I bet everywhere with restricted internet something of this sort exists.
It also reminds the tech startup scene in Gaza, when I was browsing Google Maps to see what kind of economy they have there I recall stumbling upon startup schools. It's fascinating to browse the maps and see familiar things on places you wouldn't expect , I wish the best both to Gazans and the Israeli.
Anyway, just for a bit of humanisation of the people there, here is a spontaneous street performans by a Gazan dancer in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLR6uKTZX4
It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Notice how she transforms from fathers little girl into this elegant creature the moment she makes her first move? I think people completely transform into another persona when the assume a role and in this video you can see the transformation. IMHO a similar transformation happens when people have a connection to an environment outside of theirs, therefore this stuff is important for things beyond the practical needs.
Amazing stuff. Thank you for sharing! I think Cuba is ahead of the curve here, considering the direction the internet is going these days WRT encroaching censorship and media availability issues.
I was most surprised to discover that the Cuban government releases its own version. I’m curious about the differences/additions between the “official” release and the pirate one. I can only speculate, but I would assume that the sanctioned one is likely to be instrumented and censored, possibly even with malware. The pirate site is blocked by my adblocker also, so it may not be any safer in that regard. I wonder if anyone has studied it.
>i was wondering how all the efforts to buy gazan's eSIMs was going, this seems to be one of the results.
The eSIM stuff terrifies me, because you know damn well they're feeding that data into their intelligence apparatus for targeting purposes, and recent history has shown thus far that they don't give much of a shit about collateral damage.
I highly suspect that nearby cellular activity increases the chances of being injured or killed by an airstrike.
They just point an AI at them and let it decide who to bomb, no joke, this is literally what happens. Before AGI we are already living in Minority Report...
To be fair, the goal seems to be to kill and injure as much as possible, so wether you're using a cellphone or not you might just die.
An I you consider a kill and 3 injury for each bombardement (4 casualties)(which is a low estimate), 250 bombardement a day (low estimate again), and take the highest estimate of Hamas militants, 20k (including associated armed groups), 90% of all casualties are civilians, which is a ratio you only find in civil war and genocides.
This is a very good piece from bbc [1]. It revise IDF claims and how things are not correct and that the death toll is probably much higher because israel destroyed partially or completely most of functional hospitals where death toll numbers are collected.
I am replying assuming a good faith and that your goal is not justifying killing innocent people because it is horrible.
It's not extremely clear to me - they manage to put phones with Esim where there is signal and set up a hotspot for other phones? Or do they maintain hotspots near the border for the people in Gaza to conect to? Or a mix of both?
Yes essentially they put the phones up high enough to get Israeli or Egyptian signal (since Israel shut off the Palestinian one), then the phone uses its hotspot to connect to nearby phones.
it seems to be purely built upon cellular connectivity and hotspots!
I'm shocked there's no meshnet stuff involved here, but I suppose we can't see much details beyond the backbone, last-mile connectivity methods are probably extremely hodgepodge.
I wonder if something like this will become more prolific sort of like the rise of private gated suburban cities that has their own unrestricted internet jurisdiction vs the public facilities that overtime become ghettos with their own web trees capable of evading surveillance (by the group that wakes up every morning worried about losing it all to the people outside the fence).
Often wars are frontiers for societal shifts that arises from new technological inventions/adaptations. What we are seeing in Gaza very may well become a reality in the West in the future: a divorce of a globally connected world into its own islands that can only be accessed via physical proximity or like in my earlier example, socioeconomic class, even by ethnicity.
a) lack of shipping resources, electricity, etc
b) which people are reluctant to waste on something that will instantly be a visible target and probably last about five minutes
c) Musk is on Netanyahu's side https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/28/elon-musks-israel-...
Can confirm can’t unsee it! And you realize it’s used a lot. If Russia destroys infrastructure in Ukraine, our news says “Ukrainians adapted after the Russian military destroyed their networks”. When the IDF destroys Gazan networks, the story is “Gazans adapted after their networks were destroyed”.
Same thing happens with police shootings. “A stray bullet killed a child during police encounter” is a common type of headline. “Police officer shoots kid” is less common.
I believe political judgements are against the Hacker News guidelines as I've been reprimanded for making them in the past. Your comment should be removed by the moderators.
If you'd said it about Ukraine/Russia, it wouldn't be removed.
Pointing out communication styles in the media is not a political judgement. There is a political judgement being made here, but it's done by the author of the article. Your parent comment is merely pointing out the political judgement. And if doing that is against HN guidelines, then your comment is too.
The only one blocking aid right now is Egypt in the Rafa crossing. Israel is literally bringing in aid themselves again what other country warns a civilian population before it attacks? Does Russia warn Ukraine civilians?
Yes I think if the walls between Gaza and Israel came down it would be a moment like the taking down of the Berlin wall. Two people, ruled by the same government, finally experiencing the same rights, same freedoms, same status, etc.
How to tear down that wall without the extremists trying to kill their "enemies" on each side first, that no one has the answer to
It would probably be a good start if Israel just stopped bombing or otherwise closing Palestine's sea front or land borders with other countries. They don't even have to open their own border to civilians trying to escape their air strikes!
Are you familiar with the history of how those walls went up?
Hint: it has something to do with more than one thousand civilian deaths caused by suicide bombers coming from Gaza in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which almost completely stopped after the walls and checkpoints were installed. Now Hamas uses rockets instead, but those were much less dangerous on average than the bombings that were employed beforehand.
We can play the are you familiar with history game forever. They don't just bomb people because they're crazy barbarians. They do it because they have been forced from their homes and constantly had their villages and homes raided, burned, destroyed, and built on top of by Israeli settlers who the army protects. The entire West Bank is like this, and it's not surprising they turned to whatever tactics they could to stop the same from happening to them in Gaza.
And you can understand why normal Israelis feel threatened by such things, so they build a wall and on and on.
They may not agree but the fact on the ground is that the Israeli government does not recognize any Palestinian state, so the people in Palestine are thus under the control of the Israeli state or they are stateless refugees with a right to return (to Israel). Either way, they are the responsibility of Israel the way Israel's government sees it.
What people want is one thing. What governments do is the official thing, that's what I refer to
I don’t particularly disagree with the bulk of this comment. But I’ll note that it’s substantially different than your original one, which is not about responsibility but about a hypothetical peace that would spontaneously occur if Israel would unilaterally drop its campaign. I don’t think that’s realistic, even though I agree that the side with a functional state bears additional responsibility.
> How to tear down that wall without the extremists trying to kill their "enemies" on each side first, that no one has the answer to
South Africa does. They did it. Ending apartheid there (without splitting up into two countries, one for blacks, one for whites) actually stopped the gruesome ANC actions. There's some beautiful idiom about history and repetition that applies but I don't recall it.
I mean Israel should withdraw, sign the peace deal to get the hostages free, send Netanyahu and Gallant to the ICJ, and pay reparations to rebuild Gaza.
That can take a 3% discount, for the October 7 attacks, given that they've taken at least 30 civilian lives for every one they lost.
I bet everywhere with restricted internet something of this sort exists.
It also reminds the tech startup scene in Gaza, when I was browsing Google Maps to see what kind of economy they have there I recall stumbling upon startup schools. It's fascinating to browse the maps and see familiar things on places you wouldn't expect , I wish the best both to Gazans and the Israeli.
Anyway, just for a bit of humanisation of the people there, here is a spontaneous street performans by a Gazan dancer in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSLR6uKTZX4
It's one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Notice how she transforms from fathers little girl into this elegant creature the moment she makes her first move? I think people completely transform into another persona when the assume a role and in this video you can see the transformation. IMHO a similar transformation happens when people have a connection to an environment outside of theirs, therefore this stuff is important for things beyond the practical needs.