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milchek commented on Why is Singapore no longer "cool"?   marginalrevolution.com/ma... · Posted by u/paulpauper
shell0x · 2 days ago
As a German expat who lived in Singapore for 3 years, it’s still the best country I ever lived in and I’ve also worked in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan HK, and Germany.

Everything works, it’s very efficient, public transit and internet is good and it’s extremely safe. It also has great food and has low taxes.

Most Western countries just can’t compete and while the UAE is pretty well run in some aspect, there’s always the religious part which makes me uneasy when I’m there.

As a single person without kids, there is no better place than Singapore.

milchek · 2 days ago
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.

milchek commented on Claude's new constitution   anthropic.com/news/claude... · Posted by u/meetpateltech
IgorPartola · 21 days ago
The universe cares not what we do. The universe is so vast the entire existence of our species is a blink. We know fundamentally we can’t even establish simultaneity over distances here on earth. Best we can tell temporal causality is not even a given.

The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and bad are not given to us by the universe but made up by humans.

milchek · 21 days ago
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.

milchek commented on ChatGPT is getting ads. Sam Altman once called them a 'last resort.'   businessinsider.com/chatg... · Posted by u/donpott
milchek · a month ago
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.

milchek commented on Video Game Websites in the early 00s   webdesignmuseum.org/exhib... · Posted by u/klaussilveira
milchek · a month ago
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.

milchek commented on How I archived 10 years of memories using Spotify   notes.xdavidhu.me/notes/h... · Posted by u/xdavidhu
milchek · a month ago
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.

milchek commented on The year of the 3D printed miniature and other lies we tell ourselves   matduggan.com/the-year-of... · Posted by u/sagacity
milchek · a month ago
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!

milchek commented on Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Lesson 1   egyptianhieroglyphs.net/e... · Posted by u/jameslk
milchek · 2 months ago
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?
milchek commented on Generative Optogenetics   darpa.mil/research/progra... · Posted by u/birriel
thanatos_dem · 2 months ago
Do you have a source for this? Interested in reading more.

Unless it’s your personal summary, in which case curious what sources you used, or if it’s from an LLM in which case I’ll just ask it myself.

milchek · 2 months ago
Sorry about that, added the sources
milchek commented on Generative Optogenetics   darpa.mil/research/progra... · Posted by u/birriel
milchek · 2 months ago
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.

Sources: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10730653

https://unidir.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/UNIDIR_Neurote...

https://www.asimov.press/p/darpa-neurotech

https://www.bioinformatics.org/forums/forum.php?forum_id=154...

milchek commented on Frinkiac – 3M "The Simpsons" Screencaps   frinkiac.com/... · Posted by u/GlumWoodpecker
milchek · 2 months ago
"Medium Setting!" - https://frinkiac.com/gif/S03E22/319309/322862/

The GIF generator works well. Nice work!

You could probably delete some of the frames that have credits shown over them - since you have plenty of material already anyway, for example: https://frinkiac.com/caption/S17E16/137763 or https://frinkiac.com/caption/S16E09/162162

u/milchek

KarmaCake day619October 8, 2018View Original