Dear YiXi Qian, I don’t patronise Starbucks as often as I’d like. It’s not so much about their coffee that I want to go there for. I don’t particularly like their cakes either, except perhaps that caramel nutty chocolate cake. But I do like somewhere comfortable and not-too-noisy to go into every now and then to relax while having a…
Someone wrote a paper in 2003, and because of that, we are forced to live with a variety of password complexity rules. Now, it turns out that man, Bill Burr, then manner at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), regrets much of those recommendations he made. I think pretty much all of us do too. The NIST is…
We celebrate another National Day again today. It’s Singapore’s 52nd year of independence. The National Day Parade (NDP) is one of the biggest event on the Singapore calendar. For some reason, someone thought fit that every NDP should have its own logo, and of late, I’m finding the selected logos look really strange. Last year, I wrote about how the…
One app has been the butt of many jokes recently. SGSecure came into the spotlight after it surfaced that all Ministry of Defence (Mindef) and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel were compelled to install the app into their smartphones. It’s not very smart for good public relations. This epic thread on Reddit shows why. It doesn’t mean you should write an app…
Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan earlier this week chided reporters for unfair coverage of train breakdowns. He was halfway in a prepared speech on the reliability of Singapore’s rail network when he decided to go off-script, challenging reporters to run the train system themselves. Mr Khaw had said: “But I thought they were being unfair to the teams … working…
You’ve been waiting for Amazon to come to Singapore. They already do deliver to Singapore, via their Amazon Global shipping program. But that wasn’t enough. You wanted Amazon right here in Singapore. Well, that hasn’t quite happened just yet, but Amazon just launched their Amazon Prime Now service in Singapore! This seems to have come ahead of an official announcement,…
If you’re a nervous flyer, you probably don’t want to read about this. Possibly the worst aviation disaster in history almost happened earlier this month. An Air Canada aircraft landing at San Francisco airport aborted its approach at the last moment, narrowly missing four other passenger aircrafts preparing to take off. The incident happened at night on July 7. Air…
Tyre punctures can be rather inconvenient to drivers, even if not dangerous if it happens as a blowout at highway speeds. Most other times, tyre punctures have not been a huge problem for me. But in the most recent incident, I was lucky and thankful to have a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System alert me to the problem. I installed a…
About two years ago, I wrote about Mediocre Engineering, Failed Management, in reference to SMRT’ s breakdowns. I was wrong. While it’s clear their management has been a failure, it’s beginning to emerge that their engineering isn’t doing that much better either. If I were to use favourite words from Donald Trump, they would be labelled an “absolute disaster”. I…
I’m completely disappointed about the stunt pulled by the four public transport operators to offer free travel to national servicemen on 30 June. It may have seemed like a good move on their part to commemorate 50 years of national service this year. However, their execution of this move leaves me wondering if they were genuinely interested in commemorating NS50….