Server Downtime - May 13th-16th, 2025

[ZLoth]

Hey, what happened? For a while, we either got 403-Forbidden, 503, or 404-Page not found errors. I actually set up a monitor on my local instance of Uptime Kuma to see when the forum came back up.

[WillWeaverRVA]

Hey, what happened? For a while, we either got 403-Forbidden, 503, or 404-Page not found errors. I actually set up a monitor on my local instance of Uptime Kuma to see when the forum came back up.

The forum server got absolutely clobbered by bots.

[swake]

Why would anyone DDOS this forum? Idiots.

[The Ghostbuster]

The same thing happened to me. I had feared I had been either banned from posting, or AAroads was blocking me for some reason. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who experienced this and can post again.

[Scott5114]

Why would anyone DDOS this forum? Idiots.

Companies downloading the entire forum to feed it into their AI. Except instead of going through the pages one by one they have 136,000 computers connect all at once to download everything.

[1995hoo]

The same thing happened to me. I had feared I had been either banned from posting, or AAroads was blocking me for some reason. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who experienced this and can post again.

Alex had said earlier this week he thought he would be forced to take the forum down pending a solution. I wondered whether it would come back up. Glad to see it's back.

[ZLoth]

Companies downloading the entire forum to feed it into their AI. Except instead of going through the pages one by one they have 136,000 computers connect all at once to download everything.

136,000 computers connecting at once? Doubtful. But, 136,000 virtual instances connecting at once to download everything in a server farm? That's more realistic.

[Scott5114]

Companies downloading the entire forum to feed it into their AI. Except instead of going through the pages one by one they have 136,000 computers connect all at once to download everything.

136,000 computers connecting at once? Doubtful. But, 136,000 virtual instances connecting at once to download everything in a server farm? That's more realistic.

I dunno, that's what the forum software said before it went down.

If they're all connecting from different IP addresses and displaying different user agents, then it really doesn't make all that much difference on our end whether they're running on different hardware or not. (And with IT stuff, I find it usually makes more sense to speak imprecisely when that conveys the gist of what's going when you have no idea to what degree the person you're talking to cares about the technical detail.)

[Max Rockatansky]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

[DTComposer]

I'm getting those same 502 errors, about 20% of the time that I click on a topic.

When the forum first came back up, the "users online" and "most online today" seemed to hover at around 300, which seemed reasonable, but I now see in the last hour that the "most online today" spiked again to 28K - so I'm concerned the bots might be trying to come back?

[swake]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

Thank you so much.

People call these chatbots AI. THEY ARE NOT AI. It's a sham.

[LilianaUwU]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

Thank you so much.

People call these chatbots AI. THEY ARE NOT AI. It's a sham.

AI scrapers are the property of AI companies. Don't whitewash what they are.

[Max Rockatansky]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

Thank you so much.

People call these chatbots AI. THEY ARE NOT AI. It's a sham.

AI scrapers are the property of AI companies. Don't whitewash what they are.

Isn't this the Sonic the Hedgehog Bad Future that K12 was trying to convince us would be great?

[Quillz]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

Thank you so much.

People call these chatbots AI. THEY ARE NOT AI. It's a sham.

AI scrapers are the property of AI companies. Don't whitewash what they are.

Isn't this the Sonic the Hedgehog Bad Future that K12 was trying to convince us would be great?

If that's the guy who talked about a Minority Report-style future where everything is automated, but there is no manual override or concept of "things need to be maintained," then maybe.

My take is AI is a tool like anything else. It's neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it.

[Max Rockatansky]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

Thank you so much.

People call these chatbots AI. THEY ARE NOT AI. It's a sham.

AI scrapers are the property of AI companies. Don't whitewash what they are.

Isn't this the Sonic the Hedgehog Bad Future that K12 was trying to convince us would be great?

If that's the guy who talked about a Minority Report-style future where everything is automated, but there is no manual override or concept of "things need to be maintained," then maybe.

My take is AI is a tool like anything else. It's neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it.

All these AI-branded algorithm tools have been resulting in negative outcomes along all frontiers of the road enthusiast hobby. 

Off forum today I had to delete an automatically generated AI from hijacking a California Road group I manage on Facebook.  This is one of several groups where I've had to make similar intervention.  That doesn't even get into the malignant mass of AI Road pages that keep stealing from hobby pages. 

But yes, K12 is very big on the supposed benefits of modern algorithms.  He and others seem to misunderstand that none of what is out there is actual artificial intelligence.

[formulanone]

Modern algorithms (misbranded AI) are a cancer.

Also, I'm getting a bunch of 502 errors if I refresh pages too quickly.  I'm taking it that this some form of mitigation against the bots?

Thank you so much.

People call these chatbots AI. THEY ARE NOT AI. It's a sham.

AI scrapers are the property of AI companies. Don't whitewash what they are.

Isn't this the Sonic the Hedgehog Bad Future that K12 was trying to convince us would be great?

If that's the guy who talked about a Minority Report-style future where everything is automated, but there is no manual override or concept of "things need to be maintained," then maybe.

My take is AI is a tool like anything else. It's neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it.

It's a tool, but I just don't need that left-handed screwdriver and nine-point socket all that often.

[Quillz]

K12 reminds me of Dyson from Terminator 2. Where he was making his design with nothing but good intentions in mind ("a pilot that never gets tired or makes mistakes"), and it didn't even seem to cross his mind that his design could be exploited and/or used for nefarious purposes.

[Bobby5280]

I wasn't surprised the forum was taken offline (there were warnings about it). I was a bit surprised the forum was down for that many days. Hopefully the "AI" scraper bots won't return any time soon.

[hbelkins]

The first time I tried to access the forum during the outage, I actually saw a note from Alex saying he was going to be forced to take it offline until he could figure out something. After that, I started getting 403 errors.

[1995hoo]

I saw the same note hbelkins mentions.

[vdeane]

Honestly, with all the messaging to the effect of the forum being on borrowed time, I'm pleasantly surprised that it returned at all.  I was starting to wonder how I'd keep up with road-related developments around the country without it.

I'm getting those same 502 errors, about 20% of the time that I click on a topic.

And what's worse, once you get it on a topic, I've found that you'll get it again and again when trying to click the same link (reload only works 1/10 of the time).  It takes me 3-5 tries to load topics that get the error, and when they finally do load, the load to the start of the page, not whatever post they were supposed to start on.  Combine it with the lack of "new" banners on posts in threads, and browsing the forum isn't fun right now.

[kphoger]

So many 'Loading' hangups now.  Almost every time I go to quote a post, it fails to populate the quoted text and just throws a 'Loading' banner at the top of the screen instead.  Refreshing the page and trying again works sometimes, but other times it takes several attempts and few mild profanities.

[Rothman]

Eh, could be worse.  Perhaps the struggle to post will increase the quality of posts on the forum.  Only the strong and persistent can participate!

[kurumi]

I'm glad it's back up. I can work around 502's and the Loading... on quotation issue.

("Back in my day, all we had was this: >  ... or this: ^^^^^^^")

[Sapphuby]

Reading this thread explains the 402 gateway error I got when opening this thread in particular. The irony is palpable however.