I think we have the sluggish forum problems solved

[Straightliner59]

YEEEHAWWW! Much better! Thanks a ton!

[Rattlecan Dan]

Whew! Thanks Dave. For putting my worries to rest. Thanks for the great fixing and I hope we stay fixed. It's working as smooth and fast as can be!

[Falcon Ranchero]

Runs smoother than the second road Lighning McQueen paved ?

Edited August 5, 2024 by Falcon Ranchero

[shoopdog]

Fantastic, much, much better! Thank you Dave and team.

[John B.]

Thank you, sir; I thought that I might have inadvertently done something on my end without meaning to. 

[John M.]

The forum is running much more smoothly. Thank you for taking the time and effort to rectify it all Dave. 

[James2]

Thank you for all the effort you put into keeping the board going and making it safe for the children...

[Steve H]

  On 8/4/2024 at 10:02 PM, Dave Ambrose said:

Made some modifications this afternoon, and they seem to be working. I also upgraded the forum software to the current rev. 

If you notice anything odd, please comment on this thread. 

Our sluggishness problem was related to a Chinese "search engine" continually accessing the site. I don't believe this is, in fact, a search engine. I believe they're training an AI model. They might work around our access blocks. Please comment here if the forum gets sluggish again. 

Thank you for your patience. This was a hard one to solve. 

-- Dave Ambrose

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Hi Dave, thank you very much for everything you do here. We have a wonderful community here, and the work you, and your team do to keep it that way is truly appreciated. Thanks for keeping things smooth, clean, and safe!!

Cheers, Steve

[Bill Eh?]

Thank you.

[echo]

Thanks Dave, The forum seems to work well for me again.

[Ace-Garageguy]

10:00 PM EDT Wednesday Aug. 7, 2024   

Starting to occasionally get the circle of death again, unresponsive when changing topics or trying to look at notifications, mostly when not logged in or shortly after login.

[stitchdup]

starting to slow down when posting replies now. 15.30 gmt on firefox with win11

[Dave Ambrose]

We had someone hammering our server again. Blocked them and it cleared the problem. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

  On 8/8/2024 at 4:19 PM, Dave Ambrose said:

We had someone hammering our server again. Blocked them and it cleared the problem. 

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Still just a little hangy.

I have to wonder what is gained by these -------- constantly messing with things everywhere online.

It's not like there's anything of financial value to steal from this site...

[SpikeSchumacher]

Thank you for all of your hard work! Back to its usual self now. ?

[Dave Ambrose]

  On 8/8/2024 at 4:35 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

Still just a little hangy.

I have to wonder what is gained by these -------- constantly messing with things everywhere online.

It's not like there's anything of financial value to steal from this site...

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I'm 90% certain that the first problem was someone using this site to train a large language model AI. I don't know about this second one, but it came from within our hosting company. I've already talked to them, and the problem is being referred to their senior level techs. 

[bobthehobbyguy]

Thanks Dave.

I can see it now AI that builds models. All it needs Isa 3d printer. 

[Matt Bacon]

  On 8/8/2024 at 6:01 PM, Dave Ambrose said:

'm 90% certain that the first problem was someone using this site to train a large language model AI.

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My Lord... can you imagine an LLM trained on the "One Sentence Game"? Should be fairly easy to spot, mind...

best,

M.

[Ace-Garageguy]

  On 8/8/2024 at 6:15 PM, bobthehobbyguy said:

Thanks Dave.

I can see it now AI that builds models. All it needs Isa 3d printer. 

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And Photoshop to cover its mistakes and make everyone online oooooooh and aaaaaaaah.  

[peteski]

  On 8/8/2024 at 6:01 PM, Dave Ambrose said:

I'm 90% certain that the first problem was someone using this site to train a large language model AI. I don't know about this second one, but it came from within our hosting company. I've already talked to them, and the problem is being referred to their senior level techs. 

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LOL, basing my opinion on some really poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar I see here (including myself), this site would be a very poor choice for this. Unless of course the training is about showing bad examples of English writing.

[Ace-Garageguy]

  On 8/8/2024 at 6:36 PM, peteski said:

...Unless of course the training is about showing bad examples of English writing.

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The YooToob comment section would be a far better example, slathering every imaginable topic in ignorant gibberish.  

[bobthehobbyguy]

Isn't technology wonderful. AI has the capability to mass produce village idiots.  I find it hard to be the supply is limited.

[Ace-Garageguy]

  On 8/8/2024 at 9:35 PM, bobthehobbyguy said:

Isn't technology wonderful. AI has the capability to mass produce village idiots.

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Humanity has been doing a masterful job of that for millennia, but now we have the potential to have billions of artificial ones with much more capability for destruction.

Edited August 9, 2024 by Ace-Garageguy

[Straightliner59]

  On 8/8/2024 at 6:22 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

And Photoshop to cover its mistakes and make everyone online oooooooh and aaaaaaaah.  

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Yup!

[Dave Ambrose]

Oddly enough, this isn't our first run-in with an AI project. Many years ago, there were a group of servers chewing up a huge amount of our bandwidth, and we were getting charged for the overage. The server addresses belonged to some AI project located in Fremont, CA. They never responded so I ended up blocking them.