Let the record show that, in Beijing at least, August 30, 2012 (working hours) was the worst I've ever seen it. It appears that they are experimenting with some new censorship techniques, and have started off with a blanket approach, which they will (hopefully) fine tune later.
Basically, google.com and yahoo.com load without fail, but when I click on search results, those links are almost unilaterally blocked (e.g. 5% success rate). Since I let my VPN lapse (I don't use FB/twitter, and can live without youtube) a few months ago, I felt completely and utterly powerless doing my research work, but I managed to (grudgingly) make do with baidu. Again, I honestly believe this is a very short lived trend so I'm not going to get back on the VPN bandwagon on account of today alone. But, on the off chance the game continues for a week or more, I won't give it a second thought.
ETA: I checked google/yahoo again seconds after posting, and it appears that order has been restored.
Last edited by moondog; Aug 30, 2012 at 7:55 pm