crashzone

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OMG Tumblr is Still Alive

I just reset my password and logged in to my old Tumblr account. I can’t belive Tumblr is still alive and well.

They have changed my blog addresses, I think that is because I have been inactive on the platform for more than five years.

It’s good to read my posts I wrote 5 years ago. 

I did so many things over the past 5 years, I was on Medium most of my time, I used GitHub pages, and a self hosted Wordpress website, and I also tried Blogger couple of times.

Now again I am planning to switch to a GitHub pages blog using jekyll.

So what is my latest project?

I’m turing 30 in 2020. So this year I am going to do something that is hopefully going to touch the lives of so many people.

# So what’s this new project?

It’s called Grub It - https://gogrubit.com

What is it about?

With Grub It I hope to promote healthy eating and healthy living amongst people who are still following the fast food tradition.

Diabetes and other non communicable diseases are on the rise, and they can be easily prevented if we make a small change to our eating habits.

These steps are not at all hard to follow, it’s all about your mindset.

I’m planning to talk about everyday dietary advices, recipies for healthy eating, and most importantly biohacking your way to use tech to live a healthy life.

You can read more about the Grub It website, so please follow the GrubIt! website here - https://gogrubit.com

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P vs NP vs Medical Students

P vs NP is a popular problem in computer science with a prize money of 1 million for anyone solving the problem. I knew the P vs NP problem for quite a while but a recent blog post by @malithsen got me interested over the problem once again.

But that’s not what I’m going to talk about, I like talking about these problems with people I meet because you never know when a random person might give you the answer you’re looking for or at least give some guidance in solving them. 

But when it comes to medical students, you just hit a brick wall.

Why am I saying this? Because for some reason again and again medica students have proved to me that they are not capable of lateral thinking. 

When I told them about the P vs NP problem their answer was a simple one, that P can never be NP, when I asked why for a majority of them the whole P vs NP is a stupid concept that even thinking about it is a waste of time.

For some reason medical students love to believe what’s being said in their textbooks, they will never believe that P = NP or N != NP until someone proves it and put it in a standard textbook.

And I love the look they give me for even talking about a topic like that, where they think think either I’m making things up or either I’m mad even to read stuff without studying.  

Not just maths but I find it surprising how medical students don’t like to believe some of the latest developments happening in medicine, the same P vs NP scenario happened to me when I tried to explain about the head transplant trial that will be happening in couple of years time. Why because medical students love to believe the fact that nerve cells once damaged cannot repair themselves, which makes head transplant virtually impossible.  

Why medical students can’t think laterally is beyond me, I’ve seen some students who like to discuss these topics that are like science fiction at the moment. But majority like the world as it is. Which at times makes me sad. It might be the exam stress that we all go through which makes students focus only about their studies. 

But to do medicine you would have to score a really well for science which means they have the potential to think about new things, solve problems that needed solving rather than believing something that’s written in a book or told by a teacher. 

[crashzone]

Using Events on Social Media To Recreate A Coup

It has been a week since the presidential elections, but there are so many questions that are unanswered. Ravaya is expected to write an expose in what really happened on the night of 9th of January where a coup was attempted by the incumbent facing a defeat.

What really happened on the 9th January is still unclear, no one knows the actual set of events. Everyone knows only about an attempted coup that the heads of the army refused to enforce. Other than that no one knows what actually happened, but all agree on the fact that an attempted coup took place.

If the coup went according to plan then things would have been much different by now. This might have gone to a civil unrest that might have continued to this day. 

Using the news and events unfolded on social media on January 8th and 9th and the chat room that we set up on election night that we can line up the events to get an idea about the attempted coup. 

January 8th 6 PM

The first news that came around 6 pm on 8th January was the addition of 800 extra police personnel to Temple Trees. 

Police Deploy 800 Officers To Protect Temple Trees http://t.co/WX50EwzTGU #SriLanka #lka #SLdecides15 #MY3 #PresPollSL

— Sanj Colonne (@victoriousanj)

January 8, 2015

When we got the news everyone was taken aback, why adding such extra police security to Temple Trees? Which is already one of the most secure buildings in the country?

What we thought of at that time was the president will not leave his post even if he loses the election, and he might be doing this to protect himself from the people who will raid the Temple Trees if he loses and refuse to leave office.

January 8th 11 PM

Then started coming results, even the first postal results were delayed but unconfirmed results circulated on social media that showed postal vote victory for Maithripala sirisena in most districts.

Not official : Unconfirmed, sources telling me that MY3 has won postal votes in Gampaha, I repeat unconfirmed #PresPollSL

— Rukshan (@JustRuky)

January 8, 2015

January 9th 12 midnight

This was one of the counting results circulated on social media before the official results were released which went to be true

Around this time the unofficial results were not going well for Mahinda Rajapakshe.

January 9th 1:30 AM 

At 1:20 Am in the morning all roads leading to Temple Trees were closed down

All roads around temple trees has been closed #lka #PresPollSL

— Dinouk Colombage (@Dinouk_C)

January 8, 2015

This is an important tweet, as the center of the coup it must have been to prevent people raiding the Temple Trees to prevent the coup.

January 9th 2:20 AM

Around 2:20 AM by the time Maithripala Sirisena was leading by 30,000+ votes. Rumours in the chat room was that first round of counting of votes has finished which showed a defeat for Mahinda Rajapakshe.

Within minutes getting the news of the first round of counting finishing and news of a Mahinda Rajapakshe defeating in the chat room, in came this news,

January 9th 2:30 AM

Then came the news of military buildup on D.S Senanayake college, intelligence agents trying to enter the election commissioner's office and army personnel trying to take control over the releasing of election results.

However tweets have appeared at suspicious events happening near D.S Senanayake college even before this since midnight

Unidentified individuals roaming around the entrance of D.S. Senanayake College, which is counting station for #PesPoll2015 #PresPollSL

— ChariyaT (@ChariyaT)

January 8, 2015

It was by this time that release of election results got really slow and people started questioning about the possibility of rigging election results.

January 9th somewhere between 3 AM - 4 AM

@ThomasLefroy: @PamudithaAnjana The STF tried to take control of counting. They are now forced out by civilians. #PresPollSL

— Thivakaran Sritharan (@thivakaran_)

January 8, 2015

Then came the news in social media that EC's men and civil right group workers repelling the intelligence agents and army personnel from the EC office and from D.S Senanayake college. 

Then after that in the dawn of January 9th a sudden rush of results came and the gap began to increase and it was evident that Mahinda Rajapakshe was going to lose the election.

The opposition leader was also called in to the Temple Trees around the same time.

January 9th 5.30 AM 

News came in about Rajapakshe deciding to leave Temple Trees and hand over power to the new president peacefully.

This gives an idea of how the coup was attempted on the 9th January either rigging the results by force or stopping the release of election results and taking control of the country using the armed forces. But what happened inside Temple Trees during the night of January 8th is still a mystery.

But as later news suggests the coup attempt was put in place even before the election, 

Former army chief General Sarath Fonseka has claimed that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had moved 2000 troops into Colombo three days before the election results in an attempt to stage a coup. 

- http://colombogazette.com/2015/01/16/fonseka-claims-2000-troops-sent

Also 

Standby orders issued by the Chief of Defence Staff – the highest ranked serving officer in the military – on 24 December 2014 indicated a build-up of troops in the north and around vital institutions. Once again, the document was leaked to the Opposition campaign.

 - http://www.ft.lk/2015/01/17/when-democracy-stood-upon-a-razors-edge/

By putting the army on standby in areas where the results were going to be really bad for the incumbent president by raiding and stopping the counting of votes in these areas.

Summing up the events how things could have turned out 

Army was put on standstill in areas where results were not going well for the former president stop or rigg the counting by force

Retired senior army officials was put on charge in control of different parts of the capital on election day with a group of soldiers loyal to the regime

2000 troops brought in to the capital 3 days before the election

Additional 800 security personnel deployed to Temple Trees

As results were not going well closing down of roads leading to Temple Trees

Bringing heads of army to Temple Trees and using army officials and intelligence agents in taking control of election commissioners office and D.S Senanayaka college

Rigging election results or stop the release of the election results

Surrounding the residence of the common candidate by army officials like it happened in 2010

Arrest of the common candidate and hunting down of opposition leaders

Mahinda Rajapakshe claiming election victory on January 9th eve 

Using social media news on that eventful day can get an idea how the coup might have turned out to be. With the above events and the arrest of opposition candidate and the hunting down of opposition leaders and supporters. 

Eagerly waiting to read Ravaya expose to get the really happened specially inside the Temple Trees.

It would be great is others can find missing information and more references reported on social media that would help to bring a clear picture of the coup

[crashzone]

We should push on to see true change happening in the country

It's amazing looking at the people who are leaving the country (including the chief minister of my own province) and resigning from the posts they held in the former government as well as the news about corruption that we get to hear everyday.

It's funny how what goes around comes around. Now the UPFA is in pieces and what UPFA did to UNP is now happening to UPFA. And how what Rajapaksha did to Chandrika Bandaranayaka is happening to Rajapaksha himself. 

It's ironic that it was Mahinda Rakapaksha himself that changed the law in SLFP so that whoever becomes the president or prime minister under SLFP becomes the party leader.

With people going to bribery commission, people openly speaking about the corruption in the previous government and also files being discovered daily.

Yoshitha Rajapaksa resigned from navy #PresPollSL #lka

— Sheni (@SLunicorn)

January 15, 2015

I really hope the new government will press hard on the corrupt people and I hope the social media and the internet keep on adding pressure on the new government until justice has been served to the people.

Also the way how people are talking against the Rajapakshe's and the former government shows how much they were afraid of the old regime.

During the previous regime the freedom of speech was in question with so many censorship going on the internet, how tweeps were called on to the intelligence HQ to be questioned and warning them not to tweet anything against the government.

Even I was afraid during that time, there were number of times how I deleted my tweets quickly after tweeting them, how I thought twice before tweeting something.

I really like the new government opening up the internet removing all the censorships that were put on websites, I sometimes miss the fun of accessing these websites using proxies.

Having access to censored websites, is not enough. Like I said people should be prosecuted. Non should be spared. The 100 day plan should be put into effect, and corrupt people should not be given any nominations in the upcoming election. The internet should push like they did with Rajapakshe's to make sure these things happen.

Looking at the handing over of SLFP leadership, I think it's more like coming to a deal with the new government, making some sort of a truce between them. So charges brought against them might be reduced. Also the SLFP members would not have any hesitation in joining their old friend. So they might have also added a pressure on Rajapakshe in leaving.

@ipv10 @JustRuky @TheCitizen1 don't overestimate #mr. They wer very powerful wen in power - without power they r eunuchs. #lka #PresPollSL

— Senarath Bandara (@senarath2020)

January 15, 2015

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Gamanpila For Court Jester

Udaya Gamanpila used who to be a very in good politician in the public's eye has started making some statements specially after the election that is unacceptable and without a doubt racist.

Using his Twitter account and in media he's making statements which is more suitable for a court jester than a politician who deserves to be a member of the parliament. In the previous government this was mostly done by Wimal Weerawansa who used to deliver amusing speeches on a daily basis. 

But after the election the roles have been switched where we don't see Wimal Weerawansa on TV but we see Mr Gamanpila on TV everyday now. At least Mr Weerawansa never made any statements that are this much.

This is not that much hard to believe from someone like Gamanpila, just like Gamanpila before him Weerawansa made such comments about foreign conspiracies. He has to do such things because his political future depended on it, without the government Mr Weerawansa had no future in political career.

Another thing might be Mr Gamanpila first came to politics at a time where there was a war going on between Sinhalese and Tamils, he and his party used the war to make a vote base although his party members were didn't try to get votes by making racist statements and making tension between two races. Mr Gamnpila might be hoping whether he can create a second conflict that will allow him to make a vote base of his own like he once did with the war between Sinhalese and Tamils. 

Also now Mr Gampanpila faces such a bumper about his political career, where he has to do as much as he can to bring back Rajapaksha's in the power or else his newly formed party will not be able to contest for the parliament by themselves and get elected. His future much like Mr Weerawansa depends solely on clinging on to the UPFA.

Like in the meme Mr Gamanpila has to understand that's it's Mahinda that lost, it's Mahinda's principles that lost. It's Maithripala that won, it's Maithripala's principles that won. And at the end of the day the it's the democracy that won.

Mr Gamanpila is saying today on TV that newly elect Mr Sirisena is a president where he didn't get the majority of the majority race which is "Sinhalese".

This is the most worse statement I've seen from him after the election. The constitution states that the president needs majority of the country not from the Sinhalese. This country has stayed divided enough everyone has to get together as Sri Lankans in taking the country forward. Not get divided as Sinhalese and Tamils and Muslims.

In United States a black-american who's not representing the majority of the county became the president, not once but twice. He killed Osama Bin Laden. People voted for not looking at his race but looking at his principals.

That is the way to move forward, people should elect their representatives by looking at their principals, in this country there has to be a situation where a person not representing the Sinhala race can become a president or a prime-minister in the country by getting the votes of the Sinhalese just because his principles were better than his or her opponent.

I'm happy that Mr Gampanpila is getting good responses about his statements on Twitter, I hope people will understand and will think twice about electing such people into parliament, or local governing bodies. At least Mr Gamanpila should be able to accept the mandate of the majority and act in a grownup manner.

[crashzone]

The country now hangs on a knife-edge

The political stage of the country is in a transitional period and the power of the nation hangs in a balance. The once powerful 2/3 majority government is no more and not there are two sides that has equal amount of seats in parliament.

On one side there is the newly elected president and his government now having 112 seats in the parliament with the support that was extended to the new president by UPFA members after the election. On the other side there is a fraction the supports the former president with 112 seats in the parliament that is composed of the former UPFA government under former president Rajapaksha.

On the other hand there is a cold war going on behind closed doors to take control over the SLFP leadership from former president Rajapaksha. The plan to take control of SLFP leadership was set in motion soon after the new president took oaths last Friday.

On the other hand the former president is also trying to take control of the government by coming into the parliament as a national list member. According to rumours Malini Fonseka will resign and former president Rajapakshe will come to the parliament as the opposition leader.

All in all suggests that the former president is not going to retire from politics but also not going to give up in the idea of taking control of the country once again as an executive president or as the prime minister after the change of the constitution.

From what we have seen during the 10 year regime of the Rajapakshes' it's important to prevent him ever coming back into power. And taking control of the SLFP leadership from Rajapakshas' is a must that will put an end to the political career of Rajapaksha and in preventing him from seizing control of power again.

There are people who want to see Rajapaksha back in power, the common people where Rajapaksha is more than a politician but a cult figure, built by ten years of propaganda and media. Others include politician who will not have a future in politics without Rajapaksha coming back into power, including the corrupted.

It's the latter that makes it more dangerous, as there are corrupt, power hungry politicians who don't have any future in politics without Rajapaksha they'll go whatever they can to bring Rajapaksha back into power.

Coup d'etat in motion?

News have started to spread about the plan how former president Rajapaksha tried to take control over the country by launching a Coup against the newly elected president. Also some gossip sites are telling about a more dangerous plot that includes assassinating the newly elected president using soldiers within the army loyal to the former president. The investigations that will follow after the newly elect cabinet will find out what really happened during the night of the election.

However one thing is for sure the former president is hungry from power and will do whatever he can to come back into power. Which reminds me of how Napoleon came into power for a second time after being exiled after the failed invasion of Russia. I dearly hope that former president tyrant will not be able to come to power.

Anyway the country now hangs between an edge of a knife as there is cold war going on between the two presidential candidates for power.

The newly elected president has to control these forces and try to take back the control of the country that in some ways still belong to the Rajapakshas'. As well as putting the 100 day plan into action which is going so far so good at the moment.

[crashzone]

How the internet shaped the presidential election

The long awaited presidential election 2015 is over, democracy has spoken, tyranny has fallen, the unthinkable happened and a new president was elected, and no president will be able to contest for a 3rd term in office in this country.

Technology was involved in this year's election unlike never before, before that if you were too young to remember in 2010 presidential election we saw a glimpse of social media involvement in the election. It was Facebook that reported how General Sarath Fonseka's hotel he was staying was surrounded by army. Not just the internet and social media, there were holograms as well as former president Rajapaksha delivered a speech using hologram technology.

But this year social media, and internet became one of the battle fields where the election battles was fought. And in a time where media was too afraid to help the opposition in spreading their message, internet and social media gave a voice to the opposition.

This year the main thing that was involved in making the regime change was Facebook and Twitter. My friends occasionally discussed politics and shared pictures in support of the opposition in group chats in messaging apps. Facebook and Twitter makes only a small part of the internet and social media. In future elections we will see more and more use of internet in delivering the messages like messaging apps and other forms of social media. 

Not just social media, blogs, mailing lists and various other methods also played a big part in delivering the oppositions message out there into the community when mainstream media has forbidden them. All the memes, cartoons, videos all made a contribution.

Even the government tried to take as much advantage of social media, this is why they hired a social media guru that helped Indian PM Modi in his election campaign. Although on the other hand the government was afraid because the voice of the opposition was too strong.

They called internet users who were mostly teens as hippies, keyboard heroes and that internet and social media is not suitable in changing a government.

But internet gave a voice for the people who didn't have a voice, gave the anonymity that people needed when fighting against a tyrant where going with your real name can be as dangerous as intimidation, getting arrested, white vanned or worse. I personally know some of the tweeps that were called by intelligence service during this years election because they were tweeting things that were hard for the rulers to accept.

I felt really sad when looking at the ads that said internet cannot decide, or change the minds of people on whom to elect and when the authorities pictured the internet as something that is bad and unethical. I'm happy that the internet fought back, and some people who said that we're just keyboard heros are having a hard time on their social media pages.

Whether you like it or not authorities have to admit that internet has the power to change a politics in the country, it has happened in many parts of the world and it happened in Sri Lanka as well. And the influence of the internet over politics will only continue to grow. Governments, and older generation of the country has to be ready to embrace it not reject it.

Internet is just a part of evolution how people communicate, people have to admit it and embrace it and change accordingly. Once there were only printed media, then came radio and television to this country and each and every step was a milestone and people embraced the change. People should do the same for internet, they should embrace it and use it accordingly.

As we know in evolution species who don't adopt to change get extinct. Internet is also the same for politicians, authorities and people who don't adopt will also eventually extinct. 

[crashzone]

How safe are we online in this country?

Only few more days till the presidential election, in fact just 8 days. Things are getting more and more violent by the day and after a long time we're going to see a evenly contested election, although the law and media have been one sided throughout the whole election period.

However one of the things that struck me really bad is the censoring of a political program telecasted on Dialog and Peo TV. Although web censorship has been there for sometime, this is the most aggressive censoring I've ever seen in this country in my life.

We as internet users, especially who take our online privacy and online freedom seriously this is something me and my friends all and thought that was unnecessary and should not have been done.

However this also goes on to show that the unlimited access government has over the internet and communication in this country. As the network providers that censored the TV show are also the two leading ISPs (internet service providers) and the mobile network providers in the country this poses some serious questions about online privacy.

How can we be sure that our online privacy is secure with these ISPs? What if they are providing our browsing histories, our messages through unencrypted services, our SMS conversations to the government? Specially information of people who are opposing the government?

What if government is having access to these information? How safe are the anonymity of activists who are working anonymously.

Not just that these service providers are also very well capable of tracking people using GSM network signals and GPS data which they may very well be gathering of us?

The very thought of the information that they can handover to government like this bypassing the normal procedure is quite frightening.

It doesn't always have to be the NSA. Even in this country do you think you are safe online? I think we should all think about this again. 

[crashzone]

How many hacked CCTV cameras are there in Colombo?

If you remember back in the day when the first surveillance cameras were set up in Colombo by the police there were rumours on the internet that they were hacked and people were able to see what the police were seeing through the CCTV cameras installed all around Colombo.

Although no videos surfaced and later the rumours stopped, mostly because police might have patched the vulnerability or used stronger passwords. 

In a recent blog post at Naked Security titled "Is your webcam or baby monitor video feed being streamed to this website?" They went to show a website called insecam.com which streams thousands of CCTV camera footages.

As the website goes on to show this is mostly because the admins didn't change the default passwords. The site has listed thousands of CCTV camera streams and surprisingly there are lot of unprotected from Colombo which we can go and see what's happening right now.

I checked few streams and they were mostly from shops and corporations, (there was one elevator cam as well), and I came across one household CCTV camera stream.  Most of the streams are from Batheramulla for some weird reason.

The ones that are posted on this site might be the tip of the iceberg and there may be many more unprotected CCTV cameras out there that might be accessible online.

Not to mention the national security risk these unprotected CCTV cameras can cause. 

So bottom line is make sure you use strong passwords and make sure the surveillance system is not accessible online unless it's a must.

[crashzone]

Sharing Linux WiFi connection with your Android device

I was having a tough time figuring out how to share my Wifi connection (making my laptop a hotspot) for my Android phone. Although I made my laptop a wifi hotspot it never came up on my Android phone.

Later after some googling I found the answer, it's because Linux supports a WiFi method called Ad-Hoc which is not supported by Android. There are some tutorials out there that shows how to fix this by using 3rd party software or rooting your android device.

But this is a quick and dirty way of solving it without using any 3rd party app or software. Here we go,

Open network connections window

Create a new network by creating "Add"

Select WiFi as the type of network you want and in the above window give a SSID and a connection name, leave "Mode" as "infrastructure" for now. 

Go to WiFi security, set a password and a security method and in IPV4 settings tab select "Shared to other computers" option and save the connection for now.

Go to /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ as root and open the connection you just created using a text editor.

Then change the line "mod = infrastructure" to "mode = ap".

Now goto network settings window,  

Under the Wireless mode, click the "Connect to hidden network" button, and from the available connections list select the network you just created and connect.

Now the connection will appear on your android device on available WiFi connections, select the connection, enter the password and connect.

Update : This works on iOS devices too, also I tried this on a Linux Mint 17.

[crashzone]

What's the best way to sign up users.

Recently I just made a HackerNews clone and put it on Github which allows users to sign up using Twitter, which was partly inspired by ProductHunt.

However when I post the project on HackerNews most of them didn't like me using Twitter for user sign-up. This was one of those comments

I'm likely a fuddy-duddy, but I agree with mijndert. I detest the idea of using Site A to authenticate with Site B.

For only the tiniest benefit to me (I guess it's marginally faster to sign up, maybe?) and no real benefit to you, your service is now beholden to another.

What if Twitter bans a user that is valuable member of your site? What if Twitter goes under? What if Twitter is outlawed in some countries?

What if I have a moral obligation to signing up for Twitter in the first place?

I know he pretty much sums up everything there is about using Twitter or Facebook for signing up users. When it comes to Twitter mostly you can never trust Twitter, you don't know when they will restrict their API, like they screwed up most of the Twitter clients with their token limits. 

I understand we can never trust another service or we can depend our business on another service. But there are some good advantages of using Twitter or Facebook for user signups.

Most people, especially teenagers and young people use Twitter and Facebook more than their emails at a daily basis. 

Users can signup for a service in just a click of a button without needing to fill forms, complete profiles. Because we can get all those information from their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Because the signup process is quick then it's more compelling for a user to signup to try out a new service, unless your service is popular like Facebook etc.

It's one less password to remember for a user, because he's using a Facebook or Twitter account.

Also if a user signup using his email then he has to confirm, which means logging in to email. Which takes even more time.

So what's the best way signup a user? Use the old fashioned email or use social login? I'm not all in for using Twitter or Facebook for signup users but do we have a better way other than using Email to sign up users?

[crashzone]

Never trust URL shorteners : The day bit.ly broke

Almost everyone use URL shorteners, they are good at shortening all these long URLs that are difficult to memorise. You simply shorten the URL with a shortner and you can easily share them on social networks and emails and texts. You can also track visits to the links you share by a URL shortner. Which makes them a great tool.

However on the other hand URL shorteners are also blamed for slowing down the web, for example all the URLs you share on Twitter first go through Twitter’s own URL shortning service t.co then goes throuh our URL shorning service which can eat up time depepnding how good your url shortners are.

Sometimes these URL shorteners get acquired, sometimes they shut down. And you will lose all your shortened URLs and they will break your shortened URLs forever and everything you shared using the short URL will be break permanently.

Yesterday we saw another reason why we should be careful when trusting a URL shortener, when bit.ly the most popular and widely used URL shortener, got all their urls blocked by Google’s safebrowising making all the bit.ly URLs inaccessible across firefox and chrome.

You might think this not a big deal however the number of Firefox and Chrome users and number of bit.ly URLs shares across the web every minute an outage like that lasting an hour could have easily made millions from accessing URLs across the web.

The reason was people have been using bit.ly to hide malicious URLs which unsuspecting people will click without notice.

Anyway ironically safebrowsing page for Google.com says that Google has been acting as a intermediate for malicious websites, and also shows ht.ly the URL shortner for Hootsuite as another malicious URL shortner.

Over the past 90 days, google.com appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 68 site(s) including ht.ly/, bit.ly/.

So think twice when using URL shorteners as even the best can get affected and will break all the URLs that you've ever shared.

Anyway just be careful when clicking on shortened links, there are tons of good websites out there that will extract the shortened URL for you.

[crashzone]

Hashtag hijacked and Trolled #TweepsSurprise

Yesterday was the first time I saw in SL a hashtag getting hijacked by SL twitter users to make a good laugh out of the #TweepsSurprise hashtag. 

I was seeing this hashtag come and go on my timeline, it really got me excited, it was more like tweets that comes when something really big comes up like a new iPhone or Nexus. So I was expecting something really exciting, but in the end it was nothing more than some coke bottles with some twitter usernames printed on it.

I don't understand why start a hashtag and tweet a whole week about a surprise for everyone to see and only ending up with coke bottles with twitter usernames printed on them. 

Anyway the nice people on Twitter took the opportunity to go with the first hashtag highjacking happened in this country (correct me if I'm wrong). And in the end it was all fun for everyone.

Thanks for the surprises, life. I see you in there , Everyday. #TweepsSurprise pic.twitter.com/Fa1PE6eqmZ

— Ruwan Kaduwela (@Ruw_n)

October 24, 2014

I don't know whether it's right or wrong to use people's Twitter handles for Ad campaigns without telling them. As some of the Tweets suggest people didn't even knew that their twitter usernames were used until they saw pictures of them.

Anyway this is not the first time ad companies have used Twitter user information without users being notified. Last time Etisalat twitter cricket match signup page was found to have used many more Twitter user information that were either fake or used without user consent to show fake popularity in signups.

Storify with all the good troll tweets since yesterday : https://storify.com/JustRuky/hashtag-hijacked

Will you be angry if your Twitter information was used for marketing campaigns without consent? 

PS - 

Seriously I don't know why one person in particular is so interested in this Twitter hashtag and replying to everyone who  didn't like the campaign, if he has nothing to do with it, if we didn't mention him personally why is he taking all of this so personally. 

Also people should know that what I said and most others did were not that because they were not invited but,

Many like me had a good fun watching all these troll tweets.

It's one of the if not the best hashtag hijacks and trolling happened in SL.

Some were angry because their Twitter usernames were posted on brands that they don't like, fair enough.

[crashzone]

Yesterday's student protest from a student's point of view

Yesterday we saw one of the biggest student protests we've seen in this country after a long time, with them marching towards the parliament protest ended with a tear gas and students blocking the road at Rajagiriya for few hours.

So as a university student attending a government university I thought of writing my opinion.

The problems that were there in universities is nothing new, with the control of the higher education minister who governs the university system with an iron fist, students were unable to get their demands that they were were looking for.

Also the whole education system is a mess, principals asking for money, or worst things from parents to enroll their children to grade 1. Although it's called free education parents having to pay money for all the work done at schools, the AL examination is a mess, with questions coming out before the exam, so many wrong questions at the exams.

And worst thing is no one gets punished, no one resigns or fired. The same people make the same mistake in the next year and cycle repeats itself. 

Plus with government universities not getting enough money it's no wonder students hate the private education system as they have better facilities than what is being offered at the government universities and for the people who pass the Advanced Level examination. 

But I don't agree with all the opinions of the student unions.

Student unions are the ones that prevent the raggers from getting punished, the whole ragging system is one of my most hated things in the government education system.

Student unions are all out against private education, personally I'm a supporter of private education, as long as it's offered with the highest standards. I think private education system should co exist with government universities with government universities getting same good facilities that are being offered at the private universities.

However I saw many people telling on Twitter that students should mind their own business and study and protesting is something that should not be done by university students.

This is absolutely not true, students have an equal right to protest and talk and question government and government policies. They vote, their parents pay taxes to the government so they have a right as anyone else to protest and make their voices heard if their votes and tax money is being wasted, not put in to effect by government and policy makers.

The best example is being the Hong Kong Umbrella protest is being led by a 17 year old college student. And that is not for a small cause either but for the democracy of a country. So age or being a student does not take their right to protest for a better future.

[crashzone]

Life is good

Haven't posted anything here recently, I was having a tough time with back to back exams and life revolved mostly around books. Anyway everything is settled with results being released today.

After all those tough times, back stabbing and world full of traitors I was lucky to pass the exam with 1 A, and 2 B passes.

It was not easy with results leading to the main exam was not that good for me and for most of the guys at rest of the batch. I time and time again get the feeling I ended up at the wrong field.

But with just 1 more year to go all fingers are crossed for a happy ending. Now it's time to enjoy the vacation.

[crashzone]

I seriously don't understand why Sri Lankan girls are madly in love with Korean boys. Period.

[crashzone]

Who can resist this?