Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wonder if the Chinese government is implementing the firewall at least partly to try and increase the general level of technical expertise.

View on HN

I dated a Chinese girl in college who knew all about proxies, tor and vpns all because of the censoring. I was pretty surprised given most kids in college don't know about that stuff but to people who grow up there it seems second nature.

I had the same experience with a co-worker. He was a PM, but knew more than most sys admins I worked with about the same stuff because of the censorship.

He said if you wanted to see anything interesting on the internet in China, you needed to know how to get around the restrictions. He said all of this was pretty standard knowledge to him and his friends.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com