Category: Memetics

Thoughts on the Pandemic

It’s been almost 3 months since the initial lockdowns and here are some of my thoughts on the pandemic.

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The whole “this wasn’t the apocalypse that we were looking forward to” meme referring to zombie apocalypse and nuclear holocaust “fans” was sort of amusing.

Simply put, this is one of the few calamities that I have actually prepared for, albeit accidentally.

Much of my work and recreation doesn’t require getting out of the house, and I’ve learned to reduce my need for social interaction. My habit of getting premium equipment and backup alternatives also meant I don’t need to go out to buy things often.

I’ve even got random stuff that ended up being more useful in the situation. For example, that expensive mask I got for running – I switched out the filter for a carbon-filter one which I happened to buy and never got to use until the Taal Volcano eruption.

Another is the rechargeable beard clipper I got for my beard; it came with hair guards equivalent to No 5 and below. I was able to give myself the pandemic buzzcut that’s fashionable nowadays. /s

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I can’t comment on the disease itself since I’m not an Epidemiologist. I am however, a software developer and I deal with large data sets all the time.

And pretty much all of the data shown on the news is useless from a data analysis standpoint.

Don’t get me wrong, death statistics have to be taken seriously, but the usual “Tested Positive, Recovered, Deaths” that’s been plastered all over the news is insufficient to make any informed decision from a data analysis perspective. Here’s just a small fraction of the problems with this “data”:

Tested Positive – most common flaw: the total number of tests performed is not mentioned, obscuring the infection rate. Another obvious flaw: calculating the percent of the country’s/municipalities’ total population infected/tested is left to the viewer. Other problems include not showing the breakdown of how many were tested via contact tracing (hints how the infection really spreads), and the test kit false positive/negative rate (hints the correct combination of test kits to use).

Recovered – the time of recovery (minimum, maximum, average) is never mentioned even though this can tell the public the actual severity of the infection. Also, the criteria for recovery is vague – what tests are done to categorize a patient as recovered.

Deaths – the criteria for counting a death is inconsistent among sources, basically there’s no strict rules whether to combine people who died from the disease and people who died with the disease. Patient privacy is important, but to make sense of the death statistics, we must know how these people died so agencies can make better treatment protocols, as well as decide which portion of the population to impose further quarantine measures on.

I could go on and on. And yes I’ve seen the EndCoV.ph site, but no it’s still not enough data.

You might say, “it’s ~500,000 tested and ~26,000 confirmed cases; there’s no way the public can handle that data, let alone a single software developer without a ‘data analyst’ title.”

To be frank, that amount of data is pretty small especially in this age of cloud computing. In fact, 26k data points is just a lazy Tuesday morning for me – finding the right terminology and tone for the report would actually take me far more time.

That’s just a software dev speaking. Think about what a real data scientist can do given full access to all of the data.

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So why are these government institutions and news agencies disseminating such poor quality data?

I’m going to defer to Hanlon’s Razor here and assume at least 50% of it is due to plain incompetence, with the rest to further the narrative or agenda they wish to promote.

Except for US and US-aligned mainstream media.

That’s all definitely narrative pushing, seeing how quickly news about the pandemic plummeted due to the riots. And it’s going to be worse as we approach the November elections.

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What will the near future hold for us?

I don’t know. I’m not an Epidemiologist.

So You Want to Teach Ruby and Rails…

RubyConf Philippines was a blast. I still can’t decide which of the following was the best thing I did in the event:

So yeah, I did a talk on the first day about teaching. Here are my slides:

I recorded an “extended podcast-version” earlier today. Here it is in all it’s crappy one-take glory:

Some quick links for further reading:

I am not a “Blogger”

I’ve been recently getting emails from various sources grouping me with the local blogging community. I usually just ignore them, giving a passing glance at those that may contain usable information. Last night, however, I received a message that forced me to write this post.

For the sake of those who are not familiar with me, let me introduce myself first. I am someone who has taken (and is still taking on) many roles: freelance web developer, software engineer, teacher, volunteer, public speaker, and so on.

“Blogger” is not one of them.

But if you’re not a blogger, what is this site (blog.bryanbibat.net) then?

True, this is indeed a web log in the technical sense. However, it’s not a blog in the “blogger”‘s sense. A quick look and you’ll see the difference:

No Ads. I’m a Rails developer. Any ad money I could get will be far lower than what I’d get even from part-time work.

Super Fast. Jekyll = street cred. Since I don’t feel like migrating yet, I’ll have to make do with optimizing WordPress using nginx (dev) + PHP-FPM + PHP-APC on an 8-processor server and adding CDN and caching.

Minimalist. Free responsive theme. Twitter microblog. Links to my sites and affiliates. A tongue-in-cheek appearance list. Obligatory archive links and stats. Copyright information. Nothing else.

Deeper content. I’m writing 10 pages of algorithm analysis while other “blogs” are dropping smartphones off buildings.

My reason for going away from the norm is simple:

No one wants their site to be labeled as a “blog”

If this was 2004, it would be fine to have a slow, cluttered ad plastered site with stupid content.

But this is 2013. No one wants their site to be lumped together with the stereotype. Just look at the top 2 “blogs” in my current spheres of interest:

WebGeek.ph may appear like a blog at first glance, but in reality it’s a vibrant community of developers and designers. Not only do they get large turnouts in their events, they even get sponsorships from all over – not bad considering none of the key people within the community are working on it full time.

theBobbery may also appear like a blog, but scrolling down and visiting a few pages will immediately tell you that it’s the type of news and information site that other blogs should have been in the first place.

Clean, ad-free sites with quality content; I am fairly certain that John Arce and Franky Branckaute would give me a look of disapproval if I would call their sites “blogs”.

Now I’ve already made it clear why I don’t want people calling this brain dump/soapbox a “blog”, let’s go back to the word “blogger”.

You can do better than “Blogger”

“Blogger” is a stupid label. I know it’s a catch-all term, but this doesn’t excuse it’s stupidity.

Again, it’s 2013. Web-based publications have gained enough mainstream acceptance that they’ve already killed off some established print publications; don’t you think it’s time for people to label themselves more specifically? For example, I can call myself a “software engineering writer”. Other bloggers can go with “gadget reviewer”, “independent journalist”, or “foodie” (groan).

But more importantly, the term “blogger” is forever tainted by those who chose to label themselves as such in the early days of the Internet: unprofessional freeloading hacks who follow no journalism ethics and standards.

Which brings us back to the message I got last night, a message that tried to drag me into an Internet drama that does not concern me. Not only that, but all signs point it to being a case of identity theft; a sloppy, easily verified one at that.

So here I am, a guy who finds multi-million dollar blunders and industry-wide discrimination debates merely amusing, and someone thinks I’d care about some idiotic personal feud just because I have a blog with over a hundred posts?

Screw that!

Pessimism Porn

Pessimist political blogs. You’ve probably seen their articles posted and shared on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social network you’re using. The theme is always the same: it’s about how the Philippines suck and there’s nothing you can do about it.

On the surface, there’s nothing bad about being critical the various aspects of your country’s society and culture. Even I like to be a devil’s advocate from time to time.

But the problem lies when you keep on talking about the same pessimistic shit over and over again. Let me give you an example:

When I entered UP, I was enamored by the protesters around the campus, the ones I only used to see on TV. They opened my eyes to the ills of society, and when I see them protesting, I’m like

“Wow, these guys are great! The country needs more of them!”

By my graduating year, whenever the protesters pass by the halls chanting whatever they’re protesting against, that sentiment became:

“Will you guys just shut up?!? Wouldn’t it be better if you go back to your classes to study so when you graduate you have a better chance of changing the system from within?!?“

And that’s the thing we’re seeing here, no one likes a pessimist who does nothing but whine.

The more you think about how these pessimist blogs are written, the more you realize what’s wrong about their approach.

First off, they’re not “realists”. They’re pessimists. Period. Realists would know that what they’re doing is counterproductive to his goals in the long run as it desensitizes and promotes apathy as I experienced with the protesters in UP.

Secondly, anyone who has seriously studied revolutions will tell you that what they’re doing will not result in a drastic change of the status quo. When all is said and done, all they’re doing is armchair pseudo-intellectualism, hiding behind shallow “rationalism” while ignoring the realities of society and human psychology (e.g. Learned Helplessness, Angry Monkeys).

If you want to change the status quo, you’ll need to get your hands dirty with concrete action. Writing pessimistic political blog posts (or worse, reading and sharing them, giving these people page views) will not change anything.

In short, all of these articles should be considered pessimism porn – pieces of work created to give smug satisfaction to pseudo-intellectuals who, instead of working towards fixing those problems, are content with “masturbating” to it.

Keep this in mind whenever you see another anti-Filipino rant from not-so-friendly neighborhood conspiracy nutjob.

Producers and Consumers

Last week, a tweet from @webgeekph got me thinking about the current state of local “tach” scene:

Please don't send us press releases that talks about Telcos, Mobile Phones & Gadgets. We're a bit different to other tech blogs :D

Looking at the top local technology blogs, you’ll see that almost all of them are geared towards Consumers i.e. they do previews and reviews of products, press releases, and events that showcase products. This is not unexpected, when you write about things that people want to buy, your visitor count will be pretty high.

Unfortunately, we are not a nation of rich people. Focusing too much on consuming other countries’ products will not help us in the long run.

That said, we need to focus more on the Producers: the developers, designers, and business people. We need more coding and design-related blogs. We need sites and events that showcase the works of local talents. We need more groups like DevCon and WebGeek that promote and empower local developers. We need more events like Startup Weekend and Hack2Hatch to kickstart establishing a more dynamic local tech industry.

I’m just as excited as you when it comes to the latest games and gadgets, but until we shift some focus from Consumers to Producers, that mentality will only lead our country to lag further behind our neighbors.