Cyber warfare against us: Offence is the best Defense

This could never appear in our media but in cyber warfare offence is the best defense after we have further strengthened our defenses. The most important objective after the attacker have gotten what they wanted is to cover their tracks in order to avoid retaliation.You never provide others with a justification for attacking you.

In cyber warfare if you attack others you better be sure you are very strong and they are afraid to attack you. There are far fewer such countries than there are fingers in a hand. Now even if you are a very hard target, the retaliating country only need to keep up with watching you for the opportunity to hit you. I think when you pick small nations like Israel or us to attack, you are making a big mistake. We are the sort who will give you a memorable experience because that would discourage you from trying again which is what we want. We are not some developing country with limited capabilities living in fear where lying low the be best defense against attack.

Dental Calendars

Went to the Dentist today as we have since the kids were old enough. These will calendars be useful when the time comes for me to make the next appointment.

The highlighted dates are the clinic days for this outlet.

Risks: Should it be a common pot?

Whilst people could accept that the healthy young pay less premiums they cannot accept that men pay less than women. There is always the option to putting all risks into a common pool. The result is the young and male will pay more, the old and female will pay less. Society has to agree which is best. This is a zero sum game. This is also one of those moments we search ourselves on what our values are. We have almost never done that. The government have typically make the choices for us.

Personally I think we ought to pool the risks. That is the meaning of one people. No point if lofty words are not backed by real money.

The young discover the plot against them

Were Peter Drucker still alive, he would not be in the least surprise to see such poll results. As for me, I get to see them at first hand and coming away with a very bad feeling about this. It is not too late to fix this but there is always the risk the old idiots in power or simply as voting blocs continue to rob the young to pay the old.

Our government is probably the least guilty at robbing young Peter to pay old Paul. Our personal accountability system helps a lot e.g., CPF. Pay as you go system is ideal for transferring wealth from the young to the old. Meanwhile the old having arrived a generation sooner command most of the attractive positions in the economy, calls the shots and the millennials suffered as a result. To add insult to injury, in fact this is the worse problem, the elites erect impossible barriers of entry against the rest even as they succeeded at sucking up the lion share of capital.

The elites are a global class and they have been blackmailing us and naming their price. The euphemism for blackmail is that if are not competitive they simply decamp to another city. So the choice we have is between a bad choice (like now) and a worse one i.e,. high unemployment. On the flip side despite their impractical idealism which the young need time to realize they are by and large much better schooled. They can leverage their intellectual superiority but first they must leave the rock they are living under.

The government is caught between a rock and a hard place with very little room to maneuver. That its senior officers are also deemed to be part of the elite certainly do not help. They are afraid to offend the global elites and is squeezed by unhappy young people and disenfranchised older workers because of the "taxes" of the elites. As people do not know the plot of the global wealthy they blame the government for being out of touch. Well this game of the rich getting richer cannot go on indefinitely. The sooner we pull back the better. The rules of the game is set in America and that is why that poll chart is most relevant. We are price takers in this game and are trying to mitigate its effects as best as possible. Our young is not doing as well as their parents if comparison is made after adjusting for time and place but they are doing much better than their counterparts almost everywhere else save the offspring of the elites and that include the children of ministers.

Meanwhile our elites try to pretend to be normal by eating at hawker centres and scolding those who are higher on the totem pole. That is just hypocrisy.

If the young in America, Europe and China lose faith in this system what would they replace it with? They are setting up themselves to learn through bitter experience if they lose faith in capitalism. Better reform capitalism instead of throwing it out of the window. Now is that realistic if capitalism reputation keeps worsening.

Being watched by Google Intelligence

This morning interested to find out which is a better day to visit the Gardens by the Bay, I learned from Google Map the dates in the last three months were there. That is Google Intelligence and what else would they do when they combine all sorts of factoids about you to "form a picture". Perhaps eventually it could even tell me things from my habits which I am not even aware of.

Big Data is about insight from massive data. In this instance their data on me is even better than what Gardens by the Bay have because Google Map had even tracked how I got there, when I left. Did I drive or took public transport and where I went after the visit to the Gardens until I was back home.

Job interview with SIA

Yesterday before her turn to speak to the interviewers at SIA the daughter messaged me the above: in round 2 they need to bring their own Notebook PCs for the interview.

When she finished her discussion with them she had to do two written tests and was told that SIA will not provide her any writing instrument and hopefully she has brought her own pen.

SIA has become shockingly cost sensitive. They do not care that job candidates would tell others about this. Personally I think this is sad but it is also intelligent and targeted cost cutting. Most MNCs would simply have cut cost blindly across the board.

All things equal would a girl marry a rich or poor guy? SIA is the poor guy now. Not a problem if you have to bring your own computer for a job interview but it is a problem if they try to pay you as little as possible after you join them. You marry for love but do you join the company for the same reason?

Update: July 14 11:15 am

Good to add this, the chat with my siblings yesterday.

Are we looking at a trend which SIA is just an early participant? Costs are getting squeezed everywhere. People are no longer assets except to themselves.

Cave rescue heroes

The cave rescuers insit they are not heroes - something to remember always. This takes me to the parable of the Goats and the Sheep told by Jesus.

Blaise Pascal put it more succinctly as:

I speculated how Pascal might have come to that conclusion.

There are four possible types of people given the righteous and sinners in a 4x4 matrix

1. sinners who think they are sinners
2. sinners who think they are righteous
3. righteous who think they are righteous
4. righteous who think they are sinners

Those in Group 1 will quickly become either Group 2 or 4. The time in Group 1 is very short because we can't live with it. Christian conversion is supposed to take you from Group 2 to Group 4 via Group 1 but very often they return to Group 2 instead with a new label of Christian.

Group 3 does not exist on our planet except when Jesus was here in human form and even that he humbled himself and acted like in Group 4 beginning with John's baptism out of his love for us.

Back to the cave rescuers, they are heroes who think they are not. They really are.

Finally here is a dramatization of someone who had become righteous but continue correctly to think himself as a sinner.



John Newton the composer of the song Amazing Grace. He was Jesus Sheep and he was Pascal's the righteous who think they are sinners. Without that reality lives are not change and Christian conversion or being born again is just self and mass delusion.