A Marawi Siege Update

After a month of fighting, the Marawi siege continue to its second month with casualties piling up and civilian misery unabated. Marawi is an 87 square kilometer of 200,000+ inhabitants, not as big as Iligan nor as prosperous, but it is home to the Mindanao State University, primary muslim college in the Philippines and the picturesque Lake Lanao.

Lake Lanao in Marawi City

Local governments report a total of 180,000+ civilians now evacuated out of the city and are facing bleak conditions in Iligan city and other local points in Mindanao and Visayas. 82 government soldiers are killed in action, while 317 members of the Maute group are dead. 122 civilians are dead, including 60 who died in evacuation centers of disease. Isnilon Hapilon the commander of the Maute group remains at large and appeared prepared to negotiate exchange of captives for his family's safety.

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Mailvelope, Encryption for Webmail

Encryption is the topic of week. I wrote about it in a related post here. While encryption is a very good idea, doing it and doing it every day as part of your work flow is another thing. My view is that if you're already using an email client then it is easier, simpler and more convenient to adopt encryption. That is not the case if you're using a webmail service. If you are using the browser to check, compose and send your email, what are your options? The answer is: it's complicated. Looking for a way to do encryption with Google Chrome and Gmail, I found this. I also read that Google just released code for email encryption as open source. But it's a long way to being used by end users. The extension for Google Chrome works fine if the recipient also uses Google Chrome. But I went ahead and check this on Evolution.

Donald Trump Is The 45th President of the United States

and he is preparing to move with his transition team into the Oval Office. His election is a shock to many political observers and the world in general. Donald Trump, the president-elect, ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and for many the most qualified candidate for the presidency in many years. This has led to many post election analysis of how this upset happened. The numbers of votes for each candidate and the comparisons with previous presidential elections point to the fact that the white vote for Mr. Trump is solid all throughout but the minority and black votes did not come for Mrs. Clinton. This is what happened in crucial States like Michigan and Florida. The Republicans kept Congress and the Senate. It is quite notable that Russia and in particular, Vladimir Putin, is happy that they are going to talk to Mr. Trump rather than Mrs. Clinton. It is also a ...

Webapps in Unity

So it has been 4 months since Ubuntu 14.04 came out. This is LTS and supported for 6 years by Canonical. The first mobile device with Ubuntu pre-installed is promised to come out later this year, 2014. It's time to check out how the apps perform so far. It is a good idea. I use Gmail and Twitter and Facebook. Why not a webapp in a desktop? So I start the Twitter and Gmail webapp. So far it has crashed my computer 6 times. Not a very good sign. On the other hand it does work but not as stable as opening them in Firefox. -- Use my PGP key if you want to encrypt your replies/messages to me. You are invited to also send me your PGP keys so we can communicate in private.

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