There seems to be some kind of mismatch here. I'm watching two categories (General and Development); there's a "1 unread topic" bubble, but when I go to https://community.nodebb.org/unread, I get a "no unread topics" message.
Probably a very small error somewhere, but worthy of correcting.
It's gone away on its own after posting this thread -- but it shouldn't have been in that state to begin with, right?
Funny story but this bug caused me like half a days worth of trying to find whats wrong. When setting up the nodebb I made an admin with ' in its username. Results were weird to say the least. I could login, but I couldn't actually do anything when I did it, most of the buttons were not working. Basically usernames are sacred for some reason.
Ok - at present the underlying websockets library will attempt to connect using websockets first, and failing that, drops down to ajax polling. This is why it takes a couple seconds.
As long as you eventually get connected, it's okay, although we do realise that it is a problem for some people.