5 ms·

HN bans Hector Martin’s home IP address

39 points by glyph 3y ago

glyph 3y ago
Martin writes on Mastodon: “So apparently dang and the HN crowd are so upset I wrote some messages for HN visitors to our website, that they now banned my home IP address ”
- pinwheeling 3y ago
  He sounds a bit paranoid to be honest.
  - eslerm 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - reaperman 3y ago
    Yes, but you'd likely be as well if you had been facing this at the age of 20: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am... (Hector Martin, a.k.a marcan, was also a target of the lawsuit)
Vosporos 3y ago
well that's petty
- dang 3y ago
  It could be if it were true, but it's inaccurate. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740928.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I think HN has more than earned the benefit of the doubt here. I've been visiting this forum well over 10 years and have never noted heavy handed moderation[1]. When I've looked at banned users there is always a clear track record of abuse/violation of rules/spamminess. HN breaks sometimes but there's a big difference between intentional and unintentional DoS [1] I don't like the shadow banning though
softskunk 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- water9 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - water9 3y ago
      OK let’s talk about how your shitty programming confuses someone opening too many tabs with somebody doing a DOS attack. Let’s be real you’re probably the reason why because you ban people for political speech you disagree with. This is perfectly demonstrated by the fact you did not comment on the original post, but instead commented on the post, criticizing the original post, which then you criticize, making you the exact same hypocrite that you excoriate.
      - dang 3y ago
        Sorry, you lost me. What original post? Actually I (we) don't ban people for political speech we disagree with. Politically passionate people assume we do, but this is an illusion—a total illusion, in fact. Everyone with strong feelings is certain that the mods are against them (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) - it is a reflexive bias (no doubt hard-wired in all of us somehow) and people only ever perceive it as going in one direction: against them, their tribe, their side. Even their country. I got accused of being anti-British not long ago! If you or anyone would like to see examples of how accurate these perceptions are, here's a list I put together a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. I could update it, but why? The phenomenon never changes. The short version is that they are not accurate at all about the mods (how could they be? they're entirely contradictory). But they are highly accurate indicators of the politics of the percevier.
dang 3y ago
HN has been under a botnet attack for several days. We had to lower the threshold for certain types of blocking in order to keep the site up. Unfortunately that leads to false positives, meaning some IP addresses of legit users get blocked. (It's not easy to distinguish between a legit user who is e.g. opening a bunch of tabs at once, from a distributed botnet sending a handful of requests from a massive number of IPs.) I'm sorry! I know it's a pain and we're trying hard to avoid it. But it has nothing to do with any individual user. How would we even know who's accessing HN unless they tell us? This sort of automatic block clears itself in 3 days, and in the meantime anyone in this situation can unban their IP as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. (You have to do that from a different IP address, of course.) People are, of course, also welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com to get this kind of thing fixed. It's easy to take care of in specific cases and we're happy to help anyone. Edit: I just cleared all those IP blocks from any time before 24 hours ago, so hopefully that will help.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this! I tend to open a lot of tabs all at once and then read them one at a time. I got hit with the 403s suddenly the other day (when setting up a new laptop, terrible timing) and it flabbergasted me for about 45 minutes. When I got to the office it all worked just fine, so I never had closure.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  I'd been informed of this after being caught up in the block myself yesterday, as noted in another Fediverse thread that's looking for cases of abuse in HN's moderation: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/111161109931108606 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/111161109931108606> I frequently browse HN unauthenticated, both from a tablet I'm desperately trying to keep from becoming a timesuck itself (somewhat unsuccessfully), and when doing quick checks and searched on HN (something I do a lot) from a private/incognito browser session. It's also useful to verify issues, such as I had with a submission of mine yesterday which was itself autokilled based on the domain. I'd posted an archive of the original URL from a now-dead site, using the archived version which includes the comments (Internet Archive's Wayback Machine does not, for some reason): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37732186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37732186> Dang quickly undid the kill, but I couldn't actually validate it myself given the botnet mitigations. (And the post has done much better than I'd expected.) I'd forgotten the self-service IP unbanning option, though putting that outside HN's protected IP space (or at least in a different one) might be helpful.
travisporter 3y ago
Being online is like talking about people behind their back - it's so easy to get cajoled into believing you're right without hearing the other side
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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39 points by glyph 3y ago

Martin writes on Mastodon: “So apparently dang and the HN crowd are so upset I wrote some messages for HN visitors to our website, that they now banned my home IP address ”

pinwheeling 3y ago
He sounds a bit paranoid to be honest.
- eslerm 3y ago
  [flagged]
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  [flagged]
- reaperman 3y ago
  Yes, but you'd likely be as well if you had been facing this at the age of 20: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_America,_Inc._v._Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment_Am... (Hector Martin, a.k.a marcan, was also a target of the lawsuit)

Vosporos 3y ago

well that's petty

dang 3y ago
It could be if it were true, but it's inaccurate. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740928 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37740928.
freedomben 3y ago
I think HN has more than earned the benefit of the doubt here. I've been visiting this forum well over 10 years and have never noted heavy handed moderation[1]. When I've looked at banned users there is always a clear track record of abuse/violation of rules/spamminess. HN breaks sometimes but there's a big difference between intentional and unintentional DoS [1] I don't like the shadow banning though

softskunk 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
water9 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - water9 3y ago
    OK let’s talk about how your shitty programming confuses someone opening too many tabs with somebody doing a DOS attack. Let’s be real you’re probably the reason why because you ban people for political speech you disagree with. This is perfectly demonstrated by the fact you did not comment on the original post, but instead commented on the post, criticizing the original post, which then you criticize, making you the exact same hypocrite that you excoriate.
    - dang 3y ago
      Sorry, you lost me. What original post? Actually I (we) don't ban people for political speech we disagree with. Politically passionate people assume we do, but this is an illusion—a total illusion, in fact. Everyone with strong feelings is certain that the mods are against them (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) - it is a reflexive bias (no doubt hard-wired in all of us somehow) and people only ever perceive it as going in one direction: against them, their tribe, their side. Even their country. I got accused of being anti-British not long ago! If you or anyone would like to see examples of how accurate these perceptions are, here's a list I put together a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870. I could update it, but why? The phenomenon never changes. The short version is that they are not accurate at all about the mods (how could they be? they're entirely contradictory). But they are highly accurate indicators of the politics of the percevier.

dang 3y ago

HN has been under a botnet attack for several days. We had to lower the threshold for certain types of blocking in order to keep the site up. Unfortunately that leads to false positives, meaning some IP addresses of legit users get blocked. (It's not easy to distinguish between a legit user who is e.g. opening a bunch of tabs at once, from a distributed botnet sending a handful of requests from a massive number of IPs.) I'm sorry! I know it's a pain and we're trying hard to avoid it. But it has nothing to do with any individual user. How would we even know who's accessing HN unless they tell us? This sort of automatic block clears itself in 3 days, and in the meantime anyone in this situation can unban their IP as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. (You have to do that from a different IP address, of course.) People are, of course, also welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com to get this kind of thing fixed. It's easy to take care of in specific cases and we're happy to help anyone. Edit: I just cleared all those IP blocks from any time before 24 hours ago, so hopefully that will help.

freedomben 3y ago
Thank you for mentioning this! I tend to open a lot of tabs all at once and then read them one at a time. I got hit with the 403s suddenly the other day (when setting up a new laptop, terrible timing) and it flabbergasted me for about 45 minutes. When I got to the office it all worked just fine, so I never had closure.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 3y ago
I'd been informed of this after being caught up in the block myself yesterday, as noted in another Fediverse thread that's looking for cases of abuse in HN's moderation: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/111161109931108606 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/111161109931108606> I frequently browse HN unauthenticated, both from a tablet I'm desperately trying to keep from becoming a timesuck itself (somewhat unsuccessfully), and when doing quick checks and searched on HN (something I do a lot) from a private/incognito browser session. It's also useful to verify issues, such as I had with a submission of mine yesterday which was itself autokilled based on the domain. I'd posted an archive of the original URL from a now-dead site, using the archived version which includes the comments (Internet Archive's Wayback Machine does not, for some reason): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37732186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37732186> Dang quickly undid the kill, but I couldn't actually validate it myself given the botnet mitigations. (And the post has done much better than I'd expected.) I'd forgotten the self-service IP unbanning option, though putting that outside HN's protected IP space (or at least in a different one) might be helpful.

travisporter 3y ago

Being online is like talking about people behind their back - it's so easy to get cajoled into believing you're right without hearing the other side

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago

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