Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 295 posts

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#151

Post by actuator »

McDyver wrote: post #149

I had already commented this 7 months ago when Russia did the same thing. "In the interest of the people everywhere in the world, there should always be dial-up access points available, in different countries. The "national interest", for whichever country, should always be the people's interest; and restricted information has never been of any benefit except for those restricting it" Someone had raised the point tha…

How do you dial into them if your line upto them would be stopped?

I think radio based communication like amateur broadcasting, walkie talkie like things for short distances can be an effective tool to prepare for situations like this.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#152

Post by stefan_ »

McDyver wrote: post #149

I had already commented this 7 months ago when Russia did the same thing. "In the interest of the people everywhere in the world, there should always be dial-up access points available, in different countries. The "national interest", for whichever country, should always be the people's interest; and restricted information has never been of any benefit except for those restricting it" Someone had raised the point tha…

Of course ISPs can stop modems from working. But nothing to stop a directed, tracking satellite system like Starlink (except somewhat triangulate senders).

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#153

Post by SergeAx »

TrainedMonkey wrote: post #145
SergeAx wrote: post #87

Yesterday and day before editors of Telegram channel nexta_live [0] managed to report events in Minsk and other cities in Belarus. They are now seeng subscribers count boost from 300k to 1.1m in 2 days. The entire country connection was badly shaped but still alive. Telegram is famous for it's ability to work on a very thin bandwith, and also anti-blocking techniques. Today all mobile data is switched off, but there…

To put this into context, population of Belarus is below 9.5m: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/belarus-popul...

I think lots of subscribers there are from Russia (myself included), Ukraine or other ex-USSR republics. But still.

BTW, it's 1.25m already. Gotta be 1.5m tomorrow. And those users are extremely engaged - view counts on post from just an hour before is north of 0.5m.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#154

Post by jaggirs »

yurlungur wrote: post #144

About 20 years ago there was this optimism that Internet is this new unstoppable thing that will liberate the world to have free communication and knowledge sharing. Unfortunate that turned out to be such a false idea. Probably the infrastructure of it all simply wouldn't allow it...maybe that's what needs to change.

Peer to peer internet is what is missing I suppose.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#155

Post by retrac »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #140
tapvt wrote: post #21

A case where I feel amateur (ham) radio would be a potential lifeline to the outside world.

By international treaty, hams cannot discuss politics (like chaos following dubious elections) over the air. In fact, in many countries it is the custom for hams to avoid any topics that might be seen as "serious", instead they limit their remarks to general technical matters or the weather.

Yes, this would be a case of (IMO fully justified) pirate radio.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#156

Post by McDyver »

actuator wrote: post #151
McDyver wrote: post #149

I had already commented this 7 months ago when Russia did the same thing. "In the interest of the people everywhere in the world, there should always be dial-up access points available, in different countries. The "national interest", for whichever country, should always be the people's interest; and restricted information has never been of any benefit except for those restricting it" Someone had raised the point tha…

How do you dial into them if your line upto them would be stopped? I think radio based communication like amateur broadcasting, walkie talkie like things for short distances can be an effective tool to prepare for situations like this.

If every physical line is blocked then I don't see another way around it. I meant for international numbers to be available. Unless the isps block all numbers, including "unlisted" numbers, then there could still be some hope.

Regarding HAM radio, there are some alternatives

[0] https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:HAM_Radio

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#157

Post by m0zg »

beepboopbeep wrote: post #71
keenmaster wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's being sardonic. Assad, Putin, Lukashenko, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte...they all use pseudo-legalistic justifications for authoritarian action. Assad in particular went as far as cataloging thousands of his torture victims to give an official veneer to the circumstances of their death. This is even though it seems insane to record evidence of one's own gruesome crimes of genocide. https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/12…

>Assad, Putin, Lukashenko, Modi, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Trump...they all use pseudo-legalistic justifications for authoritarian action

Except of course in the real world Trump resisted using federal forces until rioters started attacking federal property and Portland decided to let it burn. Can we here concede that burning a federal courthouse is not OK?

He's still not using the federal forces: don't interfere when your opponent is making a mistake. The rioters and "police defunders" are making an amazingly powerful case for his re-election.

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#158

Post by zzz61831 »

yurlungur wrote: post #144

About 20 years ago there was this optimism that Internet is this new unstoppable thing that will liberate the world to have free communication and knowledge sharing. Unfortunate that turned out to be such a false idea. Probably the infrastructure of it all simply wouldn't allow it...maybe that's what needs to change.

20 years ago we already knew that internet was too architecturally broken to be free as that was around the time early attempts of censorship resistance were born, like Freenet [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#159

Post by McDyver »

stefan_ wrote: post #152
McDyver wrote: post #149

I had already commented this 7 months ago when Russia did the same thing. "In the interest of the people everywhere in the world, there should always be dial-up access points available, in different countries. The "national interest", for whichever country, should always be the people's interest; and restricted information has never been of any benefit except for those restricting it" Someone had raised the point tha…

Of course ISPs can stop modems from working. But nothing to stop a directed, tracking satellite system like Starlink (except somewhat triangulate senders).

The problem with relying on a single private company like SpaceX is that it still is a single point of failure.

Who's to say that Musk, or whoever will own Starlink next, won't side with an authoritarian regime, and do the same?

Re: Belarus has shut down the internet amid a controversial election

#160

Post by actuator »

McDyver wrote: post #156
actuator wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you dial into them if your line upto them would be stopped? I think radio based communication like amateur broadcasting, walkie talkie like things for short distances can be an effective tool to prepare for situations like this.

If every physical line is blocked then I don't see another way around it. I meant for international numbers to be available. Unless the isps block all numbers, including "unlisted" numbers, then there could still be some hope. Regarding HAM radio, there are some alternatives [0] https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:HAM_Radio [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet

Fascinating stuff. I think the antennas for AMPRNet make it visually discoverable. I wonder if significant distance could be covered by something a little bit inconspicuous.

I think one amusing thing is some phones before smartphones had radio receivers for FM. It would have been fascinating if same hardware was there in the current phones and could have been possibly used to power local broadcasts.

Post reply on HN