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El Paquete Semanal

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Re: El Paquete Semanal

#31

Post by ibarrac »

Convolutional wrote: post #16

It's bizarre how the US attempted to block Cuba from getting the Internet, and still blocks Cuban Internet through many means ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g... ), but the presentation is that the suppression of content is of Cuban origin. It reminds me of when the US said Cubans were not allowed to leave Cuba, and the mental hospitals and prisons were filled with political prisoners. C…

That is not true. The US does not block Cuba from getting to the internet in general (https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/912206/download?inline), although it blocks most commerce in general under its embargo. Your linked webpage is a Github policy restricting the availability of Github Enterprise Server and Github Copilot in Cuba, not the internet.

Your characterization of the Mariel boatlift is misleading and wrong. Cubans were mostly not allowed by their government to leave Cuba. During the 1980 Mariel boatlift, Castro suddenly temporarily abolished this policy due to preceding events where thousands had rushed into the Peru embassy in Havana hoping to leave. He announced that foreign relatives of any Cubans who wished to leave could come pick them up in boats in the Mariel harbor. Those wishing to leave where subject to abusive acts of denunciation and beatings by mobs organized by the government. In a cruel twist, Castro then demanded that in addition to their relatives, the boats had to be filled with common prisoners from jails and mental patients, who were given the choice of staying in prison or trying their luck emigrating on those boats. Castro wanted to provoke a crime wave in the US to tarnish the reputations of those Cubans living there. (source: I was one of those Cuban Marielitos that arrived in 1980 in one of those boats).

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#33

Post by drpixie »

oconnore wrote: post #5

I think it's interesting to compare El Paquete Semanal to the response in the US to net neutrality and various social media scandals. When the threshold for action is high enough, the lack of open internet is overcome in Cuba without any special technology at all. Similar creative solutions pop up anywhere internet access is limited. In the US, most of the energy is spent on open source, high tech solutions that rare…

Not sure what you mean by "threshold for action" but I think cost has a great deal to do with it.

Running a cable (copper or fibre) along a street is expensive. So is putting up a wireless tower. And either have to be connected to the next town (cable, microwave, satellite, etc) and so on.

Passing around some USB sticks is much cheaper - has rather poor latency but fine bandwidth :)

I'd like to see some kind of peer-to-peer system doing the same thing. I imagine small devices (phones, raspberry pis etc) close enough that they could propagate updates or messages autonomously, and providing local wifi access to their collection of data. Perhaps fetching more recent updates from users when someone with more recent data wanders into town. Wouldn't work for streaming movies but might provide a nice sneakernet alternative.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#34

Post by stavros »

yosito wrote: post #2

I witnessed El Paquete first hand in Cuba. To be honest, it's an easier and cheaper way to get quality content than the mess of walled gardens and DRM we have in the US.

Piracy is nothing if not convenient.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#35

Post by TeMPOraL »

goda90 wrote: post #19
drpixie wrote: post #10

So sneakernet never went away, it just got less fashionable. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

I don't remember where I read it but there was sneakernet for remote villages in India(?) where the bus stop had a computer that transferred data to/from the bus that only came through every few days. People would request what they wanted and it would be sent back on later buses.

Between the two methods, this is also an unintended analogue to how interplanetary Internet would look like. Mars colony designers and hard sci-fi writers, take note.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#36

Post by anthk »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
goda90 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't remember where I read it but there was sneakernet for remote villages in India(?) where the bus stop had a computer that transferred data to/from the bus that only came through every few days. People would request what they wanted and it would be sent back on later buses.

Between the two methods, this is also an unintended analogue to how interplanetary Internet would look like. Mars colony designers and hard sci-fi writers, take note.

nncp-go it's a thing.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#38

Post by qwertox »

drpixie wrote: post #10

So sneakernet never went away, it just got less fashionable. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

It's possible to send HDDs full of data to cloud services. Amazon even quotes Andrew S. Tanenbaum

https://aws.amazon.com/de/blogs/aws/send-us-that-data/

https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001918654-Fi...

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#39

Post by kortilla »

Convolutional wrote: post #16

It's bizarre how the US attempted to block Cuba from getting the Internet, and still blocks Cuban Internet through many means ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g... ), but the presentation is that the suppression of content is of Cuban origin. It reminds me of when the US said Cubans were not allowed to leave Cuba, and the mental hospitals and prisons were filled with political prisoners. C…

It wasn’t until 2013 that Cubans could more freely leave: https://havana-guide.com/can-cubans-leave-cubaall-you-need-t...

Your post implies that Cubans suddenly weren’t allowed to leave Cuba after the US asked. That’s not the case.

Re: El Paquete Semanal

#40

Post by pjc50 »

drpixie wrote: post #24
Convolutional wrote: post #16

It's bizarre how the US attempted to block Cuba from getting the Internet, and still blocks Cuban Internet through many means ( https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g... ), but the presentation is that the suppression of content is of Cuban origin. It reminds me of when the US said Cubans were not allowed to leave Cuba, and the mental hospitals and prisons were filled with political prisoners. C…

From outside (I am not American) the anti-Cuba position seems to have an almost religious fervor! Almost like They're socialist, we're capitalist; it's natural, true, and necessary that we must oppose everything about them. Similar to the catholic v protestant division that was very strong in the anglo world last century. Surely, if one really wanted to dismantle an evil empire, one would open the borders as much as…

Yeah, as sibling comment says: the "US" as a a whole has no real interest in Cuba either way, other than a general Monroe Doctrine one. But there are enough Floridians who want to re-litigate the revolution, that feel really strongly about it, and they get to control US discourse on the subject. Because nobody else cares.
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