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From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
111–120 of 154 posts
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.
It's not only because of sanctions. It's primarily because their leadership have deeply technical backgrounds. Most of my peers who ended up in policymaking roles in Europe (and in some cases the levers of power) all had a humanities or legal background and never worked in or adjacent to the tech industry. Assuming Iran didn't follow the path that it did, Iran would have also ended up becoming a tech hub like Israel…
Iran is rich in natural resources(gas,oil), one of the richest actually. No country so rich can become a tech hub like Israel/Singapore (which just had no other options for development).
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#113Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#114I get a sense that the Irainian government is playing a sophisticted game with there internet shut down and restarts, and are getting highly compitent advice from other countrys.perturb and observe, adjust and repeat. It is also fair to say that the current internal situation in Iran is 95% focused on the economy, and the only difference between there and the US, is that you get shot in the face, a bit less in the US, quantity, not quality.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#115Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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As someone not from the west, I can relate to your viewpoints. While Iran and Venezuela, for example, may be flawed democracies, the west forgets that those who came to power there did so after a popular uprising and revolution. And just because the west doesn't like the current leaders there (for asserting their sovereignty on economic affairs), I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many weste…
>...I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many westerners here...
It's not a lack of understanding, my friend, it's hubris.
I am from the US. There's a mindset that permeates through the west that somehow we are "better", because of our values, or our governmental systems, or our economic power, or our military power, or whatever. It is flawed.
We also have a rather naive and simplistic viewpoint that because we are "better", that our viewpoint is the correct one, and that people from non-western nations should just accept whatever we do because it's in their best interest. Oftentimes, though, that "best interest" is in the short-term capitalistic/economic interest of the actors from the West who in turn stand to profit handsomely from the setup they wish to impose on nations like Iran or Venezuela. There is no concern for human life, no concern for the economic or societal health longterm of the impacted countries, nor for the country's internal affairs.
This has cost us dearly over the years. Sadly, the irony here is that a lot of these countries have a very "westernized" populace who just want to control their own resources. If we weren't such assholes to them, they'd be on "our side" as opposed to the overractionary path they have taken.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#117Iran has been rolling out the National Information Network (essentially a whitelisted internet) for a couple years now after the Green Revolution [0]. Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] and telco infra [6][7] built out over the past decade with limited outside involvement and a severe sanctions regime, and have even started exporting Iranian IT services to Uganda [2], Kenya [3], Sou…
> Iran has a surprisingly robust domestic ecosystem of hyperscalers [1] This is already repeated by the Google Search AI summary, which is unfortunate since your reference (from 2012) doesn't seem to back it up.
Much of this capacity only started getting built out after 2012. Heck, Arvaan Cloud was only founded in 2015 and operated under the radar hidden from the sanctions regime until 2020.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#118As an Iranian in Iran who is now connected, I have a request: Please tell google make colab available behind the safe browsing IP. Google's safe browsing IP is usually the #1 whitelisted IP in internet blackouts. Having colab on this IP allows tech people to ssh into their servers, and bootstrap connections based on the available protocols at the time.
There is a dedicated thread of record and anti-censorship resources of the Iran Network Shutdown [1]. Hope it helps.
Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#119Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown
#120As an Iranian in Iran who is now connected, I have a request: Please tell google make colab available behind the safe browsing IP. Google's safe browsing IP is usually the #1 whitelisted IP in internet blackouts. Having colab on this IP allows tech people to ssh into their servers, and bootstrap connections based on the available protocols at the time.
If this happened, they would blacklist it.
In the absence of a perfect solution, we should do nothing? The entire scenario is a cat and mouse whack-a-mole arms race. I'd support doing something to give the citizens a leg up.