I Am A Human. Really, I am!

[blueline]

Cloudflare back on and bots have disappeared into the ether (for now). Only 4 online users at the moment. (Zero guests - the bots are always "guests".)

[Tom]

Cloudflare back on and bots have disappeared into the ether (for now). Only 4 online users at the moment. (Zero guests - the bots are always "guests".)

I usually leave it on over night and off during the day (my time) so that the cyber-leeches don't feast overnight, but thought I'd see if maybe they'd give up on us. They haven't. I'd change that label to cyber-slime or the like, but that number includes legitimate surfers and members who aren't log in.

[J-Dub]

Have not been logged out of my mobile browser since your update. Thanks!

[Tom]

Have not been logged out of my mobile browser since your update. Thanks!

Thanks for that feedback. Glad it worked!

[Tom]

I discovered a setting in Cloudflare that will help to remember the humans and not verify you so often. If it works as advertised, you shouldn't see the cloudflare screen more than once in an 24 hour period... Fingers crossed...

[ReidMcT]

The verification isn't onerous at all, and takes only seconds. If it's helping the site, it's totally worth the short pause, even if it's every visit. Thanks!

[Gaspowered]

Hi Tom,

This morning (Friday, 8:00am CT), I became stuck on this screen for about 5 minutes before giving up.

No big deal, just wanted you to know.

Cheers

[Tom]

I've had that happen too. I think it's mostly a connectivity issue, but not 100% sure. Refreshing the screen worked for me. I've changed the settings so that Cloudflare doesn't check the same IP over and over the way it was, so that should significantly reduce how often you see the Cloudflare screen. If it continues to work, I'll bump it to check even less frequently. Hopefully folks are seeing way less Cloudflare screens already? I am...

[blueline]

The delay works for me, both mobile and PCs.

[blueline]

Speaking of AI and associated bots, I have a confession to make. I really, really like Perplexity AI. I know, hypocrite writ large.

But, in my defense , Perplexity's LLM and conversational approach is quite helpful and fun - good answers and good attributions too. It has helped fill the void created by traditional search engines' capitulation to marketing.

I remember the early days of search ... it was much more communal back in the day.