
Cubans cheer as internet goes nationwide for a day - jonbaer
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-internet/cubans-cheer-as-internet-goes-nationwide-for-a-day-idUSKBN1KZ2CB
======
dougmwne
Here's an incredible case study of "El Paquete" an ad hoc sneaker net that
developed in Cuba to trade news and media in the absence of widely available
internet connections.

[https://michaelannedye.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/el-
paquet...](https://michaelannedye.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/el-paquete-
chi.pdf)

------
LMYahooTFY
[https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8740-the_internet_in_cuba_a_stor...](https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8740-the_internet_in_cuba_a_story_of_community_resilience)

Really cool talk by two guys who flesh out internet connectivity in Cuba (one
of them is a Cuban engineering major at a Cuban university), apparently
citizens there may well operate the largest mesh network in the world.

~~~
girvo
Yep. They even have hacked video game consoles to play multiplayer games with
each other on. I got to have a go with an Xbox (the original haha) in Havana
last year — was a lot of fun!

------
emersonrsantos
I'm not sure Internet will free the Cuban people, but it's certainly a step in
freedom direction.

It is impossible to find a dozen people for whom the word freedom means the
same thing, in the same way.

I just hope they achieve freedom in their lives.

------
rosege
I visited Cuba in 2009. One of the places I went was a communist museum. It
was mostly full of what you'd expect. But in the gift shop (yes even in
communist countries the museums have them) they were selling a used VB
programming book.

------
DINKDINK
Related:

Measuring Internet Censorship in Cuba's ParkNets
[https://ooni.torproject.org/post/cuba-internet-
censorship-20...](https://ooni.torproject.org/post/cuba-internet-
censorship-2017/)

ParkNet: Short Documentary on Internet Censorship in Cuba
[https://ooni.torproject.org/post/parknet-short-
documentary-c...](https://ooni.torproject.org/post/parknet-short-documentary-
cuba/)

~~~
xrd
Awesome. Thanks for sharing this.

------
jasonkester
Aw, that's a shame. Cuba is a really cool place, and a lot of what makes it
special is the lack of internet.

It's disconnected in a way that you really can't experience anywhere else in
the world. Want to change your flight? Too bad. Can't do that. Want to
research the next town? Pull out a book or ask somebody.

Going there is like travelling was back in the 90s. You take a bus to the next
town, then walk around with your bag asking at various houses if they have any
rooms available. The lady at one may direct you a block down to her friend,
and it all works itself out.

Better still, go to a restaurant at night, drink a beer and watch the amazing
local band playing. And _talk to people_ because nobody is engrossed in their
phone. They can't be, because there is no internet. Other places, I can't
remember the last time I was able to strike up a conversation with travelers
through the barrier of their phone. In Cuba, I was talking to random people
every single night. Because that's all there was to do.

It really drives home how much connectivity can wreck things. And it'd be a
shame if we lost the last place in the world that still works like that.

~~~
dantheman
To express a desire for other people to be less free so that your vacation is
more interesting is terrible.

~~~
jasonkester
It's a shame that you came away with that impression after reading my comment.

~~~
kup0
It is an impression easily taken from your comment. Just because we have the
"privilege" (often considered a loaded word, I know, but applicable here,
IMHO) to visit a place like Cuba and enjoy its disconnectedness, the audacity
it takes to desire to force that on a country of people that has never had any
other choice is repugnant to me.

"it shouldn't change because I had a good time there" feels pretty slimy

Yes, technological progress/development will potentially bring what you
consider downsides with it, which might be the crux of your point, but that's
being unable to see the forest for the trees, IMHO

~~~
jasonkester
"to desire to force that on a country of people"

Keep in mind that you added that part yourself, then perhaps you'll understand
my sentiment better.

Lots of places in the world are nice now, while simultaneously not being
perfect. Pointing out the first bit doesn't imply actively working in
opposition of the second part.

~~~
kup0
IMHO your original post's sentiment (even if unintentional) implied a "keep it
that way" line-of-thought, so I feel my original comment stands

------
toomanybeersies
It seems that Cuba is slowly but surely liberalising. It will be interesting
to see what happens in the future, apparently they're having a referendum in
February for a new constitution that's somewhat more free-market friendly, as
well as LGBT friendly.

The USA reimposing embargoes on Cuba seems like the worst thing it can do to
try and force liberalisation. 50 years of sanctions has proven to be a
complete failure.

~~~
ant6n
I was there a couple of years ago, and it seemed the country was already in
the late-communism early-capitalism phase that Eastern European countries went
through around 1990. This was especially visible in the tourism industry, i.e.
with 'casas', apartments/rooms rented to foreigners. In this market, people
were already getting separated into economic winners and losers, as often
happens in this quick transition to capitalism. It seemed that people had a
feeling what was happening, everybody seemed in a rush to get as much of the
tourist currency that's pegged to the dollar, rather than the locals'
currency.

------
sawmurai
Unrelated to the topic, but if there is a frontend developer with reuters.com
reading: please consider fixing that replacement of the url in the address bar
once the user scrolls to the end of the current article (not the start of the
new one strangely) ... with fixing being removing the "feature".

------
friedman23
As a descendant of Cuban refugees I have to thank fate that my grandfather had
the foresight and conviction to abandon everything and come to the United
States. Just the thought that through a few twists of fate I could have been
born in some totalitarian nightmare state is enough to give me chills.

I must urge everyone that is against the US taking in refugees to consider
that by banning refugees we are trapping people in places most of us would
consider to be Hell.

~~~
TheAceOfHearts
The US has historically accepted more refugees than every other country in the
world put together [0].

Some of people's criticisms about refugees are totally valid. Unless a person
is willing to integrate with their host country's society and accept their
culture, you won't be welcomed in. I think that's a very reasonable bar to
hold people to.

I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees,
so that seems like a bit of a strawman. Having some kind of limit seems
reasonable, and other countries can help to balance things out. I'm not
sufficiently educated on the subject to comment on the factors which might've
influenced us to reduce our cap. Maybe the number of refugees we accept should
be different, I genuinely don't know. But ultimately, not everyone has to come
to the US. Why aren't you criticizing all these other countries that barely
take in refugees? The US is still accepting a very large number of refugees
relative to the rest of the world.

[0] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politic...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-
politics/refugee-resettlement-us-2018-trump-refugees-migrants-
worldwide-a8435711.html)

~~~
friedman23
>Some of people's criticisms about refugees are totally valid.

What are the valid criticisms? I don't know of any.

>Unless a person is willing to integrate with their host country's society and
accept their culture, you won't be welcomed in. I think that's a very
reasonable bar to hold people to.

This argument is not convincing to me at all.

I've lived in California, New York, and Florida and if your requirement for
refugees is to learn the culture of all these different places I would say
it's impossible.

How does people coming to the United States, speaking a different language,
eating different food, and holding different beliefs affect your life in any
way?

>I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees,
so that seems like a bit of a strawman.

I think this is dishonest. Many people are calling for an outright ban on
refugees.

>Why aren't you criticizing all these other countries that barely take in
refugees?

Because I'm not a citizen of other countries and I actually believe refugees
and immigrants in general are good for this country.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
>How does people coming to the United States, speaking a different language,
eating different food, and holding different beliefs affect your life in any
way?

Eventually it becomes South Miami where there are parts where workers don't
speak English. Kind of sucks when you try to order from a butcher shop and
have to point at the meat and then the grinder.

>>I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees,
so that seems like a bit of a strawman.

>I think this is dishonest. Many people are calling for an outright ban on
refugees.

Yea it's impossible to really argue this. Some do yes. Many just want
increased vetting.

Language is all I really care about. I don't understand how you can mesh with
a society at all if you can't even speak to them. Eat and do whatever the hell
you want, at the very least know English though.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Eventually it becomes South Miami where there are parts where workers don
> 't speak English. Kind of sucks when you try to order from a butcher shop
> and have to point at the meat and then the grinder._

Yeah, that would be kinda annoying.

Leaving innocent people to die in a totalitarian hellhole ought to demand a
slightly higher bar than "kinda annoying."

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
In that case shouldn't the U.S allow in the vast majority of Africa?

Where do you draw the line? There's only 300 million people in the U.S. A
quick search reveals that 780 million people don't have access to clean water.
What do you do?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I don't know exactly where to draw the line, but we can start with not sending
actual refugees back home to die.

------
eberfreitas
I love the freedom of the internet, but today it is led by just a few
companies that control information for profit and some sketchy things.

I'm afraid that the internet is not as free as it used to be as it reinforces
and "locks" you on a culture of individual consumerism over communal well-
being.

I can only hope that the internet won't erase from memory what the Cuban
revolution was all about.

~~~
lugg
The internet is just if not more free than it ever has been.

Maybe the way you choose to use it has changed?

For me, I have more access to free information, than I ever have.

Im trying to not let this fall into a snarky "use Facebook less" reply but
it's pretty hard not to when you're making claims like "the internet is not as
free as it used to be."

The fact the mainstream signed on and wanted centralised services over many
decentralized and democratized services isn't a suprise nor is it an indicator
the internet is less free. Simply that it's got some new citizens and they
happen to want to do things a different way than you would like.

Don't get me wrong Google, Amazon, Facebook etc having such dominance is
frightening and worrying for their own respective and distinct reasons but
let's not lazily frame it as the internet being less free.

~~~
bdamm
Your point is valid and, in the sense of TCP exchanges, true. However for most
people "the Internet" is the experience of the services that are available to
them via that medium. For the general non-technical, it has always been
centralized services, and there seem to be larger more centralized services
now than there were in the earlier times. The ability of companies to
customize the user Internet experience into a reinforced echo chamber has
unquestionably arisen.

But back to TCP. Governments have certainly improved their ability to monitor,
restrict, and even manipulate that traffic flow. Is the Internet more free?
I'm not sure.

