drathvedro

Yep. That's the number one contender. Well right after overriding default DERP's with my own VPS machines. I'll definitely try it out over some weekend.

One of my other concerns with this and other solutions suggested is the reliance on wireguard which can be subject to fingerprinting and censorship. Do you happen to know if it'd be possible to swap out Headscale's implementation of wireguard to amnezia? I'll have to do my homework anyway, but who knows, maybe there are some pitfalls to avoid.

Tailscale... is not that good. The underlying wireguard is robust, but tailscale control plane is completely proprietary, as well as their DERP servers that it too often uses completely needlessly. They can also block you off from downloading it, updating, or logging in, if you happen to be in a wrong country.

I'm myself looking for an alternative to it, but having trouble finding something I could share with non tech savvy friends while not being as complex on my end as, say, open/strongswan ais. Any suggestions welcome.

And ban all Israelis

You're in luck because bluesky is literally the only one with that exact feature. Just search for user lists, which you can use to subscribe en-masse, or, conversely, nothing's preventing you from using them as block lists. There are probably few out there where bots monitor for anyone who ever spoke hebrew, which should fit your purpose

An app developed by hobbyists who, if not passionate about it, at least care enough to spend their time developing and contributing to it, even if it's free

vs.

An all-star team of designers and engineers who are bogged down in corporate bureaucracy and do the absolute minimum to maintain their positions, while saving energy to do things that they actually enjoy. Like, oftentimes, it is developing the aforementioned free apps.

They could try to employ some kind of Apple defense, like, you wouldn't hit Apple for having monopoly on iOS. As long as it's not the only solution on the market. And for web, most of time, you could access the same resources and get similar experience by downloading... the apps... wait, they have a monopoly on that, too. Well, they are completely screwed in that case.

This idea ignores how Russia works. Everyone already knows it's a totalitarian shithole. They just don't have the means to fight it, so they either lay low and play along, or try to get the fuck out. Sanctions hit the second group, as well as companies that implement them because they're losing income. In fact, older folk here still grumble at USSR collapse and how effective free reign of capitalism was in the 90s at extracting wealth out of the country.

Even if that idea was to hold any water, straight up blocks are not what you'd need. For example, when I open up a site and I see a block page, the idea that pops into my head is always the same - "what a bunch of assholes...". I can bypass the block either way, but the difference is that it can say either "blocked by the ministry of truth", or "blocked because ur russian, haha get rekt". Given how easy it is to get hit by censorship for innocent things, it's rather easy to shift the blame, while keeping the business running, by just standing up to the ideas of free speech, like not removing the "celebrating the pride month" logo in that country specifically, like all of them did...

Is it any 8 years, or continious 8 years? In most places, the requirement is for continious, which is a tough ask. Imagine not being able to leave the country for almost a decade.

And you need a reason to get residence permit. In most cases there are few: living with spouse, reuniting with family, working, studying, or doing business. Of those, only work, study and business are the ones that are realistically achievable.

For work, there's usually also a requirement for employeer to prove that there are no natives available to fill the role. This is a tough process, which takes a lot of time and no guarantee it'd even get approved. So, not many employees even bother unless you have exceptional skills.

For study, you would have to actually study to avoid expulsion, while somehow earning enough on some part-time remote work to support yourself (or have enough savings to support yourself for years). And then, bachelors is not enough so you must go for PhD. Meanwhile, in both above cases you have to also learn local language. I'm sure there are people who could pull this off, but, again, it's quite exceptional.

Last is business. Usually the requirement is to invest somewhere in the ranges of $100k to $500k into local economy. That's not filthy rich, but, for context, for Russian it'd take 3 years of fighting on the frontlines to earn as much, with a wage considered good enough to risk dying for... And then the country can still deny you permit without any reason.

It's because of this, most people I know, who chose to leave the country keep their passports and either settle in Armenia and Georgia with 182/365 days renewable visa-free entry, or run circles between Serbia-Montenegro or Thailand-Vietnam.

There are also interesting opportunities with digital nomad visas, but, again, the requirements out of reach for most.

But for oligarchs, this is pennies. They can buy a few outright, then fly private jet to the US as tourists with pregnant wives, get children born there, then send them to study in London. Apply for family reunifications, bam, theyre now citizens of US and UK, in addition to all previous ones.

I assume if the Russian maintainers showed that they've passed the citizenship examinations and their different citizenship is only a matter of time

It's the other way around. You have to live for X years to be eligible for the test. Given a common requirement of 5 years, they would have to have started this process 2 years before the war broke out.

Apply sanctions on an individual basis?

Exactly. ACF has published a list of every single person responsible for the war. Most of them are not sanctioned because they are filthy rich and have already bought themselves passports in various EU countries. Targeting Russian passports does absolutely nothing to them as they can just use another.

If they don't want to get sanctioned and they've long migrated from Russia they should apply for citizenship elsewhere

Have you ever thought about doing this yourself? Don't have to go far to figure that it takes at least 5 years of hard work in most cases, if possible at all. Citizenship unfortunately isn't something you can acquire or renounce at will. Not without being obscenely rich, that is.

Ukraine is not committing brutal crimes, not lobbing rockets randomly, hoping to kill anyone, civilian or not

Check your sources bias. Control phrase is "cluster munitions, Donetsk". Russia is faaaar from being free of guilt, but, while they have capability to do this to ALL Ukrainian cities, I don't see any footage of landmines all over Kiyv and Lviv. Another check is to listen to chants(e.g. москаляку на гіляку, смерть русні, etc) of each side. This effectively flips your argument upside down.

Definitely not comparable, though, at least that we can agree.

That's the face I've made just yesterday when my friend told me she's now eligible for a subsidized IT mortgage. That thing was one of Russia's last ditch attempts at stopping skilled workers from fucking off to different countries. The problem is, she's a web designer. I guess that counts as IT nowadays, so good for her. But it's bitter to hear as sr. backend tech who never hit the criteria...

hammer time!