Why so many links on HN are being marked as [dead]?

Most of the [dead] I see are from newly registered accounts and most are for sites I would expect to see flagged. I am just guessing but I would suspect new spam bots being created and tested during certain times of the day. Only @dang could say for sure as he would have access to the logs.

I try to vouch the submissions that look legit but there are so many to review it starts to feel like a job and I am supposed to be retired and relaxing.

doesn't look too out of the ordinary to me. Sometimes there's just randomly waves of them.

Dead comments are collapsed on mass, which is new as well.

I'd assume in error, since it's overriding the principal of "Show Dead".

Also lots of not dead but collapsed comments.