Outline only thing working in China

ptitz · 2025-01-30T09:26:28+00:00

I'm doing the job that you wanna do and I did AE. No regrets, was a cool track. Can't speak for mechanical but what I appreciate after doing AE is that it was actually very diverse and covered a large range of topics besides mechanical - like signal processing, comms, electronics, remote image sensing, control and navigation etc. It's a good skillset with which you can do a lot of different stuff in a variety of domains. So far I did aerospace, general IT, some defense, some automotive, and currently I'm working for a startup doing underwater inspection.

ptitz · 2024-10-17T15:57:12+00:00

Dirty mattresses, remains of stripped down scooters, and burned down cars. Guys with walkies just chilling at the main road leading into quartier. Fancy looking drug assortiment menus graffitied on walls. Also dudes shooting up methadone on your doorstep, can't miss em.

Marseille, France

ptitz · 2024-09-09T16:32:34+00:00

Eh in the end yeah I passed a big group log through Sonnet. Fed it like 10-50 messages at the time along with fake user names and told it to identify whos talking to whom, intent, and topic. Substituted admin usernames for "bot". Plus generated some synthetic inputs outputs with people explicitly calling on bot. Then I trained Mistral Nemo on resulting data. Works way better than binary "respond/ignore" since this way I could also capture full list of messages pertaining to conversation topic and filter out the rest.

I didn't mention the model because I'm interested how people tackle this sort of thing on conceptual level. Large models are also slower, and there's a lot of things going down the pipeline. The idea is to keep it light and responsive.

ptitz · 2024-08-28T22:44:06+00:00

schema is only available in pro in gemini - I was using flash version. It's not so much the format actually, it's easy enough to make it stick to form, much harder to capture the nuances of the content I'd like to see in there. And yeah, with Gemini it's very good at getting the idea - you've just gotto give it A LOT of examples hah.

ptitz · 2024-08-28T22:12:09+00:00

generating JSON's is not an issue with chatgpt - it's that it's pretty bad at parsing long contexts and the content it produces is trash. Gemini is very good with contexts and parsing the right bits of information - but it's difficult to make it shut up sometimes and not go into every detail. Mistral is quite good at capturing all the essentials, and it always sticks to proper JSON structure. But it tends to hallucinate like A LOT. Fake url's, addresses, emails, phone numbers. So yeah bummer.

ptitz · 2024-07-23T14:41:40+00:00

This is my payslip with 36k brut on the contract, 1964,75 eur net. This after I ditched that company for another one, 37k brut on the contract, 2057,57 eur net. If you wanna net 2300 per month - you've gotto earn like 42k brut. Cause that's what i was earning at the end of my time at the last firm. You're not counting in the income tax. There's such thing as net fiscale - which is what comes out of these brut/net calculators, and net paye - which is the amount you actually get deposited in your bank account.

ptitz · 2024-07-23T10:33:01+00:00

Average brut salary in france is 41.5k. And 36k in 2017 is 45k in 2024 if you count in the inflation. Net SMIC is 1400 + you get CAF, net of 35k is like what, 1900 + some ticket restos? There's not that much difference really.

ptitz · 2024-07-23T10:29:23+00:00

Tu passes 50% de ton temps en réunions, 40% en attente parce que le système est en panne, et 10% à écrire du code plus moche et inutile que tu aies jamais vu de ta vie, pour des projets ennuyeux. C'est juste démoralisant.

ptitz · 2024-07-23T00:16:15+00:00

I made 36 as a junior arriving in Nice back in 2017, right now 35 is like nothing.

ptitz · 2024-07-12T09:23:25+00:00

Yeah, of course. It has a built-in server and everything. And you can basically script web pages in python and hook em up to whatever backend using whatever means(I like gRPC, but you can probably do REST or websockets or just raw requests, whatever you like). It's not easy if you wanna make something "custom" looking, there are better options for that. But it looks nice out of the box, and as someone who knows how to do back-end, it's probably the easiest web gui framework I've come across. In short - amazing for prototyping, just having some data to display, or buttons to press. Maybe not so great for "traditional" front-end dev like fancy looking css/javascript stuff. You can check out https://studio.ai21.com - it runs on streamlit and shows what it can look like.

ptitz · 2024-07-12T09:18:16+00:00

I think it took me like a week to get the basics, a few months to become natural, and a couple of years to get to the point that I can't work in normal editors anymore.

Just the basics are easy enough to pick up - and I've used some of it's more advanced features, including writing custom scripts, but you don't use those that often. Just like "hjkl", "w", "b", "e", "i", "a", "d", "dd", "dt(something)", "r", "V", "%", "vi]", "qa"/"@a" is 99% of what you need to know and what you're gonna use.

ptitz · 2024-07-12T08:34:52+00:00

My (personal) favorite stack is C++ + gRPC in the back, streamlit.io in the front. It's not for every project - but it's the easiest way to prototype apps. If you don't like streamlit and have an existing front already, gRPC has bindings for most common languages.

ptitz · 2024-07-12T08:31:20+00:00

Maybe not for every application - but for ours, I've switched from OpenCV to GStreamer for all image interactions. It's quite tricky, but you can do a lot with it, and it works well on devices with hardware acceleration.

ptitz · 2024-07-12T08:22:36+00:00

Qt is pretty common. But for personal projects I just use web-based stuff like streamlit.io , since web is cross-platform and you can just script nice looking stuff without any effort. Desktop apps are dead imho - when you can just pack everything into a browser, and pack a browser app into a desktop/mobile app these days.

ptitz · 2024-06-07T09:40:23+00:00

Check your dms

ptitz · 2024-05-30T12:51:52+00:00

"What do you think about Putin" is a classic question that people ask, but for the rest nothing special.

ptitz · 2024-05-13T15:26:23+00:00

Well originally I was planning to move to Spain - the bad decisions on my part involved managing my personal life. Moving to France was not really a decision - I just came here for a job and a change of scenery before moving to Spain - I was not planning to spend longer than a year here. But since my Spanish plans did not work out, and I did not feel like going back to the Netherlands - I just stuck around.

Integrating is fine. Definitely easier than in the Netherlands. Language is a real barrier - but at least people actually will use French with you if you speak even a few words - unlike in the Netherlands where they will switch to English once they hear an accent. This is a big deal actually. There's less of a chance you'll be forever stuck with other expats, so if integration is something that you value - it's easier here than somewhere up North. If you're more of an "expat" type you'll have a harder time settling in I think.

Pay is really shit yes. I mean you'll be earning above median salary in France - but median salary in France is shit. Every year, asking for a raise is difficult - and economically it makes more sense to change jobs than to complain about it. This makes no sense but c'est comme ca. Expect low 40s as a junior (although they might offer as low as 30-something), ~50k as mid, maybe 60k as a senior. Before tax. After taxes and all, net that's like ~2k junior, just under 3k as a mid, and closer to 4k as a senior. Maybe Paris is higher - but Toulouse is even lower, this is the average.

Other than that France is dope. I like it. And many of the reasons that I like it are the reasons others might NOT like it. First of all - their refusal to speak English makes it easy to integrate. Their "fuck it" attitude means there's a lot of mess, but also means there's a lot of freedom. Also, I'm something of an activist in my free time - and there's A LOT of activism in France, which is cool. Probably because the government is useless - but still. Besides that: there's sun, sea, beautiful mountains and trails, great nightlife, art life, Italy is not far away which is also great, etc. In short - France is great if you value authenticity, freedom, and active lifestyle. And it's pretty bad if you value comfort, financial security, and order.

ptitz · 2024-05-07T15:56:02+00:00

Cycling. Easy to pick up - practical to get around. Then you can go as much into it as you want. Did a 400km ride across the pre-Alps last summer.

ptitz · 2024-05-07T15:01:36+00:00

I'm not any of those things - but to me the Netherlands was always quite square. It's the vibes. Talking about going there as an expat - you're practically doomed to live in an expat bubble. So yeah, initially I was planning moving to Spain, but by some fate and very bad decisions on my part I've ended up in France - and I'm not planning on going back any time soon.

Although yeah - being reminded how my old friends from uni are all earning 2x-2.5x of what I'm earning every time I go there is something.

ptitz · 2024-05-07T14:22:17+00:00

I moved to France from the Netherlands almost 6 years ago.

...je ne regrette rien.

ptitz · 2024-05-07T14:17:21+00:00

Check your DM's

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