[HN Gopher] Vanuatu has been knocked offline for over a month
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Vanuatu has been knocked offline for over a month
Author : erehweb
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-12-07 15:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| zztop44 wrote:
| That sounds super serious. Of course on one level I'm extremely
| envious but on another I can't quite imagine what it'd be like.
| And I was born and raised before the internet became ubiquitous!
| somrand0 wrote:
| I like to think how, in a certain way, this means people
| growing up on that place right now, are having childhoods
| comparable to yours, in the 70s-80s (I'm assuming) right now.
| 30-40 years behind.
|
| That's cultural lag... I'm also a bit crazy and I think that
| banks make money by making effective use of this 'cultural
| lag'; to the point that there are institutions which go around
| causing this kinds of effects. It bothers me somewhat.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| A bit off track, but my first reaction when I started reading the
| article was: "well, these governments are really spoiled,
| entitled brats". This is because they take Internet as granted
| like a teenager addict of Instagram attention and not having it
| results in "20th century technology -- pen and paper" - lol, pen
| and paper were good for thousands of years. Internet is a tool
| and like any other tool you need to pay attention to care and
| maintain it and have it available, especially when you are in the
| middle of nowhere.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| So sweet. I'd love to live in a 20th century paradise where
| reasonable quality of living is maintained without digital
| technologies, the everyday communication/life rhythm is slow and
| only criminals are surveiled. Nice to know such places still
| exist (and you can even buy their citizenship).
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Man let them decide themselves what they want. What if their
| education was covid-like for remote places. Or doctors looking
| how to do procedures on youtube (not joking, junior doctors do
| it frequently even in Switzerland).
|
| If you want off-beaten path for yourself without internet there
| are still plenty of small islands in 3rd world countries like
| Philippines. Or mountains in India, Nepal, Pakistan and so on.
| HN is a massive bubble, real life (TM) looks differently out
| there.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Good luck getting your passport processed, they are not an
| analog utopia thats the problem
| jjice wrote:
| I think you have an idealistic view of the situation, but I bet
| this is actually pretty harmful to many people's lives since
| we're already so reliant on technology.
|
| The concept sounds great to me too, but I don't think the
| reality actually plays out that way.
| gamechangr wrote:
| I'm American that used to live in Vanuatu.
|
| It's the infrastructure. One time the electricity went out and I
| called The electrical company and they said "we are going to fly
| in experts next week, so we are getting it fixed"
|
| That was the update. Much of the expats were dumbfounded.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Much of the expats were dumbfounded_
|
| I've had some very interesting experiences bumping into expats
| around the world. It's amazing how many times they expect
| <remote, undeveloped country> to function _exactly_ like their
| extremely expensive and developed home country.
|
| They complain about the differences endlessly, but of course
| they want extremely cheap food, accommodation and alcohol.
|
| It's a very big disconnect.
| freeqaz wrote:
| What made you move to Vanuatu as an American? Work
| opportunities? Beautiful weather?
| gamechangr wrote:
| Both
|
| Work opportunities was the real one, but I wanted to take my
| young family (at the time my kids were 3,7,8) to experience a
| different culture. For example to feed sharks and go see a
| live volcano.
| flog wrote:
| I grew up in Vanuatu having those same experiences;
| swimming coral reefs, walking to the top of a volcano,
| exploring the jungles... etc
|
| It is a world away from the suburban kid's lifestyle back
| in the US (or wherever; i'm from NZ)
|
| Congratulations on taking the bold choice to move!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Don't leave us hanging, which kids did you feed to the
| sharks?
| googlryas wrote:
| What's the alternative? It's 300k people doing mostly low-
| medium intensity agriculture spread out over a large area in
| the middle of an ocean. I'm dumbfounded that anyone knowingly
| moving there would be dumbfounded that things move at a much
| slower pace. I'm reminded of my friend who moved to nome and
| was incensed that he couldn't get 2 day shipping on his Amazon
| orders any more.
| gamechangr wrote:
| It's okay for it Not to add up. It's a unique experience that
| is hard to translate for people that have not lived a day in
| the life.
|
| For example, there is a 30,000 member town that has high end
| hotels that do not have functional generators. You could Pay
| $600 a night and not have air conditioning.
|
| The alternative is being proactive about a backup system.
|
| Fiji has successfully done it. Their infrastructure is great.
| In Fiji, they have a similar 3rd world infrastructure for
| electricity. When it goes out, they have fully functional
| backup generators and a strong team of support. While blocks
| are down and you wouldn't even know it as a consumer.
|
| As Americans and mostly Aussie expats, the electrical
| challenge translated to not being able to shop for more than
| 1-3 days of food, but that was easy to adjust to once it was
| understood.
|
| But for example, the hospitals when they didn't know how to
| treat something-- they would just amputate. I'm guess that
| would be a surprise to most people.
|
| They had ni blood bank. They have one now, but I would get
| calls to come down to the hospital and "save a life" by
| giving blood right this minute.
|
| When forklifts at the port would break, they would just take
| the week off and ship new ones in.
|
| Which made the port constantly run behind. We had our own
| backup forklifts that we would keep on hand to make sure that
| our international contracts were honored.
|
| It's a beautiful place and the people are wonderful, but
| there is many challenges when planning a life there that many
| would take for granted
| neffy wrote:
| I have no idea why this got downloaded - but can only
| agree. Life in a major city at the forefront of
| technological change will rarely prepare someone for the
| realities of life outside that bubble. Numbers do have a
| quality of their own, and the combination of being behind
| the tech curve (which requires generational effort and
| education in itself to overcome) and not having a lot of
| people to do this with is a huge challenge for small
| countries and regions.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Life in a major city at the forefront of technological
| change will rarely prepare someone for the realities of
| life outside that bubble.
|
| Those who live such isolated lives should get out of the
| city from time to time, maybe just leave their safe
| neighborhoods. Grew up in NYC and was in cub/boy scouts
| and we did camping trips. My father preferred a rural and
| rugged lifestyle so we frequently vacationed in up state
| NY and Vermont where a lot of the activities were
| outdoors such as hikes, nature walks, tours, etc.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| This reminds me of a story about African farmers I once
| heard. NGOs and various philanthropic organizations have
| been notorious for having a superficial comprehension of
| what is actually needed to improve the lives of people in
| the so-called third world. We have the examples of the
| Nigerian or Tanzanian textile industries being severely
| hurt by the flooding of the market with mitumba[0] or the
| destruction of local shoe industry by Toms or even the
| impoverishment of Haitian agriculture through the
| distribution of free rice long after a crisis has passed,
| for that matter. But then you have cases where a piece of
| machinery breaks, and no one has the expertise to repair
| it, so the thing in question (a tractor, a well) is just
| abandoned and things go back to what they were. Technology
| lives in an ecosystem of expertise, supply chains, and
| other cultural features. Indeed, technology is part of
| culture.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitumba_(clothing)
| notch656a wrote:
| NGOs commonly are just employment schemes for wealthy
| first worlders. They aren't ignorant to the fact the
| solution they are providing isn't practical, they're just
| going with whatever pays their fat salary while
| generating donations. That is, that very little benefit
| winds up in the designated beneficiaries is by design
| rather than accident.
| xupybd wrote:
| I used to flat with a guy from Vanuatu. As a child he
| stepped on some coral. It got badly infected and he went to
| the local clinic. They discovered they had run out of any
| pain killers so they went and got some big guys to hold him
| down. They then cut his foot open and cleaned the infection
| out. While he was being held down and screaming in pain. He
| eventually passed out.
|
| The same guy went home for the holidays. He was to take a
| boat to get to his parents island. The boat was 3 days
| late. No communication so he basically camped waiting for
| the boat. He told me this was not unusual, you just had to
| wait. They did not tell you it was delayed or when it would
| come.
|
| He also told me that on his parents Island they spoke two
| totally different native languages. I asked how that was
| possible. How did they trade? He told me, "oh no if you
| crossed the river they would kill you". I asked how long
| ago that was and he told me it was during his fathers
| childhood.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| 300k is a large enough population to support expert utility
| workers. Though, who can say whether the damage would require
| regional or national expertise to converge on a county of
| that size in a larger country.
| EB66 wrote:
| > I'm dumbfounded that anyone knowingly moving there would be
| dumbfounded that things move at a much slower pace.
|
| That's a pretty rude response and also invalid. He's not
| dumbfounded at the slower pace of life. He's dumbfounded that
| a nation of 300k could have a week long electricity outage
| and not have a single resident capable of fixing the issue or
| a backup plan ready to activate. It suggests exceptionally
| poor planning -- even for an island nation in the Pacific.
| folkrav wrote:
| Something like 95% of the population are low-income farmers
| or service workers, are amongst the last 20 or so countries
| by GDP, and they have a total annual budget of less than
| $80mil a year. I'd be surprised if it was otherwise...
| guerrilla wrote:
| > It suggests exceptionally poor planning -- even for an
| island nation in the Pacific.
|
| Or the inverse... it suggests a much higher tolerance for
| inconvenience. We're just spoiled in Europe and America
| (including at our most popular vacation spots.) People
| lived for millions of years without this shit, ten thousand
| years of agricultural civilization alone...
| neffy wrote:
| Latency and logistics in my experience will always get
| you. On the similarly populated, but much closer to major
| landmasses than Vanuatu island I live on, we have had
| local outages from multiple failures close together. One
| transformer blows, and there is a replacement in stock
| for that. But if another one goes, then the new one has
| to be shipped from abroad, and that will take a few days
| even when emergency listed. Keeping replacement stock
| gets expensive as well, has to be checked, maintained,
| etc. It all adds up.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| Inconvenience is understating it, electricity isn't a
| luxury in the modern world anymore.
|
| What if you can't afford a generator and fuel, and you're
| medically reliant on a CPAP machine or a chair lift? You
| may be physically unable to leave your 2nd floor
| apartment, and unable to call for help because your
| cordless landline phone no longer has power? Not to
| mention the financial cost of all the food in your
| refrigerator spoiling.
|
| All of those things can be accounted for with money. But
| a government should plan to ensure a certain minimum
| standard of living for its citizens.
| villgax wrote:
| Never understood why tax payer money goes into proprietary
| software with shitty security
| smnscu wrote:
| I'm fascinated by these tiny, extremely remote populated places.
| Just this week I randomly found out about Pitcairn Islands, and
| looking at their blog it seems like Starlink has just become
| available there [0] (also recommend this video that's absolutely
| fascinating, to me at least [1]). I can't find much online about
| whether Vanuatu has Starlink access no, but there seems to be at
| least one group advocating for it [2] -- the article sounds
| pretty optimistic about it, but I didn't manage to find a follow-
| up (not that I looked too hard).
|
| 0: https://www.visitpitcairn.pn/the-pitkern-blog/one-of-the-
| mos...
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Dw-PuNZSE
|
| 2: https://www.dailypost.vu/news/spacex-starlink-satellites-
| to-...
| notch656a wrote:
| "Fun" fact. As of ~2004 roughly 1/3 of the male populace were
| soon-to-be-convicted sexual abusers of children, including the
| mayor.
| smnscu wrote:
| I was just reading about that and it significantly soured my
| enthusiasm :(
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/YesTheory/comments/yhsmfq/latest_ye.
| ..
| xupybd wrote:
| Have you read about
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_da_Cunha?
| notch656a wrote:
| This guy has some great stories about sailing there and
| other tiny places in tiny boats. In 1974
| his boat was the first to land on the world's most
| isolated island, Tristan da Cuhna. He had built the 6
| meter long boat Bris in his mother's basement. The island
| has no harbor but the boat was lifted up and placed on
| the beach. There he got a job as a math teacher.
|
| https://www.yrvind.com/
|
| https://www.yrvind.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/11/ex_lex_eng...
| rpigab wrote:
| Animats wrote:
| The government (gov.vu) seems to be offline, even to pings, but
| companies in Vanuatu seem to be online.
| libpcap wrote:
| kibwen wrote:
| It doesn't sound like Vanuatu itself was knocked offline (e.g.
| due to an undersea cable being cut or something), rather it
| sounds like many government systems were knocked offline as part
| of a cyberattack.
| yumitoktokstret wrote:
| I am currently in Vanuatu and have heard from government
| officials that their government systems have been hit with
| ransomware, including backups. The Finance Department was lucky
| because the data was on a remotely hosted service.
|
| The government's chief information officer's office centrally
| hosts most government digital services, and in my opinion this
| could be a weak point.
|
| I don't want to say any more.
|
| https://www.dailypost.vu/news/gov-t-pro-labels-cyberattack-n...
|
| https://www.dailypost.vu/news/cyber-attack-risks-will-remain...
| badcppdev wrote:
| Gee it's lucky they have the Australien government cyber experts
| helping harden their critical infrastructure:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_s...
| cromulent wrote:
| Vanuatu will sell you citizenship for 130k USD, without you
| having to even visit, and until a month ago that gave you visa-
| free access into the Schengen area.
|
| This program was over 40% of government income in 2020.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/citizenship-fo...
| notch656a wrote:
| EU and other entities are trying to choke off their income by
| cutting off their visa-free access which reduces the value of
| the passport, driving the country further towards the direction
| of poverty. Previously Vanuatu was able to make income via
| virtually unregulated banking but FATF cut that off too.
| jitix wrote:
| Isn't that a good thing?
|
| Tiny sovereign entities providing loopholes to the rich and
| the criminal needs to stop if we're to build an equitable
| world to deal with upcoming demographic and environmental
| challenges.
| notch656a wrote:
| But the EU also has citizenship by investment, it's just
| reserved to the even more rich. If anything opening it up
| to the lower wealth makes things more equitable, not less.
| IMO the most equitable world is open borders, so ideally
| the amounts would keep pushing lower.
|
| https://www.henleyglobal.com/citizenship-investment/austria
| jitix wrote:
| Yea and EU is wrong too. Malta, Cyprus and the UK
| dependencies are some of the worst offenders.
|
| I am also a big proponent of open borders and free
| movement but that needs to be done on a foundation of
| uniform global taxation laws. Humans can only be their
| best self when they have access to basic infrastructure
| and are given a decent social safety net, and these
| things cost money. These days most businessmen from both
| rich and poor countries hide their money behind these
| shields while the basic fabric of their societies are
| falling apart.
|
| A person shouldn't need more than a couple of billions.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| "But alarm systems don't prevent theft, they just
| restrict it to the better skilled thieves. If anything,
| weakening alarm system open theft up to the lower skilled
| thieves which makes things more equitable, not less."
|
| > IMO the most equitable world is open borders
|
| Man is not a solipsistic atom (though we can, to our own
| detriment and misery, choose to live self-absorbed,
| uncommitted lives). We are social animals that depend on
| a stable social order and a common good. That's why
| immigration is best done in a controlled manner so that
| the rate at which immigration occurs doesn't outpace and
| overwhelm the rate of absorption.
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