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

61–70 of 271 posts

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

#61

Post by sofixa »

__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.

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

#62

Post by sebmellen »

VHRanger wrote: post #57
mixermachine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly a case where VPNs do make sense.

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.

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

#63

Post by hinkley »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #49
spacebanana7 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I believe I recall them bragging about increases to horizontal bandwidth in the later designs. You may be thinking of the original network?

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

#64

Post by dylan604 »

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.

You say resilient to attack, yet it's also the opposite where it is very very easy for someone to attack someone to the point of removing their online presence. People will DDOS a site for the lulz. People will do it to cause problems for some perceived slight. Some will do it to hurt a competitor. It costs them pretty much nothing to have it happen. For those on the receiving end, it could be devastating. Their only affordable option is to use one of the megaCorp providers.

So it's a "this is why we can't have nice things" more than anything else. The assholes always ruin things in the end. So instead of some idealistic dream of a world, we get this shithole dystopian reality.

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

#65

Post by fluoridation »

matt3210 wrote: post #59

Some might say the other countries should stay out of it. For example people might say Switzerland should stay out of those nations issues. However, if Switzerland provided technology thought a normal market or not, to the rulers, they have already interfered with the natural progression of that nation. There is no hope of the people making the situation better while Switzerland is providing the rulers with tech and…

That's like saying that because the store sold you the belt you're using to beat your children, the owners should break into your house to physically stop you from doing so.

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

#66

Post by dylan604 »

crest wrote: post #54
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

Maybe DDoS their fax machines? "Toner or paper is empty!!!", white on black, 999 copies. sigh

Did anyone actually ever attempt the faxing a piece of black construction paper on an old sheet fed fax machine where you tape the top to the bottom prank? Was that even possible, or just urban legend?

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

#67

Post by dylan604 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #37
mixermachine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly a case where VPNs do make sense.

If they’re blocking all of Cloudflare I would think they could also be able to block popular VPN gateways. It’s wild that a sports league has power to dictate to ISPs like this.

Are you just stuck on it being a sports league? Just s/sports league/entity with lots of money/

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

#68

Post by hinkley »

concordDance wrote: post #38
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Booted out of the country mate. Why are you acting daft? Do you think Starlink could operate in Spain without a regional/EU branch that serves Spanish customers, collects payments, pays Spanish/EU taxes and can be summoned to court if it doesn't follow Spanish laws? That's why Starlink has geofencing in place so they can ensure it operates only in regions they're legally autorized to, it's not some pirate HAM network…

It could using crypto, but Spain would complain to the USA and they'd back down.

Three years ago they would. Not for the next four.

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

#69

Post by MichaelZuo »

ryandrake wrote: post #60
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.

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.

So then why hasn’t Europe made a viable competitor to Cloudflare yet…?

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

#70

Post by imachine1980_ »

ryandrake wrote: post #60
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.

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

Post reply on HN