All posts by Jay

About Jay

Blogger/Writer. Advocate of causes. Geek.

BPI #SUCKS

Opinion,

At the start of the year, I joined a different organization which forced me to open a new payroll account with a bank that I left more than a decade ago, Bank of the Philippine Islands.

Which means that I was among the thousands of its customers that was temporarily denied access and use of my own money from June 14 up until June 17, 2026 when BPI’s online services and app had an epic downtime.

Today, BPI president and CEO TG Limcaoco, in an interview with One News Money Talks apologized for the outage which turns out was the result of their inadequate infrastructure and terrible planning:

“The reality is it’s a series of unfortunate events that just came one after the other. We had a network issue on Sunday, which we resolved, and then because we had updated the app to a new version… the load on the backend was quite heavy, given the outage on Sunday, and then it was payday. I apologize to all our customers, and I take it on myself. Its’ my responsibility.”

First, BPI is notorious for having frequent outages that usually happens on or before payday. So that alone is proof that the country’s oldest bank with an $8.38 billion market cap is still running on a weak and unreliable infrastructure.

Second, BPI’s management is either incompetent or stupid or both, as who in their right mind would push out an app update less than 24 hours to when your banking systems regularly see peak traffic because it’s payday?!

The bank president’s apology is not enough. BPI must be made accountable, in concrete terms. It’s high time to strengthen laws that regulate banks and financial institutions like huge fines for service disruptions. Waiver of or compensation for fees incurred because of delayed payments. Criminal prosecution for its officers. Apologies are not enough. Customers deserve a lot more.

Why data centers in space are dumb

While the idea has been around for some quite time now, all thanks to humanity’s growing hatred towards AI data centers, it has started to really pick up steam after SpaceX’s record-shattering IPO that elevated right-wing fascist Elon Musk to being the world’s first trillionaire.

What does a rocket company’s IPO got anything to do with data centers in space? Because it turns out that SpaceX has quietly morphed into an AI company that is now raising some serious red flags.

But let’s take a step back and really dig into the idea of putting data centers in space, and why even IT professionals are saying it’s a dumb idea:

Is it the end of ‘Google it’?

Daily dose, , ,

For more than a decade of being online, I’ve always been a Google fan. Gmail, Chrome, Docs, I even still have a couple of the free Legacy G Suite accounts for side projects. Just like every tech nerd that’s been the “IT guy” for their friends, family and co-workers, “Google it” has been part of my vocabulary for years.

Now it seems that I’d be using or saying it less because Google Search has morphed and swallowed up by the tech giant’s push to put AI into all of its products and services.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to AI nor am I one of its evangelists. For me, It’s just another tool to get things done, if necessary. As I’ve declared in an earlier post, I only use AI in doing research and parsing the materials I’ve gathered for what I’m working on. The output, the text, all of it are my original work.

Googling for something has been annoying, not because the AI Overview is totally useless, it forces me to exert extra effort in getting to the sources, I have to scroll down a lot more to get to the links and see what other sources are available. Even before Google came out with AI Overview, its search results already needed some improvement but instead of doing that, it made AI Overview into a core feature of search which has ruined the experience of Googling for something.

A lot of users are saying the same thing, and this backlash has led to the rise of competitors like DuckDuckGo whose browser and search engine saw a 30% increase in installs over the past week. Even a Bing search is becoming more useful than the same query on Google.

Will Google pause and re-think its aggressive push for AI? Doubtful.

Will this fundamental change to Google search lead to the death of “Google it”? Let’s wait and see.

Rodrigo Duterte will go to trial for crimes against humanity

Daily dose, , , ,

It’s a historic day for human rights and justice in the Philippines. The Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court has ruled to confirm the charges of crimes against humanity against former President Rodrigo Duterte:

Confirmed charges of war crimes against Duterte

It effectively denies his request to be released and returned the Philippines and sets the stage for the trial to follow. After years of living in anguish, suffering and fear, the victims of Duterte’s brutal war on drugs will finally have their day in court.

Improved PhilHealth services

Daily dose, , ,

After three days, my youngest was finally discharged from the hospital yesterday. This wasn’t his first hospital admission so we were more familiar with the discharge procedures. So after completing the paperwork and settling the part of the hospital bill that wasn’t covered by our HMO and PhilHealth, it was a pleasant surprise when an actual PhilHealth employee came to see us for a quick interview/survey.

The PhilHealth employee courteously introduced herself as someone directly assigned to monitor the state insurer’s services at the hospital we stayed at. She wen through our bill, clearly explaining how the PhilHealth coverage was like that and the amount it covered, which was significantly larger compared to the last time my youngest, or any of us, was admitted for hospital treatment.

She then went on to ask us if the hospital asked us to make a cash deposit prior to admission, as this was against PhilHealth’s ‘zero balance billing’ program. I replied in the negative. Then her next was question was whether or not there were any difficulties availing of PhilHealth services, again I replied in the negative. Come to think of it, we’ve never had any difficulties availing services from PhilHealth. It seems that this is advantage of having up to date records and continuous contributions since I joined the formal labor sector a little more than a decade ago.

Still, it’s a wonderful experience to see first hand some good customer service from a government agency such as PhilHealth. Hopefully it continues to improve, especially the coverage it provides as for other Filipinos, PhilHealth is the only means they are able to get some form of healthcare services in this country known for crushing poverty amidst healthcare services that are not only woefully inadequate, but also criminally expensive and unaffordable.