Tag Archives: Internet

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.

Bam Aquino deserves credit for the Free College Tuition Law

Opinion, , , , , , ,

Bam Aquino hasn’t even been proclaimed as a Senator after garnering the 2nd most number of votes in the recent 2025 elections, the Duterte online propaganda machine has already made him a target.

In a scripted post that quickly spread on Facebook, Duterte partisans argue that credit for the free college tuition law or Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (RA 10931) should go to the incarcerated former President, as he was the one who signed it into law during his term.

While that little piece of history cannot be denied, it’s important to bear in mind the following:

First, if Senators and members of the House of Representatives would stop doing their job, which is to legislate or craft new laws, then the President would have nothing to sign into law. It was Bam Aquino in the Senate and Sarah Elago when she was Kabataan partylist’s representative in the Lower House who led the legislative work that went into RA 10931.

Second, it would be helpful to recall Sec. 27, Art. VI of the 1987 Constitution.

It’s the President’s duty to sign into law bills passed by Congress. If he doesn’t agree with an enrolled bill, he can veto it and return it to the chamber from which it originated, along with his explanation for the veto.

The President can even refuse to actually sign an enrolled bill and just let it sit on his desk, pretending it’s not even there,e and it would automatically lapse into law after thirty days.

The Constitution gives Congress the power and duty to legislate with little participation from the President. This implies that in our democratic setup, collaboration between the Legislature and the Executive is required.

To say that credit should only be given to the incarcerated Duterte for the Free College Tuition law shows that one does not understand our legislative process or if they are deliberately ignoring it, means they have malicious intent in doing so.

Problems with Converge in Cavite

Converge no internet connection

Just in the second month of having Converge as our primary ISP here in Cavite, we’ve already experienced an outage that lasted almost 12 hours. The following day, the connection was intermittent. The most frustrating of all is how difficult it’s been to contact their Customer Service, regardless of the channel.

I first reported the outage through their official Twitter account, and they responded after 5 hours! Tried to call their hotline and the feature to automatically generate a support ticket failed to work. So I patiently waited for almost 15 minutes to actually speak to someone, but when they were about to create a support ticket for a tech visit, the call got disconnected!

What I feared finally came to pass, it’s really hard and frustrating to get a reliable and responsive ISP outside of the capital.

Globe Broadband vs PLDT FibEr

Daily dose, ,

A month ago today, we finally moved out of the city and back into my hometown of Silang, Cavite. Aside from figuring out where to put all of our stuff in a much bigger house, one of the things I worried greatly about is getting decent fiber internet service.

Back in Taguig, our PLDT Fiber service of almost 7 years has been mostly reliable and fast. Globe wasn’t available in our neighborhood so Converge became a secondary service, a backup that is so crucial for remote work and online classes.

I tried to get our PLDT Fiber service transferred to Cavite but to no surprise, the process became a lengthy ordeal and ended up being abandoned because it turns out that it’s not available in our new address.

Fortunately, my sister has been on Globe Fiber and she told me that the service has been virtually great and reliable for some years now, so we’ve decided to split the bill and upgrade to a faster subscription of 800Mbps to accommodate the additional users and devices we’ve brought with us.

So far, Globe has not been a disappointment. Except for one inconvenience, we cannot ignore, even when there are a couple of us using the network, we’re only getting roughly 400Mbps connection speed. Half of what we are being billed monthly.

We’ve already reported this to Globe and this afternoon, one of their technicians dropped by to check the connections and the modem. He agreed that our connection speed should way above 400Mbps so he escalated it for further investigation. So now, we wait yet again for the issue to be resolved.

The entire experience just reinforced a couple of observations; first, the quality of internet connection varies largely from one area to another, and second, the state of an ISP’s provider in the area will influence the quality of the service.


So this would be my answer to anyone who’d ask ‘Which internet provider is better?’ It depends, literally on where the location is.