Friday, September 30, 2022
Thursday, September 29, 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran – We need your help
Tell HN: The Internet situation inside Iran – We need your help
584 by throwaway124592 | 91 comments on Hacker News.
As you probably have heard, there have been widespread protests going on inside Iran for the past week or so following the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police. Following the protests, the government has cut off or severely limited residential and especially mobile broadband access to the internet and people can only access websites and services hosted inside Iran. This has made connecting to VPNs with servers outside Iran, and Tor close to impossible. That being said, the servers inside Iranian data centers still have access to the outside world. The government has also blocked Instagram and WhatsApp (the main channels of communication used by people inside Iran), and alternatives such as Telegram, Signal, etc are also blocked, halting communications to a crawl. People have to either call each other via GSM or send SMSs (which by the way is being monitored and messages containing keywords related to the protests don't even get delivered). As you can imagine, it's preventing people from coordinating the protests and strikes, and with the sattelite TVs being also heavily jammed, the only source of information accessible to most people is the government-led local TV channels which are distributing regime propaganda 24/7 and trying to scare people into submission. We (a group of tech people inside Iran) have started using the servers inside Iranian data centers gain access to the Internet, and are setting up VPN servers and Tor bridges and giving the information to people we know. It's not scalable, and it's risky for us (the servers inside Iran can be traced back to us), but that's the only way we could think of to help. The technical details are published here: https://ift.tt/1elDJb0 We need help on multiple fronts: - Please review and contribute to our repository on GitHub linked above. We need to improve the security and make deployment easier. - The methods for setting up Tor bridges described in the repository were working up until 2 days ago, but have mostly stopped working and we haven't figured out why yet, maybe you can help? - We have reports that V2Ray VMess and ShadowSocks are working inside Iran even at times when most other tools and protocols don't. We haven't been able to reliably deploy and test this (there are many configuration options and it's not clear which methods are working). Please create an issue or send a PR if you know how it works and how to deploy it. - If you are an Iranian expat: Get a server inside Iran and set this up for your family and friends and get them back online. - If you are an entrepreneur or work at a tech startup inside Iran: Your company already has servers inside Iran. Talk with your team, set up VPN servers and Tor bridges and share them with other employees and ask them to help get their family and friends online. Edit: Formatting.
584 by throwaway124592 | 91 comments on Hacker News.
As you probably have heard, there have been widespread protests going on inside Iran for the past week or so following the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the morality police. Following the protests, the government has cut off or severely limited residential and especially mobile broadband access to the internet and people can only access websites and services hosted inside Iran. This has made connecting to VPNs with servers outside Iran, and Tor close to impossible. That being said, the servers inside Iranian data centers still have access to the outside world. The government has also blocked Instagram and WhatsApp (the main channels of communication used by people inside Iran), and alternatives such as Telegram, Signal, etc are also blocked, halting communications to a crawl. People have to either call each other via GSM or send SMSs (which by the way is being monitored and messages containing keywords related to the protests don't even get delivered). As you can imagine, it's preventing people from coordinating the protests and strikes, and with the sattelite TVs being also heavily jammed, the only source of information accessible to most people is the government-led local TV channels which are distributing regime propaganda 24/7 and trying to scare people into submission. We (a group of tech people inside Iran) have started using the servers inside Iranian data centers gain access to the Internet, and are setting up VPN servers and Tor bridges and giving the information to people we know. It's not scalable, and it's risky for us (the servers inside Iran can be traced back to us), but that's the only way we could think of to help. The technical details are published here: https://ift.tt/1elDJb0 We need help on multiple fronts: - Please review and contribute to our repository on GitHub linked above. We need to improve the security and make deployment easier. - The methods for setting up Tor bridges described in the repository were working up until 2 days ago, but have mostly stopped working and we haven't figured out why yet, maybe you can help? - We have reports that V2Ray VMess and ShadowSocks are working inside Iran even at times when most other tools and protocols don't. We haven't been able to reliably deploy and test this (there are many configuration options and it's not clear which methods are working). Please create an issue or send a PR if you know how it works and how to deploy it. - If you are an Iranian expat: Get a server inside Iran and set this up for your family and friends and get them back online. - If you are an entrepreneur or work at a tech startup inside Iran: Your company already has servers inside Iran. Talk with your team, set up VPN servers and Tor bridges and share them with other employees and ask them to help get their family and friends online. Edit: Formatting.
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
New best story on Hacker News: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
580 by Hadjimina | 271 comments on Hacker News.
Hi everyone, Let me introduce you to Quazel, where we want to enable people to talk their way to fluency. We have all tried various language learning apps and tools, however, one aspect of language learning current services are really bad at is conversational practice. You might get a chat-like interface, but in the end, the conversation partner will only respond with a predefined "if the users say X I say Y". With Quazel that's completely different. In completely dynamic and unscripted conversation you can talk about pretty much anything you want. For example, you can try ordering food at a restaurant and even hold a philosophical discussion with Socrates. Additionally, you can analyze the grammar of your responses or use hints to help you out when you get stuck. We want to change how languages are learned from a grammar-centric approach to a more natural, conversation-focused one.
580 by Hadjimina | 271 comments on Hacker News.
Hi everyone, Let me introduce you to Quazel, where we want to enable people to talk their way to fluency. We have all tried various language learning apps and tools, however, one aspect of language learning current services are really bad at is conversational practice. You might get a chat-like interface, but in the end, the conversation partner will only respond with a predefined "if the users say X I say Y". With Quazel that's completely different. In completely dynamic and unscripted conversation you can talk about pretty much anything you want. For example, you can try ordering food at a restaurant and even hold a philosophical discussion with Socrates. Additionally, you can analyze the grammar of your responses or use hints to help you out when you get stuck. We want to change how languages are learned from a grammar-centric approach to a more natural, conversation-focused one.
