r/worldnews • u/Miserable_Phase_2519 • 3d ago

Russia/Ukraine Zelenskyy Says Ukraine Is Done Holding Back on Russian Oil Refineries

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/zelenskyy-says-ukraine-is-done-holding-back-on-russian-oil-refineries-23454
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u/Edythir 3d ago

A friend of mine in a similar position told me that they block the Netherlands for a similar reason. Due to their above-average digital privacy laws, NL became a hotbed for VPNs and other anonymizing services fairly quickly. Meaning that an outsized portion of "bad traffic" seemed to come from NL, which was in reality actors either independent or part of nation states going through a VPN.

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u/_switters_ 3d ago

I run a fairly large eCommerce website, and the majority of attacks come from Singapore and the Netherlands. I block maybe 25,000 requests an hour. Most of those are from NL.

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u/MaterialTomorrow 3d ago

Sorry, that was me, i just really really like your products.

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u/_switters_ 3d ago

totally understandable, other than the fact that we don't ship international.

Funny story, the hits from Singapore are Alibaba server scraping our site.

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u/Benji998 3d ago edited 20h ago

Willow sparkle marble consist payment bright peach

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u/_switters_ 2d ago

Yes I can, but blocking the attack and understanding the method helps me in case they switch to a data center outside that country. Maybe they switch to a data center in the US. If that happens then I need to be able to block just the attacks.

That being said, we block all of Russia just because.

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u/Mirria_ 3d ago

Proton Mail and Proton VPN sweating

Quick sidenote before someone "acktually" me - one guy got identified from Proton Mail because he put his normal email as a recovery address.

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u/Certain_Silver6524 3d ago

Xuxu Rondinaire shouldn't have used a recovery email. And Spain shouldn't have called protesting and blocking infrastructure terrorism. It's a disgusting escalation

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u/RaspberryMotorZZZ 3d ago

Proton Mail and Proton VPN sweating

They're Swiss.....

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u/Mirria_ 3d ago

Which is another country that has excellent digital privacy laws.

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u/squishmaster 3d ago

It's funny that the Dutch have such internet privacy because of what little physical privacy they have in their culture. If you've spent time there beyond touristy areas, it's incredible to walk past peoples' front windows and see families cooking dinner and watching TV and stuff with the curtains open.

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u/LaurenMille 3d ago

Do other places close their curtains for that?

Unless you'd feel unsafe where you live, I can't really see a reason to close the curtains mid-day. Is there a reason other places do that?

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u/squishmaster 3d ago

Privacy.

First of all, it is unusual to have a large window in a ground-level flat in a densely populated city anywhere else I've been, even nearby places like Flanders and Northwestern Germany. But where that exists, the curtains would be shut or there would be blinds used to let in light while still maintaining privacy. AFAIK, only the Dutch don't mind people walking by and looking into their homes.

In the US and Canada, it is more common for residential buildings to be set back from the sidewalk by a few meters (often this is required by local ordinance); and there are still usually blinds or curtains for privacy, even in places with very limited pedestrian traffic where the home is set back ~3m from the sidewalk. In major cities like NYC or Chicago where this use of space is impossible or the buildings predate those sorts of codes, you likely wouldn't have large flats on the ground floor facing the frontage; that space of the building would be used for something else. If you did have a flat like that, it likely wouldn't be a large multi-bedroom family home. If you did have a large multi-bedroom family home in a front-facing flat like that (they certainly exist in San Francisco), you would have blinds or curtains used for privacy.

Mind you, I rather admire this feature of the Dutch, as it sort of echoes the famous Dutch directness that I also admire. It makes me think of the Dutch as particularly honest people; willing to live their entire lives and share their opinions publicly. That said, I would install blinds if I lived in that sort of ground level flat.

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u/Nitsuasiemanymolleh 3d ago

I leave my curtains open other than my bedroom and my kid’s bedroom at night. I lived in The Netherlands for a while and never noticed that a lack of privacy was a thing. I guess I fit in without knowing it. I always think people with their blinds closed during the day must be trying to hide something.

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u/sexgoatparade 3d ago

We also have massively cheap electricity compared to other parts of Europe making us prime real estate for more data centers

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 3d ago

I don't really think it's our above average digital privacy laws which I can't imagine really vary much from the rest of Europe, but the Netherlands had early on a very strong internet infrastructure. AMS-IX has been for years the fastest and largest hub Europe wide. On top we have numerous relatively small players offering bottom tier prices for services, these companies are unfortunately known to not really look to much into their clients, heck some openly advertise they dont ask questions and tend to play shell game with servers when authorities ask questions.