The # button in LQ advanced mode posting requires ajax.googleapis.com.

It was not always so but I have not been on LQ regularly recently so cannot closely time-frame the change.

There are LQ members (myself included) who prefer not to have any involvement with Google and who run NoScript or similar to prevent that. I vaguely recall a similar change on LQ around two years ago which was backed out after members mentioned it ... ?

LQ's use of ajax.googleapis.com is probably/hopefully benign but AFAIK NoScript does not allow per-site allowing of particular sites. Hence allowing ajax.googleapis.com for LQ also means allowing it for all sites

Switching to CDNs that aren't owned by Google (or Microsoft!) shouldn't be a problem. One alternative is cdnjs.

We actually use a custom CDN, but are currently serving YUI from the google global CDN. We'll look into moving YUI either to our own CDN or to something like cdnjs.

--jeremy