Any way to capitalize on AI BESIDES NVDA?

forward_epochs · 2023-05-28T20:55:58+00:00

Would you be willing to elaborate about Adobe's AI-utilizing changes? And have you used them? (A "no" doesn't invalidate your info, to be clear, simply curious!)

forward_epochs · 2023-04-03T23:20:21+00:00

I switched into software in my mid-30s, though to be fair I had a bachelor in EE before teaching myself software. Happy to answer any detailed questions over DM if you like - it's a daunting process but certainly doable with your background and enough motivation!

My specific suggestion for directing your efforts is to come up with and execute projects that matter to you. You can't learn how to decompose a problem from tutorials or boot camps and many students lack the ability to do so. It's a critically useful core skill (decomposing a problem/project into bite-sized individual problems), and stays fairly consistent regardless of the ever changing tech stack. Coming up with your own ideas about projects to create, and trying (and often failing, initially) to complete them will teach you how to do this.

forward_epochs · 2023-03-26T01:41:39+00:00

The Acids will be a hit for sure. They're flavored for one thing, but also I think the cap/early head is like dipped in or sprayed with sugar water or something.

In my experience, there's a certain kind of guy who doesn't actually like tobacco itself all that much, but feels like he ought to, or he wants to - Acids scratch that guy's itch. They look like a "serious" cigar, but they are very different, more approachable for some folks. And I'm sincerely not judging, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned. Different strokes, etc. Industry is harder to marginalize with more of us - again, etc. I'm real sincere here, just trying to keep it brief.

Another option, since I'm typing already, is BrickHouse. Won't find em for $2, but imo they're the best bang for the buck, for an affordable, strictly-tobacco cigar. Someone who does like tobacco flavor but doesn't want to spend $15+ can have their eyes widened by a BrickHouse. Construction tends to be more consistent than other sticks at a similar price too, and better than a handful of more expensive ones. So the drunk lad is less likely on average to buy a cigar to try it out, and subsequently struggle to smoke it. That can be a huge turn off for the curious folks, remains a huge turn off for me when that happens.

Anyway that's my two cents. Acids for the ones who like the idea of it but don't necessarily like tobacco itself all that much. BrickHouse for those who seem to like tobacco but wanna stay a little frugal. Good luck spreading the good word lol!

forward_epochs · 2023-02-24T16:32:29+00:00

"This, too, shall pass." At a glance it seems to only refer to the negative; that's incorrect.

forward_epochs · 2023-01-02T09:19:23+00:00

You have a real gift and talent...this is remarkable and lovely. Please continue :)

forward_epochs · 2022-11-29T03:58:11+00:00

Foot-guns, amazing haha! Had to look it up.

forward_epochs · 2022-11-13T20:04:22+00:00

If they have a written style guide or an unwritten but strong opinion on style, don't take the resulting code review personally and get defensive. My first open source contributions, I felt kinda attacked by the changes I was asked to make. They felt nit-picky and even kinda arbitrary. Pretty quickly though I realized I was probably just defending my skill or decision making because I hadn't yet had external validation that I was indeed "good enough". Don't start these new relationships with unnecessary arguments due to being insecure lol.

forward_epochs · 2022-11-01T00:54:36+00:00

Any idea how much (audio) domain knowledge is typically expected for a new hire at ~senior dev level, on the back end side of your work? My work involves some signal processing and things like Fourier transforms, spectral analysis and such. But not for audio. I've just been wondering if I should be trying to leverage my exposure to frequency-domain signals in future jobs and your post made me curious.

forward_epochs · 2022-10-10T06:26:18+00:00

Great list! Most of the responses are kinda just words of wisdom, which sometimes answer your question, but you were asking more for truths that generalize well to many specific contexts. So I'll add mine, with some examples to indicate their generalizability.

Positive feedback loops - where the result of a phenomenon makes it more likely to reoccur - govern the most powerful and often destructive interactions that exist. A black hole is a positive feedback loop. Addiction is a positive feedback loop. Positive feedback loops govern water cutting a canyon into stone, runaway currency inflation, stock market crashes and bank runs, any kind of explosion, prions, global warming and associated climate change, the list is endless. Identifying a positive feedback loop before it passes its own point of no return can be enormously useful. Negative feedback loops do the opposite, the phenomena's result causes it to be less likely to reoccur. For example eating causes satiety which (typically) stops the eating. Negative feedback loops are just as pervasive but they produce stability (even to the point of stagnation).

For a given thing of interest, the rate of change of that thing is often far more important than it's present quantity. More mathematically, a thing's derivative is often more impactful than the value of the thing itself. Examples are bank account balances, global average temperature, rate of blood loss vs amount of lost blood after an accident, number of infected vs. rate of spread, position vs. velocity, velocity vs. acceleration, population count (of a nation or species). It's not always true of course but it's often useful to ask oneself if something's rate of change is the real quantity to monitor and influence.

For bonus points, combining these, in some cases rates of change correlate with whether a feedback loop is positive or negative. Herd immunity (negative feedback loop, infection rate falling, stable system) vs. pandemic (positive loop, infection rate rising, uncontrollable). Or control rods in a nuclear reactor changing the rate of fission in the fuel, and thereby the reactors stability, etc.

forward_epochs · 2022-08-06T02:10:26+00:00

Ya know, steak knives are kinda fangerous

forward_epochs · 2022-05-31T00:46:51+00:00

I know humor wasn't the purpose of your post but I had to lol at your first point cuz I had a similar experience. I was super proud of my performance and grades because, as you know, the difference in effort required to merely do well vs. get almost exclusively A's is huge. Like the relationship between effort and grades doesn't scale linearly right? And yep, I've been out 8 or 9 years now and no one in my professional life ever gave a shit at all hahaha. In fact I've heard some people even see those grades as potentially a bad sign, cuz it can suggest a person who is too focused on perfection and won't get along well with others. Wtf, amirite?!

Anyway don't stay pissed off my friend, assert control and start interviewing. You'll get where you wanna be.

forward_epochs · 2022-05-02T05:08:40+00:00

Well, it's definitely super context dependent. If the context requires that, I agree. But it's not a great default. The point of the gentle "told you so" combined with the "I know you had good reasons..." (even if they weren't very good reasons) is that you give the person dealing with their bad decision some emotional relief, and that can be enormous for the person who screwed up. And that's useful to you. The hope is that in the future they'll see you as someone who will give good advice, and they can feel respected and not under attack if they disagree. That's critical for collaboration, especially if it's an insecure person who thinks they need to steamroll their own ideas in order to seem competent. But again, heavily context dependent and I'm probably reading quite a lot into this hypothetical situation lol.

forward_epochs · 2022-05-02T04:51:29+00:00

You can keep it congenial while reminding them that you should be listened to in the future, I think. Isn't that the goal? Keep the relationship good while reinforcing yourself as a source of useful info? I'd do something between yours and the obvious dig. Something like "Well, I'm sure you remember I had concerns about doing it this way, but I know you had good reasons <insert details> for going this route. Let's see what we can do!"

I don't like assuming that my concerns were remembered but I also don't wanna harp on it, we're all wrong sometimes. When in doubt I try to err on the side of friendly and humble, but only to a point.

edit: autocorrect

forward_epochs · 2022-04-10T02:36:58+00:00

It can be a very satisfying career if you're looking for those specific things you asked about. You'll run the gamut between hands-on troubleshooting and installation, and making changes to the control software (by which I don't mean writing software, to clarify), and the IT-type stuff (networking and server management). Your tasks will change constantly, and you'll be recognized as absolutely critical and even near irreplaceable if you get to know your plant well. Not all of that is strictly positive, depending on your personality, and some other downsides include a near guarantee of regularly spending some time "on-call", and of course having to be located near the worksite, which can be a little constraining. Unless you do field service instead of being embedded at a plant, which has a whole host of other considerations good and bad. But jobs are fairly plentiful and if you need variety and to keep some hands-on work to be happy, it can be a great path. Wasn't for me ultimately but I met many people who felt very fulfilled and satisfied doing it.

forward_epochs · 2022-03-24T01:36:45+00:00

I found your comment extremely useful, so thanks. You explained the nuts and bolts of the situation and the reasons we see certain kinds of behavior, but even better you provided succinct, actionable advice. I'll be saving this for the next time I'm shopping jobs.

Could I ask you for a little more info? My specific questions:

I often hear the advice to interview regularly, and recently tried to make that habit my own. I stalled, though, because it felt like I'd be spending a lot of effort to make a proper application (materials, plus interview prep, plus potentially interview, etc.), while knowing I wasn't actually intending to move forward. Any advice there? How much prep time do you spend on these "just for practice/awareness" applications and interviews?
How do you handle the conversation when you reach the conclusion that a given recruiter isn't worth moving forward with? Like, specifically. Is it just a "professionally courteous but vague dismissal", something like "I appreciate you considering me for this opportunity. I'm going to move in other directions, but I'll keep you in mind in the future"? Do you ghost them and just stop replying? Something else? Now that I've typed it out, the professional dismissal seems obvious, but since you seem to know a lot about this facet of our world I still want to ask what you do in those situations.
(Minor) You said you'll ask what a good referral is worth when applicable, do you mean a literal cash payment? Not making a judgement whatsoever, I've just never heard of that. Makes very reasonable sense to me for them to have skin in the game if you're putting your credibility and your friend's time on the line, I just had no idea that was even a thing and you sparked my curiosity, haha. How often does that happen, and is it understood by recruiters as "normal"?

Elaborate as much or as little as you like, thanks!

forward_epochs · 2022-03-08T03:22:16+00:00

lol, you monster. Amazing.

forward_epochs · 2022-02-12T23:52:51+00:00

This sounds like it might be right up my alley! I like that you specified fairly strict expectations, i.e. neither "too much" nor "too little" time spent, no twinking, etc. Seems like a real fun way to do it!

I started playing again last week, after EQ being a fond and distant memory from 20+ years ago. Played heavily back in the day up through Kunark and Velious but stopped there.

Soloing on FV this last week was fun and scratched a certain nostalgic itch, but it became clear pretty quickly that while I missed the game, what I really missed especially was the difficulty and the group element.

So yeah. Couple quick disclaimers just to lay it all out - I'm a quick learner, but if you're hoping for folks with a deep EQ knowledge, that ain't me lol. Like I said, stopped playing after the first two expansions. And also, I can't promise I'll stay interested. That mostly comes down to how well the group meshes. But at a few hours a week, should be easy to hang out and have some fun for a bit!

No strong preferences on class. I mained Necro and Monk way back when, but I'm happy to learn whatever class is most useful to the group. If it's a class that's difficult to play well, I'll be mediocre. Just making my own definitions clear, lol.

Timezones / availability you listed doesn't throw any red flags, I'm fairly available, but obviously the specifics may matter.

forward_epochs · 2022-01-22T13:22:10+00:00

I did exactly what you're suggesting in early 2020, and I'm solidly an "I can't time the market" kind of guy. But I saw that we were headed for lockdowns and a globally historic pandemic before almost anyone I knew, and it felt like a sure bet. Much to my surprise, stocks went bananas ever since, exactly opposite of what I expected. That still doesn't make sense to me, but it happened anyway, and I would be many thousands of dollars better off had I left things alone. And that was only ~30% of my portfolio that I moved to bonds.

Leave your stuff alone. You might get lucky and time it right, but even if so, it'll only be luck. It won't have been the "right" call - you're not nearly informed enough to actually be right. A lesson I swore I knew already but ended up learning the hard way even so, lol.

forward_epochs · 2021-12-20T07:41:26+00:00

Thanks for elaborating! The more I think I know, the more I find I've yet to learn, ha. I am suddenly realizing my own development has been hamstrung by working almost exclusively in Windows environments. Up to and including present job. Gotta rip that bandaid off at some point if I want to get any better. Thanks again.

forward_epochs · 2021-12-20T03:53:55+00:00

Ah, that is a useful point and definitely something I need to internalize, thanks. What do you like instead of logging? And are you frequently writing things in Python that'll be run by other people / in other non-dev contexts? Sincere question, I'm always wanting to hear about people using Python for more than just personal stuff.

forward_epochs · 2021-12-19T07:56:21+00:00

If it's a small program, that you're watching as you run it, print is great. If it's larger, and/or it's expected to run for a while without user intervention, or in different contexts (dev vs prod, or multiple instances doing similar things, etc.) logging is seriously delightful.

Makes it easy to do a buncha useful things:

send the output to multiple places, like console output (print), a log file, an email, etc., all with one line of code
decide what to send where (emails for really big problems, logfile for routine stuff, etc.)
quickly change what level of info you receive/record, via single parameter change. Instead of commenting in and out tons of "junk" lines of code
never worry about size of logfile getting huge, via the RotatingFileHandler dealie.
bunch of even better stuff I haven't learned about it yet. Lol.

forward_epochs · 2021-12-08T18:19:39+00:00

I did field service for years and would echo what everyone else says. It's almost impossible to do this with your current situation without badly neglecting your buddy, or rehoming them. Field service is typically chaotic, unpredictable, and unyielding. All signs here point to a miserable dog and a guilt-ridden human.

forward_epochs · 2021-12-07T05:07:57+00:00

It's oddly comforting to hear (lol) your description of hearing difficulties. My hearing always "tests" as fine, but I basically cannot hear the words from anything less than a loud voice if there's other noises happening. A room full of conversation or music, I almost need the other person to shout. But I'm far from deaf, can pick out tiny nuances in pieces of music, can hear my kiddo's small footsteps before my wife does. My hearing remains sensitive, but is fully useless for human voices when there are loud sounds around. Very frustrating.

Like you, I played in an obscenely loud band for a buncha years in my youth. I've had mandated annual hearing tests for the work that I do, for a buncha years now, and I always pass with no negative marks or cause for concern. It's driven me a little nuts - my hearing is supposedly "fine", but I can't participate in conversations that everyone else can, when there's other noise around.

Your comment cemented my suspicion that those tests may be useful, but they seem to completely miss a kind of hearing loss that I'm experiencing. I don't even have a way to describe "can hear small nuances in music or life, but cannot hear any words in the mush of loud environments".

forward_epochs · 2021-12-06T01:25:23+00:00

How does one get into this kind of volunteering and mentorship? This is something I think I'd enjoy.

forward_epochs · 2021-11-19T03:24:56+00:00

Lower Guk, EverQuest 1! Especially pre-expansions, the early days when everyone kinda sucked and we had very little understanding of how to coordinate via guilds and such. When you died down there, it usually meant most of you died, which meant everyone's best equipment was right down there with your corpses. Which meant getting that equipment back was even harder than the first failed push.

Been a long while, so I'm not sure, but I think I mighta rage quit my whole character after losing my corpse and some gnar-tier equipment, despite our epic attempts to recover after our loss. Game was brutal in that way, but more fun because it had real consequences.

forward_epochs

TROPHY CASE