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

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 271 posts

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

#41

Post by outime »

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.

I know the current situation isn't the most optimal but barely working is an extreme hyperbole.

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

#42

Post by mystified5016 »

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.

Libraries are bad and should be banned because you might find Mein Kampf in the nonfiction section

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

#43

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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.

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

#44

Post by 762236 »

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.

There seems to be a problem starting new companies in the EU. It's hard to imagine the EU developing alternatives that people would want to use in such an environment.

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

#45

Post by api »

__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.

Most of our tech has been developed in stable advanced developed countries.

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

#46

Post by dingnuts »

phmagic wrote: post #3

What are the best ways for citizens to get their own p2p internet going?

the Internet Protocol, IP, is already peer to peer. Assign yourself an address (V6) and get a peer, assign them an address, plug in a cable, voila!

Get a switch and another computer and you have an Internet. Ok, we would generally call it an "intranet," but that's because -the- Internet with a capital I is specifically a net of intranets.

So, if you were to start an ISP, which is the proposal, you would buy an uplink to the rest of the Internet for your intranet that you just built, from another ISP or backbone provider.

But you don't have to do that, you could partner with another intranet, and have a separate Net. Similar to what happens in China actually.

My point is: the Internet is already peer to peer. You just have to use the technology. Thirty years ago every tech nerd knew how to start an ISP.

The only reason individuals don't do it as much anymore is because we want the ISP to lay dedicated cable for our connections, rather than just using the phone lines, and laying cable is really expensive.

But you could use phone or amateur radio (like the JS8 digital mode) if lower speeds are acceptable, or lay your own Ethernet or fiber if you're capable.

The only thing that makes today's Internet seem like it's not peer to peer is the investment needed to start an ISP with the performance modern consumers expect

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

#47

Post by api »

lenerdenator wrote: post #34
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'm beginning to think Europe needs to just dry out from soccer for a year or two. Like, we're impacting communications now.

People getting riled up about soccer as a way to blow off steam and experience their tribalism is vastly superior to what we have in the USA -- a political environment that people treat like battling football clubs complete with lawless hooligans.

When a soccer team wins they don't get to ascend to power and leverage the state against their enemies.

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

#48

Post by arkh »

762236 wrote: post #44
globular-toast wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There seems to be a problem starting new companies in the EU. It's hard to imagine the EU developing alternatives that people would want to use in such an environment.

The problem is not in starting a company. It's in the 20 to 100 million investment if needed: those do not exist here.

You'll get up to 10 million investment from whatever bank + state arrangement no problem. But when you want to scale up you're fucked if it requires money. So no "let's get 1 billion users and then think about milking them" way to do business, you have to be profitable a lot earlier. And you better not require too much R&D.

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

#49

Post by s1artibartfast »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #33
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it's a stretch? If Starlink wants to legally operate in a country as an ISP then it has to comply with the laws of that country. Just because it's using satellites instead of locally deployed physical infrastructure doesn't absolve it from ISP and general telecomunications regulations of a country. So if the Spanish government were to make a law saying all ISPs must block the following domains for wh…

Out of curiosity, is there anything technical the Spanish authorities could do to block Starlink (i.e jamming)? Or are legal/bureaucratic measures the only solution?

They can roll up to the starlink ground station and turn of the power or cut the cords.

Edit" it looks like the inter-satellite capacity might be able to handle more than I thought

https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f5...

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

#50

Post by pc86 »

api wrote: post #47
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.

People getting riled up about soccer as a way to blow off steam and experience their tribalism is vastly superior to what we have in the USA -- a political environment that people treat like battling football clubs complete with lawless hooligans. When a soccer team wins they don't get to ascend to power and leverage the state against their enemies.

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?
Post reply on HN