Under packetloss my assumption is text is king, but I wonder if forward error correcting audio and video is actually better in some ways?
Media is information rich. Maybe we're beyond a samzdat moment and the value in comms is contextual immediacy of live feeds, text can squeeze alongside.
Long ago, broadcast quality TV was shipped as slow feed. Maybe a tiktok generation goes back there: use a phone on the street (probably surreptitiously) do post production and upload asynchronously on 30% packetloss or worse for redistribution.
Which governments are referred to as "regimes" is usually propaganda about how you should feel about them. Consider: all articles written about US using the words "The US regime".
Starlink is primarily a military technology that is used both on a battlefield and to coordinate USA-backed "protests". Why, for instance, it just become free in Venezuela? Every country needs to be able to to defend itself from Starlink.
Wow this sucks! however if i were iranian brass i would do it too. IT/OT and IoT is not safe full stop. Pull the plug. It wouldnt be pretty over here either, also china already got us good (Volt Typhoon, OPM hack, why bother to list 30 or 40 more?)
Iran has a huge black market. Many things from refrigerator to small things are being smuggled to Iran, mostly from the mountains on Iraq border (also from Turkey border and from other Gulf countries. The government is not peaky about smuggling since Iran is under heavy sanctions and it's hard for the government to provide USD to legit traders on official channels.
Not too surprising, given that Starlink operates in Iran without a permit, "space pirate radio" style, and has something of a habit of making the access free when major protests happen and the government imposes a network blackout. Iranian government and Starlink have no love for each other, clearly.
It's a pattern by now: whenever a government wants to do something awful, it shuts down internet access - so that no one can hear it, see it or coordinate a response. And Starlink becomes a lifeline that the regime would rather people didn't have.
This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place. If you give a government a capability to restrict access to whatever it wants and enact a network blackout whenever it wants, it's a matter of time until it gets abused.
The reason national great firewalls shouldn't exist, is that national great firewalls are bad. We don't have to blame potential future badness when we can blame definite present badness.
> This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place
This is a kind of colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society. There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle. You don't get to choose what is right or wrong in every part of the world: that is a very USA-centric way to view the society and easily leads to "export freedom and democracy" acts. It's a very USA-friendly way to frame things. Not necessarily the right way to frame things.
Again, just for the sake of the discussion: Iran banned starlink, people are getting terminals (BTW, I'm happy they managed to). Starlink is still providing the service in the area although they are aware it's illegal and people can be behaded for owning a starlink terminal. But hey, Iran and USA are enemies. The fact that Iran is the only country where Starlink is active even if it's NOT approved is food for thought. There are other countries, where there are regimes that control communications, where Starlink is not active.
People can do whatever they think is right, of course (: so there is no "should". My point was that saying that a government should not impose communication restrictions is not necessary right. So, no, people should be happy: if they are happy without freedom, then let them be. If they are unhappy without freedom, let them make a revolution.
Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this?
> "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"
Does anyone know how Iranians are _actually_ communicating right now? I remember seeing here on HN (admittedly a long time ago) some Bluetooth-mesh technologies that promised decentralized solutions to these very type of problems
> Fortunately, the government cannot enforce complete blackout because thousands of startlink terminals are active inside the country. They have been complaining about it to no avail.
Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.
I left the comment on starlink on that thread. I should note some personal observations as I am in touch with a few folks inside Iran through Starlink.
1. The jamming/disruption is local to large cities most notably the capital, Tehran
2. Even in Tehran it is not complete and my friends are able to send and receive messages. Uploading videos is harder.
3. The regime is now raiding homes that they suspect have Starlink terminals. I don't know how they identify them but I do wonder if they are using technology to locate them.
Satellite signals are just weak RF signals and can be disrupted easily. There is nothing 'hardened' about them. It's funny that people think Starlink or any of its many incipient competitors are any different.
I am wondering if Starlink users can't compensate for it themselves by transmitting a GPS signal using some SDR device locally, just putting in correct coordinates from Google Maps into it? GPS signals are at 1.5GHz which is easily accessible for cheap SDRs.
But really, why doesn't Starlink device allow to simply enter coordinates manually? After all, if someone enters wrong coordinates (say to enable operation in a place where Starlink has no service), it won't work because it won't find satellites where it expects them to be.
My thoughts to the Iranian people, may they get what they need and deserve at a cost that is not too high.
As in all conflicts, there's always a "fog of blame" where there isn't absolute certainty about who is right and who is to blame. Though it's not that hard. Because their survival depends on it, dictators are very good at blaming others--anybody, really--for their own shortcomings, and they usually wield the kind of hard power that makes them extremely costly to topple in terms of suffering and human lives.
Life is too short to have to deal with despots. We need a better, perhaps less-crowded or less xenophobic world where every person can protect their right to exist by simply packing and leaving as a last resort.
Why are none of the people I saw posting non-stop about Palestine saying anything about Iranian freedom? Would honestly love to hear a genuine response from anyone who is against the movement in Iran. Or even conflicted about it.
I would say it's really about opposition to death and suffering.
The activists want the excessive death and suffering to end in Palestine, and they want to avoid death and suffering in Iran.
Many politicians want to use the protests as a pretext for military intervention in Iran, and my blunt opinion is that they don't actually have the interests of Iranians in mind. There are many reasons to believe it will end up worse for both America and the Iranians than our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A valid response would be to say that you think abuses in Iran are bad enough that a military intervention is justified and that it will lead to a better outcome for Iranians. My intuition would be to disagree with that, based on the results of past interventions, etc...
> The activists want the excessive death and suffering to end in Palestine, and they want to avoid death and suffering in Iran.
And yet they are silent on the death and suffering in: Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, Myanmar, Libya. Just to name current active conflicts where people are dying, to say nothing of all the others that have flared up and subsided in my decades on this earth as I've watched "activists" ignore them all so they could hyper-focus on whatever Israel was doing at the time to protect its citizens and the Jewish diaspora. The word "exhausting" doesn't even scratch the surface of how it feels to deal with otherwise smart, educated people who roll around in this hypocrisy-laden dogpile.
Hypothecally speaking.
If I were to live in an authoritarian country that would shut off all means of communication like that. What off grid technology would be viable?
I would imagine that communicating within urban areas might be possible via some kind of a mesh network where e.g. every phone would act as a node that can forward the packets further. Something like that should be possible over WiFi I assume although I am unfamiliar with the existing protocols that would allow that.
There are two main issues with such an application that I can think of:
1. Addressing. How would the nodes know where to send the packet? But I assume there are ways to deal with that which come from the P2P networks like Tor.
2. Edge connectivity. Even if it would be possible to communicate between the regular nodes of the network, those packets would not be able to reach the outside world. So, from abroad or even from the out of town, they would still appear offline. Some kind of edge bridges would probably be necessary to reach connectivity with the outside world.
43 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 84.6 ms ] threadMedia is information rich. Maybe we're beyond a samzdat moment and the value in comms is contextual immediacy of live feeds, text can squeeze alongside.
Long ago, broadcast quality TV was shipped as slow feed. Maybe a tiktok generation goes back there: use a phone on the street (probably surreptitiously) do post production and upload asynchronously on 30% packetloss or worse for redistribution.
Isn't this "son of the late Shah" a guy from the US?
I'm sure the Iranian regime would live to jam starlink, but i don't think we have any ability to know what is actually happening here.
The article claims 80% packetloss. That's still 1 in 5 packets getting through. That is annoying but not going to stop information getting out.
I also wonder, if all other coms are cut off, is it possible star link in the country is just overloaded?
It's a pattern by now: whenever a government wants to do something awful, it shuts down internet access - so that no one can hear it, see it or coordinate a response. And Starlink becomes a lifeline that the regime would rather people didn't have.
This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place. If you give a government a capability to restrict access to whatever it wants and enact a network blackout whenever it wants, it's a matter of time until it gets abused.
> This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place
This is a kind of colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society. There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle. You don't get to choose what is right or wrong in every part of the world: that is a very USA-centric way to view the society and easily leads to "export freedom and democracy" acts. It's a very USA-friendly way to frame things. Not necessarily the right way to frame things.
Iran has commanded empires for millennia. Longer than continental Europe.
Iranians getting their hands on Starlink terminals is as “colonial” as revolutionary France helping the American colonists usurp the British.
I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.
> "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"
> Fortunately, the government cannot enforce complete blackout because thousands of startlink terminals are active inside the country. They have been complaining about it to no avail.
Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.
1. The jamming/disruption is local to large cities most notably the capital, Tehran
2. Even in Tehran it is not complete and my friends are able to send and receive messages. Uploading videos is harder.
3. The regime is now raiding homes that they suspect have Starlink terminals. I don't know how they identify them but I do wonder if they are using technology to locate them.
Old article about Starlink (see bottom of page). Competitors have similar solutions in development.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90681156/elon-musk-starlink-sate...
But really, why doesn't Starlink device allow to simply enter coordinates manually? After all, if someone enters wrong coordinates (say to enable operation in a place where Starlink has no service), it won't work because it won't find satellites where it expects them to be.
Or is there something here that i'm missing?
> Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them
so under those circumstances anything goes to defeat the likes of Mossad and associated foreign entities doing their thing on Iranian soil.
[1] https://xcancel.com/mikepompeo/status/2007180411638620659
Could you get at least 1mbps from a phone to LEO now for email and non-realtime data?
As in all conflicts, there's always a "fog of blame" where there isn't absolute certainty about who is right and who is to blame. Though it's not that hard. Because their survival depends on it, dictators are very good at blaming others--anybody, really--for their own shortcomings, and they usually wield the kind of hard power that makes them extremely costly to topple in terms of suffering and human lives.
Life is too short to have to deal with despots. We need a better, perhaps less-crowded or less xenophobic world where every person can protect their right to exist by simply packing and leaving as a last resort.
The activists want the excessive death and suffering to end in Palestine, and they want to avoid death and suffering in Iran.
Many politicians want to use the protests as a pretext for military intervention in Iran, and my blunt opinion is that they don't actually have the interests of Iranians in mind. There are many reasons to believe it will end up worse for both America and the Iranians than our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A valid response would be to say that you think abuses in Iran are bad enough that a military intervention is justified and that it will lead to a better outcome for Iranians. My intuition would be to disagree with that, based on the results of past interventions, etc...
And yet they are silent on the death and suffering in: Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo, Myanmar, Libya. Just to name current active conflicts where people are dying, to say nothing of all the others that have flared up and subsided in my decades on this earth as I've watched "activists" ignore them all so they could hyper-focus on whatever Israel was doing at the time to protect its citizens and the Jewish diaspora. The word "exhausting" doesn't even scratch the surface of how it feels to deal with otherwise smart, educated people who roll around in this hypocrisy-laden dogpile.
Lora? Shortwave radio? Or nothing at all?
There are two main issues with such an application that I can think of:
1. Addressing. How would the nodes know where to send the packet? But I assume there are ways to deal with that which come from the P2P networks like Tor.
2. Edge connectivity. Even if it would be possible to communicate between the regular nodes of the network, those packets would not be able to reach the outside world. So, from abroad or even from the out of town, they would still appear offline. Some kind of edge bridges would probably be necessary to reach connectivity with the outside world.