I come from a country where the citizens are almost always looking at Facebook as their main source of information. When an under-educated populace cannot tell the difference between fact and fake news, the results can be disastrous. In 2016, Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency on account of a divisive Facebook propaganda campaign built on fake news run by people trained in Russia by Putin's propaganda machine.

The result: a culture of violence and impunity which caused the deaths of tens of thousands.

Facebook (now Meta) has direct and indirect culpability in all of this as it had ignored widespread reports of misinformation and allowed the proliferation of fake news to a population of over 110 million. Facebook still enjoys enormous reach in the Philippines today, so much so that Meta funded subsea cable investments for the country, with subsidized access to Facebook available for any smartphone owner.

The Philippines is a model and a cautionary tale of how many parts of the world shifted dramatically to the right in the 2010's, no thanks to unimpeded fake news on social media.

Leisure Suit Larry?

I'm surprised something like this had to be posted. You'd think the usual slashdot reader would already know the difference.

Intelligent IVR's were also supposed to be the death knell of outsourced call centers. A dozen years on and outsourced call centers have grown from tens of thousands of employees in the 2000's to over 17 million people today.

"Zoom.. "


"Enhance!"

I highly doubt the Taiwanese government (TSMC's largest shareholder) would be willing to bring more operational redundancy outside of Taiwan for the sole purpose that Taiwan's semiconductor fabrication dominance has single-handedly prevented an invasion by China. There is a reason the semiconductor industry has been dubbed Taiwan's "Silicon Shield".

Unfortunately for the rest of the world, Taiwan happens to be right smack in the middle of the Pacific Ring of Fire and is also in the same region where many of the world's most powerful typhoons occur. A powerful earthquake, tsunami, super typhoon, or the invasion of a vengeful neighbor (which keeps calling Taiwan a "rogue province") might well be what causes the next global economic catastrophe.

"Indeed, students are far better off with in-person learning than with online approaches."

General conclusions such as this generally don't age well. Considering we've only had online learning for a little over 2 decades (compared to over a couple of millennia in what we know today as pedagogy and andragogy), I'd say it's too early to tell.

As an online learning professional with nearly two decades' combined work in instructional design and learning experience design, I've found that the most effective online learning programs, whether asynchronous or not, have to be designed properly (much like software and game development) by actual designers with years of experience and the right set of skills. Imagine a high school physics teacher used to presenting classroom content with a blackboard suddenly being asked to learn how to teach the same syllabus online without any knowledge of web or graphics design and you'll get the idea.

Unfortunately, the pandemic has brought many teachers into the forefront of what is, essentially, highly specialized work requiring highly specialized skills. As subject-matter experts, I have no doubt these professors are the most knowledgeable in their field. However, creating effective online content is a whole different set of competencies altogether. What I have seen as "remote learning" from many schools and universities during this pandemic have basically been course curricula adapted to fit into an off-the-shelf learning management system (probably running its poorly-designed default UI). Worst-case scenarios here would be teachers who basically just live-stream their lectures and send pdf copies of entire textbooks, expecting the same results as doing this in person.

I've heard of some universities running training courses and webinars for their faculty for doing online learning but it really isn't enough. I don't blame academia or the teachers, of course, as these are extraordinary times we live in.

An effective online learning program involves a lot of pre-work: analysis, design, development, project management, prototyping, alpha and beta testing, etc., prior to these being released to learners. There is also a lot of work done during implementation to ensure that the modules run correctly along with post-work to evaluate where things could be done better. This value chain is not that far removed from software development or even product development.

Concluding that remote learning is NOT effective when the implementation is probably not done properly is unwise and potentially limits the evolution of our educational system.

"They also squarely accepted responsibility for the incident, rather than trying to deflect blame onto the system vendor Fujitsu Ltd."

This sense of honor and responsibility is unnervingly rare in capitalism.

Mongolia, New Zealand, and Taiwan would beg to differ.

A research paper from Stanford Medicine's AIM Lab shows that an N95 mask exposed to 70C (158F) of hot air for 30 minutes in an oven (not your home oven) can be disinfected enough for reuse.

In summary bleach and microwaves were failures at point of care because the bleach gases (skin and respiratory irritants) remained after multiple strategies were used to remove them, the microwave melted the masks and soaking them first led to reduced filtration. EtO, UVGI, and hydrogen peroxide decontamination were safe and effective in the models tested but it is not known if they would retain filtration, material strength, and airflow integrity with repeated use. EtO, UVGI, and hydrogen peroxide limitations include time from decontamination to reuse and available space and materials to decontaminate in an OR setting. 70C /158F heating in an oven (not your home oven) for 30min, or hot water vapor from boiling water for 10 min, are additional effective decontamination methods

There is a table on the fifth slide which also seems to indicate that UV light exposure for 30 minutes and hot water vapor for 10 minutes can also be used. Note that the research paper has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Link to the Internet Archive's MS-Dos library.


It's a massive list with some of the classics of the period included. The article mentions 2,500 additions to what is already an extensive list of some of the greatest games ever released.

"Meanwhile, there is a new political will among governments to try to control websites -- especially following events like the Arab Spring, during which Facebook and Twitter helped fuel political uprisings."

The converse is also true. The rise of the populist right all over the world (Putin, Brexit, Trump, Modi, Duterte, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, et al) is pretty much due to the proliferate use of social media for fake news and propaganda.

Had Facebook worked on this shit a lot earlier, the current global political trend of far-right populism would probably have been prevented. Now, you have people like Duterte, Trump, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Modi, et al, running a significant portion of the world.

1) Fabiano Caruana - Italian-American chess prodigy who once played for Italy
2) Wesley So - chess prodigy born and raised in the Philippines; So transferred to the US 4 years ago as his country's federation could not adequately support him
3) Hikaru Nakamura - Japanese-American chess prodigy who was born in Japan but moved to the US at age 2, his Sri Lankan stepfather taught him how to play

Immigration is a key factor in the recent rise of US chess.

Facebook is committed to answer to the US government as it is an American company and conducts business under its regulatory control.

But what about in countries where almost the entire citizenry relies on Facebook as its primary source of information? One of these is the Philippines, where once tabloids and tv dominated, today Facebook is THE biggest medium to disseminate information, thanks to the mobile phone and subsidized access to Facebook courtesy of the telco duopoly.

Duterte's campaign team used it to propel a known murderer into the presidency, whereby he immediately implemented his War on Drugs which has since claimed over 12,000 lives. His first two years in office has also seen the economy plummet to new lows, with inflation at its highest in close to a decade and currently the highest in asia.

And now that Duterte's social media propaganda is state-sponsored, you can then understand why his approval ratings are the highest in history. This is even if his sound bites make Trump sound like Anne Frank in comparison (even more so in the vernacular).

I am unsure if Facebook will be able to fix itself because if it doesn't, you can very well imagine what the consequences are for Filipinos.