The depth and coverage that cloudflare has is crazy
At this this, US is basically enemy to EU. Good for us, we will be less dependent on US global oil police.
I hope EU companies will stop manufacturing US airplanes and other things.
And yet, here you are...
It's right for all of us to consider whether our online presence supports fascist dictators be they from USA, Russia, Venezuela, or wherever.
Thanks for the reminder that even here people are sometimes shit, I guess.
I'm pretty sure you know what the parent poster meant, and you should take it as a compliment to you and our HN community that they didn't intend you, or us, to be included in that definition of 'anything US-based'.
Stirring the pot like that isn't helpful to you, to HN itself, or any of our community.
In current times, encrypted accesses to Usenet and IRC via I2P and the like will boost the platforms more than ever. Why? IRC and Usenet are dead simple, Emacs has ports to everything and among being a Lisp env, an editor and a minimal web browser, it's an IRC and Usenet client too even under Android. Oh, and you can set I2P under Android too. Thus, you just have to set Emacs against it. There are several guides online.
Rocksolid BBS' federate with the whole Usenet (and some newsgroups catch anything text based, no binaries). On I2P proxies to Libera.chat, it's just a matter of time to exist. Meanwhile, there's ILITA IRC with I2PD.
Difficult? A Chinese Bluetooth keyboard it's worth very little today, and the gains are enormous. You can chat with people with really small bandwidths but encrypted either with TLS or I2P. You don't have blocks (except bans under IRC), comment limits, enforced timelines and any enshittification coming from social networks. Also, you can short Usenet threads by score. That's it, it's there a brilliant poster and comp.misc, you set the score for all his comment to 1000; then that random Joe will always be on top in any group. Try that with X/Twitter, Reddit or whatever.
You will be able to chat with Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, the Japanese, anyone. Forget tribes, forget the bullshit made to earn zillions of cash from X with shitty fabricated polemics. Forget Meta's snooping and industrial stealing. You aren't enforced to give your real name and address.
> I hope EU companies will stop manufacturing US airplanes and other things.
Independent of how little we may like current US politics: a) it will probably change, more sooner than later. And b) starting a trade war with the US is not very good idea. We like it or not, there are many things that we need desperately to be able to produce. Starting with computers and SW. And please don't start with "OOS SW" as much as I like the idea, and I constantly advocate for it, even if we start yesterday, it will take decades to build everything again.
Sure.
Though I think the EU is thinking that blowing up critical energy pipelines and seriously damaging Europes economy through the resulting much higher energy prices wasn't too friendly.
All to boost US energy exports, make US manufacturing more competitive and met US geopolitical goals.
ie that's not declaring war - but's it's a pretty big FU wake up call. Turning a blind eye when the US treats central and south american countries with contempt is one thing, but it's a bit of a shock when it openly does the same to you - cf Greenland as another example.
Although if you ask "cui bono?" there are some pointers in that direction, is not proven, and there are also pointers in other directions. I refrain of accusing without reasonable proof.
>All to boost US energy exports, make US manufacturing more competitive and met US geopolitical goals.
I cannot blame them for that. Of course anything they do is in their benefit. Some may argue, is precisely what the government should do. It is clear, that while the action in Venezuela was against a very shady government, was done thinking in US interests (as can be clearly seen by titles as "Trump Says Venezuela Will Buy Only US-Made Products From Oil Deal Proceeds").
So yes, they do all in own interest, and the EU isn't and wasn't very different. Alone if you consider the long colonialism years. Now the EU is acting poorly, but I would say not out of altruism, but incompetence and bureaucratic stagnation.
I will not say "is impossible" they do the same in Greenland... For good reason I think. BUT comparing the 2 is also farfetched. I know plenty of people from Venezuela, and unless you were part of the government, you were strongly against it. I know no venezuelan (from the at least 100 I know) that wanted Maduro there. And many are still in party modus. Granted, I know primarily expats, so, survivor bias may apply... but still.
Exactly - the views of people who have left Cuba, Venezuelan, or Iran are typically not representative - by definition they chose or were forced to leave.
Indeed if they have left - why are their views informing armed intervention - should Italian American's force political change through American might in Italy over the people that still live in Italy?
It's all just performative - bottom line Trump doesn't care about good governance and democratic in Venezuela - indeed he has just come out against fresh elections - all he cares about is the flow of money and resources.
But this isn't something unique to Trump - just look at the history if US meddling in central and south america. Democracy and the will of the people ( whatever that is ) isn't the driving factor.
BTW totally accept Europe has a very similar past, and to some extent present - and you could argue that the fact that the EU is less involved in this sort of thing these days is a question of capacity rather than desire.
However that's rather my point - in a globalised world - the differences in power will equalise meaning whether countries like it or not just going around doing what you want is going to no longer be an option - and it's better to gracefully accept that and adjust rather than rage against the dying of the light and inviting in the four horsemen.
Again, that is not speaking well of the acting government. Is just not normal that so much people choose or even worst are forced to leave. That just does not speak well of that regime. Does it? So dismissing their opinions does not seem to be a useful reasoning. I know from friends of mine in many different places in Latin America (mind you, in both "left" (brasil/MX) and "right" (Arg/ Chile) countries) that there are literally thousands of venezuelans in exile. That is not normal and is not a good sign.
> bottom line Trump doesn't care about good governance and democratic in Venezuela
Totally agree. But as I said, is not "Trump". Is not a person, is institutional. Which you could reasonably argue is much worse. But OTOH, there are many people again, does not matter if they went or stay... many people from that very country that are very happy with the intervention...
My way of seeing it is: we have to wait to be able to weight the prons and cons. WWII + Plan marshal was basically the same, wasn't it? And I'm pretty happy with the results and how everything played out...
Being forced to leave in itself is not a bad sign - do people not flee the US to Mexico to avoid justice? Perhaps they were part of an old corrupt cabal running the country for their own benefit?
Or perhaps they had to leave because of dire economic circumstances largely caused by foreign sanctions rather than internal mismanagement?
Let's be clear I'm not a fan of the current governments in the countries I've listed, but then I'm not a fan of Trump either. In neither case does it justify military invention - I'm not advocating abducting Trump to free the America people from a leader who sends troops on to the streets in cities of his political opponents.... and openly ignores the constitution.
> But OTOH, there are many people again, does not matter if they went or stay... many people from that very country that are very happy with the intervention...
The whole point of democracy is you don't have people like you and me making arbitrary choices from afar based on hearsay - and if there isn't democracy - in my view it's still a democratic choice to decide whether the cost of a rebellion is worth the price. Outside countries shouldn't be making that choice for other people ( We decided that your son dying is a price worth paying for a change in political system ).
Note that doesn't mean you shouldn't stand for your values and be assertive - and driving very hard to ensure no military inbalances. However that's a long way from self-interested coups under pre-texts.
> WWII + Plan marshal was basically the same, wasn't it? And I'm pretty happy with the results and how everything played out...
A closer comparison would be the 1953 coup to remove a democratically elected government of Iran in an attempt by UK/US to get back control of the oil. The installation of a non-democratic autocrat who was friendly to the west directly lead to revolution and the situation today.
Of course, what connects Europe and the USA forever is that they think the same in these matters. No one can trust them.
You know the US is explicitly threatening with military action on Greenland, which is part of Denmark, which is in NATO, just like the US?
The US's international appeal (especially for EU countries) is crumbling by the day.
Is it, given this kind of talk from POTUS preceding the more recent threats?
> Let's be honest, the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That's the purpose of it, and they've done a good job of it.
And https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-putin-russia-eu...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/05/a-warning-no...
It looks mutual between EU citizens and Trump.
https://www.politico.eu/article/half-europeans-see-donald-tr...
USA an enemy to EU because of Venezuela? LMAO, EU has said nothing. In fact we agree. We have no relations to Venezuela. Now if the USA attacks Greenland, that is different.
Also, only reacting to US aggression after Greenland is attacked? Not prepare at all and then write a strongly worded letter after the fact?
If, after everything Trump has done, you still think he isn't serious about annexing Greenland then you and people like you, including the eurocrats, are truly hopeless.
I suspect most countries would prefer a multi-polar world where the majority is dominant ( democratic ), not one particular country ( autocratic ).
ie why do we have to choose to be under the heel of the US or under the heel of China?
The US has been playing the benevolent dictator role for the last 70 years, but when faced with losing the dictator role, the benevolent facade is dropping.
The US is mistaken to think that countries not wanting US dominance is the same as wanting Chinese dominance - they, in fact, want neither.
Zambia defaulted during the pandemic.
Ethiopia defaulted in 2023.
Ghana suspended payments on most external debt to try and make the Chinese debt payments in 2022/2023.
Pakistan just keeps rolling those loans into other loans so it won't default.
Loas got so bad China now owns their power grid.
Suriname defaulted in 2020.
Kenya stopped paying govt workers for awhile to make their loan payments.
"Recent reports from the Lowy Institute and the World Bank indicate that 75 of the world's poorest countries face a record high of approximately $35 billion in debt repayments to China in 2025 alone."
2026 will see more countries default to be pressed into extreme measures to make the payments.
This seems to come from the US obsession with hegemony as the only strategy ( without realising that only works for 1 out of 200 countries ) - everything is framed as a US/China tussle for top dog.
Note this isn't a purely a Trumpian thing - he is just being more open/less subtle about it.
The US has to realise that it's days of global dominance are coming to and end - just as the UK had to ~100 years ago. What I hope is this time we won't have a couple of world wars during the transition to a multi-polar world.
I'd argue that leaders in South/Central America were under no illusions of how the US operated - the fact that Trump does so openly doesn't really change that. The 'great game' goes on.
What's changed is the wider public perception - both home and abroad. The question is will that create political pressure for a change.
For example, the new openess of the US-Israeli agenda in Gaza and the West Bank and elsewhere appears to have really shifted the political landscape domestically in the US in terms of unconditional support for Israel. The US self image is potentially shifting - this could have much bigger domestic implications.
Likewise aboard, while the current US hostility to China is not a suprise to the leadership in China - it's a continuation. The view of the US in the general population in China will be shifting, which will potentially create political change in the response.
Now I'm not sure Trump understands he is potentially squandering that soft power, because he lives a bubble which applauds the strongman messaging - and let's face it - he has won 2 elections on the back of it.
That for me here is the real risk - people shifting from thinking they were the good guys ( even if that was not entirely true ) to accepting they are out for themselves - and how that then effects both domestic and foreign policy over time - will US society fragment with people being ever more isolated domestically and as a country abroad?
EU, Germany especially Loves Russian oil.
So congrats?
Other CDN companies can do it too, it's just that they don't work on signalling their engineering focused organization.
https://www.ripe.net/analyse/internet-measurements/routing-i...
Until their systems block you for no reason. I recently had a similar issue on a work related site. Fortunately, I was able to reach to the administrator (which is on another country) and had the knowledge to write a report which was useful enough for the said administrator.
And this is for a system which has the same static IP which is not shared with anything for 10ish years.
Found out that I was blocked from it in my default setup. Firefox with default settings, and no VPN.
I'm working hard to turn Cloudflare off.
Cloudflare is not remotely awsome. It's also a solution to a problem (aggressive scrapers that produce DOS) which is worse.
New traffic isn't humans. I blocked some AI scraper user-agents, which helped, a bit. But most new user agents are identifying as vanilla browsers, not scrapers.
I don't have numbers. It was enough to consume all nginx worker_connections. Raising the number doesn't help, as it's just reverse proxying to JVM.
After the switch, Cloudflare showed USA and Singapore as heavy traffic sources.
I don't mind scrapers on the site, but app is a search engine (of sorts) so every page view consumes some CPU. Including 'facet this search' buttons. My (WIP) solution is to rewrite to make it all client-side and put it all on a CDN.
This is how they get you, alongside with "residential proxy" services they use. They appear to be benign browsers from various homes.
Systems get infected, and new "residential proxies" get made of unsuspecting internet subscribers all the time.
It's just another IP to them.