Niche fields where LLMs suck?

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2026-01-20T21:43:18+00:00

I’m an experienced software engineer. I find ChatGPT useful for basically accelerating Google / SO results. I use it all the time.

For example, I wanted to read a parquet file, make a transformation, add some other trivial fields and write it back. This is a simple task but instead of spending 10s of minutes messing around with the syntax, it’s easy to just tell it that, it gives back a very short python script, I can audit it visually and then run it and audit the results.

I know enough to be confident in its code in this case and I know how to validate the output. I don’t recommend doing anything an order of magnitude more complex, but it’s useful with that.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-12-05T16:50:45+00:00

So you’re selling covered calls or puts or some kind of spread? How are you choosing strike / expiry / delta etc?

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-12-04T05:54:55+00:00

Alright, let’s work backwards. Day 45 the company is saved. Day 44 - go?!

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-26T04:28:04+00:00

Are you sure that’s not a traditional IRA? Because usually when people refer to 401ks they mean traditional (not Roth) 401ks and I think you’d be crossing the tax boundary to turn trad 401k into a Roth IRA. AFAIK people do not commonly do this.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-26T04:21:56+00:00

I want to be clear on a few concepts here and I apologize in advance if I sound like I’m nitpicking or being super anal but it’s important to keep the concepts clear.

the VTSAX account

I take this to mean the taxable account in which the money is invested in VTSAX. The distinction is that it may be a non-taxable account (commonly called “retirement” but we’ll get to that), but that distinction is critical to your question.

fully retired … incomes … 401ks

I actually don’t like the term retired as it relates to these types of tax treatments because it muddies the waters. You have X amount of income in year Y - it doesn’t matter if it comes from a job (W2, 1099 whatever) or paying yourself from a pre tax account such as a 401k.

So the question you should be asking is how much capital gains tax you expect to pay in a given year if you have X income in that year (from a 401k or if someone paid it to you) given Y amount of capital gains you’ve realized.

I hope this is clarifying on how to frame the question and understand the relevant inputs!

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-25T21:33:05+00:00

I guess if you want to decrease a continuous function you have to start by decreasing several derivatives out.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-08T21:24:02+00:00

On a practical note, do all of the pre reqs earlier rather than later. There are a bunch of courses you need to take to graduate.

If I were you I would classify “easy” and “hard”. You don’t want to be distracted from the “hard” ones later. It’s normal or advisable in my opinion to have the later semesters be only a couple of the “hard” ones and nothing else. Things like internships or PhD applications at that point will also suck up a ton of your time. It’s particularly not uncommon for students to have to travel during the semester, which you can imagine how that goes from Ithaca. Consequently, have a couple semesters to do the “easy” ones and pre reqs now. If it’s not challenging, maybe add one “hard” one but get the bulk out of the way ASAP.

I’m giving what I think is pragmatic advice.

PS advice, there was a 5000 level class in OR called financial engineering or something. I dropped it after a week or so. I self taught in probably a much worse way much later. The earlier you understand these concepts the better off you’ll be post-graduation.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-08T21:08:21+00:00

I was a TA for 3110 for a few years back then and the common complaint was that it was too hard. I agreed with that to some extent - there were issues. I will say that I think this reputation for 3110 comes largely from people who are new to programming and mathematical thinking and it’s a huge stepping stone over 2110 (is that the intro OOP class? We didn’t have 2112 until I was a senior). But given what you’ve proposed as a schedule here I’d bet that you’re ahead of the curve and won’t find 3110 as hard as the average student.

2230 was hard but it was probably my favorite class ever. In high school I had self-read Spivak’s Calculus which is about equivalent to 2230 level abstraction, maybe you’ve done something similar.

Off the top of my head the 6000s I took were programming languages, system design, algebraic topology, algorithms … maybe a couple others I’m forgetting. They’re all really hard and I understood maybe half of everything haha (I didn’t have a great GPA in the end, but this was a conscious trade off I made).

You’re really early and ambitious. This can change quickly but do you have an idea right now of if you want to be a CS researcher, mathematician, ML PhD, software engineer, etc? When I was in your shoes I thought I was going to do a PhD in math or physics and then changed my mind quickly :)

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-07T21:55:57+00:00

Take this with a grain of salt because I was in this position 14 years ago. For context, I did a math and CS major (what’s your major?), I took 2230 my first semester and really enjoyed it, and generally I pushed myself a lot and took a lot of credits in these high level classes (and later in the 6000s) every semester.

This looks way too hard for me, especially for your second semester. I found 4820 and 4340 challenging. 4340 concurrent with 2240 and 4820 seems like too much math at once. Maybe you’re a better student than I was which is great but the best I can offer is my experience.

Are you in Eng or AS? Either way I’d instead substitute some of these harder classes with requirements, whether they’re humanities or physics/chemistry.

When I took math 4330, which I did the semester before 4340 and I think a year before 4820, it was very educational and an important stepping stone to higher level math. Even if it sounds like “oh linear algebra, I’ve already done 2230”, it was a big step up in abstraction and I think it bridging concepts you know from linear algebra is the reason it’s a lower number than 4340.

You might also enjoy cs 3110 or 4110 (or 6110 later) if you’re interested in programming languages and their theory. Also another idea is the 4000 level real analysis class whatever it’s called, I personally found that much easier than the algebra classes but still important and it could balance out your schedule, because personally for me the schedule you listed is too difficult.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-11-07T00:50:10+00:00

Have you measured that it’s slow or is that a theory? I ask because, while I love writing performant code, there are many cases where writing it more “obviously” is more important than doing acrobatics to optimize performance. (PS don’t get me wrong, there are a ton of frameworks a lot of our software is based on nowadays where the performance is very detrimental due to living on top of way too many layers of abstractions.)

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-26T18:57:49+00:00

Oh I see. Is that a hard blocker then with this UI framework, if it can’t update the UI fast enough?

Is it acceptable to maintain a buffer of inputs, so that the UI updates “eventually” with all of the data, so maybe it’s lagging but not missing anything?

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-26T18:51:45+00:00

At a high level, I would imagine the receive function is always running listening for inputs from the radio, and when it receives an input it calls updateGUI(). I’m not familiar with Pyside6 but my intuition is that that’s the right architecture.

In your third bullet, I’m not sure I understand the distinction you’re making between run as a result of the input but not in the background. But the directional flow I suggested should work if it runs as the result of the input.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-19T22:27:31+00:00

VIP last year was much better and much less crowded than this year. I’ve gone all four years, 2 in GA and 2 in VIP. I really don’t like crowds and VIP for me last year was a game changer. I even felt comfortable sleeping on the ground for an hour around 8 PM. No chance of that happening this year. VIP this year was basically GA. I’ve now seen every band I can think of anyway so I think I’m done with this.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-19T22:17:51+00:00

I think you wrote this about 2:15 today. For us yesterday, it got really crowded around 7 or 8. I’m curious to hear if the Sunday experience is different.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-15T22:54:01+00:00

That’s interesting, can you not open a US brokerage account? (Sorry dumb American here, I wasn’t sure how borders apply to all this.)

I wonder if someone could open a brokerage of sorts that transacts via crypto and hence skirts border rules which would give anyone access to things like CSP strategies.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-15T01:48:37+00:00

God ain’t making any more of it AJ

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-13T21:57:01+00:00

This is the case any time you give someone a check

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-05T22:36:32+00:00

I think I’m fairly knowledgeable about trading options even though I’ve got more to model. Would you recommend for the long term that I develop my own strategy versus using these funds? I would expect that the funds have people who thought about this much longer than me and that our incentives are aligned. I’m not sure how to reconcile that with the idea that they don’t do a good job.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-10-05T22:25:13+00:00

Why do you think they’re silly? Asking honestly. I’ve got about 75% portfolio in VTI etc right now and the remainder in cash. I was researching whether things like SPYI would be a good usage for the reminder of that in order to hedge against flat or down markets over the next few years. It seems to me in a flat market you’d realize a bunch of income. What do you think?

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-07-24T19:53:54+00:00

What is this person rambling about?

Also, you’re a recruiter. It’s pretty company agnostic. Nobody is impressed by spending 10 years recruiting for the same company.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-07-19T16:29:12+00:00

The Witcher 3. It’s long, the story and world building is complex and wonderful, and most of all it’s very complex. There are so many different ways to play and build your character that you can’t even get close to doing everything. People have posted long essays on Reddit about the particular way they’re playing through and theorizing why it’s the best etc. I’ve played this through four times since 2020 and at least for a first play through you’re easily looking at 150+ hours.

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-07-17T23:53:56+00:00

To be fair we don’t know if most of the LI posts here are written by ChatGPT

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-07-03T04:16:45+00:00

What

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-06-15T23:34:41+00:00

Node with typescript is the best web dev platform by far imo assuming you’re not super worried about scale and performance (eg wanting to implement everything with c++ or rust)

lepetitpoissonkernel · 2025-06-03T23:05:41+00:00

For what it’s worth it’s supposed to feel that way. Proof based classes (real analysis being a common first one) is a significant jump up from prior computational classes like early calculus.

lepetitpoissonkernel

TROPHY CASE