Including "Dropout" as some significant metric is truly idiotic. Meekly going through a university degree isn't indicative of being a paragon of virtue or success, and it's a safe bet that most higher end convicted fraudsters had a degree, probably an advanced one (i.e. the large majority of politicians in that group.)

There's a classic book from 1985 about an early, successful attempt to make one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie

Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaemons

The Eudaemons were a small group headed by graduate physics students J. Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard at the University of California Santa Cruz in the late 1970s.[1] The group's immediate objective was to find a way to beat roulette using a concealed computer, with the ulterior motive of using the money made from roulette to fund a scientific community. The name of the group was inspired by the eudaimonism philosophy. .... As a science experiment, the group's objective was accomplished: to prove that there was a way of predicting where a ball would fall in a roulette wheel given input data about the timing of the passage of the ball relative to the wheel.

A previous wearable roulette computer had been built and used in a casino by Edward O. Thorp and Claude Shannon in 1960–1961, though it had only been used briefly.[2][3]

She should sue the city controlling that police department, into oblivion. Or at least to the absolute max she can get.

Drop in the bucket for them. Giving Zuck some jail time would be the more appropriate message - there's no doubt he knows and approves of the kind of evil activity the New Mexico law enforcement dug up.

That would be a dream, but cannot see it happening. But totally agree with your theory- platforms should face genuine legal exposure for algorithmic harm to minors (as tobacco companies did for health harm).

Unfortunately, as we found out recently, Meta's lobbyists are a powerful force to contend with and I do not trust our governments to stand up to them.

One solution: do NOT just program for work. If it's not work related - where management can dictate how you work - you can whatever you want, and if what you want is to keep writing software and not outsource your brain to an AI, absolutely do so.

I’ve come to the same conclusion, though my line of work was research rather than software engineering. “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” It’s fun as long as I enjoyed the tunes being called, but the tunes changed, and I became less interested in playing.

I am now a tenure-track community college professor. I’m evaluated entirely by my teaching and service. While teaching a full course load is intense, and while my salary is nowhere near what a FAANG engineer makes, I get three months of summer break and one month of winter break every year to rejuvenate and to work on personal projects, with nobody telling me what research projects to work on, how frequently I should publish, and how fast I ship code.

This quote from J. J. Thomson resonates with me, and it’s more than 100 years old:

"Granting the importance of this pioneering research, how can it best be promoted? The method of direct endowment will not work, for if you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible results being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to work on a lower, or at any rate a different plane where he could be sure of getting year by year tangible results which would justify his salary. The position is this: You want this kind of research, but, if you pay a man to do it, it will drive him to research of a different kind. The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it." (from https://archive.org/details/b29932208/page/198/mode/2up).

That was the original strategy for universities: teaching was the job, and research was the side-product of having some very smart people with free time. Until some "genius" decided that it was better to have professors competing for money to pay directly for their research. This transformed a noble and desirable profession into just another money searching activity.

Fine that doesn't change the fact for a lot of people they felt they had "if you love what you do you don't work a day in your life" and now they don't. They aren't wrong to feel a sense of deep loss.

I wholeheartedly agree. Computing professions such as software engineering used to feel like, "Wow, they're paying me to do this!" Yes, there was real work involved, but for many of us it never felt like drudgery, and we produced, shipped, and made our customers, managers, and other stakeholders happy. I remember a time (roughly 20 years ago) when zealous enthusiasts would proudly profess that they'd work for companies like Apple or Google for free if they could work on their dream projects.

Times have changed. The field has become much more serious about making money; fantasies about volunteering at Apple have been replaced with fantasies about very large salaries and RSU grants. Simultaneously (and I don't think coincidentally), the field has become less fun. I recognized how privileged this sounds talking about "fun", given how for most of humanity, work isn't about having fun and personal fulfillment, but about making the money required to house, feed, and clothe themselves and their loved ones. Even with the drudgery of corporate life, it beats the work conditions and the abuse that many other occupations get.

Still, let's pour one out for a time when the interests and passions of computing enthusiasts did line up with the interests of the corporate world.

The money was what did it, not the AI. If we were all just tinkering with the AI all day long this stuff would still be fun.

Money sucking the joy out of things, a tale as old as time.

I didn't say they were. I feel it too.

Or just shut down your computer after work and “touch grass”. Go to the gym, hang out with friends and family.

My “brain” has always been a systems thinker. I was fortunate enough even in my first job to be directly in front of our customer and gathering requirements, not having the label for it then but trying to solve XYProblems, dealing directly with users and their pain points and seeing an entire data entry department built around my code. This was when I was 22 - 3 decades ago.

Now my brain helps me go from ambiguous, conflicting requirements, working with people, an empty AWS account and an empty git repo to a complete working solution.

Coding has always been the necesary grind between vision and implementation

Totally agree. I'm baffled by those who don't clearly see that Codex works better than C.C. in many ways.

Codex being faster is not at all equivalent to working better. Claude Code does what I need from it most of the time.

I said better, not faster. Primarily, it writes better code, works more smoothly, is better at describing what it's doing and what it's done.

Well, yes, but it was in response to a post mostly waxing lyrical about using rust instead of typescript, so forgive me if I got the wrong impression.

Also, that is so far outside my experience that I can’t tell if you are joking.

Codex seems to always do exactly what I ask of it, nothing more, and nothing less, and with as many shortcuts as possible.

All lower case, instant won't read.

Agree. It is just stupid, doesn't serve any functional purpose.

In this case, it seems to be serving as a useful filter function.

Yeah, I got the sarcasm, but that's ok.

I'll water my indoor tomatoes, basil and thyme. It is way more productive than blabbering about gardening in the internet.

I didnt even notice.

I have an RTX 6000 Pro Max-Q, which has 96GB VRAM. It identified the hardware correctly but incorrectly thought it had 4GB, at least if I interpret the RAM dropdown correctly.

Then it shows the full resolution models, which are completely unnecessary to run quality inference. Quantized models are routine for local inference and it should realize that.

Needs work.

This is really important work.

Try Meetup.com. It's unfortunately gone downhill in many ways, but there are still people using it. Search for in-person meetups in your area and if any look interesting, sign up and go to some events.

Yep, meetup.com, eventbrite.com and for the musically inclined residentadvisor.com and dice.fm.

The trick for me was to offer to help with the organization of the event, it is more rewarding and makes for more lasting connections.