[sepent]

I live in Iran and I am lucky enough to have a connected link right now, but this is the last link among the others I lost in the previous hours. I was wondering is there any stable solution like satellite internet or something without direct affiliation with government for people like me, desperate enough to ask questions like this.

[athinggoingon]

Hi fellow Iranian. Install Toosheh while you can: https://twitter.com/radiojibi/status/1195802219884503040

[driverdan]

For those of us who can't speak Arabic, can you explain what Toosheh is?

[Mathnerd314]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toosheh. It's software for decoding a 1-6GB daily data dump broadcast over satellite TV.

[mavdi]

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-quickest-way-to-offend-an-Ir...

[kick]

It's Arabic script, though, isn't it?

[smnrchrds]

It is based on Arabic script, but it has quite a few differences. There are a couple of extra consonants (گ چ پ ژ), some letters are different (ک vs ك), (ی vs ي), etc. Some letters simply do not exist in Persian (ڤ‎). There are quite a few differences between the two.

Fun fact: during the era of Windows 9x, Windows did not have good (any?) support for Persian, but it supported Arabic. Since Iran is not a signatory to any international copyright treaties, that was not a problem. A company in Iran called Borna Rayaneh essentially patched Windows 95 and later 98 to make it work with Persian. Their patched Windows version was ubiquitous in Iran. It would take a couple of years and Windows versions until Windows' default installation was good enough for everyday use.

Unfortunately Borna made some engineering decisions in making their version whose result has been a mess whose effects could still be felt almost a quarter century later.

In order to make things work for Persian, they took the Arabic version and tweaked it just enough to make it usable. One of the things they did was taking an Arabic font, removing glyphs that Persian did not have, and replacing them with glyphs it did. Remember, this was the pre-Unicode days. This was the easiest way to make it work, as opposed to creating a new encoding system. Their fonts (called series B, because their names all started with B) are still widely used today, and they are far from ideal.

For example, you open a document that has all ک encoded as ك. But the font shows it as ك, so you don't know anything is wrong. You search for a word with ک and it doesn't find any matches. And if you are a non-technical person, you get the impression that search doesn't work and start looking through the 582-page document manually to find the word you are looking for.

Normalizing Arabic and Persian code points (to the best of my knowledge by manual replacement of one with the other, not built-in standard library functions, because they are actually different and the only reason they are sometimes mixed up is historical decisions) is a must if you want to implement any sort of search in a website or an app.

[marcosdumay]

> Since Iran is not a signatory to any international copyright treaties

Getting off from a tangent, how does that work? Your copyrights are ignored on any other country? Or do your people do something to get some kind of "international copyrights"?

I imagine it does not make much difference for patents, is that right?

[smnrchrds]

Just in case it is not quite clear what Borna Rayaneh did to fonts to add Persian support: they essentially took Arabic fonts and wingdinged them until they looked Persian.

Also the sentence saying "But the font shows it as ك" should read "But the font shows it as ک".

[apta]

> (ی vs ي)

Arabic has both, but they're pronounced differently from Farsi. (ي) is a (y) sound (like seed) whereas (ی) is either an (a) sound (like bat) or an (ay) sound (like may).

[solstice]

Thank you for the fascinating explanation and story

[ehsankia]

That's like if I said that your comment is French. Just because it uses the same alphabet doesn't mean it's the same language.

[MrMorden]

The writing system is based on Arabic (with several extra letters, and several retained from Arabic used only in loanwords), but Persian is a completely different language.

https://medium.com/@eteraz/the-death-of-the-urdu-script-9ce9...

[kick]

Thanks for sharing!

[skrebbel]

Sorry I don't understand your comment, I don't speak Latin

[koaladevops]

No it's Persian alphabet. They look similar but aren't exactly the same thing.

[bane]

In the same way that Russian is written with Greek letters.

[hassancf]

Yes, it’s the Arabic script. Many languages use the Arabic script, the same way many European languages use the Latin script.

[asadhaider]

I believe it's likely Farsi which uses the same Arabic alphabet but is a different language. People from Iran are Persian, not Arabs.

[smnrchrds]

> People from Iran are Persian, not Arabs.

People from Iran are from many different ethnicities, including Arabs [0]; although Arabs are one of the smaller ethnic minorities of Iran. Only about 60% of Iranians are Persian [1].

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Arabs

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iran#Languages...

[akhosravian]

The preferred term for the language is “Persian”. The word for the language in the language (Like “English” in English or “español” in Spanish) is Farsi.

The Wikipedia article on the organization that regulates the language has links to sources if you care to learn more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Persian_Language_...

[kick]

Obviously they're not Arabs, but I was unaware until now that it wasn't Arabic script! Cool!

[bklaasen]

Iranians mainly speak Farsi, an Indo-European language. There are other minority languages, none of them related to Arabic.

They use Arabic script (with modifications) to write Farsi.

[abolol]

Ahamd from NetFreedom Pioneers, developers of Toosheh, here:

Toosheh is a satellite filecasting service. We transcode any digital data into a .TS/MPEG4 format and broadcast it over our satellite channel on YahSat over Iran and the Middle East.

Viewers of the Toosheh channel can record the broadcasting video and use Toosheh extractor on their android phone or PC to extract the transmitted content out of the recorded video. It's free, secure, untraceable, and most importantly the ONLY way to send digital files in case of total Internet Shutdown.

Toosheh is sending over 5Gigabytes of data over 2 hours.

Toosheh extractor software could also be used to browse a package of blocked websites that are blocked in Iran i.e. BBC, Radio Farda, etc..

Using Toosheh application people can locally share the content with others over WiFi.

More here: https://www.cnet.com/features/in-iran-bypassing-online-censo...

[csomar]

That's not Arabic. Interestingly, the English version of the website (?) will take you here: https://knapsackforhope.org

[taspeotis]

https://knapsackforhope.org/

[therein]

Interestingly enough, it sounds like touché. I wonder if that's intentional.

[kick]

If you think you could organize people quickly enough, maybe a meshnet? Or if you can get your hands on a few high-powered radios, you can transfer bits through them, though slowly, and you'd require cooperation from others (or just use them to talk with other people, but that's probably not what you're looking for).

[dogma1138]

Considering IRGC counter intelligence is likely constantly monitoring for radio signals it’s probably not a good idea to do so.

A mesh radio network could easily look like a cell of foreign tasked assets spying on the country especially if any of the peers would be near strategic POI’s.

In a western country you might pay a fine after clearing up a misunderstanding even if does get you pulled out of your bed in the middle of the night. In Iran on the other hand your fate will likely be quite different...

[trevyn]

Honestly, it looks like IRGC isn’t going to be around much longer, so it’s probably fine.

[ficklepickle]

In the thread Toosheh is mentioned, a satellite filecasting service that operates in the middle east. It can be received with a regular TV satellite dish.

Just in case you weren't aware of it. Be safe.

[tracer4201]

This is an interesting notion and one I never thought about before - there is nothing preventing another state from beaming internet down to citizens of Iran (or any other nation that shuts down internet but lacks technology to shoot down a satellite...

If Elon Musk was to put satellites over Iran, what kind of ground infrastructure would be required for someone to connect? Can it be a radio that fits in ones pocket but can easily be connected via USB or some other ubiquitous interface? The goal here is to have something so easy to hide and transport that the government can maybe find it from 50% of the population at best.

[ISL]

It is hard to hide when you are transmitting RF. Even with beamforming, there will be sidelobes.

[mycall]

Maybe hiding doesn't matter. Of course, signal jamming isn't hard to achieve.

[marcosdumay]

For bidirectional data, yes. But a foreign country can broadcast easily.

[wcoenen]

> Can it be a radio that fits in ones pocket

No, Starlink will use a phased array antenna that has been described as being the size of a pizza box.

Iridium GO! devices are small and already exist, but you'll pay exorbitant prices for very low speeds.

[cartoonworld]

I don't know, but I would imagine Iridium service is embargoed.

[angott]

Satellite is also relatively easy to jam, like GPS.

[swiley]

If you’re ok with something slow there are dialup ISPs.

Even slower and without encryption (although cryptographic auth is ok) is PSKmail.

[aaomidi]

Dialup ISPs won't work in Iran right now.

Internet connectivity and international phone calls are managed by the govt.