Mat Bowles

OK, it appears that the DDOS attack that was causing issues for many of us in posting has ceased (as of Wednesday). ljkrissy posted in news at times we were being hit with over 10 times our normal traffic load. Ouch. LJ has, I'm told by those that know, a remarkably robust server structure, but 10 times normal traffic is horrible. Some of the preventative measures involved censorship and it y appears to be linked to a rather nasty Russian extremist group ^[1]. Meh, reading the comment threads as I ate my noodles, found one entitlement arse with a few issues. It's likely going to happen again, DDOSes are nasty (update and re-run spyware protection if you haven't done it recently, just in case), but in the meantime, I can post again without worrying if it'll go through.

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[1] -- the Russian language sector of LJ is very political. That's about the most you'll get from me about such things; I did a study on Russian extremist movenets as part of my degree, and, well, ouch. These guys aren't even that nasty compared to many.

[2]faeriecween? I'd love to read that long update post you had queued now. I'll try to get mine done at some point, but I'm busy busy tomorrow; off to the ballet with two gorgeous women. Both of whom will read this... Ah well, hmm, 4.25am. Best not write said post now then.

OK, heads up for those not subscribed, both the_lj_herald and lj_maintenance are reporting that the recent LJ clunkiness may be due to:

f a distributed denial of service (DDOS) and we've taken a number of measures to mitigate the impact in order to bring LiveJournal back to full functionality.

In the meantime, as not all comment notifications are getting through, I've rediscovered the usefulness of the Recent Comments page, now with extra souped up paid account goodness.

For the record, I'll repeat my recommendation that everyone should read the_lj_herald, completely unofficial, but summarises all the useful LJ announcements from their various sources, a lot easier; it's on my main filter, all the others are on a 'read when bored' filter, and it'll mean you get told about things such as UK voice post numbers, new features, etc fairly quickly without wading through all the crap on the official comms.