
Tell HN: HackerNews is the greatest site to browse in Cuba - ChicagoBoy11
I am in Cuba for a week for business and pleasure. Internet here is, unsurprisingly, incredibly scarce and insanely expensive. Even for foreign businesses, 1mb connections can cost in the thousands of dollars a month.<p>In my downtime, I have tried surfing the web, and every experience under the sun has been pretty painful, even for sites technically optimized for slow connections like Gmails HTML view.<p>But damn it, I´ve been browsing HN just as well as if I had been back home.<p>Thanks, dang
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ChicagoBoy11
On a sidenote, you cant help but walk around here and also feel that, should
commercial relations someday be fully normalized, there is going to be an
economic boom here unlike any the world has ever seen

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ck2
Is Cuban internet censored like China?

Surprised there isn't sat internet more available there, you can get that on
even remote islands in other parts of the world for a couple hundred US$ per
month.

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dalke
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_survei...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Cuba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Cuba)
give some specific details about censorship on the Cuban internet.

The only direct comparison to China is in the latter, which says:

> Reporters Without Borders suspects that Cuba obtained some of its internet
> surveillance technology from China ... However, it should be noted that Cuba
> does not enforce the same level of internet keyword censorship as China

but also:

> Rather than having complex filtering systems, the government relies on the
> high cost of getting online and the telecommunications infrastructure that
> is slow to restrict Internet access

You'll need to decide for yourself what "like" means.

If I read [http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2013/11/ilegal-satellite-
int...](http://laredcubana.blogspot.com/2013/11/ilegal-satellite-internet-
service-in.html) correctly, satellite internet is illegal, and expensive:

> getting the equipment in and installed costs between $3,500-$4.200, paid in
> advance in Miami. The bills are generally paid for by families members who
> live in the US and it seems that the motivation is purely business -- cheap
> phone calls and Internet access -- not political.

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bbcbasic
It's also the best site on my phone deep in a train tunnel where there is some
connection but very slow!

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brador
Try [http://skimfeed.com](http://skimfeed.com)

Just browsing the titles is enough to get a feel for the days events.

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ericzawo
Wow, bookmarked!

