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How is it like to be a dev in Iran
- fabrika 7y ago"Even in US we can find certain domains which are blocked and cannot be accessed like those which contain CP or wild anti-humanism contents." Is it true? I always assumed US never blocks access to websites. They would rather ask the hosting provider to take down the website or try to arrest the author.
- hartator 7y agoYeah my understanding the FBI takes the actual domain down in case of child pornography. But they still won’t mess with your DNS.
- steve19 7y ago"People are dying due to absence of medicines. People are starving. The economy system is falling apart and the politicians and their children are all abroad! None of them have any sense about what is going on the streets." That is not what we (the West) are hearing in mainstream media. Edit: I may well be wrong on this as others have pointed out.
- m0zg 7y agoThat's kind of by design. What other effect do you think the total economic embargo would have? It's not like they're some super advanced country that's independent of anybody else for tech. Good (for the US) news is, it's working. They're getting ready to negotiate, hence the UK tanker intercepts etc. Weak negotiating position, need bargaining chips. I kind of agree with Lindsey Graham: if you just want nuclear power, there's no need whatsoever to enrich your own uranium. You can buy fuel for reactors from the enriching nations, no problem. I'm sure, given the situation, you could even negotiate the price down to nearly nothing, as well.
- h0l0cube 7y ago> it's working The last deal for de-nuclearization already worked, but it was inexplicably terminated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework
- m0zg 7y agoIt's not "denuclearization" if you continue to enrich, retain all nuclear infrastructure, and if the deal expires after a few years. Parts of the "deal" were expected to expire as soon as in 2026.
- nutjob2 7y agoIt's the best deal they could negotiate. It was done by moderates on the Iranian side who have now been discredited and the hardliners are ascendant. If you think military provocations and escalations are a sign that sanctions are "working" you're in for a surprise. All it takes is one side to make a little mistake and it escalates quickly and unintentionally. Trump has emboldened the Iranian military by pulling his punches. Now they assume they can take action without a military response from the US because Trump is not willing to go to war. That logic unfortunately makes war more likely.
- NikolaeVarius 7y agoI dont understand this type of reply where just because a specific subtopic of a news story isnt being screamed just as loudly as every other top breaking headline, its the western media being silent on the issue. Plenty of discussion has been had on mainstream media about the effects and.effectiveness of sanctions on basic goods https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-sanctions-hit-iran-residents-complain-medicine-shortages/story?id=63930442 https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-sanctions-hit-iran-r... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/inflation-rampant-in-tehran-as-iran-struggles-to-stem-rising-food-prices.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/inflation-rampant-in-tehran-...? https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sanctions-trumps-cruel-substitute-for-an-actual-iran-policy/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sanctions-t... https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sanctions-trumps-cruel-substitute-for-an-actual-iran-policy/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sanctions-t...
- jstewartmobile 7y agoNeedle in a haystack. Today's articles for me: * Heat wave relief in sight after scorching temps... * Disney star Cameron Boyce's mother breaks silence... * 'You're breathtaking' Keanu Reeves pulls another classic Keanu... * Thousands of bones discovered in Vatican crypt... * Miss Michigan winner tweets... * National Ice Cream Day means free cones. Here's what to know... * The Horrors of Jeffrey Epstein's Private Island * The 1 Reason you shouldn't save for retirement Today's body count for the MI-complex never seems to make the cut.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago> Needle in a haystack As a practical matter, Tehran’s domestic governance is irrelevant to most Western readers. My FT, WSJ or Bloomberg subscriptions tend to touch on it about twice a year. Given I have zero influence over the situation, that plenty for me.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoJapanese tanker incident and a close-call expanding our middle-east misadventures just a few weeks ago, and free ice cream cones are still more relevant...
- oh_sigh 7y agoCan American reporters even go on the ground in Iran without a government chaperone?
- nixgeek 7y agoSeems like it could be dangerous just to blog about these activities if you live in Iran?
- keithnz 7y agoThat's what I was wondering, it seems like a public admission of breaking the local laws ( as corrupt as those laws are.. ).
- defanor 7y agoIs it illegal to bypass blocking in Iran? I know in some countries it's legal to bypass such blocks if you can, even if a government tries to block proxying as well.
- codedokode 7y agoIn Russia there is no punishment for bypassing blocking. But if you publish information about bypassing or proxy server addresses, your site will be blocked too (but no punishment for you personally).
- smnrchrds 7y agoThe same is generally true in Iran based on my experience.
- walrus01 7y agoIt technically is, but such a huge number of people use vpns. I know 14 year old children who use commercial VPNs to watch YouTube.
- eternalban 7y agoUnless you are not in Iran and this is propaganda. I am not a fan of IRI by any stretch but that post does not pass the smell test. And last I checked -- I have relatives in Iran -- no one is "starving". As for Iran's government not wanting its citizens spilling their daily beans on an Israeli platform, that's pretty sensible. (Would Israel permit its citizens to chat away on platforms from Iran?) How difficult is it to redirect to a server outside of Iran? Who resolves "shahinsorkh.ir" for your browser? DNS lookup says 104.24.126.79 and that is in California, United States, and not Iran. "Let's go invade Iran so Iranians can access Facebook and not starve!!!"
- googlesux 7y ago>People are dying due to absence of medicines. People are starving. The economy system is falling apart and the politicians and their children are all abroad! None of them have any sense about what is going on the streets. Seems like you should be rooting against your govt fat cats hoarding all the food not writing a blog
- smnrchrds 7y agoDear devs, Please stop using Google Cloud Platform to host your projects. GCP blocks Iran, so by hosting any part of the app on GCP, your apps become impossible to access from Iran. Azure and AWS do not do this. This form of blocking is exclusive to GCP. After the switch to GCP, Iranians lost access to gitlab. Firefox Monitor is blocked in Iran for the same reason. The list goes on and on. I don't believe Mozilla team for example has consciously decided to block Iran, just that their devs do not know about Google's policy regarding Iran. I hope all devs learn about this fact, so they make informed decisions when choosing cloud platforms.
- xrd 7y agoThis should be spread more widely. I didn't know this.
- viraptor 7y agoIs GCP blocking a result of the current sanctions on Iran? (ie. we can't differentiate what you provide so we'll cut everything) Or some other reason?
- smnrchrds 7y agoIt's because of sanctions, but it's not recent. I think GCP had always blocked Iran, but I'm not sure. In any case, Azure and AWS are complying with the same sanctions without a blanket ban. After all, they are American companies as well. Azure and AWS don't allow customers from Iran to purchase hosting services, but don't block access to all sites hosted on their platforms, and it seems that this is enough for US regulators to not consider them in violation of sanctions. I imagine Google has taken an extreme "better safe than sorry" approach which other players have fortunately decided not to copy.
- sterlind 7y agoI bet it's technical. Both GCP, YouTube and other Google properties suffered recently due to a misconfigured core switch in one of their regions. This implies they share at least network fabric between GCP and everything else. They probably slapped a blanket block over some shared infrastructure, and decided GCP is too much of a small-fry to justify the legal and technical work to be more nuanced. (Disclosure: I work for MS but have no knowledge of our sanction compliance stuff)
- nasir 7y agoTen years ago when I still lived in Iran I was a wizard working my way around the "filternet". I had even taught my mom to setup a socks proxy through an SSH tunnel!
- dunstad 7y agoI do this at work to get around the company firewall. Pretty useful technique!
- schpaencoder 7y agoI feel for you and I know that normal people are always the victims of sanctions, not the privileged and rich. I hope one day your people will be free. Sincerely.
- aerovistae 7y agoThis is so sad to read.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jasonhansel 7y ago> not all servers like to get traffik from TOR. For instance, CloudFlare annoys when you are accessing its servers through TOR. This is why you shouldn't ban Tor. In some places, it is absolutely necessary.
- wp381640 7y agoit's also why you shouldn't abuse Tor with web scraping or other actions that lead to sites blocking it
- juskrey 7y agoThis is why you shouldn't use CloudFlare, whose good intentions lead to not so good places
- judge2020 7y agoWhen 80% of traffic from an IP is malicious and the other 20% is regular traffic, but both sources look like the same traffic (impersonating browser headers, sometimes running headless chromium), what else can you do? Cookies and stateful cookie-like objects, such as privacy pass. Can anyone report how well privacy pass works nowadays?
- Operyl 7y agoThe times I've had to use Tor, privacypass has been usable.
- kodablah 7y ago> When 80% of traffic from an IP is malicious and the other 20% is regular traffic, but both sources look like the same traffic (impersonating browser headers, sometimes running headless chromium), what else can you do? Accept the traffic, taking the bad with the good. We all know the ills of visitor profiling regardless of effectiveness.
- 7y ago
- ilaksh 7y agoIts an ongoing war. Just without bullets. My concern is that people will see him mention things like censorship and for them that will justify an invasion that results in mass killing and destruction. Does anyone know exactly what sort of actual submission they are looking for from Iran? I really don't believe its about nuclear development. I hope that any Iranians who can get out will get out.
- emilsedgh 7y agoIranian living in the U.S. here. During Obama it was: We will choke you to death unless you give up your nuclear ambitions. Now it is: We will choke you to death unless you shoot yourself in the head. U.S. is bullying Iran right now and people are starving to death. All because of a partisan issue. Unbelievable.
- neom 7y agoNothing has been learned since the 50s it would seem. Unbelievable indeed.
- ilaksh 7y agoDo you think it is a partisan issue or do you think it has to do with long term military strategy such as the Strait and fossil fuels? My guess would be they essentially want total military submission, something like a base inside the country.
- mars4rp 7y agoAIPAC has a great influence in both parties. And don't forget the military industrial complex and its influence to break the peace and sell more weapons.
- kaveh_h 7y agoAIPAC has influence because politicians wants perception of an ally to ”defend” and so have better support for their policies. This is not about real genuine support for Israel.
- codedokode 7y agoBlocking access to documentation is too much, I think. Sanctions do not require to block any access to the site from countries under sanctions.
- ALittleLight 7y agoIt seems like some of those obstacles are also opportunities. For example, the point about not being able to get a MasterCard or Visa and therefore not being able to use AWS makes me think there's probably an opportunity for a neat business renting out VMs to Iranians with whatever payment they can use. Of course AWS does a lot more than just rent VMs, but it seems like a relatively straightforward part of the business to copy.
- empath75 7y agoBeing on the wrong side of us sanctions is not a happy place.
- ALittleLight 7y agoI was imagining this as an opportunity for Iranian devs, who are, presumably, already on the wrong side of US sanctions.
- Ayesh 7y agoThere are many hosting rpov8ders who accept local payments. In Georgia (the country), you can even pay for hosting from the numerous kiosks on every corner of the street. Super market cash payments, Alipay, etc. It's a saturated market already.
- Havoc 7y agoSeems near impossible to keep up with modern tech advances if you can't even google stuff properly. :(
- anticensor 7y agoHe says that Google search works but results are irreachable.
- pizza 7y agoEffects of sanctions totally slide off the elite and shit all over the poorest members of a society.
- azimuth11 7y agoIt is sad the sanctions have that side effect. Hopefully it’s enough to affect some change in a hostile country led by an oppressive elite.
- lurker9000 7y agoare you talking about the US? or Iran? I'm confused...
- anon_d 7y agoLike America?
- jackaroe78 7y agoExactly like America
- empath75 7y agoAt this point can it really be considered a side effect. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that that is what the result will be and yet people still insist on them.
- ehsankia 7y agoAs the comment above you alluded to, and as it's been evidenced many times, it is not enough to affect change. These aren't "side effects", the poorest feel the main effect of the sanctions.
- dictum 7y agoThey're side effects, but not entirely unintended. If the head of that state (and party elites etc) don't meet the requests of the sanctioning states, the ensuing poverty can mobilize the impoverished masses. This can backfire and drive them to further nationalism/jingoism, but it opens a window of opportunity for the opposition (and, more cynically, covert agents and external forces).
- tehjoker 7y agoWhile the Iranian regime is somewhat less than perfect, the US has no business interfering in that region. The establishment reason for tensions is to protect (nuclear armed) Israel and oil (with some other knock on oil based relationships like SA). Guess what though, Israel has nukes and we desperately need to stop using oil as soon as possible. Why not just drop sanctions and stop tearing up perfectly good nuclear deals?
- tomohawk 7y agoA deal with no adequate verification regime is not a good deal. A deal that gives billions of dollars to the worlds largest supporter of terrorism is not a good deal. It is appeasement. When fascist regimes like what run Iran say things like how they're going to nuke Israel and the US, that this is a goal they are pursuing, I believe them. It's sad that the Iranian people have to put up with the fascists who control their government, but appeasing their government will not solve anything.
- deetdat 7y agoYour first two points are not really supported by facts. The nuclear deal had a relatively invasive verification regime. I also don't understand why people refer to Iran as the world's largest supporter of terror--what specific terror acts are we speaking of? Any negotiated deal will have tradeoffs. The US's latest policy of total humiliation as articulated by Pompeo seems destined to fail. The regime is not going to sign for that and it will grow increasingly confrontational without options.
- yyyk 7y ago"The nuclear deal had a relatively invasive verification regime" A 'relatively invasive' inspection regime where you had to get permission in advance from Iran to visit 'military sites', and nearly all of the restrictions were temporary. "what specific terror acts are we speaking of?" There's a pretty massive civil war you may have heard of, where Iran is on the side which uses chemical weapons. Or maybe we could mention sending lots of IEDs to Iraq to kill Americans. Or bombing the AMIA center to kill Jews. And we can't forget the Rushdie affair. Really, the list is endless. "The US's latest policy of total humiliation" Got it. Demanding the regime to halt interference in foreign lands == "total humiliation" Holding hostages like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe != "humiliation".
- strooper 7y agoDear Iranian devs, let's learn to take advantage of the situation instead of complaining about it. Why not learn from the devs in China?! To my knowledge, China blocks no less online service than Iran. China monitors citizens' online activities in ways that very few other countries can. Yet their internet services flourish and engage users in ways nowhere else is seen. Let's build/clone fancy/popular services locally instead. Haven't we seen how big opportunity that is financially? Doesn't that bring freedom from both the controlfreak regime and sanction-imposing regime?
- williamchangnpu 7y agoYet their internet services flourish and engage users in ways nowhere else is seen. But comparing to those services in the western countries, these services(dev tools and online resources etc) are just too immature and unstable and not well-documented,( I'm saying some opensource project from alibaba and so on ,and highly biased)
- Ayesh 7y agoThis was heavily downvoted, but I think this can be an opportunity as well. I am preparing to go to Iran and of this year to travel, and I have been researching about a lot of things. I was fascinated to learn about Daric Pay, an internal payment network that is trying to replace Visa/master.
- mohas 7y agoplease don't come if you are from UK or US
- shane369 7y agoIn fact, chinese government excludes most of tech companies and university from GFW. Any company/institution can apply VPN usage if there is a need
- yfzhou 7y agoPrecisely this. The author probably won't even have a job in tech to begin with if those US services aren't banned.
- throwaway-ba9 7y agoThrowaway account for obvious reasons. I'm one of those operations people who have been required by a legal department to block access from sanctioned countries - I've literally written the HTTP rules to deny access to folks like the original author. I think about how the infrastructure I write and operate creates situations like these, and while I know I'm partly to blame, it's worth highlighting that this is a by-product of United Stats policies that create pressure on US companies. I'm most certainly _not_ a lawyer, but if this sort of thing bothers you, be cognizant of candidate policies about technology if you want to help enact change - because I doubt most companies will provide services to these and other regions if it'll break export law.
- throwaway-klsdj 7y agoThis is a good point. To add a slightly different perspective, I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored. I think most people don't realize how incredibly serious this is, and how basically there is already a global war being fought. And the nations with the most freedom have the most to lose. Certainly most of the people in Iran are similar to most of the people around the world. In kindness, compassion, in just trying to get their daily job done and enjoy time with friends and family. If only it was easy to distinguish between the good, the bad, the indifferent. Probably a lot of sanctions don't hinder the most threatening of Iran's activities, while impacting the population. But it does have an effect (not always the ones intended, perhaps). If the government in power over you is in conflict with others, and/or in conflict with it's own people, it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government. True for the USA and everyone else. Another lesson that the USA has been illustrating repeatedly recently is that it's probably better for a nations citizens to reform their government themselves, instead of a foreign power. Until that happens, yes their lives are not going to be as free as they'd like. It's hard and there is a cost to be paid for those freedoms. Many of us are fortunate in that those before us did the hard work and we get to enjoy the benefits. Good luck to the author of the blog, hopefully they can find good solutions.
- gdy 7y ago
- mariojv 7y agoI was a little surprised that Docker even returns text indicating why the request was blocked with the 403 status code. I wonder if there are any services trying to comply with sanctions in this way that are using response code 451 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451)....
- sytelus 7y agoFew things I learned recently: Iran is cut off from all international banking, wire transfer, SWIFT etc. This means Iran must pay by hard cold cash for everything. Sometime cash is sent in shipping container! Iran had few countries helping for export import like Russia, North Korea and few 3rd world countries. Recently Trump administrators have tighten up screw so much on this that any company found to be doing transactions is also then cut off from International banking system. US now tracks all ships going around Iran, runs audits on them and enforces sanctions. Countries like Saudi Arabia is also top enemy of Iran which puts additional pressure on other countries for sanctions. I can’t imagine how average tech savvy person would be able to survive in Iran.
- kebman 7y agoHaha, at this point the only difference between Iran's totalitarian censorship and Western censorship, is that the West does it way better, ref. deplatforming and censorship on both Facebook, Google and Twitter. At this point, even banks are trying to freeze the assets of people they don't like. He's talking about totalitarian censorship, when most of the totalitarian censorship—and surveillance—in the West are done by Big Tech in cooperation with bureaucratic entities such as the EU and Great Britain. The USA too, but they're more interested in information. (However the US do currently "censor" traders from using foreign platforms that offer leverages that are too high according to US authorities, among other things. For their own good, of course...) Oh and Big Tech also blocks Iran on many platforms, for obvious reasons. So not only does Iran have to deal with invasive surveillance and censorship from their government, but also from tech companies abroad. Talk about picking the short straw! He's right about one thing, though. Nobody cares about the people. Not in Iran or the West. Edit: I knew such a comment would be costly, but next time, you could be the one who's affected. Think about it.
- asdojasdosadsa 7y agoWow. Reading this felt like a continuous nightmare, can't image living in such a restricted country. Very enlightening read, thanks for sharing!
- flyinglizard 7y agoI’m always caught by surprise when I see intelligent, educated people ignore the nature and actions of Iran to justify their adversarial feelings towards the US administration. Iran is on an unprecedented aggressive and violent push towards dominating the Middle East. They are deployed in Syria, building forward bases to threaten Israel, destabilize Lebanon and pushing it closer to another war with Israel by funding and arming Hezbollah. They are sponsoring and arming Shiite militias in Iraq and provide them with ballistic missiles to threaten other Middle East countries. They are supporting and funding the Houthis in Yemen who are responsible for the civil war and attacks on Saudi Arabia and Gulf states. They are supporting, funding and arming Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, both of which are recognized terrorist groups intent on murdering Jews. They are responsible for historical attacks on US forces in Lebanon during the 80s which killed hundreds of Americans. They are later responsible for the attack on the Jewish community in Argentina in the early 90s. Lately multiple Iranian operative cells have been exposed in Europe, trying to engage in assassinations. They are bullying Gulf states. They are calling for the destruction of Israel every few weeks. Iran is developing a ballistic missile program which is intended to threaten Western Europe (they are up to 4000km in range now with their latest missiles). Finally, Iran hangs gays from cranes. Now, why would anyone in their right mind oppose sanctioning this country?
- knowThySelfx 7y agoOne side of the story. But the thing is, intelligent people will want to know why?
- flyinglizard 7y agoIntelligent people already know why: Iran is interested to see Shiite Muslim groups proliferating, for religious as well as practical reasons. Iran is the leader of the Shiite world, in the same vein Saudi Arabia represents the Sunni world. This is why Iran supports Hezbollah (Shiite) over other groups in Lebanon, Houthis (who are not Shiite but oppose the Sunni majority) in Yemen, Shiite in Iraq, Bashar Al Assad (who is Alawite himself but closely aligned with the Shiite and opposing the Sunnis in Syria). The only place where Iran supports Sunnis is Gaza, and that's done to primarily weaken Israel which Iran perceives as its primary threat to regional hegemony.
- nickleefly 7y agoI'm sure you heard of China GFW, We have strict censorship too, especially during some event, we have used shadowsocks, v2ray. Lots of users reported tcp packet was dropped, but you can use shadowsocks with v2ray-plugin, or v2ray https over cdn
- mohas 7y agoHi, do you have any servers for shadowsocks I could use?
- dnprock 7y agoI may hold an extreme position here. I believe sanction is always a bad idea. I grew up in a formerly sanctioned country, Vietnam. Life was rough for normal people. They become increasingly attached to their sanctioned regime. The US sanctioned Vietnam mainly because it took down a genocidal regime. Sanction is not an effective tool for change. The right way to move the world forward is to lead by example, to become the society that other countries want to emulate.
- sebow 7y agoSanctions may be harsh but they're effective.That always has been the case and will (always sounds presumptious) be for a long time. It's sad but it is a reality.Thankfully if we look at history it is less and less applied(as conflicts are declining, in general) What i would say that is that sanctions themselves do not have the mission of "change", they're only meant to enable change.Leading by example is indeed the right(and kind of the only) way of change.But to reach that without straight-up violence is very hard and slow.
- milemi 7y agoI can’t think of a historical example of economic sanctions even moving the situation toward the putative goal of regime change in the target country, let alone achieving that goal. I’ve lived under UN sanctions imposed on Serbia under Milosevic regime during the nineties. Two things happen: 1) people in the regime leadership don’t suffer 2) the little people who do suffer feel attacked and rally around the leader. Pretty much the opposite of what the sanctions ostensibly aim to achieve. This same dynamic played out in Cuba, North Korea, Iran, you name it, for decades with no good effect. What brought Milosevic regime down was the aerial NATO assault and its aftermath, not the sanctions. As far as I can tell sanctions are a way for US politicians (they may be imposed by all the western countries, but I can’t think of an example where US wasn’t the leader) to look like they are punishing the offending country without going to war. They just don’t seem to work.
- viburnum 7y agoSouth Africa is seen as a success.
- milemi 7y agoThat’s a good example, albeit a special one where the regime was not accepted as being of the people by a large majority of the population.
- stickfigure 7y agoIt's really hard to judge how 'accepted' governments that remain in control via fear and information control are.
- throwaway-klsdj 7y agoI'm not sure the entire plan is to get the country to do what you want. It's also about not supporting your enemies. Why send them raw materials, hardware, software that they will then use to fight against you? This seems to have worked for the countries you listed and a few more with the possible exception of Iran. They are much weaker than they could have been and are therefore not as significant a threat.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sansnomme 7y agoAny DApp developer/startup care to comment on this? Blockchain/distributed ledger is often touted to be resilient against attacks, censorship resistant etc. etc. blah blah blah, so how well will they function against the will of the United States? @muneeb? @perlin-network?
- byron_fast 7y agoForcing HTTPS apparently doesn't help people who could benefit from privacy. You don't really need privacy to learn to code.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rb808 7y agoThe modern computer world is so interwoven in the internet now. It was only 20 years ago when every company I worked had physical computers, no internet access (except email) and every piece of software had to be installed from CD. I wonder if/when a big war or disaster occurs much of our computer world will just break. We've built an extremely fragile system now.
- chibg10 7y agoThis is also a subject of intense interest to me. We're in uncharted territory here, and the most relevant historical example imo is WW1 where all major participants began the war without giving any real thought to oil and left the war knowing oil (and the vehicles it powers) was arguably the single most important strategic factor in wars during that time period (and still today really aside from speculation). It seems plausible, if not very likely, a similar paradigm shift will occur after the first serious cyberwar occurs. We will learn a lot of lessons.
- Gibbon1 7y agoYes!!! The current world power structure is underlain by the control of oil. That's going to change radically in just ten years. Because of solar, wind, and electrified transportation Makes the control of oil vastly less important. And just like 1914 the dominant powers are clueless.
- ohithereyou 7y agoGP posted: > left the war knowing oil (and the vehicles it powers) was arguably the single most important strategic factor in wars during that time period (and still today really aside from speculation Then you responded: > That's going to change radically in just ten years. Because of solar, wind, and electrified transportation Makes the control of oil vastly less important. Unless the US military is making a solar, wind, or electric powered series of fighter jets and tanks then the control of oil will be relevant until at least the middle of this century if not the end of this century.
- 7y ago
- reilly3000 7y agoThere are full data sets out there of stack overflow and Wikipedia, etc. After reading this I’d love to get that in the hands of more Iranians and others. It’s most likely not illegal to deliver the actual data as long as its not via the web.
- mrweasel 7y agoOne of his complaints is that they can't even reach Docker docs and just a few minutes ago I ran into an issue where Ubuntu didn't have a manual page for a build in command. We have been so accustomed to having access to the internet all the time that systems no long ship with the required documentation. If more tools actually shipped with complete documentation, then the Iranian developers life would be just a little easier. I would imagine that they have access to Docker, via mirrors, so why isn't the entire Docker documentation just included.
- bvod 7y agoI would recommend talking with a lawyer before taking any actions to circumvent international sanctions. There are very severe civil and criminal penalties.
- anticensor 7y agoQuarterly IPFS snapshots for Wikipedia and quarterly data dumps for SE are available.
- Iv 7y agoAm I the only one to see this as a positive side effect of sanctions? Now Iranians have a legitimate reason to use TOR: bypassing sanctions. Turns out it allows them to bypass censorship as well and brings more people into the Tor network.
- daliusd 7y agoI doubt that they use Tor. First Iranian I have talked with after airport security simply shown as VPN app to use that works. I have used SSH tunnel without problems. Censorship is quite weak in Iran and Tor is not necessary.
- entropy_ 7y agoIt's only weak if you have access to a credit card and are able to pay for a VPS or VPN abroad. If you're trying to bypass it using only free(as in beer) tools, it's quite effective as clearly shown by the article.
- daliusd 7y agoI was answering to Iv comment that people in Iran will find Tor. That's not the case from my experience while I was traveling in Iran last year. People simply use free VPNs.
- Iv 7y agoPlus I have never understood why people assumed it was safe from the government. You are making a credit card transaction with your name on it and associate it with a named account! You never know who is behind a VPN company. If I were a state censor I'd make sure to have several cheap and reliable VPNs accessible to the locals and just make a list of what they are doing with it.
- mnm1 7y ago> People are dying due to absence of medicines. People are starving. The economy system is falling apart and the politicians and their children are all abroad! Sounds like the sanctions are working exactly as intended. No one in their right mind could possibly think that the sanctions would affect government officials or their families. Then again, most people in the US government are not in their right minds.
- throwaway-29510 7y agoI worked for quite some time as a network engineer in a Syrian company. I'll be honest here, sanctions only slows the internet down because of the VPN overhead, so does the government with its stupid proxies and single point of connection for the whole country, but is it stopping us from doing our job? no. Censorship: Back in 2010-2011, just before the revolution, ADSL subs were growing fast, government censorship getting tighter. Facebook, Youtube, even Amazon (they don't deliver to Syria tho), are banned. With more websites adopting ssl and people getting more educated about its benefits, government started doing Man-in-the-middle attacks causing the red ugly warning. Fortunately, that didn't last too long, thanks to free VPN services(yes we gave up privacy to foreign firms, to escape local censorship), I believe the government saw that it's attacks are causing people to be more aware of their security rather than helping it in identifying and arresting activists. Luckily most websites use https now. Until recently we didn't have a local ban issue since all the block was done by local forwarding proxies configured to filter certain domains, and only plain http traffic was processed there. I remember seeing Blue Coat hardware being used in some official departments, not sure though if this was used on a larger scale. That was the way to block things, in addition to blocking a few dozens of IP addresses. Now government is trying to tighten the censorship on messaging and VoIP apps to raise the profit for local telecom companies, which are (surprise!) largely owned indirectly by the president through loyal (shadow?) businessmen. They have blocked most connections to Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, their method is not perfect, but most of the people are using proxies like psiphon or even getting a paid subscription. They will probably try to block the proxies too in the coming years (they are very slow tbh). I heard that they are promoting local VPN services, but didn't find anything relevant, though it's highly possible like the Iranian case. Sanctions: It's a real pain, especially when it comes to payment, but thanks to diaspora and UAE (which serves the main breathing point for the Syrian companies to avoid sanctions), we have a way to pay for and buy stuff. Now comes the online services, which are blocked by US based companies. We're still using proxies for most of the services, but since few years, most ISPs started implementing their own remote proxy service outside of Syria and passing them some traffic, thus unblocking some services like Apple Store, Google Play, and even Snapchat. But for us devs we still have to use proxies to access AWS, GCP (and everything hosted there), Docker, Bitbucket, Gitlab, everything related to android dev, and many other services. Can the government unblock these to help locals do their work? yes. Will they? probably no, they don't need to do so. Since they can get to Dubai or Paris and enjoy their time there it's all fine. BTW, some people who can afford to live quite a luxurious life have Netflix subscriptions. Tor? haven't used it since the early days of the revolution. Bad network connection with our crappy infrastructure makes tor dead slow. Personal Opinion: sanctions or not, foreign companies who want to work in Syria, or Syrian companies that want to work for foreign clients, both found ways to bypass it. We have German companies employing Syrians, I worked for a British firm last year. After all, who wouldn't prefer to pay someone $400/mo to get work done than say $1500/mo? not to mention insurance and taxes. Same for locals, even $300/mo is still very good compared to what most companies offer, for an IT guy at least. Finally, we need a new democratic Syria, by helping Syrians people take the lead and rule themselves freely, weakening Assad's family grip, but the government and its strongmen are finding their way to bypass sanctions, so do sanctions really help or are they only affecting the poor? I have mixed feeling. But had the sanctions been meant to help Syrians, they would have confiscated Assad's family and their loyalist crimes supporters billions in the West.
- knowThySelfx 7y agoI do not know how others feel. But I feel resentment towards embargoes (and calling their poodle countries to follow suite) placed on other countries just because they don't tow your line. Going to Iran's backyard and threatening them and then cry when they retaliate (a pretext to start war)...its so...pathetic. In fact most of the 20th century wars were started using this kind of baiting.
- stale2002 7y ago> just because they don't tow your line. Let's be specific what we are talking about here. We are talking about a country funding lots of militant groups that kill lots of people. So, let's rephrase your original statement to instead say "just because they continue to fund militant groups that kill lots of people". Rephrased that way, your original comment does not sounds so reasonable.
- jussij 7y agoThe problem is the report that Iran is a country funding lots of militant groups comes out of the USA and it's recent actions means it has lost all credibility. Just in recent times we have seen the USA spy on it's own nationals (NSA) and invade a country based on a lies (WMD in Iraq). The USA also has a long history of propping up murderous dictators (MBS just the most recent) and it now has a president who loves being photographed with tyrants like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin. So while the claims being made might even be true, because these are USA claims the statements needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
- stale2002 7y agoI don't have to take the statements of the USA. All I have to do is listen to the claims that Iran makes, about who it funds, the actions it is taking, and planning on taking. The stuff that Iran itself says it wants to do, such as that it wants to wipe Israel from the face of the map, is bad enough.
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- misingnoglic 7y agoMy heart breaks for these devs. I've been able to launch a successful development career specifically because I was born in the US (and my parents left Iran). If I was the same person in a different geographic area I'd be struggling under sanctions. Companies definitely need to push back on extra egregious legal teams who want to block services Iran, as it's mostly paranoia and not that the services actually fall under the jurisdiction of our sanctions. I know amazing people at Google who are doing this work, and I hope others at other companies do the same.
- thedevilslawyer 7y agoIsn't the point of sanctions to cause frustration by restrictions?
- trilila 7y agoIt is. But you see, those hit hardest by sanctions are neither the cause of trouble nor anti western. Those are usually people like you and i, while the “elite” can smuggle in whatever they want and access whatever they want. Not only that but regular folk is weakened and cant stand a chance against the well fed government. No sanctions means greater exposure to our way of life and thus an easier path for grassroots change. If anything, i’d make government owned proxies available to iranians and chinese and all those oppressed so they can access censored content. I’d also make it easier to smuggle in technology so they can show others what they are missing on by supporting their criminal governments.
- daliusd 7y agoIt depends on sanctions and it is more nuanced usually. Usually people that are under sanctions are hit hardest by them. Other people usually are hit by their government and brainwashed by propaganda that sanctions are to blame.
- trilila 7y agoGood point - sanctions are also a good propaganda tool for their corrupt governments.
- lsiebert 7y agoThere are of course arguments against doing this and in support of sanctions, but I feel for this person. I think, given that the Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts, never met a first amendment argument that he didn't like, these restrictions could probably be eliminated if not narrowly tailored. Any significantly large software company could sue to overcome general software export restrictions on First amendment grounds, but most likely they won't. Politically it would be shooting themselves in the foot and inviting wrath from Trump, and they don't get paid to support free speech, they usually just do it incidentally. Perhaps a little more likely, The EFF could sue again. Somebody should ask the EFF about export controls on software during their Defcon panel on the 10th or something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
- ziggrat 7y agoThey should look at migrating to other countries, even migrating to Africa seems like a good option. If some basic things are not in place, as described, imagine building anything in a place like that.
- throwaway-76727 7y agoHas anyone ever heard of a charity fund for buying VPN access for people in repressive, low-income countries? NordVPN is 2.62 EUR per month right now for a 3 year plan. It seems like a lot of good could be done for not much money.
- Tepix 7y agoPublic VPNs will get blocked more frequently than private VPNs. I think a better solution is go setup a bunch of private VPS and setup VPN servers. Then share each of them with a few dozen people each. You can get them for $12/year or less at lowendbox / lowendtalk
- ThrowAwayRedRed 7y agoI'm a developer in Iran too. Just wanted to say this guy works in Douran (شرکت دوران) company, proudly stated in his page (Which screams amateur and narcissist), they are providing the government with many censorship and surveillance software and services. They are notorious and hated, like death squad level in the free minded, geek community in the country. I can't believe his post got this much attention and sympathy without anyone noticing he works in a freedom killing company... what a joke! Sanctions really hurt... good luck using a good cloud provider, which is a backbone for our daily activities as developers. No doubt about that, nothing new. The problem is our double standards in the middle east, we fuck up everything then blame it on others. They (west, east, x, y) aren't saints but we aren't either. Here is a clear example of this ugly truth. I know people mostly from minorities (Kurds, atheists, LGBT, secular, Narenji guys) with death sentences in Iran because of their online activities and if there is a single corporation you can easily blame and point to who lands a hand to the government for their inhuman acts it's them, Douran. Double standards won't work, you can only fool people for a very short period of time in our era.
- ignoramous 7y agoThanks for sharing this. > his page (Which screams amateur and narcissist)... Pls tone down personal attacks, if you can.
- slim 7y agoI can't believe your ad hominem got so many upvotes. I live in Tunisia, and till before 2011 revolution, we were classified as "Enemies of the Internet" by reporters without borders. We were worse than Iran. I can tell you something : the role played by the geeks working for the state security was crucial in changing things over here. Considering them enemies got us nowhere, because they were silently on our side. By doing what you did, you fucked up everything and blame it on others.
- darkpuma 7y ago> "this guy works in Douran (شرکت دوران) company, proudly stated in his page (Which screams amateur and narcissist)" You really decimate your credibility when you say absurd things like this. If you're willing to misconstrue something as simple as stating your employer on the internet as such a serious character flaw, how can we trust the rest of your judgement to be reasonable?
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- gdfasfklshg4 7y agoI notice that doubleclick won't serve to Iran. A very small silver lining to the huge black cloud of sanctions...
- mpoloton 7y agoDefinition of terrorism according to Wikipedia: "Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a religious or political aim." How economic sanctions and maximum pressure different from terrorism? Putting a lot of pressure and pain on ordinary people to achieve political goal, which in this case is surrender of Iran. This is economic terrorism, plain and simple.
- keiferski 7y agoThe answer to your question is in the text you quoted: intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror. Economic sanctions may be justified or unjustified, moral or immoral, but they are distinctly different from indiscriminate violence. Muddying the definitions of words really doesn't help anyone and indeed makes the discussion harder to have, as communication is only possible if both/all participants can agree on their communicative medium - i.e., that they are both using words to mean the same things.
- mpoloton 7y agoI didn't say it is "Terrorism" I said "Economic Terrorism". Economic sanctions by definition are indiscriminate. Now there is a shortage of some cancer and MS medication in Iran and people are dying because of it. Even though the medications are not sanctioned, the financial transactions are sanctioned and these medications cannot be purchased easily. How isn't this violence? According to the UN, sanctions on food and medication is a crime against humanity. We have seen this period of sever sanctions on Iraq in the disguise of oil for food program. We know how it ended. I don't want to justify the actions of Iranian government, in my opinion most governments are evil and power hungry. I am just pointing out that the goal of sanctions, even according to the US officials is to cause suffering for people ultimately in the goal of regime change. Sever economic sanctions are just another tool in the empire toolbox. Be it against Iran or Cuba for example.
- yyyk 7y ago"I am just pointing out that the goal of sanctions, even according to the US officials is to cause suffering for people ultimately in the goal of regime change" No, you're not in fact pointing that out, you're just stating it without providing any evidence at all. If you're saying 'the goal is to cause suffer according to US officials' surely you'd have a quote for it? You won't because they did not say that and you just stated something not in evidence. Officially, the purpose of the sanctions is to get 'a better deal'.
- domrdy 7y agoHas anyone here managed to hire people from Iran? Our immigration lawyer told us it would take more than a year to even get an appointment at the embassy - I've tried calling multiple times and ultimately gave up. We're in Europe. It sucked because we had a few promising candidates. If you happen to have any special insight / loop holes that you are willing to share with me over email, I would really appreciate it.
- cerealbad 7y agoamerica needs to elect another straight shooter so people don't get confused about foreign policy issues. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg
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- EGreg 7y agoI have seen a lot of this kind of stuff. Sanctions almost never work, and are almost always a bad idea. Just like arming rebels against a government, the CIA found out, almost never results in anything good[1], then tried it again[2] and it again predictably resulted in something awful. When it comes to sanctions, they have exacerbated situations that could have been solved with diplomacy. In the case of Iran, we already had negotiated an unprecedented deal with international inspectors having more access to its nuclear facilities and mining sites than any country in history. But that wasn’t enough. The deal was scrapped by Trump simply to erase Obama’s legacy[3], with no plan in place. It’s not just Trump, it’s the Republican leaders[4] and types of presidents the new Republican party tends to elect.[5] Let’s turn to substance and back up the claim abou sanctions. We have seen this movie before. North Korea, cut off from world trade and under threat, was angling to get nuclear weapons. Clinton had negotiated a deal with Kin Jong Il, called the Agreed Framework[6], in exchange for step by step normalization of relations and lifting sanctions. It was already signed and began to be implemented! Then the next administration entered office - Bush and the GOP called the deal expensive “appeasement” and scuttled it. Instead, they put more sanctions on North korea. How did that work out? The people got united under the credible narrative that “they hate our way of life and they hate us” and North Korea got the bomb. With a little help from Ukrainians on the black market[7]. What’s worse is that with no agreement in place or relations with the US North Korea continued to act as a rogue state and gave nuclear technology to Syria to use against Israel. The Syrian nuclear reactor was covertly bombed by Israelis in a pre emptive strike[8] and no country (including Syria) spoke about this for months. I could go down the line to show that diplomacy beats sanctions every time and that sanctions radicalize the population and make them support the very thing you want them to abandon. I will jump straight to Godwin’s law. The Nazis came to power because of crushing sanctions on Germany after the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, France hated Germany and yes they wanted them to pay reparations for starting World War 1. But as a result, the German people were reduced to complete poverty and hyperinflation. What did they do? They had a nationalist fervor and pushed for leaders to “restore” Germany, armed themselves to the teeth, and then launched World War 2! Imagine if there was no sanctions. Would the Germans elect Nazis if they were prosperous? Would North Koreans not develop a rootless cosmopolitan bourgiousie class if they were allowed to trade with the world? These things happen when sanctions are LIFTED. You want to help a country — lift sanctions on its people! 1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arming-rebels-has-pretty-much-never-worked-180953054/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arming-rebels-has-... 2. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syria-rebel-arm-train-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/world/middleeast/cia-syri... 3. https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-48978484 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-48978484 4. https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromise-pledge-044311 https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromis... 5. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/12/usa.books https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/12/usa.books 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework 7. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543477518/north-koreas-secret-weapon-in-nuclear-program-ukrainian-rocket-engines https://www.npr.org/2017/08/14/543477518/north-koreas-secret... 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outside_the_Box
- majortennis 7y agoWhat is it like, not how is it like, you could say how was it like. but how is it just doesnt feel right
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