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Comment by philsalesses | Hacker News Reader

As an American who up and moved to China on a whim and more recently started a tech company split between Boston and Shanghai, I can only greet this news with jubilation. Life here over the last two years has become simply impossible. Good luck to you China.

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As an Indian, I'm curious. Do you have a blog with your experience in China?

Care to share more details on how things have changed?

In terms of policy, probably nothing. They have however become more competent, meaning the firewall isn't easy to hop anymore and I went to MIT. I don't know how non-technical foreigners can do anything here.

Every expat in China I have met paid a few dollars a month for a VPN and had as much Facebook, Google, YouTube as the rest of us.

Are you only referring to Great Firewall when you say that "life here is simply impossible"?

I have 4 (ExpressVPN, VyprVPN, StrongVPN, and a fourth I'll never tell anyone where it is). They do not reliably connect, are prone to attacks from the government and even when they do connect, you'll be throttled into oblivion. Before I discovered Shadowsocks (Chinese went to clouds house and made him remove it from github), my VPN would, within 3-5 minutes, be throttled to about 128k average speed. I would be elated if I could get a 1 MBps connection out. And for those wondering, I pay for 200MBps and I do get that in within the Chinese intranet.

You say you went to MIT and don't know how to set up your own VPN server?

Fairly certain the GFC can ferret out any VPN you can set up on your own.

Not exactly. If you use an standard VPN protocol right out of the box (read: OpenVPN), then yes it is automatically blocked. The OpenVPN SSL handshake is different to regular SSL.

There are certain ways you can disguise the traffic and the VPN companies that specialize in China do that- but the GFW is regularly updated so what works today probably won't work next month.

The other issue is that even if you do get a VPN working, they have a tendency to throttle your connection. VPN traffic is quite different to your regular http/https.

Aren't you snarky... Read carefully. I have a fourth. And that wouldn't fix it anyway. They detect it on the protocol level. They posison your DNS.

That's a legitimate question, setting up an OpenVPN server is trivial. I am curious, have you tried using obfusproxy or an alternate way to obfuscate your vpn traffic?

Not yet. Planning to write a small series of posts when I move back, but I do need some time out of this environment before I can judge things with less a biased mentality. Distance is great for that. Will post to HN when I do.

A post about the 2 year cat and mouse game of vpns and gfc is something I'd love to read.

High labor cost and the great firewall

Essentially this. There have been entire weeks where I can't get a connection out I the country and as someone who can't speak Chinese that's a problem. I've learned the language a bit, but there's no way I can achieve business fluency in the time period necessary to be successful.

The reason why the Chinese middle class is booming is the rising labour cost. Without it there would be no demand for the products we westerners want to sell.

Impossible in what sense?

Could you elaborate? Your comment is vague.

holy shit are we the same person?

hit me up at Windows some time. Or wherever.

I'd be down to meet my doppelgänger., but if you want to meet at Window, we are not the same person. haha. How do I get ahold of you after my trip to the states?

Wechats the same as my id here.

>moved to China on a whim

>started a tech company

>split between [two very different countries]

>two years

With all due respect, the problem is most likely a series of poor decisions on your part.

>With all due respect, the problem is most likely a series of poor decisions on your part.

seems like he moved to china a while back and only recently started a tech company. Managing tech companies over several geographical regions is not rare, especially if your business model calls for it.

How exactly did you arrive at the conclusion that it is most likely a series of poor decisions on his part without knowing anything about him or his business?

With all due respect, you have no idea of what you are talking about.

Your comment is off base. You don't know me or what I optimize for in life.

...and xkcd doesn't suck. Randall does something he's passionate about and out its out into the world for millions to see. Good for him.

Do you mind if Inask what you do or have done?

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