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And cue the rise of self-hosted VPNs. 1 click to get a VPS instance, install VPN software, and make a connection. Automatically destroy the instance with anothe

And cue the rise of self-hosted VPNs. 1 click to get a VPS instance, install VPN software, and make a connection. Automatically destroy the instance with another click or after a certain amount of time.

txrx0000 1y ago
If this keeps going, they will ban self-hosting next: only government-approved hosts allowed. We can't just rely on technological solutions because you can't out-tech the law at scale. People need to actually understand that the government is very close to having the tools needed for a stable technocratic authoritarian regime here in the US and all around the world. It might not happen immediately even if they have the tools, but once the tools are built, that future becomes almost unavoidable.
- skeledrew 1y ago
  I feel like that'd take a level of surveillance that's technically unsustainable. But then again, sustainability isn't a consideration when it stands in the way of "better" control.
  - haxiomic 1y ago
    AI is the perfect low cost tool to enable that. Plantir knows this and has been making strategic moves to build this Seems quite achievable and sustainable to me Every human carries dense compute and sensors with them. If they don't they stand out while still surrounded by dense compute and sensors held by others at all times Not nice to think about but it is the reality we are moving towards – vote accordingly
    - hdgvhicv 1y ago
      Voting doesn’t help. You need to win hearts and minds, and the synergy of resources available between the trillion dollar industries like AI and Marketing and you makes that a losing battle too. People want this stuff. People want ring doorbells, they want age verification, they want government control. Think of the children/criminals/immigrants. Voting won’t help.
      - martin-t 1y ago
        Voting doesn't work because people are not smart enough to think multiple steps ahead of people who are professionals at this. Voting doesn't work because everybody votes on everything, not just people who understand the subject matter. Voting doesn't work because it's impossible to express nuanced choice - you vote for a candidate or party as a whole, not on specific policies. The number of parties is much smaller than the number combinations of policies so some opinions can't be expressed at all.
        lucianbr 1y ago
        Those are arguments why voting does not produce a perfect outcome. That's different than "voting doesn't work". Using arguments like yours nothing can ever work. Society is complex and there will always be someone somewhere that can influence an outcome where he/she doesn't understand the subject matter. Hence, nothing works and can ever work. "Let's just give up" is the only conclusion I can see. Hardly useful. Can you give an example of something that works by your standards?
        martin-t 1y ago
        It does not work to produce a society where people are actually the ones holding power and where laws side with those in the right - i.e. the current legal system anywhere does not represent a consistent moral system and is not even close. You're right it's too strong as a general statement but it was in response to a specific issue - those in power wanting to take yet another bit of power from the general population - (this time and in this particular country) by banning VPNs. People always vote based on the most pressing issues to them - immigration, taxes, abortions, LGBT rights (random list which is different in every country). Minor issues fall between the cracks until they become so bad they become pressing to enough people. > "Let's just give up" is the only conclusion I can see. Hardly useful. Then you're reading it wrong. I listed specific issues - the solution is to find solutions to those issues. Here's a couple suggestions I'd like to see gamed out and tested: - The right to vote not as a function of age but a test of reasoning ability and general knowledge. - Limiting the amount of time a person can perform politics (including professional lobbying) to 5-10 years. - Splitting laws into areas of expertise and potentially requiring tests to prove understanding to gain the right to vote on those areas for both the general population and politicians. - Replacing FPTP with more nuanced voting systems. These are just a few random suggestions described briefly. When I do this, people start nitpicking and then I have to reply with obvious solutions to surface issues - I encourage everyone to instead think how to make this work (yes, in an adversarial environment) instead of just trying to shoot it down.
  - esafak 1y ago
    China is sustaining it just fine at much higher scale, and advancing technology only makes it easier.
- joquarky 1y ago
  Seems like a raspberry pi hidden at a library, restaurant, or anywhere with wifi would thwart this.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1gn15 1y ago
    Feels like they'd make that illegal, and enforce it by checking the CCTV footage for the person who planted that mini computer, then arresting that person.
- superkuh 1y ago
  When the ban happens it'll be really easy to implement without requiring only government approved hosts or any such distributed measures requiring enforcement. Certificate Authorities. There are just a handful of corporations get to decide which websites are visitable every 90 days. Put a bit of legal pressure on the corporate certificate authorities and there's instant centralized control of effectively the entire web thanks to corporate browser HTTPS-only defaults and HTTP/3 not being able to use self-signed certs for public websites.
  - mr_toad 1y ago
    There’s a handful of commonly used CAs, but the full list of CAs is very long.
    - superkuh 1y ago
      The full list of CAs with root certs in corporate browsers is fairly short. That's all that matters. If your CA isn't in $browser/$os cert root store then it's not going to be useful. $ ls -lathr /etc/ssl/certs/ | wc -l 265 And of those far fewer are going to actually be giving out certs to human people. CAs are the chokepoint but I acknowledge that saying 'a handful' was hyperbolic. A few dozen.
- LadyCailin 1y ago
  If it went this far, the US would no longer be recognizable. Not to say it can’t happen, and the US is fast marching in that direction, but this would be a dramatic shift in the entire underlying fabric of the country.
  - slfnflctd 1y ago
    Some would argue that the US is already unrecognizable in many ways, and that there are clear indications this trend will continue.
    - LadyCailin 1y ago
      For sure. And the US looked very different under McCarthyism too, so there’s even precedent. But my point is that there are other prerequisites that have to happen first.
      - lucianbr 1y ago
        Why is that important? Sounds like saying "well before winter comes, autumn must come first". Yeah duh, so what? Winter is still coming, if anyone cares about it.
        LadyCailin 1y ago
        Because if you overreact to an issue, then that can and will be used to dismiss your arguments entirely, and the general public can more easily be swayed against you.
        lucianbr 1y ago
        Non sequitur. Pointing out an intermediate step changes nothing about how bad or good the issue is or how appropriate or inappropriate the reaction is.
  - deaux 1y ago
    Like the dramatic shift that has taken place over the last 12 months, you mean?
Crontab 1y ago
I've been considering doing that, because it seems a lot of VPN owned IP addresses are being flagged.
- txrx0000 1y ago
  Consider SoftEther, which is VPN over Ethernet wrapped in HTTPS. It's open-source. It has a server discovery site called VPNGate. You can host a server to let somebody else use, then use a server soneone else is hosting. https://www.vpngate.net/en/ https://www.vpngate.net/en/ We're really only missing a few things before there's decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner, similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and broadcasting into the client. Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use.
  - suslik 1y ago
    Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this worrisome.
    - txrx0000 1y ago
      > Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? No, but I'm curious why you'd think that?
      - giobox 1y ago
        The risk surely exists if you decide to run their gate service: "After you activate the VPN Gate Service, anyone can connect a VPN connection to your computer, and access to any hosts on the Internet via your computer" "When you are running the VPN Gate Relaying Function on your company's network, then any person's communication to Internet hosts will be relayed via your company's network." > https://www.vpngate.net/en/join.aspx https://www.vpngate.net/en/join.aspx There's simply no way I would offer my residential or company IPs as exit nodes to strangers. > Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use. If this came to pass, much the same problems.
LeoPanthera 1y ago
Tailscale makes this trivial, which is why I'm worried about governments starting to block the Tailscale control servers. Which I think China already does. I don't know if Tailscale has any plans to make their service more censorship resistant, but I hope they do.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  Headscale can help here, if you're willing to host it. https://github.com/juanfont/headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale
giobox 1y ago
I did this for years during the early 2010s, but given the IP ranges of most the major VPS players are widely known, many sites and services now just block them outright. It got to the stage I had to stop doing it. I suspect it has only gotten worse now many sites are trying to prevent scraping for AI training as well. If your primary focus is just reaching region blocked content, Self hosted VPNs can work great if you have access to a residential IP in your target country- I've taken advantage of family member's domestic connections instead of VPSes now, as I was lucky enough to have family in the regions I wanted. Devices like the Apple TV can function as a Tailscale exit node too, which greatly simplified deployment.

txrx0000 1y ago

If this keeps going, they will ban self-hosting next: only government-approved hosts allowed. We can't just rely on technological solutions because you can't out-tech the law at scale. People need to actually understand that the government is very close to having the tools needed for a stable technocratic authoritarian regime here in the US and all around the world. It might not happen immediately even if they have the tools, but once the tools are built, that future becomes almost unavoidable.

skeledrew 1y ago
I feel like that'd take a level of surveillance that's technically unsustainable. But then again, sustainability isn't a consideration when it stands in the way of "better" control.
- haxiomic 1y ago
  AI is the perfect low cost tool to enable that. Plantir knows this and has been making strategic moves to build this Seems quite achievable and sustainable to me Every human carries dense compute and sensors with them. If they don't they stand out while still surrounded by dense compute and sensors held by others at all times Not nice to think about but it is the reality we are moving towards – vote accordingly
  - hdgvhicv 1y ago
    Voting doesn’t help. You need to win hearts and minds, and the synergy of resources available between the trillion dollar industries like AI and Marketing and you makes that a losing battle too. People want this stuff. People want ring doorbells, they want age verification, they want government control. Think of the children/criminals/immigrants. Voting won’t help.
    - martin-t 1y ago
      Voting doesn't work because people are not smart enough to think multiple steps ahead of people who are professionals at this. Voting doesn't work because everybody votes on everything, not just people who understand the subject matter. Voting doesn't work because it's impossible to express nuanced choice - you vote for a candidate or party as a whole, not on specific policies. The number of parties is much smaller than the number combinations of policies so some opinions can't be expressed at all.
      - lucianbr 1y ago
        Those are arguments why voting does not produce a perfect outcome. That's different than "voting doesn't work". Using arguments like yours nothing can ever work. Society is complex and there will always be someone somewhere that can influence an outcome where he/she doesn't understand the subject matter. Hence, nothing works and can ever work. "Let's just give up" is the only conclusion I can see. Hardly useful. Can you give an example of something that works by your standards?
        martin-t 1y ago
        It does not work to produce a society where people are actually the ones holding power and where laws side with those in the right - i.e. the current legal system anywhere does not represent a consistent moral system and is not even close. You're right it's too strong as a general statement but it was in response to a specific issue - those in power wanting to take yet another bit of power from the general population - (this time and in this particular country) by banning VPNs. People always vote based on the most pressing issues to them - immigration, taxes, abortions, LGBT rights (random list which is different in every country). Minor issues fall between the cracks until they become so bad they become pressing to enough people. > "Let's just give up" is the only conclusion I can see. Hardly useful. Then you're reading it wrong. I listed specific issues - the solution is to find solutions to those issues. Here's a couple suggestions I'd like to see gamed out and tested: - The right to vote not as a function of age but a test of reasoning ability and general knowledge. - Limiting the amount of time a person can perform politics (including professional lobbying) to 5-10 years. - Splitting laws into areas of expertise and potentially requiring tests to prove understanding to gain the right to vote on those areas for both the general population and politicians. - Replacing FPTP with more nuanced voting systems. These are just a few random suggestions described briefly. When I do this, people start nitpicking and then I have to reply with obvious solutions to surface issues - I encourage everyone to instead think how to make this work (yes, in an adversarial environment) instead of just trying to shoot it down.
- esafak 1y ago
  China is sustaining it just fine at much higher scale, and advancing technology only makes it easier.
joquarky 1y ago
Seems like a raspberry pi hidden at a library, restaurant, or anywhere with wifi would thwart this.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- 1gn15 1y ago
  Feels like they'd make that illegal, and enforce it by checking the CCTV footage for the person who planted that mini computer, then arresting that person.
superkuh 1y ago
When the ban happens it'll be really easy to implement without requiring only government approved hosts or any such distributed measures requiring enforcement. Certificate Authorities. There are just a handful of corporations get to decide which websites are visitable every 90 days. Put a bit of legal pressure on the corporate certificate authorities and there's instant centralized control of effectively the entire web thanks to corporate browser HTTPS-only defaults and HTTP/3 not being able to use self-signed certs for public websites.
- mr_toad 1y ago
  There’s a handful of commonly used CAs, but the full list of CAs is very long.
  - superkuh 1y ago
    The full list of CAs with root certs in corporate browsers is fairly short. That's all that matters. If your CA isn't in $browser/$os cert root store then it's not going to be useful. $ ls -lathr /etc/ssl/certs/ | wc -l 265 And of those far fewer are going to actually be giving out certs to human people. CAs are the chokepoint but I acknowledge that saying 'a handful' was hyperbolic. A few dozen.
LadyCailin 1y ago
If it went this far, the US would no longer be recognizable. Not to say it can’t happen, and the US is fast marching in that direction, but this would be a dramatic shift in the entire underlying fabric of the country.
- slfnflctd 1y ago
  Some would argue that the US is already unrecognizable in many ways, and that there are clear indications this trend will continue.
  - LadyCailin 1y ago
    For sure. And the US looked very different under McCarthyism too, so there’s even precedent. But my point is that there are other prerequisites that have to happen first.
    - lucianbr 1y ago
      Why is that important? Sounds like saying "well before winter comes, autumn must come first". Yeah duh, so what? Winter is still coming, if anyone cares about it.
      - LadyCailin 1y ago
        Because if you overreact to an issue, then that can and will be used to dismiss your arguments entirely, and the general public can more easily be swayed against you.
        lucianbr 1y ago
        Non sequitur. Pointing out an intermediate step changes nothing about how bad or good the issue is or how appropriate or inappropriate the reaction is.
- deaux 1y ago
  Like the dramatic shift that has taken place over the last 12 months, you mean?

Crontab 1y ago

I've been considering doing that, because it seems a lot of VPN owned IP addresses are being flagged.

txrx0000 1y ago
Consider SoftEther, which is VPN over Ethernet wrapped in HTTPS. It's open-source. It has a server discovery site called VPNGate. You can host a server to let somebody else use, then use a server soneone else is hosting. https://www.vpngate.net/en/ https://www.vpngate.net/en/ We're really only missing a few things before there's decentralized VPN over HTTPS that anyone in the world can host and use, and it would be resistant to all DPI firewalls. First, a user-friendly mobile client. Second, a way to broadcast and discover server lists in a sparse and decentralized manner, similar to BitTorrent (or we may be able to make use of the BT protocol as is), and we'd have to build such auto-discovery and broadcasting into the client. Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use.
- suslik 1y ago
  Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this worrisome.
  - txrx0000 1y ago
    > Using this tech, all the CP traffic would detectably flow towards my ip, right? No, but I'm curious why you'd think that?
    - giobox 1y ago
      The risk surely exists if you decide to run their gate service: "After you activate the VPN Gate Service, anyone can connect a VPN connection to your computer, and access to any hosts on the Internet via your computer" "When you are running the VPN Gate Relaying Function on your company's network, then any person's communication to Internet hosts will be relayed via your company's network." > https://www.vpngate.net/en/join.aspx https://www.vpngate.net/en/join.aspx There's simply no way I would offer my residential or company IPs as exit nodes to strangers. > Third, make each client automatically host a temporary server and broadcast its IP to the public server lists when in use. If this came to pass, much the same problems.

LeoPanthera 1y ago

Tailscale makes this trivial, which is why I'm worried about governments starting to block the Tailscale control servers. Which I think China already does. I don't know if Tailscale has any plans to make their service more censorship resistant, but I hope they do.

rpdillon 1y ago
Headscale can help here, if you're willing to host it. https://github.com/juanfont/headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale

giobox 1y ago

I did this for years during the early 2010s, but given the IP ranges of most the major VPS players are widely known, many sites and services now just block them outright. It got to the stage I had to stop doing it. I suspect it has only gotten worse now many sites are trying to prevent scraping for AI training as well. If your primary focus is just reaching region blocked content, Self hosted VPNs can work great if you have access to a residential IP in your target country- I've taken advantage of family member's domestic connections instead of VPSes now, as I was lucky enough to have family in the regions I wanted. Devices like the Apple TV can function as a Tailscale exit node too, which greatly simplified deployment.