I only found out about GDPR earlier this year from a random HN comment. I can't understand the attitude from some HN commenters that everyone should have known about this for years. Where/how should every small business that could be impacted by this regulation be notified?

As you noted, the regulation is readable, but verbose and frustratingly vague. I ended up reading most of it along with countless articles from various third parties debating what it means and how to comply - and I'm still not 100% certain if the steps I've taken mean I'm actually "GDPR compliant."

I too got stuck having to comply since around 30% of my customers are in the EU. However, I gladly would have foregone all of that revenue and focused on non-EU customers only if I had known what was coming back then...