Hardware Problem Fixed – Happy Boxing Day

As you can see, the site is now back up. We’re almost certain it didn’t go down as the result of a malicious attack. Rather, it was an unforeseeable hardware fault. Not a conspiracy, in other words, but an unfortunate accident. Then again, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

Thanks to Ian Rons, our IT Director, for working flat out for the last 24 hours to fix the problem, and to Nic Elliott, who lets us use his server for free and also helped fix the problem. (Check out Sounding Board, Nic’s excellent podcast.) Everything on the Daily Sceptic is backed up regularly so we didn’t lose anything apart from a few below-the-line comments.

I’ll be doing the News Round-Up tonight and will aim to include the most interesting stuff that’s appeared over the last two days. Luckily, there’s usually very little news over the festive period so that shouldn’t be too arduous.

Happy Boxing Day and a special thank you to all those people who’ve donated to our Donorbox account while the site has been down. We are hugely grateful for your continuing support.

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41 Comments
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SilentP
SilentP
4 years ago

Great news. Well done to all who have worked hard on the fix.

Interesting lead item in the Sunday Telegraph today

Vxi7
Vxi7
4 years ago
Reply to  SilentP

Hard work? The picture suggest it was the “turning it off and on again” solution 🙂

By the way IT Crowd is absolutely hilarious series.

ComeTheRevolution
ComeTheRevolution
4 years ago

This is clear evidence of the Daily Sceptic being part of a co-ordinated conspiracy to close down free speech over Christmas to stop people telling the truth. Only joking 😉

However on the subject of who is actually pulling the strings in this realm we inhabit, and who the big players truly are, Russ Brown has done some great work here.

SPECIAL REPORT Blackrock & Vanguard? – Revealed The Company That REALLY DOES Owns Everything DTCC
https://www.bitchute.com/video/5glPSneO9ClF/

Andrea Salford
4 years ago

‘Blackrock! give’s a job’.
Time we played them at their own game. Can you imagine if we could get inside and turn this sh!t show around?
tbh take more evil and patience than most of us can muster I’d guess

186NO
186NO
4 years ago

FFS do some research into ETFs and nominee companies. Russ Brown is an extremely ignorant conspiracy theorist, and does not even write as well as his brother , Dan.

SilentP
SilentP
4 years ago

How do others view the mood of the nation after the last couple of weeks and after speaking with family (if you were able to do so) over Christmas?

I have found more people saying enough is enough even if they still believe the messaging.

Even my wife, who had only gone as far as remaining unjabbed but found much of the rest of the sceptical side too horrible to contemplate, has now started being openly critical of what is being done to us.

Arborvitae23
4 years ago
Reply to  SilentP

I have had the jabs. I don’t have the app. My husband and I have decided we are not home testing any more. I don’t test myself for a cold or the flu so why Covid. My wider family are split one third are still enjoying being martyrs the other two thirds are getting on with their lives and what they want to do.
Mind you, that side are farmers and if they worked from home we would all be stuffed.

Arborvitae23
4 years ago
Reply to  Arborvitae23

Oh, and my sister, double jabbed with serious lung condition caught Civud in early November. She was so ill the GP got her admitted to hospital. They turfed her out 3 hours later and told me on the phone the fact that she lived alone and could barely stand was irrelevant. I picked her up and we nursed her. I have never seen anyone so ill discharged from a hospital. For the first 48h I was worried she might not survive.
We used sensible hygiene precautions regarding hand washing etc. but no masks or other faf. She was with us for 2 weeks before ready to return home.
We did not catch it from her.
I didn’t have a very high opinion of our large city hospital before. I will not repeat what I think about them now. Although she probably got far better care from us than in there.

Jane G
Jane G
4 years ago
Reply to  Arborvitae23

Thank goodness for people like you. X

stewart
4 years ago
Reply to  SilentP

Most definitely many more than ever before saying they have had enough.

Milo
Milo
4 years ago
Reply to  SilentP

My nephew home from Uni has had enough and confirms that others in his age group are done with the restrictions and will not adhere to them – so some good news. My sister’s christmas – for which she had travelled a long distance at considerable effort and expense – was totally trashed by the restrictions as one of their party had a positive test. My instinct would have been to advise, unless you feell really ill, go ahead and celebrate xmas as a group. but because she and her family will be travelling again in Europe after christmas they had to abide by the restrictions on testing and isolation to the letter. The “sickness” such as it was was no more than a cold. When, in days of yore, did any of us NOT sit around our festive tables with someone who had a touch of the cold??? Before this my sister was a total covidian – I’m sensing frustration with the “restrictions” but that is about all. A shame she cannot see the whole sham and charade for what it is. It could go either of 2 ways – a lot of people who have had their festive… Read more »

Username1
4 years ago

Nice little website you’ve got there Toby. Shame if anything was to happen to it
~ The Establishment

Portnadler
4 years ago

A big thanks to all who got it fixed! Phew!

Annie
4 years ago

Welcome back, glad no hack.

hail
hail
4 years ago

Glad to see you back online after more than 24 hours down

rayc
rayc
4 years ago

Let’s hope your server has all the latest antivirus software and is getting jabbed (patched) every 3 months.

Peter W
Peter W
4 years ago
Reply to  rayc

It obviously needed its booster. Another one in 12 weeks?

milesahead
milesahead
4 years ago

A big thank you to Ian Rons for working over Christmas to fix everything.

Ian Rons
Editor
4 years ago
Reply to  milesahead

You’re welcome, mate. But if you have any children, don’t encourage them to go into IT. Unless it involves investment banking, that is.

milesahead
milesahead
4 years ago
Reply to  Ian Rons

🙂

CovidiousAlbion
4 years ago
Reply to  Ian Rons

Wouldn’t do the IB, either. It’s a very high price for a decent salary and a string of bonus excuses.

Peter W
Peter W
4 years ago
Reply to  Ian Rons

Or plumbing!

hail
hail
4 years ago

Let the record show that for more than thirty hours, this website was inaccessible and showed the following message on a blank-white screen:

I’d like to wish a very happy Christmas to all our readers.

Unfortunately, the site is down! It’s quite a serious problem and may take a day or two to fix, so please bear with us. We don’t think it’s the result of a malicious attack, just a hardware fault.

I think the fact that it happened on Christmas Day of all days is a blessing. Harder to fix the problem when most people are taking a day off, but then again we probably have fewer visitors on December 25th than any other day of the year. But it does mean there’ll be no daily update on Boxing Day.

I wanted to say a special thank you to all our donors. Without your ongoing donations to our DonorBox account we wouldn’t have been able to keep the site going for 21 months.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed by the 27th.

– Toby Young

sjonesy1999
sjonesy1999
4 years ago

Keep it up people we will prevail.

Gregoryno6
4 years ago

Half your luck! The mercury hit 44C here yesterday, and the power went out in my neighbourhood about twelve hours ago. Still waiting for its return.

Gregoryno6
4 years ago
Reply to  Gregoryno6

Update: ten minutes after my post above the power came back on in full.
Apparently the gods of electricity monitor DS for prayers and petitions. Okay, whatever. Sure beats finding a virgin to sacrifice.

Norman
4 years ago
Reply to  Gregoryno6

It is lucky you weren’t in England. Here we are told nobody can survive temperatures of over 35C.

iane
iane
4 years ago
Reply to  Gregoryno6

44C: wow, is that Alice Springs?

Gregoryno6
4 years ago
Reply to  iane

Perth.
I’d rather not think what it’s like in Alice Springs!

TruthHurts2077
4 years ago

Welcome back. I’ve been using Twatter since Christmas morning. That’s not good.

CovidiousAlbion
4 years ago

we didn’t lose anything apart from a few below-the-line comments.

Just the really important, truly counter-narrative, stuff, then!

Andrea Salford
4 years ago

Happy Boxing Day to Tech guys and Toby Thank you for having the courage and tech savvy to create a place for sceptics and truth sharers.

sam s.j.
sam s.j.
4 years ago

was lost with out my daily ‘ the daily sceptic ‘so glad back !thank you toby wil l ian and all and the great btl commenters . am stuck among the poor brainwashed folk otherwise

watersider
4 years ago
Reply to  sam s.j.

Indeed,
Welcome back Toby. May I add my thanks to your(our) great IT geniuses.

lowgold
lowgold
4 years ago

Why are you running your own server in this day and age?

Put it in the cloud! No one should be dealing with actual physical hardware nowadays.

Peter W
Peter W
4 years ago
Reply to  lowgold

And who controls the “cloud”? Some benevolent god?
They’re right to keep it close to home. I ran our business server for years with only a few inconvenient glitches – even through that other scam, the Millenium Bug!

lowgold
lowgold
4 years ago
Reply to  Peter W

I can tell from the user profile page icon and URL that this is a Word Press site… so the benevolent gods in this case would be hundreds of word press hosting companies all competing with each other to provide full WP stack nginx hardened security with database back up, memcache page caching etc at the cheapest price the market allows for. Maybe some of them will use Microsoft, Google or AWS for the hardware.. but it should be possible to find some that don’t. My point is there are companies who compete on providing secure, backed up sites with an SLA for up time… leaving Ian to do other more interesting things with his time 🙂

Peter W
Peter W
4 years ago
Reply to  lowgold

Fair point but, as you say, using the likes of Google and Amazon Web.
I once foolishly trusted a company offering cloud services with full backup and “military grade” encryption. Fine for a year until they decided to farm it out to another service provider but failed to transfer any files and so “lost” all the data. Fortunately I had been mirroring the data so it was back to the old trusty server in the back of the office!

rtaylor
4 years ago
Reply to  Peter W

I’ve been using Ghost for 2 years It comes both as open source and with a hosting option. Newsletter’s, no need for (SEO) extensions, has paid membership built in and they’ve made it very easy to install API’s, if needed. I still haven’t broken anything.

huxleypiggles
4 years ago

Many thanks to the DS team.

Just glad you’re back.