Eh. They started using a Microsoft-hosted script Quite Some Time Ago Now, possibly more than a year. I've had it blocked this entire time, via NoScript (as part of "block all by default"); I'm not going to allow all scripts from microsoft.com just to get a few FFnet features. Frankly, not being able to get access to the "Recommended" tab has probably been a good thing for me, in that it's reduced my ability to casually sink hours into just scanning FFnet for new things worth reading.
Weirdly, every now and then it seems as if they briefly (as in, a few hours at most) use a copy hosted somewhere I've already allowed scripts from, and author-page tabs work fine for a little while even with microsoft.com still blocked - but then they switch back again. Possibly they've got some round-robin mirror-selection logic to decide which copy of the script to point to at any given time?
Point being, their use of a Microsoft-hosted script isn't new; the only thing that seems new is that the server which hosts that script is giving timeouts.
Weirdly, every now and then it seems as if they briefly (as in, a few hours at most) use a copy hosted somewhere I've already allowed scripts from, and author-page tabs work fine for a little while even with microsoft.com still blocked - but then they switch back again. Possibly they've got some round-robin mirror-selection logic to decide which copy of the script to point to at any given time?
Point being, their use of a Microsoft-hosted script isn't new; the only thing that seems new is that the server which hosts that script is giving timeouts.