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Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
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Apr 2 • 10 tweets • 6 min read
Looks like they blocked @twitter, @facebook and @whatsapp.
#GoHomeRajapaksas
Alright, let me drop some advice for people trying to get online
1) Don't download random VPN apps. Most of them steal data. If you want the good stuff, download TOR (torproject.org/download/).
2) TOR is free and some of the best VPN tech you can get for that price, but slow as hell. For something faster, download Opera. Got to settings (left hand, bottom, gear icon), type 'VPN' in the search and enable it.
opera.com/download
3) Opera isn't fancy and has only a handful of servers, so easy to block. Still, usable. I'm using it right now.

4) Download Signal (signal.org/en/) for your instant messaging needs. Or Telegram, whatever, but Signal with disappearing messages turned on is -chefs kiss-
5) Obligatory disclaimer: stay safe, don't do anything stupid, this is so you can keep in touch with friends and family etc etc.
6) Tagging @netblocks. Folks, we've lost access to FB, WhatsApp and Twitter (Twitter app works, but not website). Once again the government of Sri Lanka uses the old man's cudgel of blocking things they don't understand.
@netblocks 7) We'll get the new @TeamWatchDog app on Android, will notify soon
With our social media gone, it's easier to keep you updated directly (don't worry, we're still running)
@netblocks @TeamWatchDog Send this message thread out to friends and family via SMS, let's get the country back online!
@netblocks @TeamWatchDog For mobile devices, I recommend:
TOR for Android. play.google.com/store/apps/det…
Onion Browser for iOS.
apps.apple.com/us/app/onion-b…
Keep in mind that the user experience isn't buttery smooth on both, but they do the job free and do it well
@netblocks @TeamWatchDog A note on VPNing your apps on mobile (suggested by @ASayakkara): there's a piece of software called Orbot for Android and iOS.
What it does it, instead of giving you a VPN'd browser to play with, it reroutes all your network traffic so your normal apps are now VPN'd.
However, I don't use it often, because sites like Facebook flag this kind of behaviour. If you really need a mobile-only app to work, then Orbot is your best shot; it's built on TOR.

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More from @yudhanjaya

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
Apr 4
Notes from watching all this protest footage: actual people's protests / rallies in #SriLanka are usually far smaller than political party rallies.
Suggests multiple things:
1. Political parties have serious protest infrastructure (comms, money/incentives)
2. Very little of this protest infrastructure was actually used for the #gohomerajapakses protests. We have a few parties stepping in, such as SLMC in Addalaichenai, but none of the usual SJB/JVP shenanigans. Either these politicos, when push comes to shove, are afraid...
... or they are simply not smart tor competent enough to carpe diem.
3. Political protests are largely theatre, a trading of time in exchange for money, usually achieved by bussing in large numbers of people to a central location to give the impression of popular support.
Read 13 tweets
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
Mar 25
**NEW ANALYSIS DROP**
One of the things that we've been working @teamwatchdog is a complex series on how food is made and consumed in Sri Lanka, digging into fertilizer and the fallout of @GotabayaR's sudden organic farming push.
But first, we had to dig into a persistent piece of myth that seems to underlie all these conversations, even at the the policymaker level: that Sri Lanka has been agriculturally self-sufficient.
Some say we were fine before the reforms that made us an open economy.
Ah. No.
Nobody alive today in Sri Lanka can claim that they've lived in an agriculturally self-sufficient country.
Read 9 tweets
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
Mar 23
Some stuff that we're working on @TeamWatchDog
1) A multi-part look at food production and policy, w/ critical look at the 'we were an agriculturally self-sufficient nation' narrative
2) Global perceptions on Sri Lankan corruption, married to govt dept raid data
3) the next in our economy series, starring the Special Goods and Services Tax as a filler before we move on to an explainer on the IMF

All told, 4 new analyses dropping this week + podcast + newsletter
On the technical side -
1) we're finally running a platform that lets our team write longform, analyse csvs, visualise data, and publish multilingually from one place
2) new watchdog app and CMS for managing it nearing completion
Read 4 tweets
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
Mar 23
IMO this is also one of the perils of ML. So much of academic CS glues models together and boasts performance on specific set of benchmarks without thinking about a) bias b) performance in the real world
Don’t get more wrong. I’m glad that we can do this. I myself am more an engineer and data hound than a scientist. But this is how you also get legions of bullshit ‘AI’ companies that are either just a random forest or three GANs in a trenchcoat
In the development / policy circles I float in, there is push for explainable AI. Problem is that we have enough trouble reliably explaining / predicting input —> output on one model for 1 model let alone many.
Read 4 tweets
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
Feb 17, 2021
Alright, folks. I promised a tweet-thread introduction to the open-source, alternate-economies world we've been building over at @SciFiEconomics.
So -rubs hands- shall we begin?
Welcome to Witness! Let's first talk about what it IS and why we're writing/designing it. [1]
[2] Witness is a fictional, floating megacity set in a post-climate-change future.
Witness is made out of Distrikts: each Distrikt runs a radically different social contract and economic structure. There are solarpunks out to prevent waste; monastic orders aiming for the stars -
[3] Data-heavy, top-down experiments in Marxism, Keynesian welfare states leaning on Modern Monetary Theory, and anarcho-communalist societies who have moved away from all that to implement decaying digital currencies so that wealth cannot be stockpiled and hoarded.
Read 29 tweets
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne 🎭 Profile picture
Feb 16, 2021
Few ideas:
1) Don't have cronies with fake PhDs openly consorting with your political apparatus
2) Actually fund public universities instead of buying more guns n' ammo. Pay lecturers well so you don't lose top-tier talent to private industry.
3) Integrate aspects of the humanities and economics into STEM degrees instead of producing rote learners with no intellectual curiosity. Likewise, give the arts a dose of statistics, for the love of all that's good; we've got enough half-assed woo thinking as is.
4) Fund and build institutes of vocational training for all those who don't make the z-score cutoff. Right now the choices are: get into university or give up and drive tuktuk.
Read 4 tweets

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