Browser bloat is the principle cause of desktop instability for me over the past 5--10 years has been bloated browser sessions. To the point I have a "firefox-reaper" script to kill the largest 10--20 browser tabs in an effort to try to keep things sane. (It helps, but doesn't solve the problem.)
Upgraded memory recently, unfortunately it appears to be bad RAM, purchased ... a while ago. Replacement (if I can't find the warranty) will cost several times what I originally paid a couple of years back.
One of the draws of HN over other aggregator sites is that it's comparatively ultra-lightweight. I can browse it without crashing not just my tab or browser session, but my full system. Even F/OSS sites such as Mastodon compare poorly here, let alone commercial social media (even used read-only w/o login).
See Idlewords' "The Website Obesity Crisis" from 2015.
Something of an HN perennial:
11 years ago (367 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10820445>
10 years ago (90 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659026>
9 years ago (83 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14088092>
8 years ago (30 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17943754>
7 years ago (22 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22283344>
5 years ago (89 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27355556>
4 years ago (43 comments) <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34466910>
The only bright spot is that the RAMpocalypse is finally imposing real costs on memory-heavy development. Though I fear even it will only have a temporary effect.
These are still very generous limits I doubt that'll help at all