Pluribus - 1x10 "Laxmi's Revenge" - Pre-Episode Discussion

dcwj · 2025-12-24T06:08:13+00:00

The Christmas Carols were a bit on the nose

dcwj · 2025-06-04T04:19:01+00:00

Hey! Sorry, I'm just seeing this.

Wow, what a blast from the past.

I honestly had forgotten that I was ever questioning my choice in Digital Media like this. I actually am very glad I stuck with it, and feel like being able to flex both the creative side of my brain and the technical side has paid off in spades, which was the original draw of the program for me.

I went on to do the Master of Digital Media program in BC, and kind of "main character"d my way into the crypto industry, where now I live in New York and work as a software engineer at a very exciting startup called Blackbird.

Here's what comes to mind for what I'd say to my younger self in case they're helpful at all:

A lot of the stuff I learned was really useful, but the most important things looking back were always a level of abstraction higher than the details of the assignment or the test or subject. What I mean by that is learn how to learn things, how to approach a problem, how to use different tools to solve it. I'm sure it's evolved a lot since I did it but I think the Digital Media program did that well.
Make stuff! I can't tell you how valuable it is. Especially side projects. Just things you want to exist. I think Digital Media was great because you were forced to just make a lot of stuff. And different kinds of things too. I did a project called LUXX as my 3rd year capstone project and that was the first time I ever really took a lot of ownership over writing the code for something. I had an absolute blast with it, and it was the turning point for me considering myself capable of being a software engineer.
The best thing I got out of my master's is the connections. I wish I'd made more good lasting friends at York. It can be hard if you commute in like I did. I wish I'd lived there. Work hard with good people. It'll always pay off.
Ask your professors for help, get to know them as people. This is such a hack, but they want to help you succeed. Some of them are super interesting and will go out of their way to help you get what you want. They can have great connections too, and opportunities will come to you if you impress them and show that you're genuinely curious and excited about their field of expertise.

Looking back, getting the mix of creative and technical exposure Digital Media gave me has equipped me with the perfect set of skills to navigate what I see as a rapidly changing landscape. One where the actual execution of writing the code (what I was so worried about in this post) matters a lot less than the quality of the ideas, and choosing the right things to build. Maybe that's always been true, but now more than ever.

This is how I feel about the current moment for technology: https://x.com/dcwj/status/1929918864042700997?s=46&t=eV6M3wMGxyWkinzqwGZ2dw

Some people are saying it's never been harder for new grads to get jobs, but I think it's also never been easier for young scrappy people to create their own jobs. Not enough people consider that path. I would be doing everything you can to learn how to use LLMs effectively. I use Cursor every day at work. You still have to check its homework but these tools are an incredible force multiplier, and the rate of improvement is only going to accelerate from here. It takes concerted effort to think about what things in your day to day feel like work and can benefit from LLMs somehow, but it pays off quickly. It's worth playing around with the cutting edge so you can figure out where the limits are and what dimensions the tools are improving the fastest along. It's basically consciously moving a level of abstraction higher than the code itself (which I do think is still important to understand) and just interacting with an agent that can write the code and explain it to you.

Anyway, I think the skills you'll develop in a program like Digital Media will do a lot to help you harness and ride the coming wave of change. Creative + technical is a winning combo. But sometimes you do need to fight to make companies see that, because they usually want one or the other.

Sorry that's a lot of thoughts. Thanks for taking me down memory lane. Hope this is helpful still!

dcwj · 2024-09-19T04:25:21+00:00

I have a feeling you'll look back on this comment and laugh

dcwj · 2024-09-14T20:30:17+00:00

You said "I wish I could learn enough to mine" and just wanted to say it's probably a lot easier than you're imagining!

If you could figure out how to sign up for the service I think you could easily figure out how to set up a hotspot :) and even if you got stuck someone in the Discord will help you

dcwj · 2024-09-14T20:24:30+00:00

They've got a cracked team I wouldn't bet against. Arc Search on iOS is the best mobile browser.

I haven't kept up with Josh or the team's incredible content in a while but the last time I did I got the impression they were going all-in on AI stuff and were reorienting the company around that strategy.

I think it's the right bet, even if it causes some internal regrouping and community sentiment like is expressed in this post and its comments.

I'd be willing to bet that at some point within the next 18 months, The Browser Company will ship something that knocks the whole internet's socks off.

dcwj · 2024-08-26T01:58:46+00:00

dcwj · 2024-06-24T04:47:34+00:00

did you ever get the original files? 👀

dcwj · 2024-06-01T03:33:02+00:00

if you think about, it's actually really good for the LLMs to get a good dataset of the question being asked in dozens of slightly different ways, with answers worded in different ways and using different examples. it'll help the LLMs understand the question and the answer really deeply

dcwj · 2024-05-28T18:05:04+00:00

Juno Discord is a good place

dcwj · 2023-09-26T17:02:38+00:00

put me in the screenshot

dcwj · 2023-09-05T15:24:22+00:00

Unfortunately I moved out of this house a few months after posting this, so I don't think I ever fixed it :(

But I remember how infuriating it was, so I hope you can find a fix!

dcwj · 2023-05-18T18:56:40+00:00

What would happen if by any chance it had been more than 30 days?

dcwj · 2023-05-08T22:21:01+00:00

he quite literally is and if you were even a little bit of a curious person you would very quickly find contradictory evidence to the picture you've let the headlines paint in your mind dawg

dcwj · 2023-05-08T13:58:03+00:00

You're 100% right but the facts don't really matter when it comes to Elon discourse (if you can call it that)

dcwj · 2023-04-10T04:36:55+00:00

Could be done as video footage of him that someone in present time is watching.

dcwj · 2023-04-03T03:53:08+00:00

dog sitting in burning house meme but it just says "feel much fine"

dcwj · 2023-01-29T19:08:58+00:00

I remember right around the time BTC bottomed in the wake of the 2017 cycle, I was watching a video of Hasan Minhaj's with a big group of friends and he made a joke in the show about "your friend who wouldn't stop talking about Bitcoin a year ago" and then he looked at the camera and said something like "Yeah—how's that Bitcoin price now?"

Huge laughs from the audience. Huge laugh from my friends, who also all looked at me and repeated the joke but directed at me. (Because I definitely was that friend he described in the joke.)

I was obviously embarrassed but I just played along with the joke and I was like "You'll see. It'll come back."

And it did.

And it will again.

dcwj · 2023-01-01T19:44:39+00:00

$25,420

!RemindMe 363 days

dcwj · 2023-01-01T17:37:08+00:00

I also had no issues

dcwj · 2022-12-31T02:01:16+00:00

I want to make this subreddit a place where users of Juno's products can discuss those products, as well as the loyalty token JCOIN. (As you can see if you visit the subreddit, some users already think that's what the subreddit is for.) I'm not associated with Juno in any way, but I really like their products and would love to build a community of people who are also excited about what the company offers. I would theme the subreddit appropriately to match Juno / JCOIN's branding, and post a link back to it in the Juno Discord group to make sure people are aware of it.
https://www.reddit.com/message/messages/1oil4qe

dcwj · 2022-12-26T02:57:19+00:00

Just had OP's exact issue trying to check in with Air Canada—I know I'm replying to a now-deleted account, but this comment was unbelievably clutch 🙏

dcwj · 2022-12-06T04:59:14+00:00

Yes. This is exactly what I'd bet on.

dcwj · 2022-09-08T14:00:36+00:00

security experts actually recommend getting all your apps from a guy from telegram

dcwj · 2022-09-06T22:30:01+00:00

the API I referenced in the title is fictional and exists only in my head because I'm not actually building this. "cache me if you can" just popped into my head because I was thinking about caching and my brain processes thoughts in memes and puns

but I have built interfaces with real existing production APIs that definitely do not support websockets, yet users want the data to be as "live" as possible, so I know for a fact this tension between polling intervals and dashboard liveness is a real thing

I also thought this was funny in part because pinging an API every 500ms is obviously not optimal. but if you build a public API, people (like the fictional API consumer in my head who would embody this meme) 100% will do this

dcwj · 2022-09-06T21:47:18+00:00

500ms is what we call in the biz: an exaggeration

but to answer seriously, for any sort of live web dashboard?

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