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Why the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Sucks

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Re: Why the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Sucks

#121

Post by rakoo »

hueving wrote: post #93
jgrahamc wrote: post #29

This is why CloudFlare is building out PoPs in Africa. Our goal is to be 10s of ms from people living there, not 100s, so that people who use CloudFlare for their sites provide a great experience in African countries. We are already live in Johannesburg and there will be many more.

That's somewhat helpful but won't be useful for anything uncachable (e.g. Someone's Facebook wall, twitter feed, emails, etc).

Those things are extremely cacheable. The smart move here is to transport diff as much as possible, which is what Cloudflare is doing with railgun (https://www.cloudflare.com/railgun)

Re: Why the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Sucks

#122

Post by MichaelCrawford »

sumedh wrote: post #118
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father was an electrical power engineer. It's quite a lot harder than one would think to distribute power with a nationwide grid. It's never really made sense to me that we even have a nationwide grid. Why not local grids with local power plants? That's what islands use. While there is economy of scale in a big power plant then you need a bigger grid to consume its power. There are many ways to generate electrical…

> It's quite a lot harder than one would think to distribute power with a nationwide grid. I am not an expert on this topic but I am Indian so I know that corruption and apathy play a big role too.

I've just gotten into the PDX Renters Unite! Facebook group. Rental prices in Portland are skyrocketing largely due to venture-backed companies hiring from out of state.

The solutions are largely straightforward, for example "inclusionary zoning" would require that new housing developments include a certain proportion of affordable housing. But inclusionary zoning is forbidden by Oregon State Law.

In what way does that law serves the needs of the people? Well that was not considered by the legislators, no the developers lobbied them, no doubt set them up with hookers and blow so as to maximize shareholder value while throwing lots of young people out on the street.

Re: Why the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Sucks

#123

Post by MichaelCrawford »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #116
mc32 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't the leading search engine in all countries of the world, so they should not spike everywhere. I'm surprised you didn't notice Russia and China not spiking as much either.

China here. Google isn't working, supposedly they have connection issues (but we all know the GFW is blocking it). Not surprising to not get traffic from a country not letting it in.

I once read that the GFW permits google from time to time so as to fool those who search with google into thinking that it is a technical fault on google's part, rather than censorship.

Re: Why the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Sucks

#124

Post by seanmcdirmid »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #123
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China here. Google isn't working, supposedly they have connection issues (but we all know the GFW is blocking it). Not surprising to not get traffic from a country not letting it in.

I once read that the GFW permits google from time to time so as to fool those who search with google into thinking that it is a technical fault on google's part, rather than censorship.

If you ask China Telecom why Google and Facebook aren't working, they'll tell you it "must be due to technical problems on their side" -- they do not officially block any websites (some WTO concern) and are incredibly opaque about what they do block.

Re: Why the Internet in Sub-Saharan Africa Sucks

#125

Post by MichaelCrawford »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #124
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read that the GFW permits google from time to time so as to fool those who search with google into thinking that it is a technical fault on google's part, rather than censorship.

If you ask China Telecom why Google and Facebook aren't working, they'll tell you it "must be due to technical problems on their side" -- they do not officially block any websites (some WTO concern) and are incredibly opaque about what they do block.

It seems to me Google and Facebook would have standing to force the US government to tariff or even block chinese imports.
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