Older readers will remember when you'd buy a computer magazine printed on paper and at least 80% of it was ads. Which often didn't change from month to month.

Older readers will remember when you'd buy a computer magazine printed on paper and at least 80% of it was ads. Which often didn't change from month to month. Massive slabs of wood pulp had to be printed and shipped to all to the stores that stocked them, at huge cost, just so you could manhandle one of them home. And the content was mostly physical bloat. That's the modern web. Except that you don't just get the ads, you get some of the machinery that serves them - at you, specifically, based on your browsing profile, which is used to decide which ads you see. I always refuse all cookies. When I forget to do that for some reason it's obvious just how much slower the experience gets.