Why is there JavaScript that prevents me from selecting any text? That is how I read sometimes (subconsciously mostly). When I disable JS, I can select text again. What are you trying to accomplish with this?
I guess some of all those hosts is doing something that goes haywire and results in this problem.
Would be cool if we could downrank pages like this somehow. Maybe tell the submitter "The page loads scripts (and therefore sends data to) 117 different servers. Please be aware that we will not show it on the front page until it has at least 117 upvotes".
I block all third-party requests with ublock and enable them one at a time (targeted, by looking at what they are manually) to get websites working again (when I really want to). It is generally insane how many external requests are 'needed' to display very basic websites like blogs or general information websites of companies.
There is lots of information on optimizing images and whenever I speak to designers they always say "don't worry, we optimize the images", which is great of course, but they completely overlook all the JS. Many websites don't only load more JS in terms of raw file size, but the parsing of all this JS then, again, takes more time than loading all of CSS and images, combined. And for what? Usually some annoying pop-ups, image sliders or some chat-box. In fact, those chat-boxes themselves load complete web pages in the iframe they are created in. I also see websites loading multiple versions of jQuery.
Anyway, 117 external requests for anything, let alone a blog, is insane.
I had the same issue. It's caused by an overlay of the "Updated Privacy Policy" button. You can either disable your adblocker and click accept to remove the overlay, or you create a rule in your adblocker to block it: ##div.reveal-overlay:nth-of-type(6)
I always find replies like this amusing. It seems to be the habit of Hacker News users to focus on minutiae while either missing or ignoring the focus of a submission. It's baffling.
