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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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704 "guests": http plus talk works, https plus whisper does not.
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chempyre235
Hazard to Others
Posts: 207
Registered: 21-10-2024
Location: Between Nb and Tc
Member Is Offline
Mood: Quite distracted
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I've just now been able to get on the SM forum pages. As of even this morning, it hadn't been working. Was able to log on about five days ago, then
endless loading and error messages until now.
Not even the http/talk trick had been working.
[Edited on 12/10/2025 by chempyre235]
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." -Winston Churchill
"I weep at the sight of flaming acetic anhydride." -@Madscientist
"...the elements shall melt with fervent heat..." -2 Peter 3:10
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Radiums Lab
Hazard to Others
Posts: 299
Registered: 18-3-2025
Location: India
Member Is Offline
Mood: Experiencing the elegance of science.
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I used to hate that human verification thing in other websites, now I understood its importance.
Water is dangerous if you don't know how to handle it, elemental fluorine (F₂) on the other hand is pretty tame if you know what you are doing.
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RogueRose
International Hazard
Posts: 1601
Registered: 16-6-2014
Member Is Offline
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I was having problems loading the site for at least 12 days or so. My browser history only goes back that far b/c of an OS reload. This is the first
time I was able to load the site for at least that long. Does anyone know how long the site was having problems? I'm in the US if that matters..
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jackchem2001
Hazard to Others
Posts: 110
Registered: 2-6-2024
Member Is Offline
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I think the site always has some occasional connectivity problems, just have to try again later, not a problem
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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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No problem in the last two weeks. Number of guests has been below 500 as far as I know.
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1392
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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Site unreachable yesterday, repeated timeouts today. I guess we're getting hammered by bots again.
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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Dr.Bob
International Hazard
Posts: 2918
Registered: 26-1-2011
Location: USA - NC
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mildly disgruntled scientist
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Is there anything we can do to help? or can Polverone or someone create a backup site or email place to connect if the site is down.
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Radiums Lab
Hazard to Others
Posts: 299
Registered: 18-3-2025
Location: India
Member Is Offline
Mood: Experiencing the elegance of science.
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The guest count is more than 500. That explains the site being down.
Water is dangerous if you don't know how to handle it, elemental fluorine (F₂) on the other hand is pretty tame if you know what you are doing.
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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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I knew we were close to an event when the number of leeches jumped from 320 to 580. It would be interesting if we could plot the number of leeches as
a function of time. Maybe there is a pattern, maybe not.
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BromicAcid
International Hazard
Posts: 3323
Registered: 13-7-2003
Location: Wisconsin
Member Is Offline
Mood: Rock n' Roll
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Someone's gotta train the AI models, it might as well be us 
I'm sure lots of issues like this are getting buried in the models thanks to us:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2xZxYaGlfs
[Edited on 1/16/2026 by BromicAcid]
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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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Just imagine if they had access to Detritus.
521 "guests" right now.
[Edited on 16-1-2026 by bnull]
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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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1611 leeches ten hours ago, 862 now.
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1392
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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Is there no way to limit guest bandwidth or concurrent numbers? Is the server software too old for this?
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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BromicAcid
International Hazard
Posts: 3323
Registered: 13-7-2003
Location: Wisconsin
Member Is Offline
Mood: Rock n' Roll
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I have to wonder the same thing or at least what is hosting costing now? We had a hosting crunch several years back, are we burning through money or
good will now? Do we need to start locking things down - is this becoming untenable? Couldn't access this morning, more than 1000 of those buggers.
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bariumbromate
Hazard to Others
Posts: 104
Registered: 4-2-2025
Location: australia
Member Is Offline
Mood: nitrating
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polverone could try nepenthes? https://zadzmo.org/code/nepenthes/
it might deter ai scrapers?
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pesco
Hazard to Self
Posts: 95
Registered: 19-11-2015
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Site is unreachable most of the time. When it becomes accessible then posting fails every time.
It becomes unusable 
Please limit number of guest allowed simultaneously or allow only logged in users.
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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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What about limiting the time allowed to move between threads? Human operators take seconds to do that, leeches fractions of a second.
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yobbo II
National Hazard
Posts: 820
Registered: 28-3-2016
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Hello,
[img] https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/files.php?pid=516736&aid=67913[/img]
At least the spammers could not (effectively) lock you out of the site.
  
These joyous activities have no effect on Bots.
Welcome to modernity!!
What to do?
Yob
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j_sum1
Administrator
Posts: 6472
Registered: 4-10-2014
Location: Limbo
Member Is Offline
Mood: Just got through yet another "take this job and shove it" moment.
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This is a frustrating problem and I agree with the bulk of what has been said here. The solution may be as simple as a captcha to access the site.
It does expose a bigger problem – one which has been discussed but for which there is no current solution.
Polverone basically has the keys to the board. It began as his baby and he is really the only one who can implement changes. However, he is extremely
infrequent – his life has moved on. Practically, this means the board is vulnerable to all manner of potential problems and not all of them could be
solved through software upgrades.
My thoughts are that a steady stream of emails from members may be the best way to catch his attention. Nothing big or spammy. Just a simple request
in the subject line.
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pesco
Hazard to Self
Posts: 95
Registered: 19-11-2015
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Captcha might not work.
It easy to train AI to pass the captcha and I suspect the AI crawlers have that ability already built in.
Only 3 solution I can see working for sure:
- only logged in users, but that makes it unavailable to wide public
- extensive filters/acl, but that takes time and effort to implement
- best one, next post
Althought i specialised in embedded systems and networking and not web servers configuration I had some experience with bunch of Apache installs and
could help with the filters/acl as time allows.
Something has to be done as the forum becomes unusable more and more often and it will become worse over time as AI hype gers worse and ever so
smaller entities try their luck in this tech.
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pesco
Hazard to Self
Posts: 95
Registered: 19-11-2015
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Best solution - make a mirror, then keep one on login only excluding AI crawlers and the other one on free public access.
That way we can comfortably read and post on member only version while crawlers will be free to clog up the public copy.
I don't have private servers anymore, but I do have one virtual server on ionos and if the specs are good enough I am happy to put a mirror on it. I
use it only for my email server, so I am not bothered about space or bandwidth. Email is not interactive anyway and its space quota is separate from
web space quota.
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bnull
National Hazard
Posts: 994
Registered: 15-1-2024
Location: East Woods
Member Is Offline
Mood: Fecking annoyed
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Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1  | It does expose a bigger problem – one which has been discussed but for which there is no current solution.
Polverone basically has the keys to the board. It began as his baby and he is really the only one who can implement changes. However, he is extremely
infrequent – his life has moved on. Practically, this means the board is vulnerable to all manner of potential problems and not all of them could be
solved through software upgrades. |
I wonder if he would agree to setting up a board of trustees.
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1392
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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The bigger problem is these AI crawlers chewing up server bandwidth that has to be paid for by someone. Hosting aint free.
They're getting this AI training data for nothing - and this is part of an internet wide issue of AI gobbling up peoples hard work without
compensation, and then using that to make money. It's theft, basically.
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1392
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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814 'guests' ?! This is getting out of hand. Reading around, it seems we're not the only ones getting hit by aggressive bots.
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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