As you noticed, I had to temporarily enable DDoS protection. Someone is trying quite effectively to distract me from my activities ;p Unfortunately, this may cause some issues with the federation. I will try to cut off the traffic as soon as possible and return to normal operation. Thank you for all your support and patience! :)
While it’s probably from HN, make sure you don’t fall victim to the Mastodon design flaw causing DDoS-like traffic: https://jort.link.