Reposting this at the top level of the thread, because when I asked previously deeper in the comments, I was told it was posted in reply to an account that a lot of people called out as a potential state actor spreading misleading information. And I genuinely need help with this, as this window of opportunity seems to be closing fast. Sidenote: i really appreciate people pointing out the potentially malicious account in the comments. With that in mind, below is the modified copy of my original comment.
Is there anything that can be done now to ensure that the access remains after this block goes into the effect? Internet is my only way to contact my father living there, and today I was walking him through a VPN setup. But now that I’ve read these news, I am not even sure if this will help.
The only reason i am asking here is because the time is ticking, and once the block goes into the effect, me and him will be completely cut off, with me having zero way to assist him or even make sure he is still alive. So it is pretty much either pre-emptively taking care of it or being stuck hoping that he will figure something out on his own. And I would rather leave as little as possible to a chance here, given what's at stake.
I personally would have him leave if at all possible. A lot of people in Ukraine are regretting not abandoning everything right now.
If that's too extreme, anecdotally the Russian govt seems pretty dependent on Telegram. They've backed down from banning it in the past, albeit in less serious situations. As long as you neither of you ever send anything political on telegram or join any political channels that might be your safest communication option.
On this specific post: I don't speak Russian. Someone on Twitter who claimed to speak Russian said the top of the document makes it clear they're only requiring official government websites to switch to fully domestic hosts. (Don't think this helps much, because who knows what will change in a week)
> I was told it was posted in reply to an account that a lot of people called out as a potential state actor spreading misleading information. [...] Sidenote: i really appreciate people pointing out the potentially malicious account in the comments. With that in mind, below is the modified copy of my original comment.
Hard to not take this personal since this is literally about me. However, I don't see the thread containing "a lot of people calling out a potential state actor", I only see one user making that accusation twice in the thread you speak of (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30582330)
For what it's worth, I left you a comment that can help you to keep in contact with your dad. I agree with the general idea that general skepticism should be applied everywhere on the internet, but you shouldn't also rush to conclusions and believe that because one user wrote something many times, that makes it more true.
Apologies, my statement about it wasn't meant to actively accuse you of being a state actor, because I have zero mental power and desire left trying to figure out who is a state actor and who isn't. I mostly mentioned it to justify as to why I made a copy of my comment from elsewhere in the thread. Because you being accused of that by multiple people pretty much guarantees that my child comment/question will not be seen by most people who could actually provide any help.
No hard feelings, and I really appreciate your help.
Hello. I’m worried about my mother-in-law in Chernihiv (if she survives this disgusting attack) for the same reasons. If Russians take the city, the same block will obstruct her too. I gave her our emails and telephone numbers. I assume she will be able to call someone who can email us. Otherwise she can make an international call to us. It is very scary. My wife almost has a breakdown unless she can check on her mum through the day. This blockade will ruin peoples lives.
I am very sorry to hear about your situation, it sounds significantly more stressful and awful than mine. I hope your family gets through this successfully. I cannot even imagine how to deal with having someone close to you being directly in the action zone there. My dad is in mainland Russia, but given recent laws that Russia passed in regards to "fake news" and protestors, we seriously were concerned about our calls being tapped. And not in a "oh man, that's not cool for someone to tap our communications", but more like "15 years of russian prison and/or much worse consequences feel a bit too close right now" type of way.
> she can make an international call to us.
One question about this, if you don't mind. What's the best way to do place international calls there in terms of convenience/cost/quality and just as an overall package? My mind jumped first to Google Voice, because that's something I've used with success before. But I don't have much of an idea about alternatives, so I wouldn't know if there was something much better suited for the purpose.
Many people use WhatsApp or Telegram. Both let you make free calls given internet access. The first is more secure, but the second is much more commonly used in Russia - it'll be more innocuous looking and less likely to be blocked.
I'm not at all an expert, but I'd suggest setting up Telegram.
Anecdotally the Russian govt seems pretty dependent on it for their own communication. They've backed down from banning it in the past, albeit in less serious situations. As long as you neither of you ever send anything political on telegram or join any political channels that might be your safest communication option.
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Lol realism, some Christian cardinal is on Russian state television and talking about how the Ukrainians are forced to endure homosexuality parades or get executed
What’s your plan now that you’re getting firewalled in mate? Or do you have.. special privileges
While Mir and UnionPay was already popular-ish in Russia, I don't think "Visa & MasterCard cut off Russia" is true. They merely separated the networks so Visa cards from outside Russia won't work inside, and vice-versa. But I haven't physically verified this myself.
Look, I do live in the real world - Russia doesn't want Ukraine in NATO, meanwhile, America wants it (and has been wanting it for decades) to degrade Russia from a global to a regional power. One have to be a complete idiot to believe that Russia want infiltrate Ukraine - the same way America has, for example. By the way, the treatment of these people and purposely putting them on display harmed would have been reacted to differently if those were, let's say, Ukrainian spies caught in Russia.
Those countries want to be in the NATO because Putin has been threatening for many years/decades and is being a bully. That isn't Europe's fault, but Russia's.
NATO has been reluctant to accept Ukraine even, but Ukraine added it in their law that they want to join Europe/Nato. That isn't Europe or US their fault either. It's because of Russia threatening democracy in Ukraine ( once again).
Also, gas was found in Crimea which seems to be the main cause for Russia invading and taking Crimea immediately. The resource was so big, that it was possible to use that for European supply within a couple of years if Russia wouldn't have invaded.
If you look at the facts, a lot of Europe has actually bought more gas at premium prices.
This is reversing now, rightfully so. And NATO is now also increasing military spending, which they were cautious about before. Do you think that's also a "new threat" to Russia? It's full within their right after literally seeing Russia starting a war.
We shouldn't have increased buying Russian gas, so much is clear by now.
Outside of that. Russia is taking every opportunity to violate the Geneva convention and is actively shelling when civilians want to flee. That's just immoral. What Russia says and does are 2 different things.
If you read NATO's founding documents, a country can be accepted only if it would improves the alliances overall security, which is not the case with Ukraine and Georgia. Both countries would only improve the alliance's security if they stay neutral as buffer zones.
Ukraine has been shelling Donbas for 8 years and there's plenty of evidence, which has been totally ignored by the West.
On the contrary, there's little evidence (only narrative) that Russia shells evacuees.
There was no active discussion of bringing Ukraine into NATO. Also, wanting to be in NATO (a) is the right of a sovereign nation to decide and (b) does not make that nation Nazis. Putin asserts Ukraine is not sovereign and is full of Nazis as his primary reason for invading after spending months saying he had no intention of invading. So he is a liar at best, delusional at worst.
Russia agreed to the Budapest Memorandum recognizing Ukraine's sovereignty as an independent state. Russia is also a party to the U.N. Charter as a founding member, and the Geneva Conventions. Those have all been torn up by Putin. So I for one choose to not believe anything he says, and find him completely untrustworthy. Any promise he signs is worthless including one to not invade Ukraine, or any other country, if they agree to stay out of NATO. Staying out of NATO is not a security guarantee so long as Putin is the one in charge. He presented not a single complaint before the U.N. about Ukraine before invading, after promising he wouldn't.
And as Putin is making it increasingly clear the stability-instability paradox may be a real and true thing, we have to consider that avoiding nuclear war at all costs itself has a cost which is that of principles. The principle being, you don't fucking roll tanks into people's backyards in contravention of the U.N. charter. The whole goddamn reason that institution exists is to prevent wars exactly like this. That it hasn't prevented it makes me question the trap we're now in: nuclear weapons are being used as a shield to permit a country to commit worse atrocities with conventional weapons than had nuclear weapons not existed, and that begs escalation all the way to a nuclear event. There is now a much bigger gap between conventional war and mutually assured destruction.
We can't go back before Putin did this. The world cannot just glibly accept what's happened as a result of fear of nukes, allowing that to make us ignore our principles. And our principles are the U.N. charter - that's the best thing that most nations agree on most of the time. There isn't anything else. If we lose that, we have nothing, and then we are certain to repeat the mistakes of WW1 and WW2.
The pipes are still there (meaning the actual physical cables) but sites are forced to use DNS servers and other infrastructure that is actually hosted in Russia, and supposedly they can control the response of the DNS servers better. So routing within Russia and to a select few on the outside can work, but it'll be harder to access the internet infrastructure from the outside.
I've personally have been seeing Russian endpoints disappearing one and one and DNS records slowly disappearing too, from the outside while watching Russian infrastructure since day one of the invasion. Seems they are so overpowered by all the attacks happening on their infrastructure, that they opt for just shutting of most connections at this point.
However, as long as you have a route into Russia (Tor with Russian exit node, VPN on dedicated server in Russia or "Acquired" residential/company computers) that you can use, this change won't do much to stop the attacks. Although it'll get rid of the constant ddos many beginner "hackers" are currently performing against them.
Is there anything that can be done now to ensure that the access remains after this block goes into the effect? Internet is my only way to contact my father living there, and today I was walking him through a VPN setup. But now that I’ve read these news, I am not even sure if this will help.
The only reason i am asking here is because the time is ticking, and once the block goes into the effect, I wont even be able to relay to him any useful info on how to go around it. So is it pretty much either pre-emptively taking care of it or being stuck hoping that he will figure something out on his own?
Please ignore Mo3 who seems to think anyone who thinks differently then them is a "Russian state actor". I'm not and in fact I'm currently actively trying to get into Russian infrastructure from the outside, not the other way around.
Tor will most likely continue to work, as long as there is a route to an entry node, your father would be able to navigate the web. However, they can try to stop Tor, and I'd advise you to read through the Troubleshooting steps from Tor preemptively: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/
Also try to lookup ways to still use Tor even if the usage is blocked. There are a couple of ways that could help him in that situation.
If you do end up losing contact with him (because of internet blockage), I can try to do my best to get you two in contact again, one way or another. My email is in my profile if you want to reach out.
Thanks for pointing it out. I am lowkey panicking about what to do next, and I feel like the next steps need to be taken asap. So in this brainfog, I didn't immediately notice the criticism of the parent comment. I really appreciate the call out.
I'm trying to say that both things are happening, and that the firewalling is probably happening in order to prevent the DDOS that is being launched towards Russian IT infrastructure, together with trying to prevent the increased attacks.
To put in another perspective, nothing in Russian IT infrastructure has to change in order to control who sees what on the "Russian" internet. So if it was all about "controlling people's mind", then this would be overkill.
But if you're getting hit by constant attacks from outside the country, this move makes a lot of sense in order to stop the attack, although also overkill but if you're not very skilled, it would probably stop many attacks.
I assume this is related to [0], but because for some reason Twitter age-restricted the tweets in the original submission I can't be sure.
It is also discussed on HN in [1] where I provided some context.
Also it should be noted what nexta_tv shouldn't had the problem understanding the second line in that document, where it is clearly stated to whom it is addressed (only government agencies). Considering the tone of their tweet it was a deliberate... twist of the message.
Pavel Durov had a post on Telegram that he has some Ukrainian ties on his mother's side, he does not live in Russia anymore, does not employ any people in Russia, and cares now more than ever about privacy, yet, he blocked content, which means that Telegram is just another WhatsApp and Messenger. I'm not sure if he gets this - even Facebook did it better by only putting a big warning about the content, but not completely blocking it. Also, it would have been nice to cite the exact laws being violated, which, in this case, don't even exist! Taking sides on a platform, which only exists, because it claims to be neutral and censorship-free, is a recipe for disaster. I understand, he's probably trying not to get removed by the app stores.
These are Russian propaganda/spy channels. Nice try. I can remember seeing three of them on a new list on Twitter earlier.. did you seriously just stage a conversation with yourself?
Is there anything that can be done now to ensure that the access remains after this block goes into the effect? Internet is my only way to contact my father living there, and today I was walking him through a VPN setup. But now that I’ve read these news, I am not even sure if this will help.
The only reason i am asking here is because the time is ticking, and once the block goes into the effect, me and him will be completely cut off, with me having zero way to assist him or even make sure he is still alive. So it is pretty much either pre-emptively taking care of it or being stuck hoping that he will figure something out on his own. And I would rather leave as little as possible to a chance here, given what's at stake.