Prologue: Firewall of illusion

It's been a wild ride, this final semester of my Master's in Data Science. I’ve been neck-deep in algorithms, machine learning models, and more data sets than I care to remember. But the one thing that’s kept me sane—or so I thought—was the online discussion forum hosted by Professor Claire. We’re four weeks into the remote learning course, and oddly enough, it’s been just me, another student in Sydney, and Prof Claire keeping the conversation alive. The rest of the class? Dead silent.

The Prof and the admin staff have been on our case, sending reminders to the remaining 30 international students to chip in. But, despite their efforts, it was like shouting into the void—radio silence.

Fast forward to today, I’m doing a routine grocery run. I don’t know if I was just too distracted with coursework before, but today something felt off. The shelves were half-empty, and a lot of our usual imports from the Middle East, India, Europe, and the US were either gone or replaced by stuff from Asia. Weird, right? But hey, I’m deep in my studies; maybe I just hadn’t noticed.

So I get home, still puzzled, and decide to check in on the Uni forum. As I’m logging in, an email pops up on Outlook. And this is where things go off the rails. The email, from a friend who’s a bit more…shall we say, “resourceful” than most, reveals something that’s straight out of a dystopian novel.

Turns out, the rest of the students who’ve been ghosting the forum? They’re not slacking—they’re gone. Wiped out in a nuclear exchange that’s turned everything westward of Central Asia into a radioactive wasteland. Alaska? Same story. And here I am, like many others in Singapore and Australia, living inside a carefully constructed bubble of disinformation.

Our governments, in their infinite wisdom, have created a digital firewall to keep us blissfully unaware, plugging away at our studies, jobs, and lives as if everything were fine. We’ve been living inside a Matrix-like illusion of normalcy while the real world burns outside our borders.

How do I know this? My friend—let’s call him a black hat hacker with a conscience—managed to hack through the digital curtain. He got the real story from his counterpart in Thailand, someone still plugged into what’s left of the global grid.

So here I am, about to dive down the rabbit hole. There’s a world beyond the firewall, and I need to know what’s really happening. Because if this is the new normal, I’m not content to just be another line of code in someone else’s simulation.

*Note: This is a fictional story.*

Students got hacked!

So, here we go again. Just when students are neck-deep in preparing for the O levels, what happens? A massive hacking incident hits Mobile Guardian, the app they rely on for their notes and study progress. Poof! Months of hard work, gone in an instant. Can you imagine the frustration? All those late nights and weekends sacrificed, only to see it all disappear because someone couldn’t keep their system secure.

And the kicker? This isn't just any app—it’s provided by an overseas vendor. Yes, Mobile Guardian isn’t even based in Singapore, so it’s way out of our jurisdiction. How did MOE not see this coming? It’s mind-boggling that there wasn’t stricter oversight, especially after the whole Singhealth hacking fiasco. You’d think the government would be on high alert, but no, it seems they’re still catching Z’s.

What’s even more infuriating is Mobile Guardian’s reputation. Have you seen their Google reviews? Abysmal, to say the least. How did MOE think it was okay to partner with a vendor that’s clearly been failing its users? It screams complacency. It feels like the government has gotten way too comfortable with these vendors, who are probably delivering subpar performance at best.

And Mobile Guardian—what a name, huh? Guardian of what, exactly? Certainly not our students' data. It’s almost laughable how they failed to live up to their name. 

Honestly, it’s like MOE was caught napping with Mobile Guardian instead of keeping a close watch. This breach shows a serious lapse in judgment. Our students deserve better than this mess. They need reliable tools, especially when their future is on the line.

It’s about time the government stops cozying up to these vendors and starts demanding accountability. The frustration is real, and if things don’t change, it’s only going to get worse. Our students need protection, and it’s high time MOE steps up its game.

Small Nation and the Second Hand Smoke

The haze serve to remind us that we can be easily affected by the action (or in action) of our neighboring countries. That the reason we have ASEAN to iron out regional issue in a thoughtful, gentleman and mature manner in achieving a WIN-WIN for all. Rather than one tactless minister resorting to accusing Singaporean of "Acting Like A Child". This minister do the entire ASEAN community no good with such comments as a representative from Indonesia. Is he under the Indonesian government payroll or some Palm Oil Companies left and right pocket? Yet on another side of the court, we have another mini-star firing off his rhetoric salvo forgetting this is not a local Opposition party handling some Hawker Center issues.

The Silver lining in this very hazy war of politics and diplomacy is the objective approach of Indonesian Foreign Minister to refocus the attention on fighting the forest fire and the assuring appearance of our PM on TV to inform our citizen the way ahead to tackle both the haze as well as health issues of the people.

Hope it paves the way to 1) Get ride of the fire and thus the haze 2)Prevent occurrence by persecuting errand Companies as well as help equip poorer farmers with alternative means of forest clearing or even a staggered slash and burn schedule to reduce number of hot spot at any time.

Half a million or 1 million dollar is not enough to solve the problem when the money lands in the wrong hands. We rather keep in in our nation reserve at the moment.

Further liberalization of camera phone use

Picture this. A man walking into a sensitive installation, wearing Google Glass equipped with a discreet miniature camera. He proceeded to take pictures of anything and everything he sees. Now rewind the story and this time we have a women, wearing a miniature camera the size of a blouse button. The permutation of scenario are numerous yet the reaction from are the same.... Increase security checks, increase spot check and new rules to mete out severe punishment to perpetrators. Not to mention the finger pointing and blaming game.

Welcome to the brand new world where anyone can have access to James Bond style spying tools and every security department are scrambling to find ways to prevent the sneak in of camera devices and leakage of sensitive photos. Lots of money and time are spend to prevent an elusive force whose stealth is up to the imagination and poker face of the smuggler. This resources are simply spend to suppress the singular issue of unauthorized photography and unfortunately at the same time deprive the increase value of mobile photography.

In the end, whether an individual decides to embark on internal espionage or simply the thrill of taking pictures and posting it on the internet boils down to INTENT. The best security measures may not be able to stop some one with a strong intention. Its boils down to education, discipline and instilling a sense of security ownership to the people.

Imagine one day we are all allowed to liberally bring in camera equipped phone into sensitive installation yet having the good discipline and education to ensure we do not take photos of sensitive facilities or equipment. Think about the value we can add to our work with this new found capability.

To be fair, there are already efforts to relax the rule of camera devices and it is a welcome change. There can however be further liberalization down the road for employee and the same time reducing the coverage of "No Camera Zone". Interestingly camera phone restriction did create a niche revenue stream for Telco and mobile phone-makers selling non-camera phone.

Happiness and Our Population - A gamers view

After 2 weeks of writing my Capstone Project Proposal and dozen of literature reviews, I realize my Ang Mo and critical writing skills are truly degrading. May be a result of lack of linguistic exercise from such a long time away from blogging. Its time to put those academic work a side for a while and share my opinion on the "Population White Paper".

No....I haven't read the Population White Paper and I don't intend to start reviewing its content. This job are better suited for our Statesman. I wonder how many people do actually read it from head to tail but I am sure most will appreciate the emotional disturbance to citizen this White Paper had, which the Parliament had already voted in favor. No thanks to the overwhelming White-shirtess votes.

Is a 6.9 million population even viable in Singapore? It all depends on the resources are country can provide to support such huge numbers on a tiny island. The basics like food, water, sanitation, shelter and healthcare are absolute necessary for humanity survival. State planner are of course ready to predict/forecast the resource demands using whatever mathematical model or super computer they had. What about happiness of Singaporean? Can it be measured at all?

If anyone had played the computer game, Civilization (I, II, III, IV and now V), you would be very careful on your citizen happiness level. As the smart player (or ruler) in the game, beside fielding a armed force to scare the shit out of other civilization from attacking you,  you will also watch out for domestic affairs like production, gold and most importantly populations. Production and Gold output of the civilization greatly depend on the number of citizen that can work the territory and like our Gahmen, I love to have lots of gold reserve for emergency us as well as urging my citizen to be more productive at work. The simplest way to increase either of this are simply to increase population.

Now the problem of increase population, in this game, is the decrease in citizen happiness. The counter such effect, we start building "Happiness" building like a Colosseum, Theatre, Wonders ...etc etc. Sometime, we implement policy to improve the existing happiness of our people. Sometimes a civilization with great culture value translate to improved happiness when adopting certain policy.

Using a computer game to illustrate effect of increased population may be slightly naive due to its "helicopter" view of real work situation but this games does set me thinking on the reasons of our unhappiness. Why are we unhappy with further increase in population? In my view, its  a case of lack of resources (happiness building), high cost of resources( the price citizen had to pay for happiness building), invasion of culture (losing culture value) and poor policy making.

In the game, players aim to dominate other civilization before 2030 through Military, Science, Diplomacy or Culture. I wonder what Singapore will be like in 2030. Large population don't guaranteed a civilization success, neither lots of gold and production level. In real life, I am a firm believer that even with a Singaporean core of just 2.7 million.... there are plenty of talents to lead our country to  greater success on the world stage. In the meantime, I hope our government are truly honest that the White paper is just a projection.

Isn't it time to get back on Blogging?

Pathetic....only one blog in 2012 and the blog had been dormant for a year. Think its time to get back and write my piece of mind. There definately some cock and bull story to talk about. Maybe my opinion on population white paper will be a good start.  Stay tune.