[image above from http://chloescheffe.github.io/trust.html%5D Last Friday, 19th June 2020, I was part of a group of four from the local open source hacker community to tear down the proposed TraceTogether token. This was by invitation […]
Category: open source
open source stuff
Seriously? NRIC for TraceTogether?
[Image from https://www.solarwindsmsp.com/blog/what-pii-and-phi-and-how-do-you-secure-them and added NO to it using gimp.] I wrote earlier that asking for a phone number when registering the TraceTogether app on the mobile phone was about the only useful and barest […]
Looking forward to a recyclable, open sourced, wearable, contact tracing device
So, the other shoe is about to drop. Gov is planning on providing everyone a wearable contacting tracing device to counter the limitations of apps that run in mobile phones (from the Apple ecosystem) – […]
A flawed idea. Zoom does not get it (or maybe they are pretending).
Earlier this week, a report came out that the video conferencing provider, Zoom, would be providing End-to-End-Encryption (E2EE) but only for paying customers. They’ve made a case that because “bad” people would use encryption to […]
Curated playlist of videos
I did not realise that there are plenty of videos of events at which I spoke, interviews I gave and panels I was part of. For my own purposes, I thought it is best if […]
Working Remotely with FOSS tools
These last few months have been really wonderful in enabling me to catch up on making sure that as much of the technology that I use to be working online is indeed free and open […]
Jit.si if you care and Zoom if you don’t.
So, last week, from 8th April onwards, the Singapore Government imposed a partial lockdown (PL) – or as they say euphemistically “circuit breaker” (CB). The Singapore Ministry of Education introduced Home-based Learning (HBL) that they […]
A tip to play audio (and video) in a browser
So, the teacher in the house, aka my wife, asked me to help with the online teaching she has to do specifically with being able to play audio tracks for her students. She uses Fedora […]
No. Internet voting is still a No Go.
I was asked by a friend why is it that we can’t do voting over the Internet. With all of the digitisation being done globally, and the ongoing COVID-19 issue, shouldn’t Singapore – the Smart […]
BuildTogether – data, code, people for the world
The Singapore Government Technology Agency released, at the end of last week (Friday 20 March 2020) a mobile phone app, called TraceTogether which uses the bluetooth of the mobile phone to establish tiny database with […]
Of NUCs and Bastions
[image above from https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/ssh-proxy-bastion-proxyjump%5D Just documenting the systems I have on my home network so that I know what to do next time as well as being a repository of tips and tricks for anyone […]
Fa(r)cial Recognition + Parliament = Smart Parliament?
If the Singapore Parliament aspires to be a smart Parliament, it should live stream proceedings in full on the Internet with no delay (Facial recognition system to track MPs’ presence in Parliament, Nov 8). By doing that, MPs’ attendance can be tracked using software that is already available.
The Enormous Empowering of Free and Open Source Software Ecosystem
It is quite disappointing to see the escalation of bad behaviour on the part of some of the partners in the technology industry legally pushed on by US politicians who have no idea what they […]
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
This. There was a time when I was so happy to be able to connect to the Internet with my mobile phone by dialing-in into the ISP. I remember on a trip to Tel Aviv, […]
Simple life hack
Turn your mobile data to the OFF as a default when out and about. Why? Read on. Since about October 2017, I’ve been quite conscious about how my phone connects to the data network via […]
Working around censorship
The Internet is a wonderful and absolutely essential resource that needs to be looked after, managed well and secured so that it can deliver the vast benefits to humanity and more. But along with that […]
NASA Space Apps Challenge 2018 – Singapore
It was wonderful that Red Hat’s Open Innovation Labs is a sponsor of this year’s NASA Space Apps Challenge event that is being held in Singapore. It was held at LEVEL3‘s offices at the Mapletree […]
Not allowed to code? Really?
[image from: http://cdn.blog.safe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/no-coding.png%5D Lots of interesting, but not surprising, information is being made public about the Singhealth data breach. The Commitee of Inquiry has been told that there was an IHIS employee who found a […]
Happy 35th Birthday GNU!
The GNU project was officially announced on 27 September 1983 by Richard Stallman. Thirty-five years of a project that has now become the fundamental building block of everything we use and see in technology in […]
A healthcare IT foundation built on gooey clay
Today, there was a report from the Solicitor General of Singapore about the data breach of the SingHealth systems that happened in July. These systems have been in place for many years. They are almost […]
What I’ve learned in 15 years at Red Hat
[image credit: https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Spock-shades.jpg%5D In September 2003, I was asked by Gus Robertson to consider joining Red Hat – essentially to kickstart the Red Hat office in Singapore/ASEAN. I was at that time running my own […]
You gotta love the UNIX way of doing things
A colleague was asking for some help in a demo he was planning on that would involve him editing a spreadsheet in LibreOffice on his laptop and then the spreadsheet to be saved to a […]
My updated GPG keys: 0x61AFA27B
I have just updated my GPG keys. The fingerprint is: 0x61AFA27B And my public key is: —–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—– mQINBFtV24ABEADERsMgNNOOFpzfaYxrmlmYPd0IOjFn3iIba38SvqVyWJxLmuvc[…]
SingHealth, PDPA, Smart Nation, sigh!
Looks like I am clear from the data breach at SingHealth. My Mom’s data, however, is not. This is the SMS received: Yes, I’ve redacted her name, and yes, I use Signal as my SMS […]
ssh tunnel via userspace systemd service
[image above is a screenshot of 0pointer.de – in place of a systemd logo] This is short how-to on setting up a systemd service that is run from a user account. In the /etc/systemd/system directory: […]
So, you want to do computer science, huh?
This has been on my mind for a while. Lots of friends are asking me for advise about their interest in pursuing courses on computer science (undergrad or grad). First things first: I do have […]
And, they are online now
Over a week ago, I was pinged by @l00g33k on twitter with a picture of a description of a piece of code I wrote in 1982. That lead to a meet up and reliving a […]
You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep**
Lots of what we take for granted found expression in the thoughts and writings of John Perry Barlow. He crafted “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” back in 1996. It held lots of truths […]
Seeking a board seat at OpenSource.org
I’ve stepped up to be considered for a seat on the Board of the Open Source Initiative. Why would I want to do this? Simple: most of my technology-based career has been made possible because […]
Wireless@SGx for Fedora and Linux users
Eight years ago, I wrote about the use of Wireless@SGx being less than optimal. I must acknowledge that there has been efforts to improve the access (and speeds) to the extent that earlier this week, […]
This is very interesting! (it is proprietary though)
I just came across something called hashgraph that seems to be able to replace blockchains as the basis of distributed ledgers. The hashgraph is wrtten up by Dr Leemon Baird in this paper: http://leemon.com/papers/2016b.pdf is […]
Three must haves in Fedora 26
I’ve been using Fedora ever since it came out back in 2003. The developers of Fedora and the greater community of contributors have been doing a amazing job in incorporating features and functionality that subsequently […]
A better model to work with citizens
I have been putting off installing the SGSecure application on my phone. I finally decided to do it via the Google Playstore. It got downloaded and installed and when I started the app, it needed […]
This is quite a nice tool – magic-wormhole
I was catching up on the various talks at PyCon 2016 held in the wonderful city of Portland, Oregon last month. There are lots of good content available from PyCon 2016 on youtube. What I […]
UEFI and Fedora/RHEL – trivially working.
My older son just enrolled into my alma mater, Singapore Polytechnic, to do Electrical Engineering. It is really nice to see that he has an interest in that field and, yes, make me smile as […]
I know more than you do
I cannot help but continue to be baffled by the way the G responds to some of the continuing challenges that the nation faces. Way back in 2009, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced the […]
A blast from the past
I was searching for advertisements that I recalled seeing in the Linux Journal back in the mid 1990s that was put out by Red Hat about their upcoming release of Red Hat Linux. Fortunately, I […]
This is too cool!
[harish@phoenix ~]$ traceroute 216.81.59.173 traceroute to 216.81.59.173 (216.81.59.173), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 registerlafonera.fon.com (192.168.10.1) 2.473 ms 2.937 ms 3.902 ms 2 cm1.zeta224.maxonline.com.sg (116.87.224.1) 15.342 ms 15.664 ms 16.515 ms 3 172.20.53.17 (172.20.53.17) […]
In a word, wow!
I am not sure if this is a report that contains stuff taken out of context, but if its true that PM Lee thinks that his government did not have clarity in vision, what does that […]
Doing the right thing and a proposal
I am glad to read the the Prime Minister has decided to probe the sale the applications (built and paid using tax dollars) by the PAP Town Councils to the PAP-owned company AIM. <stand up> […]
It’s not a contest per se, it’s a Sahana-moment!
So, my 3 am post from January 3rd 2013 is now on http://www.tremeritus.com, probably not a good thing, but then this is the way things move. For what it’s worth, going by the comments in that post, […]
Why Open Standards and Open Source Matters in Government
I have offered to the powers that be (TPTB) running the various Town Councils in Singapore an opportunity for the open source community to help build an application to manage their respective towns following the […]
My Conscience Is Bugging Me
I cannot let the media statement put out by the “Coordinating Chairman of the PAP Town Councils” regarding the sale of the town council management software system to a ex-PAP MP-owned company be left alone […]
Software for Public Sector Applications
The ongoing egg-in-the-face of the PAP over the “tender” (thanks to Alex for posting it via an anonymous source) awarded to AIM over the acquisition of a piece of software created for the use of the Town […]
Open Source and Government
[11:05 am Dec 26th: updated to reflect some clarifications given to me via other walled-garden social media] The recent events with the Worker’s Party-led Aljunied Hougang Town Council‘s financial management system needs to be looked […]
A helper note for family and friends about your connectivity to the Internet from July 9 2012
This is a note targeted at family and friends who might find that they are not able to connect to the Internet from July 9, 2012 onwards. This only affects those whose machines were are […]
And it’s live now – SCO Open Server 5.0.5 running in a RHEL 6 KVM
As promised earlier, the final bits of getting an application that runs on the old hardware on to the VM is now all done. I tried to install the app but, I really did not […]
Microsoft’s “open technology” spinoff
While I would like to stand up and cheer Microsoft on them setting up the “Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc”, I am not convinced that they are doing this in good faith. Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, […]
Exposing localhost via a tunnel
I came across this tool, localtunnel, that offers a way to expose a localhost based webserver (for example) to the internet. It is a reverse proxy that brings you to your machine way behind a […]
What does it take?
I am an organizer of a programming contest that will be using some really cool technologies (HTML5, Python, OpenShift, just to name three). This will be a contest open to anyone but we would need […]
The Value of being Heard and Consulted
Some of you would know that I am employed by a company called Red Hat since September 2003, it will be nine years with the organization. That’s longer than I have been with any of […]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 comes to the rescue of SCO Open Server in a VM!
After about two years ago to the day (plus or minus), I’ve finally gotten around to moving a friend’s ancient SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 to run on a modern operating system within a virtual machine. My […]
Cool tech tip
Saw this on identi.ca feed: “@climagic youtube-dl -q -o- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zscrs94_pFc | mplayer – cache 1000 – # Watch youtube streaming directly to mplayer” So, do yum install youtube-dl mplayer on your Fedora machines, then you can pull […]
OSCON 2011 – Tuesday July 26
Finally, I’ve found time and motivation to attend the O’Reilly organized Open Source Convention 2011 in Portland, Oregon. It has been many years since I was in Portland – in fact, the times I spent in […]
Change and Opportunity
Change and evolution are hallmarks of any open source project. Ideas form, code gets cut, repurposed, refined and released (and sometimes thrashed). Much the same thing happens with teams of people. In the True Spirit […]
Now all machines at home are on Fedora 15!
I spent 30 minutes this morning upgrading my sons’ laptops to Fedora 15. I used a Fedora 15 LiveDVD (installed on a USB) that I had created that included stuff that the standard Fedora 15 […]
Printer/cups tip
Every time I update the OS on my laptops, I have to add the CUPS printer settings for the in office systems. It used to be that there was an internally usable RPM to do […]
Early thoughts on GNOME 3
I must admit, the first time I installed Fedora 15 alpha, I did it only to test out what GNOME 3 was all about. It looked like an interesting interface that would work on a […]
My must-haves on any new Fedora installation
So, I’ve taken the plunge and gone ahead and updated my Fedora 14 to the next rev of Fedora 15. F15 comes default with GNOME 3. I am still finding my way around it, but […]
Open Source Java all the way
I am really pleased to see that the IcedTea project doing so well that for all the sites that need Java enabled in the browser, icedtea is more than sufficient. It used to be the […]
Is Vietnam blocking Facebook?
I am sitting at a lounge in Ho Chi Minh City’s international airport and connected to the wifi. Interestingly, I cannot reach facebook.com. Here’s the dig and traceroute info: $ dig http://www.facebook.com ; <<>> DiG […]
It’s May 8th 2011 and it is a Brand New Singapore!
Good morning Singapore. Together we broke the back of the PAP with them being routed in the polls, with the Worker’s Party retaining Hougang and now winning the Aljunied GRC. As the sun emerges, we […]
Wear A Rubber Band On Your Right Wrist As You Go To Vote
We have four days till Polling Day. Here’s what I would like to see happen. The BIGGEST challenge with the electorate is that they are fearful of the following: a) That the vote is not […]
Way before 2016 – The Open Party
I think Singapore will be a dramatically different place come the early morning of May 8th, 2011. The tsunami of votes of support which will bring in ABPs into parliament would reinforce confidence in Singapore […]
Managing open source skepticism
I had an opportunity to speak to a few people from a government tender drafting committee on Wednesday. They are looking at solutions that will be essentially a cloud for a large number of users […]
Glad to have participated in the Cloud Workshop in Penang
I am pleased to have spent two days at the National Cloud Computing Workshop 2011 held in Penang, Malaysia April 11-12 2011. Targeted at the Malaysian academic community, it offered some insights to the initiatives that […]
Cloud for Academics
I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak from both a Red Hat and an open source presective about cloud technologies to the academic community in Malaysia. Clearly there is a lot to […]
Believing in your own BS
I spend pretty much 100% of my waking hours in the IT world. A world that changes and evolves rapidly. This results in a massive amount of churn in ideas, methods and processes. Some of […]
True Leadership and The Open Source Way
I live in the Free and Open Source World. A lot of what the FOSS movement’s ethos and principles are quite core to me. I think this webinar featuring Charlene Li is a required viewing. […]
NASA’s inaugural Open Source Summit
I missed the live streaming of the NASA OSS Summit but it is mostly all captured and available on ustream.tv. These are the links to the recordings: Day One: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13644010 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13644386 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13647514 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13650365 Day Two: […]
Taking the higher ground
I am disappointed with the kinds of ad hominem attacks being made at the person from the PAP who is being labelled as the PAP’s youngest candidate to be introduced this time around. It is one […]
Interesting post from a non-techie moving to Fedora
A good friend of mine sent me a note about his friend’s experience in moving to a Fedora and Red Hat desktop environment. That person is a non-techie and this is his report – all […]
Data analysis sought
I’ve extracted the stats from the Singapore elections department‘s site and set up a tabulated voting results from the very first elections in 1955 upto the last one in 2006. The data from the parliamentary […]
Unfiltered feed from Al Jazeera
If you are running Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can watch the raw feed from Al Jazeera using this script: ======>8=====cut here============= #!/bin/sh rtmpdump -v -r[…]
The magic of brand loyalty
We are all slaves to perception. What you perceives essentially drives your actions. Yes, we can think through the issues and mitigate perceptions so that you can derive at a fair decision. My very first […]
Virtualization and the Internet
I had the privilege of speaking to a great group of network operators as part of the South Asian Network Operators Group conference held in Colombo, Sri Lanka from Jan 11-18, 2011. The topic I […]
Temporary fix to StarHub’s illegal code injection
StarHub continues to do their illegal code injection into the return stream and here are four ways to you temporarily fix it: Run a proxy server somewhere. By using a proxy server, you can by […]
This is what thought leadership is an example of!
I am pleased to see this note by Michael Tiemann, President of Open Source, Inc. As 2011 opens up, I would not be surprised to see the CPTN Holdings LLC, begin to play the game […]
Was I fair?
I read with amusement some of the comments that people made with regards to the chat I had with the Dell Rep about acquiring a N-series machine. The chat is posted here. Most of the […]
Security breach of addons.mozilla.org
Thanks to Mozilla for this pro-active reporting of the security breach. If any of you reading this blog have an account on addons.mozilla.org and have not received this note, please take action. Mozilla Add-ons date […]
Interesting to see me quoted
I was pleasantly pinged by someone who said that I was being quoted in an article saying: “The best moment for me was the launch of Fedora 14 (and subsequently Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) Enterprise 6) along with the […]
How to buy a Dell WITHOUT windows
I was asked by a friend to get a Fedora CD to her and her friend so that their children can learn to use Linux. I suggested that I will help by shipping the Live […]
National Convention for Academics and Researchers, Hyderabad, India
I had the distinct privilege of attending and speaking at the National Convention for Academics and Researchers 2010 in Hyderabad on December 17 and 18 2010. The event was held at the Mahindra Satyam Technology […]
FOSS.in Day 2 and feeling sick! Really sick!
Day two of the very last FOSS.in started a little late for me. I was developing a cold, a really bad cold. The one thing I always carry with me when I travel is vitamin […]
FOSS.in day 1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 launch
FOSS.in in Bangalore (their Xth edition and allegedly their last), started off “in true FOSS.in style” – an hour late [this was what the MC said at the very beginning and is not an editorial […]
Participate in this info-comm survey
I think this survey, being run by the Nanyang Technology University and the Singapore Computer Society could use responses from across the world, not only Singapore. So, please consider participating and making this survey results […]
This is so clever!
When something clever, it deserves pointing out. Google posted a video about their Chrome OS and that video had some interesting stuff aka easter eggs. What was nice is that the folks at Jamendo, which […]
GPG Keysigning at FOSS.in 2010
I will be attending the FOSS.in event from December 15-17 in Bangalore, India. As part of the Fedora participation at the FOSS.in, I will be running a GPG keysigning party. This will be the first […]
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 launch in Singapore
Red Hat is launching the next version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, version 6, on December 3rd 2010 in Singapore at the M Hotel, Anson Road. It starts at 9 am. I would be sharing […]
Fedora 14 launched in Singapore
Fedora 14 was officially launched on November 29, 2010 at the Singapore Management University. The event was jointly held with the launch of the Open Source Software for Innovation and Collaboration Special Interest Group of […]
More twists and turns
News is coming in that Novell is being bought out by Attachmate for about US$2.2 billion along with Novell’s “intellectual properties” (patents, trademarks, copyrights) being sold to some consortium called CPTN Holdings LLC. For some reason, […]
Reflections of a week of ISO/IEC JTC1 meeting in Belfast
Interesting meeting and great opportunity to meet with people who to me seem to be caught in a world that has seen it’s glory days. I was asked by the Singapore IT Standards Committee to attend […]
Standards work
Not sure how the upcoming week will pan out, but I am definitely eager to learn what are the nuances and politics that happens at the ISO. I will be a delegate from Singapore attending […]
Being part of Community Architecture
It is time to tell the world that I have the distinct pleasure to become part of the Community Architecture team within Red Hat. This is indeed both an exciting as well as a deeply […]
Rescuing a SCO OpenServer 5.0.5 machine to run in a VM on RHEL5.4
I received a frantic SMS from an old classmate running a travel agency business saying that his SCO machine cannot now boot. He is running an application written to a 3-GL/4-GL product called Thoroughbred. He […]
Automatically connecting to the Wireless@SG hotspots
Thanks to a caustic comment some years ago to Lee Kuan Yew by some visitors to Singapore, we have a nation-wide free wifi network called “Wireless@SG”. It has been a constant pain to use and […]
Fonera 2.0n finally!
Finally vpost delivers the Fonera 2.0n I ordered online. Earlier this week, I was suprised to receive a letter (yes, paper mail) from SingPost that my Fon was being held at Singapore Customs pending approval […]
Xournal
Thanks to Xournal, you can now annotate any PDF and export it out to a new PDF. This is excellent for filling in forms, note taking, keeping a journal, writing using a stylus etc. I […]
Singapore files contradiction to the ECMA/MS OOXML proposal
It was an interesting evening today. As I arrived home at 6:30pm, I got a call from the chairman of the ITSC Council, saying that he had been hounded on the phone today by the […]
