Discussions on tech censorship came to the forefront in recent weeks due to the aftermath of the Jan 6 capitol insurrection in the US. I’ve been writing down a bunch of thoughts about the complicated issue, let’s see if I can hammer them into a blog post. (I also wanted to defer posting about it until after the Biden inauguration, in case more things of interest happen.) Here’s where I am now:
All entries tagged current events.
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Jan 2021
Aug 2020
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These weeknotes are coming in late in the day because of reasons. (The reasons being laziness and procrastination.) Actually, I feel like I’ve been kind of phoning in the weeknotes over the past few weeks, they’ve mostly been “hey, I’ve been busy, so nothing of significance happened, but here are some things I watched/played.” Supposedly one of the side effects of writing regular updates is that you tend to look out for more interesting things to do so you have something to write about, even on an unconscious level.
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Still kind of busy, although there’s a bunch of things I hope I can finally wrap up this week, so I can move on to the long list of other things I want to be doing. The world continues to be bleak, so I’m still hiding from it. My stuff: Forty-two. I thought about just merging these into a single post for the day, but nah, this seems better. Reworking the old charity side project still ongoing.
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Kind of a busy week for me again, so the week kind of passed me by quickly. It’s August! In one month it will be (PH) Christmas season! It feels like July went by more quickly than other quarantine months. My stuff: A bit of consulting work. Reworking the old charity side project still ongoing. I was hoping to finish all the changes last week and next week would be testing and deployment, but stuff got in the way (and estimates may have been a bit off), but the spillover is small and we should still be fine for finishing everything next week.
Jul 2020
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The world: hm. I was a bit busy this week, so I wasn’t paying too much attention, so I don’t have too much to rail against today. Well of course, things are still ongoing. There’s still the pandemic, fascist police state philosophy continues to rear it’s ugly head in the US, PH gov’t continues to be dumb, etc., but this week seemed a bit tame comparably. On 26 Jul 2020 12:00am I wrote: Pandemic thoughts and updates, July 26 edition:
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My country: There are days when I have to consciously temper my rage at the shenanigans of this government. I can’t write about them today. My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Had a busy work week again; at the same time I also picked up an older charity project where the client asked for UI updates. Had issues with running the old code, and it was small enough, so I decided to rewrite it in a new tech stack.
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My country: Friday afternoon the House of Representatives voted to deny the franchise application of the nation’s biggest broadcaster ABS-CBN. This despite all agencies of the executive testifying that the company had no violations. Justifications cited were mostly personal reasons. The Palace claims they remained neutral on this issue, but no one really believes that. Probably not even then. What now, Philippines? My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes.
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My country: Friday afternoon the president sighed the controversial “Anti-terror law” that vastly expands police powers, allows people to be arrested without warrants on mere suspicion of terrorism etc. Interesting timing, right after China applies a new anti-terror low to Hong Kong (and rightly gets castigated for it by countries all over the world) and also right after the PNP (who promise not to abuse their newfound powers) are under criticism for killing some soldiers in a misencounter and tampering with the crime scene to cover it up.
Jun 2020
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My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Easily the most annoying thing this week: our broadband modem conked out Wednesday night. Customer support isn’t super responsive for local telcos: I called their support line the next day (support line is not even available 24/7!), got put on hold for 45 minutes TWICE before they agreed to send a repair crew over the next day (Friday). Friday morning I got a text that the technician visit was actually scheduled for SATURDAY morning.
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My stuff: This week’s pandemic notes. Some days still hot, but weather beginning to turn for the better. Sleep kind of better and a bit more regular too. Did my quarterly medical checkup this past week (slightly delayed). No issues, but I need to do an FBS test for next time. Sleep schedule kind of settling back into my usual biphasic sleep. Although the second phase seems to move around a lot… Not much work-wise the past week, and a bit more family-related expenses.
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Surprisingly, no new crises have emerged during the past week. I think. More of the same crises, carrying on. Last Friday was the PH independence day holiday. I didn’t feel like celebrating. It doesn’t feel like we are free. In any case, a protest rally against the yet-to-be-signed terror bill took place at the university that morning, inspite of threats from the authorities that it wasn’t allowed. The protestors spaced themselves out and everything.
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The world isn’t letting up. The virus is still around, but both the US and my own country have gotten distracted. The US is in its second week of police brutality/black lives matters protests. Meanwhile, our government took on a sidequest of trying to enact a wide-ranging and easily abusable anti-terror bill, triggering some smaller (by comparison to the US). I haven’t written about the terror bill, mainly because I haven’t had the opportunity to dig into it too deeply.
May 2020
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A bit of brouhaha a couple of weeks ago after the National Telecommunications Commission ordered the country’s biggest broadcaster ABS-CBN to cease operations because Congress had been remiss in renewing their franchise.. This despite the NTC earlier promising they can operate provisionally while the franchise renewal is being processed, a change of heart apparently due to a legal opinion by the SolGen. Some thoughts: “Bias” The speaker of the house says:
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I mean, that’s true in general of course. But it certainly seems much more true in these pandemic times. Before all of this waves hands arounds frantically, people had a general sense of routine and predictability about their daily lives. It varied person by person of course, but many people had regular things like a steady job that kept them occupied for most of the week, a school where their kids could go off to most days, maybe a favorite bar or restaurant they visit every week or so, church on Sundays, friends you saw every other weekend or so, malls or stores they would pass by regularly, and so on and so forth.
Apr 2020
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I was reading this post about how to respond to the “Nothing to Hide” argument against the concept of privacy. The quoted DuckDuckGo blog post lists some pretty good reasons, but I thought I’d expound on some thoughts as well. The core of the “Nothing to Hide” argument is that if you, personally, have nothing incriminating or illegal to hide, then you don’t need to worry about privacy intrusions. The argument is used mainly to justify things like state-sponsored surveillance, but might also be applicable to data collection activities by large corporations such as Facebook or Google.
Mar 2020
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I originally had this as a tweetstorm/rant, but it ended up quite long, so I’m posting it to the blog too. It is mostly frustration at how poorly the people in charge are handling things. Instead of asking for more budget, the govt should be telling us first how they are planning to spend the money they are already allocated, which they claimed was sufficient. Instead of saying we can’t do mass testing because of limited kits, they should be telling us about their plans for getting more testing kits, ppes, hospital capacity, etc.
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This post will largely be about the effects of the COVID-19 virus on my country, the Philippines, including government and society’s response, largely from a personal POV. It’s actually a bit difficult to write about, but I figure it’s something I would like to be able to look back on in the future, so let’s give it a shot. The reason it’s difficult to write about is that events are unfolding and changing rapidly, and a lot of things are still unclear.
Nov 2019
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A quick follow-up to something I mentioned in yesterday’s post: It is a cultural problem too. Even we the citizens have little respect for rules and laws and try to skip around them when we can. This is why we have fixers, and connections, and patronage. We trade on favors to get us out of trouble. I’m not sure if needed to be said, but I wasn’t saying that literally every single person participates in fixing and patronage to get around the rules.
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In yet another example of what is wrong with this country, the PNP are planning to arrest vape users after Duterte’s directive, despite there actually being yet no law or executive order banning vaping. Thus, the arrests are meaningless and merely another form of harassment. PNP spokesman Brig. Gen. Bernard Banac explained that while violators would be apprehended, they would be released immediately after the incident is recorded in the police blotter.
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So the Philippine Competition Commission recently fined rideshare provider Grab P23M for overcharging their customers. Apparently only P5M of that is meant to go back to the affected riders, which seems like a piddly amount considering the number of riders in the Philippines. We’ll see how of that I actually get credited back, if any. Grab pricing has been steadily increasing since Uber exited the market early last year. The other day Grab wanted to charge me a bit over P400 for a 13km ride to a commercial area, which seemed insane.
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Hong Kong is on fire. For months now, protests and unrests, led mainly by university students, have wracked the city. Initially in response to a controversial China-backed extradition bill, it is also believed to be fueled by political and social inequality and interference by the Chinese government. As the months went on, the stakes have escalated in the wake of widespread anger at the way the police are brutally cracking down on protests.
Sep 2019
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This past weekend was supposedly some global climate strike, led by young activists. I don’t actually know if there was a local counterpart to these activities, as obviously I did not participate. Good for the young though. Between the climate activists and HK protesters, the modern youth still give me some hope for humanity. Anyway, I’m gonna step into the melee here and start rambling about things I may or may not be fully informed about, feel free to correct me or tell me I’m being an idiot or whatever.
May 2019
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I remember when playing the original version of Civilization back in the day, the “most advanced” form of government was Democracy, with the only downside of it being you can’t declare war (because you had a senate that would stop you.) The other available forms of government were typically not very useful, but Democracy massively increased your trade output, so most often I would build the Pyramids (a wonder which allowed switching to any government immediately and without penalty), and spend the rest of the game toggling between Democracy and Despotism (for when I wanted to go to war).
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The results are disappointing, but that’s only because we expected better. Historically, those who have made it into the Senate did so mostly on name recognition. What does it matter if Diokno had the best resume of all the candidates, if many of the voters did not know who he was? How could he compete against someone who appeared on a hit primetime TV series right up until the start of the campaign period?
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The PH senatorial and local elections are on Monday. I almost didn’t want to write the usual election post, mostly because I was annoyed with and tired of the electorate and the politicians and the system and all that. But we shouldn’t give in to despair. Often when choosing who to vote, it will be difficult to find candidates who align perfectly with your values. You make compromises to prioritize those issues you think are more important.
Apr 2019
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via /u/haveanicedayreddit on reddit: The very fact that our nation’s highest court is weighing in on the amount of cruelty we can inflict upon those we put to death suggests we’ve taken a wrong turn. And yet the very subject invites some to ask why we should even care about the feelings of rapists or murderers. Here’s why we need to care. We need to care because our justice system demands it.
Mar 2019
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Daily news reading is a habit I inherited from my father, who tends to read the morning newspaper at the dining table during breakfast every morning and most other meals as well, even to this day. Some would say a bad habit, especially when among company. These days my morning newspaper consists mostly of Flipboard articles, then the local newspaper during lunch and dinner if I am at home. Aside from mealtime readings, I also regularly take breaks to check what is going on in social media and my RSS reader.
Feb 2019
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The EDSA revolution was a promise. “Never again.” They cried. But the scope was never clear. Never again to a dictator? Okay, but if not that, then what? What of corruption, of patronage, of poverty, of oligarchy, of ignorance? We thought the job finished and patted ourselves on the back and assumed everything would go back to normal, without regard to what “normal” needed to be. The same evils took different guises, and today the forces of darkness and dictatorship are almost close to fulfilling their return.
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According to Wikipedia, Speaking truth to power is a non-violent political tactic, employed by dissidents against the received wisdom or propaganda of governments they regard as oppressive, authoritarian or an ideocracy. I always had the general sense of it before, but not that it was specifically for use against oppressive or authoritarian governments. It is believed the phrase has origins in a Quaker pamphlet published in 1955. I was reminded of this phrase today and looked it up because it seems relevant again recently, at least in the Philippines.
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In late 2017, the US moved to ban Kaspersky antivirus from use by federal agencies, because of suspected influence from the Russian government. In late 2018, the US and other countries have either banned or are considering banning the Chinese tech giant Huawei and its telecoms products, for security reasons. Both companies are under scrutiny for their perceived ties to their governments, both of which happen to have authoritarian leanings. From a certain POV, the bannings may be unfair, as they are “preventive” in nature, i.
Jan 2019
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In a recent episode of The Orville, captain Ed Mercer of the Union is stuck debating with a member of the Krill, a fanatic and xenophobic race in conflict with Earth’s multi-species Planetary Union. He says: “Look, from what we’ve seen, when planets first achieve space travel and they venture out into the galaxy and discover that they’re just one single species among a vast diversity of lifeforms, they usually react in one of two ways: they embrace and adapt to the fact that they’re no longer the center of the universe, or they ratchet up their xenophobia.
Dec 2018
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Facebook is in hot water again, over controversial deals it made in the past that compromised user privacy. I have been considering for a long time to leave Facebook. These are the challenges: For many people, Facebook is the only way I have to contact them I don’t have a better place to share family pictures (again most of the family is on Facebook) certain follows/groups relevant to my interest are Facebook only Basically the network effect.
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Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg are different people in vastly different positions, but I find it interesting the uncanny parallels their stories have taken them through. Like many non-Americans, I’m acutely aware of the shenanigans of Donald Trump, the current US president. It would be a fascinating story, if only it weren’t so bad for the world. His character arc is of someone who rose to the level of this own incompetence.
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China is setting up some kind of large-scale “social credit system” to rank and monitor the behavior of their citizens. Citizens with low scores can get penalized in various ways like being denied travel or access to top-tier schools and so on. It’s quite creepy, and the mere idea evokes the dystopian Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” where people use an app to rate other people. China’s social credit system might be even worse than the Black Mirror one because:
Aug 2010
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(Click to view full-size) 24 Aug 2010 12:15amClose August 23, 2010: A disgruntled and decorated police officer who had been dismissed on charges of extortion took hostage a bus full of tourists from Hong Kong. The hostage drama unfolded in front of the Quirino Grandstand in Manila with the expected media circus, confused cops and SWAT who didn’t know what to do and a tragic ending that involved dead hostages and a bullet to the head.