I'd like to offer a few words about why Parler's "Russian IP" is nothing of note to me.

First, the IP belongs to ddos-guard, a CDN (Content Delivery Network). First, a CDN is a service gets content to your site visitors faster through methods which aren't important right now. /1

Well, it kind of is, hrm. There are two ways it makes it faster: 1. by putting copies of often-loaded content closer to the end users, and by using a dedicated network to spread out to places closer to your end users. There's a problem: right now DDOS-guard isn't doing that.
Right now, when you look up https://t.co/6vN8gzCjkW, the return is a single IP address in Russia. That IP is not in Russia, it's in Belize.
DDoS-guard offers a service where you locate your own address allocation on their network, but this isn't what Parler is doing (yet, and I suspect they never will).

Basically, all we know is that Parler has not committed to using ddos-guard yet, in the sense that they...
aren't using it for anything that would be useful from a technical point of view (with the possible exception of some network filtering). I say that because CDNs really shine when you have a page that makes a lot of calls back to the origin server, but right now...
...it's nothing more than a really crappy group microblog. Speaking of which, here's the latest entry:
Speaking of which, if anyone out there has the Parler app downloaded, I'd be genuinely curious as to what you're seeing. They may feel so badly burned by clients that are out of their control (e.g. a web browser) that they may have dumbed it down. Just covering bases here.
My point is that people tying Parler using a Russian CDN to it somehow being under the thumb of the Russian government, well, that's like you getting thrown out of one bar, going to another one, the bartender putting a coaster under your glass, and someone jumping up...
...and pointing at the coaster, saying "AHA, THE OWNER OF THIS PLACE OWNS YOUR SOUL NOW!"

My point is that the choice of CDN is the least interesting part about this. Focus on things like whether Rebeccah Mercer is still throwing money at Parler: https://t.co/BwcOUgU7Bh
Because if they're going to an iffy CDN and they're shying away from spending $1K/mo. for a real plan that would put endpoints closer to their clients, it may be that she's not, which would be really big news. /fin
Also: testing with a VPN, that IP address in Belize is what you get pointed at connecting from both US East and West, Bulgaria, Australia and Japan.

That's not a CDN, it's basically a single remote reverse proxy with some traffic filtering thrown in.

More from Tech

There has been a lot of discussion about negative emissions technologies (NETs) lately. While we need to be skeptical of assumed planetary-scale engineering and wary of moral hazard, we also need much greater RD&D funding to keep our options open. A quick thread: 1/10

Energy system models love NETs, particularly for very rapid mitigation scenarios like 1.5C (where the alternative is zero global emissions by 2040)! More problematically, they also like tons of NETs in 2C scenarios where NETs are less essential.
https://t.co/M3ACyD4cv7 2/10


In model world the math is simple: very rapid mitigation is expensive today, particularly once you get outside the power sector, and technological advancement may make later NETs cheaper than near-term mitigation after a point. 3/10

This is, of course, problematic if the aim is to ensure that particular targets (such as well-below 2C) are met; betting that a "backstop" technology that does not exist today at any meaningful scale will save the day is a hell of a moral hazard. 4/10

Many models go completely overboard with CCS, seeing a future resurgence of coal and a large part of global primary energy occurring with carbon capture. For example, here is what the MESSAGE SSP2-1.9 scenario shows: 5/10

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“We don’t negotiate salaries” is a negotiation tactic.

Always. No, your company is not an exception.

A tactic I don’t appreciate at all because of how unfairly it penalizes low-leverage, junior employees, and those loyal enough not to question it, but that’s negotiation for you after all. Weaponized information asymmetry.

Listen to Aditya


And by the way, you should never be worried that an offer would be withdrawn if you politely negotiate.

I have seen this happen *extremely* rarely, mostly to women, and anyway is a giant red flag. It suggests you probably didn’t want to work there.

You wish there was no negotiating so it would all be more fair? I feel you, but it’s not happening.

Instead, negotiate hard, use your privilege, and then go and share numbers with your underrepresented and underpaid colleagues. […]