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https://sg.style.yahoo.com/quit-teaching-because-chatgpt-173713528.html I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT This fall is the first in nearly 20 years that I am not returning to the classroom. For most of my career, I taught writing, literature, and language, primarily to university students. I quit, in large part, because of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. Virtually all experienced scholars know that writing, as historian Lynn Hunt has argued, is “not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in [the writer’s] mind.” Rather, writing is a process closely tied to thinking. In graduate school, I spent months trying to fit pieces of my dissertation together in my mind and eventually found I could solve the puzzle only through writing. Writing is hard work. It is sometimes frightening. With the easy temptation of AI, many—possibly most—of my students were no longer willing to push through discomfort. In my most recent job, I taught academic writing to doctoral students at a technical college. My graduate students, many of whom were computer scientists, understood the mechanisms of generative AI better than I do. They recognized LLMs as unreliable research tools that hallucinate and invent citations. They acknowledged the environmental impact and ethical problems of the technology. They knew that models are trained on existing data and therefore cannot produce novel research. However, that knowledge did not stop my students from relying heavily on generative AI. Several students admitted to drafting their research in note form and asking ChatGPT to write their articles. As an experienced teacher, I am familiar with pedagogical best practices. I scaffolded assignments. I researched ways to incorporate generative AI in my lesson plans, and I designed activities to draw attention to its limitations. I reminded students that ChatGPT may alter the meaning of a text when prompted to revise, that it can yield biased and inaccurate information, that it does not generate stylistically strong writing and, for those grade-oriented students, that it does not result in A-level work. It did not matter. The students still used it. In one activity, my students drafted a paragraph in class, fed their work to ChatGPT with a revision prompt, and then compared the output with their original writing. However, these types of comparative analyses failed because most of my students were not developed enough as writers to analyze the subtleties of meaning or evaluate style. “It makes my writing look fancy,” one PhD student protested when I pointed to weaknesses in AI-revised text. My students also relied heavily on AI-powered paraphrasing tools such as Quillbot. Paraphrasing well, like drafting original research, is a process of deepening understanding. Recent high-profile examples of “duplicative language” are a reminder that paraphrasing is hard work. It is not surprising, then, that many students are tempted by AI-powered paraphrasing tools. These technologies, however, often result in inconsistent writing style, do not always help students avoid plagiarism, and allow the writer to gloss over understanding. Online paraphrasing tools are useful only when students have already developed a deep knowledge of the craft of writing. Students who outsource their writing to AI lose an opportunity to think more deeply about their research. In a recent article on art and generative AI, author Ted Chiang put it this way: “Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.” Chiang also notes that the hundreds of small choices we make as writers are just as important as the initial conception. Chiang is a writer of fiction, but the logic applies equally to scholarly writing. Decisions regarding syntax, vocabulary, and other elements of style imbue a text with meaning nearly as much as the underlying research. Generative AI is, in some ways, a democratizing tool. Many of my students were non-native speakers of English. Their writing frequently contained grammatical errors. Generative AI is effective at correcting grammar. However, the technology often changes vocabulary and alters meaning even when the only prompt is “fix the grammar.” My students lacked the skills to identify and correct subtle shifts in meaning. I could not convince them of the need for stylistic consistency or the need to develop voices as research writers. The problem was not recognizing AI-generated or AI-revised text. At the start of every semester, I had students write in class. With that baseline sample as a point of comparison, it was easy for me to distinguish between my students’ writing and text generated by ChatGPT. I am also familiar with AI detectors, which purport to indicate whether something has been generated by AI. These detectors, however, are faulty. AI-assisted writing is easy to identify but hard to prove. As a result, I found myself spending many hours grading writing that I knew was generated by AI. I noted where arguments were unsound. I pointed to weaknesses such as stylistic quirks that I knew to be common to ChatGPT (I noticed a sudden surge of phrases such as “delves into”). That is, I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students. So I quit. The best educators will adapt to AI. In some ways, the changes will be positive. Teachers must move away from mechanical activities or assigning simple summaries. They will find ways to encourage students to think critically and learn that writing is a way of generating ideas, revealing contradictions, and clarifying methodologies. However, those lessons require that students be willing to sit with the temporary discomfort of not knowing. Students must learn to move forward with faith in their own cognitive abilities as they write and revise their way into clarity. With few exceptions, my students were not willing to enter those uncomfortable spaces or remain there long enough to discover the revelatory power of writing.

Has anyone heard of or used before this service https://www.airbnb.com.sg/? Basically when you travel to a foreign country for a vacation, instead of securing your accommodation from the usual source such as hotels, motels or hostels, airbnb.com.sg brings together hosts from the country who are willing to rent out their room for you to live in. In layman terms, they play host to you, the guests. This isn't anything new (for me it is) and I am trying to find accommodations for my vacation next year and am wondering if anyone has any experience to share (both good and bad). What do you guys think of this idea or would you rather stay in a standard hotel? I will only be traveling with a fellow girlfriend hence I kinda liked the idea that airbnb.com.sg offers. Some of the prices available there are rather attractive, beautiful rooms, near popular tourist spots etc. Pros: Might be cheaper than hotels Able to live with the local hosts and learn more about their culture Some hosts could be really amazing people Some of the apartments/rooms are really beautiful Cons: Nothing scarier than a bad host Took some screenshots using Gold Coast as an example. Can't see the words but what it says is basically house rules etc.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/starhub-m1-announce-new-plans-for-data-hungry-consumers-9169150 Not that i use so much, but seems like they fighting off Circles.life.

Thanks to its Chinese owner Geely, Lotus now has the resources to expand and is looking to add 200 new engineers to its workforce as part of its plan to increase production. As reported by The Telegraph, the British sports car company plans to triple production to 5,000 cars a year and will also open an engineering center in the Midlands. It will also be launching a hypercar dubbed ‘Type 130’ that will be unveiled later this year. The hypercar will have an output of around 1000bhp and will be powered by an all-electric powertrain developed by Williams Advanced Engineering. Back in 2017, Geely bought over Lotus as part of a £100 million (S$177 million) deal and its boss, billionaire Li Shufu aims to turn Lotus around and make it a credible rival to the world’s best supercar makers.

hi, anyone using CAAS (airport) corporate plan ? what's the plans like ? diff companies are offered different plans by the service providers ... my office one not very attractive compared to my sis's SGH CIS ...

Cargill Inc., the agriculture and trading giant, said Thursday that it would close a division that trades coal, as well as European power and gas, after a strategic review of the businesses. Cargill, one of the world's largest privately owned companies, said in a statement that it is exiting the businesses because of "significant changes in the coal and European power and gas markets." It didn't identify those changes. Separately, Cargill and Copersucar SA, a Brazilian sugar and ethanol trader, agreed to combine their global sugar-trading activities, creating a new joint venture that will source and trade sugar. The Geneva-based energy-trading operation Cargill is closing is part of its energy, transportation and metals division. Cargill estimates it buys nearly $5 billion of energy a year. Reduced coal consumption in some countries, such as the U.S., has lifted global supplies of coal in recent years and depressed prices, intensifying competition for markets that still need the fuel. Coking coal, used for making steel, is trading at its lowest level in eight years, while prices of thermal coal, used in power generation, are the weakest since 2009. Cargill said it would continue to trade in petroleum, petrochemicals, iron ore and steel, ocean freight and North American gas and power markets. Last month, SparkSpread.com, an energy-market publication, reported that Cargill suffered losses of at least $100 million trading in energy markets early this year, mostly in mid-Atlantic power markets. The publication didn't cite a source for its information. Pete Stoddart, a spokesman for Cargill, said Thursday that the company doesn't disclose the results of individual business units, but said the $100 million-loss figure was inaccurate. He said the decision to exit the coal and European power businesses was unrelated to the U.S. power operation. The Cargill-Copersucar sugar venture will be 50%-owned by each company. Other financial terms weren't disclosed. The venture will benefit from a large supply of sugar from Copersucar's partner mills in Brazil, the world's largest sugar producer and exporter, and from both companies' logistics-management experience, the companies said. The venture's trading activities will be based in Geneva, with offices in locations including Hong Kong, São Paulo, Brazil; Miami, Moscow and Dubai. Ivo Sarjanovic, who leads Cargill's sugar business, will be chief executive once the new company is formed, which is expected in the second half of 2014. Copersucar Chairman Luis Roberto Pogetti will become the first chairman of the venture, a post that will rotate. Both companies' ethanol businesses and fixed assets, such as terminals and mills, are excluded from the transaction. Each company will continue to own its own logistics and infrastructure facilities, but these will serve the joint venture, according to a spokesman for Copersucar. The deal will help Copersucar shore up its logistics reach after a massive fire in October damaged six of its Brazilian sugar warehouses, used to store and ship sugar at the port of Santos. Shipments of sugar from the port dropped by about 40% after the fire. Copersucar is repairing its Santos terminal and by February 2015 expects to have the capacity to receive and ship 10 million tons of sugar a year, an average of about 800,000 to a month, up from a current 250,000 a month. The deal comes as other commodity companies have struggled in the sugar business. Bunge Ltd. last month said it hired Morgan Stanley to advise on a strategic review of its money-losing sugar milling operation, which has been hurt by low world sugar prices and caps on the price of ethanol produced from sugar cane in Brazil. Archer Daniels Midland Co., in financial results reported in February, recorded a $50 million impairment of its investment in a Brazilian sugar mill, based on a new assessment of future cash flows from the business. Cargill, founded in 1865, has diverse operations including processing meat, selling steel and making pharmaceutical ingredients, in addition to trading grain, energy and other commodities and transporting goods across a sprawling global logistics network.

Almost half the growth rate of past 10yrs! Look at the chart... New population target

London's Heathrow is the fourth busiest airport on the planet, and it's not nearly big enough to handle the doubling in traffic the UK's Department for Transport predicts will hit by 2030. Some want to construct a third runway, but that would likely require the demolition of entire villages, as Heathrow is in a dense area outside London. There is a more outlandish idea that takes advantage of unused space... Build a new airport on the estuary of the Thames River. One group pushing for this option, the Thames Estuary Research and Development Company (Testrad) has released new plans for its "innovative and spectacular" London Britannia Airport. The new six-runway hub airport on the Thames estuary to the east of London could be built within seven years at a cost of US$76 billion ($91.2 billion), said a consortium formed by London Mayor Boris Johnson to address the capital's air capacity crunch. The British government and business groups want to expand flights to fast-growing economies to ensure the UK can tap into billions of pounds of trade opportunities. With Heathrow, London's biggest airport, operating at 99 per cent capacity, more runways are needed. The proposed new airport would sit on a purpose-built island off the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, some 50 miles east of central London, and would be known as London Britannia Airport, said the Thames Estuary Research and Development (Testrad) consortium formed by Johnson to study options for estuary airports. The plan, to be launched at the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament, comes two years after architect Norman Foster unveiled proposals for a four-runway hub in the Thames Estuary, backed by Johnson and dubbed "Boris Island". Testrad said the new hub would have six runways and could be built within seven years at a cost of 47.3 billion pounds, without having to demolish houses or industrial infrastructure. "This project avoids flying over densely populated areas of London and the south east, removing completely the noise contours and impact which have bedevilled millions of people throughout and around London over the past 40 years," a Testrad spokeswoman said, adding that Heathrow airport would likely have to close to accommodate its plans. Britain's Conservative-led government last year set up the UK Airports Commission, chaired by Howard Davies, to look into airport capacity in southern England. It is due to publish a list of potential schemes by the end of this year with the final report due after the 2015 general election. Earlier this year bosses at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports urged the government to let them build additional runways to solve the capacity shortage, plans vigorously opposed by Johnson. Johnson previously proposed a new four-runway hub should be built either east of central London on the Isle of Grain or further out in the Thames Estuary on an artificial island. http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/plan-for-spectacular-island-airport-in-london-20131118-2xq0v.html

By MITSURU OBE TOKYO

Viable??? http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/sin...1257452/1/.html

http://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/feature-ove...e-plans-q3-2012 data caps as usual

Toyota Motor said on Friday it would roll out eight compact car models tailored for emerging markets by 2015 in an attempt to catch up to front-runners such as Volkswagen (VW) and General Motors (GM). Toyota, which lost the crown as the world's top automaker last year, is looking to reduce its dependence on the mature North American, European and Japanese markets. It wants to shift more of its weight to growth markets such as China, India and Brazil, where Volkswagen, GM and Hyundai Motor have taken the lead. The Japanese automaker aims to sell half of its vehicles in emerging markets by 2015, up from around 45 per cent last year and 18.6 per cent in 2000. 'In emerging markets, there are four or five automakers vying to take the lead in sales volumes,' Toyota executive vice-president Yukitoshi Funo told reporters. 'Particularly in the South-east Asian region, Volkswagen and others are looking to challenge our lead so we can't be resting on our laurels,' he said. Including the Etios model that it launched in India in December 2010, Toyota plans to introduce eight compact cars by 2015, targeting combined annual sales of more than one million vehicles in over 100 countries during that period. The upcoming cars will be priced around 1 million yen (S$16,000) or higher and produced in local markets such as India, Brazil and China. Toyota said it would aim to procure 100 per cent of the cars' components locally to lower costs - a move that would require a stronger research and development function in those markets. By 2013, production capacity in emerging markets will rise to 3.1 million vehicles a year, from 2.38 million in 2010, matching the level in Japan, Toyota said. Mr Funo dismissed a report published in Japan's Asahi newspaper on Thursday that Toyota was working on a car priced around 500,000 yen (S$8,000) for the Indian market, to be sold under a new brand from around 2016. 'We won't go to the 500,000 yen segment - it's not our category,' Mr Funo said. 'We want to beef up our presence in segments where we can be competitive. There are many other options for customers looking in that price range, including used cars.' Mr Funo added that the cheaper segments were the territory of subsidiary Daihatsu Motor, which has expertise in smaller, lower-cost vehicles. Carmakers such as Nissan Motor and Hyundai are considering ultra low-cost cars, potentially tapping a huge base of consumers trading up from motorcycles. Toyota's cheapest car is the Etios, which sells for about US$9,000 (S$11,500) in India, or double the price of market leader Maruti Suzuki India's Alto. Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/Motoring/Story...ory_803064.html

after calling starhub today i am dismayed to learn that upon contract expiry today, my broad band package will revert to $80 per month while my tv package will revert to $40 per month. even if i recontract my broadband plus tv, it will cost me about $75 per month ($48+$27) any cheaper broad band plans around ? nowadays with smartphone on 3g, i hardly used broad band, hence lookin for the cheapest broad band plan

What are your plans for this long weekend? As usual, I am gonna chill and take things easy.

As per above, i am setting aside a lump sum of money for NTUC SAIL Plan (Single Premium) Any IFAs / Bankers / Agents who can provide vouchers in return? http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/why...investment.html I am intending to set aside 70k in cash... Previously bought some 40k, the agent's commission was around 1.4k...

Big Brother is watching us all! Soon they will be watching our cars too. http://sg.news.yahoo.com/lta-plans-to-use-...al-parking.html LTA plans to use CCTVs to curb illegal parking By Ewen Boey | Yahoo! Newsroom

LTA plans to use CCTVs to curb illegal parking Illegal parkers beware. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is launching a trial of a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera system to deal with illegal parking problems along roads. In a tender called last week to contractors to run a six-month trial, LTA hopes the system improves its detection of such offences. Two public roads have been targeted for trial, but it is unclear where these sites are. The sites, however, will be 150m long and two lanes wide each, reported The Straits Times. The CCTV cameras will capture the licence plate details of vehicles parked in prohibited zones round the clock, and under all weather and lighting conditions. The contractor who wins the tender will then produce the evidence of drivers breaking the law. The quality of images and videos will be reviewed by LTA during the trial, which will determine the viability of using it as evidence in court. The offences include parking along roads with parallel continuous white lines, a single continuous yellow line, double continuous yellow lines, a single zig-zag yellow line and double zig-zag yellow lines. This is believed to be the first time LTA is trying this method to curb illegal parking. Motorists chalked up about 22,000 summons a month on such offences, which is about the same as the monthly average issued by the traffic police from 2007 till November last year, when LTA took over this duty. A spokesperson said that that LTA

Just want to know where is the link (if there is one) to find out state land use plans. E.g. if you see some kind of initial construction work carried out on a big piece of empty field next to HDB blocks, but no signboard whatsoever saying what is being constructed, or whether anything is being planned in future for a big piece of empty land - where to find out this info? URA website? Appreciate the assistance, thanks.

hi guys. today being a half day at work, i'm thinking of wat to do later. bringing my wife n daughter... not going to any countdown party. n going to town will b suicidal, with the expected heavy traffic jams. so...been thinking whole morning, still cant decide where to go or wat to do. any of u guys hv any ideas?

For me..taking it slow and easy..and chill. You?

Minister questions plans to separate conjoined twins Mon, Apr 20, 2009 The Straits Times by Judith Tan THREE of the four twins joined at the head who were separated in operations here are dead, and the fourth is not in good shape. Given this track record and the similarly dismal results overseas, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan yesterday suggested that doctors reconsider plans to separate yet another pair of such conjoined twins. Indian twins Vani and Veena, five, will go under the knife at East Shore Hospital in August if the medical team involved decides to proceed with the operation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three cases involving Singapore doctors Ganga and Jamuna Shrestha, Nepal The 11-month-old Siamese twins underwent a marathon 97-hour operation at the Singapore General Hospital in April 2001. Ganga, the weaker of the twins, died on July 29 last year from a severe chest infection. Ladan and Laleh Bijani, Iran More than 50 hours into the historic surgery at Raffles Hospital to separate them in July 2003, the sisters died from excessive blood loss - 90 minutes apart. Vani and Veena, India Neurosurgeon Keith Goh, who led the teams in the previous two operations to separate craniopagus conjoined twins here, has been asked to undertake the operation of separating the five-year-olds from Hyderabad.

AIA / AIG Life policy, insurance coverage, endowment, unit trust ... etc

Take a look at this! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...-to-babies.html Germany plans to give vote to babies By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Last Updated: 7:17AM BST 10/07/2008 Dozens of German politicians have tabled a new law to extend voting rights to babies, toddlers, children and teenagers. The bill, which has won the cross-party backing of some heavyweight German politicians, would wipe away decades of "exclusion" and "discrimination" against minors, according to its supporters. Currently the voting threshold in Germany is 18, with an exception in some states, where 16-year-olds are allowed to cast a ballot. But that does not go far enough for the new law's backers, who want to ensure voting rights from cradle to grave. If the bill gets adopted, babies will have the same powers to voice their opinion on government handling of macro-economic performance in a global downturn enjoyed by their parents. Toddlers will be able to take a stand on issues such as whether German armed forces should be deployed abroad. According to the head of the liberal Free Democratic Party

British Daily Mails reported : Wenger hoping to wreck Fergie's transfer plans for the second time. By Simon Jones Last updated at 8:25 AM on 12th June 2008 Arsene Wenger is ready to wreck Sir Alex Ferguson's transfer strategy for the second time by beating him to Blackburn's

bored with 2008, lets look into 2009... 2009_Holidays.pdf