keithRozario.com has a new look, and I can hardly contain my excitement.

The blog still retains all its previous content and more glorious content will be on its way, for now take a moment to savour the brand new theme which hopefully is cleaner and easier on the eyes than my previous blogs design. Also enjoy my complementary TLS connection (notice the httpS connection instead of just http) which means you now have a fully encrypted tunnel from your browser all the way to my new server in Singapore, and to round things up, the blog should be much faster now that its hosted it's own dedicated server.

Today I read that our beloved Education Minister is ‘SHOCKED’ that Malaysian students are not on par with their foreign counterparts. 

Shocked? Really?

Just 2 years ago, the good Minister was proudly proclaiming that “The Malaysian education system is on track to becoming among the world’s best”, and this was backed up by a Government Transformation Project (GTP) report.

The US Government host a really cool website called “We the People”, that let’s users petition the US Government for various things. It’s a cool website, because you get really cool request on it.

For instance, in 2013, more than 34,000 people petitioned the US government to  “Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016″, which triggered a response from the Government that was one part Star Wars Fanboy-ism, and one part Science lesson.

Those were exceptions though, the vast majority of petitions are political in nature, with the most popular petition requesting the US Government to formally press charges against 47 Members of Congress for their role in under-mining a nuclear agreement with Iran.

So it was natural that the former US Ambassador to Malaysia, John Malott create a petition to "make the release Anwar Ibrahim a top priority for US policy towards Malaysia". This Petition was then picked up by the likes of Lim Kit Siang and begun garnering significant attention from the Malaysian online community.

I've stopped scrapping the API readings for Malaysia, as the MET department have stopped publishing historical readings on their website.

The data has been updated to include all API readings up to 01-Sept-2015, and then from 28-Sep-2015 to 03-Oct-2015. The ‘gap’ in the dataset is because the MET department changed their webpage and removed the legacy data before I could get my hands on them. I’ve written to them for it, hopefully we get a useful response. For now though, there’s 24 months of data from Aug-2013 to Oct-2015 in the dataset. enjoy!

To get all the readings by region in a single delimited file, click this link, I apologize for the messiness of the data and the files, I should tidy them up by the end of the month. Contact me directly for anything specific.

Keith

Once again, your friendly neighbourhood techie has used this powers for the good of the country.

Last September, I scrapped all the procurement data from the Malaysian’s Government MyProcurement website, this time I scrapped all the Air Pollutant Index (API) readings from the Department of Environment (DOE) website.

First off, Kudos to the DOE for keeping such great tabs on the data–overall the DOE publishes one API reading for every hour or every day across 52 locations in Malaysians. Just to put the sheer volume of data into perspective, for just one year that’s:

52 locations x 1 reading/hour x 24 hours/day x 365 days/year  = 455,520 readings.

I want to inform you that UnoTelly will allow people stream the NFL Super Bowl for free on Sunday, February 1, regardless of where they live or whether they are UnoTelly subscribers.

We are offering free access to media stations (NBC Sports, Channel 4 and more) that will be broadcasting the Super Bowl for free. Visitors will not be required to sign up for a subscription, but simply need to submit their e-mail address. Please feel free to visit our Super Bowl page for more information:https://www2.unotelly.com/superbowl

Recently I received a phishing email from konzie2@usm.edu telling me that Maybank had installed new security features and that I need to validate my details on the Maybank2u web portal. The email was marked as SPAM by Gmail, and trying to visit the site further sparked more warnings from Firefox AND my anti-virus.

But I was curious as to what the link would entail, in much the same way I was curious about the RHB phishing emails I received some months back.

Hopefully this post gives you an indication of just how sophisticated these attacks are, and manages to educate you on the one true way to establish if the site you’re visiting is genuine.

The fake login page for Maybank2u looks exactly like the REAL login page of Maybank2u, there really is no difference from the victims perspective. What’s more interesting is when you go deeper, by just enter in ‘a’ username and a password you get to the following page (please don’t enter ‘your’ username and password, just ‘a’ username and password)

The Star reports that :

Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation vice-chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye called on the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block bomb-making websites.

“We live in a troubled age. Previously, it was unimaginable, but now even from your home, you can make a bomb. The MCMC must do a comprehensive check to see how we can block sites that are harmful to the nation,” he said.

Now, apart from the fact, that there aren't any dangerous substances used for bomb-making today, that wasn't around in the 1970's, the entire statement is one made from ignorance.

The Anarchist Cookbook, one of the most famous manuals for making home-made bombs, was written in the 1970's and improvised in the 1980's--stuff that was flammable 20 years ago, is still flammable today. It's not like as though, the atmosphere has changed and petrol no longer burns.

But calling for the MCMC to 'comprehensively' block sites that are 'harmful' to the nation is something no one, especially a Vice-chairman of an NGO should ever do. We can't allow for the MCMC to be given a rein on the internet, even if the intentions are good--after all, we know what the road to hell is paved with--we can't allow good intentions to create bad consequences such as internet censorship.

Anyone that calls for the blocking of websites needs to understand the reasons I don't condone blocking of websites.

A while back, I wrote about how the Government blew nearly RM 1 Billion ringgit on the MERS 999 system. A system that soaked up nearly Rm30 Million in consultancy cost alone–yet failed. The biggest issue I had with the MERS 999 system was that the government had a similar system called MyDistress, which not only worked well in the Klang Valley, but was given to the government free of charge by a company who was doing it as part of their CSR activities.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ve heard about the 3-d printing. 3-D printing is supposed to be the next ‘big’ thing in technology, it allows anyone the ability to physically ‘print’ 3-dimensional objects like cups, toy models, even car parts from ABS plastic (that’s the same plastic used to make Lego pieces), in much the same way you print documents on pieces of paper. The great thing about 3-D printing of course is that it’s digital, the files that instruct the printer what to print is a digital file, similar to the word or powerpoint documents you’re probably used to. With that comes all the advantages of digital files, which mean they can be replicated ad infinitum and distributed across the internet for free.

The 3-D printing revolution has already begun, websites have sprouted up online hosting the digital files for printing things like citrus juicers and wine glass holders, all the way to replica models of sports cars and Star Wars spaceships.

But there is one concern. A concern so over-whelming, governments around the world, including ours are looking at 3-D printing with some suspicion. The ability to 3-D print a GUN!

A 3-D printable gun would allow any criminal (or child) to download a file off the internet and print a working weapon all from the comfort of their home. What do we do when technology starts to allow people to endanger lives? Well the answer is, technology has always made it easier to kill people, take your car for example. If you really wanted to kill someone, the best most reasonable way to do it would be to run them down with your car–and then reverse over them just to make sure, do we ban cars just because they can (and often do) kill people?

What’s more this idea that a 3-D printed gun is a clear and present danger is completely over-blown.

If you understood the physics of a gun, you’d know that a fully functional gun isn’t all that likely.