7 minutes ago, Roger That said:

Can you hotspot to your phone and test in a private browsing session in Firefox to see whether it's the same behaviour or not on a different internet connection?

I ran a test and USB tethered my laptop to my phone and ran through the True cellular data network with a private browsing session. Still blocked.

 

I had previously determined that the block did not depend on a specific source IP address, since rebooting my router assigned a new IP.

 

Another thing I had tried was assigning a different User Agent (using one of the Firefox extensions).

 

The best hypothesis I have is that the problem is somehow cookie-related, since I can connect to the AN homepage if I clear the cache and cookies. But as soon as I try to load another page (with the new cookie) I am blocked.

 

Paul Laew

OK. I think you have to update Firefox then. If that is not straightforward because it's an old version of Ubuntu, then update Ubuntu.

 

You mentioned that Ubuntu 16.04 is LTS - from what I can see, Ubuntu 16.04 is end of life, unless you specifically sign up for Extended Security Maintenance. This seems to be free for personal use, but you have to register.

 

Why not just upgrade?

2 minutes ago, Roger That said:

OK. I think you have to update Firefox then. If that is not straightforward because it's an old version of Ubuntu, then update Ubuntu.

 

You mentioned that Ubuntu 16.04 is LTS - from what I can see, Ubuntu 16.04 is end of life, unless you specifically sign up for Extended Security Maintenance. This seems to be free for personal use, but you have to register.

 

Why not just upgrade?

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is supported until 2026. It's a very stable release. I'm sort of old school, I don't need the latest bugs.

 

Since AN is the only website that seems to cause any problems, Chrome is a reasonable workaround. Chrome memory management seems better than it used to be.

 

Paul Laew

 

Paul Laew

It's supported if you have ESM. Do you have that? If not, it's not supported.

 

And, as you can see, using old software introduces bugs of its own...

 

Without Firefox updates it's likely that you'll get more and more issues going forward.

6 minutes ago, Roger That said:

It's supported if you have ESM. Do you have that? If not, it's not supported.

 

And, as you can see, using old software introduces bugs of its own...

 

Without Firefox updates it's likely that you'll get more and more issues going forward.

Yes, I have the extended security maintenance for 16.04 LTS. It's free for personal use. Wish they offered it for wives.

 

Paul Laew

Just an update ... I decided to bite the bullet and update to Ubuntu 21.04 with Firefox 97. That did solve the problem accessing AN with Firefox, though it came at the cost of having to reconfigure my finely tuned Ubuntu configuration, file restoration, etc.

 

At least I didn't fall off a speedboat.

 

Paul Laew

3 minutes ago, Paulaew said:

Just an update ... I decided to bite the bullet and update to Ubuntu 21.04 with Firefox 97. That did solve the problem accessing AN with Firefox, though it came at the cost of having to reconfigure my finely tuned Ubuntu configuration, file restoration, etc.

 

At least I didn't fall off a speedboat.

 

Paul Laew

It's best to stick with the LTS versions. Had you left it much longer then an update would not have been possible. Non LTS versions are only supported for something like 18 months. Not all *.04 versions are LTS. Soon 22.04 will be released and I highly recommend upgrading to that. You can set your software updater to upgrade only LTS versions.  Always accept all updates and update them when offered. I have used Ubuntu as my main o/s for 12 years and my full time job is Ubuntu based so I'm a big fan of Ubuntu. I'm going to have a play with nixos when I can find time.

16 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

It's best to stick with the LTS versions. Had you left it much longer then an update would not have been possible. Non LTS versions are only supported for something like 18 months. Not all *.04 versions are LTS. Soon 22.04 will be released and I highly recommend upgrading to that. You can set your software updater to upgrade only LTS versions.  Always accept all updates and update them when offered. I have used Ubuntu as my main o/s for 12 years and my full time job is Ubuntu based so I'm a big fan of Ubuntu. I'm going to have a play with nixos when I can find time.

The reason I went to 21.04 is because this version supports a new kernel version that includes the Mediatek Wifi drivers. This has been a longstanding issue with Linux -- I previously had to manually compile a kernel with those drivers and had to do it each time I had a kernel upgrade. So I had switched to Ethernet at home instead, but I still need the Wifi drivers when I'm on the road.

 

I did a clean install with 21.04 rather than an update, but then had to find a new desktop environment (I was previously running lubuntu). Then there are all those little details like a screen brightness control. Fortunately I've been through all this before. But I can see why the average user may still find Linux frustrating.

 

Paul Laew

3 minutes ago, Paulaew said:

The reason I went to 21.04 is because this version supports a new kernel version that includes the Mediatek Wifi drivers. This has been a longstanding issue with Linux -- I previously had to manually compile a kernel with those drivers and had to do it each time I had a kernel upgrade. So I had switched to Ethernet at home instead, but I still need the Wifi drivers when I'm on the road.

 

I did a clean install with 21.04 rather than an update, but then had to find a new desktop environment (I was previously running lubuntu). Then there are all those little details like a screen brightness control. Fortunately I've been through all this before. But I can see why the average user may still find Linux frustrating.

 

Paul Laew

I have always stuck to the included UI. Much of my time is spent in terminal anyway as I mainly work with servers and do a lot of coding. I started coding on dos machines back in the 80's anyway. Not sure why the "average" user would have any issues with Ubuntu or the default desktop.

I have the same problem, although not using firefox. This started yestsrday. The browsers failing are both chrome based, one running on android and the other on debian.

 

As I stated in my email to AN support, their site is occasionally entertaining, but it really isn't so good that it is worth all this nonsense. Blocked 5 times in 2 days.