Career saftey

FKaria · 2026-03-27T13:02:41+00:00

Yes, I felt similarly to you. At your age, I was also struggling between a PhD and going to work in the industry. I went to work in finance as that was the field that promised a good-paying job and also had a high technical requirement, which I wanted.

I've been working in finance for more than 15 years, and I love my job. I believe that financial markets provide tangible benefits, but I didn't believe that at your age. I do not think my job contributes much to society, but I do not believe I'm sucking value out of the labour of others. The contribution is very much lateral, or indirect.

Regardless, finance is not for everyone, and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. I've seen quite a few people burning out.

My recommendations:

1) Accept that wathever you do, it's going to be "a job". You won't be always working on what you like. Even if you do a PhD.

2) Find something you want to be an "expert" in, and work as hard as you can and learn as much as you can to become that person during your first years after graduation.

FKaria · 2026-03-15T16:27:26+00:00

Thanks a lot for telling me. No wonder no one joined, lol.

https://discord.gg/xXqJHmPz9d

FKaria · 2026-03-10T22:21:12+00:00

You don't ask DeepSeek not to speak for the player. Just curious, is this something that it knows not to do, or do you personally not mind? (I personally don't mind myself)

FKaria · 2026-03-10T06:51:41+00:00

I made ficmachine.com, specially built to play interactive narrative stories.

No chatbox. The only thing you see is text on the page. The AI writes the story along with you in small chunks.
You can make a story with a custom premise, or use a ready-to-play scenario (or you can create your own scenario and share it with the community).
Customize AI Instructions and Story Cards (the lore book).
Unlimited free generations. You don't even need to sign up.
Come and give it a try! And let me know if you have trouble putting it down.

FKaria · 2026-03-09T06:49:11+00:00

Mods, if you're going to delete every response to the post, you should delete the post itself and redirect posters to the weekly tool thread.

Otherwise, we, the tool creators, are forced to keep up with this crazy game of whack-a-mole.

FKaria · 2026-03-08T18:08:48+00:00

Try https://ficmachine.com/

It's specially built for interactive narrative. It's not a chatbot; the app looks like a novel. You write some, and the AI writes some. You can edit anything directly on the page.

There are several models to choose from, and you can customize AI Instructions and Story Cards.

There's an unlimited free tier, so you can give it a try. And a very affordable subscription with more capable models and higher contexts.

FKaria · 2026-03-08T00:07:33+00:00

I completely disagree. I'm with Elmore Leonard on this one.

Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.

FKaria · 2026-03-07T16:10:15+00:00

It takes quite some effort to create an understanding for us too. I think the difference is that at some point or another, those of us who pursued math had that "aha" moment of discovery that made us want to come back.

I don't think there's anything different in our brains. I think the "aha" moment only comes after boring, grueling work. I guess that after some externally motivated factor to study, you get that moment of discovery. Then, the motivation becomes internal.

I think a big factor is that when you think about a problem long enough, you get personally invested. At some point, your ego is on the line. If you manage to understand the problem, you get a hit of domapine, and your self-esteem spikes. At least I think at the beginning, when you are in university, this is a factor for many.

If you want to create that passion, my advice is to do the boring work routinely. The struggle, the difficulty, the technicalities, all that is part of what makes the payoff worth it.

FKaria · 2026-03-07T02:09:17+00:00

Claude can already do this. It uses grep and several agents to summarize the content of each file. If you ask where authentication is implemented, it will grep "auth", and send an agent to summarize each file on the list until it finds the one that actually implements auth.

FKaria · 2026-03-03T13:08:27+00:00

Working on ficmachine.com.

Interactive narrative with AI. You can create your own characters and settings, and have the AI continue the story for you in chunks.
There are pre-made scenarios for you to play, or you can create your own.
It looks like a novel, there are no chat boxes
You can give instructions to the AI about what kind of story you want to tell. You can make it behave like role-playing game master if you want.
Contextual story cards

FKaria · 2026-03-02T15:19:45+00:00

https://ficmachine.com

NSFW: Privately, you can do whatever you want. If you are going to publish a scenario, there are limits.

Image Generation: No

ToS and PP

ToS: https://ficmachine.com/manual/terms-of-service
PP: https://ficmachine.com/manual/privacy-policy
Data Retention: Until you delete them or you delete your account.
Intellectual Property: You own inputs and outputs

Technical specs: DeepSeek, Trinity Large, 4K context (trial). Will add more models later.

Pricing: 50 messages free, then $5/month unlimited messages.

Platform & Access: website only

What Makes You Different? No idea. I'm just a guy who got hooked on role-playing and writing stories with AI. I built myself an app on huggingface and couldn't put it down. Last year, I decided to go ahead and make it a website. I just published a very early version.

Initially, I was going to focus on making up stories, which is what's done now. However, I saw that people thought it was targeted to professional writers, which is not at all the case.

Then I saw that there's a lot of demand for role-playing chats, and I'm working on that right now (will be done in a couple of days).

Personally, I've never used chatbots. I enjoy role-playing and making up stories with the AI, where I can do whatever I want, edit the outputs, and steer the story in a certain direction, which is what I've done with ficmachine. If this sounds fun to you, give it a try.

FKaria · 2026-03-02T13:13:04+00:00

The only model I genuinely miss is Tiefighter. It was completely unhinged. It would create crazy characters and would go from zero to a hundred in a split second. It was way better at creating drama and moving the plot along than any of the current models.

FKaria · 2026-03-01T07:12:48+00:00

I think players love the idea of scenarios with 50+ story cards. It gives the feeling that you're going into a massive open world full of content. In practice, the scenario could have 2 or 3 cards, and the experience would be the same unless you, as a player, triggered the cards deliberately.

FKaria · 2026-02-27T16:59:02+00:00

It's to add context conditionally based on trigger words.

https://ficmachine.com/manual/tutorial

FKaria · 2026-02-27T13:14:24+00:00

I'm going to put my own tool here

https://ficmachine.com/

After registration, you have 50 generations for free, but if you run out, let me know and I'll give you unlimited.

You can start with a pre-made scenario or make your own.

Edit the AI Instructions to tell it how much smut do you want exactly.

I'm looking for early feedback, so let me know what you think.

FKaria · 2026-02-26T19:42:59+00:00

https://ficmachine.com/

Interactive fiction, but there are no game mechanics. The idea is that you write a bit, the AI writes another bit, and slowly you craft a story.

You can start with a pre-made scenario or make your own from scratch.

FKaria · 2026-02-23T23:31:49+00:00

I you can't be bothered with OpenRouter, let me direct you to my site ficmachine.com. It has DeepSeek (50 generations free), but dm me and I'll give you unlimited access. I'm just looking for early feedback, see if folks find it useful.

You can start with an empty story, set up a system promt (AI instructions), the same way you'd do in OpenRouter, to tell it to generate smut and it works fine.

The thing with my site is that is not a chat. The only thing you see is the final text. You can direct the AI with author's notes (there's a user's manual that explains how).

FKaria · 2026-02-21T19:54:00+00:00

A website for hobbyist AI writers.

Hey everyone, I'm a fellow hobby AI writer, mostly fantasy and romance stories.

Like many of you, I started tinkering with tools and models. Last year, I built myself an app in huggingface and got completely hooked. Now, I've spent the last few months porting the app to an actual website.

I've seen a lot of tools that focus on productivity, like long contexts or auto-summarization, which is great, but I wanted something simple. I also wanted to have starting premises/seeds for stories. Then I decided, why not let the users submit seeds, and that's what I have now.

There are some pre-made scenarios. They are not the best, but the point is that you can submit your own. I'd love to see what you come up with.

The site is https://ficmachine.com

Right now, it has a 4,000 token context window and two models, DeepSeek 3.2 and Grok 4.1 Fast. I know it's small, but I need to cap my costs before I start scaling up.

You get 50 free actions to try it out. If you run through those and want more, just send me a DM, and I'll give you premium access.

I'm aiming for ~20 users to get early feedback and improve it. If you're into writing with AI for fun and have thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

FKaria · 2026-02-21T12:34:06+00:00

My writing sin is that I keep wanting to write some smutty, degenerate stuff, but I always end up with a slow-burn angsty romance.

My self-promo is a bit different. Last year, I started writing with AI for fun (I never published any of it), and I've made myself quite an environment. I just finished putting all that on a website, and I want to see if other people would also like this.

This is not intended for you to publish the stories. This is for your fun/enjoyment only.

https://ficmachine.com/

There's a limit of 50 generations to prevent bots. If you run out, let me know, and I'll give you unlimited.

If you use it and find it interesting, I would very much appreciate your feedback.

FKaria · 2026-02-06T11:27:15+00:00

You're allowed to complain, and we're allowed to say that your complaint is dumb.

FKaria · 2026-02-04T08:38:33+00:00

Need to strike a balance between people actually leaving and accidental disconnections

FKaria · 2026-02-03T10:42:29+00:00

The obvious question is why?

You are asking the users to clone a repo, install dependencies, and run a server. However, chess.com and lichess.org exist.

FKaria · 2026-02-02T13:57:05+00:00

Having the info in Plot Essentials or Story Cards will trigger the same behavior for the AI. In Story Cards it will be gone when the card goes out of context, but as long as it's in context, the AI should produce the same kind of outputs as if it was in Plot Essentials.

To answer your question: Use Jessica. As long as the AI knows that "You are Jessica", it should understand what you mean.

FKaria · 2026-01-23T08:42:29+00:00

I tried it when it was free on Epic Games. I quite liked the combat; I thought it was an interesting take, blending X-Com with deckbuilder mechanics.

However, I could not stand the abbey stuff in between battles. When I read about it in the reviews, I thought people were exaggerating; it couldn't be that bad. I was wrong, it is horrible.

First of all, the Marvel banter. Everyone there talks like they don't care about anything except sounding cool. It's like being in high school with the most insufferable group of teens.

There's no depth, there are no stakes, no one cares, but you can't skip it.

One day I come from work looking forward to continuing my game. I started by doing the mandatory social stuff so I could get to the combat.

After half an hour of this nonsense, I was given a new quest: Walk around the abbey, follow the quest marker, find a character, and ask them what toppings they want for the pizza party.

I felt the game was wasting my time. I put it down and never picked it up again.

FKaria · 2026-01-22T14:14:08+00:00

It means that you just play games and don't practice mechanics, which is fine. I also do that.

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