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Almost yes! The header is different and I use my own RPC node for requesting data. Therefore you could use it if steemit.com is down.

Right. Now that you mentioned Steem is down, I'm wondering: was that just my connection acting up, or does Steem frequently take forever to load, or even fail to load at all?

There were difficulties on the servers. In the meantime there was an update and it should work better again... until the next problem. That's why it's always good to know alternatives. :-)