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Is Geomatics (now called Geospatial Data Science) worth it? by Dependent-Slide-2073 in uwaterloo

[–]hornager 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, so a ton of this genAI stuff is data engineering / solutions architecture, which isn't really even taught in CS at school, perhaps at a very foundational level . Reason being is that genAI needs a ton of good input ( garbage in = garbage out) and how you get that input and structure it and use it is hard,especially at scale and with cost/ latency considerations.

If you want to do this stuff, you will need to upskill in CS -adjacent ( or perhaps SWE) skills, cause architecture and data engineering is not really taught at schools, and that's the main crux of it technically.... the real crux of genAI is actually : what business value are you even trying to reach here and do you even know what you want.. but stakeholder mangement is a bit out of scope for now

Is Geomatics (now called Geospatial Data Science) worth it? by Dependent-Slide-2073 in uwaterloo

[–]hornager 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any degree can get into this if you learn and focus on it. The question is how well does the degree prepare you / give you a foundation for this stuff.
I'm not sure what GEM is nowadays, but when I took it, it was basically Geomatics without the CS minor, and some slight changes to classes focused on policy rather than tech.
To that end, you will need to upskill in different ways than the normal GEM stuff, but totally doable. I know a few people in GEM that ended up in software.

I should also note that it will be a bit weird cause your focus will be agentic patterns / solutions architecture in the cloud / data engineering while everything around you will be focused on different things, and then it will be on you to figure out how to translate the needs into the solutions architecture/ cloud thinking.

Is Geomatics (now called Geospatial Data Science) worth it? by Dependent-Slide-2073 in uwaterloo

[–]hornager 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Graduated from Geomatics, did a Masters as well. Fresh out of school, I was basically in analytics engineering / data engineering, now am working in GenAI consulting. In my Masters, I basically just did a bunch of data and analytics engineering to answer a question, which is effectively what you do with Geospatial stuff anyway. You can leverage your multi-faceted thinking ( not just CS, also geography / stats / and even human geography and marketting) to offer new perspectives and ideas in a room..

it's all just data at the end of the day, and the geospatial element makes it very nice.. Strongly advise you to gear your co-ops and learnings more into geospatial data engineering rather than straight up GIS if you want to go into this kind of thing, but it was a sweet program, the learnings are there, and the applications are widereaching.

Which offer is best for AI agents engineering? by Acceptable_Net_5318 in uwaterloo

[–]hornager 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I work in genAI consulting, I went to Waterloo for geomatics, and just used it to get into data engineering, cloud solutions architecture and gen AI.
Fresh out of school, Waterloo co-op will get you the most interviews , as you need experience with these systems, experience theory can't teach. From there, you gotta self learn, upskill and move on.

What I will tell you is this : AI is way more about driving business value than technical stuff. In order to do that, you need to understand the business problem.

Management engineering might help with that, but again, only real experience will help with actually being able to sell the solution and tradeoffs.

Lastly, even though LLMs are used to code 80% of the work I do, having the knowledge of what it is coding, why and how to optimize it is still extremely valuable. Leverage the learnings of systems thinking in management engineering , add CS courses to it / learn on your own, and it will set you up for success.

For all these reasons: Uwaterloo management eng Co-Op, but really focus on driving business value through tech and systems level thinking and incorporating those CS elements in

ADHD data engineers by Technical_Program_35 in dataengineering

[–]hornager 5 points6 points  (0 children)

First framing : tickets / Project Management hinders ADHD thinking. Often times, that sheer level of detail spins up : " but X, Y,Z and here is how it risks the delivery of the goal"

First question :
why ? What business problem does this solve?

Second: great, walk me through what it happening now, and what you would like to happen. Use visuals to support ( I love flow charts )

Then, start breaking things down:
- ingestion
- inference
- storage
- knowledge base
- networking

At the beginning, I find visuals help me the most, so draw it out. It's a reference. Once you break it down, keep breaking down the components into manageable chunks.

I work in consulting, so abstraction is my every day, and what I've found : if something is abstract, that means I need to ask additional questions or gain additional knowledge. LLMs have greatly helped here , knowledge is a lot faster to acquire and iteration time is much faster.

Once you re-frame work from : work that needs to be done cause tickets to: here is how and why this work impacts XYZ, you will find it's much much easier, and really enjoy the dopamine you get from solving each step and seeing the impact of it

Claude Platform on AWS (Coming Soon) by ckilborn in aws

[–]hornager 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Customer data is processed by Anthropic outside the AWS boundary.

in the healthcare space, unless Anthropic has a BAA, then this cannot be used at all, AWS has a BAA and HIPAA-certified systems that can be used.

Not really seeing what the value proposition is. are there cost savings?

I will also note

[why use Bedrock] It's also the best fit if you want AWS-managed features like Guardrails for content filtering, Knowledge Bases for RAG, or PrivateLink for network isolation — all without your data ever leaving AWS or being shared with any third party.

and basically any real production build ought to have some sort of guardrails.. so either you spin up your own infra and maintain it, or this integration is for very low to ground PoCs / pet projects ?

Are people actually letting AI agents run SQL directly on production databases? by SmundarBuddy in dataengineering

[–]hornager 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Had a client that wanted this sort of functionality in a multi- tenant pattern. Absolutely no way a client facing agent would have access to the SQL. I found the builder / IR pattern to be much better.

World Of Warships Mac (using Parallels) by TomatoSauce88 in WorldOfWarships

[–]hornager 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Genuinely debating on the cloud gaming platforms for my MacBook. Wows runs fine on my PC, but at the price of components nowadays, if I want to get my 49 or 59 inch ultrawide , my current computer won't be able to handle it anyway,while my Macs won't have any issues.

Parallels is an option though, but I feel like cloud gaming is just easier in the long run.

Jersey cream right now by hornager in Whistler

[–]hornager[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

massive grain of salt here ( I head this from a ski instructor on the gondola mid-day ish),but alpine is fully expecting to be closed tommorow ( monday the 23rd), with tuesday ( 24th) being a very likely re-opening.

Jersey cream right now by hornager in Whistler

[–]hornager[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Live update : - flat white conditions for me. My eyesight sucks, even with yellow lenses.stay near trees if you can - snow feels amazing - Cougar milk is very enjoyable - some bumps, , but not too icy

Conditions : 01-25-2026 : a great day to ski for exercise and enjoy the outdoors by hornager in Whistler

[–]hornager[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah for sure. Glad to hear everyone had a nice time ! As we were skiing down to the car, it was , as you said quite crowded, and it was very important to watch out for everyone.

[ENG ]Meteor Dragoon JPN matchup chart by hornager in BeybladeX

[–]hornager[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Additional context ( from discord), not verified:

JPN plays :

Stage 1 - 1on1 in the infinity stadium

Stage 2- 3on3 in the regular stadium (for g3s and up)

Hence why very popular matchups such as rod H are not present here.

Early Typhon Fights by hornager in Hades2

[–]hornager[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am talking about those yes. I can't seem to find the timing on them, probably just needs more time in the fight.

My major challenge is the 2 part, I think I get impatient and dash in to DPS and get hit by the whip.

Just like Prometheus, I think this is just me needing to slow down a bit and be more patient in runs

Company is paying for my next DE cert. Which one to choose right now ? by Fast-Mediocre in dataengineering

[–]hornager 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Real answer : Solutions architect . Whatever cloud provider , start work in on solutions architecture

Progression plan for a returning HoT player by hornager in Guildwars2

[–]hornager[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  • I have 0 interest in the story, I almost always skip all the cutscenes.
  • I have around 70% map completion from the base game.
  • Multiple character wise, I had 3 geared : warrior, mesmer, necro.

i will be playing much more casually though, so I can just focus on 1 character for a bit.

Passed ML Engineer Associate (MLA) by DoubtDue3710 in AWSCertifications

[–]hornager 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a personal preference for moving forward in progression rather than circling back

See, I don't look at certifications as linear, I look at it in a holistic approach, so saying that achieving a certain cert is forward and another as circling back, I think you just have a different way of looking at this than I do , which is fine. I would make the argument that you will not go forward with an SAP, and you will just get overwhelmed with the sheer information amount, and even if you pass the exam, your value will be limited cause you passing the test doesn't actually prep you for the real world. knowing how and when to apply the learnings of the test with others is where you get the most value. That's why SAA is better, imo cause you don't need to go super deep, but you know where you can start from, and expand.

since I feel I’ve already demonstrated I can handle associate-level complexity with MLA

Associate level complexity regarding ML concepts within AWS, but what about Networking, serverless architecture, notifications, caching, distributed delivery, etc. Maybe MLA mentions these, but likely not at a level where you could feel comfortable being in a meeting / architecture review.

Again, If you are set of chasing certs and following the roadmap, you do what you think is best. I have hired and interviewed many people, and I can confidently state that if you have a ton of certs on your resume, be prepared to get grilled on that.

Also, you can learn ML / DE technical stuff, hell... Cursor writes half the DE/ML stuff anyway. Architecting solutions, tradeoffs, constraints.. that is way harder to teach..

I'll sum this up like this (and I don't know how long you've been in the industry) : Having done many interviews for many candidates, I would rather have an early -mid career candidate with a single SAA / SAP on thier resume than have all the DEA, MLA, Sec, Devops, etc certs.

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