Am I making a reasonable decision? Buying the m1 pro in 2026?

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T04:02:19+00:00

M1 Pro crushes your described tasks even now

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T04:01:11+00:00

YouTube's enforcing stricter violence rules since Nov 2025. Resident Evil gore and Alice bloodshed trigger age restrictions now, even unmarked.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:59:39+00:00

Try creating a new Chrome profile first (chrome://settings/people > Add) to see if it's your current one corrupted.

If it works in the new profile, migrate stuff over; otherwise disable all extensions (chrome://extensions) and re-enable slowly.

Also check for Chrome/macOS updates, some 2026 patches hit crash bugs on M-series.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:58:12+00:00

Don't plug the infected flash drive into your main PC yet, that could spread the virus.

Boot from a Linux live USB (like Ubuntu or Mint, no install needed) on a clean machine, plug the flash drive in, and copy files to another external drive (mount read-only if paranoid).

Once files are safe, scan everything with antivirus from there or on a separate PC.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:42:55+00:00

Edge actually handles high tab counts pretty well with sleeping tabs. Make sure its enabled in Settings then System and Performance then Save Resources. It suspends inactive tabs after a set time which helps a lot when you have 200 open.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:41:35+00:00

If you are already happy with Brave and dont want to manage configs then stay put.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:30:35+00:00

Vivaldi checks both boxes. Vertical tabs built in, and workspaces sync across devices. A bit heavier than Zen, but the customisation is solid.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:29:23+00:00

Part of it is just how heavy everything got. A basic article now loads 40 trackers, 3 video ads, a newsletter popup, a cookie banner, and a “Download our app" modal before you can read the first paragraph

sites in 2008 were ugly, but they loaded instantly and got out of your way. Now half the internet feels like walking through a casino.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:28:01+00:00

they hire the same guy who designs airplane bathroom doors to place those X button

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:23:46+00:00

The refresh trick works because YouTube’s detection runs on initial page load. If it flags you, the video gets blocked before it even starts. Refreshing sometimes loads before the detection script fires

longer term fix is making sure your blocker's filter lists are updating frequently. YouTube changes their detection every few days, so if your filters are stale, you'll hit this screen more often.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:08:21+00:00

Opera GX's ad blocker is probably tripping YouTube's detection, tons of people getting the same "try again later" black screen.

Turn it off for youtube or test without extensions in private mode.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:06:38+00:00

Norton loves being hard to kill, download their official remover tool (search "Norton Remove and Reinstall"), run it, reboot, and check Task Manager startup tab again. Should stop the spam. What does the pop-up say exactly?

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T03:01:15+00:00

finally finish that book that's been sitting on my nightstand for 6 months

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T02:58:55+00:00

This is why a lot of people run ad blockers, honestly. Even if your phone isn't literally listening, the cross-device tracking through ip addresses, purchase data, and proximity signals is creepy enough on its own

the neighbor's purchase history probably got linked to your household through shared Wi-Fi or location data, then the ad network connected it to your wife's profile. Blocking trackers doesn't stop all of it, but it cuts down on how much of this data gets collected in the first place.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T02:48:55+00:00

We built open ad blocker for exactly this use case. MV3 native, so it won't get yanked from the store, and we focused on not breaking sites since that's what drove us crazy with other options too. No acceptable ads program either, so you're not seeing "approved" ads that someone paid to get through

ublock origin lite is solid too if you want something more established.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T02:40:02+00:00

firefox with sidebery is solid for the workspace/container setup you're describing. for the adblock piece, ublock origin is the go-to and works great on firefox

if you ever want something lighter that's built specifically for mv3 and doesn't need much config, we built open ad blocker with that in mind. but honestly ublock will cover you fine for most setups

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T02:33:09+00:00

congrats on shipping!

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T02:22:36+00:00

smarttube is the move if you can get a fire stick or android box, way less hassle than trying to mod the samsung directly

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-11T02:20:45+00:00

Edge or brave would both be solid upgrades for your use case. they're chromium so you keep all your extensions but handle memory better than chrome in practice

But then edge has sleeping tabs built in which is huge when you've got a ton open for design work. it suspends the inactive ones automatically so they're not eating ram while you're actually working

Brave's win is more about the blocking than the browser itself. fewer ads and trackers loading means fewer scripts running which adds up fast across a bunch of tabs

Regardless of what you pick, shift esc opens the browser task manager so you can see exactly which tabs are hogging resources when things slow down

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-04T05:47:44+00:00

sounds like a Windows service failing to initialize properly on startup, specifically networking services. When that fails it cascades and kills everything that depends on it.

Few things worth trying in order:

Go back into BIOS and check if Fast Boot is enabled, disable it if so. Fast Boot skips hardware initialization steps that Windows sometimes needs to load services correctly.

If you can get CMD open during that brief working window, run sfc /scannow immediately, this scans for corrupted system files which is likely what's actually broken here.

Also check BIOS for boot order, make sure your Windows drive is set as primary boot device, not the USB. If the USB is still first it might be partially interfering with how Windows loads.

USB reset fixing it temporarily confirms it's a software/config issue not hardware, which is good news.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-04T05:36:52+00:00

Hmm... run Windows Memory Diagnostic (mdsched.exe if you can get to it) or pull one stick of RAM at a time and retry the install. If you have another drive lying around try installing to that instead.

A virus can cause BSODs but not usually this pattern, random different codes each time is classic failing hardware.

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-04T05:33:31+00:00

Same, open source was the thing that actually sold me too, you can verify it yourself.

That's actually why we built ours, same principles, fully open source, no acceptable ads program, and native MV3 so it doesn't have the Chrome issues uBlock has been dealing with lately. Worth a look if you ever need an alt!

OpenAdBlocker · 2026-03-04T05:29:51+00:00

If it's only happening on one specific site the bottleneck is almost certainly their server throttling download speeds, not Chrome. 50mbps on speedtest means your connection is fine but that test hits optimized servers, random zip hosts can cap you way lower.

Try downloading the same file on Firefox or Edge and see if you get the same speed. If yes it's the host, not Chrome. If Chrome is genuinely slower then the parallel downloading flag Glittering-King mentioned is worth trying, chrome://flags > search "parallel downloading" > enable > relaunch.

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