Emergency request for donations

[Jim Eshelman]

Membership and participation on Solunars.com is free. Regrettably, right now (April 2025) I need to ask you for emergency donations.

In March, Solunars.com was pounded by hits (excessive traffic) from southeast Asia. This pushed bandwidth usage through the roof in the one week it took me to identify the source and block the pounding. I just got the bill for $724.36 of additional charges that I have to pay this month to keep the site from being shut down.

Please donate if you can. There is a Donate button near the upper left part of the screen.

You have my thanks in advance.

[PS - The "progress bar" on the home page says $755 because the donation system takes about 4% of donations. I set the displayed goal to $755 to meet the $725 actual goal.]

Bandwidth.png

[Veronica]

Such strange tides.
I wish I could give more but I'm fairly strapped myself right now. I hope this doesn't persist. What a shame that bandwidth still costs money.

[Arena]

Hey Jim. This is regrettable. I will make a donation.
What do you think is the cause of this happening? Is it some kind of AI or a bot farm of some kind?

[FlorencedeZ.]

Hi Jim. I have just made a donation. Hopefully others will do as well. Regards, Flo

[Jim Eshelman]

Veronica, Arena, and Flo, thanks to all of you (and the others who have donated and not posted on this thread). You've helped me a lot.

Arena, your guess is also my best guess. (It's only a guess, of course.) It could be some complex malicious scan trying to find web sites with securities vulnerabilities; but if tis were so, we'd expect a wide range of sites to be impacted. My hosting company says that's not happening. The next most likely thing (that my imagination has generated) is that a new AI, probably Chinese, operating out of Singapore is "feeding" on certain kinds of sites and, for some reason, picked this one.

[sidus_illuminans]

Hey Jim, I think it is rather likely that your second guess is on point. Other spaces are facing similar issues. Its either large AI companies training their new LLMs with your astrological data, or live LLMs actively drawing on your site data to keep their knowledge current. One example of a similar case is described in this article (https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/devs ... countries/).

I have provided raw astrological data to LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemma and they output really solid analyses that align with astrological principles. So I am not surprised to learn that they may be drawing from your website in order to refine their knowledge.

[Jim Eshelman]

Very interesting. Thank you for the read.

[RingsOfSaturn22]

I've just donated. The goal should be met now.

Thanks, Jim, for all that you do.

[Jim Eshelman]

Good-morning, Rings. I just saw that. Thank you very much!

[Jim Eshelman]

Good morning, everyone. We have met the goal. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

Bandwidth usage has remained at about the level it was before the onslaught (just a little higher on average, but there's room for that). I will do everything I can to keep this site secure and running well.

Thank you.

PS - I'll leave the progress bar up for a few days so everyone can see how well you all did.