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Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

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Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#131

Post by darth_avocado »

1024core wrote: post #118
darth_avocado wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in a country where internet can be blocked, so can access to power. Satellite relays or other DIY devices or starling or pretty much anything else doesn’t work if you have no power.

Batteries? Solar power?

In theory sure, but practically, it won’t. Even in the US, only 15% of households have any backup at all [1]. That number it drops even more in the rest of the world. And to add to it, just having a backup isn’t enough if the outage is sustained for a longer period of time.

For the rest of the world, especially countries like Pakistan, solar power or a battery backup is out of reach for the majority of the population, so they won’t work.

[1] https://electrek.co/2022/09/29/american-power-outages/

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#132

Post by mlyle »

nine_k wrote: post #107
retrac wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure a tiny bit of RF leaks out of the LNB Any receiver using the heterodyne principle (this includes most current digital radio modems) is trivially detected by its local oscillator, often to some considerable range (potentially hundreds of metres). In the UK, the BBC used to exploit this, with radio detection vans patrolling the streets for unauthorized receivers, to fine people for watching TV without a lice…

I suppose the heterodyne frequently (the 465 kHz of AM, for instance) can be effectively hidden. Put your whole receiver into a metal enclosure, have a high-pass filter before the antenna connector, and a low-pass filter before the outputs and power connectors. Such a device would likely look peculiar enough to be easily recognizable, though, so you'll need to hide it, possibly inside some innocuous-looking other dev…

> I suppose the heterodyne frequently (the 465 kHz of AM, for instance) can be effectively hidden. Put your whole receiver into a metal enclosure, have a high-pass filter before the antenna connector, and a low-pass filter before the outputs and power connectors.

Yes-- and every piece you mention is "quality radio design 101".

> Such a device would likely look peculiar enough to be easily recognizable

I'm not sure about that.

The biggest most suspicious thing is, if they're resourced to investigate everyone with a piece of coax going outside-- where does yours plug into?

Of course, if you're really dedicated-- get a satellite TV receiver, empty out the nice metal box, put the receiver inside ;).

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#133

Post by mlyle »

runsWphotons wrote: post #92
mlyle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're replying to a thread where I started by saying " Maybe the internet as a whole is intractable ."

could you say this seven more times?

I'm worried I'll have to :/

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#134

Post by closetnerd »

screye wrote: post #108
ourmandave wrote: post #72

Scrolling through the comments, Imran was arrested for accepting bribes worth billions while in office. Some comments say it's true, the other it's false charges. Does anybody have a credible source for what's really going on? The point of propaganda is not to make people believe it. It is to foster cynicism so that we don’t know what to believe and come to believe that nothing is true, no facts are reliable, and the…

In South Asian politics, bribes are a way of life. No one goes to prison for bribes. They go to prison, and then it's decided which bribe will be used an excuse to put them there. Imran is currently ushering in an 'Arab Spring' style movement in Pakistan. I use that phrase with all the positive and negative connotations that go with it. The army wants to maintain dictatorial-ish control and want to do to Imran what t…

> So the army is having to resort to increasingly contrived methods to keep Imran under control.

They tried to assassinate him and got very close to it.

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#135

Post by flockonus »

skeaker wrote: post #6

I would like to believe there is a future where blocking access to the internet is unilaterally impossible. Major powers being able to pull the rug on what has become a foundation of modern society like this is too scary of a thing to allow. What could the answer be? Satellite-powered relays and DIY-able user devices to talk to them?

There is no unstoppable tech, it's usually 100x cheaper to destroy than to build (a defining trait of our ever changing universe).

That said, I find FreakWAN [1] (from the creator of Redis) a very interesting low-cost, low-powered communication protocol that can go VERY far[2]

[1] https://github.com/antirez/freakwan

[2] https://twitter.com/antirez/status/1632664864538738688

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#136

Post by dragonwriter »

robocat wrote: post #106
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While imperial Britain has much to take blame for in South Asia, the partition is not really one of them. I’m going to disagree; however little direct control they exert at that point, the imperial power always bears significant responsbility for the costs of problems that accompany imperial collapse.

The problem is when we start creating stories that place groups of people as perpetual victims, or they play that rôle themselves. It is hard to be honest about our faults and easy to blame others. Balance that against total erasure of the past - denial is rife. The present controls the past.

> The problem is when we start creating stories that place groups of people as perpetual victims, or they play that role themselves.

Recognize imperial powers’ blame for the adverse results of imperialism doesn’t do that, because blame is not exclusive.

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#137

Post by int_19h »

avh02 wrote: post #82
matthewdgreen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We now have the ability to train entire language models that contain information, can regurgitate it in the form of articles, and can even interact through conversation. Right now they’re big, but with continued improvements we could likely have useful and accurate models that fit on USB sticks and can be distributed through Bluetooth.

If you're sneaking in USB's, why put an LLM on them and not just articles/data/wikis? (Curious if I'm missing something here)

You aren't. The entirety of English Wikipedia (sans history) compressed with zstd is currently ~93 Gb from https://www.kiwix.org/. If you exclude the images, it's ~13 Gb. It's a much better bang for the buck than any LLM storage-wise, and that's before we even consider the hardware requirements to actually run an LLM vs an offline wiki reader.

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#138

Post by closetnerd »

ourmandave wrote: post #72

Scrolling through the comments, Imran was arrested for accepting bribes worth billions while in office. Some comments say it's true, the other it's false charges. Does anybody have a credible source for what's really going on? The point of propaganda is not to make people believe it. It is to foster cynicism so that we don’t know what to believe and come to believe that nothing is true, no facts are reliable, and the…

Very much false.

They arrested him, and many others, because he's demanding the constitutionally mandated elections be held. He'd been going to court for cases like terrorism because of "blasphemy".

He's a major threat to the very corrupt army and dynastic parties. All other parties have joined in a coalition with the army. The only opposition is Imran Khan.

Sharifs: The head of one has been in self exile in London while he made his brother prime minister. His daughter and nephews run the party. He was found to have been hiding money when the Panama papers came out.

Zardaris: Was prime minister when Osama bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan. Known as mr 10%. His niece and disgraced generals accused him of killing Bhuttos. He's made his son the heir to the party.

Of the top 10 richest folks in Pakistan are Sharif & Zardari.

Imran Khan is not. Instead earned most of his money through cricket when he led Pakistan to the only World Cup victory. Then he'd opened the best hospitals in Pakistan that treat most patients (all of them desperately poor) for free. Then founded/created an entirely new party that after decades came to power.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/28/pakistani-cour...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/16/pakistan-zarda...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/18/pakistan-court...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pakistanis_by_net_wort...

[5] https://twitter.com/voaurdu/status/1655992378098843709

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/20/pakistan-punja...

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#139

Post by [deleted] »

6stringronin wrote: post #122
ourmandave wrote: post #72

Scrolling through the comments, Imran was arrested for accepting bribes worth billions while in office. Some comments say it's true, the other it's false charges. Does anybody have a credible source for what's really going on? The point of propaganda is not to make people believe it. It is to foster cynicism so that we don’t know what to believe and come to believe that nothing is true, no facts are reliable, and the…

Its amazing that the brother of the current PM Nawaz Sharif was indicted on literally that charge in the Panama Papers. Now they are accusing the other side of it and fabricating a case because Imran Khan.

[deleted]

Re: Internet disrupted in Pakistan amid arrest of former PM Imran Khan

#140

Post by StanislavPetrov »

ourmandave wrote: post #72

Scrolling through the comments, Imran was arrested for accepting bribes worth billions while in office. Some comments say it's true, the other it's false charges. Does anybody have a credible source for what's really going on? The point of propaganda is not to make people believe it. It is to foster cynicism so that we don’t know what to believe and come to believe that nothing is true, no facts are reliable, and the…

>Does anybody have a credible source for what's really going on?

Everyone will have their own take, here is mine:

What it boils down to is that Imran Kahn is by far the most popular politician in Pakistan. He was Prime Minister of Pakistan in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. He refused to take sides in the conflict, despite pressure by the US. In March of 2022, Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed Khan (no relation), sent a letter to the PTI government from his post in Washington DC saying that the US government was threatening to withdraw financial aid to Pakistan (at least $32 billion over the last 20 years) if they didn't get rid of Khan (denied by the US government). Days later Khan was removed as Prime Minister by a "no confidence" vote. Since then, corruption charges have been filed again Khan and thousands of his supporters have been surrounding Khan's home and repelling attempts by the government and the army to arrest him (until now). Now the situation is extremely volatile as the extremely unpopular government, seen as deeply corrupt by the vast majority of Pakistanis (corruption is endemic there), has arrested the most popular politician in the country on charges of corruption.

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