The Iranian Developer Deadlock: Stuck Between Censorship and US Sanctions (thenextweb.com) 52
In July, GitHub blocked several accounts to prevent users in Iran from accessing several portions of its service. A few days later Amazon Web Services followed suite. With major cloud services pulling support for developers in the country, many lost their academic work and several apps ceased to function. A solution for these developers now is to cut reliance on American giants and build their own services. But there's a catch: Internet in Iran is heavily censored, so they can't rely on local networks.
After Trump backed away from the nuclear deal, there's been a tremendous pressure on tech companies to block IPs from Iran. Plus, Mozilla decided to omit a whole transparency section in its report on the country succumbing to the government pressure. With sanctions on one side and censorship on the other, there's a tough road ahead for developers. Ivan Mehta, a journalist at The Next Web, looks at the issue.
After Trump backed away from the nuclear deal, there's been a tremendous pressure on tech companies to block IPs from Iran. Plus, Mozilla decided to omit a whole transparency section in its report on the country succumbing to the government pressure. With sanctions on one side and censorship on the other, there's a tough road ahead for developers. Ivan Mehta, a journalist at The Next Web, looks at the issue.
s/suite/suit/ (NT) (Score:1)
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You expect Slashdot editors to edit? Or to understand English?
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Slashdot has editors? They didn't used to have them...
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If Iran allowed their locals to connect to a US-based website, why would they not allow them to connect to a local website?
Many people in Western countries fail to understand authoritarianism.
It is rarely difficult to circumvent censorship. Censorship is usually not an attempt to prevent people from accessing the material, but rather a way of expressing "official disapproval".
In America, toleration of dissent is seen as a strength, and lashing out at critics is perceived as weakness. In authoritarian countries, the opposite is true.
Iran suppresses dissent on local networks because if they did otherwise their opponents would t
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FYI, the US illegally shut down media on accusation of being afffiliated to Lebanese Hezbollah, despite law having explicit exception for foreign media.
Half of US states have laws on the books barring any state contracts, to include even employment and social services, to anybody involved in BDS vs Israel.
Of course the Anglo-American West's favorite "anti-authoriarian" author is Orwell, who in fact was enthusiastic informant for authoritarian secret police.
Nobody in the West cares about the above unless th
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Support a color revolution and then people can be accepted back into the normal academic world.
Dont change the gov? No change to academic acceptance.
All part of creating internal academic tension in a nation to induce support for a CIA/NGO backed color revolution.
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That seems to be a response from you.
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Iranians aren't arabs, guess again.
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I don't know if the OP meant it either, but I bet most American's don't understand that Iranians aren't Arabs and I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that most Trump supporters would make the same mistake
If people want to be racist or bigoted that's their right, but I feel like if you are going to hate a whole class of people you should at least try to learn a bit about them.
Of course, if you do that you run the risk of getting to know them too well, realize that they are really no different than you and therefore they lose their "otherness" and subsequently become harder to hate.
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Re:Response from Trump conservatives (Score:5, Informative)
It's their fault because those Arabs chose to be born in such a backward country. Fuck 'em, I got mine.
Iranians/Persians are actually primarily Indo-European, coming from more Central Asia/Caucasus region. Arabs came from the Arabian peninsula.
I know you're just trying to troll but still, you can do better.
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Truth is relevant. Iran and Persia is not considered part of Arab world, although it is part of Muslim world. Somalia is in some contexts considered part of Arabic world, but Somalia is related within same Afro-Asian group as Arabic (although Eritrea and Ethiopia should probably be included by same metric, if issue is differentiated from religious sect).
Arabic script, including modifications, was also used for Turkic languages and Malay languages. In fact, many more languages were derived from very-similar-
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What about a mesh net? (Score:1)
To connect to whom? AWS is your neighbor? (Score:2)
A mesh network will let you connect to your neighborhood; what good is that? Unless your neighbors are AWS, Google, and GitHub, I'm not sure how that solves anything.
At $450 billion, Iran's economy is slightly smaller than Dallas. It's tech economy is much less than Dallas or Denver. They need to be able to connect to the rest of the world.
-- Tangent Ahead --
Speaking of the size and economics of pesky countries, North Korea's GDP is a measily $40 billion. Equivalent to suburb of Dallas. Can you imagine R
Well that is kind of the point... (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet in Iran is heavily censored, so they can't rely on local networks.
So before Trump pulled out the "Let Iran Build Nuclear Weapons Freely" plan, people there had one reason to try to change the leadership of Iran...
Now they have two. If they can get the leadership to something more friendly to people around the world, then then will have less censored networks at home, and get back all of the access to internet features the rest of the world provides.
That's the point of the sanctions, is to try and
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Fake Hannity News
The existing regime was "friendly" enough to negotiate a deal to lift sanctions, but the orange person reneged on the agreement. That country got slapped for being friendly, wh
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Fake Hannity News
Real News disagrees [nytimes.com]
The existing regime was "friendly" enough to negotiate a deal to lift sanctions
You are confused about who was friendly - yes Obama was friendly enough to agree to send Iran a plane full of cash [cnn.com] in secret, while Iran was busy sending Iranian backed soldiers to kill Americans in Iraq...
And the reward we got was that Iran continued work on nuclear weapons anyway (as the previous link demonstrated, but that all people with intelligence greater than a rock knew to be the case
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You are confused about who was friendly - yes Obama was friendly enough to agree to send Iran a plane full of cash [cnn.com] in secret,
You mean money from Iranian government accounts we froze back in the 70s? Yes, how dare Obama give Iran back money that was rightfully theirs anyway. You know how you make deals get done? You make signs of good faith. You don't just try to bully people until they give you everything you want.
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You mean money from Iranian government accounts we froze back in the 70s? Yes, how dare Obama give Iran back money that was rightfully theirs anyway. You know how you make deals get done? You make signs of good faith. You don't just try to bully people until they give you everything you want.
And, you can't just give them everything they want until they guit bullying you...
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Go fuck yourself.
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Looks like the Iranians archived their shit when the agreement took hold.
I'm no fan of their current regime, and they certainly exert military and political influence that can be dangerous, but I have not seen anything that shows that they did not honor the nuclear agreement.
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Did you read your own post? Note that there is a difference between "Mr. Netanyahu did not provide any evidence that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement" and "Iran did not violate the nuclear agreement."
Note also that burning an intelligence source (by, for example, announcin
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It was their cash to begin with, as others explain. Do you want to debate or just echo Fox Spin Memes?
As far as the Israeli claims, they should be taken with a grain of salt. They, just like you, often spin such matters.
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The existing regime was "friendly" enough to negotiate a deal to lift sanctions, but the orange person reneged on the agreement. That country got slapped for being friendly, which doesn't give international friendliness a good reputation among the population. It made the USA look like jerks. Very few are motivated to be friendly with jerks.
A deal that got them a midnight delivery of a planeload of cash, and no requirement to stop nuclear development. Sure. That is why Obama was so quick to get that deal voted on in the Senate.
The USA didn't look like jerks, because the USA didn't make a deal. The President doesn't get to make a deal by himself, as every government negotiating with the US knows. Only Obama looked like a jerk for claiming to the world that a deal was made.
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El Wrongo.
O followed the same approach many prior Presidents had. You have a double standard.
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El Wrongo.
You are incorrect. If the JCPOA had been strictly followed by all parties, Iran would have had a 10 year delay in nuclear weapons development. During that time, they would have been permitted to continue nuclear research, including upgrading their heavy-water reactor, proceed with modernizing their centrifuges, and continue development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. By 15 years after the "agreement", Iran would be free to resume any nuclear development, enrichment, or breeder scheme without penal
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I assumed by "nuclear development" you meant actual weapons, not the related tooling. Anyhow, delaying actual weapons production and testing is better than no delay.
Just because we didn't get everything we wanted doesn't mean the deal is overall bad. Negotiations are give and take.
It is bad, but not a
Very much this (Score:2)
That country got slapped for being friendly, which doesn't give international friendliness a good reputation among the population. It made the USA look like jerks.
I know a lot of Persians. While they do dislike the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard, much of the rest of their government is democratic and representative, and many of them view the US favorably. But when Trump re-instated sanctions, it made life much more difficult in Iran, and increased their distrust of the United States.
Thinking that our being assholes will cause people to change their own governments is woefully misguided.
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I hope someday the kind people of Iran will have the government they deserve, instead of the crappy intolerant and irrational government they have.
They had it. They voted for a superior ruler. We interfered because that wasn't convenient for us.
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Bullshit. Mosaddegh was a would-be tyrant that used forged votes to gain power, used secret police to silence and murder his opposition, and eventually illegally dissolved the parliament to grant himself 'emergency' absolute rule over the country.
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Vastly preferable than the approach where you try to change regimes externally.
It's better to let people in countries choose their own government, rather than trying to have foreign countries change regimes for them. That is the philosophical approach.
Every time the US tries to force a regime in a foreign country, it doesn't go very well. That is the practical approach.
Finally, it makes more sense for people who are closer to the government make decisions. Thus Topeka shouldn't make laws for San Francisco, and vice versa. That is the theoretical approach.
Censoring Developer Work (Score:2)
Yeah Right.
Fermi's Paradox solved (Score:3)
Civilization will end when StackOverflow crashes and nobody can fix our software-controlled infrastructure.
That is a chilling thought (Score:3, Funny)
Just imagine :
*StackOverflow crashes*
SO admin: StackOverflow is down, how do we fix it again?
*tries to search for answer and only links found lead to SO*
*Civilization Burns*
Iran is proof (Score:2)
that the US and its minions, the US companies doing business abroad, are a threat to any country's national sovereignty. Countries that are friends of the US now just don't realize it - or pretend to ignore it. But the fact remains that all the world's states effectively have their cojones in His Orangeness' hands, and that should worry the shit out of all of them.
Any country that truly wants to guarantee its own national independence should cut ties with US-based suppliers and subcontractors whenever possi
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Absolutely. The response is not only Iran or similarly effected countries developing their own local infrastructure, although that is part of it, but cooperating with infrastructure based in other countries which don't blindly submit to US dictat. Anybody, living/based in America, who does not wish to further US hegemony can also utilize infrastructure based in such countries. Every US Silicon Valley company which happily cooperates with US orders, meanwhile taking advantage of international jurisdictions f
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Followed suite??? (Score:2)
Okay, I can accept that many programmers can't spell worth a crap - it's not part of the job description, after all.
But EDITORS who can't spell??? C'mon, surely we can make literacy in written English part of the job description for the /. editors....
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But EDITORS who can't spell??? C'mon, surely we can make literacy in written English part of the job description for the /. editors....
I wasn't here in the C&D days, but I was around for most of the Slashdot era (I lurked before joining) and the editors have always been horrible in literally every way. I guess the current owners figure there's no reason to mess with tradition, because they are still all horrible. I could do better with one hand behind my back, one eye poked out, and a modem connection.
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I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed by the illiteracy on display here.
It's like a nightmare living here. (Score:1)