Yes, I had to switch to my Vodafone eSIM for data to connect to Hacker News.

Yup.

``` Prefix 209.216.230.0/24 BGP as_path 3356 21581 21581 ```

As seen from AS3320.

Even NordVPN to the nearest German hub is screwed. Have to vpn to the US to access HN.

I see a lot of ads for NordVPN, but you should know they're not necessarily reliable. Just look for NordVPN on hacker news search: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (see e.g. the second hit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692 covering up security issues, using your connection to proxy other people's traffic, a related company does data mining...). The only VPN that seemed to fit the bill when I looked for one about a year ago was ProtonVPN, but I certainly didn't manage to look at every VPN on the planet and I'm just a random internet stranger so... take that with a grain of salt.

Yeah, I agree that their marketing is aggressive, but a lot else I think is just speculation. The VPN market is very cut-throat, competitors create all kinds of crack-pot conspiracy theories to sow doubt amongst potential customers. As far as I know there was one incident, It wasn't very serious, no customer data was stolen. Also, the company now does 3rd party audits. I think NordVPN is pretty decent, but that's just me.

I know. But they are required to unlock streaming services. I’m not using them for privacy or even normal traffic.

Alright, just making sure. Happy to hear you're an informed netizen :)