We spent a ton of time removing subjectivity from this field… only to forcefully shove it in and punish it for giving repeatable objective responses. Wild.
Try things and see for yourself. I know that’s not super satisfying advice, but everyone has a different experience with these things so there are no easy answers.
Start small. Don’t feel pressured to dive straight into the $300 keyboards. I have a fancy custom mechanical keyboard myself, but that’s because a few years back I decided it would be fun to get into using a more hackable keyboard. For a very long time I was more than content with the (sadly now discontinued) Microsoft Sculpt keyboard, which was one of the least expensive options.
Were cat toys not made in the US? Especially if you were to factor and $18 delta?
Sorry, but tariffs on aluminum or steel that is only made in China or microchips or components. I think that’s a valid discussion to have. … you’re complaining about disposable cat toys that were likely made in a sweat shop where the workers were not making a livable wage and then putting in a container on a ship burning crude oil and pushed around the world so you can have some junk that was a couple dollars cheaper than a domestic option?
>You really have to put everything in a box nowadays.
What if that was always a good idea.
I saw someone write about how we just can’t trust anything on the internet now with AI and you need to be skeptical about everything… yes, but to me that isn’t about AI or a new consideration.
I worked with a guy from sg. He gave me tips for when I went to visit. He hooked me up with a family member that showed me the backend a bit.
The country effectively runs on a slave class. You must drive a new vehicle under 5 years old, and the license just to buy a car was $90,000 or so. This means an entire class of people that will be taking the bus to do your laundry and clean your house for the rest of their lives and likely their kids lives.
The guy took me around to construction sites. The Indonesian and Malaysian workers were some of the most brave or stupid workers I’ve ever seen. I saw a guy install a window in a three story building by effectively free climbing from the outside half a flight up starting on the third floor, from the outside of the building. No harness, no ropes, just him out there hanging and pushing against a nook with his work boots. The SG contractor had helmet, hi-vis, steel toed, carhart, radio, clipboards etc.
Singapore is an amazing place. It’s like, a rorschach test kind of. Like everyone sees something different there.
I noticed things that trip. However… I was able to enjoy the botanical gardens and Marina Bay Sands rooftop like the other tourists… fond memories, but they have a backdrop that reality is only thinly hidden there.
I agree with you that the migrant workers are effectively a serf class. However, I think it's fine that the SG government severely discourages owning a car. It's a small island with lots of people, there would be gridlock if everyone wanted their own car. The public transportation system is amazing and works well.
I promise you do not need to explain scarcity to me :) the issue is that the disparity between I can’t afford a car, and I will never be able to afford a car is vast.
The slave class exist to do nothing but serve (be on the street at 2300, it’s poor people running power washers everywhere you go).
The entire country runs on Chinese goods in shipping containers going to the US. It’s a tax state.
Don’t get me wrong, unique place, I loved it. But ya, not what it seems, lah.
> disparity between I can’t afford a car, and I will never be able to afford a car is vast
There's no disparity. Either way you're not going to own a car any time soon.
You're not freer when the legal system prevents you to do something because you don't have enough money than when the legal system prevents you from doing that thing for other reasons.
no, more precisely, they can actively think about it and still believe it's not an issue.
For example they can justify that the migrant workers are given a choice etc or it's better than some of their alternative.
If it's not clear: that's pretty close to what I believe, yes.
Calling the opposite position 'out of sight, out of mind' or 'The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics' kind of gives my disdain for it away, I thought?
The country's progress and management is extremely good, however it's enabled mostly by exploitation of migrant workers and various kind of white collar crimes (ie, facilitating business for illegal or sanctionned entities - cf Nvidia chips for China for example)
I think specifically for example of getting Nvidia chips to China, many Singaporeans would say that that is only illegal because the US deems it so. There is no moral reason.
I guess you prefer poor people stay in their poor countries where you don't have to look at them? Allowing migrant workers is a win-win arrangement, and I wish we'd do more of that.
With the MRT not having a car is not bad. Paying 100K SGD for a Certificate of Entitlement (10 year car registration) is definitely a rich person move. Good point on the underclass and labor conditions.
"Indonesian and Malaysian workers". Sounds like you never actually visited construction sites. Most of the workers ive come accross are from Bangladesh, India and China. Malaysian and indonesian immigrants tend to be better off than them.
I really wish people would not throw this word around so casually, it is disrespectful to the many millions of people over the course of human history (and today!) who were forced under threat of violence or death to labour without remuneration.
Of course Singapore's migrant worker system is open to criticism, but every single one of those workers can resign tomorrow and get a free plane ticket home, and the same applies to domestic helpers as well.
Migrant workers work in Singapore because it's their most rational economic choice. They pay no income tax, room and board is provided and the wages are sufficient to house, feed and educate their family back home, almost certainly to a better standard than would otherwise be possible had they remained in their home country.
tl;dr migrant workers have agency!
The comment about cars is unintentionally hilarious. “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.” and the public transportation in Singapore is very good indeed.
The argument against allowing migrant workers seems to boil down mostly to 'out of sight, out of mind'. Or in more sophisticated terms: The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.
Interesting article, and thanks for the introduction to "philosophy bro".
I think the Copenhagen interpretation of Ethics is really a misnomer. In quantum physics, a particle can exist in a superposition of states until you observe it. The ethical equivalent would be "a problem can be viewed as moral or amoral until you observe it", which is not really what the author is explaining. Additionally, I think the problem the author describes mostly boils down to how one interprets the intention behind each example. For instance: paying a homeless person $20 a day (plus donations) can be viewed as charitable (a homeless person gets to earn money and be treated as a human being) or exploitative (you underpay a worker). Same with the price surging: you can view it as a incentive for drivers to compensate for demands or price gouging. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but that these are the opposed views are coexisting in different people's head. For this, it would make more sense to call this scenario a "Reverse Copenhagen interpretation" where one observation lead to two coexisting interpretations.
There are different degrees and institutions of slavery, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and former chattel slave himself, had this to say[1] about that sentiment:
> The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. However, later in life he concluded to the contrary, saying "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other"
No, the majority of people use something a lot of Americans struggle with "Public transport".
The MRT and bus system in Singapore is great for getting around to the point that you don't need a car, but if you Want one it must be new and you have to pay for a license as road space and parking space are physically limited.
Singapore is a small and dense island, poor people fare better without cars there. Cars are very expensive, even old, beat up cars. They're either expensive for the owner or for society or both.
Is it? Honestly, I still chuckle about black Nazis and the female Indian Popes. That was my first impression of Gemini, and first impressions are hard to break. I used Gemini’s VL (vision) for something and it refused to describe because it assumed it was NSFW imagery, which is was not.
I also question statis as an obvious follow up. Is Gemini equal to Opus? Today? Tomorrow? Has Google led the industry thus far and do I expect them to continue?
Counterpoint to that would be that with natural language input and output, that LLM specific tooling is rare and it is easy to switch around if you commoditize the product backend.
>enable end-to-end encryption between the camera and your phone.
So… exactly not the part I care about?
Cool, it’s encrypted on transit to me… now what about at rest with them? Is it encrypted and they absolutely can not view or hand that footage to police/gov? No.
> Cool, it’s encrypted on transit to me… now what about at rest with them? Is it encrypted and they absolutely can not view or hand that footage to police/gov? No.
Technically yes, e2e encryption means video hosted on their servers is only viewable by devices with decryption keys. So if the police/gov brought a subpoena to request the video, Ring could only offer them the encrypted video. They would have to take possession of your phone and gain access in order to decrypt and view the video.
In this case the "ends" in the e2e encryption is the camera and your phone.
I used to work for a well known communication app, the kind everyone here used. Couple things I learnt about "end to end encryption":
- You can call your service e2e encrypted even if every client has the same key bundled into the binary, and rotate it from time to time when it's reversed.
- You can call your service e2e encrypted even if you have a server that stores and pushes client keys. That is how you could access your message history on multiple devices.
- You can call your service e2e encrypted and just retrieve or push client keys at will whenever you get a government request.
I just set it up e2e on Ring last week. It generates the a key and a word list (for backup) on your phone. You have to physically be in vicinity of the Ring camera to activate encryption on the camera. My impression is that Ring is truly offering a version of video collection which they can't access.
But I think your third point is valid, there is nothing stopping Ring from telling the app to share a user's keys and then give them to whoever is asking.
They are encrypting at rest, that's my whole point and what everyone in this thread seems to be missing.
When you turn on e2e, the video is not viewable anywhere but your phone.
That's why you can no longer view your videos on ring.com and a myriad of ring features will no longer work.
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