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Ask HN: My HN has vanished

23 pointssalvadors20 comments

I've moved to a new apartment, and my new internet connection doesn't seem to like HN, in that it won't actually load it. From my neighbour's open wifi connection (which appears to be with the same ISP) everything loads fine, but from mine I get nothing. Telnetting directly to port 80 connects fine, but the server closes the connection instantly before I can even issue a request.

I thought maybe it was a DNS thing, but both connections are going to 174.132.225.106.

The only thing I can think of is that I've been re-allocated an IP address that did something bad somewhere before, but that seems a little unlikely.

Any suggestions as to what's going on, or things to investigate further?

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Have you installed the recently posted greasemonkey script:

http://github.com/brainkarma/hnreputation/tree/master

This may have triggered an automated block... It seems like a rather abusive script.

Yep, that'll be it. I hadn't seen any of the threads asking not to use it (as I'd been offline for a few days moving apartment), and wasn't aware of how abusive it was. I've emailed pg asking if he can unblock my IP.

Thanks.

Can you connect to other sites containing the word "hacker"?

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=789469 (pg's request for people to stop using hnreputation)

The Bug Fixer could probably tell you if you have an ip-non-grata. Such a list does seem to exist: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=ip+ban+site...

Have you or your neighbor recently installed the greasemonkey script that gets people banned? I don't have it handy but answer this: "Have you recently installed a new greasemonkey script for using HN?"

This happened to me; something weird was going on, so PG blocked my IP. E-mail him with your IP address and username and let him know what's up.

IF this was the case he wouldn't be able to telnet into port 80.

Unless the block was at the application layer.

I was under the impression that he was able to do a GET once he established a connection...

Thats why I suggested another browser. I've had this problem quite a few times (especially with chrome) because some browsers do some goofey DNS caching...

> I was under the impression that he was able to do a GET once he established a connection...

No: As I said: "Telnetting directly to port 80 connects fine, but the server closes the connection instantly before I can even issue a request."

He says the connection closes instantly which to me sounds like a security measure for blocked IPs. I assume the block isn't at the OS level so he'd still be able to get into port 80 but once he did it would try to connect to the HN software on that server which would end the connection.

Guys, if he can telnet into port 80 and do a get, that means that he isn't blocked (either by HN admins, or by his ISP).

What browser are you using? Some browsers (like chrome) do weird DNS caching that can, sometimes, cause problems.

The fact that you can get it from telnet, but not from your browser, means that you should be looking at your browser.

No, you can still telnet. It depends on how a block is done. If it's done at the application layer, you would still get an initial connection. Open up firebug and hit the URL. Try to see what if any status errors you're getting.

Oh, I guess I assumed he was telnetting in, then doing a get...

I was trying to, but the connection would close before I could even issue a HEAD or GET.

If you have a bad IP address, why not disconnect and reconnect? On many connections that should give you a new address (unless you've got a static address).

I do have a static address, so unfortunately unless pg decides to lift the ban, I'm stuck with having to switch to leeching my neighbour's connection just to use HN.

I assume that you can get most of the rest of the web through your new connection normally?

When my IP was blocked I could connect but the HTTP server wouldn't respond. The ban was caused by a userscript posted here a couple of days ago that was poorly scripted and would thus trigger anti-DDOS/anti-scraping protection. I emailed PG about it and he unbanned me. The same thing happened to at least one other person.

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=781918

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