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Analyzed from 851 words in the discussion.

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#vpns#using#vpn#tcrf#block#https#site#blocked#com#access

Discussion (46 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

dgellow•about 4 hours ago
Access seems pretty strict

——

403 Forbidden

You are unable to access this site.

Sorry, you are not allowed to access tcrf.net right now.

If you are using a VPN, try disabling it first. We block many VPNs because of abuse.

If that does not work, the block may be due to one of the following reasons:

You are connecting using a network we have blocked. Your connection is still using a VPN or proxy (incl. Apple Private Wi-Fi, CloudFlare relays, etc.) You are a badly-behaving or unwelcome bot (ChatGPT, bingbot, yandex, etc.) You are using a badly-behaving extension (eg. Imagus, etc) that is trying to load every single version of a file in the background If you were able to view pages before, and this error message has suddenly appeared in place of what you were expecting, make sure you are not running any extensions or tools that are attempting to download everything at once. It is possible you were manually blocked, and it might be removed soon. If not, well, sorry.

If this page always apppeared, there is likely not a lot you can do. If you are using a VPN, turn off your VPN and try again.

Sorry for the trouble. We have been under a long-running DDoS attack.

willXare•about 2 hours ago
403 Forbidden is just the modern version of blowing into the cartridge.
free_bip•about 4 hours ago
That's weird, I can connect just fine over mullvad.
MrDrMcCoy•about 4 hours ago
I'm on Mullvad and got blocked.
echelon•41 minutes ago
30 out of 34 comments are about the content blocking.

Only four comments are about the content of the article, and none of them really go into depth.

This has been at the top of HN all day. If people can't see it, what gives?

Xkeeper•18 minutes ago
From my logging, most people can access it just fine.

As for "what gives", I have no idea. The article itself isn't interesting and doesn't contain much of value; the "game" itself is what is interesting, but that's not what the article is there to cover.

So my guess is it's just only the people who can't see it, because for others there's not really much to discuss. I don't know why this was even posted here, to be honest.

remywang•40 minutes ago
I had some good fun writing non-gaming apps for the playdate console including a browser [1] and Kagi news mirror [2] and feel the device has great potential as an alternative to android/iOS duopoly

[1]: https://github.com/remysucre/ORBIT

[2]: https://github.com/remysucre/cranky-news

marcosscriven•about 2 hours ago
Blocking Apple iCloud privacy is pretty extreme.
dmitrygr•about 1 hour ago
It isn’t blocked. It is on for me and the site loaded fine.
marcosscriven•about 1 hour ago
It was at the time. Now it’s loading fine. In the 403 screen it specifically called out iCloud privacy.
retired•about 1 hour ago
It’s basically “give me your IP address before you can continue so we can better data mine you”
as1mov•about 1 hour ago
Yeah, the community run TCRF wiki is banning VPNs just so they can mine your data along with the luxurious $400/mo they're getting from Patreon. And not because they're constantly being besieged by rampant bots that they have to resort to such drastic measures.
retired•27 minutes ago
I don’t know anything about TCRF or what they do as their website blocks me. I do see trackers from multiple big corporations on tcrf.net.

What bots are using Apple Private Relay?

LRDEV111•about 1 hour ago
ooo free data!
ajdude•about 4 hours ago
https://archive.ph/t3SI6
willXare•about 2 hours ago
The original "work from anywhere" setup, as long as anywhere had two AA batteries.
asdff•about 2 hours ago
Four AA
pfannl•35 minutes ago
10 AA
retired•about 1 hour ago
Anywhere with enough ambient light.
dbalatero•about 3 hours ago
When I try to share this page on iMessage it unfurls the link as "LLM / AI Standard Test Page" so I guess I won't share it!
tedmiston•about 1 hour ago
you can do the period trick:

> . http://example.com .

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/03/15/how-to-send-links-w...

DANmode•about 2 hours ago
You can choose to display the text of the link,

instead of letting your device’s defaults decide who you are,

and then telling all of us about it.

calmworm•about 4 hours ago
Site blocks VPN users.
Xkeeper•5 minutes ago
Unfortunately true. I wrote about it early last year here: https://blog.xkeeper.net/uncategorized/tcrf-has-been-getting...

The story has not changed much. Every so often I will remove most of the blocks put in place, and within a few hours I'm back to having to block them. Many of the cheaper VPNs are also hosted on AWS / Google Cloud / Azure (or other cloud providers), which are also unilaterally blocked.

I would much prefer we did not have to do this, but it is what it is.

deadbabe•about 4 hours ago
This is why you should self host your VPN.
Retr0id•24 minutes ago
But where do you self-host it? Most sites that block VPNs also block VPSes
retired•about 3 hours ago
Does that not defeat the anonymity aspect?
deadbabe•about 3 hours ago
VPNs even from big public providers have not been a reliable way to protect anonymity for a while now. Use VPNs for cryptographic security and circumventing region control.
DANmode•about 2 hours ago
You mean pseudo anonymity, from advertisers mostly?
ErroneousBosh•about 2 hours ago
Many of us only like legitimate users, and therefore block VPNs.
lxgr•about 2 hours ago
What makes a VPN user inherently “illegitimate” in your view?
mschuster91•about 1 hour ago
The problem is the whack-a-mole game with hackers and script kiddies. It used to be the case that banning known colo ASNs was enough to get rid of nuisance by STROs, then there was a flood of hacked routers being used for DDoS that was really annoying to get rid of, and then came "residential IP" VPNs and commercial VPNs, both of which get routinely abused by AI scrapers and frankly, the AI scrapers are a worse enemy than the skiddies of 10 years ago. They ruin everything.

And you as a site operator can't really tell apart skiddies, griefers, AI scrapers and legitimate users apart any more.

ant6n•about 4 hours ago
The linked video seems to provide a much deeper story: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZcrPM-jDqY&ra=m
initramfs•13 minutes ago
yes, amazing complement to a super rare non-release (but protoype) exists.
Asfand2099•about 2 hours ago
The "you might be a bot" bullet point now explicitly listing ChatGPT is a pretty good snapshot of where the web is in 2026. For years sites optimized for search engine crawlers; now they're increasingly optimizing against AI crawlers. It's a fundamental shift in who site operators see as their largest source of unwanted traffic.
montag•about 2 hours ago
Where are you seeing this?
iamjackg•about 2 hours ago
It's probably a bot account that tried to read the article to come up with a reasonable comment, but TCRF likely serves a "you're a bot, go away" static response page when it's accessed by bots. Pretty funny.
iamjackg•about 2 hours ago
I take that back! It seems to be happening to multiple people using VPNs. My bad. I should have been more charitable.