Category Archives: Daily dose

Who is Qassem Soleimani? Is it now World War III?

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When news of the US admitting that President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani broke out, World War III became a trending topic in Twitter, Google search and Facebook.

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone has a good rundown of what this recent development in the Middle East is and she’s right to say that those who value peace and humanity should closely follow how it will all pan out.

Who is Qassem Soleimani to begin with? Andrew Sexun easily sums it up as:

But I do know something of how important Qassem Soleimani was, because he spent more time in the Arabic-speaking world—propping up Iranian allies from Iraq to Lebanon, and from Syria to Yemen—than he did back home in Iran. From a military and diplomatic perspective, Soleimani was Iran’s David Petraeus and Stan McChrystal and Brett McGurk all rolled into one.

To which Fred Kaplan adds:

To convey a sense of Soleimani’s significance, it would be as if, during the Iraq war, the ayatollah had ordered the assassination of Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. Jim Mattis, the head of Special Operations Command, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.* Soleimani’s responsibilities corresponded with all four of these roles. Even then, the analogy falls short because, among Shi’ite Muslims across the region, Soleimani also exuded the charisma of a religious icon, a holy warrior.

For the past 20 years, he had been the architect of Iran’s expansionist foreign policy, running subversive operations and controlling Shiite militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.

Why did the US assassinated Soleimani? He may have helped the US push back ISIS, he is also responsible for attacks against US soldiers and operatives in recent years. That may or may not be a justification, but most experts are now saying it doesn’t matter. It’s been done. The real question now is, what will happen next aside from the certainty that Iran will strike back? World War III? Who knows? Even the experts don’t have an answer yet. And that’s the scary part.

Would Congress act fast enough to allow bike-hailing services?

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#Savemotortaxi should now be the the new battle cry for the commuting public instead of just #SaveAngkas as the LTFRB’s Technical Working Group has recently announced that once their pilot study ends, the provisional permits for bike-hailing services like Angkas, JoyRide and Move It will end as well. It means after March 23, 2020, no more motorcycle taxis. Well, the ones you can book via an app that is. The only option left for commuters would be habal-habal, its illegal version.

Unless of course, Congress moves fast enough to amend Republic Act No. 4136 to legalize the bike-for-hire services, commuters would have to find other solutions to the terrible and worsening traffic situation in Metro Manila on their own.

At the moment legislation that legalizes motorycle taxis pending in Congress are as follows: HB 8959 which was passed by the Lower House last February 4, 2019 and is now pending with the Senate; Senate Bills: SBN-50, SBN-128, SBN-409 and SBN-1025.

Maybe the recent ruckus between Angkas and the LTFRB will be enough to get Congress’ attention to finally act on those pending bills.

New book: The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow & Charles Stross

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Sometime in 2007 or 2008, back in my blogging heyday, I stumbled on I Write Like. It’s a nifty website that checks ‘which famous writer you write like by analyzing your word choice and writing style‘. The first result back then was that I write like Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author and co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow. Which was a delight because I enjoy his writing and we are both activists. Since then I’ve been following his blog and podcasts and finally, I got a hard copy of one of his books – The Rapture of the Nerds. Co-authored with Charles Stross.

The Rapture of the Nerds by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross

Before I wrote this post, I tried to run the analysis again and the results were the same. 🙂 Quite excited to get started on this book and pretty sure I’d be buying Cory’s other books in the months to come.

Hopefully, reading more and more would help me get back my blogging mojo and someday I’d be able to publish a book as well.

Snapchat Cameo: Star in your own video clips

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Taking Bitmoji to the next level, Snapchat is working on an upcoming feature that lets users put their selfies into short clips that convey quick emotion, reaction, or silly situation in Snapchat messages.

It uses Deepfake tech to add your face into short video clips. It’s under limited testing in France as seen in a few tweets by French Snapchat users who have stumbled into it:

https://twitter.com/toddflanderrs/status/1203305620188913665

Snapchat has not yet confirmed when the feature will be available globally and you can be sure this will start a new trend among social messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber etc.

The concept has so many potentials, the applications actually scare me a bit. What do you think of Snapchat Cameo?

By the way, here’s a good explanation of what Deepfake is. You’d understand why the technology is quite scary.

How to clear app cache or app data in Android

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If an app is not behaving the way you expect it – white screen when you open it, freezes every now and then, etc a basic troubleshooting fix is to clear the app cache or app data or both.

Clear app cache vs app data

App cache is the temporary data stored on your device that is used by an app in doing its tasks. Over time, apps may accumulate a lot of temporary data in its app cache which could cause issues like slow responses, freezing up, or would just not start.

Clearing the cache app means deleting the temporary data so that the app can work on a clean space.

App data means the settings, preferences or account information stored by the app in order to work properly. Clearing the app data is just like resetting it to default settings as if the app has just been installed.

You would need to provide your login information, give or deny permissions to access your data or device components, all over again after clearing the app data. So you may need to take note of the settings of an app before you clear its app data.

How to clear cache app or app data

  • Go to the Settings Menu.
  • Click on Apps.
  • Find the All tab or All apps (if it doesn’t show you all apps by default)
  • Choose an app that you want to clear the cache or data.
  • Click the button Clear Cache. For devices running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or newer you’ll need to click on Storage and then Clear Cache.
  • To clear the app data instead of the cache, simply select Clear Data/Storage instead.

Once done, you can relaunch the app and see if it works better. Again, you may need to re-enter your account information and give it permissions upon launch.

Hopefully this will fix your app troubles.