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Internet Shutdowns At Record High In Africa As Access 'Weaponized'

2 months 1 week ago
Internet shutdowns in Africa hit a record high in 2024, with 21 shutdowns across 15 countries. The previous record was 19 shutdowns in 2020 and 21. The Guardian reports: Authorities in Comoros, Guinea-Bissau and Mauritius joined repeat offenders such as Burundi, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea and Kenya. Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania were also on the list. But perpetrators also included militias and other non-state actors. Telecommunication and internet service providers who shut services based on government orders are also complicit in violating people's rights, said Felicia Anthonio, the #KeepItOn campaign manager at Access Now, citing the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. The details showed that most of the shutdowns were imposed as a response to conflicts, protests and political instability. There were also restrictions during elections. [...] At least five shutdowns in Africa had been imposed for more than a year by the end of 2024, according to Access Now. As of early 2025, the social network Meta was still restricted in Uganda, despite authorities engaging with its representatives. On the Equatorial Guinean island of Annobon, internet and cell services have been cut off since an August 2024 protest over environmental concerns and isolation from the rest of the country. The increase in shutdowns led the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights to pass a landmark resolution in March 2024 to help reverse the trend.

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Wine Releases Framework Mono 6.14

2 months 1 week ago
Today marks the release of Framework Mono 6.14, the first major Mono release in five years and the first under WineHQ's stewardship. This update includes long-awaited improvements such as native macOS ARM64 support, enhancements to System.Windows.Forms for X11, better COM interface support, and various stability fixes. Phoronix reports: In addition to the native macOS ARM64 support and System.Windows.Forms improvements for X11, some of the other Mono 6.14 improvements carried out over the past half-decade include improved support for generated COM interfaces, many warning fixes, addressing common cases where processes would hang on exit, and more. As for the "Framework Mono" name rather than just Mono, the release announcement explains: "Framework Mono is the project previously hosted at https://github.com/mono/mono, which was then simply called Mono. I have made this change to distinguish it from 'monovm' and 'Wine Mono', which are different projects. Framework Mono is a cross-platform runtime compatible with .NET Framework." You can download and learn more about the release here.

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