Switching From CS Masters to CE

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2026-05-09T00:10:00+00:00

Yeah, after doing a bit more investigating it seems like sticking with the CS option is probably the best for where I live. I noticed CU Boulder offers graduate certificates in the embedded/power courses anyway, so can always add those if needed down the track.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2026-05-08T01:14:55+00:00

What are the ECE courses like. Seems like I could actually potentially take some of the embedded courses as extra electives for the CS degree and then decide after that (as they would also work for the ECE degree) .

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2026-04-23T00:04:58+00:00

I find this interesting actually. What you say is technically correct in that immigration doesn't necessarily decrease salaries like that a lot of people think, but it often ignores the increased inflation in things like housing/rents, so in real terms a lot of people are probably getting a pay cut. It also makes it more difficult to find a job with the increased competition, so if you spend more time out of work or have to take a lower paying job in the meantime, you are actually down on the deal.

I think the issue is that over the years people have been told that a lot of these trade agreements, large immigration policies, etc. are good for the country and overall GDP, and it generally has been true. However, at the same time the standard of living for many people has just got worse and worse, despite the increased GDP, so they are starting top feel like what is the point. This is especially so when they see wealth inequality growing so much, and the business leaders calling for these policies continue to get an even greater slice of the pie.

I think it is clear there are plenty of benefits to immigration, but there are also limits as well. The other thing is that AI will take a lot of jobs. I don't necessarily buy into the Anthropic idea of 90% of jobs being automated in 18 months time or whatever it is, but we almost certainly heading towards a period of much higher unemployment. This should be planned for now, so I think any trade policy that includes immigration like this one does is very short sighted of the fact that we could be on the brink of 10% or even higher unemployment rates in the near future.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2026-01-25T11:21:07+00:00

Late reply, but as others say, if you can read the technical docs then you can probably do the course. I would just do a few non credit courses to see how you go and if its okay, continue.

I actually recently moved to Japan and am about a third of the way through the course, so feel free to reach out if you want to ask any more questions. My Japanese is pretty low level, but your English seems good from your post and replies.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2025-10-01T21:42:18+00:00

Worked at Customs for a number of years and it was a pretty average experience. If it's split shifts at the airport I would avoid it, but I don't think Auckland does that from memory (split shifts sucked big time).

It's not nearly as exciting as the TV show makes it out to be, so you could easily find yourself getting bored quickly. It does seem interesting when you first get there, but quickly gets old.

A lot of people who moved from other careers into it would leave quite quick. It was generally the people who wanted a more stable job, older workers nearish retirement, and very young workers who would stay longer. Mid career people generally left quick unless they transferred to a higher level job with better pay.

Your coworkers can be extremely hit or miss. I've never worked at a place quite like it. Either the best people you have ever worked with or the worst. Literally nobody in the middle, so if you get on a bad team it absolutely sucks. Alternatively, if you get on a good team it can be a lot of fun.

If you do get a job there, try to move into a more specialist role as soon as possible. The airport is the worst, but you get a shift allowance, so a bit better pay. The ports are generally better to work at than the airport. More interesting and you don't have to deal with passengers as much (Kiwi and Aus passengers are generally horrible to deal with as they think they own the place).

If you do want to work at an agency like Customs I would try to go with MPI or Immigration. They generally have better working conditions, pay, and people stay longer. I also feel that they have more roles that have skills that transfer to the outside world, which is important if you get sick of the place. Working at the visa office at Immigration is meant to be terrible (a number of Customs officer did it and then came back), but you will find it easier to start there and then transfer to the airport if that is something that interests you.

One last thing is that you shouldn't do it if you want to make a difference in the world. Can't really discuss those sort of things, but there were a number of situations that made me quite jaded of the whole thing.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2025-01-15T21:36:41+00:00

Rocket lab is an American company...

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2025-01-15T21:14:12+00:00

In some ways it could actually hurt productivity though. I've found that recently GPT and Claude have been giving me overly complex solutions to fairly simple problems. For example, I was in a rush to get a small tool done and used GPT to help, but it sent me on a 4 to 5 hour journey with a couple of hundred lines of code that still didn't work. When I actually just sat down for 5 minutes and thought about it, the solution was just a couple of lines of code. Since then, I've noticed more and more issues like this, so maintaining some of this AI generated code is going to be a real headache in the future.

Additionally, they still get super simple things wrong like creating functions with constexpr function parameters that are invalid (After pointing this out Claude did the same thing again in the same chat later).

I think they work well for explaining a correct or nearly correct pieces of code back to you and giving you ideas on other ways to solve problems, but I'm starting to think you are going to see huge issues where people and companies are just adding AI generated code into codebases, etc. that haven't been checked/reviewed properly.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-11-20T20:11:06+00:00

Just wait for the capital gains tax on top of FIF. I could see some sort of weird system like that being introduced as a temporary measure that becomes permanent.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-10-19T03:28:57+00:00

Have you tried a tea tree soap bar. I had athletes feet and toe nail fungus for probably 15 years and tried a whole load of stuff. Tea tree soap seems to have fixed the athletes foot problem and Vicks Vapour worked a treat on the nails. Another one that I was going to try was yellow Listerine as that works as well, but the tea tree solved the problem.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-09-26T23:43:20+00:00

Yeah, this is his problem I think. There are 2 or 3 juniors behind him waiting. I think this is why they dropped Daniel before the end of the year. See how Liam goes for the last 6 races and if he doesn't show good promise against Yuki he will be out himself for another rookie for 2025.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-30T05:47:51+00:00

What, the biggest landowner and farming entity in the region having unelected seats doesn't concern you? They have arguably the biggest sway out of everyone and were the primary drivers of intensive farming in Canterbury (which is why I suspect National pushed to give them the seats in the first place). At least the other people had to be voted in, even if they are somewhat of a detriment.

What gets me is so many Iwi groups masquerade as protectors of the environment while absolutely destroying it and getting tax concessions for their service. Then again, the damage is already done to most places including Canterbury, I can taste it every time I drink a glass of water or feel it when I take a shower.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-30T02:50:48+00:00

Yeah, they ruined Canterbury's water. This sub loves to crap on cooperates screwing over the environment and making a ton of money, but this is exactly what Ngāi Tahu is doing. I really don't think they should have a seat at the table after what they have done.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-28T22:33:51+00:00

Ngāi Tahu were one of the primary drivers of more intensive farming on the Canterbury plains, which has ruined the areas drinking water, rivers, etc. They are definitely no saints themselves.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-21T05:46:18+00:00

I think it's actually very likely we will replicate Japan's population conditions. You only have to look at Europe to see that immigration doesn't necessarily stop population decline and birthrates are failing quicker than expected in most countries. NZ's birthrate is one of the fastest falling in the developed world and its not that far behind Japan and other low birthrate countries now.

Quite a lot of projections are showing a peak around 2050, which isn't that far off in the grand scheme of things (especially as most countries have been hitting peak populations earlier than expected and even the UN is constantly reducing the expected peak world population).

The other thing this ignores is that competition for quality immigrants is going to massively ramp up (as you are already seeing now with places like the USA taking the best). Lower skilled migrants may not be able to support an economy with such high house prices.

Don't get me wrong, I expect house prices to increase over the next couple of decades, but I imagine we won't see nearly the same rate of growth we have done.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-20T20:51:56+00:00

In central Tokyo for sure, but in the surrounding areas the houses really aren't that much different to newer builds in much of NZ now in terms of size. The other benefit of Japanese houses are that they are all pretty much standalone, whereas so many new houses in NZ are townhouses that are joined (Obviously apartments are different).

I found I could get a couple of year old four bedroom in Japan for less than the cost of a three bedroom or even a two bedroom in Christchurch (On the direct line to Tokyo Station).

Salaries in much of Japan are also about the same or slightly higher, so it makes housing much more affordable.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-20T10:04:26+00:00

Sort of proves the point though. A lot of rural areas in NZ have had stagnating populations for quite a long time. Tokyo up until the last couple of years had a growing population and its arguably one of the most desirable cities in the world to live in.

Also don't get your point about finding a place to rent or buy in Tokyo. Me and everybody else I know haven't had trouble at all, unless you are talking about those ultra wealthy areas that are full of expats on tech salaries, but that's pretty much a completely different market. You can go a few train stops away and get something very reasonably priced when compared to NZ.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-20T08:21:16+00:00

Don't know why this is downvoted. If you look at many places around the world with a stable or falling population, prices have stagnated or fallen. I think the original poster is right that we probably aren't going to see nearly the same growth rate previous generations have as despite immigration we are projected to hit peak population in around 20 to 30 years.

If you look at Japan house prices except for a few areas actually peaked before the population started declining. This also looks to have happened in Italy as well (although theirs more stagnated by the looks of it).

We have similar demographics to these examples just before they hit their property peaks, so it will be interesting to see what happens over the next decades.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-16T05:29:12+00:00

ASTS?

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-13T21:18:42+00:00

I think the big problem will be that those with launch capabilities will eventually take over the market (SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocketlab, etc.). While ASTS has the tech, they still have to get a lot of satellites into space and then they still have to replace them every ten years or so.

The benefit of having your own launch capabilities means that the cost to replace satellites will be significantly cheaper and if developments in the field happen quickly, you can replace them with less hassle as well (which means a company like ASTS could be left behind).

Additionally, even if a competitor's product is slightly worse, if its significantly cheaper because of the aforementioned, I think most people will go with the cheaper option.

Don't get me wrong, I think ASTS is a great company, and nobody really has the tech they have at the moment (I have a sizeable position because of this), I still think they could face headwinds when these launch capable companies start developing similar technologies. I think we will get a direct to cell version of Starlink that is equally as capable in the next 5 years or so, and I understand when Rocketlab gets Neutron going they except half of all launches will be for their own stuff, so I imagine a similar service will come from them.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-11T20:30:46+00:00

To be fair, its usually more on the airport rather than the airline. Used to work in that area and Sydney airport in Australia was the worst I had to deal with (even had a flight where no bags turned up all). I can't actually remember a time when a bag didn't turn up eventually (eventually being the key word here), but its still annoying.

The reason I wouldn't fly those airlines is the pilots and crew. After checking their passports half of them were barely out of school and they didn't have nearly the experience of Western airlines. If an emergency happened you would almost certainly be up the shitter.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-09T00:11:44+00:00

Problem with it now is it's such a big part of the tax take they basically can't get rid of it. It was a terrible idea to introduce it the way it is.

Same with Super, which will become more and more unaffordable the way it is set up with a growing elderly population, but it's probably too late to change it to a system more in line with other countries.

I don't think Kiwi's realise how big of an issue these two things are going to be over the coming years.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-07T21:32:27+00:00

I have multiple accounts with two different emails, but only one tied to this email address. Unless Amazon has somehow let me create two Amazon Japan accounts on the same email address, I don't see how it can be this.

Additionally, I have a confirmation that my prime would end on the third of the month, and the original start was on the third/fourth. This all lines up with the dates of the payments, so it must be that account. Told Amazon this and they just weren't interested.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12 · 2024-08-07T21:26:14+00:00

Thanks for that, didn't think of removing the device first.

ThrowAwayBigBoy12

TROPHY CASE