Wednesday, 4 June 2025

Author: Medecci Lineil

Most companies are doing it wrong

FOR the past two years, ever since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been a common refrain among companies and organisations of all sizes: We need an AI strategy! The frenzy is understandable.  Nobody wants to be left behind and miss the Next Big Thing.  So, many companies are rushing

Teach your kids to fail

‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.’ – William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), recipient of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature. One complaint I hear from every parent who needs to send their kid to primary school: “Aiyo, some take so long to drop

The world is paying for Xi’s mistakes

US President Donald Trump’s readiness to use coercive tariffs presents a profound threat to the postwar economic and political order, introducing an unpredictability to global commerce that makes it difficult for trade partners to know how to react — and next to impossible for businesses to plan. But he is

Seen it all before

The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me? —Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born American writer and philosopher The intense and hostile clash in the Oval Office among US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has astonished many observers. For

The geometry of insanity

I first heard about John Nash from Professor Andrew Gelman, his former student—who also taught my Bayesian Nash Equilibrium lecture.  On day one, he assigned A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar’s biography of Nash. It’s a hell of a book—459 pages of brilliance, madness and redemption.  Nash cracked game theory, spiralled

My ‘off’ button is broken

‘My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?’ — Ernest Hemingway It sparked a financial panic, spooked many of us and seized the attention of the entire world. It wiped out a trillion dollars of market value in a single day. That was the week

On the Sea Wolff

“Time for some Vitamin Sea” “My wife, Jillian” LOOKING at all the fancy private yachts, catamarans and boats at the marina in Langkawi, Kedah I wondered who owned each vessel (there’s one called Sea-E-O), and how wonderful it would be if they allowed us to use one of their boats

EPF’s growing clout

A new report, citing an unnamed official, revealed that the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) attracted a whopping RM13 billion in voluntary contributions last year from over 1.2 million members. That’s about 7.5 per cent of the EPF’s more than 16 million members or 14 per cent of its 8.7 million

Math made awesome

The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom – Georg Cantor (1845-1918) German mathematician SINGAPORE is a country that takes the Internet seriously. Last week, its Ministry of Defence granted a deferment for the country’s compulsory National Service to a Singaporean teenager so he could finish competing in the finals

Touched by kindness

‘Not all those who wander are lost.’ – J.R.R Tolkien Even though Chinese New Year has passed, I still want to wish all my Chinese friends and those I have known throughout my life – a happy Chinese New Year. Many things about this country disturb me and I thought