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The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

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101–110 of 143 posts

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#101
post #49
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not crazy, internet is like public roads, they can decide to close them anytime they want.

Who's "they" and why are we paying to uphold their power to make this decision whenever they want

"They" are whoever holds the monopoly on violence in the region. Sometimes colloquially called a "government" or "state".

You probably don't pay them to uphold their power to close roads whenever they want, it's just a consequence of the aforesaid monopoly on violence.

If you think it's wrong, you can try to bring competition into the market, but if history is any indication you'd better make sure you have a lot of upper/middle-class people who agree with you first.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#102

The only real solution long-term is completely peer-to-peer ad-hoc networking that doesn't depend on BGP. A few projects are in similar territory but none I've seen are working at the layer of bypassing BGP. Many are just acting as an overlay; which works to an extent. https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go It's probably begging for a different model of the "internet" and where data lives. My requirements:…

https://quantumgate.org/

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how it's any less meaningful than "liberal," or "conservative." Each of these terms labels a set of family resemblances and is dependent on context.

"Liberal" is at least a really imprecise synonym for Democrat party in the US, ditto for "conservative" and Republican.

There are other meaningful political categories besides the ones that designate parties. Irving Kristol, the closest the movement has to a founder, himself embraced the label. And it's pretty uncontroversial which people decidedly belong and which don't: Richard Perle is one, Pat Buchanan is not; Jeane Kirkpatrick and James Q. Wilson are, Samantha Power and Noam Chomsky aren't.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Liberal" is at least a really imprecise synonym for Democrat party in the US, ditto for "conservative" and Republican.

There are other meaningful political categories besides the ones that designate parties. Irving Kristol, the closest the movement has to a founder, himself embraced the label. And it's pretty uncontroversial which people decidedly belong and which don't: Richard Perle is one, Pat Buchanan is not; Jeane Kirkpatrick and James Q. Wilson are, Samantha Power and Noam Chomsky aren't.

To be honest, I'll have to take your word for it, because I don't know a single person you listed. Maybe they're from an older generation.

Seems like this was a real movement but isn't so relevant anymore, and now people are misusing the term. Now "hawkish" or "interventionist" is pretty close to the old meaning of neocon. I'm willing to accept it as a term for a historical movement, but if someone tells me X newly relevant person is a neocon, I'll basically discard that.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#105
post #96
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't doing anything, The Iranian government chooses to control what happens to electricity within their borders. It's one of the fundamental points of state sovereignty.

The example given was "public roads"

States can, and do, maintain the power to maintain or close public roads. In fact, they do so daily at border checkpoints, and do so locally in cases like local natural disaster risk (e.g. hurricane or wildfire evacuation).

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#107

The only real solution long-term is completely peer-to-peer ad-hoc networking that doesn't depend on BGP. A few projects are in similar territory but none I've seen are working at the layer of bypassing BGP. Many are just acting as an overlay; which works to an extent. https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go It's probably begging for a different model of the "internet" and where data lives. My requirements:…

How exactly are you going to "bypass BGP" on the global Internet? Reaching your trusted peers depends on routing, which means BGP (at least for anything outside of your ASN.)

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#108

The only real solution long-term is completely peer-to-peer ad-hoc networking that doesn't depend on BGP. A few projects are in similar territory but none I've seen are working at the layer of bypassing BGP. Many are just acting as an overlay; which works to an extent. https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go It's probably begging for a different model of the "internet" and where data lives. My requirements:…

How exactly are you going to "bypass BGP" on the global Internet? Reaching your trusted peers depends on routing, which means BGP (at least for anything outside of your ASN.)

Well if you want to get rid of BGP then it probably doesn't make sense to talk about ASNs since BGP is a way to connect ASNs... That being said, it does seem very pie-in-the-sky to imagine the entire global internet using decentralized routing without some sort of backbone infra that is at least moderately centralized. There is just too much data. I could imagine mesh networks being more feasible if we were still living in an era of html websites and RSS feeds.

Re: The Iran Firewall: A preliminary report

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is not an economic self own even most dictatorships are willing to make. What basis do you have for this claim? People make these claims constantly so confidently, but wherever I look all I see is that dictators have always been willing to make their nations incredibly poor. > These firewalls are an exercise in having your cake and eating it too. More to the point this isn't the Gordian Knot you think it is.…

It is game theory. Consider what happens in the real world - it is strictly easier for Iran or any country with a competent infrastructure to just shut down the big internet pipelines for retail customers. They don’t do that. China has spent untold amounts of money creating a stupidly effective surveillance state which is still technically open to the internet. Why? So your assumption that “dictators will do the wors…

I said that dictators are *willing* to make their countries poor. That is different from wilfully make them poorer without marginal gain.
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