4 ms·

AWS WAF is even worse. I recently moved from Australia to India, and quite a few high-profile websites are now completely inaccessible to me because WAF seems t

AWS WAF is even worse. I recently moved from Australia to India, and quite a few high-profile websites are now completely inaccessible to me because WAF seems to be legitimately broken. Two such sites: https://officeworks.com.au/ https://officeworks.com.au/ and https://centrecom.com.au/ https://centrecom.com.au/. You successfully complete their annoying thingummy, and it redirects you… to the same Human Verification CAPTCHA. This has been the case for at least half a year, so it’s not a recent breakage. If I tunnel via my VPS which is still in Australia, then I can access it. But complete blocks via Cloudflare have also been a problem: I had to do something with VicRoads as part of selling my car, and was blocked outright when I got to the actual form page. Had I not had my VPS in Australia, I don’t know what I would have done. My IP address is massively shared (CGNAT) with plenty of botnet around, so I’m frequently troubled by Cloudflare, but not often outright blocked, and if challenged rather than blocked, I’ve never had any problem with it. Linux, Firefox.

bobnamob 2y ago
As another aussie expat abroad, leaving a box behind at my parents place for an Australian residential IP has got to be one of the most unexpectedly great things I've done. Wireguard/Tailscale and my parents having access to cheap renewable power are the real enablers ofc. To anyone moving abroad in the near future - leave a box behind with your parents/close friends, it's well worth the trouble if they're ok with you occasionally mooching some bandwidth. You absolutely won't regret it
- imhoguy 2y ago
  And don't be tempted to run any upgrades on it until you come back :)
  - bobnamob 2y ago
    Yeah, I’ll admit there’s some paranoia about losing access after a botched upgrade. I’m considering investing in a https://tinypilotkvm.com/ https://tinypilotkvm.com/, but that can wait till I’ve lost ssh at least once. I’m not hosting aws on the thing so I can afford to play it fast and loose :)
    - ycombinatrix 2y ago
      imo it's more flexible to just have two boxes, especially if they're cheap.
  - ycombinatrix 2y ago
    Oof. Been there.

bobnamob 2y ago

As another aussie expat abroad, leaving a box behind at my parents place for an Australian residential IP has got to be one of the most unexpectedly great things I've done. Wireguard/Tailscale and my parents having access to cheap renewable power are the real enablers ofc. To anyone moving abroad in the near future - leave a box behind with your parents/close friends, it's well worth the trouble if they're ok with you occasionally mooching some bandwidth. You absolutely won't regret it

imhoguy 2y ago
And don't be tempted to run any upgrades on it until you come back :)
- bobnamob 2y ago
  Yeah, I’ll admit there’s some paranoia about losing access after a botched upgrade. I’m considering investing in a https://tinypilotkvm.com/ https://tinypilotkvm.com/, but that can wait till I’ve lost ssh at least once. I’m not hosting aws on the thing so I can afford to play it fast and loose :)
  - ycombinatrix 2y ago
    imo it's more flexible to just have two boxes, especially if they're cheap.
- ycombinatrix 2y ago
  Oof. Been there.