the future of eldercare?

Japan also has been pushing robots for nursing their growing elderly population, 

and China is putting out videos of dancing robots etc and getting breathless reports by the US MSM who push the story without any scepticism.

.....

and yes Ray Bradbury fortold this years ago. Twilight zone even had a program based on his short story:

.................................

Bots manipulating you. Who wudda guess?

X revealed the places where people were posting, and a lot of the anti Israel stuff is bots or fake news by folk claiming they were suffering in Gaza but they were actually posting from far away.

heh Who wudda thot?

If you don't have X here is an alternative site:

LINK

and of course a lot of similar fake stuff is going on about covid and the vaccines, about the Ukraine,  or fake Republicans who changed their mind and now hate Trumpiboy, 

did you ever notice all those anti Trump  protests that are supposed to be grass roots,   have pre printed signs that are identical (Printed signs cost money and take time to print and distribute.)

a lot of the fake bots are behind the push to get MAGA Republicans to fight among each other and to desert Trump.

given the amount of manipulation about covid, why should one think this is new?

 

from Instapundit: 

 SHINE ON LITTLE LIGHT, SHINE ON: 

from X: or alternative site. 

 Seeing the sheer number of people on the ‘American online right’ exposed to be foreigners is frankly relieving. Given many of these accounts have been actively stoking the flames of the little civil war we are having on the right at the moment, their locations being posted is huge.

Go into any hot topic political conversation on twitter right now. Go into the comments. Find the most inflammatory comments pushing the hardest and the strongest on the most radical position. You’ll find them filled with people from Europe. India. The Philippines. The Middle East. Australia. Nigeria. Malaysia. I’m batting about 75% in being able to guess who is American and who is not.

well duh. But What about VPN? Does X register the VPN address or the real address?

Just wondering. 

could a solar flare disrupt society?

I might say that it wouldn't affect us so much, 

but you know, when we were hit by a bad typhoon and lost power for a week, it meant no water or ATM/Bank or computer or TV... but our cellphones worked as did my portable short wave radio.

but we had a generator as long as the local gas station could supply us with fuel for the generator to run our water pump and charge our cellphones. That last part is important: within a day the local shops not only were selling bottled water, but had signs outside saying "cellphone charge 25 pesos" (fifty cents). So people could get in touch with relatives, and also get on line to get the news, or to play games or surf the net.

 Would cellphones be affected by the solar flare? 

Grok says:

A solar flare could affect cellphones, but the impact depends on the flare's strength and the phone's exposure. Solar flares release bursts of electromagnetic radiation and charged particles, which can disrupt satellite communications, GPS signals, and power grids,...

However, a strong flare could interfere with cellular networks by disrupting satellites or ground-based infrastructure, potentially causing signal loss or dropped calls. For example, a massive solar flare in 1859, known as the Carrington Event, disrupted telegraph systems, and a similar event today could affect modern tech...

when the typhoon hit, the roads were blocked but we are rice farmers and could buy produce locally. Everyone has a motorcycle or tricycle (motorcycle with side car) so food delivery was not badly affected. But what about trucks? Trucks would be needed to deliver food to cities...

So would a solar flare disrupt the computers that run our cars and trucks, either those with computerized carborators or electric cars and trucks etc.( here in the Philippines we are starting to switch to e-jeepneys and e-tricycles, replacing the old pollution emitting engines).

  

Grok answers:

Yes, a solar flare could potentially disrupt computerized car engines and electric cars, but the extent depends on the flare's intensity and the car's design.

 Key Factors: Flare Strength:

Only powerful flares (e.g., X-class) pose significant risks.

Shielding: Automotive electronics are designed with some EMI protection, but not necessarily for extreme solar events.

Infrastructure Impact: Both types of vehicles could be indirectly affected if flares disrupt power grids or communication networks. No specific data on recent flares is provided here, but I can search for real-time solar activity to assess current risks if you’d like. 

Yup. even modern cars are computerized, so might be affected  which is why we keep our old jeep just in case. And of course we grow rice, and even if we had no cars, we could use a bicycle to get supplies...But in an advanced country, this could result in cities not getting food or supplies. How many people are prepared for this?

The example of what could happen was seen in the March 1989 geomagnetic storm when not only communications were affected, but the power grid of Quebec went down:

Sigh.

Robo caregiver is coming

 from asahi.com:

Recently in Tokyo an AI-driven robot leaned over a man lying on his back and gently put a hand on his knee and another on a shoulder and rolled him onto his side -- a maneuver used to change diapers or prevent bedsores in the elderly. The 150-kg (330 lb) artificial intelligence-driven humanoid robot called AIREC is a prototype future “caregiver” for Japan’s rapidly ageing population and chronic shortage of aged-care workers.

Its “baby boomer” generation, a bulging cohort created by a spike in post-war child births from 1947 to 1949, all turned at least 75 by the end of 2024, exacerbating the severe shortage of aged care workers.

this is despite 57 thousand overseas caregivers.

here in the Philippines, the extended family still cares for the elderly. But the economy pushes a lot of the healthy younger adults to work overseas . Often Grandparents care for grandkids, but what comes when the grandkid go overseas and no one is left at home?

Until recently, the population here was still increasing, but in a recent article I read that even here the average number of children is approaching replacement level. 

Pakistan internet outage

 Just posting links to look into this later.

Al J reports:

Since the arrest of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan three days ago, mobile internet services remain suspended across the country. Khan was ordered to be released on Thursday, after the country’s top court termed his arrest illegal. However, the mobile broadband shutdown was not lifted.

the article is about how this affected e commerce.

When you shut down internet and mobile access you actually hurt Pakistan’s economy, individuals and companies who use these services to earn their bread and butter. #internet #shutdown

— jehan_ara (@jehan_ara) May 11, 2023

History lesson of the day: Boffin power

Wikipedia:

Boffin is a British slang term for a scientist, engineer, or other person engaged in technical or scientific research and development. A "boffin" was viewed by some in the regular military or government services as odd, quirky or peculiar, though quite bright and essential to helping in the war effort through having and developing the key ideas leading to transformative military capabilities....

So if you are reading this, it might be because a boffin worked for years developing a blue LED.

Why are blue LEDs important? after all, red LEDs had been around for years.

This video explains why making a blue LED was so difficult, and why this is important. And it also tells the story of the stubborn boffin who found the solution by  doing hands on work, and the two other university scientists whose work contributed to the discovery...

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Shuji Nakamura won The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014

shared with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano

The Nobel committee explains:

Lighting plays a major role in our quality of life. The development of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has made more efficient light sources possible. Creating white light that can be used for lighting requires a combination of red, green, and blue light. Blue LEDs proved to be much more difficult to create than red and green diodes. During the 1980s and 1990s Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura successfully used the difficult-to-handle semiconductor gallium nitride to create effecient blue LEDs.

headsup from Kuya. 

When computers go wrong

 Apparently this is a big scandal in the UK, but I never heard about it until I ran across this story in a Japanese paper.

After the Post Office rolled out the Horizon information technology system, developed by Japanese company Fujitsu, in 1999 to automate sales accounting, local Post Office managers began finding unexplained losses they were responsible to cover.

The state-owned Post Office maintained Horizon was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty. Between 2000 and 2014, around 900 postal workers were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, with some going to prison and others forced into bankruptcy.

This story has been perculating for years in the UK but a recent miniseries is what has brought the scandal to a head.

Latest big new thing: AI and chatbots

Lots of stuff out there about AI etc.

Since I have essentially been off line since I had Dengue (which made me weaker, tire easily and have problems thinking), I am now trying to catch up with the stuff going on out there.

So here are a few videos that discuss what is going on with AI, which seems to be worrying Elon Musk etc.

Here are a few videos that discuss the problem mainly so I can watch them at my leisure.

The big problem?

manipulation, and at a higher level, the assumption that AI etc are independent of their programers.

 So what is AI, and why are the lords of the internet/tech world worried about it?

=========

A lot of the videos seem to imply that the AI stuff is actually thinking: see first video that implies this.

But that is not true:AI and chatbot stuff are just parroting what was built into them. 

Garbage in/garbage out.

But most people are getting to the idea that the problem is AI itself doing bad stuff, not the danger that AI is being manipulated to manipulate you.

and just like people were silenced if they questioned the propaganda about covid by shouting "follow the science" at them, we soon will see us being manipulated by assuming what the AI/Chatbot is saying is the TRUTH with a capital T...and if you question them, you will become a heretic.

So who dares to say "the emperor is naked", that AI is not a new being that is an ubermensch that should boss you areound, but something that is being manipulated, for good or for bad?

I don't know what is worse: Those who see AI/Chatbot/the singularity leading to utopia, (which makes me wonder if this will form a state where ordinary folk will soon be seen as inferior by either the AI or their bosses ) or that AI is so dangerous we need to destroy it (which won't work at all).

Here is an explantion of how AI works that even I can understand. 

AI and chatbot are legos.

Toward the end he goes into religious conspiracy theories, so be warned... 

.....

Longer discussion/rant about his theory that AI/Chatbot and UFO etc. are diabolical on my personal blog. LINK

Soon: Starlink

Back in 2006, an earthquake near Taiwan cut our internet for weeks after a 7.0 earthquake cut 9 internet cables.

this disrupted our internet, but also a lot of business and bank internet traffic, and not only affected the Philippines but disrupted business in other Asian countries that used these cables to send information to the US.

Other problems that could threaten our local internet (especially for those of us living in the rural Philippines) are local typhoons/floods/earthquakes and even volcanic eruptions. Luckily, however, usually the cellphone towers enable folks to keep in touch with relatives, so we could connect via cellphone for email and vital information: And indeed, when we were hit with a big typhoon a couple years back and had no water or electric service for two weeks, our neighbors would come and charge up their cellphones from our generator so they could stay in touch with their relatives.

So the Philippines is at risk for internet problems if China decides to continue pushing us around, but the main problem will come if they invade Taiwan and start blocking internet cables near there or in the West Philippine sea.

So I was happy to read in the Inquirer that the Philippines is okaying Starlink.... something that should benefit us if we decide to move to the farm to live, and of course would benefit those in even more isolated areas of the Philippines.

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology’s (DICT) speedy approval of SpaceX-Starlink’s requirements will allow the country to enjoy breakthrough internet services through Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network constellation consisting of over 1,600 satellites. Starlink promises to deliver up to 200 Mbps broadband speeds particularly on “geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDA)” that is hard to reach with a fiber connection. 

So good news all around.

When Russia disrupted the internet for the Ukraine, Starlink satellites were repositioned quickly so they could communicate with each other and with the outside world, at a time when the west was still dithering and contemplating their navels to figure out if they should help or not.

So Starlink might take another weapon away from Chinese bullying other Asian nations from helping Taiwan if they decide to invade that country... which is why China is trying to figure out how to destroy these satellites,

..... 

and of course all that lovely money gifted to a certain US politician's cocaine using son, not to mention gifts of oodles of money to environmental groups, isn't why the US government  is so aggressive at delaying Musk from using Cape Canavral, claiming they need to do an environmental review (of an area that has been used to launch rockets since the early 1960s.) 

Overseas citizens and military are disinfranchised, and why I don't rely on the internet

 I just got an email from Democrats Abroad in Manila to tell me to insist that they count our ballots.

Actually I haven't voted since moving here: Partly because my last voting address was Oklahoma and the Republicans there would overwhelm my little vote, and partly because I am not up to date to vote on local candidates there, but mainly because the mail is so slow that even if I send it in early, it might arrive late. 

My latest mail to the USA took 3 weeks to get there, but the latest letter from the US to me was posted in late August. But even in good times, (pre covid) it took 2 to 3 weeks for "snail mail" to arrive. Much of the delay if from Manila to our town, which takes 7 to ten days on average. 

But the worse delay was a pension check mailed in February that arrived damaged and unreadable in late July. 

So the DemocratsAbroad. are correct in worrying that ex pats (overseas Americans) and others (especially military votes) will not be counted.  

No link, but I sort of remember in 2000, when they were arguing about "hanging chads" in Florida, that at the same time lots of military ballots were never counted because they arrived too late.

The Military Times has a similar worry. LINK and the numbers are significant if the election is close:

Overall in 2016, there were 252,574 military absentee ballots counted by all the states; and 382,896 absentee ballots from U.S. citizens overseas, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. As everyone has seen, the margins of votes in this election are changing rapidly as more votes are counted. Military and overseas citizens' votes will be counted by election officials, but the fact that some states have previously carved out later deadlines to allow for more transit times for these ballots could make a difference.

that is one of the reasons for allowing counting of late ballots.

of course, when the law allows things like this, you have to remember it also allows people to discover ballot boxes in the back room: this is especially important when they don't require postmarks to be validated, or when the late ballots hint of fraud (i.e. too high a count for one side, or when more people voted than are registered, or when they find a ballot or two registered to a dead person, which makes one wonder how many fraudulent ballots will be overlooked.

so it looks like it will be another fight to see who wins. Nothing new here, alas, but the important news is that there haven't been riots: it looks like people are still trusting the constitution to play out according to law.

The best quip about all of this is from Dilbert:

Episode 1176 Scott Adams: Even the Looters Don’t Know What to do Now.

My son swears by NPR which tells him only Trump is worried about fraud. My take? I don't have one. But I don't especially trust NPR or most of the MSM here: the rule is that if they don't get the facts correct about things you know about, don't trust them about things you don't know about. And the distortion about the Philippines news and about the covid epidemic is there, although it's hard to tell if the distortions are from opinion pieces or regular news (they need to lable the difference, since it's hard to tell the difference when you get the news on line).

I get most of my news on line. And our internet problems mean I haven't been able to keep up with the deluge of propaganda from both sides. So if I haven't written about the election, it is because I have a life, and typhoons and epidemics and worry if the rice crop will survive and get harvested sort of seem more important right now.

I just don't trust the MSM, and the censorship of the conservative voices by social media to eliminate the right wing propaganda and fake news means it's hard to find the reasonable opinions from the other side.

I suspect that there will be a breakup of the social media no matter who wins, similar to the breakup of AT&T or IBM in the past, The monopoly laws go back to Teddy Roosevelt, so don't blame Trumpieboy (or Biden) when this happens.

Nor is the fight between government and huge internet based monopolies limited to the USA: The UKGuardian has an article about Jack Ma vs Xi. 

well, anyway, I haven't been able to follow a lot of the kerfuffle in the US elections for the last six weeks.

 Our internet has been going off and on during the day (the phone company is upgrading their cable to carry the traffic from all the kids at home using the internet to  take classes, so often the internet doesn't work while they are working on the line). So the only time I know I can get on line is early in the morning, before 8 am.

To complicate matter we have had heavy rain and two nearby typhoons and brownouts.

But the main reason is that Joy is using my computer. Sometimes it is because the secretary (part time) is using it to update the books and data, and other times Joy uses my newer computer in order to do her zoom business conferences. But not just during the day: because the internet is off much of the time during the day, Joy is up late at night using my computer to do her email and business stuff late at night when the internet is working.

it is a real problem for Joy's business: Often the internet is out when she is on conference calls, so she has to link to the internet via her phone, which is expensive and slow. 

So yesterday, she signed up for Huawei internet link. Yes, it will cost a bit, but cheaper and faster for business, (G5 link? I have no idea). She has the modem in her room, but it reaches to the dining room for the rest of us to connect if we wish.

-----------------------------

update: most of the local English papers here in the Philippines (run by the oligarchy that loves the Democrats) are comparing the confusion of the USA election to Marcos trying to stop the counting of legal ballots against him. But they sort of over look that many of the mail in ballots coming in late resemble the "Hello Garci" scandal, where a certain lovely president was recorded talking to a local bigshot asking him to make sure the ballots were being done properly, which most folks here interpreted as telling him to bring out the pre filled out ballots from the back room.

That scandal was one reason the Philippines paid a lot of money to get electronic voting machines.

a lot of what is happening, from the "BLM" and "antifa" demonstrations to the Democratic DA's who refuse to prosecute rioters, to the mail in ballot scheme, are all seen by Trump and his followers as a conspiracy (many of Trump's backers are Democrats who are upset that the extreme left took over their party).

But one does see the censorship of social media against the "deplorables", and the MSM is not very curious about checking on possible cheating, so one suspects the end result will be that the most productive and hard working folks in the USA will essentially be disenfranchised again by corrupt politicians of both parties who like the status quo where they can get rich. (another story rarely reported outside of the small right wing media which has since been banished from Youtube and facebook and twitter).

Not much I can do about any of this of course: When I pray, I only get the small quiet feeling that this is a chastisement for the USA and ultimately for the world.

As for us, a Biden presidency would mean letting China get away with their shennanigans stealing our fish and our petroleum reserves. StrategyPage has a longish essay on what is going on here LINK

Big Brother part 3

in a previous post, I mentioned how China is helping Zimbabwe will monitor all their citizens by collecting data on them.

StrategyPage has a long essay on China, and if you go down into the article past the part about the Wuhan virus, they discuss how this is being done in Venezuela:

The most valuable service China has done for the socialist Venezuelan government (aside from helping rebuild the collapsed oil industry) has been to help use police state tech to better control an angry population.

China has such tech and has agreed to export it to Venezuela and assist with the installation of its newly developed SCR (Social Credit Rating).

the Chinese have perfected this in their western provinces (where most of the population is Uighur Muslims) 

China helped adapt the SCR system to Venezuela, especially the issuance or ID cards (for individuals and businesses) linked to an SCR database.

Most of the population depends on the government for basic necessities, like food. Everyone will get an ID card that must be used to get anything from the government. A low SCR score means you go hungry.

The more affluent can pay a bribe to get around SCR problems. Venezuela is enormously corrupt but if you cannot pay a bribe you cannot get around the SCR system.

A bad SCR makes it more difficult to get a good job, a bank loan or a passport. SCR scores depend on what the government sees, hears or reads via that growing network of sensors and informants.

You can see why the post Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe is eager to get their hands on this technology, and you can see why I wonder why the western press doesn't get more upset about this linkage of political control with the banking system.

the good news? it's a windfall for authorities who take bribes.

Big Brother is here: part 2

As a foreigner with a permanent retirement Visa, I have several ID cards with digital information (fingerprints and photo) here.

I am amazed at the number of computers that I am now on when I went to get my immigration renewed: police, neighborhood, post office, and several immigration computers. Most of them also required fingerprints.

When I traveled thru China, I needed to get photo and a visa just to stay in the transit lounge for 12 hours (plus a whole body scan).

So theoretically if there is a war, they know where I am.

Since last year, the Philippines has had a "universal" identification card for everyone.




and overlapping this governmental ID we are getting into e commerce stuff here.

Now the malls are starting to accept e-money. And of course we have had ATM's for years.

I am old and don't quite trust these things. I always used a credit card (and had to replace mine several times after they were hacked or my purse was stolen), but my husband Lolo didn't use credit cards, but carried cash: lot of older folks like him still do, which is why you periodically read about old folks having their life savings confiscated at airports or stolen by thieves).

So I use credit cards, but I am still suspicious of using e money and worry about hackers stealing my ID which is in all these computers: Heck, even my US Federal OPM (employment) file was hacked a couple years ago by the Chinese hackers.

But they are starting to use e commerce, since cellphones have been everywhere for the last 20 years, and now they are building a 5G infrastructure: Manila in 2018, and now expanding all over.
It's Chinese, of course, meaning they can spy even more on us.

And only a few "green" types like Kuya refuse to put the towers on our farm land because he distrusts them being safe.

cellphone and microwave towers are all over the place of course, and there are similar worries by anti tech types about radiation from these and from cellphones: worries that are pooh poohed by experts. And 5G towers put out more low frequency waves than cellphone towers.

and the bad news for us: We have one of these towers down the street where there is one of the city jails and the building that used to be the City Hall that was then used as a rehab center but is now offices.

Connectivity is here.

Here, everyone has cellphones. You buy a "load" to text for as little as 50 cents. Even my maid has a cellphone and posts videos on Facebook.

E commerce as in AliBaba and it's Philippine equivalents, e.g. Lazada and others,  is here too.

AliBaba is the Chinese equivalent of Amazon that showed how e-commerce can mean even isolated villages can get stuff through the delivery companies/courier companies. LINK.

in the last few years, we are using these companies to send rice samples and papers for our business, but so far we are too large to send rice via courier, but so small that we have to do rice deliveries by our own pickup trucks and once in awhile our large truck that we mainly use to haul rice and equipment for the farm.

But I suspect in the future we will be doing more rice transport to individual customers by courier type services to their homes.

It is now easy to get equipment and "stuff" in our town, whereas when I moved here 15 years ago, we had to go to Manila for a lot of basic needs (e.g. decent clothing, computer equipment).
but now we can get it locally. But with prosperity comes traffic jams, which now extend out of the city and suburbs and into the farm area small towns, and even with the new trains and overhead roads the traffic on the way to Manila is terrible.

 e commerce and e money on your cellphone is big in Manila, here in the provinces it is mainly by the middle class and young but now we have local malls being built, and like the USA, will probably have some of them go bankrupt as e commerce fills the gap to buy "stuff".

So e commerce goes along with credit cards, cellphones, and electronic IDs.

So should one worry? Depends on if you fear your government.

Digital ID website writes:

Key Findings Digital ID can empower marginalized people while also increasing surveillance of those same populations.

Gaining a legal identity can empower people in a variety of ways, but the collection of a lot of personal data about a large group can also act as a surveillance mechanism. ...ignoring the infrastructure and mass data gathering behind these systems, or the personal nature of the data gathered, could put already vulnerable populations at risk of harm.

Efforts aimed at providing legal identities are increasing in scope. One of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals is for everyone to have a legal identity by 2030 (Target 16.9).

why? Why do UN bureaucrats think everyone needs to be on a database? Are they influenced by big business that has to make it safe to pay for "stuff"?

However, the way ‘legal identities’ are being provided is becoming increasingly broader. More data is being collected–and more systems are being integrated–in an attempt to meet a greater variety of purposes. This broadening of the initial focus leaves people unsure of the true purpose of the digital IDs they obtain.

pdf summary here.

India is already busy pushing emoney:





So the modern world is making it harder to stay off the web, even if you live in a small isolated third world village.

And since theives will quickly figure how to hack these things, presumably the next step if the "mark of the beast": using biometrics or using a chip in your hand.

So should one fear if the government knows a lot of personal stuff about you? Maybe.

this is not quite paranoid: as Digital ID points out, the Rohingya didn't want their ethnicity on their id cards for fear of ethnic cleansing.

China, back in 2018, made a biometric database of their Uighur population: including of those who immigrated to other countries. And of course, this made it easy for them to find people who were high risk and needed to go to reeducation camps.

Today, government surveillance of Uighurs permeates almost every aspect of the minority citizens' lives: They are subject to extensive security checks in public areas, from gas stations to shopping centers. Authorities rely on a network of 40,000 facial-recognition cameras to monitor Uighurs' activity, and recently began collecting DNA samples, fingerprints, iris scans, and blood types from all Xinjiang residents between 12 and 65 years old.Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been forced into "re-education centers," which are essentially camps aimed at "rewiring the political thinking of detainees, erasing their Islamic beliefs and reshaping their very identities," according to the Associated Press.

This has been done before, of course, in Nazi Germany and in communist countries, but now it is easier to do, and "safe" places outside of surveillance is harder to find.

The bad news is that all of this relies on a delicate system that is vulnerable to acts of war or terrorism, or just plain everyday disasters.

All it would take is an earthquake (one earthquake south of Taiwan ten years ago cut a major cable in 2010, and we were off line and then slow for months),

and of course, local problems can be caused by ordinary disasters such as typhoons, floods, or volcanoes: A couple years ago, we lost internet and electricity for ten days did after a large typhoon with flood a few years ago. Luckily our cellphones still worked, and within a day, local entrepreneurs put out signs: Cellphone recharge here.

And then there is the problem if there is a repeat of the Carrington Event.





--------------
update: BBC on the cashless society notes:

Americans used cash for an estimated 26% of transactions last year, down from 40% in 2012, according to surveys by the US central bank. The decline is not unique to the US. In the UK, the proportion of cash payments has dropped by more than half since 2008, sinking from 60% to 28% in 2018. In Sweden, cash accounts for just 6% of transactions, down from more than 35% in 2012.

the article discusses the problem: the poor in the USA often don't have bank accounts and use cash, so if a business/restaurant doesn't take cash, they can't use the business (i.e. stealth discrimination). So NYCity has just passed a law outlawing the denial of service to those who use cash.

... "It's clear that the future of currency is electronic," Leo Kremer, co-founder of Dos Toros, a cashless taqueria chain, told New York City Council last year. In his testimony, Mr Kremer said that he sympathised with the bill's intent, but it wasn't fair to hold restaurants to a different standard than the many businesses - such as e-commerce firms - for which electronic payments are the norm.

but the ACLU counters this:

Cash also works in an emergency when the power is out and preserves privacy in an era when credit card companies and others widely share shopper histories, said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has lobbied in favour of the new laws.

the article notes that changing to a cashless society makes a lot of money for these vendors:

Consulting firm McKinsey expects revenue in the global payments industry to grow 6% annually over the next five years, to more than $2.7 trillion.

which might be why the elites are pushing this.

(and I won't even get into hacking and fraud and snooping in on your purchases). 

 "Let's pull those members of our community forward into the modern financial system, rather than pulling the business community backward with a well-intentioned, but ill-advised and burdensome regulation," he said. Sarah Wafula, a project manager who works in Manhattan, says she hardly ever carries cash, since using cards makes it easier to track purchases. Many of her friends do the same. 

 but this article asks: What if your cards are stolen?

Cellphones are changing the world

the cellphone revolution has hit the third world. For years, our farmers and help have had simple cellphones to use to text and talk to family, but now they are getting smart phones to connect to the internet, to post selfies and cat videos.

and soon: 5 G is coming..

I remember when "green" and cheap computers were being given as a charity to poor villages in Africa, but that idea has pretty well been replaced by cheap cellphones which are opening rural Africa and Asia to texting their family and friends, reading the news, putting selfies on facebook, and are now being used for banking and e commerce.

Jack Ma's Alibaba has been a revolution for rural China: Alibaba. Find what you want, pay via cellphone and it comes to your door.

think Ebay/Amazon meets the Sears catalogue.

and he is now spreading e commerce into Africa. As Ma wrote in the NYTimes:

Africa is poised for radical change. The world is experiencing a digital revolution, which I believe has the potential to be not only the most transformative but also the most inclusive technological revolution we have ever seen.

Today, anyone with a smartphone can get a loan and start a business. Mobile technology and the internet have put access to countless products and services in the palm of every person’s hand.

The digital revolution has the potential to drive tremendous — and inclusive — economic prosperity for Africa. But we need digital entrepreneurs to create the companies that can make all this possible.

This is one of the ignored stories of the decade: Africa emerging.

The US media usually only sees Africa as a basket case: We read only of wars (send in Special forces to train the local military to stop the jihadis) and famines (send money for NGO's to feed the starving, but keep out GM crops and push socialism that discourages industry and investment in the infrastructure because hey, we want them to live a green lifestyle, aka stay in poverty).

But China sees it as an economic opportunity: not just as a source of rare earth metals and agricultural products, and not just as a place to dump shoddy goods that underprice local markets, but now Jack Ma and cellphones could revolutionize the rural economies as was done in China.

It might not solve the problem of famines from drought and the army worm eating all the maize but e commerce might get around the basic problem in Africa: corruption. By offering an alternative way to get rich.

Because corruption, more than "pollution" or "global warming" or any other trendy idea, is the real problem that keeps people poor.

for example: here in the Philippines, what comes in the way of e commerce and buying things on line for later delivery is that people just don't trust it.  But credit cards being used in the mall, and now they are starting to accept e-money via cellphones to pay for stuff, so it's only a matter of time.

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Speaking of China: protests in Hongkong: a thousand points of light.




No, not candles: but people are lifting up their cellphones.


update: Discussing Hong Kong:


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and one more cellphone related item:

StrategyPage discusses cellphone use in North Korea.

70 percent of the population now own one, and can surf the local restricted internet (or if you are near to China, get on the world wide web).

and since electricity is iffy in some areas, many use solar panels to charge them.

Philippine news

a lot of stuff that impacts ordinary folks here are not getting much publicity, even in our news.

The typhoon really caused a lot of damage south of here, according to Joy who was in Manila for a meeting and met with folks from that area.

one report was that not only were a lot of people forced from their homes, but a lot of the crops that were almost ready to harvest were destroyed. And that will be a disaster for small farmers: I mean, you can replace/fix up a flooded home, but if you lose your farm income it won't be replaced.

Rappler report here.


We have two plantings a year: The main one in the northern islands in the Philippines is in May/June, after the monsoon starts, with usually hand planting of seedling carefully spaced. This is harvested usually in October/November, but if the monsoon is late or you planted later, the harvest is not yet finished.

 The second crop is in the "dry" season, i.e. when rains are iffy, so the crop is not guaranteed unless you irrigate, which costs more money. Traditionally, the farmers without irrigation just plow, spread the seeds by hand instead of planting seedlings, cross their fingers and figure if it grows, fine, and if there isn't enough rain, well, not much lost. But with modernization, and with more irrigation, folks are relying on that second harvest to make ends meet.

So farmers who didn't harvest their crops early and lost their crops will lose their main source of income, but they will probably just plant the dry season crop early.

Ironically, the farmers don't always eat their own rice: Too poor. As soon as it is harvested, they sell it to pay off the loans for planting expenses, and use it for school fees/uniforms etc. Then they buy cheap imported rice to eat. The time waiting for the summer crop to be harvested is a time of hunger: No more money, and no rice from your fields. 

We managed to get most of our second crop harvested before the heavy rains from the typhoon hit (not too windy in our area this time), but the rains interfered with drying the crop: the usual way is to spread the grain on a road/parking lot or on a plastic sheet on a flat surface, and let the sun dry it. A rain shower hit our almost dry rice and it had to be separated and re-dried (with a fan in the large meeting room in our business compound). Alas, it will probably be lower in quality than usual, meaning we can still sell it to the rice mill to sell as cheap rice, but not as our brand of gourmet organic 
rice.
-

another agricultural problem: The African swine flu is here and killing the pigs of some of our neighbors who are small farmers who keep a couple pigs for food or for extra money. If it spreads, it could bankrupt the larger pig farms nearby, not to mention others in the pig industry who sell pork/lechon.

so will there be a ham shortage for Christmas? well, when I went to the mall, the supermarket had chicken rolls that looked like ham in their buena noche display...
This newspaper article warns there will be a shortage and discusses the history of eating ham for Buena Noche. The ham is usually imported, a small ball of ham, in contrast to the "tocino" which is local salted pork which we eat all the time.

The African Swine flu is decimating pigs in East Asia, so it probably was spread to the Philippines via smuggled pork from China where it is causing a pork shortage.

again, not a lot about this in the news, but it is a big thing in China with a lot of implications for Trumpieboy/China negotiations on trade.

But probably will affect a lot of folks here too.

Speaking of China, the new 5G super internet is being put up here by China's Huawei.

more HERE.

I know nothing about 5G but have downloaded a video about this from Glenn Beck to watch later: Yes he's crazy but he is a good teacher.

Apparently 5G requires a lot of towers to be built, and Kuya said he refused to let them put one on our fields: he tends to read all those green webpages that see a danger in everything (after all, we do grow organic rice).

But like most conspiracy theories, there is a grain of truth in them.

Why do I say this?
Well, many years ago in the early 1970s, I treated a patient from the AirForce who was dying of some sort of lymphoma. and he worked with Radar stuff, and his wife said quite a few patients in the cancer ward of military hospital where he was treated were men who had worked with electronic stuff had similar cancers. "Studies" insisted the cancer rate was the same as for the equivalent civilian population, but I do wonder about it.

and then there were all those rare lymphoma of the brain in famous people (e.g. Wm Casey) who might also have worked in electronically active areas.... it is known that this tumor is associated with HIV, and in patients on chemotherapy because of the weakened immune system...but of course there is that conspiracy is about cellphones.

But I wonder: could all those  electromagnetic radiation type waves in the air cause lymphomas and other cancers? (maybe not directly via cell mutation but indirectly via affecting the immune system).

on the other hand, the Moscow Embassy study (where the Russians zapped microwaves on the employees for years) didn't show anything, so again probably just coincidence.

and anyway, the main cause of death here is due to hypertension (from the high salt diet) and now an increased rate of diabetes in recent years.

-----------------

I had read that there are riots in Lebanon but haven't read the details.

However it must be serious, because our OFW there are asking to come home. The article hints it's not just the riots behind this but that the economy is in bad shape so people can't afford nannies/domestic helpers/maid and are firing them. They then become "undocumented" and have to work without papers. The gov't is trying to arrange repatriation for those wanting to come home.

The headlines shout every little thing and make mountains into molehills, so it's hard to judge how serious things are in the world, but one clue is if the maids decide it's time to come home, then yes, it's serious.
---------------

not related to the Philippines, but the Phil Inquirer has an article on CO2 emissions.

And this interesting chart:

SUMMARY: Blame Asia.

all those protesters wanting to ban "fossil fuels" ignore that banning fossil fuels would cause severe poverty in Asia. Pollution is bad, of course, but poverty and starvation would kill a lot more people than unclean air and pollution in the water supply.

much of the CO2 comes from China, which is using coal for electricity. Chinese coal is high in sulfur and more polluting than American coal, so encouraging American coal miners to export to China might help, as, of course, so will developing their natural gas resources via fracking (one reason for the decrease in CO2 emissions in the US is fracking and producing natural gas for energy).

And the need for energy is one reason that the Chinese are stealing the West Philippine sea from the Philippines: There's natural gas in them there shoals, and unlike Duterte, who had taking the unpopular stance to try to partner with China here, Vietnam is thumbing their nose to China and planning to develop the area.

Cyberwar

Iran placed old fashioned mines on some tankers, and then shot down a spy drone, and the world (and the US left/Democrats/MSM) prepared their talking points against Trumpie boy because they assumed he'd bomb them in retaliation.

But then, Trumpieboy thought "outside the box". From Richard Fernandez:

Members of Congress had already geared up in anticipation to block the war that was sure to come. "As the prospect of a confrontation with Iran continues to rise, an increasing number of members of Congress have a new objective: ensuring President Trump does not launch a war without their approval."

But he didn't bomb anything biological.

Even though the Washington Post sources called the strike "a long-in-the-making cyberattack that took down Iranian missile control computers," it still caught conventional wisdom by surprise. Just as the Battle of the Coral Sea was the first naval engagement conducted beyond the visual range of opposing fleets, the recent exchange of strikes marks the first public battle between two nations in which only automata died.

Fenandez goes on to point out the problem with this: like economic sanctions, it hurts ordinary people, but does not necessarily topple their leaders.

On the other hand, it does weaken them enough that they are no longer a threat.

This attack got into the news, but the dirty little secret is that the US has been the target for cyberattacks for years. (for example, my OPM personnel file was one of millions hacked by China "unknown persons".)

This is why people aware of this threat were so enraged that Hillary had an insecure email server and found out that Huma took sensitive emails and information to her apartment and used her husband's computer to print them out. 

That last part especially raised eyebrows, since her husband was into porn and that is an easy way to get a malwaree virus on your computer.


StrategyPage wrote about the problem in 2007.

The U.S. Department of Defense has noted the increasing number of hackers trying, and succeeding, to get into military networks. This sort of thing has been going on since the 1980s, when a gang of West German hackers, hired by the Soviet secret police (KGB) were caught inside Department of Defense networks, stealing classified data.
But in the last few years, the hacker activity has accelerated. Currently, Department of Defense networks get probed six million times a day. 

and a more recent article (May 2009) notes that Iran has lots of these cyberwarriors.

This use of APTs was one advantage Iran had against its enemies. Decades of sanctions had made it impossible for Iran to obtain modern weapons or technology in general. But via the APTs, they created or employed they could steal much of what they wanted.

So just a variation of "spy vs spy", right?

Wrong. Everything is connected nowadays.

and if you watched DieHard4.0, you know how a cyberattack on basic utility systems could decimate the country.

(and not just a cyber attack: A half decent solar flare could do the same thing).

ZDnet (Dec2018) has an article on this that should give you nightmares.

Unlike traditional military attacks, a cyberattack can be launched instantaneously from any distance, with little obvious evidence of any build-up, unlike a traditional military operation.... governments and intelligence agencies worry that digital attacks against vital infrastructure -- like banking systems or power grids -- will give attackers a way of bypassing a country's traditional defences, and are racing to improve their computer security.

More at ZDNet here

and here is a "WAGD" scenario by an independent video maker:





presumably, I should be safe here in the rural Philippines where everyone including my maid has a smartphone, but most people have generators etc. since we get periodic typhoons, floods, and brownouts...

but actually we had a minor cyberwar kerfuffle with China a couple years ago (actually, Chinese hackers who are of course government inspired, but the Filipino hackers were just students causing mischief, but it does show how we do have the talent to do these things)., 

So if China wanted to play rough with us via cyberwar, we might be in trouble... but not completely helpless.

Cyberstuff in the news

DavidReneke's Spaceblog has a report on Space X's satellite launch last week:

Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s firm aims eventually to loft nearly 12,000 spacecraft for its “Starlink” network. SpaceX is one of several commercial outfits with permission to fly an internet mega-constellation. Others include the UK-based start-up OneWeb, which began its roll-out in February with six operational spacecraft....

it will be some time before SpaceX can actually offer connections to the internet. For that it must launch many more than the 60 spacecraft on Thursday’s Falcon. Six further rocket flights will have to take place before minor broadband coverage is achieved. A dozen launches are required for moderate coverage, says Mr Musk. He hopes ultimately that revenue from the telecommunications network can fund some of his other ideas: “We think this is a key stepping stone on the way towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the Moon.”

how will this change things?




Space.com has an article on how private space satellites have been there for quite awhile (Direct TV for example), and discusses how this will change things in the future.

--------------
related: 5G:



and some of this is about Huawei in the USA: there is a big worry they can spy on you.

or as Richard Fernandez puts it:

If Globalization Meant China Could Turn off Your Fridge, Would You Still Like It?

China stealing intellectual property?

what else is new: It's been an open secret for at least 30 years (and ignored by Clinton who arranged a way for rocket technology be sent to China).

Well, since my Lenovo computer came with illegal embedded software to spy on me (removed after someone found out and insisted they send you a way to do this), no I don't trust China. (and of course, they hacked my US Gov't OPM file a couple years ago).

Strategy Page has an article about the US/China trade war, and includes a paragraph on how China is using a Social Credit Rating and other means to control their population.

In the northwest (Xinjiang province) it has been no secret that the extreme security measures have been mainly directed at Uighur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz Moslems. This includes a growing number of electronic tracking methods (mandatory cell phone apps, extensive use of high resolution security vidcams and effective facial recognition tech) that enable police to monitor most everyone in Xinjiang in real time and enormous detail. This system automatically detects and locates “disloyal” people and has them picked up for reeducation.

and guess who is their main target? Those pesky Uighurs, who object to the Han takeover of their ancestral land: Folks who happen to be Muslim: 

Nearly a million of these Moslems have been sent to reeducation camps and that has become an international issue, but not with Moslem nations who are usually quick to complain about any real or imagined slight by Western nations.

like the Rohingye refugees, no one cares because it isn't the fault of the US or Israel.

But then, how many western countries condemn the persecution of Christians in the Middle East or in China (hell, the Pope is even looking the other way).

Sigh.

For later reading.




and remember: a lot of folks in the US will be quietly bribed or given business deals to push their story. LINK LINK2  LI NK3

The future is here

Trumpieboy just announced he is supporting 5 G, something China has recently pushed too.

What is 5 G?

Gizmodo article (for later reading)

-------------------

Scott Adams (Dilbert) discusses why it is good at the end of this podcast including it's ability to enable education.


he also has been pushing these newfangled and safe nuclear reactors, which could revolutionize the way we obtain energy.

more at MIT review: safe nuclear power, half the price.

-------------------------------
Dilbert also discusses Trumpieboy's trolling of the Democrats by saying he's going to move immigrants to their "safe" cities instead of settling them in the poorer regions of the south and Southwest.

Heads explode. But why? Don't they want cheap nannies/maids/gardeners/construction workers? (yes, I'm being sarcastic. My immigrant family members work at these jobs, but it is also well known that affluent areas of the country frequently hire illegals to do these jobs because they don't have to pay as much: For example, no workman's comp or social security taxes for them and you can threaten to fire them if they complain about working overtime or in dangerous areas...when a boss made a threat against my son that he'd call "la migra", my son laughed at him...he is a US Citizen, but what about the other workers?).

one more comment on his discussion of immigration:

What no one is discussing is that maybe the "solution" is not just to build a wall or stop the funding of the caravans by people who have an agenda to change the demographics of the USA (not to actually help poor people) but to cut crime and corruption in these countries.

This can be done: but when someone tries to do it, the SJW/human rights types oppose this solution.

For example, Duterte has cut crime here, but the SJW (and the Catholic bishops) are busy demonizing him (often by taking his jokes/irony out of context) because hey, stopping criminals by rough justice is evil....

my answer: Yes, it is evil: better to convert the criminals to embrace Jesus. 

But from a pragmatic standpoint, rough justice works. Here the "carrot and stick" approach to drug gangs and drug addicts who were fueling the crime wave enabled the ordinary folks to live in safety. But alas too many of the politicians are using the corrupt and inefficient court system to get away with their crimes, and even when they are arrested, the international human rights types take their part and pressure the courts to let them go.

Yes, Mrs. George Clooney, I am talking about you.

The real hacking danger: China

NPR Frontline has a report on China's stealing intellectual property from the US for at least 20 years.

why? Because if the companies complained, China might not let them use their cheap labor to make profits.

Technology theft and other unfair business practices originating from China are costing the American economy more than $57 billion a year, White House officials believe, and they expect that figure to grow. Yet an investigation by NPR and FRONTLINE into why three successive administrations failed to stop cyberhacking from China found an unlikely obstacle for the government — the victims themselves.

In dozens of interviews with U.S. government and business representatives, officials involved in commerce with China said hacking and theft were an open secret for almost two decades, allowed to quietly continue because U.S. companies had too much money at stake to make waves

read the whole article.

This is indeed an open secret, and the Frontline program is supposed to be about Trumpieboy's trade war with China. Trump was in business and knows how these things work of course, but don't expect an accurate account of why he decided to fight back, because, as the saying goes: "orange man bad".

sigh. I wish Congress would recognize that there are very real problems that need bi partisan cooperation instead of constantly whining and obstructing reform to make political points.

In other news, there are hints that Trump will shut down the Federal OPM office (who allowed my files to be hacked).

The WAPO hyperventillates about it but does admit:

Today the agency is widely viewed as slow and ineffective, though, with a long-lingering backlog of background investigations and risk-averse leadership that has failed to respond to calls for faster hiring and recruiting for a changing workforce. “In order to really ramp up the mission around people, we need to have an infrastructure for people management that is really world-class,” Weichert said.

in other words, reorganize the place. Given the advances in technology for records since the office was established, one hopes it is about time the office is reorganized and made more efficient.

But of course, this is government, which takes forever to do anything and tends to be years behind the private sector. If we needed something repaired or replaced at our clinic, it took months and lots of paperwork to get it done. As for computers: we had MSDos for our medical records in 2000, for example, even though Windows 1 was released in 1985... And then we were hacked and went back to using paper records.

ah but the problem with the bureaucracy is that their priorities are more important than the priorities of actually doing what they were tasked to do.

The plan has raised suspicions from federal employees, who have watched the administration attempt to freeze their pay, weaken the power of their unions, and move to clear a faster path to discipline and firing.

Translation: Right now, it's almost impossible to fire an employee who isn't needed, and it is difficult to fire a lazy or incompetent employee.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, with 750,000 members, is calling the idea “Trump’s Dangerous Plan to Abolish OPM” and predicting a “disastrous” result if policy for federal employees moves so close to the White House.

presumably they will slow down their work and do things wrong just to "punish" Trumpieboy.

Ah, but the realization that something needs to be done is a bipartisan agreement, which the WAPO admits if you read down to near the end of the long article:

Breaking up the OPM is not a Republican idea, though. The Obama administration discussed internally whether to do it, and so did Hillary Clinton’s team in 2016, civil service experts said. And the agency drew bipartisan fury in 2015 when U.S. officials alleged Chinese hackers stole millions of personnel records by hacking through the agency’s weak security system.

why yes. And who was fired for this security breech? Anyone? Anyone? 

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update: from Lawfareblog via Belmontclub:

OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour acknowledged that the information compromised in the data breach included “SF-86 data as well as clearance adjudication information.” This was a particularly dismaying disclosure ... The full breadth of the security clearance data at risk remains unclear.

For instance, U.S. officials have “neither confirmed nor denied” whether OPM’s database was linked with Scattered Castles, the intelligence community’s database of “sensitive clearance holders” ... To make matters worse, it appears that OPM maintained an unsecured and unencrypted database for the security clearances ... Along with the aforementioned databases, the OPM systems are linked electronically to other agencies and databases, and it stored much of this data alongside the security clearance files. 

and Belmnot club adds:

 This is conceivably the biggest headline that never was; quite a feat in an period whose intelligence disasters included Snowden, Wikileaks-Manning, the rollup of the CIA network in China, missing the rise of ISIS and the burning of the US diplomatic stations in Benghazi. When you combine the litany of disasters with what we now know about lobbying for foreign governments in Washington it’s probable that Collusion has been out of control for some time. It’s a design defect. DC was meant to be a national capital not the 'capital of the world' which it has now become. The federal bureaucracy, the press corps and its defensive agencies were designed for more homogenous national age. They seem unable to cope with the corrosion of the global world.