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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'

#181

Post by technothrasher »

pc86 wrote: post #163
oefrha wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you hear about hundreds of thousands of people dying in South Sudan’s civil war since 2013? Did you hear about the return of open-air slave markets in Libya since NATO intervention in 2011? Did you hear about dozens of other hideous things happening in Africa? It’s almost comical that you think people elsewhere would give a shit about such a comparatively minor thing as Internet interruptions.

These things have been reported hundreds / thousands of time if you read enough news to get informed of them. That's the only reason you know about them. There's no reason for a random local news station in rural Oklahoma to cover the South Sudan's civil war or Libyan slave markets. That war and slavery are bad doesn't make the curtailing of civil rights for millions of people suddenly a nothingburger.

"That war and slavery are bad doesn't make the curtailing of civil rights for millions of people suddenly a nothingburger."

Also known as the fallacy of relative privation. This line of reasoning quickly leads to the conclusion that only bad thing worth caring about is the absolute worst thing happening.

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

#182

Post by HaZeust »

sandy_coyote wrote: post #155
HaZeust wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I need to try out this line on my manager in stand-up later today.

Yes, that'll get you right.

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

#183

Post by alephnerd »

bilbo0s wrote: post #140
alephnerd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starlink makes "internet shutdown" impotent It still requires a radio transmitter. If push comes to shove, a government can still track RF leakage or worst case GPS jamming (if it's really that existential). Iran did the same thing when cracking down on Satelite TV and SatPhones during the crackdown of the Green Revolution (anti-Ahmedinijad protests in 2009) and anecdotally, Starlink terminals have been increasingl…

A lot of these people talk about Starlink like they never heard of RF engineering. It's like, "Um, guy, Starlink can be shut down too."

> A lot of these people talk about Starlink like they never heard of RF engineering.

Because they most likely didn't. On a separate tangent, I HATE how most CS majors can get a CS degree without even learning basics about electronics engineering or even computer architecture.

It's a shame because a lot of the craft used in DSP and RF Engineering has direct applications in ML (much of ML is itself a fork of Information Theory which started off as a DSP subfield)

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

#184

Post by throw0101c »

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.

> We live in a ridiculous world.

Let The Market™ decide on access to drinking water:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization

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

#185

Post by throwaway894345 »

pc86 wrote: post #145
throwaway894345 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which DA went after a particular person without referral by law enforcement or a criminal complaint? If this was really such a breach of ethics, surely it would be trivial for the political party in question to first make a criminal complaint? It's not obvious to me that the complaint/referral matters much?

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

#186

Post by mywittyname »

benced wrote: post #175

This is especially notable when you consider African states are bad at basically everything you'd expect a state to be able to do but are apparently very capable of this.

Blocking internet access is pretty simple thing to do, especially compared to something like building and maintaining a bridge.

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

#187

Post by FredPret »

imachine1980_ wrote: post #70
ryandrake wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a football problem, it's a "company has way too much power" problem. It's as if Coca-Cola were allowed to tell my water company to turn off my tap water for a few hours because I should be drinking their soda at lunchtime.

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

Are you in an alternate dimension where Snow Crash literally happened?!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash

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

#188

Post by catlikesshrimp »

Retric wrote: post #131
NewJazz wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One drop in an empty bucket is infinitely more water.

> One drop in an empty bucket is infinitely more water. No multiply 0 by infinity and you don’t get one drop, ie 1/0 is undefined. Further it wasn’t an empty bucket.

In this case, as bucket content aproaches 0 drops, 1 drop becomes infinitely more, at least in calculus.

Limits in calculus: "When a real function can be expressed as a fraction whose denominator tends to zero, the output of the function becomes arbitrarily large, and is said to "tend to infinity" For example, the reciprocal function, f ( x ) = 1/x tends to infinity as x tends to 0.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero

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

#189

Post by [deleted] »

hbn wrote: post #144
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.

[deleted]

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

#190

Post by mywittyname »

aaronbaugher wrote: post #105
registeredcorn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Internet is a little flaky today. Probably a bird perching on the fiber."

Before wireless came to my rural area, we used to joke about how the phone companies ran dialup over barbed wire. "Internet's down; deer must have broken the barbed wire again."

Growing up, my grandpa would joke that "someone tripped over the extension cord" when the power went out.
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