8 ms·

Cuba: a nation gets connected

67 points by caio1982 11y ago

vegabook 11y ago
maravilloso, and welcome to our brethren in Cuba! But there is still something sad about the internet reaching all of the planet. I kinda liked the idea of a place, a mythical place, an unspoiled place....untouched by rent-seeking Search, un-comment-streamed, un-immediate. A place where Adwords know no purchase...a modern-day unwired Atlantis! Just to relax. Once in a while.
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  That's why many people have cottages in the middle of no where: to get away. It's sort of a romantic idea. But to impose that "ideal" on a whole nation is something else entirely.
  - vegabook 11y ago
    Completely agreed mfoy_... I would hate to have my freedom of information curtailed by anybody, and do not wish it upon any individual or nation. Yet still...a cottage in the hills. This gives me personal freedom, but it does not give me access to a whole society untouched by the other (arguably often negative) aspects of connectivity. If we accept that we are social beings, that we are not merely individuals, that society is in some ways adversely affected by connectivity, then it is still reasonable to long for a social place, a whole society, free of the internet?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- azinman2 11y ago
  For your own benefit... Cubans meanwhile probably aren't so crazy about forced disconnection. There's always North Korea!
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- grecy 11y ago
  Move North :) 10 minutes out of any town in the Yukon, there is no cell service, and certainly no internet. It's great to drive 1000+ miles without service, and camp for weeks and weeks without hearing from the outside world (no regular radio either, when you really get out there).
sbuttgereit 11y ago
What is not addressed in the article is how open the access is, or if there's a Great Firewall of Cuba. I cannot help but suspecting that there is. Connectivity to the outside word is not, by itself, a virtue unless you get access to the outside world. If that perspective is so heavily edited that all you get is the same stale thinking you had before the connectivity, can you say you even are truly connected? I think not.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  To anyone in Cuba: If you're a tech professional, can you run http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/cli.html http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/cli.html and report the results back?
  - deproders 11y ago
    http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca253f-8683-9854a58e-fb28-478b-94ed http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca253f-8683-9...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Replace this link with a screenshot excluding or obfuscating your IP.
- paozac 11y ago
  Fifteen years ago there were some country-wide ACLs. I wouldn't be surprised if they're still in place.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    It looks like they're using some pretty extensive proxies (read: every service) currently.
- cleaver 11y ago
  My brief experience while on vacation in 2010 is that Internet access is far too expensive for an individual. I suspect there's little or no censorship. Cuba has no money for such luxuries. With a busy tourist industry it would be difficult to keep out news of the outside world as is possible in China.
dalke 11y ago
The title is a bit of a misnomer. Cuba was already connected to the Internet in the early 1990s. See http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/cuba2.htm http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/cuba2.ht... : > One of the authors (Snyder) was able to make a direct connection from the CENIAI Unix system to a VAX/VMS system in his apartment using a single X.121 address at the Havana end. To get to the Login prompt, his connection ran from the PAD program on the CENIAI Unix microcomputer over the X.25 satellite link to Moscow. VNIIPAS received the call and routed it to the international Sprint network. It was routed to Reston, Virginia where it entered the domestic US network. Sprint conveyed the call to Columbus, Ohio, and passed it to the CompuServe X.25 gateway. CompuServe carried it to University of Arizona's Telecommunications Group where it was translated from X.25 to DECnet format, and routed through Ethernet, fiber optics, a 56K line, and an asynch 9.6K DECnet line to Snyder's apartment. The gateway VAX in his apartment passed the call to his workstation VAX, which displayed ``Username:''!
- jpatokal 11y ago
  North Korea has also been connected to the Internet for a good long time -- doesn't mean that 99.9% of its population has any access. I do agree that this article is a bit hypey, a few dozen Wifi hotspots that charge $2/hr isn't exactly a telecoms resolutions. Unlike NK, Cuba has had public Internet for a long time, it has just been expensive and inconvenient, and continues to be so.
  - dalke 11y ago
    What is your point of bringing North Korea into the thread? There are plenty of countries which have worse internet penetration than Cuba, including Haiti, the Solomon Islands, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Surely the last a better comparison to Cuba than NK, no? BTW, a quick check of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba says that more about 3% of the population had internet access already by 2002, and about 25% now. Slow Internet? Certainly. Filtered? Yes. Expensive? Yes. But why bring up an irrelevant 0.1% statistic?
    - 11y ago
mrbig4545 11y ago
I was there in may, Cuba was already connected. Its just another "look at how good America is making Cuba" article. http://laredcubana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuban-infrastructure-investment-china.html?m=1 http://laredcubana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuban-infrastructu...
- caio1982 11y ago
  Really? Where/how exactly did you read that in the article? All I could find that is slightly related to your comment is this: "Although some U.S. companies, including Google, seem eager to help Cuba build up its Internet capabilities, the government still hasn't tipped its hand on how much help it wants from the United States." I'm pretty sure Cubans don't care who's setting things up as long as they get connected at last. To me the article seems to focus on the OMG-I-AM-ONLINE aspect of things, reporting people trying to make video calls for the first time and such. That's special and that's about technology enabling people, not much about politics at this point IMHO.
  - caente 11y ago
    I agree, OMG-I-AM-ONLINE, is pretty much the only good thing about it. I'm cuban, I haven't lived there for a few years now. My wife and her family have been able to speak using video. I have also heard stories of people have been able to see they loved ones after many years. Other than that, cuban internet is horrible. I have had all kinds. I worked in a 300 employees company where our internet was 196kbs. After that I worked in another with 2 mbps, but this one had more than 4000 employees across the country, so after 5 pm the internet was awesome, not so much on office hours. I never had internet at home until I quit my job to work as freelancer, then I had to pay 60 usd for 80 hrs a month on a commuted connection, which never when above 40kbps. All of that happened after 2005. And btw, that commuted connection, was because my grandmother was born in Spain, so she had the right to have internet, I was lucky. Other cubans need to use more irregular methods. Today it's not much better, yes, you can have internet on the park, but it is still very hard to actually use it to get work done. For that, you still need to leave the country.
- brandon272 11y ago
captn3m0 11y ago
imo, the chat application mentioned in the article is available here: https://imo.im/ https://imo.im/ I was a heavy user of imo because it was a generic xmpp client, and used it mainly for google chat, along with federated facebook chat etc. It was a really good interface for handling multiple chats at the same time (This is before slack). However, google's move to move away from federated xmpp cost them a lot as they lost a lot of customers, iirc. Nice to see that they are still doing good.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
curiousjorge 11y ago
this is exciting! even more exciting would be when the regime collapses. what sort of war crimesque stories would we hear? ex. who was sending the messages on the number stations? imagine one day, north korea....the horrors that would be unveiled while the world sat by looking the other way. it would be the biggest embarassment of humanity. in our modern day and age, in this day of UN and international bullshit, we allow a nationwide gulag to operate and continue to attack south korea.
- WaxProlix 11y ago
  Are you seriously comparing Cuba to NK? A country whose internal economic structuring during McCarthyism netted them an economic and political blackballing by their nearest trading neighbor (one of the largest economic powerhouses in the world) and all their allies, but which still managed to produce one of the world's best healthcare systems and even send their surplus of doctors on numerous humanitarian missions... how is this even remotely the same as a country that chose to cloister itself and actively deny its citizens rights? Or have I just been trolled, maybe...
  - marcoperaza 11y ago
    To use your words, Cuba actively denies its citizens rights. There is no freedom of speech, press, or assembly. Internet access is closely monitored and heavily restricted. For a long time it was illegal to even leave Cuba. My family had to tell a web of lies to escape decades ago. Cuban doctors are forced to work overseas for pittances and have minders to keep them from defecting. The same goes for Cuban athletes, who routinely defect despite the regime's efforts to stop them. The Castros funded communist horrors across South America and even in Africa. Today they prop up their autocratic allies in Venezuela. The idea that Cuba has "one of the world's best healthcare systems" has been thoroughly debunked too. Further, what you call "economic restructuring" most others would see as illegal confiscation of property. It's little reported today, but one of the original reasons for the US embargo against Cuba is the nationalization of American-owned property without compensation. Communism produced only poverty and hardship everywhere it has been implemented, what makes you think that Cuba would have been any different save for the embargo? Finally, as someone who's family witnessed the horrors of Castro's Cuba firsthand, and decided to flee to America with little more than the clothes on their backs, I'm saddened to see someone who's clearly intelligent and articulate repeat such brazen lies. The difference between Cuba and North Korea is just a matter of degree.
wahsd 11y ago
aaaaand the NSA has tapped them in direct violation of all things democratic and good.
bayesianhorse 11y ago
There is an Open Source user group in Cuba called GUTL (http://gutl.jovenclub.cu/ http://gutl.jovenclub.cu/). I met one of their members at the last Python Unconference in Hamburg. They want to organize a tech conference in Cuba, the idea being that for the exchange of knowledge it is easier to bring foreigners to Cuba than for Cubans to go to international conferences. See http://www.cubaconf.org/ http://www.cubaconf.org/

67 points by caio1982 11y ago

maravilloso, and welcome to our brethren in Cuba! But there is still something sad about the internet reaching all of the planet. I kinda liked the idea of a place, a mythical place, an unspoiled place....untouched by rent-seeking Search, un-comment-streamed, un-immediate. A place where Adwords know no purchase...a modern-day unwired Atlantis! Just to relax. Once in a while.

mfoy_ 11y ago
That's why many people have cottages in the middle of no where: to get away. It's sort of a romantic idea. But to impose that "ideal" on a whole nation is something else entirely.
- vegabook 11y ago
  Completely agreed mfoy_... I would hate to have my freedom of information curtailed by anybody, and do not wish it upon any individual or nation. Yet still...a cottage in the hills. This gives me personal freedom, but it does not give me access to a whole society untouched by the other (arguably often negative) aspects of connectivity. If we accept that we are social beings, that we are not merely individuals, that society is in some ways adversely affected by connectivity, then it is still reasonable to long for a social place, a whole society, free of the internet?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
azinman2 11y ago
For your own benefit... Cubans meanwhile probably aren't so crazy about forced disconnection. There's always North Korea!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
grecy 11y ago
Move North :) 10 minutes out of any town in the Yukon, there is no cell service, and certainly no internet. It's great to drive 1000+ miles without service, and camp for weeks and weeks without hearing from the outside world (no regular radio either, when you really get out there).

sbuttgereit 11y ago

What is not addressed in the article is how open the access is, or if there's a Great Firewall of Cuba. I cannot help but suspecting that there is. Connectivity to the outside word is not, by itself, a virtue unless you get access to the outside world. If that perspective is so heavily edited that all you get is the same stale thinking you had before the connectivity, can you say you even are truly connected? I think not.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
To anyone in Cuba: If you're a tech professional, can you run http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/cli.html http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/cli.html and report the results back?
- deproders 11y ago
  http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca253f-8683-9854a58e-fb28-478b-94ed http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/restore/id=43ca253f-8683-9...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Replace this link with a screenshot excluding or obfuscating your IP.
paozac 11y ago
Fifteen years ago there were some country-wide ACLs. I wouldn't be surprised if they're still in place.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  It looks like they're using some pretty extensive proxies (read: every service) currently.
cleaver 11y ago
My brief experience while on vacation in 2010 is that Internet access is far too expensive for an individual. I suspect there's little or no censorship. Cuba has no money for such luxuries. With a busy tourist industry it would be difficult to keep out news of the outside world as is possible in China.

dalke 11y ago

The title is a bit of a misnomer. Cuba was already connected to the Internet in the early 1990s. See http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/cuba2.htm http://som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/devnat/nations/cuba/cuba2.ht... : > One of the authors (Snyder) was able to make a direct connection from the CENIAI Unix system to a VAX/VMS system in his apartment using a single X.121 address at the Havana end. To get to the Login prompt, his connection ran from the PAD program on the CENIAI Unix microcomputer over the X.25 satellite link to Moscow. VNIIPAS received the call and routed it to the international Sprint network. It was routed to Reston, Virginia where it entered the domestic US network. Sprint conveyed the call to Columbus, Ohio, and passed it to the CompuServe X.25 gateway. CompuServe carried it to University of Arizona's Telecommunications Group where it was translated from X.25 to DECnet format, and routed through Ethernet, fiber optics, a 56K line, and an asynch 9.6K DECnet line to Snyder's apartment. The gateway VAX in his apartment passed the call to his workstation VAX, which displayed ``Username:''!

jpatokal 11y ago
North Korea has also been connected to the Internet for a good long time -- doesn't mean that 99.9% of its population has any access. I do agree that this article is a bit hypey, a few dozen Wifi hotspots that charge $2/hr isn't exactly a telecoms resolutions. Unlike NK, Cuba has had public Internet for a long time, it has just been expensive and inconvenient, and continues to be so.
- dalke 11y ago
  What is your point of bringing North Korea into the thread? There are plenty of countries which have worse internet penetration than Cuba, including Haiti, the Solomon Islands, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Surely the last a better comparison to Cuba than NK, no? BTW, a quick check of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Cuba says that more about 3% of the population had internet access already by 2002, and about 25% now. Slow Internet? Certainly. Filtered? Yes. Expensive? Yes. But why bring up an irrelevant 0.1% statistic?
  - 11y ago

mrbig4545 11y ago

I was there in may, Cuba was already connected. Its just another "look at how good America is making Cuba" article. http://laredcubana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuban-infrastructure-investment-china.html?m=1 http://laredcubana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuban-infrastructu...

caio1982 11y ago
Really? Where/how exactly did you read that in the article? All I could find that is slightly related to your comment is this: "Although some U.S. companies, including Google, seem eager to help Cuba build up its Internet capabilities, the government still hasn't tipped its hand on how much help it wants from the United States." I'm pretty sure Cubans don't care who's setting things up as long as they get connected at last. To me the article seems to focus on the OMG-I-AM-ONLINE aspect of things, reporting people trying to make video calls for the first time and such. That's special and that's about technology enabling people, not much about politics at this point IMHO.
- caente 11y ago
  I agree, OMG-I-AM-ONLINE, is pretty much the only good thing about it. I'm cuban, I haven't lived there for a few years now. My wife and her family have been able to speak using video. I have also heard stories of people have been able to see they loved ones after many years. Other than that, cuban internet is horrible. I have had all kinds. I worked in a 300 employees company where our internet was 196kbs. After that I worked in another with 2 mbps, but this one had more than 4000 employees across the country, so after 5 pm the internet was awesome, not so much on office hours. I never had internet at home until I quit my job to work as freelancer, then I had to pay 60 usd for 80 hrs a month on a commuted connection, which never when above 40kbps. All of that happened after 2005. And btw, that commuted connection, was because my grandmother was born in Spain, so she had the right to have internet, I was lucky. Other cubans need to use more irregular methods. Today it's not much better, yes, you can have internet on the park, but it is still very hard to actually use it to get work done. For that, you still need to leave the country.
brandon272 11y ago

captn3m0 11y ago

imo, the chat application mentioned in the article is available here: https://imo.im/ https://imo.im/ I was a heavy user of imo because it was a generic xmpp client, and used it mainly for google chat, along with federated facebook chat etc. It was a really good interface for handling multiple chats at the same time (This is before slack). However, google's move to move away from federated xmpp cost them a lot as they lost a lot of customers, iirc. Nice to see that they are still doing good.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

curiousjorge 11y ago

this is exciting! even more exciting would be when the regime collapses. what sort of war crimesque stories would we hear? ex. who was sending the messages on the number stations? imagine one day, north korea....the horrors that would be unveiled while the world sat by looking the other way. it would be the biggest embarassment of humanity. in our modern day and age, in this day of UN and international bullshit, we allow a nationwide gulag to operate and continue to attack south korea.

WaxProlix 11y ago
Are you seriously comparing Cuba to NK? A country whose internal economic structuring during McCarthyism netted them an economic and political blackballing by their nearest trading neighbor (one of the largest economic powerhouses in the world) and all their allies, but which still managed to produce one of the world's best healthcare systems and even send their surplus of doctors on numerous humanitarian missions... how is this even remotely the same as a country that chose to cloister itself and actively deny its citizens rights? Or have I just been trolled, maybe...
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  To use your words, Cuba actively denies its citizens rights. There is no freedom of speech, press, or assembly. Internet access is closely monitored and heavily restricted. For a long time it was illegal to even leave Cuba. My family had to tell a web of lies to escape decades ago. Cuban doctors are forced to work overseas for pittances and have minders to keep them from defecting. The same goes for Cuban athletes, who routinely defect despite the regime's efforts to stop them. The Castros funded communist horrors across South America and even in Africa. Today they prop up their autocratic allies in Venezuela. The idea that Cuba has "one of the world's best healthcare systems" has been thoroughly debunked too. Further, what you call "economic restructuring" most others would see as illegal confiscation of property. It's little reported today, but one of the original reasons for the US embargo against Cuba is the nationalization of American-owned property without compensation. Communism produced only poverty and hardship everywhere it has been implemented, what makes you think that Cuba would have been any different save for the embargo? Finally, as someone who's family witnessed the horrors of Castro's Cuba firsthand, and decided to flee to America with little more than the clothes on their backs, I'm saddened to see someone who's clearly intelligent and articulate repeat such brazen lies. The difference between Cuba and North Korea is just a matter of degree.

wahsd 11y ago

aaaaand the NSA has tapped them in direct violation of all things democratic and good.

bayesianhorse 11y ago

There is an Open Source user group in Cuba called GUTL (http://gutl.jovenclub.cu/ http://gutl.jovenclub.cu/). I met one of their members at the last Python Unconference in Hamburg. They want to organize a tech conference in Cuba, the idea being that for the exchange of knowledge it is easier to bring foreigners to Cuba than for Cubans to go to international conferences. See http://www.cubaconf.org/ http://www.cubaconf.org/