
The Cuban Internet Crisis - jgayduk
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-cuban-internet-crisis-c7b0beb10945
======
hcentelles
Accurate snapshot of the internet state in Cuba, well written from a american
point of view.

As the cofounder of one of the most popular cuban websites, revolico.com, I'm
suffering this since 2007. We launch revolico on December '07, on march '08
the government blocked our IPs, then when we circumvent this censorship, they
made a DNS spoofing nationwide.

Nevertheless revolico is still the #1 classifieds ads site of the island, way
ahead of the government offering, our users are doing a lot of crazy and
creative stuff to get acces to the site.

So Cuba, besides having an internet penetration of less than 5%, strongly
censor the link, which is even sadder. I predict that access will increase in
the near/medium term, but unfortunately proportionally with the censorship.

~~~
rdudek
Have you ever writted a full story in regards how you operate the site and how
users from the island are able to access it? I would love to read it.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Cuban authorities would also be very interested, I imagine.

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gmisra
Interestingly, Cuba has developed an alternative network for the distribution
of many types of digital content: people with access to content download it
and distribute it using portable hard drives and usb sticks. A friend of mine
recently visited Cuba, and according to him, these "paquete shops" are
everywhere. There are standard bundles of content (tv shows, movies, viral
videos, news, music, etc), and a la carte service. According to him, the
content is consistently up-to-date (the latest Game of Thrones episode is
available within 2-3 days). The shops themselves have developed brands, part
of the value they provide is curatorial, as each bundle is different. Some of
them have even branched out into adding their own bundled content, including
neighborhood classifieds (craigslist, anyone?).

Information really only travels in one direction, so it is not even close to
the real internet, but we could image an enterprising paquete shop bundling in
some encryption software and forum software to enable two-way communication.

More here: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-
in...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-internet-
weekly-packet-external-hard-drives)

~~~
eric_h
Ah, the good ole sneaker net. It seems likely the bandwidth of that network
will far outpace that of "real" internet in Cuba for quite some time.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Bandwith, yes. "Latency", not so much. We talk about a latency of milliseconds
being important for e-commerce, online trading, API Access, but a sneakernet
has a latency of at the very least days for the most "interesting" stuff, and
months for other content.

So yes, the sneakernet can be used to distribute education materials, movies,
texts and the like, but the real benefits of the internet only develop with
low latency and multidirectional communication.

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forinti
There are 10 times more people without access to the Internet in my country
(Brazil) than there are Cubans.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users)

Cuba occupies far too much space on the media relative to its size/population.

~~~
davidcollantes
Brazil is a democracy, Cuba isn't. Just as North Korea, but much closer to
America, Cuba is above all a curiosity, a place semi-frozen in time, where
ingenuity is no luxury, if you want to live.

~~~
linschn
Putting Cuba and North Korea in the same basket is wildly misleading.

Although Cubans do not enjoy complete political freedom, most people there
have a higher standard of living than before the revolution, almost everyone
knows how to read and write and most social services are free (Cubans have
better healthcare than US citizens).

~~~
ibarrac
The 80% poor may have had their standard of living raised by the revolution in
1959 but the rich and middle class had it lowered. In the 55 years since, the
standard of living of the middle class and opportunities for the young in
other similar countries has advanced past Cuba's while Cuba has stagnated and
remained a 1970s soviet-like low-tech state.

~~~
digi_owl
Not sure if it is worth the ulcer, but i do wonder how much the Helms-Burton
Act (and similar) has had to do with that...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act)

------
technofiend
I realize off-island access is slow or impossible, but this seems like the
perfect application for mesh-based WISPs to spring up. On-island resources
would at least be accessible to other on-island users.

Where's google with their phalanx of balloons and a cached copy of wikipedia?

~~~
gandalfu
There are plenty of p2p wireless networks in Havana extending miles. People do
all sort of crazy Antenas in order to extend the range.

[http://cubayatwittea.blogspot.nl/2013/01/como-acceder-
intern...](http://cubayatwittea.blogspot.nl/2013/01/como-acceder-internet-en-
cuba-super.html)

~~~
PebblesHD
Using existing parabolic reflecters as well as home-made solutions like fan
covers is genius! I'm always astounded by the level of ingenuity in developing
areas with regards to technology such as this, great link!

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redwards510
Maybe someone can help me change my view on this topic. I don't see why we
should be in such a rush to bring the third world online. Shouldn't we be
focused on making sure they have clean water, food, and jobs that pay enough
for them to afford the internet first?

All these efforts to put smartphones in the hands of starving people seems
motivated by mega-corporations eager to "open up new markets", exploit
vulnerable people, and increase their tracking datasets using people too naive
to know any better. Most Americans resist privacy invasions because they've
been a bit educated on the topic, so let's move on to people who don't know
better?

~~~
Retric
First off mobile infrastructure is cheap.

Second, in many ways the developing world is better leveraging the internet
than the developed world. Travel is a huge issue in the developing world so
being able to do remote transactions becomes far more valuable. Access to
education and professionals is more limited so information becomes more
valuable not less.

~~~
walshemj
Really in that case if its cheap why are mobile carriers into infrastructure
sharing.

Or why doesn't BT in the UK just build its own mobile network instead of
buying EE

~~~
Retric
"why are mobile carriers into infrastructure sharing"

Because for profit companies want to make as much money as possible and
spectrum is limited. Which is more or less why buying an empty field in the
Brazil is ridiculously cheaper than the same sized empty field in downtown
London.

~~~
walshemj
Doesn't that just prove my point building a country wide mobile network is not
a minor or cheap undertaking.

~~~
Retric
The first network is cheap to start, it gets pricy after that.

You don't need to start by building a nationwide network when you start out. 1
Cell tower can handle a little over 1200 calls at the same time and cover up
to 1,500 square miles using 2002 teck. So start with one tower in the major
city(s) for a few million and add towers as needed after that with the revenue
from customers.

Which is why there is a cell network in every country. The problem is a few
towers is not going to cut it once someone is covering the country.

PS: Building a modern tower in the US costs ~300k USD as a baseline including
equipment and construction costs (though you can have more than one network
per tower). Covering the UK wold cost at a minimum ~30million USD for the
towers assuming ~1k square miles per tower. Less if you include significant
gaps, laying the ground network is adds costs. But you would probably pay 10x
just for the spectrum and you would want a much higher density in city's, and
land is not free etc.

~~~
walshemj
Yes but the USA's model of mobile is broken - European Governments sensibly
mandate yes you can have the licence but you must by xx years have yy%
coverage of the population.

------
gandalfu
In case anyone wonders, this is the "cuban" clone of craigslist.
[http://www.revolico.com](http://www.revolico.com)

You cab buy/sell almost anything on the black market.

For reference, 1 CUC = 1.10 USD

------
leroyg
Everything associated with Cuba right now feels like financial opportunity for
insiders. How does this go down any other way than the Soviet privatisation
did? Everything from resort development, in some cases re-developemnt since
American companies still have or had businesses on the island before Communism
- to technical infrastructure. How does it not be that process?

------
toomuchtodo
Is there anything stopping someone from coming to Cuba and installing wifi
access points, backhaul, etc and giving it away for free?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The secret police that'll tear off your fingernails for going against the
party? Cuba isn't exactly known for its lax take on political "crime."

Its priced at the level to limit access. This is a feature of the communist
government, not a bug that needs fixing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Its priced at the level to limit access. This is a feature of the communist
> government, not a bug that needs fixing.

All political control of information is a bug that needs fixing.

------
eridal
Completely OT but why do blogs don't justify paragraphs?

Call me obsessive but once I've fixed that, their entire article read better.

~~~
cmaury
Justified paragraphs are mostly useful for text laid out in columns (i.e.
Newspapers and magazines). This way when you are reading the second and
subsequent columns, the eye can easily find the start of the line/column.

Most blogs are single column. Justifying the text will create variations in
the space between words which makes it harder to read with little benefit
other than an overall aesthetic that may or may not be more pleasing to look
at as a whole.

~~~
whoopdedo
But many blogs will place advertisements or other elements to the right of the
main content. Would an aligned border improve the readability of the ads
leading to higher conversion when text is justified?

Alternately, you may get lower conversion as the aligned text creates a "stop
here" signal that makes the reader less likely to wander into the ad space.
Should be worth A-B testing.

~~~
jacobolus
Justified text really only looks good if either (a) you have correct
hyphenation and a high-quality paragraph composition algorithm, such as the
one used by TeX or Adobe InDesign, or (b) you lay the text out by hand very
carefully for a fixed-width layout. To make justified text look really good,
the start and end positions of each line need to be optically adjusted (in
other words, vary a little bit from line to line to account for varying letter
shapes) and usually punctuation stuck slightly into the margin.

In a web browser, text composition is done line by line (because that was more
practical for the compute resources available in 1995, and no one has bothered
to implement the better alternative, even though every device used today has
more than enough CPU to handle it), there is no hyphenation, and you can
forget about optical adjustment. As a result, justified text invariably looks
like complete garbage, with dramatically varying amounts of space from line to
line. These turn into distracting “rivers” of whitespace running down the
page.

