough to run everything. now even a simple calculator program would barely fit on 100 floppy disks

[@Shishou_Shi]

Not to mention all the unnecessary animations and moving motions that actually feel slow. I've turned off animations on my phone and it is instantly easier and faster to use when they don't try to hide loading times with slow animations in every app and slide. It's incredibly annoying and frustrating because these animations don't feel fast and snappy at all, it's like devices have become more powerful but also slower at the same time. KZbin wasn't this power hungry before, older smartphones didn't heat up in your hand like this and laptops weren't on fire and melting all the time. It's absolutely crazy and probably intentional because functionally nothing has changed, KZbin still just plays video with the same quality yet you still have to buy new devices every couple years because the old ones have become unusuable.

[@jamessorrel]

I have an 14 year old laptop. It's still usable. On Firefox I have some pretty good adblocking and an extension to convert 60fps to 30fps video. I think it's called h264ify or something. That let me continue to use my old laptop quite nicely.

[@Scooter30FTW]

Those AMD A series CPU's weren't worth a crap even when they were new.

[@9852323]

They were truly awful, the old turions were better.

[@Gengh13]

Just like the Intel Atoms.

[@dzonikg]

YEs that AMDs and INtel Atoms were total crap as new ,COre 2 felt like super computer to Atom

[@RealMakarov]

I just bought a desktop with a a4 6300, gets sooooo slow I have to buy a athlon ii x4 860k and another 8gb stick of ram to get atleast usable

[@judewestburner]

I'm sure Steve Jobs said this would end when flash was replaced by html5 ;)

[@1pcfred]

Steve Jobs tried to cure cancer with carrots too. So there's that.

[@Jerhevon]

Much as I like Apple, they are totally into obsoleting tech before it's time. Looking to replace my 2013 iMac in 2025 due to Discord just not running in the browser and sites using various unsupported image formats. And sometimes the computer needs a restart so KZbin's sidebars/comments start working again. Such external reasons for hardware that still works fine, but so little of the software is being updated or supported. Augh.

[@1pcfred]

@@Jerhevon 2013? Yeah I think you're due for an upgrade. That's 12 years old. Electrolytic capacitors run at high frequency do not last forever. In fact they can catastrophically fail any time after they've been used for 5 years. You're looking to get a hat trick out of yours though. They're caps, not cats, so they don't have 9 lives.

[@Jerhevon]

@ physically I'm more worried about the hard drive. And I appreciate still using my consoles that are older than that. :)

[@MarkusHobelsberger]

​@@1pcfred I run several PCs from 2012-2014 and they are all fine. One just has to maintain the hardware properly and replace components from time to time, like storage or failing PSUs.

[@IOverlord]

With all the trackers, cookies, and ads, I'm not surprised

[@fiddley]

It's incredible that computers are being asked to do almost exactly the same job as they were 10 years ago, ie display text, graphica and video on a screen, but now they use 100x more power to do it. Javascript has a lot to answer for.

[@XashA12Musk]

for youtube videos it's problem of VP9 codec not present on older processors

[@fiddley]

@@XashA12Musk It's not really though because if you let the page load fully, older processors have no problem streaming the video even if it's decoding in software. The trouble is for the page to completely load and for cpu activity to cease so you can press play on the video can take 60 seconds each time. Ain't no one got time for that.

[@wardrich]

How much of this is due to DRM and crappy code? We keep driving up hardware and instead of using the resources to advance things, we just use it as an excuse to write crappier code because of the extra room. It's frustrating.

[@adziak]

Problem of today websites is they are overloaded with heavy animations and lack of optimization that causes old machines without hardware acceleration struggle. Few years ago low powered office laptop could be usable for internet browsing but not today.

[@elmariachi5133]

One major problem for old notebooks and netbooks is that current operating systems don't support their graphics sufficiently, and usually this means no hardware acceleration. So you have to use an outdated OS. But then you are very limited in the choice of your webbrowser, too. And these few specialized webbrowser versions for older PCs then don't support all the features needed for currently using the web. It's a chain of sadness :( And btw: From my countless tries on different systems with many OSses, Linux isn't any better on older hardware than Windows.- actually it's worse, because there are kind of modern tools for older Windows versions. But using an old Linux distributions mostly means being stuck to old software, too.

[@CiscoRo]

The page loading the texts and de boxes, then slowly loading the pics and the Ads it make me feels like I return to the 90, with the loud modem burning my brain every time I use internet.

[@paulharrison8379]

There are a number of 'mobile' versions of websites which still work. There is an m dot version of KZbin and an m dot version of Facebook.

[@Nabbit-Mario]

I have a 2015 Lenovo ThinkCentre with 12GB of RAM and a SATA SSD. It browses the web perfectly.

[@MickeyMishra]

Best thing to do with these older machines is to use them in some kind of remote desktop mode or cloud mode where all the processing happens on the other end and all the machine needs to do is display a video feed that it would be able to do hardware accelerated at the machine itself. Does anybody remember trying to get that broadcom PCI card for their netbooks so they could actually play KZbin on it? I do.

[@Kq4hcuDan]

Cloud service fails as well😂

[@TheSimoc]

That pretty much defeats the purpose.

[@MickeyMishra]

@@TheSimoc Well, I guess buying a hot hair re-work station might be in the cards. Just got to feather it...

[@TheSimoc]

@@MickeyMishra I'm not sure what you meant, and I don't know about broadcom and netbooks. But to elaborate, I meant that needing to have another powerful machine (on cloud or on your own network), pretty much defeats the purpose of utilizing the old machine in first place.

[@eDoc2020]

@@TheSimoc For old laptops it makes much more sense because they're small and portable while the powerful PC doesn't need to be. Even with a modern laptop you'll get better battery life and thermals if it's just a remote client.

[@alexandrutereify]

These netbook machines were obsolete on launch lol.

[@camberwellcarrot420]

Everyone should probably invest in whole home ad-blocking, and ideally IPS/IDS. That could be right at the router/firewall, or even as simple as Pi-Hole or a DNS service. It makes a difference and makes everything a little more secure.

[@XashA12Musk]

even if you don't wanna invest in hardware or software for ad blocking, you can change dns in router to adguard's dns. and block all the ads besides youtube. and use brave browser for youtube ad blocking

[@RampantLeaf]

Part of the problem is that web designers have shifted from implementing most display logic on the server side to the client side. Essentially what this means is that instead of assembling and combining the various parts of a webpage together on the server and sending before sending it your browser to render, the server only sends the data and your CPU is given the job of building the web page and putting all the pieces together. This is great for reducing datacenter costs, but it means that the computing "cost" is offloaded to your computer. Because of this, many websites are so fundamentally reliant on JavaScript for their basic functionally that adblockers and noscript are hardly useful on old devices.

[@pf100andahalf]

Interesting perspective. I never looked at it quite this way before. I'll use this video to demonstrate to people how hard to run the modern internet is. People didn't notice because it got harder to run slowly over time.

[@moodhot]

my first laptop was an AMD E1, i remembered back in 2013 it was snappier with windows 8, watching youtube and downloading files works just fine, it was a low end device even in 2013

[@catgirl_eva]

I agree with this, but only partially. There were computers sold that weren't good even when new. All eras of computers have systems like that. The laptop in this video is such an example. Even when new, it wasn't a good computer.

[@Sharkbite1970]

You don't say exactly how old the pc is anyone tec savvy will try any thing .upgrading the ram module makes a big difference and you don't talk about that. High street stores pitch the price of a pc at something they think people will pay .cutting down the ram module cheapens the price you then end up paying for the upgrade ,some of the older laptops even have a removable back panel so the job is easy if not your back at the shop or d.i.y with a you tube vid. The big question is whether you can put more ram in than recommended

[@dzonikg]

@@Sharkbite1970 THat CPY was crap ,its 3 times slower then 5 years older Core 2 Duo .AMD at that time were total crap

[@TheSimoc]

@@catgirl_eva Literally *every* computer used to be able to run any website in 00s, even 90's computers with MHz processors, single core. Gaming was the only home usage that set any requirements.

[@MarkusHobelsberger]

@@TheSimoc I think a bit of both is true. The A4-1200 was a weak chip when it got released and websites got more demanding than in the 00s. But personally, I wouldn't want to go back to websites from the 00s. Remember, there wasn't even video streaming until KZbin came around 2005-2006 and even then 360p was the best available quality for years. Today's web is so much more feature-rich.

[@TheSimoc]

@@MarkusHobelsberger There were lots of small video streaming sites before they got monopolized to KZbin - which also worked well with just 500MHz single core I had in 00s. And barring the video streaming and higher resolutions, there is no added functionality in websites today. No more pretexts, please.

[@cranebird1467]

The real problem why an old computer cannot keep up with the modern Internet is CSR (client side rendering) content, when JavaScript became the only engine for a browser.

[@simonebernacchia]

When i was working in a radio station cluster i was the person that did spend time optimizing images to have less weight possible while retaining good quality, other did not care

[@zeitgenosse]

Yes. uBO and NoScript (or any other JavaScript manager) and blocking domains via hosts file dramatically help save CPU cycles. However, there is also the issue of immense RAM usage. A relative's old laptop tends to run out of memory as soon as he has opened a few tabs too many. I keep telling him to use bookmarks instead, but no …

[@nP0131]

I wasn't familiar with a4-1200 so I looked it up. Surprised it was slower than an intel atom from the same era. Even when they were just released, parts of the web were already too bloated for them to run.

[@hhvictor2462]

About 27 years ago I owned an IBM TP701 "Butterfly" notebook. Worked just fine for MS Office 95 and basic web surfing. Then a couple of years later the machine constantly displayed the blue screen of death while visiting some websites (Netscape Navigator was THE browser). What transpired during those 2 or 3 years in the webverse pretty much rendered my notebook next to useless.

[@benotsilent6703]

I have an 8c/16t Xeon and 96GB of DDR3 ram that struggles with some newer websites.

[@user-s0me1x]

What's your GPU and do you use SSD?

[@9852323]

I find that hard to believe..I browse the web flawlessly on Core2Duo systems.

[@TheWebstaff]

​@user-s0me1x he's got a 4090 and an nvme stripe array with pci 5 drives.

[@benotsilent6703]

@@user-s0me1x It's running a Radeon R9 380 at the moment, system drive is SSD.

[@user-s0me1x]

@@benotsilent6703 Thanks for responding. I'm typing to you on my very old desktop pc I upgraded a bit recently: Arch Linux, Phenom II x6 1100T 6c/6t @3.3GHz, 16GB DDR3, GTX 660, NVMe SSD via an interface board connected to a PCIe2.0 slot. It doesn't "struggle" much with browsing the internet. It does take 2~ seconds to load YT front page, and you could say it's "struggling", but nothing too slow like the video is showing with his laptop. Your Radeon R9 380 is ~10% faster than my GTX 660, and your Xeon with 8c/16t is probably better than my Phenom although your Xeon may have a bit slower frequency than my Phenom. I wonder how bad your pc "struggles" with some websites, and what would be the main cause of the "struggle". I guess single core GHz is more important than I thought for today's internet browsing.

[@MA-jz4yc]

KZbin pauses for a second or 2 to go full screen when on my 14 core 20 thread i7 laptop. Can't imagine what a old netbook from 2012 will be like

[@nit3h8wk81]

Brave has a built in ad-blocker no 3rd party plugins needed.

[@videooblivion]

"Boohoo. Sniff. Too bad. Buy a new computer." - Every 8-bit computer in my collection.

[@antaripghosh102]

Solution: Google should release a dummed down version of youtube like it has done with gmail. You can have best of the two worlds that way

[@CnCDune]

didn't the light-gmail get shut down?

[@UrbanoDagrippino]

I have an old packet bell PC still works

[@LouiseBrooksBob]

It's probably considered more efficient for a company to load processing onto the user than the server.

[@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360]

One of solutions to slow browsing is the use of alternative clients (interfaces). Sadly, large companies not only don't help with it, but actively prevent usage of such software.

[@rustymixer2886]

Netbook for life...

[@suseanneegoulet1033]

The problem is bandwidth sucking, cpu wasting, auto play video garbage, not the computer. Let's put the blame where it belongs!

[@Nimboid-20]

No, it's not a problem with the hardware, it's a problem with the website designers!

[@nathanielbass771]

the real truth is that people are being wasteful because they're not used to being without. Some of the greatest innovations in software and gaming were caused by a lack of resources on the system hardware. Now, "ha ha, browser take 2 gigabyte ram base!"

[@darien217]

I use a 10 year old ZBook 15 G2 with a i7-4910MQ / 32GB Ram / 2TB M2 SSD / 2 GB GPU, using Win10/Firefox with Ad Blocking, still going strong.

[@iraj4377]

just use brave browser which gives better performance increment.

[@andrewszombie]

that has 8mb of cache. the cpu in this clip has only 1mb

[@GuitarM_n]

If you uograde GPU to one that decodes YT format, then it is easier. VP9 codecs if I recall correctly. Source: using 8570w with quadro rtx with said codecs

[@EugeniaLoli]

Your laptop is WAY more powerful than his. In passmark benchmark terms, your cpu does 6253 points, and his AMD does 369. And you have a lot more ram. Night and day between your case and his!

[@leylandlynxvlog]

That's a high end machine, I think he was meaning old more basic hardware. With your spec you could still run modern games at low settings. The one in the video would struggle to run UrbanTerror probably.

[@victormurori4367]

I remember a time when you could happily browse no lag, with only 2gb ram, now 16 is ideal for flawless performance

[@elu9780]

Oh yeah, I remember back in the early 2010s, I was experiencing serious browser slowdowns because of website bloat. I had iPad 2 at the time, and it was usable, but then quickly became less and less visible until most websites would become a huge pain to load. KZbin videos also used to be playable - not anymore. I currently have a laptop, ThinkPad R500, and it hurts how much the CPU has to work to load some pretty basic websites despite the laptop being good enough to run games that are supposed to be way more demanding than just playing a video or loading a website.

[@janMawisa]

This video alone has been enough to make me rewrite my (until recently very bloated, I must say) website from the ground up to only use vanilla HTML & CSS. Thank you!

[@Skathacat0r]

Not only would I attribute the issue on resource-intensive Javascript code, I'd also attribute the issue on dependence on graphics (e.g. canvases, WebGL) and video that would run much slower without hardware acceleration. I wish there were software implementations that would render web pages not exactly the same, but with significantly less resources. For example, many software 3D graphics didn't have shading nor texture filtering.

[@PrentisHancock1]

Computers **appear** to slow down for a wide variety of reasons, one of which you highlight here. Website technology has changed rapidly. The biggest change has been the introduction of the "scroll of death" - as you scroll to the bottom of the page more content loads and you can never reach the bottom. Everything use this method, even though it is incredibly annoying. Whoever invented it should be written into the annals of computing infamy. But other things also slow them down quickly. Number one is antivirus software. Number 2 is Windows and other operating systems' security updates and patches. 3 Ever increasing bloated software that is poorly written. Easiest solution to this is when a computer becomes too slow to use, permanently disconnect it from the internet, and then turn off the anti-virus software. You'll see how much it speeds up again. Use it for offline tasks such as a media player, word processing, and storage.

[@DctrBread]

remember when they said adobe flash was slowing down the internet?

[@laca103]

I am an internet user who grew up in the dial-up age of the internet. It is a reflex to install an adblocker on EVERY fresh system I install (right after firefox install). I'm so accustomed to this, that for years, I couldn't understand why is there so many complaint about the ads in sites and vids... it was so evident to me to use adblockers, that I was shocked to know that there are people who don't use them!!! Also, on old linux PCs you shouldn't use bigger desktop environment than LXDE (even XFCE is too big). Debian stable + LXDE is my go-for in the case of old PCs.

[@javabeanz8549]

Congratulations on passing the 2K subscribers.

[@joshwa1234]

Thank you very much 😀

[@musikSkool]

"Hardware Acceleration" helps sometimes.

[@DezsikeDevil1]

CSS is also a CPU killer if you don't have hardware acceleration. Disabling it will render websites in a very simple, unstructured way but it will be readable. Pair it with an adblock extension and you will have no problem browsing the web even on older computers.

[@azidahaka2]

The only way out of this spiral is to have a service pre-rendering and cleaning webpages for older hardware serving a clean html result to render. We had something like that on cellphones with some Opera browser versions many years ago