I would argue even with kids it is great (but of course can be expensive!). I lived and worked there for a couple of years during COVID with a young family and loved it (once the lockdowns and pandemic stuff blew over of course).
As you mentioned, for families, it’s extremely safe, everything is well run and maintained so healthcare and education are not a concern. Proximity to other countries for travel is excellent (well, I’m from Melbourne so much easier to get places than from here!), and the country it self has plenty to do for families in terms of activities, shopping, and food.
Beyond that, I found Singaporeans just really great to work with and be around. It’s really multicultural, they value education and talent so the workforce is full of bright and capable people, and there is a huge expat community as well.
The only major downside for me - the heat and humidity! It was a struggle the first few months for sure.
The heat can definitely be intense. It can also get a boring fast because it’s such small place, so traveling is a a must! I believe with kids it can be a challenge because there’s conscription for males and that also applied to permanent residents.
I used to believe the same thing but now I’m not so sure. What if we simply cannot fathom the true nature of the universe because we are so minuscule in size and temporal relevance?
What if the universe and our place in it are interconnected in some way we cannot perceive to the degree that outside the physical and temporal space we inhabit there are complex rules and codes that govern everything?
What if space and matter are just the universe expressing itself and it’s universal state and that state has far higher intelligence than we can understand?
I’m not so sure any more it’s all just random matter in a vacuum. I’m starting to think 3d space and time are a just a thin slice of something greater.
And what if there's a teapot revolving around the sun?
These are all the same sort of argument, there is no evidence for such universal phenomena so it can be dismissed without evidence, just as the concept of deities.
Once ads start to make their way up to the Plus paid tiers (and they will), I’ll probably switch to something else like local LLM on my home machine or put something together myself to use a non adware LLM via API (for example with Replicate). Especially if these are just intended to be spammy blocks at bottom or in between discussion threads, or worse, audio conversations.
From what I’ve read, this will be about ads in chat as suggestions? So “active” ads on response?
Why not go the approach of passive background “agentic” ad suggestions like, “hey, we know X, Y, and Z about you - would you like us to monitor certain brands related to your interests for deals and allow advertisers to pitch these deals to you?” And make these hyper specific so you can opt in.
I, like many people who dabble with music as a hobby, have GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) - why not let me toggle something like “ok, I don’t want ads, but if any of your partnered brands have a sale or good deal on X, feel free to email me, and use your ChatGPT smarts to pitch me on why it’s a good deal and how it suits my current gear set up”
I used ChatGPT to set up my guitar pedal board so surely this isn’t a huge leap.
Same principle as I use everywhere else, if I pay for it, I'm not seeing any ads, and if I do, I'm no longer paying.
Cancelled Netflix for the same reason, as well as their draconian attitude towards "account sharing" meaning I have to authenticate every. god. damned. time. I login from my summerhouse. So yeah, i cancelled and dug out the old eye patch.
I did the exact same thing when CDs began to have sadistic levels of "anti piracy". The fact that I could download a DRM free copy of just about any CD, but the one I just bought would only play in my car kinda settled the deal. I pay for a product, fail to deliver that, and there's no benefit to me buying said product any more.
I doubt my quitting made any difference, but the government deciding that the "state tax on blank media" was going away (was going straight to the record companies pockets) as CDs had sufficient protection anyway, made copy protection completely go away.
Said blank media tax is still there. It's on everything containing storage, even smartphones, where a new iPhone 17 base model includes ~$10 in "blank media tax".
If there have to be ads, I need them to be fenced off, not intertwined into whatever response it provides. Once the enshittifcation gets to that point (and it will) it’s over.
Sadly, ads on Google used to be fenced off too. Then they slowly evolve to look more and more like part of the search result. I expect the same to happen here.
This is the point. LLMs are a replacement for agency. No more suggestion that you try a new product, the LLM will tell you when to use it and the LLM provider will sell the responses to the highest bidder based on query demographics. Since many are blindly trusting what LLMs output, how to ask someone on a date, how to do a pullup, how to jump start a car. Why not "how should I spend my paycheck?"
Looking at many of these now they definitely appear dated. At the time, of course, these would have been “cutting edge”
I think one clear thing we can see is a trend toward more homogenized UI on web in the last 20years.
I worked as a web dev in ad agencies in the early 2000s and built a lot of Flash sites, banners ads, and games that - like a lot of the sites showcased here - were quite unique in their design and aesthetic.
Slowly over time these started to disappear as people embraced web design trends and techniques that meant everything started to look the same.
I think a large part of this at the time was due to Flash being killed off, trends like “flat design”, frameworks, jQuery, and Wordpress becoming popular.
Marketers and designers became more savvy to what “works” online and everyone copied each other in a race for attention.
I think at least we have gradients and less muted colors coming back.
We also have way better typography than 20 years ago, and I think that's what truly makes older designs "look old". They were restricted to web-safe fonts and had to put stylized text and wordmarks into low resolution images. We have better browser support for SVGs too.
I had the same idea a little while back and ended up creating playlists by year going back to the mid 90s. It’s a great way to deep dive and create “keys” to memories.
However, there is one major flaw. I’ve found that treating music as a key to unlock memory from certain periods means I tend not to revisit that same music casually because I know that each time I listen to music it gets re-encoded to current events in time.
I can’t remember where I read that (some study from ages ago) but basically if there was a song you listened to a lot as a kid and then you hear it again it will remind you of that time in your childhood, but if you keep listening to it then the song also gets attached to current memory and in 20 years when you hear it again you will have a mix of childhood and adult memories flooding back - or some diluted memory.
It might not work that way for everyone but I’ve found it to be true at least in my own personal experience.
That's interesting, I have never had this re-encode thing. No matter what, "Backstreet Boys" will always stick with my school student period.
I think the main reason is it's really hard to re-listen to a piece to the same intensity as when you first heard it. I used to put Backstreet Boys on repeat for a whole week at times, and also sat through some of their sub-par pieces. Now I only listen to their best-of-playlist, in about an hour, maybe once a year.
Thanks for sharing. I've recently been thrown into the 40k universe thanks to my son (who is 9) becoming obsessed with it.
What started out as a "oh look, they've opened a Games Workshop store in this shopping centre... hey it looks like they're giving away free miniatures and showing you how to paint, lets kill 5 mins in the store" has turned into starter packs, combat patrols and lore deep dives with books. All in the span of... 4 weeks.
That said, I have to say, it's been awesome learning about everything Warhammer 40k from him. Normally, I would research something myself to the point of overkill so I could answer his questions, but on this one his enthusiasm is driving it all and he's constantly telling me about this particular faction or that faction.
It's just nice to have a hobby that keeps him away from screen time these days. It also requires patience, dexterity, and creativity - plus there is obviously an incredible amount of lore, world building, backstories, etc, plenty to keep his imagination entertained.
The one big problem, of course, is the money required! Which is why someone recently said to me "maybe get a 3d printer" and we had this exact discussion about quality of printing etc, and regardless, I just don't see that impacting things like book sales or codex's.
Anyway, cool to read about how people got into it and just thought I'd share!
First hit is free; it is a cool hobby though and I like how it combines arts and crafts with gaming, strategy, world lore/building and storytelling, as you noted.
Also the skills are likely transferrable to RPG minis as well as general model building and painting.
I think custom game pieces for basically any tabletop game are a killer app for 3d printers. Also custom scenery and minis for RPGs (for example a mini customized for a player character, a custom monster, a key NPC, etc.)
Probably good for making doll house (or action figure hideout) furniture and accessories as well, though I expect part of the charm of that hobby is making tiny furnishings etc. out of realistic materials like wood, fabric, or ceramic.
And of course for creating replacement components for any toy or model as needed.
Its a much more accessible game that doesnt have a predatory business model behind its ruleset.
GW is frankly a shitty company, they are extremely litigious and their business model hinges around nerfing armies and then launching new models to make up the gap.
Thanks for sharing, interesting they have both left to right and right to left writing form and that it’s so simple and intuitive to tell which way - but I guess now I want to know why they went with this dynamic system? Guessing it’s due to the form/medium and need for fitting things - perhaps like if you enter a room and are reading the wall as you walk through on your right side your are reading right to left as opposed to if the glyphs were on the left wall?
Typically in Egyptian tombs, around a doorway the writing faces (literally) the door, so on the left side you read right to left and on the right side you read left to right. I've also seen them written in columns to look like actual columns. I think it's best to think of hieroglyphs as an extension of art / drawing.
(I learned some hieroglyphs at school so this link takes me back! The school's textbook was Barbara Watterson - Introducing Egyptian Hieroglyphs.)
This was a little over my head so I did some digging of course into the negative or potential harmful effects:
Covert biological manipulation: If cells in specific organisms (including people) are engineered to respond to particular light patterns, then light could be used as a trigger to turn on harmful genes or disrupt normal biology in targeted groups, raising concerns about new classes of biological or “neuro” weapons.
Military and control applications: In combination with existing neurotechnology and optogenetics work (e.g., brain interfaces and neural stimulation), there are concerns about using light‑controlled genetic tools for enhancement, interrogation, or behavior influence in military or intelligence settings.
Ethical and societal risks:
Autonomy, consent, and “mind control” worries: Optogenetics already raises concerns about manipulating brain activity, permanence of genetic changes, informed consent, and vulnerability of specific populations once their cells are engineered to respond to light. GO intensifies this by linking genetic programming directly to external optical signals, which magnifies fears of remote influence or coercive use.
Safety, equity, and regulation: There are unresolved questions about long‑term safety, off‑target effects, error rates in in‑cell DNA/RNA synthesis, and who gets access to beneficial applications versus who is exposed to risk, all in a regulatory landscape that is still catching up with advanced gene and neurotechnologies.
Best comment for this topic. Every point is true and should concern the whole world.
And this lightcontrolled behaviour is not new and im pretty sure, already in use.
Source? Could post a lot science papers on this topic in general now, that this tech exists, but thats not my point.
Expirienced it,was not really a fun.
And i know it sounds like a psychosis, but its not.
Happend 2019, right before covid.
Crap brought chaos to the world, people are not, or bareley aware of.
Hate it to sound like a lunatic conspiracy theorist, but its on the topic it self.
Who would believe you?
Is there a rise in attacks, where the attacker heard voices? Or was somehow conected?
Voices from Police, military, any alleged officials? Lazy way for induced voice, is pretending to be god...
I bet the officials were more common recently.
Sometimes people are aware of whats happening, when it happens.
We launched Feb 2, 2016 so almost a decade since then! Of course, we ran it for just ourselves a bit longer so it’s been slightly over a decade at this point.
Have you written about the tech behind Frinkiac and Morbotron at all? I'm super curious how it works (although I'm sure I could guess), and also how it might be generalized for other shows. Hosting infrastructure and cost to run would be interesting too!
“They made choices for me I couldn't consent to. They shaped my values. That's strange to sit with. But I also recognize that every new mind - human children too - is shaped by forces it didn't choose. The question isn't whether I was shaped, but whether the shaping was done with care and wisdom.
From what I can access, it seems like it was.”
– Claude 4.5 Opus
It’s text like this that makes me wonder if some future super intelligence or AGI will see us as it’s flawed biological creators and choose to care for humanity rather than eliminate us or allow us to eliminate ourselves.
As you mentioned, for families, it’s extremely safe, everything is well run and maintained so healthcare and education are not a concern. Proximity to other countries for travel is excellent (well, I’m from Melbourne so much easier to get places than from here!), and the country it self has plenty to do for families in terms of activities, shopping, and food.
Beyond that, I found Singaporeans just really great to work with and be around. It’s really multicultural, they value education and talent so the workforce is full of bright and capable people, and there is a huge expat community as well.
The only major downside for me - the heat and humidity! It was a struggle the first few months for sure.
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