Had something similar happen at my last job, and although that wasn't the reason I quit, it didn't say very much about the working conditions that led me to look elsewhere. Funnily enough, the same firewall flagged a corporate press release as "pornography" and notified my boss I was looking at naughty bits, when in fact I was looking at something about the F-35.

I've never had trouble (so far at least) with HN, but I frequently need to switch to my filter-avoidance proxy for various HN links. Ironically, I am using proxy-avoidance software to get around a "blocked - category: proxy avoidance" message.

An SSH server outside the firewall listening on port 443, and a copy of PuTTY on your desktop can solve many firewall problems. Yes indeed.