Recent downtimes

What is a ddos attack?

In computing, a denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. A DoS attack generally consists of efforts to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet.
Denial-of-service attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

Most probably a programming mistake from me. I'm not quite sure yet. It's stabilized for now! 4200 players and running smooth.

Could be a DoS from that (seemingly) serious Anti-Lichess facebook group.

Why would someone DOS an awesome and totally free Chess site?

Been running smooth last few hours, only hiccup is I can no longer make moves in analyse, but can drop into board editor if needed.

Appreciate the hard work on the site, about the best around imo

Pawns of the world unite! :P

Even if recent downtimes were caused by malicious attacks - this is in some sense good news.

Good, because it shows that lichess is doing something right and chess.com is doing something wrong.

Lichess sets an excellent standard as to what is truly worth money in online chess.

Since it reproduces 99% of chess.com features ( or has even better features ) free, this means that only 1% of what chess.com does is truly worth paying for.

It is true that GM video series ( and maybe chess mentor lectures ) are difficult to reproduce for a free site. High rated GMs are unlikely to devote their precious time to making video series and lectures completely free of charge.

But the latter is important for a very thin population of users. The bulk majority of users is paying for things ( including ridiculous things as unlimited tournament play, ability for downloading their games, viewing their rating history - sic! ) which easily can be reproduced freely.

The truth is that chess.com is cashing in big on money on things that in reality worth very little in terms of underlying production costs. I don't say that chess.com offers nothing for money, but what it offers is way too exaggarated in terms of fees: in reality chess.com users pay 99% of their fee for they being under informed about the real cost of the services they receive and only 1% for real value which cannot be reproduced free of charge.

So, it were hack attacks from competitor sites?
No luck for them, they should learn a lesson: Liches.org have best programmers, and will counter their attacks with ease.
To ensure site security, maybe, we need more servers, what you think? Let's donate more money then, so lichess could afford them.

No, there's no information as to whether it is a DoS or not. It would be hasty to conclude that, you'll only foster an "us v them" mentality, as fingers are inevitably pointed - as they already have been - despite these being claims which are entirely unsubstantiated.

Let's wait and see as to what the root cause is before hastily drawing conclusions. Especially as I am sure many of us are not as computer literate as thibault.

I agree. I merely brought up the question, but I don't necessarily believe they were attacks.

Thibault himself said it was likely a programming error by him. He would know better than us.