From Newsgroup: comp.arch

Today when I am trying to access Google Usenet archives most of the
time I get "429 Too Many Requests".
Is it just me or outage is widespread?
The link: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 9/27/26 11:23 AM, Michael S wrote:

Today when I am trying to access Google Usenet archives most of the
time I get "429 Too Many Requests".
Is it just me or outage is widespread?
The link: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch

It appears to be widespread. I've noticed it for a few weeks now.
None of my bookmarked usenet links work anymore.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

Joseph Seigh <jseigh_es00@xemaps.com> writes:

On 9/27/26 11:23 AM, Michael S wrote:

Today when I am trying to access Google Usenet archives most of the
time I get "429 Too Many Requests".
Is it just me or outage is widespread?
The link: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch

Lots of bots are now requesting content from all URLs they can find,
again and again, and have done so for two or three years. A Usenet
archive with its many URLs tends to be hit hard. Likewise for web
interfaces to code repositories. We have turned off cvsweb access
more than a year ago because of this, yet we still have had 804524
accesses to cvsweb pages since 2026-09-01, 29% of our web accesses.

For a well-connected organization like Google, it's unusual that they
feel the strain of these web scrapers so much that they do not service
the request, but apparently it does happen; this may also point to the
lack of importance that this service has for Google and its revenue
stream.

It appears to be widespread. I've noticed it for a few weeks now.
None of my bookmarked usenet links work anymore.

In particular, al.howardknight.net is now offline, after being online,
but unusable (probably from scraper overload) during summer.

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 28/09/2026 07:53, Anton Ertl wrote:

Joseph Seigh <jseigh_es00@xemaps.com> writes:

On 9/27/26 11:23 AM, Michael S wrote:

Today when I am trying to access Google Usenet archives most of the
time I get "429 Too Many Requests".
Is it just me or outage is widespread?
The link: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch

Lots of bots are now requesting content from all URLs they can find,
again and again, and have done so for two or three years. A Usenet
archive with its many URLs tends to be hit hard. Likewise for web
interfaces to code repositories. We have turned off cvsweb access
more than a year ago because of this, yet we still have had 804524
accesses to cvsweb pages since 2026-09-01, 29% of our web accesses.

For a well-connected organization like Google, it's unusual that they
feel the strain of these web scrapers so much that they do not service
the request, but apparently it does happen; this may also point to the
lack of importance that this service has for Google and its revenue
stream.

It appears to be widespread. I've noticed it for a few weeks now.
None of my bookmarked usenet links work anymore.

In particular, al.howardknight.net is now offline, after being online,
but unusable (probably from scraper overload) during summer.

- anton

I gather that some 60% of internet traffic is now AI bots scrapping
sites and talking to each other. Some sites will of course be hit
harder than others. And I guess a significant proportion of what they
are "reading" is just slop created by other AIs. What a mess!

The internet survived funny cat videos, and it survived bittorrent music
and movies, so I expect it will survive AI too. But it bugs me that we
all have to pay for this total waste of money, power and bandwidth.


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

David Brown [2026-09-28 10:32:22] wrote:

The internet survived funny cat videos, and it survived bittorrent music and movies, so I expect it will survive AI too. But it bugs me that we all have to pay for this total waste of money, power and bandwidth.

And it's not just a waste of resources. It also means that DDoS is now
a normal everyday occurrence for any site whatsoever. It makes
a qualitative change in the sense that it takes a professional sysadmin
to manage even the most innocuous web-server.


=== Stefan
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On Mon, 28 Sep 2026 05:53:33 GMT, Anton Ertl wrote:

For a well-connected organization like Google, it's unusual that
they feel the strain of these web scrapers so much that they do not
service the request, but apparently it does happen ...

Occasionally my attempt at a Google search will return some kind of access-blocked page warning that rCLbot-likerCY activity has been detected coming from my IP address.

I suspect itrCOs a false positive triggered by my propensity for using private-browsing mode.

YourCOd think different Google services would respond in a uniform way,
with consistent behaviours and failure messages, but apparently not.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:20:10 -0400
Joseph Seigh <jseigh_es00@xemaps.com> wrote:

On 9/27/26 11:23 AM, Michael S wrote:

Today when I am trying to access Google Usenet archives most of the
time I get "429 Too Many Requests".
Is it just me or outage is widespread?
The link: https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch

It appears to be widespread. I've noticed it for a few weeks now.
None of my bookmarked usenet links work anymore.

Today when I start from the top https://groups.google.com it works.
From here I can move to https://groups.google.com/recent
And here I can click comp.arch and it is working.
But then if I hit refresh it returns 429.
Also all attempts to use links to individual messages fail.
It looks like some very crude form of DDOS or anti-bot protection by
Google. Somehow they are trying to force an interactive usage.
It is so crude that it makes it unusable as archive. Which in recent
years after termination of Usenet posting service was its only
remaining usage.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2