
Github blocked from China - hunvreus
http://viewdns.info/chinesefirewall/?domain=github.com
======
ccp0202
I believe the blocking is directly related to an automated train ticket
polling plugin that had brought down Github just days ago. Due to upcoming
Chinese New Year, newly released train tickets are sold within minutes. That
plugin introduces huge traffic to already crumbling ticket vending site, and
it has obviously made railroad bureau angry. Blocking Github makes that plugin
immediately malfunction because it makes reference to javascript files hosted
on Github pages. The bureau has also paid a visit to the plugin's author, for
the purpose of intimidation perhaps.

~~~
matthuggins
Do you have a link to a news article or something that explains all this?

~~~
quant18
Tech in Asia has an English summary & commentary about the train ticket
plugins ban:

[http://www.techinasia.com/negotiation-miit-orders-chinese-
br...](http://www.techinasia.com/negotiation-miit-orders-chinese-browsers-
kill-train-ticket-plugins/)

Indeed there seems to be one plugin which hotlinks a js file from Github:
[http://www.ce.cn/cysc/tech/07hlw/guonei/201301/21/t20130121_...](http://www.ce.cn/cysc/tech/07hlw/guonei/201301/21/t20130121_21322634.shtml)

But of course, blocking Github didn't affect any of the other plugins. So
Phoenix TV is reporting that most other plugins are still actually working:

[http://tech.ifeng.com/internet/detail_2013_01/21/21406667_0....](http://tech.ifeng.com/internet/detail_2013_01/21/21406667_0.shtml)

------
gbraad
Ouch, but maybe solvable...

Confirmed from Beijing. Thought it was the internet connectivity in the office
that failed, but same at home.

Did a traceroute and this reveals an expected result. It is really the DNS
which returns a wrong value '59.24.3.173' instead of the expected
'207.97.227.239', so it looks like a dns poisoning attempt or some other dns
issue. Editing your /etc/hosts file or using opendns can help in this case.

traceroute to github.com (207.97.227.239), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1
10.0.21.1 (10.0.21.1) 1.987 ms 2.265 ms 2.832 ms 2 123.121.64.1 (123.121.64.1)
35.160 ms 35.416 ms 35.675 ms 3 61.148.185.249 (61.148.185.249) 20.185 ms
22.808 ms 24.970 ms 4 124.65.61.173 (124.65.61.173) 33.900 ms 33.950 ms 34.056
ms 5 * * * 6 219.158.101.122 (219.158.101.122) 71.221 ms 48.915 ms 50.631 ms 7
219.158.23.6 (219.158.23.6) 70.620 ms 72.682 ms 95.149 ms 8 219.158.96.202
(219.158.96.202) 88.623 ms 90.785 ms 93.630 ms 9 219.158.29.170
(219.158.29.170) 267.972 ms 276.896 ms 277.973 ms 10 219.158.32.10
(219.158.32.10) 265.656 ms 269.840 ms 210.408 ms 11 * * * 12 67.133.246.158
(67.133.246.158) 286.678 ms 288.514 ms 291.715 ms 13
vlan905.core5.iad2.rackspace.net (72.4.122.10) 303.488 ms 307.324 ms 305.763
ms 14 aggr301a-1-core5.iad2.rackspace.net (72.4.122.121) 311.652 ms 314.041 ms
317.400 ms 15 github.com (207.97.227.239) 315.588 ms 317.580 ms 320.812 ms

So with OpenDNS it loads... still some packetloss, but this is expected. In
the worst case, use a VPN. Although, this means it will trouble Chinese
participation and contributions to projects even more.

~~~
gbraad
At least it is big news on Weibo where people complain about 'creating dumb
people when you cant study code'.

This might have to do with the a ticket polling (bashing) application since
during this time it is hard to get tickets for the train due to the yearly
mass migration for spring festival. It referred to assets hosted on github
pages.

------
aneth4
I'm not sure how any developer survives in China without a VPN, so this is
probably one of the least vulnerable groups.

On the other hand, any deployment strategies that depend on github are going
to be hosed.

I no longer live in China. Internet issues are a bit reason for that.

~~~
benatkin
There are tools that make it easy to work disconnected. Ruby On Rails is one,
because of its one-stop-shop nature and its easy-to-download docs.

------
biesnecker
This really sucks because Github doesn't seem to like my favorite OpenVPN
providers -- I can access the site, but actual git operations don't work.
Previously I'd just disconnect, clone/push/etc., and reconnect, but now that
might not work at all.

Pain in the ass, more so by the day it seems.

~~~
csense
Have you tried using a <https://> url instead of git:// url?

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hnfmr
As a developer from China, I can tell you that I am furious now. The bottom
line has long been that sites such as Github.com & etc are not blocked. This
is no longer true...

~~~
biesnecker
Seriously? (I say this as someone living in Shanghai now, who has lived here
for the last 10 years). Github was your bottom line?

~~~
hnfmr
Meant to say that I have had enough of this situation.

------
csmattryder
This was predicted around a month ago, after the release of the tool that
detects routers acting in the Great Firewall. [1]

But I'd assume you'd just Streisand Effect the project if it was closed down,
almost inevitable once mongol was released, it'd just be forked.

Unless the block was a culmination of other factors that I don't know about,
then I'd love to hear more.

[1] <https://github.com/mothran/mongol/issues/1>

------
contingencies
Confirmed in Yunnan.

I just returned to China after most of a year. The VPN stuff has gotten much
worse. Tor is banned, new wacky Tor is banned. My work VPN (OpenVPN based, not
publicly listed or used by anyone else) appears blocked (though it worked a
couple of days back on a different link; I have a theory this is China Unicom
vs. China Telecom landlines).

I am presently exploring IPSec/PPTP/SSH+PPP style solutions. Can anyone save
me time here and tell me what is likely to be the most reliable? OpenVPN has
been my mainstay in the past and it is now too much trouble here.

SSH+PPP is looking good from a low-latency, port-hopping, unlikely-to-be-
blocked perspective, but figuring out how to get a client for that up in OSX
is driving me nuts.

~~~
nak012
<http://refer.ly/aWhX> PPTP

------
benatkin
This is a downside to using a code hosting site. Joel Spolsky once said that
"politics are orthogonal to software". I might not care if Chinese censors
block my blog, but I want my code to be available to as many as possible. The
smaller the site that holds the code, the easier it is for them to selectively
allow it.

I don't want to go out of my way to make it so they can allow access to it
despite a horrible censorship system, but I'd prefer not to put all my eggs
into one giant basket either.

~~~
fudged71
Software is easy to distribute. Copy your eggs to multiple baskets.

------
Christine_Ren
Cannot access the Hacker News Meetup page anymore...
(<http://wiredcraft.github.com/hnshanghai/>)

~~~
barry-cotter
Are you at it? I'm the guy sitting at a table with a beer, a laptop, glasses
and a terrible, terrible sweater.

~~~
pferde
So, did you find each other? Don't keep us in suspense! :)

------
antihero
It's kind of ironic, as open source is a pretty socialist idea in the first
place (not that China is socialist, but it's supposed to be).

~~~
djisjke
Is it really? The author of code owns that code. It's not like the workers
using the factory (the programmers using the languages) owns it, they are just
licensed to use it way more freely than it the owner did not give any
freedoms.

In a communist society then the governemt would take ownership of all code (of
factories). That's not Stallmans idea.

Saying that 'socialism == sharing' is too simple.

~~~
rieter
One of the core ideas of Communism - workers own the means of production.
Source code is means of production for software. Capitalism is when the source
code is owned by the "factory owner", i.e. corporation, and not by the people
who actually produce it.

Example: programmers who work at Microsoft don't own the source code and can't
use it for their own benefit, while Microsoft makes money from it and only
pays wages, which are below the value of source code to the company. This is
the old model of Capitalism.

Open Source is very much a Communist idea. People who work on open source,
even if they are payed for it, still have access to their work and can use it
independently of the company.

~~~
graue
Great point. It seems obvious in retrospect, yet I had never thought of it
with that level of clarity. It also explains why, as I ponder my career, I'm
drawn to companies where a significant portion (or all) of my work would be
open source.

On the other hand, given the terrible outcomes communism produced in the 20th
century, it has a well-deserved bad reputation. I'd therefore hesitate to link
it to open source without noting why open source is different: Code, once
written, can be copied infinitely for free (or at a very low cost), so the
model can work.

Thanks for a thought-provoking post.

------
gkwelding
My blog, <http://www.in-the-attic.com> is hosted on Github pages, I have
tested against the site this post links to and my site is accessible. IP it
resolves to is 204.232.175.78 and this is the Github pages IP address.

~~~
gbraad
I was unable to open <http://openhack.github.com> (also on github pages) so it
seems to be targeted.

~~~
gkwelding
Yeah, this is happening because I specify the A Name record for the in-the-
attic.com domain, if I hit gkwelding.github.com which is the github page
itself then it's also blocked. Looks like some DNS FUBAR'ness is occurring
somewhere.

~~~
hola_org
We just added GitHub to our Firewall Unblocker for Hola, but we don't know if
it's working. Can you check it out and report to me? Just install from
Hola.org our Windows client > hover over the Hola tray icon and click Hola
Unblocker. On this page choose GitHub from the Firewall Unblocker, and let me
know at steve@hola.org Thanks! If it works, start telling your friends! BTW
Hola is totally free! Thanks!

------
pekingduck
Hmmm...I can access github from Beijing without any problems... (I am using
Google's DNS servers)

~~~
gbraad
Traffic directed at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 is not always reliable (intercepted
and malformed) where I life. I use mostly opendns and a tunneled dns proxy
back to some servers i have. Bu yes, it works by avoiding the poisoned dns
servers

------
preinheimer
I'm seeing the same thing:
<http://wheresitup.com/results/50fd9b39d331167b5a00017a>

------
guruz
A friend of a friend from Beijing said github works for him (~2 minutes ago).

I'm actually flying there on Wednesday, let's see how it goes :)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It's blocked in my Beijing apartment.

------
darxius
My personal website is hosted by github and it's accessible from China. So
they don't seem to block those -- weird.

------
greatabel
They just have too many enemies and too scared.I wish github can be
recovered,otherwise I have to cross the wall.

------
suyash
Thanks to the blocking, no more projects being OutSourced to China, at-least
the ones hosted on Github now!

------
rajshekhar
Is it because of some govern"mental" issue or just some technical problem?

~~~
gbraad
not clear. might be DNS poison... since a trace returns a functional path and
using an alternative DNS it seems to work.

------
chj
You can't survive in China without a stable VPN connection.

~~~
est
China blocked VPN protocols.

You can't survive in China without a closed homebrew tunnel protocol.

------
tomedme
No-go in Shanghai :-(

~~~
barry-cotter
Yeah, I know. Anyone else at the HN meetup at Abbey Road? I'm thewhite guy
with glasses, a beer, laptop and a receding hairline.

~~~
hunvreus
The next HN meetup will be held on February 21, after the Chinese New Year:
<http://shanghaihn.org/>

~~~
barry-cotter
Bollocks. I thought it was tonight. See you next month.

~~~
hunvreus
Subscribed you to the mail reminder so that you don't forget: see you there.

~~~
nickyoung
Is it possible to be subscribed as well?

~~~
hunvreus
You can subscribe to the newsletter at the bottom of the official page:
<http://shanghaihn.org> (hopefully that words fine despite being a Github
pages :) ).

~~~
nickyoung
Thanks! Are there any HN meet ups in Beijing?

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BruceLi
This sucks, the GFW sucks, the government sucks!!

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xjtlujoe
blocked websites may be more popular in China now...before, not many people
know Github..

------
rodrigoavie
Shit

