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If they can block IPs of cloudflare what extra mechanisms would be needed to block VPN IPs?

The only viable way to even get most of them is to shut down internet access entirely. It's not a realistic solution, unlike blocking a few well known IP ranges belonging to a large corp like Cloudflare.

And even if you managed to get them all beforehand, some VPN providers will adapt and keep some servers in reserve, putting them online just as you managed to block the previous ones. Getting around internet censorship is a large chunk of their business, and some are really good at it.


You don’t really need to block all, you just need to annoy the users enough that paying is easier. And I think there are enough games to use up the IP reserve pretty quickly and getting new ones every time is pretty annoying.

I can provision a new VPS in about 5s of active work. I'd probably fully automate spinning up new servers and failing over because automatically detecting which got blocked is trivial. Bonus points if you use providers that let you attach multiple IPs to each VPS for cheap. Use some censorship resistant decentralized protocols to provide the next couple IPs to your client software and you're good.

And then they still need to monitor hundreds of VPN providers for whether they have new IPs, which is not neccssarily as easy as just grabbing a list of them. Once they have some, they then need to forward them to the ISPs and ask for them to be blocked. Their process is significantly less friendly to automation.

No country ever won this fight short of total shutdown/disconnects.


> No country ever won this fight short of total shutdown/disconnects.

Some countries also throttle pretty effectively. So you can connect but if you're trying to do more than read Hacker News it's not very usable.


It's a game. The VPN marketplace is huge so it's wack-a-mole.

Big companies don't hide their VPN ASNs. Obscure, for sure, but getting a good list isn't hard. Usually they get blocked.

Smaller companies may pass under the radar, and have higher tolerance for risky strategies.

The fringe providers are the problem. They aggressively change IP ranges, front-vs-obscure ownership, and play dirty. Shady folks will resell residential ranges. End-users often get tainted goods.

... and you still have the collateral damage game when VPNs host infra with big cloud providers vs colofarms vs self-host, etc.


Is aider even a thing considered anymore?

It was pretty much first for CLI agents and had a benchmark that was the go to at the start of LLM coding. Now the benchmark doesn't get updated and aider never gets a mention in talking about CLI tools till now.


Aider is dead because it's pre function calling era of tech

5 days ago OpenAI raised $122b and 26' Q1 recorded the largest amount of startup funding in a Q ever.

I wouldn't say it's drying.

https://x.com/OpenAI/status/2039085161971896807

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/01/startup-funding-shatters-a...


I'm on sky in the UK which is marked as not safe due to no RPKI.

It's not on the list so imagine there is a fair few missing, would be neat to have a table you could filter by country, provider type (cloud/isp etc) based on real results from users.

edit: there's a show all button to expand the table


If you're interested, Community Fibre is a yes from this website


I get the same result for A&A, but frankly I trust them more than some random site with (apparently) an axe to grind.



And here we are six years on... I have a lot of respect for A&A, but I do find it hard to sympathise with that page.


My hope would be that A&A have a process manually whitelisting the route that made the test fail because in fact (as of course it would be) it's actually deliberately not signed but it is really their route.

But on some level that's like assuming the reason the guy with the handgun is on your plane is that he's a sky marshal and not that some idiot let a concealed handgun through security. I mean, sure, maybe, but, maybe not.

Without asking it's just a guess and I haven't asked. Maybe I should.


And now thanks to jsty's sibling comment I don't have to ask, thanks! It does seem like they've been more than "cautious" enough at this point and should just implement RPKI.


This isn’t accurate even for API prices for a request/response.

Go on something like openrouter with gpt 5.1 and use the chat then check the billing and you’ll see an average joe query is like 0.00102 or something.

You’re quoting figures from articles for initial ChatGPT release in 2022


They were failing as an online IDE for several years then growth shot up after the AI pivot.


Couldn’t they just send some hardware down Texas to co-locate there (presuming specialist hardware) and add another deployment target for their software? Would it be that hard?


The speed of light limits fibre speed which in turn limits high-frequency trading.

Flash Boys by Michael Lewis was a fun read on the subject. One memorable quote alleged that HFT traders would "sell their grandmothers for a microsecond [of edge]"


The issue is the speed of light.


for an interesting reversal of the "problem" of the speed of light, IEX is a stock exchange design to combat HFT by adding a physical speed bump by way of 38 miles of fiber optic cable. The general idea being to level the playing field and improve market liquidity using physical communication limits of light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEX


That marketing gimic adds hundreds of microseconds to order latency. It’s not designed to level any playing fields it’s designed to get publicity.


Not really because anyone running a trading strategy that needs to worry about latency is already running their servers in the same datacenter as the exchange, so that just moves with it. What probably is an issue is that the datacenters required for a market don't look like AWS datacenters. I don't have any direct experience here, but I would be shocked if HFT software is something you could just deploy to a standard VM like on AWS.


They'd probably be running in an Equinix facility instead of AWS.


I thought they use GPU for learning and TPU for inference, I’m open to been corrected.


The first tpu they made was inference only. Everything since has been used for training. I think that means they weren't using it for training in 2015 but rather 2017 based on Wikipedia.


The first TPU they *announced" was for inference



no. for internal training most work is done on TPUs, which have been explicitly designed for high performance training.


I've heard its a mixture because they can't source enough in-house compute


I’ve never had an experience in any house or office where there’s been enough sockets to leave everything plugged.


I've never had an experience in any house or office where anything has ever been unplugged other than to put it away (a kitchen appliance that doesn't need to live on a counter, or a hair dryer, for example).

Buy a fused extension cord with more plugs, you have now turned one socket into 4, 6, or 8 sockets. You can even get some that have USB built-in, so you don't use a socket up for a phone or tablet charger. They're not even very expensive.

And in an office, I'm pretty sure all equipment (computers, lights, controls for adjustable desks if you have them), are meant to remain permanently plugged in anyway in a properly installed desk setup. What is going on in your office where you're choosing what is plugged in and what isn't, constantly? And why can't your office manager spring £20 for an extension cord with multiple sockets?


I've never stepped on a plug myself, so I agree it's not a major problem.

However, some older houses in the UK have far fewer sockets than more modern properties - sometimes only one or two per room.

And sure, if you need to use a hairdryer and a hair straightener a person with an orderly lifestyle might return them both to a cupboard afterwards - but some people don't mind clutter and just leave them wherever.

When it comes to multiway extension leads - people in the UK are sometimes told it's bad to "overload" sockets but have only a vague understanding of what that means, so some people are reluctant to use them.


"When it comes to multiway extension leads - people in the UK are sometimes told it's bad to "overload" sockets but have only a vague understanding of what that means, so some people are reluctant to use them."

To be fair, most people work on the assumption that if the consumer unit doesn't complain, then it is fair game. They are relying on modern standards, which nowadays is quite reasonable. I suppose it is good that we can nowadays rely on standards.

However, I have lived in a couple of houses with fuse wire boards, one of which the previous occupants put in a nail for a circuit that kept burning out.

Good practice is to put a low rated fuse - eg 5A (red) into extension leads for most devices. A tuppence part is easy and cheap to replace but if a few devices not involved with room heating/cooling blow a 5A fuse, you need to investigate. A hair dryer, for example, should not blow a 5A fuse.


Hair dryer and straightener would both be on a counter, right? No stepping issue there. And the same for appliance switching.

The only thing I plug in at ground level that isn't semi-permanent is a vacuum. No plugs are left lying around all day.


I honestly find in go it’s easier and less code to just write whatever feature you’re trying to implement than use a package a lot of the time.

Compared to typescript where it’s a package + code to use said package which always was more loc than anything comparative I have done in golang.


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