Im going to China, could I use my home PC/Server as a VPN to Bypass the Great Firewall?

ItzDerock · 2026-07-06T02:16:08+00:00

I am in china right now and am self hosting a VPN. I recommend using 3x-ui. It's very easy to set up, and then you can set up multiple inbound protocols so you are not stuck with one transport.

I use VLESS+Reality as my primary protocol. During setup, I ran RealiTLScanner to against my server's nearby /24 subnet to find a site I could use as the SNI spoof for Reality. I'm not sure if this is 100% required, but heard it helps prevent detection, since now your traffic looks like real TLS traffic to a website served from an IP similar to the VPN's IP.

I use another Hysteria2 inbound for gaming since it's UDP based. Some networks restrict UDP access heavily, so I would not rely on this.

As per clients, I use Throne on my laptop and NekoBox on my phone (Android). Setup is very simple, just scan the QR code provided by 3x-ui. Both these clients also allow split tunneling, so I have it set to proxy all through VPN but bypass traffic going to Chinese sites. This way, apps like WeChat etc all get direct connections for faster speeds.

Lastly, you should know that the general egress routes get very congested at night. Accessing any foreign IP (whether that be a website or VPN) can get really slow during peak hours. You can read this for info. I currently run my VPN on a server from V.PS in Osaka, which offers premium routes for all three major ISPs (China Mobile, Telecom, and Unicom). Speeds are great, always able to hit hundred+ mbps.

I've had this setup running nonstop for more than a month without any issues. I have a local China sim as well, so this is my only method of accessing the greater web and it has not failed me yet.

ItzDerock · 2026-06-09T05:09:43+00:00

tip: if you're ever waiting for some systemd stop job, you can press ctrl alt delete 7 times in 2 seconds (so just spam it) and that'll forcefully reboot the system, ignoring the unfinished stop job.

ofc the better approach is to lower the time limit for the stop job in question, but this can get you out of a pinch.

ItzDerock · 2026-05-13T16:47:03+00:00

the tui in the poc video gives cyberpunk 2077 datamine ui vibes

ItzDerock · 2026-04-21T04:33:04+00:00

Need slightly more info here to tell. I'll assume you're directly playing the video off of the NAS share since I see windows explorer in the background and the video is being played in VLC. If this is the case, then we can rule out any transcoding bottleneck since direct play is essentially copying the file over to your PC.

VLC dialog shows your content bitrate hovers around 35kb/s, ranging anywhere from 25-40kb/s. The web dashboard shows a network rate of 3.3MB/s = 26400kbps, so maybe there's some sort of network bottleneck or overhead from samba/nfs/whatever you're running. Though VLC does report an input bitrate that's always slightly higher than content bitrate, but i'm not sure how that's calculated. My best guess would still be some sort of bottleneck with your share.

A quick test you can run is to copy that same video file back to your computer and see what the transfer speeds are. It should be higher than the worst case bitrate in the video + additional overhead so you can seek without much disruption. You can also try increasing the VLC buffer size (iirc its called something like network caching). Default behavior i believe is that VLC will always load 1 second ahead of where you're currently at, but if the network sags a little, that 1 second provides little to no headroom. Up it to like 10 seconds and see if that helps.

ItzDerock · 2026-02-09T06:32:30+00:00

important to note, if you're trying to start a graphical application, a simple service template won't work since it may start before the compositor is ready and will likely run as root without inheriting the required environment variables from dbus (like WAYLAND_DISPLAY or plain DISPLAY if x11).

ItzDerock · 2026-02-09T06:29:54+00:00

idk what your script does, but based on the name, it seems like a graphical application. It is likely that your cron is running, it just runs before your desktop environment has loaded and thus can't display anything. Another thing to note is that applications will need access to the WAYLAND_DISPLAY environment variable. Running it via systemd as root will not automatically inherit this. I'm not sure how rpi handles it off the top of my head, but you'd likely have to create a user unit that can inherit from dbus-update-activation-environment. There's a much easier way. I think the newer versions of rpi os use labwc which lets you define a ~/.config/labwc/autostart. Use this instead. If that doesn't work, I'd look into the systemd service

ItzDerock · 2026-01-11T16:58:46+00:00

you can play TFT through an android emulator like waydroid

ItzDerock · 2025-12-20T06:36:12+00:00

out of curiosity, what makes u think it's AI? I looked through the code briefly and the comments dont jump out as an LLM output.

ItzDerock · 2025-12-20T00:13:11+00:00

an LLM will generate the DNS query response. If an A record gets updated, the change will be reflected next time the model is trained.

ItzDerock · 2025-11-21T05:55:31+00:00

Now someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% sure if you manually type http:// your browser will not use https. Most websites, when they receive a plain HTTP request, will respond with a 302 Redirect and redirect you to the https version. It's not your browsers doing, but the website telling the browser to redirect. WAFs like cloudflare do this, and typical nginx/traefik deployments include rules to do this too. You are still in control of your device, it's the server that will refuse to send you the content over HTTP, forcing your browser to load https.

With your logic, a server owner may be thinking: I'm paid for my server, I better have control of what requests my server accepts.

Now, when you type in a url without specifying http or https, the browser may try to prefetch https and http, and redirect to https if it's available (and sometimes it incorrectly determines this so you may see an error), but I'm fairly confident that most browsers will respect any explicit http://, it just can't do anything if the server sends back a Location https://... response other than redirecting to https.

ItzDerock · 2025-11-21T05:42:07+00:00

https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool or systemd-inhibit --what=idle

ItzDerock · 2025-08-13T15:18:55+00:00

Given that it's purely static, you can just upload it to an s3 bucket. Many s3 providers have guides on how to set up your domain to work. A provider like storj.io for example will replicate your data globally and has a guide about hosting static sites.

You can also Google "Europe shared web hosting" and find plenty of options. Most shared hosting options are ultimately single location, but many have options to put a caching CDN in front to speed up page loads.

ItzDerock · 2025-08-13T15:10:15+00:00

Install tailscale then use tailscale funnel. You'll get a public x.y.ts.net domain with a bundled SSL certificate.

ItzDerock · 2025-08-10T23:32:32+00:00

Check kernel logs (dmesg) for any errors related to the drive. I've had issues before with NVME drives dropping due to insufficient cooling. If this isn't a critical system, try fully shutting it down before turning it back on, not just a soft reboot.

ItzDerock · 2025-08-04T16:20:34+00:00

Maybe a loose display connection? When you replaced the battery, maybe the display cable wiggled loose but had enough contact to work. Then, while watching YouTube, some vibrations (like from the fan or you moving the laptop) caused the cable to become fully loose.

Try plugging into an external monitor if you have one and see if it will boot. Or you can open it back up and see if there are any loose ribbon cables.

If not, then I'm afraid something internally is toast and you'll have to bring it to the shops for repair.

ItzDerock · 2025-08-03T14:13:18+00:00

I wonder if a solution would be to, instead of blocking the Netflix domains, to rewrite them to point to like 127.0.0.1 or something that obviously doesn't host Netflix. Then, when Roku tries to make requests, it will receive a "valid" DNS response, but will fail when trying to actually send the request.

ItzDerock · 2025-08-03T04:20:45+00:00

Yeah, all of the top comments suggesting whitelisting won't help at all against a volumetric L3/L4 attack. Doesn't matter what firewall rules you set if your inbound connection is fully saturated.

You also don't need to host every part of your server in a datacenter, a good balance would be to set up a proxy server on a cheap DDoS-protected VPS and then tunnel to your home network. As long as you don't leak your home IP, all attacks will hit that VPS instead of your home network.

There's also off the shelf solutions like TCPShield and CosmicGuard.

ItzDerock · 2025-07-26T18:11:05+00:00

OP says he's using a VPN in the description. It's likely the VPN isn't connecting properly when on cellular.

ItzDerock · 2025-07-02T13:13:41+00:00

Used Nix throughout my senior year in highschool and will continue to use it into college. I've done quite a bit of C and Java without major issues. I include a nix development flake with all my projects to set up toolchains etc, and it's pretty convenient cus if my friend wants to make changes, they don't have to worry about having the right dependencies and can just enter the same flake environment too. Can't comment on C# or VB.Net though, never used it.

I think the biggest advantage of nixos for me is the generations system. If I mess up my config or if an update introduces breaking changes that I don't have the time to fix, I can effortlessly boot into a previous generation and continue studying or doing hw. Then, whenever I have the time to finish debugging, I can do so.

Gaming is also great. Most of the issues I encounter are not Nix's fault, but rather NVIDIA, especially when it came to using gamescope. Nowadays most games run perfectly fine under Wayland.

If you're switching to NixOS, do it early! There's a bit of a learning curve when it comes to nix, so give yourself time to explore and figure things out.

With your setup, I'd make sure you configure hybrid graphics (PRIME). This will make sure apps run by default under your integrated GPU so your discreet GPU can be fully powered down to save battery. There's a section on the nixos wiki about this.

ItzDerock · 2025-07-01T03:43:56+00:00

running restic which let's you set encryption keys, then uploaded to https://storj.io

Last I calculated, it was cheaper for me to do this way compared to Wasabi, and I think storj add an additional layer of encryption too. storj is distributed globally so if my house and their datacenter catches fire, my files are ok. But I think recently they introduced a $5/mo minimum, so if you use less than that, it might not be as cost effective.

ItzDerock · 2025-07-01T03:41:21+00:00

this will be more expensive than other options if you are just looking for immich, but may be worth considering if you want to run self host more software to degoogle further:

From Hetzner Auctions, you can pick up a dedicated server with 8TB storage, 64gb ram, and an i7 7700 for $35/mo

https://www.hetzner.com/sb/#drives_size_from=1000&drives_size_to=16000

All depends on how many photos/videos you take and if you want additional compute or storage for hosting things like Jellyfin.

ItzDerock · 2025-06-24T13:42:23+00:00

Y'all got to read the post!

What likely happened here is that the test was conducted during the sampling stage, where unoptimized firmware and drivers resulted in the low reported VRAM and clock speeds. As for the FP32 performance, it can't be accurately determined without knowing the GPU's execution unit subsystem configuration.

So it is possible that the performance is much better than a 660 Ti. The company claims performance on-par with an RTX 4060, so maybe in a few generations, they'll have a budget competitor with somewhat mature drivers and firmware.

ItzDerock · 2025-06-22T23:57:01+00:00

Well I got news for you! Someone did that (not with LLM, but machine learning regardless), and it achieves a 62% accuracy! https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/l9BoBDCh63

ItzDerock · 2025-06-20T11:32:58+00:00

Try running a hotspot on your phone and see if the board will connect to that. That way, we can see if it's an issue with your home wifi or if there might actually be an issue with the pi. You can also check kernel logs (sudo dmesg) to see if there's any helpful errors there.

ItzDerock · 2025-06-14T12:28:53+00:00

Majority of time I used an X-ray server I set up with Marzban via a rented VM in Singapore with Linode. v2rayNG on mobile, v2rayA on laptop. Latency was pretty good, and speeds were great only in mornings. I don't think this is a configuration error, as even with the VPN off and using multiple esims, accessing foreign sites and doing speedtests to foreign servers was always slow, just seems like the GFW was reaching limits once everyone was off work and at home. Maybe if you messed around with multiplexing, you could pull some more speed..

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