It started sometime after I upgraded to Mavericks (it was 10.9.something by the time I got around to it, and I really do quite enjoy using it) and before the next update. I would be poking around on the internet and seemingly at random, everything would just stop working.
Everything that wasn't going over http would work fine (ssh on terminal, im programs, Tor).
I initially assumed there was something wrong with dns so tried using OpenDNS instead of my isp, but that didn't fix it.
I tried flushing dns caches every way I found relevant to OSX 10.8 and 10.9 on the internet, but that didn't fix it.
I figured there might be something wrong with the routing maybe as when I tracerouted any given site, I would get stuck somewhere inside hwng.net or bandcon.com (which appear to be the same thing), however Tor worked.
The only thing that ever worked reliably was rebooting the machine. This was a minor inconvenience the first time. Annoying the second time a month or so later. The third time (most recent occurrence) was about a week after the second time and I'm slightly ever so very really quite pissed.
Josh had taken today off as he'd worked a hell of a lot of overtime earlier in the week, so sat and nutted out the problem with me, and eventually theorised that there was "something" (possibly a hidden proxy) between the http layer and the communications layer that was breaking and thus stopping http from working, and the reason Tor worked was because the communications layer wasn't quite sure what it was dealing with, just knew it had to go [here] (or something to that effect). Given the stupidity surrounding the NSA and PRISM and all that other stuff, it was then a short leap to conjecture that this alleged "something" that shouldn't be between the http and communication layers was put there soley for the purposes of monitoring. Perhaps insidious NSA monitoring. [cue over the top dramatic music]
I then tried to work out what I should be searching the internet for as far as solutions or workarounds to the problem goes as I'm not sure how else to describe the problem and from what I've searched with I seem to be the only person on the entire internet with the problem.
And it could be something completely innocuous if wtf.
Hoping a clean reinstall (when I get annoyed enough to do a more recent backup than the one I have and Just Do It) will somehow magically solve that weird problem.
My longer term solution is getting the dream rig purely for animation related production and only connect it to the interwebz every so often for updates and getting a slightly souped up one of these for everything else I do, and hoping I somehow magically have some luck with Ubuntu Studio where my Cintiq will Just Work without blowing up because I closed the laptop or hotplugged the Cintiq and am able to stomach Blender long enough to start liking it before I have to replace my current rig.