Live data from Hacker News

Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

github.com

111–120 of 157 posts

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#111
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tested it. Copied&pasted the original title into submit form. Nope. Right within the limit.

[flagged]

"You are factually incorrect" is not moving the goalposts.

Shifting to a completely unrelated argument is moving the goalposts because you can't stand to be wrong.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#112

I think what we’re seeing here isnt Valve messing up but rather the middle east conflict expanded to cyberspace and spilling over to impact civilians. Look at the timing and affected countries. China isnt also exactly known for free internet. WebRTC works as fallback. WebRTC is encrypted and cant be used for much else. STUN in the otherhand is unencrypted and the protocol itself can be used for DDoS reflection/amplif…

We do P2P in our networking software and this is why we do it all in band instead of using STUN, TURN, or other common methods. Those get blocked and they’re also often insecure.

STUN has mitigations now against being weaponized but it’s still a shit protocol. The fact that neither STUN nor TURN contain any way whatsoever to accomplish any kind of rendezvous without yet another signaling path boggles my mind given how easy it would have been.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#113
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> force them to use TURN servers that are more centralized and easier to spy on Webrtc traffic is encrypted as it travels through the TURN servers, isn't it? Sure, you get some which-ip-contacted-which-using-what-service metadata, but any active middleman able to mess with STUN traffic already has that. It could just be that someone's fucked up a setting somewhere. I mean, the reason WebRTC has loads of options for '…

The traffic is encrypted, but this makes it a lot easier to acquire if you have some way to break it.

And metadata plus encrypted traffic fingerprinting is enough to provide huge signal to an intelligence agency.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#114
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"You are factually incorrect" is not moving the goalposts. Shifting to a completely unrelated argument is moving the goalposts because you can't stand to be wrong.

etiam's right that "in Israel and possibly other middle east countries" wouldn't fit onto the HN title, which is relevant to raincole's clickbait accusation. The original Github issue title fits, but that doesn't specify "Valve" or the timeframe.

Not that it'd be particularly hard to reword to fit all information. Feel like things are getting unnecessarily agitated ("You've been here long enough to understand", "you can't stand to be wrong", "Bro was never more glad there's anonymity on the internet", etc.) for no real reason.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd question the idea that they treat developers poorly. Epic Games Store exists and Famously beats Steam (and others) over the head by charging only a 12% fee Hell, they even buy timed exclusive access to certain games And yet. Steam persists

Having worked in the games industry for long time, everyone is constantly trying in vain to escape the 30% tax.

It’s fascinating how (mostly western liberal) game developers argue in favor of 99% taxes for general population “for maintaining infrastructure” and yet cannot fathom paying a fee for maintaining actual infrastructure that is necessary for their business to function.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company makes $50,000,000 for every employee each year. It can afford more employees.

But would it actually help. More employees means more communication and overhead. Lean organisations can move much quicker. Part of why valve can do what valve does is how lean it runs.

To summarize this conversation:

"Steam is bad because it has few employees."

"Steam can afford more employees."

"Adding more employees would make Steam worse."

Good talk.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in the games industry for long time, everyone is constantly trying in vain to escape the 30% tax.

It’s fascinating how (mostly western liberal) game developers argue in favor of 99% taxes for general population “for maintaining infrastructure” and yet cannot fathom paying a fee for maintaining actual infrastructure that is necessary for their business to function.

I'm not familiar with whatever strawman you're invoking here.

By "everyone" I mean game studio owners. They're desperate to not pay 30% to Valve / Sony / Apple / whatever.

The vast majority of people that work at game studios don't really care about that, they see a shrinking fraction of the profits of their employers and worsening conditions.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#119
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, Steam is kind of like the liberal democratic US empire. It may be evil in a lot of ways but it could actually be a LOT worse. We may actually historically be very lucky to have had a non-shittificationmaxxing games platform for a couple decades, just like we were lowkey lucky that the world was briefly ruled by a somewhat democratic country.. Enjoy both while they last, may not be around long.

[flagged]

Steam is also a child gambling company that sells loot boxes to kids but it could be a lot worse. From the perspective of someone getting ripped off it doesn't matter whether it was Gaben who scammed you, but he and his empire could still be a lot worse overall.

You're allowed to say what you just said in that post without getting taken away at night and your family never talking about you again. Or a drone taking you out while you sleep. Palantir logs all our comments and it would be trivially easy for them if there weren't still some lingering democratic handrails holding them back.

You're also typing on a computer on HN, so you're a "beneficiary of the empire" regardless of where you live. As someone who apparently reads leftist theory you should know to look at the big picture on world-historical questions rather than getting emotional, like the people who say USSR was just as evil as WW2 Germany because it also killed gormillions of people.

Democracy in the US is dying and may not last another generation. It was something that helped imperial workers and limited the power of the ruling elite, like unions. Unions, like democracy as a whole, are dying. Unions were also corrupt and complicit in imperialist war crimes during the Cold war. Unions in the West have always been connected to labor aristocracy and imperialism. That said, unions as a whole are still a good thing. We should still mourn the decline of labor unions and miss the days when they kept the elite in check and allowed so many working people to live a decent life.

Steam is also likely to become an ordinary ripoff company one day soon. I will miss this historical aberration among pure ripoff services. Just like I will miss being able to vote and dissent without drones zapping me.

Re: Major P2P issues in Israel and possibly other Middle East countries

#120
post #112

I think what we’re seeing here isnt Valve messing up but rather the middle east conflict expanded to cyberspace and spilling over to impact civilians. Look at the timing and affected countries. China isnt also exactly known for free internet. WebRTC works as fallback. WebRTC is encrypted and cant be used for much else. STUN in the otherhand is unencrypted and the protocol itself can be used for DDoS reflection/amplif…

We do P2P in our networking software and this is why we do it all in band instead of using STUN, TURN, or other common methods. Those get blocked and they’re also often insecure. STUN has mitigations now against being weaponized but it’s still a shit protocol. The fact that neither STUN nor TURN contain any way whatsoever to accomplish any kind of rendezvous without yet another signaling path boggles my mind given ho…

> The fact that neither STUN nor TURN contain any way whatsoever to accomplish any kind of rendezvous without yet another signaling path boggles my mind

Interesting. Can you expound on this a bit? How does ZeroTier do it?

Post reply on HN