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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'

#201

Post by Dylan16807 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #168
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare isn't the company with too much power in the above scenario: La Liga is. CF isn't turning off access because they want to, it's because La Liga convinced a court that Cloudflare is promoting "piracy" with the various websites they host (some of which, constituting less than a rounding error of the overall sites they host, may host pirated soccer streams), and convinced a court to have Cloudflare blocked.

If there was a viable competitor, then it wouldn’t matter so much if it was blocked or not…

That's a bad thing in this case. I don't want website blocking to be easier.

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

#202

Post by thaumasiotes »

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.

Your hypothetical involved Coca-Cola directing the service cutoff. It doesn't sound like that was real.

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

#203

Post by thaumasiotes »

Retric wrote: post #200
catlikesshrimp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tends to infinity != infinity. Also, the fundamental theory of calculus requires a continuous function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_calculu...

You think it's possible for a bucket to contain a negative amount of water?

I should note that the product of zero and infinity being an indeterminate form is actually a result about the product of an infinitesimal (of small but indefinite magnitude) and an infinite value. If when you say "zero", you actually mean "zero", there is no ambiguity: zero is more infinitesimal than any infinite value is infinite, and the product of zero with anything, including an infinitely large value, is zero.

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

#204

Post by Retric »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #203
Retric wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tends to infinity != infinity. Also, the fundamental theory of calculus requires a continuous function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_calculu...

You think it's possible for a bucket to contain a negative amount of water? I should note that the product of zero and infinity being an indeterminate form is actually a result about the product of an infinitesimal (of small but indefinite magnitude) and an infinite value. If when you say "zero", you actually mean "zero", there is no ambiguity: zero is more infinitesimal than any infinite value is infinite, and the p…

> You think it's possible for a bucket to contain a negative amount of water?

Irrelevant, the discontinuity occurs at 0 not a negative number.

The limit of f(X) = (X-2)/(X-2) as X approaches 2 is 1, that doesn’t mean the function has a defined value at 2. Limits seem easy because most students really don’t understand limits and thus misuse them.

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

#205

Post by jp42 »

jp42 wrote: post #81

Internet shutdown typically happens during riots/ violent protests. Starlink makes "internet shutdown" impotent. Though Starlink has to follow country's laws and actually shutdown the internet. Most if not all protest are sponsored by entities that are against the host country and they will find ways to enable the internet for protesters with starlink or some other ways.

why i am being downvoted for this :confused:

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

#206

Post by rbanffy »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #203
Retric wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tends to infinity != infinity. Also, the fundamental theory of calculus requires a continuous function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_calculu...

You think it's possible for a bucket to contain a negative amount of water? I should note that the product of zero and infinity being an indeterminate form is actually a result about the product of an infinitesimal (of small but indefinite magnitude) and an infinite value. If when you say "zero", you actually mean "zero", there is no ambiguity: zero is more infinitesimal than any infinite value is infinite, and the p…

Quantum physics tells us all particles are waves, so it’s possible that the amount of water will be negative in some point in time, as long as the average value is not negative. ;-)

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

#207

Post by AnimalMuppet »

h2zizzle wrote: post #31
ty6853 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony here is the government has little grip in much of central Africa. Militias roam the bush with little fear of law. Places like CAR are nations only because europeans drew it like that on a map. Killing the internet may be the only lever of control for the central government, they cannot control people's lives to nearly the extent is done in most the west. In places like the US they can just use one of the ga…

We just had that whole Cliven Bundy thing happen a few years ago, no? Also, large swathes of the western US, Alaska, Appalachia, etc., are often difficult for authorities to access (at least quickly). It's important to be clear that the lack of government control in Central Africa has a lot to do with that same sort of geographic inaccessibility. There are whole countries in Asia that exist largely because of the dif…

The US doesn't have that kind of geographic inaccessibility. Cliven Bundy is alive, not because the US couldn't locate him, not because the US couldn't reach that location with overwhelming force, but because the US decided that killing him was a less optimal move than letting him be an annoyance for a while, and eventually arresting and trying him.

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

#208

Post by rbanffy »

notavalleyman wrote: post #180
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.

Wagner* and russia's Libya intervention to continuously arm and support general khalifa haftar against the internationally recognised government

Usually it’s only the propaganda outlets that get blocked, not all internet access.

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

#209

Post by rbanffy »

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..

At least in Brazil, blocks are limited to specific IP ranges and happen because companies defy court orders to hand over publisher data the court considers illegal - irregular electoral propaganda, misinformation campaigns, etc. Rumble, AFAIK, is blocked in Brazil right now. Twitter and WhatsApp were blocked more than once.
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