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@hdv is right: it’s the LMM bots that are bombarding my site with traffic. I mean, look at November 19th – what a day! 🤯 (look at the number of lines on the left)

That’s great news! I can just write an invoice to Sam and friends. ☺️ My son suggested “how about one cent per LLM bot request”…

Their support team replied:

“Your website matthiasott.com is being accessed continuously and massively.”

That’s … great!! 🎉🥳

“It is likely a DDoS attack. We have installed a filter that only allows access from certain countries to protect the server from overload.”

That’s … not so great. 🤔😂

Because people are asking: my current provider is all-inkl.com – I’ve been a customer for about 17 years and it has always worked well in general, although their control panel never got an update in all those years… 😅

But this is now the second time I’m having issues and their support is somewhat resistant to take me seriously – the first one was that, out of nowhere, KeyCDN stopped working. I’m still convinced it was a server / firewall issue back then, too. 😁

Sorry to everyone having trouble connecting to my little website and RSS feed right now! It looks like my web hosting provider is (once again) having a hard time getting their server/load balancer configuration right. I wrote them again, hope the issue will be resolved soon. Thanks for your patience! 💚🙏

After long-winded discussions in which I had to prove to them – using nghttp via VPN – that I am not “in one boat with malicious actors using VPN and TOR” but that instead their server immediately closes the connection after the SSL handshake, they had already reset the config for my domain recently. It worked well for a few days.

But now, it seems to be offline again for whole regions/countries like Canada, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, Turkey, and many more. 😕
So I’m thinking of moving my site to another provider. It might be time for my own VPS/managed server anyway…

Any suggestions (🇩🇪/🇪🇺)?

On the cusp of the snowy doorstep, I felt a child-like excitement. I wanted to run outside and embrace the snow — the first proper snow, as we would say here, in at least a year. This is the kind of snow that will lie on the ground., I thought. The snow flakes were thick, lea...

… and after one month, we now have a rotten zombie pumpkin in our garden. 🎃🧟‍♂️😂

This evening I hosted an online event about writing and writing on the web. “Writing” is a broad topic, so I wanted a way to help get the discussion going. A few weeks ago, I tried an ice breaker question in an event which went well, so I decided I’d try one again this evenin...

My copy of Stephen King’s On Writing has been sitting on the shelf for a while. Why I stopped reading the book is one of those things lost to time. But about two weeks ago, I went to my bookshelves and picked out the two books that I had started but not finished yet. I could ...

❄️ It’s freezing cold outside here in Germany, and this is an interesting explainer of why that is: a warming event in the polar region is leading to an early collapse of the polar vortex, so Europe and North America are flooded with cold air, while the North Pole is unusually warm. #weather #climate https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/stratospheric-warming-watch-polar-vortex-collapse-cold-snow-impacts-coming-for-united-states-canada-europe-fa/

“You tried to get me fired in September – it didn’t work, Mr. President! […] How about this: I’ll go when you, okay? Let’s ride off into the sunset like Butch Cassidy and the sun-tanned kid. And until then, if I may borrow a phrase from you … quiet, piggy!“

Jimmy Kimmel is invincible now🔥😂👏

https://youtu.be/LHCQ5BWXmfE?si=RVSS1SQb-SWxEE2Z

Haven't seen this again since it came out. And I enjoyed this a lot now! That dream-within-a-dream concept is so good, and Nolan can just go crazy with the action. And it's still one of his movies you can more easily follow. Technically it's flawless IMO. And that ending is so perfect!

Good HWC yesterday. I finally removed SASS from the build-pipeline for this site - using just plain CSS now - and also updated my view-transition syntax, so that those work again now. But apart from this, it was mostly us talking about various topics from home networking and self-hosting to - as often - AI and LLMs.

The next HWC DUS is on Dec. 18^th.

A dusting of snow blankets hills in the distance, left over from the snowfall two evenings ago. There are thin light clouds above the hills through which the sky peeks. On the horizon, separating the snowy white hills from the light grey clouds, there is a hint of a pale red,...

FeedCity now supports “likes”. Including sending webmentions to supporting sites.

You can now “like” any post within FeedCity.

I have been listening to a podcast interview between Ezra Klein and Brian Eno. In it, Eno referenced the concept of the “premature sheen.” I stopped what I was doing, paused the podcast, and started to think about what those words meant. I wanted to learn more about the conc...

Over the last few weeks I have been working on rebuilding my morning routine. I used to be regimented in my morning routine – everything scheduled down to the minute. I then ebbed the opposite way: my routines became unstructured, my mind every morning exerting itself to rem...

The snow looks like drops of moonlight I thought to myself as the cool light from the street lamps illuminated the falling snow. It’s beautiful. I have never seen anything like it. Earlier this week I saw light rain fall that looked almost like it was snow – the light reflec...