Because it's summer, kids everywhere are bored in their mom's basement. So DDoSing is back :/
The Düsseldorf servers' DDoS protection sadly consists of "we protect our network and turn off your server".

I blame BOTV Jon.

Slate had a bad server crash, requiring a reinstall. They're back since this weekend.

Good to hear, they're much closer to you than my other German servers.

Like deetr said already, the point is to make you download a fake mumble client. This has a trojan inside that allows them to control your PC and steal your steam items.

They used a non-protected server twice, and a OVH DDoS protected server twice. The DDoS mitigation of that provider can take up to two minutes to kick in. I don't know if the teams left before it kicking in or if it wasn't effective enough.
Unfortunately the teams didn't try one of the other DDoS protected server options in the EU.

It would also have been nice if all 18 players had taken the normal precautions for showmatches to prevent the gameserver IP from leaking out in the first place.

I have this nifty notification system so I never miss a HL showmatch.

Dear Customer,

We have just detected an attack on IP address 188.165.226.226.

Are you referring to MasterNoob as a 6s player?

Go on....

Just launched 12 new German (Düsseldorf) servers which should have way better pings for Western Europe. DDoS protected too, yay! Look for RheinBrigade and let me know what you think. These will probably replace the 12 FritzBrigade servers.

O HAI

http://i.imgur.com/e9BaLcE.jpg

Spend most or all of your budget on the headphones. With your budget you can get a very high-end one from the top brands. If you stick to 300Ohms or less, any headphone should be drivable from the onboard soundcard. On-board audio is amazing these days, so unless you get noise or low output from that, don't spend any money on DACs and amps.

You could spend some money on a (USB) soundcard with Dolby Headphone support (Asus U7 for example), that will get you good surround sound from a stereo headphone. Don't believe that's possible? Listen to the virtual barbershop with headphones.

Don't bother with hi-res audio (you're not a bat and you can't hear a mosquito next to a jackhammer) and lossless audio (except for archiving purposes), it's mastering that makes a lot of modern music sound atrocious. Find well mastered music, enjoy it on your high-end headphones fed through a $2 sound chip.

I hope one of the clueless, barely English speaking TF2Center admins manages to explain to you why your drunk, ban evading buddy who told someone to kill themselves got permabanned.

Cool, where?

Go to a site, insult/troll/bait the people that made it, get banned, act outraged. K.

All you bull prodders aren't making TF2Center better, you're just making competitive TF2 worse.

TF2Center makes 2h long reservations on serveme.tf, even though they could use 5h long ones.

Been a while since I posted about serveme.tf, so here's an update:

On the EU side things are a bit meh. I'm considering terminating 1 or 2 dedicated servers because the average usage of the gameservers and donations don't justify 109 gameservers.

http://i.imgur.com/DK9GTw6.png

This should leave about 80 servers that I'll probably split 20-60, free vs premium. Before I do that though, I'm experimenting with a smaller pool of free servers in July, see if that convinces some people to donate.

Meanwhile in NA, everything's great. Due to the high popularity, use and donations, it was easy to convince tragicservers (use coupon "SERVEME30" for 30% off) to sponsor some additional servers. There are now 26 and as you can see, they were sorely needed.

http://i.imgur.com/rMi7C7W.png