.. and then they gradually vanish over the next 4 weeks!
Can anyone tell me why this sawtooth pattern has appeared in the Tor relay metrics since August? On the 2nd August, 2nd Sep and 2nd Oct, about 500 new relays have appeared; the total number of relays then slowly declines during the rest of each month to the original (1st of the month) level. There are also downticks in the relay totals on the 1st of the month. Presumably this is some bug in the statistics gathering? Or have hackers found a new way to distract us?