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Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

theguardian.com

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Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#141

Post by m3047 »

sofixa wrote: post #61
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #43

Apps should respond to events like this by becoming smaller--so that you can only collaborate with people on your network partition. Most of the time they instead break altogether. The future is way to uncertain to assume a reliably connected future, which is what most of our tech is doing.

But if the app doesn't have internet access, how would it discover the others on that same partition? (Assuming it's a wholesale internet/specific domains being fully blocked). If your phone/computer can't contact Telegram's servers, it doesn't matter.

By making its own "internet in a box": open wifi, DHCP and DNS, and Bob's your uncle. Anybody in range can play; everyone else is out of luck. Install NNTP so that news can move around by flooding, as nodes form new associations. Add a second wifi transceiver and some clever dynamic route discovery and you have a mesh network.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#142

Post by bilbo0s »

4b11b4 wrote: post #72

This should be an extremely high profile piece of news... Imagine people all over planet Earth talking to each other in real life, in passing.. "Did you hear Internet access is cut off in ____"? Is there not some "tracker" out there? I'm sure it would be hard to keep up to date but..

Imagine people all over planet Earth talking to each other in real life, in passing.. "Did you hear Internet access is cut off in ____"?

The issue is that no one would care.

There are children being sold into sexual slavery and you don't get that kind of reaction. You're definitely not going to get it because some random InstaSnapTwit in Nigeria can't get his fart app to work.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#143

Post by pstuart »

Retric wrote: post #132
int_19h wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same aquifer though, right?

If the factory had simply shut down without hooking up their infrastructure, the area still would have had the exact same short term issues. The issue was arguably a lack of wells in an extreme situation, not a lack of water in the aquifer.

Aquifers are not infinite in capacity, so it's a valid point.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#144

Post by hbn »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #128

Internet has become an essential right up there with housing, electricity, water etc. Everywhere around the world people are connected to the internet. Even in poor African countries.

It's essential if you live in a place where it's essential.

But there are plenty of places where everything hasn't gone all digital, which makes living without internet much easier than it is in e.g. America.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#145

Post by pc86 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #127
pc86 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you're talking about a District Attorney deciding that an individual needs to be charged prima facie and saying he "will find a crime" right?

District Attorneys everywhere charge first and then prove the crime afterwards, right?

Well typically a case is referred to them by law enforcement or a criminal complaint, then they review the evidence and decide whether or not to go to trial.

It's much rarer for a DA to say they want to find crimes a particular person committed and then direct others to go find evidence for whatever they can find evidence for.

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#146

Post by 1270018080 »

globular-toast wrote: post #39
lenerdenator wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm beginning to think Europe needs to just dry out from soccer for a year or two. Like, we're impacting communications now.

Or, alternatively, we consider whether doing our communications via the same few huge American corporations is actually a good idea. The internet was literally designed to be resilient to enemy attack and look what we've done to it. Decades later, still on IPv4 and using ridiculous hacks to keep it all just barely working.

La Liga is the problem in this scenario

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#147

Post by HaZeust »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
imachine1980_ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this literally happens in mexico, monterrey in 2022 during biggest drought in the century, public supply was shut down while coca-cola keep producing soft drink from that reservoir, they end-up give some percentage back after a protest. https://www.jornada.com.mx/2022/08/06/estados/022n1est

Wow, I try to come up with an exaggerated hypothetical and it turns out to be a real example. We live in a ridiculous world.

That's why I haven't taken life so seriously and been as uptight about things in recent years; because life sure as hell doesn't take us serious lol

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#148

Post by 1270018080 »

briandear wrote: post #11
create-username wrote: post #2

Here, in Spain, internet access is cut off for many websites during football matches because La Liga, the association football league, is in war against cloudflare for not blocking their allegedly offending websites. Or something like that. Today, I tried to look up a word on a dictionary and I got an error message. “There must be a football game going on right now”. I thought

I have Starlink and it doesn’t seem to be affected in Spain, but I could be wrong. I just haven’t noticed it.

That's still just giving a different corporation the power to control communications

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#149

Post by oeitho »

sebmellen wrote: post #62
VHRanger wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPNs would not make sense if the actual ISP if blocking you. Apart from something like starlink and even then they're not playing nice with geographical access most of the time based on politics, whims of a narcissist, or just business.

Starlink is the only massively global ISP and (as far as I’m aware) has not cut off access for anyone based on their politics or location.

Not true at all, Elon Musk has already cut off access for Ukraine because of his own personal views[1]. There's a reason why he's currently hated in most of Europe.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4193788-musk-acknowledges...

Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'

#150

Post by gimme_treefiddy »

junaru wrote: post #19

Given how internet exploited and divided people in the west i don't blame them. Ignorance is bliss and i want it back.

Note how almost no one will acknowledge this is happening in the backdrop of unravelling of USAID and how certain powers in the world sow discord in other countries.

I have done a complete 180 on this issue in recent years.

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