5 ms·

Well my IP (regular plain residential Asian ISP) is blocked on this site. Zealous Cloudflare-blocking is breaking the web. (also thanks for the useful message

Well my IP (regular plain residential Asian ISP) is blocked on this site. Zealous Cloudflare-blocking is breaking the web. (also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be)

kogasa240p 4mo ago
Microsoft has decided not to move forward with its proposed site for a data center in the Village of Caledonia after facing significant community pushback from residents. Posted and last updated VILLAGE OF CALEDONIA, Wis. — Microsoft has decided not to move forward with its proposed site for a data center in the Village of Caledonia after facing significant community pushback from residents. PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Microsoft data center proposal continues to divide Caledonia residents as rezoning plans move forward “Based on the community feedback we heard, we have chosen not to move forward with this site,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. The tech giant’s decision comes after hundreds of residents voiced opposition to the project over recent weeks. More than 2,000 people signed a petition opposing a rezoning proposal that would have allowed the data center to be built on 244 acres of land. Watch: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia after community pushback The proposed site was situated on County Line Road and State Highway 32, southwest of the WE Energies Oak Creek Power Plant, and was surrounded by farmland and residential properties. 47032805-Concept Site Plan - Project Nova by TMJ4 News Despite abandoning this particular location, Microsoft indicated it remains interested in investing in Southeast Wisconsin. The spokesperson said the company looks forward to “working with the Village of Caledonia and Racine County leaders to identify a site that aligns with community priorities and our long-term development goals.” TMJ4’s Jenna Rae, who has been following this story, reached out to Todd Willis, the village administrator, who provided the following statement: “Nothing official has been submitted to the Village regarding their pending application, and have no comment until such time.” - Todd Willis, Village Administrator Resident Prescott Balch told TMJ4 that his phone did not stop ringing on Wednesday morning, as people delivered the news. PRESCOTT BALCH TMJ4 Prescott Balch lives in Caledonia. Balch welcomed the news that Microsoft is changing plans to bring a data center in the area. "We're ecstatic that those arguments held water and ultimately convinced a large corporation to back off, so great day here in Caledonia," Balch said. Village trustee Nancy Pierce says she learned about the change from a news article. "I have a lot of respect for Microsoft, making the decision when they say they listened to the constituents. They also listened to board questions both at the planning commission at the board level. I believe that they took a lot of different pieces of information into play," Pierce stated. Nancy Pierce TMJ4 News Nancy Pierce is a village trustee in Caledonia. Both Pierce and Balch made it clear that they are not opposed to working with Microsoft in Caledonia. As the tech giant looks for a new site, there is hope that there are improvements to the overall process. "I would’ve liked to been able to engage directly with Microsoft much earlier in the process. We were not allowed to do that. I think that became an obstacle for a lot of different points and reasons," Pierce explained. "I feel like now they would come forward much quicker and engage directly with the community, really get to understand the community." "There are people that have an opinion about what they want to do with their village, and that was absent in this to me. That's the real message of this thing," Balch explained. "Let's help Microsoft find the right spot in southeast Wisconsin."
isodev 4mo ago
It's amazing how after all these years, tech world still believes it's a good idea to sell the entrance to their websites and services to the same bouncer. Cloudflare not in the mood for your IP/ISP/Country? Tough cookies.
- llm_nerd 4mo ago
  In this case a site is geoblocking. It's an affiliate station is Wisconsin, serving up local news. Sites have been using things like MaxMind and blanket blocking entire regions long before Cloudflare. If you've run a site like that, pretty soon you realize 100% of the traffic that hits you from Asia, Russia, the Middle East and even Eastern Europe / the Baltics is exploit detection scripts and is just noise in your logs. Okay, 99.999999% as once every decade something ends up on HN and gets a broader audience.
  - isodev 4mo ago
    This is such a narrow PoV and I don't see how it relates to Cloudflare currently being de factor gatekeeper for every web properly of consequence. What's the point of publishing news or content on the web if you don't want it to be accessible? What about locals who travel? What about locals who share links with others?
    - llm_nerd 4mo ago
      You brought up Cloudflare, when in reality this site went into their caching services configuration and purposefully enabled geofencing restrictions. They could have done this a million ways, and Cloudflare is basically irrelevant to this conversation, and is utterly fungible. >What's the point of publishing news or content on the web if you don't want it to be accessible Because you don't want the burden of far away users who will never represent a penny of income for your content? This is a weirdly entitled comment. Quite aside from certain countries disproportionately account for malicious traffic, often there are legal issues that come into play as well. This is why many regional sites block EU locations because they don't want the compliance costs for users that aren't their base.
dylan604 4mo ago
I'm not defending Cloudflare, but what is a better solution? If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence because some group thinks it'll be funny, what protections do they have? It takes too much equipment and know-how to stop an attack for people to be able to survive online. The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket just like the mob.
- deely3 4mo ago
  And don't forget about kids safety!
- PunchyHamster 4mo ago
  nah they will be selling their service to both hackers and their targets
- somenameforme 4mo ago
  The site's also blocked for me, also on a normal residential IP. Making your site inaccessible for people out of fear that somebody might make it inaccessible for people feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded.
  - expedition32 4mo ago
    The internet is killing itself. And no I do not blame small website owners they just have to live with this mess same as everyone else.
  - dantillberg 4mo ago
    > feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded I think this is a poor analogy, unnecessarily politicizing the topic. It might be a good analogy the other way around, if hackers DDOSed the website as revenge for partial IP-based blocking, in order to apply pressure to the website operator to remove IP-based blocking. But that wasn't the topic.
    - 4mo ago
PunchyHamster 4mo ago
block was enabled by site owner, not cloudflare. If they used something else they'd just blanked block ASN IP blocks
- zinekeller 4mo ago
  And as stated by others, it's about not complying with GDPR et al. Heck, this is not even Cloudflare, it's AWS Cloudfront!
  - Symbiote 4mo ago
    The site works fine from the EU.
not_a_bot_4sho 4mo ago
> (also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be) I hit this a lot with Firefox VPN and it's ridiculous
sammy2255 4mo ago
You could use a search engine to find their contact information
theflyinghorse 4mo ago
I don't understand why cloudflare is loved by tech people. They ARE breaking the web.
- throwaway2037 4mo ago
  Real question: What is the alternative to prevent DDoS? The killer app is that their DDoS prevention is free for small sites.
  - toast0 4mo ago
    Most sites can probably make do with ddos mitigation from their hosting provider. Larger hosting providers may have enough bandwidth to accept and drop most inbound volumetric DDoS. Smaller providers often contract with a DDoS mitigation service; during an attack the mitigation service BGP announces the attacked range, filters out problematic traffic and forwards the rest. It's been at least 7 years since I ran servers that routinely saw DDoS... at that time, we didn't tend to attract attacks anywhere near 10Gbps, so having 10G connections for severs likely to be targetted did most of the work. I'm sure it's worse now, so 10G might not cover easy attacks but 100G servers aren't hard to find. Attacks do get larger than 100G, but most sites won't be hit with a large attack. For a small site, taking an outage during a DDoS is often an acceptable alternative too.
Mickelby 4mo ago
If you run a website then you quickly learn that 99% of traffic is bots/spam/scam/ai, and will overwhelm your resources. You can block it with the click of a (Cloudflare) button. There is nothing to consider here.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

kogasa240p 4mo ago

Microsoft has decided not to move forward with its proposed site for a data center in the Village of Caledonia after facing significant community pushback from residents. Posted and last updated VILLAGE OF CALEDONIA, Wis. — Microsoft has decided not to move forward with its proposed site for a data center in the Village of Caledonia after facing significant community pushback from residents. PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Microsoft data center proposal continues to divide Caledonia residents as rezoning plans move forward “Based on the community feedback we heard, we have chosen not to move forward with this site,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. The tech giant’s decision comes after hundreds of residents voiced opposition to the project over recent weeks. More than 2,000 people signed a petition opposing a rezoning proposal that would have allowed the data center to be built on 244 acres of land. Watch: Microsoft pulls plug on plans for 244-acre data center in Caledonia after community pushback The proposed site was situated on County Line Road and State Highway 32, southwest of the WE Energies Oak Creek Power Plant, and was surrounded by farmland and residential properties. 47032805-Concept Site Plan - Project Nova by TMJ4 News Despite abandoning this particular location, Microsoft indicated it remains interested in investing in Southeast Wisconsin. The spokesperson said the company looks forward to “working with the Village of Caledonia and Racine County leaders to identify a site that aligns with community priorities and our long-term development goals.” TMJ4’s Jenna Rae, who has been following this story, reached out to Todd Willis, the village administrator, who provided the following statement: “Nothing official has been submitted to the Village regarding their pending application, and have no comment until such time.” - Todd Willis, Village Administrator Resident Prescott Balch told TMJ4 that his phone did not stop ringing on Wednesday morning, as people delivered the news. PRESCOTT BALCH TMJ4 Prescott Balch lives in Caledonia. Balch welcomed the news that Microsoft is changing plans to bring a data center in the area. "We're ecstatic that those arguments held water and ultimately convinced a large corporation to back off, so great day here in Caledonia," Balch said. Village trustee Nancy Pierce says she learned about the change from a news article. "I have a lot of respect for Microsoft, making the decision when they say they listened to the constituents. They also listened to board questions both at the planning commission at the board level. I believe that they took a lot of different pieces of information into play," Pierce stated. Nancy Pierce TMJ4 News Nancy Pierce is a village trustee in Caledonia. Both Pierce and Balch made it clear that they are not opposed to working with Microsoft in Caledonia. As the tech giant looks for a new site, there is hope that there are improvements to the overall process. "I would’ve liked to been able to engage directly with Microsoft much earlier in the process. We were not allowed to do that. I think that became an obstacle for a lot of different points and reasons," Pierce explained. "I feel like now they would come forward much quicker and engage directly with the community, really get to understand the community." "There are people that have an opinion about what they want to do with their village, and that was absent in this to me. That's the real message of this thing," Balch explained. "Let's help Microsoft find the right spot in southeast Wisconsin."

isodev 4mo ago

It's amazing how after all these years, tech world still believes it's a good idea to sell the entrance to their websites and services to the same bouncer. Cloudflare not in the mood for your IP/ISP/Country? Tough cookies.

llm_nerd 4mo ago
In this case a site is geoblocking. It's an affiliate station is Wisconsin, serving up local news. Sites have been using things like MaxMind and blanket blocking entire regions long before Cloudflare. If you've run a site like that, pretty soon you realize 100% of the traffic that hits you from Asia, Russia, the Middle East and even Eastern Europe / the Baltics is exploit detection scripts and is just noise in your logs. Okay, 99.999999% as once every decade something ends up on HN and gets a broader audience.
- isodev 4mo ago
  This is such a narrow PoV and I don't see how it relates to Cloudflare currently being de factor gatekeeper for every web properly of consequence. What's the point of publishing news or content on the web if you don't want it to be accessible? What about locals who travel? What about locals who share links with others?
  - llm_nerd 4mo ago
    You brought up Cloudflare, when in reality this site went into their caching services configuration and purposefully enabled geofencing restrictions. They could have done this a million ways, and Cloudflare is basically irrelevant to this conversation, and is utterly fungible. >What's the point of publishing news or content on the web if you don't want it to be accessible Because you don't want the burden of far away users who will never represent a penny of income for your content? This is a weirdly entitled comment. Quite aside from certain countries disproportionately account for malicious traffic, often there are legal issues that come into play as well. This is why many regional sites block EU locations because they don't want the compliance costs for users that aren't their base.

dylan604 4mo ago

I'm not defending Cloudflare, but what is a better solution? If small websites can just be DDOS'd out of existence because some group thinks it'll be funny, what protections do they have? It takes too much equipment and know-how to stop an attack for people to be able to survive online. The next thing you'll hear about is a monthly service fee to the hackers as a protection racket just like the mob.

deely3 4mo ago
And don't forget about kids safety!
PunchyHamster 4mo ago
nah they will be selling their service to both hackers and their targets
somenameforme 4mo ago
The site's also blocked for me, also on a normal residential IP. Making your site inaccessible for people out of fear that somebody might make it inaccessible for people feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded.
- expedition32 4mo ago
  The internet is killing itself. And no I do not blame small website owners they just have to live with this mess same as everyone else.
- dantillberg 4mo ago
  > feels reminiscent of blockading the strait because you don't want the strait blockaded I think this is a poor analogy, unnecessarily politicizing the topic. It might be a good analogy the other way around, if hackers DDOSed the website as revenge for partial IP-based blocking, in order to apply pressure to the website operator to remove IP-based blocking. But that wasn't the topic.
  - 4mo ago

PunchyHamster 4mo ago

block was enabled by site owner, not cloudflare. If they used something else they'd just blanked block ASN IP blocks

zinekeller 4mo ago
And as stated by others, it's about not complying with GDPR et al. Heck, this is not even Cloudflare, it's AWS Cloudfront!
- Symbiote 4mo ago
  The site works fine from the EU.

not_a_bot_4sho 4mo ago

> (also thanks for the useful message telling me to "contact the website owner... while blocking me from the website where the contact info should be) I hit this a lot with Firefox VPN and it's ridiculous

sammy2255 4mo ago

You could use a search engine to find their contact information

theflyinghorse 4mo ago

I don't understand why cloudflare is loved by tech people. They ARE breaking the web.

throwaway2037 4mo ago
Real question: What is the alternative to prevent DDoS? The killer app is that their DDoS prevention is free for small sites.
- toast0 4mo ago
  Most sites can probably make do with ddos mitigation from their hosting provider. Larger hosting providers may have enough bandwidth to accept and drop most inbound volumetric DDoS. Smaller providers often contract with a DDoS mitigation service; during an attack the mitigation service BGP announces the attacked range, filters out problematic traffic and forwards the rest. It's been at least 7 years since I ran servers that routinely saw DDoS... at that time, we didn't tend to attract attacks anywhere near 10Gbps, so having 10G connections for severs likely to be targetted did most of the work. I'm sure it's worse now, so 10G might not cover easy attacks but 100G servers aren't hard to find. Attacks do get larger than 100G, but most sites won't be hit with a large attack. For a small site, taking an outage during a DDoS is often an acceptable alternative too.

Mickelby 4mo ago

If you run a website then you quickly learn that 99% of traffic is bots/spam/scam/ai, and will overwhelm your resources. You can block it with the click of a (Cloudflare) button. There is nothing to consider here.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]