Please disable Cloudflare's "I'm Under Attack" mode. Has BYOND just been under some perpetual DDoS attack this year? A half-day's manual solution to address any sporadic DDoS/botting would be a much better alternative.

As an intermittent user with a perpetual love of this site for over 18 years now, this 5-second deferred-load and occasional double-CAPTCHA are notable annoyances to me. If I were a potentially new user that didn't already have a personal investment in BYOND, this would be an immediate deal-breaker; if I didn't kill the tab during the 5 seconds where it's "checking my browser," I definitely wouldn't make it past the CAPTCHA phase.

Maybe this would be acceptable if this were a commonplace thing when I visit my bank, Amazon, etc, but it's not. It adds to the ongoing list of reasons for new users to think BYOND is illegitimate:

• "WTF?" moment when visiting website (hence this post)
• Download random .exe online? Risky...
• Trying to install, Windows blocked me. I'm a random Internet user, I don't know anything about certificates and the grievances certain developers have for them. Whatever, I like danger. Proceeding anyways...
• Software looks kinda old. (Well, it is, so...) Ah whatever, I press-on where others do not!

I digress, this is a commonplace thing---websites trying to get you to install viruses often pop up with spammy things saying they are "checking your browser" and/or that you are already infected, and you should install some software to fix. I guess if BYOND really wants to come off as virus-y, this is a good way to do it.