[lwhsiao]

Some of these social benefits can also be had at your local library, without the fees. It's nice to just go pull up a desk in the library alongside students studying for exams, curious readers curled up in comfortable chairs, and professionals working on their latest reports. It's especially nice when the library has separate areas for quiet, focused work and open discussions.

[julianlam]

Libraries are great for heads-down focused work, but I can't imagine doing sales calls at the library would be allowed.

My local library blocks vpn and ssh, actually, so that makes it even worse.

[pokstad]

My library blocks VPNs too, but I just set my PIA VPN to use TCP over port 443 and it works fine. You just need your VPN to look like HTTPS.

[ralusek]

Crushing* sales calls. Please, show some self-respect.

[ken]

Doesn’t your library have rooms for patron use?

Seattle Public Library has all kinds. They even have music practice rooms, with pianos and soundproofed walls. I used to go there after work.

[derekp7]

Not a showstopper, as you can tunnel ssh over https. Also there's the option of using your phone as a hotspot (thank you unlimited plans).

[Something1234]

Wait how? SSH runs on port 22, so how would you get it to switch over from port 443.

[slig]

You can configure sshd to use any port you want.

[mythrwy]

And there are good arguments why you _should_.

My ssh is never on port 22 and although I don't know that this would help much against targeted attack, logfiles are so much quieter.

[slig]

Mine as well. I don't see one good argument why one shouldn't.

[imhoguy]

And even share port with HTTPS https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923092

[derekp7]

Take a look at http://dag.wiee.rs/howto/ssh-http-tunneling/ for one example.

Essentially, you tell ssh to use another program to proxy the connection. That program (such as proxytunnel) connects to an http / https server on port 443, and issues a "CONNECT" method (such as "CONNECT anotherhost 22"). Then accept the status message, and pass the connection back over to ssh.

You need to configure the target HTTPS server to allow that connect method to the target host / port, and it is advisable to protect it behind at least https basic authentication.

And the best part of this, is that since it starts off as an SSL (https) connection, they can't even tell that you are doing a proxy (the "CONNECT" message is encrypted). It looks like a regular https connection at that point. The only thing they can do is either use a MITM proxy and require you to load their certificate (common in corporate and government environments), or do pattern analysis on the traffic.

[saagarjha]

> My local library blocks vpn and ssh

Where is this, and why?

[fimdomeio]

It happened to me once. They just blocked all non http(s) traffic. By best guess was to block people torrenting made by someone that didn't want to spend more than two minutes working on it.

[lozenge]

VPNs, torrents and games all run over UDP and torrent software loves to saturate your connection. They could well have blocked all UDP (except DNS).

[ravenstine]

Too bad mine's a de facto homeless shelter.

[throwawy912]

You misspelled homeless people.