> I tried out portmaster recently. Coming from rethinkdns on Android, I was far from impressed; it looks featured, but it's much harder to use. Opensnitch looks better but doesn't have the nice features
If 'far from impressed ... much harder to use' is about Rethink DNS + Firewall... Over the years, we've got numerous complaints about the UI over emails and on GitHub Issues, so we're acutely aware of the fact. In our defense, we have had no help from a designer, and couldn't come up with a good UX even if our life depended on it. We'll keep trying though.
> German-speaking EU you'd get real top-notch engineering for 120€/h
No disrespect to German-speaking engs, but Colin isn't merely "top-notch", he's "the top".
Huge salaries (like those paid to "top" athletes in "top" professional team sports) aren't unheard of in Tech anymore. For instance, Google paid $2b+ to acquihire Noam Shazeer of c.ai back. Meta was rumoured to be paying $20m+ salaries to poach OpenAI researchers based in Zurich.
disclaimer: I co-develop (FOSS) Little Snitch / Open Snitch inspired firewall but for Android
> little snitch given its a full kernel extension
On macOS, don't think Little Snitch needs kernel exclaves / extensions. Apple provides userspace ("Network Extension") APIs (however limited) for apps like Little Snitch to use (instead of pf).
> effectively able to MITM your whole network stack
"MITM" means something else, anywho... if network observability (not firewall) is the primary need, cross-platform (GUI) sniffers like Sniffnet exist: https://github.com/GyulyVGC/sniffnet
nahīñ hai nā-umīd 'iqbāl' apnī kisht-e-vīrāñ se
zarā nam ho to ye miTTī bahut zarḳhez hai saaqi
Do not despair over barren fields.
The soil is so fertile; a little rain is enough.
(The entire Urdu poem which probably is comparable to Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" is pretty good).
This coalition is "tiny" insofar NATO & the GCC (well, apart from Bahrain and the UAE) refused to join the attacks, despite Iran's transgressions. The US could wage this war for many years all alone, and force the GCC to watch as the region burned. I guess, Trump's administration isn't willing to go as far as the current Israeli leadership may have hoped or wanted. That said, the war could very well still flare up, if the events from past 2 years following "talks" are any indicator.
I don't disagree, but the expectation from the US Admin was some of their NATO allies would join (like they did in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq). Especially since the Oil spike hurts Europe (where the NATO nations are) the most.
> NATO is a defensive agreement
Turkey was attacked by Iran, though, it is unclear if Turkey would have invoked Art5 even if Iran had kept escalating.
> Freedom of navigation is a core global principal
Unlike Bosporus & Suez (similar choke points in the region), there's no international arrangement for the Hormuz bottleneck, nor has Iran ratified UNCLOS ("Convention on the Law of the Sea").
And in the real world I see, the Iranian regime is able to absorb a tremendous amount of pain and stay in power.
During their war with Iraq they cleared mine fields with big groups of teenagers.
I think it’s likely they would withstand whatever the US bombing does, and in return damage tons of gulf oil and gas infrastructure, as well as ships already in the gulf.
> And in the real world I see, the Iranian regime is able to absorb a tremendous amount of pain and stay in power.
Tragic for the Iranian people, but also it has only been 5 weeks. We’ve destroyed whatever we can find and their regime is routinely blown up once we find them. Exercising control and staying in power amounts to them hanging 19 year old kids. But sure they’re “in power”.
The US can do damage too. As Trump threatened we could quite literally ensure that the country has no functioning infrastructure forever. No power. Nothing. Meanwhile Iran will eventually run out of missiles, unless of course Russia helps them out. Not that anyone seems to remember Iran helping Russia for some reason when they gloat about how they think the Iranians have the upper hand. Hell the US just forced them to open the straight for 2 weeks and sit down at the table.
The US 'forced' them to do this by agreeing in principal that Iran could charge that toll (along with 9 other points).
The question isn't whether the US can destroy Iran, it obviously could(as evil as that would be). The question is does the US want to pay the price of continuing the war more than the price of agreeing to those points, and would Iran pay the price required to fight back if it does not get the US to capitulate on those points.
I can tell you what will happen to any boat that doesn't pay the extortion (toll) and enters the straight. So realistically it doesn't matter if it's in breach of maritime norms, who's going to restart attacks on Iran to enforce those norms if the US capitulated on it?
The Iranian regime doesn't care what "age" their people are living in and have been stockpiling weapons for enough decades to follow through on their threats.
And every time I read "we have destroyed 3000% of Iran's weapons capability", I read about more missiles and drones flying.
It should be remembered these points have not been agreed - they are the basis for the Iranian negotiation over the next two weeks. There is no guarantee that the US will not simply reject it and start bombing again - in fact, considering the model for Trump's strategies (comrade Vladimir Putin and his "special military operation" in Ukraine), that's probably what they'll do.
Technically this war might be "won" by carrying out this threat--just as it could be "won" by using nuclear weapons--but the long-term strategic damage done to the winner by using those means would perhaps spawn a new phrase with more a sweeping strategic connotation than "Pyrrhic". "Trumpian" springs to mind.
Presumably, the ships that want to pass through the strait will have to care. As you said, there's no room for compromise.
> shows they don’t live in the real world.
i don't think iran is the country living in a world of delusion—to the contrary, they seem to understand how to leverage their position better than israel, the US, and the gulf states combined.
I don’t think they do because they’re not doing anything that wasn’t already prepared for. Remember while prices rise means MAGA is mad about their Ford truck gas prices… big deal… countries in Asia are switching to 4-days in the office and Italian cities are restricting jet fuel. The leverage they have is, frankly, to the extent they can make the world mad against America but most adults in the room know you can’t have these guys holding 20% of the world’s oil hostage. Even China seems to have been pressuring Iran.
> but most adults in the room know you can’t have these guys holding 20% of the world’s oil hostage.
...where, presumably, your understanding of "adult" is whether or not they align with the US? C'mon; be serious. We've been acting like spoiled toddlers throwing a tantrum for the last fifty years because we can't twist iran into kissing our ass.
> ...where, presumably, your understanding of "adult" is whether or not they align with the US?
No, bad assumption. I think about these things for myself though of course nobody is immune to their cultural biases, whether that's the Ayatollah or a MAGA anti-war protestor.
> C'mon; be serious. We've been acting like spoiled toddlers throwing a tantrum for the last fifty years because we can't twist iran into kissing our ass.
Don't think anyone cares about Iran kissing our ass. Instead folks are tired of:
Iran murdering its own citizens
Constantly threatening to destroy the United States and Israel - if words don't matter and we shouldn't take threats seriously, it goes both ways then, so stop pearl-clutching at Trump's threats
Iran loading up on missiles to make it even more difficult to stop them from extorting the rest of the world via threats to blow up ships in the Straight
Iran funding and arming terrorist groups (as designated by the United States and European Union) including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis which are responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians
Iran trying to build a nuclear weapon (see threats)
Iran supplying Russia with drones so that Russia can prosecute its unjust war against Ukraine
> Constantly threatening to destroy the United States and Israel
We should destroy both states, though—they've destabilized the globe enormously and constantly shit on the international order. Especially in the last 25 years. And I say this especially as an American. I have no beef with Iran, and Iran has no beef with me or anyone I love. Israel has killed orders of magnitude more Americans than Iran has.
> Iran loading up on missiles to make it even more difficult to stop them from extorting the rest of the world via threats to blow up ships in the Straight
That's just a rational state acting rationally. Why are we getting involved at all?
> Iran funding and arming terrorist groups (as designated by the United States and European Union) including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis which are responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians
But you're fine with the IDF, who has killed orders of magnitude more civilians (and Americans) than any of the above groups? Why?
> Iran trying to build a nuclear weapon (see threats)
See: a rational state acting rationally. By all logic that we justify our own nukes, the world would be safer off if every state had them. If that weren't the case, surely we would be trying to disarm for the collective safety of all humanity (including us).
> Iran supplying Russia with drones so that Russia can prosecute its unjust war against Ukraine
I don't really care. Ukraine has decided that hundreds of thousands should die before they capitulate and that's their decision.
It was working just fine, until Bibi decided he wanted to be remembered as "the guy who completed Israel" so he needed a distraction to try and finish Hezbollah. It will work just fine once Trump is cut to size and the adults get back in the room.
While Iran and Israel don't 'have the backbone to disagree & commit', while there's much 'earn trust' between Saudia/Bahrain/UAE & Iran to do, and while Amazon should 'insist on higher standards' from CENTCOM, it must also 'think big' military things as 'success and scale bring broad responsibility' and most certainly 'dive deep' in to new-age ew/autonomous tech and 'deliver results' through "AWS air & land" weapons systems of their own; and not forget to 'hire & develop the best' mercenaries who would show 'bias for action' & operate with ruthlessness hitherto unknown to humankind. Wouldn't that make Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie proud.
> Government obviously pretty silent on all these failures and media doesn't want to dig and ask hard questions
Some analysts are sure drumming up the severity [0]. In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not. The proposal by the current US Admin to increase defence spending by 40% to $1.5t is not a welcome sign for those opposed to heavy spending, for any number of reasons.
> In the fog of war, it is hard to tell what's exaggerated and what's not.
Honestly it's more than that. Propaganda and lies put out by ALL actors in this conflict. If you want to understand what's going on I think you have the expose yourself to as many competing sources as you can find. And still you're going to end up with a very shoddy picture. The term for this is epistemic collapse.
One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
I like to think that I live in a free/liberal democratic portion of the world, but seeing the "other side" being more honest really puts a dent in things.
> One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
The most recent example - I have been seeing reels/tik toks fronted by young women, that push Iranian talking points, they were saying that Trump's announcements on the conflict were timed to manipulate markets, and to "watch tomorrow"
They were referring to a Sunday before the Markets opened, and right on cue President Trump started making announcements that had a massive effect on market movements
Previously the USA government were downplaying (then retaliatory) Iranian drone attacks on bases in the middle east, claiming zero damage, and laughing at the attackers, the Iranians provided footage that showed real damage, and the US military released statement(s) that agreed with the Iranian claims.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that the Iranian regime is anything but a steaming pile of ew, but the lesson we were supposed to learn from the Vietnam war, and the Iraq war (II), was that hearts and minds are the key to "winning", and that's built on trust, which is built on transparency and honesty.
not only that, one big fact is that the Trump administration attacked twice Iran during negotiations. That sort of backstabbing gives you a sense of what their word is worth.
The easy example is that meta was full of influencers confirming the war was over, with the us having won, at a time Iran's own statements declared otherwise. That was a while back.
>One of the things I have disliked about the Iranian conflict is that their propaganda/messaging has been, by quite a margin, more reliable than what the US/Israel have been putting out.
Kek. Tell me you live in a bubble without telling me you live in a bubble.
"Both are doing propaganda, but one side's propaganda is totally less propaganda" gave me a good laugh today, thank you
The multiple sources don't know either, the reason the picture is shoddy is it is necessarily composed of the primary information that is coming from ... people with the strongest incentive to lie. There aren't a lot of independent ways to assess the situation. And of course that is part of the fog of war - even the militairy struggles to put together a picture of what is going on. I'd imagine that defining where the front-line is presents a complex and uncertain exercise for the commanders involved.
The only thing I think can be said reliably is that this has been going on for weeks, the Strait seems to be more closed than open, Trump is clearly out of his depth and the US is sending more units to the area. All of those point to a serious problem for the US military.
> I tried out portmaster recently. Coming from rethinkdns on Android, I was far from impressed; it looks featured, but it's much harder to use. Opensnitch looks better but doesn't have the nice features
If 'far from impressed ... much harder to use' is about Rethink DNS + Firewall... Over the years, we've got numerous complaints about the UI over emails and on GitHub Issues, so we're acutely aware of the fact. In our defense, we have had no help from a designer, and couldn't come up with a good UX even if our life depended on it. We'll keep trying though.
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