Steam has been banned in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#451

Post by bamboozled » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:40 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #424

itsagavin wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is every step you took was observed and I would assume even where you slept both video and audio were recorded.

You can assume anything. Doesn't mean it's true. The reality is that your perception of China is highly fantasized and part of a crafted narrative. It's dangerous if you continue to contribute to this propaganda without care as to whether you've verified anything you've heard yourself. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but I doubt you'd know. I mean, it's certainly possible our rooms were bugged, but to what end? To fulfil…

Business people go missing, women who speak our are silenced, climate change is of no concern, concentration camps are real.

We’ve seen enough already.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#452

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:41 PM UTC

foverzar wrote: post #36

meibo wrote: post #2

Note: this refers to the global Steam service/community - Valve still offers Steam China with a very limited/censored selection of mostly-Valve games, adhering to local child protection laws. Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global service instead, as this Chinese version of Steam has only been available since February 2021.

I really love how we all have an impression of China as a country without access to global internet, but then there are things like "Most Chinese Steam users have historically been using the global service instead". Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works for yourself. The more I read about China, the more unbelievably contradictive it gets.

> Really makes you want to visit and see how this actually works for yourself. The more I read about China, the more unbelievably contradictive it gets.

It’s not really weird: most Chinese prefer the best choices possible, and if it isn’t blocked (and often even it is) they will use the service if t has more than a watered down local version. The government blocks internet global services via the great firewall because otherwise they would get used in China (and also makes jumping the wall annoying because otherwise more people would jump it).

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#453

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:45 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #425

bigmanwalter wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I backpacked through China and stayed in youth hostels. Highly doubt they were bugged. They didn’t even have heating (we used electric blankets)

I think part of that is that a lot of infrastructure is missing, but also culturally less wasteful than American lifestyles. For example I stayed in my Japanese friend's house in Tokyo and he doesn't heat the entire place even though it's a pretty small apartment. My room just had a heated blanket as well. But I agree, for any random foreigner the government is not competent enough to surveil him/her and much less mo…

The problem is that China doesn’t allow for central heating south of the Yangtze. So my coldest winter ever was spent in a small town in south Hunan, where it was above freezing but the lack of indoor heating really beats you down, kotatsus not withstanding. A friend of mine has parents who migrate to “northern” China in the winter so they don’t freeze to death.

Japan had a similar problem being previously not very rich (they invented kotatsu for that reason).

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#454

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:48 PM UTC

rvba wrote: post #386

powerapple wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true. The reason is that only hotels with passport verification system can accept foreign guests (all hotels have a system connected to police department to verify national id), most hotels only have a small national id verification system (because it was cheaper I guess), only some 4 star and 5 star hotels have these. I had once tried to use my passport to stay in a hotel, they didn't allow me then I learnt ab…

Probably only the bigger hotels have an agent of ministry of state security on premises. You should assume that you get a bugged room too. Russians did it in the 80s, even easier now.

All hotels have to report their guests to the local PSB, but some smaller hotels don’t (rules aren’t that enforced in China), but will avoid foreign guests because they easily bring attention from authorities. You can get away without reporting to the PSB in some way out places (like a hostel in the middle of nowhere I stayed in that lacked electricity beyond a simply hydro wheel), but those are rare, and not in big cities.

The rooms aren’t bugged. Most foreigners aren’t that special. Maybe they will big some special hotel that gets lots of diplomats? But most of us won’t stay in those.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#455

Post by nneonneo » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:49 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #165

flohofwoe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME the Great Firewall doesn't outright block global traffic apart from some selected services, but makes them so unreliable and slow that it's almost impossible to directly connect and use services from the other side (think 'analog modem speed'), companies (maybe just IT companies, not sure) can get an exemption (they need to connect to github after all), but even then it's not very reliable. If Steam had a working…

There are no such exemptions, and I don't know from where did this idea came

There absolutely are, or at least were. I attended a computer security competition in Shanghai in 2016, and the organizers told us explicitly that they’d obtained an exemption to get unfiltered internet access at the site. It was indeed unfiltered - Google and such worked fine - and an IP test showed us connecting from a Chinese ISP (so, not a VPN).

As this was about five years ago, the situation may well have changed, but at the time exemptions definitely were possible.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#456

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:51 PM UTC

arbuge wrote: post #288

alisonatwork wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. I have been refused access to a place because the landlord was openly racist and didn't want to rent to me after she found out I was a foreigner. There is pretty much no recourse for foreigners who are victims of racism in China, it's an extremely racist country. When you're a foreigner you just kinda have to accept that there are people who will cross the street or shield their kids when they see you, loudly c…

This is weird. Definitely not my experience at all. I visited Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu in China in 2012 and I felt extremely welcome wherever I went. I might also add that in Chengdu, a city which sees considerably less foreigners than the other two, I felt like I was being treated like somewhat of a celebrity, with people smiling at me everywhere, and random passer-bys on the street trying to impress me with t…

It really depends on your race as a foreigner. Black and Indian foreigners will be treated worse than white foreigners. Asian foreigners…it really depends how Chinese they look.

It seems to get worse every year also. My first visit in 1999, foreigners were quite welcomed. Then it simply got more mundane from there. My visit twas chengdu in 2006 was fairly like you stated though.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#457

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #156

whimsicalism wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Where did you get this from? US hotels most definitely do not “register (resident or non-resident) guests with the local government”. A few states require hotel guests to present an ID at checkin.

We usually do have to present ID these days, but more importantly a credit card. There is no registration with the police as you say, America has nothing like the hukou system either.

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#458

Post by nneonneo » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:53 PM UTC

nanliu wrote: post #187

manuelabeledo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, Google Fi worked just fine in late 2019. I’m wondering if foreign SIM cards are not subjected to filtering.

During my last visit using GoogleFI, the mobile phone shows a US IP when running whatismyip. So even though the phone is connected to the local telecom 5G network, traffic is segmented and routed back to the US carrier (T-Mobile in AWS US east IP ranges if I remember correctly) before hitting any website. So phones with GoogleFI sim works like a US client with a bit higher latency. This was really nice, but attemptin…

Google Fi, along with many other mobile telecoms, tend to limit the speed that you can attain from tethering, especially when roaming. Since computers don’t usually expect this, programs tend to misbehave on such metered connections.

In fact, I built a tool to specifically circumvent this: https://github.com/nneonneo/iOS-SOCKS-Server. It provides a SOCKS proxy through which you can tunnel any TCP connection, and have the connection appear to originate from your phone (and thus not be subject to the tethering rate limit). I used this when I was in China recently (2019).

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#459

Post by rndgermandude » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

tombh wrote: post #170

rndgermandude wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being OK with the myriad of human rights abuses the Chinese government commits - sometimes "silently" and sometimes very opening and outright proudly - is just because I struggle with my own regions history? What the actual fuck... I have to call your "theory" what it is: stupid and dangerous - and whataboutism on top.

To give a metaphor, I think it is perfectly reasonable to criticise my project lead when she criticises me for not meeting my targets but turns up hungover and spends the whole day on Facebook. I am criticising her because I want her to be effective at her job . Not because I disagree with her about our team's laziness.

And I criticize the Chinese government because I want the Chinese people to live a life that is free and void of the constant danger of abuse (while at the same time I can as well recognize that we in the West have a big list of problems and abuses we have to tackle).

Re: Steam has been banned in China

#460

Post by nneonneo » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #143

manuelabeledo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, Google Fi worked just fine in late 2019. I’m wondering if foreign SIM cards are not subjected to filtering.

I used Google Fi in early 2020 in China. iirc it really just depended on where you were... Sometimes Fi let me break through the GFW, but it definitely did not in Beijing.

It should always, because the APNs (gateway for your IP packets) for Google Fi are in the US no matter where you are roaming from. That’s standard fare for any cellular service: you always connect to the internet gateways in your provider’s home country when roaming.