
Ask HN: Why Is My VPN's IPs Blocked from Hacker News? - jD91mZM2
A few of my VPN&#x27;s IPs seem to be blocked. I just get greeted with an empty page (I checked inspect element). Is there any way to submit an unban request to these IPs? It&#x27;s really annoying.
======
dang
This is in the FAQ:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
If the unban link described there doesn't work for you, please email us and
we'll take care of it.

I'm sorry that this is necessary, btw. We hate it when legit users get
blocked, but HN is also hit by a ton of crawlers and it's hard to distinguish
the two. Since our app server runs on a single core, we don't have a drop of
spare performance.

Some big improvements which we've been working on for months will hopefully
roll out soonish, which should allow us to loosen things up quite a bit.

~~~
ezekg
Just curious--why is HN run on only a single core?

~~~
dang
Arc is implemented in Racket and uses its green threads, which don't do
multiprocessing.

~~~
soegaard
The standard Racket threads do run on a single core. Racket (not Arc) does
however support two forms of parallelism, namely futures and places.

[http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/parallelism.html](http://docs.racket-
lang.org/guide/parallelism.html)

------
whalesalad
Reminder that HN is proxied through Cloudflare so that might be the actual
organization blocking your traffic.

------
thrownaway3421
I use HN via Tor. Occasionally I get a 'prove you are legit' message, which is
fine. The biggest problem is that my account seems to be permanently flagged
for restricted posting; after even a few comments I get a message: 'you are
posting too fast', and HN won't accept more comments for awhile.

@mods: Perhaps after an account gains a certain amount of karma, even 500,
that flag could be disabled even for Tor users.

------
tvmalsv
Same thing happens to me. I've noticed that it works fine if I'm not logged
in, but if I am logged in or I try the login page, I get a blank page if my
VPN is on.

The Chrome network panel shows a 403 code (Forbidden).

Edit: I can write this up in an email to hn@ycombinator.com if requested.

------
danso
What does the Network Panel say in terms of HTTP status code?

~~~
u801e
As an alternative, you could use curl with the verbose option:

    
    
      curl -v https://news.ycombinator.com
    

That will show you the status code along with any headers and body (if any)
sent by the server in response to the HTTP request.

------
sillysaurus3
Requests like these are better sent to hn@ycombinator.com, but note that they
simply won't reply to you if they get busy or don't feel like it.

From my testing, HN has various anti-abuse features to prevent people from
creating accounts to dodge bans or moderation penalties. E.g. if you create an
account using Opera's VPN, your account's comments will all show up as [dead].

Perhaps they believe that there's no valid reason to use a VPN to check HN
other than to dodge penalties. Either way, it's important to remember that we
don't see the _good_ things that come of choices like this.

(Or that it's just a random bug.)

~~~
forapurpose
> Requests like these are better sent to hn@ycombinator.com, but note that
> they simply won't reply to you if they get busy or don't feel like it.

In my experience, the response rate is 100%. Responses are thoughtful,
professional, respectful, and even friendly, and they obviously read through
even longer messages. It's probably the best customer service of any
organization I patronize, besides my attorney who charges a bit more. Given
the number of users, the size of the staff and, knowing HN, probably users'
demanding nature, I'm impressed.

Now, do I get my 1,000 karma? :)

~~~
mindcrime
_In my experience, the response rate is 100%. Responses are thoughtful,
professional, respectful, and even friendly, and they obviously read through
even longer messages. It 's probably the best customer service of any
organization I patronize, besides my attorney who charges a bit more. Given
the number of users, the size of the staff and, knowing HN, probably users'
demanding nature, I'm impressed._

Not only that, but @dang's tears cure cancer. Sadly, @dang is so tough that he
never cries! @dang has also counted to infinity. Twice! @dang can also
strangle you to death with a cordless phone...

~~~
dukeflukem
Sounds like Chuck Norris jokes to me

~~~
mindcrime
Dang > Chuck Norris

Hey, c'mon, you gotta admit, that cordless phone thing was pretty damn funny!

