If there’s nothing happening, then the obvious way for the authorities to prove that is to let observers in, and let independent information out. They do not do this, so I will take these reports of deaths more seriously.
E.g. like reading the sentence:
>TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
And going "hmmm".
> >TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
> And going "hmmm".
Journalists couldn’t possibly independently verify large scale death counts, especially at this point.
That doesn’t mean they’re wrong or propaganda.
If you start “going hmmm” when journalists honestly report their own limitations then that’s just going to leave you more vulnerable to the psy-op peddlers who never give such disclaimers.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-casualty-counts-us-funde...
There is footage slowly trickling out.
I have to imagine the situation in Iran is more difficult for a few reasons:
1. Gen AI is much better today than it was in 2022. So, both sides can generate much more realistic fakes.
2. There was an article here on HN about Iran's internet slowly coming back on a whitelist basis. We're probably getting more pro-Government videos now than we were at the beginning of the current events.
3. Further crackdown on Starlink minimizes authentic leaks (I only heard about this and have no way to confirm how impactful this really is)
I'll add my own anecdotal agreement with your suspicion though - the footage coming out of Iran has been, for me, more difficult than other conflicts to piece together into a cohesive story. Western countries are claiming 30k+ dead, and while I don't necessarily reject the claim, the situation on the ground is still very blurry to me.
I am sure some people would like to know who’s on the whitelist.
[edit] I don't get why I'm getting downvoted. Are people making assumptions because I mentioned Dresden? Get a hold of yourself.
And the crowd itself can be deadly if it gets too dense, due to panic or otherwise. For example, there have been at least two crowd collapse events with >1000 deaths in the Mecca pilgrimage.
The 30,000 number comes from the Ministry of Health. It seems the UN number also aligns with the new 30,000 number. This is much worse than the 3,000 that was reported earlier. But it also seems like the crackdown is over now, and we're still just counting deaths from Jan 8 and 9.
I compare this to the recent protests in Bangladesh, where Sheikh Hasina ordered the military to shoot the protesters and the military refused. The difference between these two countries is proof that people do have the ability to disobey orders from authoritarian leaders, and that decision can have a huge impact.
Then why does the article say that they couldn't independently verify the number and that the only source is a German-Iranian eye doctor?
It comes, allegedly, from people from that ministry who were talking to TIME.
I would imagine their contact was probably mediated by the state department - the same people currently gearing up for an Iraq-style invasion.
Later on TIME adds:
>TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
Which is not altogether unsurprising. TIME wasnt exactly the most careful magazine when it came to verifying state department supplied intelligence about WMDs back in 2003.
It will be his greatest act as president if Trump sends real assistance, as the Iranian people are begging him. It will save countless lives. Either way, in the end, Persia will rise again, the lion will raise its head, the brutality of Islamic oppression will be cast off, and the world will come to know the true spirit of these people.
This is Iran's third total internet shutdown, but the methodology has evolved into something far more surgical. They didn't just block IP addresses; they severed BGP routes, killed mobile data, and effectively jammed Starlink signals into a dead zone thanks to Russian imports. When the signal itself is murdered, your Tor bridges and VPNs become expensive paperweights.
As builders, we are being out-engineered. We have grown complacent, assuming the "always-on" cloud is a fundamental constant of the universe. But if your software requires a remote handshake to function, it is a liability, not a tool, in a crisis zone. Every application built with heavy reliance on centralized APIs vaporizes the moment the backbone is cut.
We must stop designing for the "connected" illusion and start building for the darkness.
This is my plea to the HN community: stop treating "offline-first" as a niche feature and start treating it as a human right. We need robust, decentralized mesh networks that bypass state-controlled gateways entirely. We need isolated documentation tools and local-first databases that can sync via Bluetooth or physical handoffs.
Build for the 212 regions that went dark last year so that the next time a state pulls the plug, the people aren't left helpless.
a throwaway account for obvious reasons (they have also Chinese tech to track); make your code work when the world goes quiet.
I charitably assume you used it for translation, but I wanted you to know that AI "voice" is grating to a lot of people
I'm not saying that nobody should ever consider "the state cuts off the internet" as a criteria when deciding what to do, but making that a foundational requirement is like starting out with "handle google-scale" as a requirement when you have zero reason to believe you will.
There are plenty of good reasons for local first apps, but "build for darkness" is pretty far down the list for me.
The sad thing about continuing development of existing technologies is that all reliability, robustness, and multi-purpose capabilities get optimized away over time. In the ideal world, companies wouldn't even sell you hardware or software, they'd just charge for magically doing the one thing you want at the moment, with no generality and no agency on your end.
It's a miracle we still have electric outlets in homes, and not just bunch of hard-wired appliances plugged in by vendor subcontractors.
As opposed to what? Everyone pays the overhead and price of apps designed for things like local-first Bluetooth sync?
This is a situation where the market will prevail and people would go toward (and therefore pay for) apps designed to fit their needs, not apps designed around rare and unusual scenarios.
Build specific tools for specific situations. You won’t get anywhere trying to get all general purpose apps to focus on niche requirements.
I think having an offline map of at least the region you live in can come in handy. In fact, I carry an old phone with impressive battery life (Samsung Galaxy A10) and offline maps installed on it so I don't get lost.
The funny part of engineers is that they always think that, at some point, they will reach perfect engineering.
The best engineering already exists and you do not need to do a thing. Code will not save you from the shtstorm that is coming.
This is the opposite of what I’ve observed. Most engineers know that everything is tradeoffs and compromises. They know there will always be a better way.
A lot of engineering management is getting engineering teams to accept good enough rather than endless iterations and refactoring.
I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of the problems in Iran, but switching to a world where tools are design first for syncing via Bluetooth and offline methods just isn’t going to make a better world for all of us.
You need specialized tools for specialized situations. Trying to get the whole world to pay the overhead of mesh networks and Bluetooth handoffs and all of the design choices that go along with it would be a mistake.
The software world is monolithic. Pleas for everyone to stop building for the way the world works and start building for highly unusual and specific use cases isn’t reasonable.
Build specialized tools for specialized circumstances. They will always serve the purpose far better than if you try to get everyone to build their general purpose tools around extremely rare circumstances.
Expecting a robust ecosystem of offline-first apps, ideally compatible with everyone else's existing apps, would be awesome.
An opt-in facebook streaming offline mode where posts are queued and sent...
or an opt-in signal mode where p2p messaging is possible via transient connections (imagine the data mule movie that would be coming out in 2030). All this is technically possible, just not prioritized.
Perhaps we know, but the reasons will be unpopular.
and the islamic regime was a sponsor of previous pro-palestine movements.
leftists don't find this an appealing mix. they'd rather blame Israel for everything, but here we see Iranians siding with the Israelis because they've seen what islam does to their country.
China in Tibet, China's treatment of the Uyghurs, Russia's war against Ukraine, Kony 2012 etc, there are lots of causes where the local government in whichever country you look at isn't actively involved, yet there was a lot more public noise and campaigns.
I don't know what the answer is, but "my government doesn't deliver weapons to them" hasn't been a reason before, so I don't see why it would be now.
This is very different from Israel, where our govts are actively supporting a genocide. That requires activism to change course.
Why would people demonstrate if everyone is aligned?
“Human beings are members of a whole
In creation of one essence and soul
If one member is afflicted with pain
Other members uneasy will remain
If you have no sympathy for human pain
The name of human you cannot retain”
—Saadi, Persian poet
Unfortunately, ABC and NBC haven't found a way to blame Trump for what's happening in Iran. Highlighting the atrocities perpetuated in the name of Islam is more likely to help Trump than hurt him, so this story must be minimized. It's just good, smart politics.
The only NGO looking for Iran exclusively is Iran Human Right (https://iranhr.net/en/) and depend on the UNHRC, which is not particularly media trained and not good at reacting (also, they lost US funding less than a year ago and are reorganizing as we speak).
In the end, it will be like Yemen or Sudan all over again: media hear of the massacre late, send journalists, journalists get refused, they send journalists to neighboring countries and infiltrate with local guide help, some journalist dies, and three month after the beginning of the trouble we will get images and information.
Labeling it a "protest" is equating it to what a bunch of clustered people holding stupid billboards and yelling into microphones. This isn't that.
How come I wonder?
Then I'm sure the full might and wrath of the U.S. military would be unleashed upon him and his regime...
inshard•1h ago