It’s a little bit Ironic that they use the name of an American super hero
diggan 49 minutes ago [-]
AFAIK, "Stark" is a fairly common last name (one of my sisters has that last name), meaning "Strong" at least in Sweden and probably the neighbor-countries too.
brazzy 10 minutes ago [-]
It's not just "Stark", it's "Stark Industries". That is not a coincidence.
DFHippie 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nickff 13 hours ago [-]
It is my understanding that Marvel Studios' Tony Stark was modeled after him, rather than the other way around. Additionally, he had a cameo in one of the Iron Man movies.
simsla 12 hours ago [-]
Elon was three years old when the first Iron Man comic book came out.
EDIT: and the movies are pretty faithful to the comic books.
dotnet00 12 hours ago [-]
The movie personality of Tony Stark was supposedly inspired by Musk's persona (at least from before he began spending most of his time in a futile attempt to woo Trump)
"In 2022, Iron Man screenwriter Mark Fergus confirmed that Musk had partly inspired the screen version of the Marvel hero, as both men share tech prowess, arrogance and a short fuse. He told New York magazine that Stark was as if “Musk took the brilliance of [Steve] Jobs with the showmanship of [Donald] Trump,” adding: “He was the only one who had the fun factor and the celebrity vibe and actual business substance.”"
Edit: I'm not quite sure why Musk was brought up unprompted though, made it seem like he has something to do with this company, but it doesn't seem like that's the case?
kingkongjaffa 11 hours ago [-]
This is pretty revisionist. In 2008 when the first Iron Man movie came out, Trump wasn’t on anyone’s radar let alone used as inspiration for anything.
Talanes 11 hours ago [-]
The 1993 movie Super Mario Bros. features both a major and minor antagonist clearly modeled after Donald Trump. He was a well known, highly referenced figure for DECADES before he entered politics. Where are you getting this idea that nobody in 2008 could have been thinking about Donald Trump?
He was literally in the middle of his 13-year run on Network tv. If he hadn't won the presidency, that would be talked about as the apex of his time as a public figure.
pezezin 10 hours ago [-]
Isn't the alternate timeline version of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future 2 modeled after Donald Trump? That movie was released in 1989...
yahoozoo 9 hours ago [-]
The screenwriter said some time _after_ 2016 with never previously noting the connection so take that as you will.
Philpax 11 hours ago [-]
Donald Trump has been a public figure for much longer than just the last ten years. By 2008, the Apprentice had already been running for four years. He ran for president in 2000. The portrayal of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future 2 (1989) was partially based on his public persona at the time.
And, having been a kid at the time, I remember excitedly talking with friends about how Elon Musk was the real life Tony Stark. We were young enough to be insulated from his controveries, and to not truly appreciate how impossible the Iron Man suit was.
tomjakubowski 12 hours ago [-]
His cameo in IM2 was part of the deal he made to let the producers use a SpaceX facility.
yareally 6 hours ago [-]
I feel Tony Stark is more like Howard Hughes than Elon. His dad even looks a bit like him in the movies
The comic book Tony Stark was definitely modeled on Hughes, but it seems like the (Marvel Studios) movie Stark was at least partially based on Musk.
dabeeeenster 15 hours ago [-]
WTH is a “bulletproof host”? Been working in the industry for 30 years and never once heard it?
david_shaw 15 hours ago [-]
> WTH is a “bulletproof host”?
A "bulletproof" host or provider is the colloquial term for a business that will not reveal your identity, payment information, provide LEO access, respond to subpoenas, etc.
It's generally used by cyber-criminals as a "safe" vendor, though some privacy-minded individuals like this type of provider as well.
zamadatix 12 hours ago [-]
> provide LEO access
Those poor astronauts! ("Law Enforcement Officer", for anyone else not in the know).
tharkun__ 11 hours ago [-]
Especially helpful hint coz the other thread's talking about Elon </SCNR>
NooneAtAll3 3 hours ago [-]
great
inventing new word when we don't need one
Blahah 3 hours ago [-]
Which word did you think was new?
cptnapalm 15 hours ago [-]
My mind first jump to an old video of somebody shooting a Sun Microsystems machine and the bullets did not in fact penetrate the steel.
I forgot about the HP one! I distinctly remember there was a Sun too; it was like a backyard shoot.
willvarfar 5 hours ago [-]
There was an awesome viral video of someone offloading their frustration and a full mag on an HP printer. Now I can't find the original because it started a trend of copiers.
It says so in the article. Isp's who ignore authorities and allow anything to happen on their networks.
Rotdhizon 12 hours ago [-]
Imagine a rack of servers in some countries where global and even that country's law can't really touch them. "cyber gangs" and the like will use those servers as hosting for their malware and activities.
aswegs8 1 hours ago [-]
Interesting that Netherlands seems to be one of these lawless places...?
IlikeKitties 10 hours ago [-]
> even that country's law can't really touch them.
Well, that countries law enforcement could always cut off those servers. It's usually either due to corruption or in case of russia political intent that these servers are kept online.
bobthepanda 2 hours ago [-]
It kind of depends, a lot of the recent ones are in Myanmar where the state is in not much position to enforce much of anything due to the whole civil war thing.
dabeeeenster 15 hours ago [-]
Thanks for the replies. Should have RTFA I guess
YcYc10 2 hours ago [-]
Criminal-friendly
lucb1e 13 hours ago [-]
> Been working in the industry for 30 years and never once heard it?
Others already answered but while I'm chiming in anyway, I'm not in the hosting industry but IT security (for like ten years, say) and for me it's a very normal term. Maybe precisely because of that niche though; many of us are paranoid
hrdwdmrbl 16 hours ago [-]
Sometimes it feels like the internet is still the wild west.
The EU tries to rope off a single building with velvet ropes, a doorman, ID verification, facial scans, and cookie banners, while next door it's an illegal rave in an abandoned supermarket.
devjab 15 hours ago [-]
I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation. What websites should do is that they should assume you reject any tracking as their default, and then they can offer a site setting that you have to seek out, where you can agree to be tracked. What they are sort of allowed to do, is that they can prompt you with a banner, but it has to be a single no-click without requiring you to read much, but that is still not compliance. Anything more annoying is a legal violation.
The real issue is that there aren't a whole lot of consequences when it comes to tracking data. It's a legal violation, sure, but it's not a criminal violation. So it would be up to you to pursue it. In many countries you can't even file a civil lawsuit, but rather, you have to go through your national data protection agency. Which in reality likely means your complaint will be auto-rejected after five years because they need to clean up the queue.
As far as the malicious disobedience goes... well... it's probably because "all the other website do it", but you might as well just give people the option to go to a setting to turn it off. It's not like that would be any less of a legal violation than the banner.
IanCal 14 hours ago [-]
Sort of aside but it’s wild to me that people talk of ab testing all kinds of minor things and yet so many shops immediately cover up the item I’m viewing with a huge banner/full page annoyance about cookies.
willvarfar 5 hours ago [-]
The other day I accidentally double-clicked on the the dismiss of a popup and the second click went through to the page underneath and I added an item to cart.
Don't know if it was intentionally positioned like that but I was ready to imagine it was.
zamadatix 12 hours ago [-]
The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, it's very possible the same places found the tracking data is worth the annoyance.
14 hours ago [-]
PeterStuer 3 hours ago [-]
You are not wrong, but the fact that they never follow up and allow the practice makes them complicit. Same for the farcical malicious (non-)compliance of the GFPR through 'legitimate intetest' abuse.
sjiabq 1 hours ago [-]
What are they supposed to do about it?
They didn't want user data to be sent to third-parties without consent, so they created a law that made it mandatory for web pages to ask for consent to send the data. Most web pages need to send data to third-parties to be profitable, so they need to ask for consent.
What would the next steps be like? The purpose of the law is to give users the power to consent or not consent. In other words, I can pay for the contents of a web page with my data. Removing that option from me doesn't give me power to do whatever I want with my data: it takes that power away from me instead. That would be bad.
Propelloni 2 hours ago [-]
I agree with your sentiment, but it would really be a great step to stop calling these things "cookie banners" and use "consent banners" or "tracking banners". Call them what they are.
Because it is not the means, it is the intent that the GDPR tries to protect you from. The GDPR (and EDP) says that tracking, any tracking not just cookies, requires the consent of the tracked one.
petcat 12 hours ago [-]
> I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation.
The EU's own government websites are littered with the obnoxious cookie banners [1].
It's an unbelievably thoughtless and misguided law that has unfortunately ruined the internet. I think a lot of people rightfully blame the EU and they're terrible lawmaking for this nonsense.
I don't seem to get them from outside the EU (even with my adblocker disabled), so a law saying they need an annoying banners I agree to before they go for it might actually be a step up.
willvarfar 5 hours ago [-]
At least it has a 'only necessary cookies' option and you don't have to click through a lot of 'settings' to get them off.
pmontra 4 hours ago [-]
It's also easy to hide with the element picker of uBO. It's a DOM element with a straightforward id #cookie-consent-banner
erulabs 15 hours ago [-]
If the majority of users use the system wrong, it's the system that's wrong, not the users.
jdlshore 14 hours ago [-]
That rubric only applies when the users aren’t actively and maliciously sabotaging the system, which privacy-subverting websites absolutely are. (And everyone else is cargo-cutting their behavior.)
chatmasta 13 hours ago [-]
To be fair, I’m sabotaging it from the other side with my ad-blocker.
kevin_thibedeau 13 hours ago [-]
Defending yourself from abuse is not an excuse for others to engage in abuse. I have no issue with passive 90's-style ads. I don't need to block them. I use my abuse-blocker to handle more concerning problems.
WesolyKubeczek 14 hours ago [-]
Note that the most annoying consent banners come from advertising conglomerates (IAB comes to mind). Well who would think they wouldn’t sabotage anything?
giveita 12 hours ago [-]
The physical world is like that too!
rubiquity 12 hours ago [-]
If anything the internet has become more of the wild west and will continue to do so as the internet is incredibly useful for state actors.
TacticalCoder 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
trhway 16 hours ago [-]
Sanctions?! What sanctions? They don't even hide, right in the heart of Western Europe:
MIRhosting, a leading provider of enterprise-grade colocation and IT infrastructure services in Europe, proudly announces the launch of two dedicated, fully equipped data rooms at its newest location within the NorthC data center in Nieuwegein. This strategic expansion strengthens MIRhosting's colocation capabilities, directly addressing the growing demand for reliable and scalable colocation solutions in the greater Amsterdam region...."
yieldcrv 15 hours ago [-]
this is more common and easier than people think, and I think this conflict was necessary to exposure the hubris behind global superpowers
they think they're omnipotent but really don't control the world, rendering economic sanctions and service blacklisting to be null and moot
pessimizer 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
galaxy_gas 15 hours ago [-]
Ignoring the narrative portion , I routinely block the PQ IP spaces which change frequently in my services. They are mass brute force and exploit attempt-abuse report is ignored, spam/exploit scan, botnet CNC
I have not seen legitimate single request from ANY ip in this. Only spam bot and brute.
ACCount37 13 hours ago [-]
And you never would - if you keep slapping IP bans left and right.
Blanket IP bans should have died back in 00s, where they belong. Instead, we still get wannabe webmasters applying them willy-nilly - with gatekeepers like Cloudflare enabling them.
dafelst 15 hours ago [-]
From TFA
> Materializing just two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Stark Industries Solutions became a frequent source of massive DDoS attacks, Russian-language proxy and VPN services, malware tied to Russia-backed hacking groups, and fake news.
Nihilartikel 15 hours ago [-]
I did a pro bono analysis of a ddos against a dolphin protection non profit, probably a lashing out from a butthurt fishing concern. A significant amount of traffic in that attack originated from the stark asn. Interesting to see them here.
trhway 15 hours ago [-]
> censorship of Russians
why not censor Russians? They had as of now already censored forever about a million of Ukranians and have shown all the intentions to do it more and more.
And Russia doesn't allow foreign propaganda inside Russia (it is a felony there), so it is absolutely normal to block Russian propaganda inside the foreign countries (and notice that nobody spreading Russian propaganda are put in jail for that in foreign countries though that would be only fair) .
tryauuum 14 hours ago [-]
Because the tools created for censorship for the good cause are too dangerous to exist
Governments quickly realize that they cannot effectively block websites in foreign jurisdictions. The only way to achieve this is to tell local ISPs which subnets to block, and fine them if they disobey. When this automation is in place, the government can block any website in a matter of hours, no matter where it is located
eptcyka 14 hours ago [-]
The tools exist as is, that cat has been out of the bag for quite a while.
tryauuum 13 hours ago [-]
Not in my country. The ISP just blocks a domain name on the ISP-provided DNS server, which is a joke in the world of dns-over-https
eptcyka 2 hours ago [-]
The ISP chooses to not do that. The tools exist, they cost more money and complexity, but they definitely exist.
trhway 13 hours ago [-]
>Because the tools created for censorship for the good cause are too dangerous to exist ....the government can block any website in a matter of hours
yet the tools of war do exist. Even though the government can kill anybody in a matter of minutes.
And we do already have tools to block spam, and there is no difference between spam and Russian propaganda.
tryauuum 5 hours ago [-]
Comparing it to the physical thing is not fair. Murder is slow, and for mass murder at least there are people who will have to agree and do it. Compare it to automatically blocking a website after a button is pressed
And murder is transparent, you cannot murder many people without a public reaction. With the internet though... They can block thousands of IPS and no one will know. And you cannot access the database of the blocked resources because, who are you, a pedophile?
I have a feeling I cannot explain how painful it is to live in a country destroying the internet. I wanted to leave the Russia even before the war because of that. Now I am extremely allergic to any government's censorship attempts
awesome_dude 13 hours ago [-]
Have you heard of the great firewall of China at all?
preisschild 15 hours ago [-]
This is not "censorship". These are Russian state-sponsored influence operations against countries it might want to invade (hybrid warfare)
Rendered at 10:12:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
EDIT: and the movies are pretty faithful to the comic books.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/28/robert-downey-j...
"In 2022, Iron Man screenwriter Mark Fergus confirmed that Musk had partly inspired the screen version of the Marvel hero, as both men share tech prowess, arrogance and a short fuse. He told New York magazine that Stark was as if “Musk took the brilliance of [Steve] Jobs with the showmanship of [Donald] Trump,” adding: “He was the only one who had the fun factor and the celebrity vibe and actual business substance.”"
Edit: I'm not quite sure why Musk was brought up unprompted though, made it seem like he has something to do with this company, but it doesn't seem like that's the case?
He was literally in the middle of his 13-year run on Network tv. If he hadn't won the presidency, that would be talked about as the apex of his time as a public figure.
And, having been a kid at the time, I remember excitedly talking with friends about how Elon Musk was the real life Tony Stark. We were young enough to be insulated from his controveries, and to not truly appreciate how impossible the Iron Man suit was.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes
A "bulletproof" host or provider is the colloquial term for a business that will not reveal your identity, payment information, provide LEO access, respond to subpoenas, etc.
It's generally used by cyber-criminals as a "safe" vendor, though some privacy-minded individuals like this type of provider as well.
Those poor astronauts! ("Law Enforcement Officer", for anyone else not in the know).
inventing new word when we don't need one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnjb1WVkhmU
Well, that countries law enforcement could always cut off those servers. It's usually either due to corruption or in case of russia political intent that these servers are kept online.
obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1053/ Happy ten thousand day!
Others already answered but while I'm chiming in anyway, I'm not in the hosting industry but IT security (for like ten years, say) and for me it's a very normal term. Maybe precisely because of that niche though; many of us are paranoid
The EU tries to rope off a single building with velvet ropes, a doorman, ID verification, facial scans, and cookie banners, while next door it's an illegal rave in an abandoned supermarket.
The real issue is that there aren't a whole lot of consequences when it comes to tracking data. It's a legal violation, sure, but it's not a criminal violation. So it would be up to you to pursue it. In many countries you can't even file a civil lawsuit, but rather, you have to go through your national data protection agency. Which in reality likely means your complaint will be auto-rejected after five years because they need to clean up the queue.
As far as the malicious disobedience goes... well... it's probably because "all the other website do it", but you might as well just give people the option to go to a setting to turn it off. It's not like that would be any less of a legal violation than the banner.
Don't know if it was intentionally positioned like that but I was ready to imagine it was.
They didn't want user data to be sent to third-parties without consent, so they created a law that made it mandatory for web pages to ask for consent to send the data. Most web pages need to send data to third-parties to be profitable, so they need to ask for consent.
What would the next steps be like? The purpose of the law is to give users the power to consent or not consent. In other words, I can pay for the contents of a web page with my data. Removing that option from me doesn't give me power to do whatever I want with my data: it takes that power away from me instead. That would be bad.
Because it is not the means, it is the intent that the GDPR tries to protect you from. The GDPR (and EDP) says that tracking, any tracking not just cookies, requires the consent of the tracked one.
The EU's own government websites are littered with the obnoxious cookie banners [1].
It's an unbelievably thoughtless and misguided law that has unfortunately ruined the internet. I think a lot of people rightfully blame the EU and they're terrible lawmaking for this nonsense.
https://european-union.europa.eu
https://www.swedbank-aktiellt.se/telegram/WOzsdcJG
"AMSTERDAM, April 10, 2025
MIRhosting, a leading provider of enterprise-grade colocation and IT infrastructure services in Europe, proudly announces the launch of two dedicated, fully equipped data rooms at its newest location within the NorthC data center in Nieuwegein. This strategic expansion strengthens MIRhosting's colocation capabilities, directly addressing the growing demand for reliable and scalable colocation solutions in the greater Amsterdam region...."
they think they're omnipotent but really don't control the world, rendering economic sanctions and service blacklisting to be null and moot
They are also UpStream of several other provider. For example https://bgp.he.net/AS215540#_prefixes
I have not seen legitimate single request from ANY ip in this. Only spam bot and brute.
Blanket IP bans should have died back in 00s, where they belong. Instead, we still get wannabe webmasters applying them willy-nilly - with gatekeepers like Cloudflare enabling them.
> Materializing just two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Stark Industries Solutions became a frequent source of massive DDoS attacks, Russian-language proxy and VPN services, malware tied to Russia-backed hacking groups, and fake news.
why not censor Russians? They had as of now already censored forever about a million of Ukranians and have shown all the intentions to do it more and more.
And Russia doesn't allow foreign propaganda inside Russia (it is a felony there), so it is absolutely normal to block Russian propaganda inside the foreign countries (and notice that nobody spreading Russian propaganda are put in jail for that in foreign countries though that would be only fair) .
Governments quickly realize that they cannot effectively block websites in foreign jurisdictions. The only way to achieve this is to tell local ISPs which subnets to block, and fine them if they disobey. When this automation is in place, the government can block any website in a matter of hours, no matter where it is located
yet the tools of war do exist. Even though the government can kill anybody in a matter of minutes.
And we do already have tools to block spam, and there is no difference between spam and Russian propaganda.
And murder is transparent, you cannot murder many people without a public reaction. With the internet though... They can block thousands of IPS and no one will know. And you cannot access the database of the blocked resources because, who are you, a pedophile?
I have a feeling I cannot explain how painful it is to live in a country destroying the internet. I wanted to leave the Russia even before the war because of that. Now I am extremely allergic to any government's censorship attempts