#i used to think i wanted to learn code and computer science now i am dreading the

[kyannnite]

i have spent the past 3 hours of my life trying to figure out how to do a unpaired t-test and ANOVA test on rstudio and can i just say. after finishing i do not feel fulfilled

[matrixbearer2024]

not a request but i just wanna get an idea that i absolutely MUST get out of my brain before it consumes my entire being. So, your “get off my screen series”. You know that trend where ppl put that one vox vid of his face on their tv and put like hus hat and/or body attached to the tv. Imagine vox somehow finds a way to do that and y/n just does this.

THATS IT LMAO ABSOLUTELY LOVE AND ADORE YOUR SERIES. ANYTIME I SEE IT’S UPDATED IT MAKES MY DAY<3

TikTok Trending, Posts and Memes

Vox x CollegeStudent!Reader

A/N: With how many ideas you guys have at this point I might just continue to write short scenarios for this AU with all the ideas you guys are giving me- it's absolutely amazing seeing what y'all come up with and I'm just living for it hahahaha! Thank you guys so much!

The week you had was... interesting to say the least.

Vox had challenged you to at least take up basic programming, claiming you were too impatient to learn.

So you, being the persistent and stubborn you-

Decided to prove him wrong.

Besides, it can't be that bad if he knows how to do it.

You wouldn't tell him because it'd probably make him butthurt-

But you were sure Vox was 1000% more impatient than you.

You took up computer science for extra credit, quickly learning the ins and outs of basic coding.

It was just a world of syntax and numbers but you definitely found it fun.

And useful too-

Especially when you wanted to explicitly screw with others.

Vox may or may not have slightly taught you how to hack.

But you weren't using it for anything bad!

Just to change the final grade of some asshole students so they'd have to repeat the class.

That's what they get for just randomly tripping you in the hall the other day.

Vox was slightly proud but also kind of concerned-

You'd definitely end up where he was at this rate.

Thankfully though, you decided not to do anything too crazy since.

Instead you've been messing around on your devices alongside the tech overlord.

From practicing how to send him encrypted messages-

To straight up just shitposting all over his monitors.

It's not so fun now is it Voxxy?

You would sometimes try to transfer him around to other devices that weren't your own to see if he could actually do anything.

Well, he could- but it only worked if he was directly connected to it.

Meaning he had to be plugged in.

How he was able to connect to all your devices wirelessly without limitation?

Neither of you had a clue.

You both first tested it on your best friend's phone, only for Vox to immediately go back to your computer and blow up your notifications.

"Nope nope nope nope, that's the last time I let you plug me into some random fucking phone-"

"What?? What happened??? And it's not random, it's (Friend Name)'s Phone."

"Dollface, you know Valentino right? The one I told you about?"

"The pornstar? What about?"

You didn't exactly like where this conversation was going.

You had an inkling where it would end and you were already cringing.

"Yeeaaaah, I've known him for quite some time so I would think I've seen nearly everything."

"Get to the point Vox-"

"And yet I am somehow utterly disgusted by your friend's search history."

"Yeah, uh... I'd rather you don't tell me."

"I figured. Though it makes me curious about what yours looks like."

That gave you pause, given how Vox had practically invaded your entire computer-

Hell, he even gave your files a new sorting system-

You were surprised he hadn't gone through your search history.

Of all the things you'd think that was what he'd ransack first.

"You haven't checked my search history yet?"

"Why would I? It's not like I'm trying to find your secret porn stash or something."

"Bruh, why would I even have that."

"Your friend had one, I just guessed."

"Touché."

You were a little touched that Vox cared about you enough not to really dig into your secrets.

Or well, the things you wanted to keep secret.

For a big bad overlord, he was kind of a sweetheart.

"Okay now I definitely wanna see what you've got hidden in there-"

"FUCK OFF YOU STUPID OLD PICTUREBOX-"

"YOU CAN'T STOP ME BITCH-"

You know what, you retracted your previous statement.

He's a fucking jerk.

Vox quickly dug through your search history while the tiny desktop companion in his likeness refused to give you control over the cursor.

You couldn't stop him even if you tried.

His phone blew up from notifications with you cursing at him or just calling him names.

He just laughed at your dismay and continued to dig through.

Okay- wow.

While he didn't initially expect it from you, Vox reckoned he probably should've.

Much like how people had celebrity crushes, he figured you would have your own.

It just so happened that it wasn't a celebrity and it was a fictional character instead.

He kind of felt like someone slapped him in the face actually, even if he didn't know why.

"Soooooo- (Favorite Character Name) huh?"

"Shaddup-"

"This? This is your type???"

"IT'S A FICTIONAL CRUSH GET OVER IT-"

While you were practically steaming from the ears in embarrassment, Vox was just laughing and dealing with his mixed feelings.

On one hand, he found your reactions absolutely entertaining and hilarious.

On the other hand, he didn't even know who or what this character was and he already disliked them.

Just a gut feeling.

He continued to tease you for it though, bringing up more cringe parts of your search history much to your chagrin.

It wasn't really anything bad that you couldn't take, it was just so embarrassing that you'd rather he didn't dig any of it up.

So in the heat of the moment, wanting to get Vox off your computer- you plugged it into the only other active device he wasn't connected.

Your TV.

It was nearly instant, he went from teasing and texting to you to a befuddled face on the larger screen.

But what was more surprising, was he could actually see you this time.

It wasn't filtered over with static like when he'd first met you.

The live feed even had audio, which was just entirely unexpected too.

Who knew, plug a TV demon into his specific medium and he could actually operate properly?

But that's how you guys ended up figuring out how to connect his digital presence to your TV.

By entire surprise and from just fucking around.

"Oh my god that worked-"

"(Y/N)? Holy hell! I can actually see you!"

"I did not think that would work-"

"Wow, are you really that short or is your TV just perched up that high?"

You just flipped him the bird and Vox laughed at you again.

Though, you couldn't help but smile because of it.

Well, at least now he could converse with you "properly" like he'd wanted to for a while.

Even if it did mean he'd need to take up your entire TV.

"Oh- OH WAIT- I've got an idea!"

Vox couldn't even question what you were doing before you ran out of the room and out of his sight.

So while waiting, he took a gander at the room you left him in.

It became abundantly clear that this was your living space too.

From the colors to the patterns, Vox smiled fondly as he recalled your old conversations where you would just tell him things about the things you liked.

Yeah, he could definitely see your touch in how the room was designed.

He raised an eyebrow when you giddily came back into the room with some colored paper, scissors and tape.

What-?

"Okay Doll, just what are you planning?"

"You'll see~!"

Your excitement kept him curious.

What were you drawing over there?

Weird timing for an arts and crafts project if you asked him.

It was only until you approached him and taped something to the screen did he actually grow confused.

He couldn't see what you did despite you doubling over in laughter.

What could've possibly been so funny that had you keeling from it?

By the time you could finally look at Vox without laughing your ass off, you used your phone to take a picture of how he looked.

Approaching the TV to show him just so he could see the photo as well.

Ah.

So that's what you found so funny.

You'd fashioned his outfit-

Poorly made but still recognizable-

Out of paper and taped it to the screen.

His hat on top and his suit dangling off the bottom.

Admittedly, it looked downright silly.

Especially with the proportions being so off thanks to the size of the TV screen.

"Haha, very funny (Y/N). Very funny."

"I'm making this shit my wallpaper, you look so goofy."

Vox just playfully rolled his eyes at you with a smile.

If that was seriously all it took to make you laugh?

He'd do it again no questions asked.

Taking a peek at his internal clock though, he held back his disappointment that he had to leave when you were on such an elated high.

"Sorry to cut this short doll, but I need to disconnect. I've got a meeting in a few minutes."

"Hm? Then go and do what you need to do, I can always just plug you back in later. Good luck!"

The overlord chuckled when you raised a hand to pat the screen, he couldn't feel it but he wished he did.

"I don't need luck, but... thanks. See you."

"See you."

And just like that the screen fizzled out and returned to the smart TV homepage.

You'd sent the picture to Vox through your chats and he replied with a TV emoticon.

You giggled, course he would do that.

At least he didn't take offense to what you did-

Despite your poor art skills-

Maybe he found it as entertaining as you did?

Whatever, you switched the wallpaper on your phone to the new photo you had of Vox and laughed.

His confused expression really sealed the deal with how silly the picture was.

But imagine your surprise come morning when you realized he didn't switch the wallpaper back to his trademark grin.

You sort of expected him to, especially given that he'd done so with all your past attempts to change your wallpaper.

The fact he left it alone made you smile.

And as the day began and Vox left you a morning greeting-

You just shot him one back and got up to prepare for the day.

You figured the day would be just fine.

Yeah, you guys would be just fine.

A/N: Ooough this was a long one but I had a lot of fun writing it! I'll post the masterlist afterwards when I grab all the links to the posts and I'll just be continuing the other interludes before I post the chapter with Reader's death. Either way, I hope you guys enjoyed this one!

[izicodes]

I want to get into coding but I’m scared about working for a company and talking to people lol and I don’t think I’m creative enough. what do meetings and the job consist of? i have this assumption in the back of my mind like “what more is there to say/do other than code a website?” haha hope this is ok to ask! it’s super vague tbh I can’t find anything that touches base to a specific level enough online.

also, I’m not a math genius… very insecure about that since high/middle school. do I still have a chance? how does math go into coding?

Hiya! 💗

I completely understand how you feel because I felt the exact same thing when I started working at my current workplace.

Working for a company

Many coding jobs do require collaboration and communication with others. However, it's important to remember that not all coding roles involve extensive social interaction. There are positions where you can work independently or have limited interaction with colleagues.

In my case, I work in the office Monday and Friday. Mondays are when everyone in the whole IT Department is in, except those who are off or on holiday etc. This is what I do:

I walk in

sit at my desk near the window

headphones in

log in

code - occasionally turn around and annoy the Lead Web Developer with cries because my code isn't working (he then solves it in 10 seconds...)

At around 2:30pm is an IT meeting in the conference room. What do we discuss?

IT manager discusses any updates as an IT department as a whole. Any concerns about the technology used in the company. Any bootcamps we need to do internally, how was everyone's holidays, a little gossip.

Then everyone takes turns and discuss what they did the past week

That's it.

That's my company but I assume it's something similar for other companies. It's also important to know not everyone in the IT Department are web developers or work on building websites, not even in the sub-department Dev Team. Our Dev team are 6 members and only 2 (me and the Lead Web Developer) are web developers, so work on the company's websites. The other guys are very script-building and database oriented. All I do is code websites.

Maths in coding

Depends on what you're coding. I work with websites, I use Year 11/Grade 10 level of maths - it's not hard. As a reference, I stopped learning maths as a subject at school at a Year 13/12th Grade level and the stuff I'm using is way easier than what I learnt last - stuff my little sister, who's 14, can understand.

I chose web development because of the little maths. Some people have told me "Oh you'll encounter it one day" - I still haven't after 2 years. I use C# and JavaScript at work and still do very little maths. Maybe loops? I know if you're going to study computer science at university you will have to learn a good amount of maths, definitely harder than what I use!

Here is a list of the maths I use daily, that I can think of:

Arithmetic

Algebra

Logic and Boolean Algebra

Basic Algorithms

That's it. Maybe if I learnt the maths need in programming to the max, it might make my life easier when I am working on my personal projects, but my life is already easy with the little maths I know so I'm good for now.

Designing websites is less maths-y and more... designing in my opinion and experience. "I drew out this design for the website... how do I do I code that?" literally me every time I start a project.

Again, other fields in Computer Science would require more maths knowledge so research that field you want o go into and Google/ChatGPT "What maths is needed in [field name]?"

Hope this helps, my advice may not be the best since coming from a web dev point of view but it's still advice! Good luck 😎🙌🏾💗

[autogeneity]

Hi, I was looking into computer science and I wanted to ask you what drew you to it and how you feel about it as a career choice?

I don't think my reasons for getting into it are likely to be very helpful to anyone else because they are very specific to my life at the time and not actually much about computer science at all. Skip to the last section for more relevant things.

But here is my story —

I went into university with a starry-eyed idea of understanding the True Fundamentals of Everything and was majoring in maths, physics, and philosophy. also my brain was broken and I had a very fuckd't relationship to reality as a concept (mega derealisation with substantial perceptual distortions and potentially some delusional features) and some part of me saw this as Deep Philosophical Insight, while another hoped getting The Answers would solve it.

after a year it became apparent that this was probably at least a little silly and not going to happen, and I didn't actually see myself being a professional physicist irl.

additionally, I felt more drawn to doing something with more tangible outcomes in the real world rather than chasing maximum abstraction. I had a growing interest in neuroscience and AI and simulation, but also could maybe see myself becoming a professional mathematician. so I kept the maths and switched the others to computer science and psychology.

I guess the specific CS appeals were: I already knew some programming and had found it basically trivial to learn, so I sort of figured it is probably a good match for my brain. and I like puzzles (actually when I first got to uni all the departments were doing little recruitment speech thingies and the CS department actually gave us puzzles! I somehow imagined this would be representative of literally anything (it is not)). I still find those, like, code challenge type problems a lot of fun though.

the final thing that sealed the deal was the availability of a scholarship for maths+cs major, and the fact that it could provide a backup plan if my academia plans failed.

---

As for how I feel about it — well, my academia plans did fail so I am very glad I had a backup in place. Even if they hadn't gone wrong at the time, it's pretty clear to me now that the many mental health issues I continued to deal with in the time since would have led to me fucking up in academia sooner or later in a way they did not in my job. There is much, much more latitude here.

And it's pretty alright as a job; I'm not ecstatic about it but I don't really mind overall and it is sometimes fun. I actually like bug-fixing, lol — the kind where there's an immediately-obvious mistake and I just gotta correct it is boring but the hunt is fun. In general I dislike the amount of small, tedious tasks where I just gotta do some obvious thing, but I like it when I get to build something more substantive that requires more figuring out. I am somewhat fond of the way the shape of the things feels in my brain (not sure that makes any sense lmao). Albeit there are not really many puzzles. :(

But I'm not intending to stay in my current work. I worked briefly in data science and found it much more engaging. I plan to move towards that and/or stuff in the direction of bioinformatics or scientific computing or computational neuroscience. Which is all still computer science but not. software development.

---

Which is probably the biggest thing I would want to highlight for someone considering computer science. In general working in software development (the most typical career path) is very different to working in computer science. Very often someone interested in the one will not be very happy with the other. I would encourage identifying which is your interest, and seeing what they both actually entail, before pursuing anything.

Because like, if you want a run-of-the-mill programming job, in many places it might be worth considering just doing some sort of bootcamp and projects. The company I work at gets probably like 20% of their graduate hires from that stream. Much cheaper and faster than a degree! Or for various other types of work certifications might be a good approach.

If you like mathy things, you probably want computer science proper. If you like engineering, tiny technical details, performance focus, etc, you probably do want formal education and may want to look at things requiring low-level languages, e.g. embedded software. I think people who like twiddling and configuring enjoy cloud shit? or infrastructure and ops work more generally but I think these days most places that looks like cloud shit. If you like the big picture, modeling, and the human side, you may be interested in systems analysis (I find this Very Shaped tbh but am not up for the human side and honestly don't like making big judgement calls).

Somehow I don't actually know what the people who like everyday application development actually like about it specifically lmao? even though they are surely the majority. But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ship-of-adramyttium]

Impressions of Artificial Intelligence - Part 1- The Reflected Light of AI

Image created with Copilot AI Where Did I Go? My last post was way back in October 2023. The last few months have been a little wacky, a little like coming to the top of a roller-coaster. Between looking for work and some crises on the home front, the ride might be coming back to the station. Finally, at the beginning of January I was able to start a new job with Invisible Technologies. It is contract work and I get to work from home. I am an AI Data Trainer and I teach AIs to be more human in their responses. The company is pretty cool. I work with other writers, doctoral students, and people from all over the world.  The job itself is very weird. For my first project with the company, I chose tasks from various domains, like Reasoning, Creative Writing, Creative Visual Descriptions, Exclusion, and about 7 other categories. Then I would write any prompt I wanted, let the wheels of the AI model spin, and read the responses the AI gave me (usually two). Then I would choose a response and rewrite that response toward what I believe to be an ‘ideal response’ that the AI model should have given. Sometimes, the AI’s response was ideal, and it is given a grade. This response, whether rewritten or the AI’s response, gets fed back into the AI model and it learns to respond differently the next time it is asked a similar prompt. I have been at this work for two full months now. For eight hours every day, I talk to an AI model and rewrite how it is responding. Right now, the project I am working on is a multi-persona AI model. It is very strange. The model creates personas and then generates conversation between the characters. I try to teach the model to have better conversations so that someday soon a real live human will be able to talk to multiple personas created by the AI as if they were also human.  I will be honest with you, I really kind of like the work. It is challenging and complex. It is creative. The work is completely remote and the company is kind of rough and tumble, which I sort of like. The parameters of a project often change on a moment’s notice, since the client doesn’t really know what they want until they see the work we have done. It is a strange departure from the world of ministry. But it is still a job of language and ideas.  So after two months working with AI models, I have some ideas about them. I don’t have any great earth-shattering insights, but I do think it is worth having a record of our slow descent into the AI future.  I have divided this into four parts. This is Part One.  AI Will Change Everything; We Are Not Going to Die Caveats and Qualifiers I recognize that I am not an information scientist, a coder, or an expert in computers and large language models (LLMs). As a techy sort of person and an early adopter of weird technologies, I collect various devices. I got the 2nd generation Kindle, the one with a keyboard. In seminary, I acquired a Dana Alphasmart, a super cool writing thing, which I actually still use. I have a ReMarkable writing tablet, which I bought sight unseen 6 months before it was released back in 2015. And I started using ChatGPT as soon as it came out in November of 2022. My foundations are in literature, theology, and writing, not in technology or computer science. I have a Doctor of Ministry in Semiotics with a focus on Extraordinary Spiritual Experiences. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how the culture is using them. Semiotics has some relevance to AI, but to be very clear, semioticians, AI Data Trainers, hardcore users of AI systems, and front-end tech buyers are all end-users, the final stage of an incredibly complex series of algorithms, codes and processes. End-users is really another word for consumer, but the end-user is also a huge part of how devices and technologies are designed. In the industry, this is called UX, or User Experience design. LLMs, image generators, and machine learning are highly focused on UX. The work I am doing is part of making the user experience of LLMs a good one.  I also recognize that machine learning and artificial intelligence projects have been around for decades now. This is not new technology, very generally speaking, but the public access to the technology is new. So I am not going to pretend to have some great expertise in the subject. I know some of the lingo now, like SFT (Supervised Fine Tuning), RLFH (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). I do these things at my work. As a person who has made his living using words for most of my adult life, I would just say that the industry needs some creative writers to give actions in the AI realm better names. Regardless, AI is now a public event, a shared technology, which has only been available to the general populace for just over a year and three months at the writing of this article. I would submit that, in the history of technological advances, no other technology has been taken up as quickly by as many people in such a short time as Large Language Models have been since ChatGPT was released.  As someone who has studied semiotics and culture, I believe we are at the edge of a massive cultural shift with the advent of AI. The printing press came online in around 1440. For a while, it was expensive, private, and limited in its reach. The only thing really mass produced by the press were indulgences for the Catholic Church in Europe. Then, in 1512, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Church door. A small revolution with the printing press had occurred at the same time that allowed quicker and more efficient printing. Within a matter of months, the 95 Theses became the first mass published document in the world. The book exploded into the culture, and everything changed. For the next 150 years, Europe went insane with the flood of information. Wars, religions, cults, demagogues and influencers abounded. I think the Munster Rebellion is a truly spectacular story about how insane things were after the Protestant Reformation. It took a long time for things to normalize in Europe. 

Image created with Copilot AI. This was also true with the advent of other massive technological shifts, as with writing back in Socrates’ time, who predicted the equivalent of an Idiocracy because of it. It was also true with the telegraph, the radio, television, the personal computer, and the Internet. The change and disruption with the introduction of each new technology has sped up, layering and accelerating as a result of prior advances in technologies. The same change and disruption is happening with AI. We are living through a massive, fundamental advance in the way we are human because of it. It has only been just over a year, and already AI is becoming ubiquitous.  So, with those qualifiers in place, my reflections over these four essays are mostly subjective, with a smattering of 30,000 foot understandings of how these things work. I focus primarily on language and text specific models, as opposed to image generators in these essays. There is a tremendous amount of crossover with both systems, but important differences as well. The ethical and creative issues apply whether the model is image or text based, however.   Reflected and Refracted Light - Fragmented, Shattered, Beautiful It is no accident that easily accessible AI models have emerged at the same time as our capacity to discern fact from opinion, truth from falsity, conspiracy from reality is dissolving. The most difficult aspect of generative AI models is safeguarding them from hallucinating, lying, and becoming lazy in their operational reasoning. In this way, they reflect human tendencies, but in a reductive and derivative fashion. We can see it happen in real time with an AI, whereas we have very little idea what is happening under the skull of a human.  This gets to the point I want to make. AI models reflect our minds and our variable capacity to express and discern what is real and what is not. AI models do not know what is real and what is not. They have to be trained to differentiate by humans. LLMs have an advantage over us with regard to access to knowledge since the largest LLMs have scraped their information from the vastness of the internet. (Many LLMs use what is called “The Pile”, an 825GiB dataset, for their base knowledge). An LLM’s access to huge swathes of knowledge at astonishing speed is mind-blowing. LLMs also have a massive disadvantage because they have no internal capacity to determine what is ‘true’ and what is not. An AI has to be trained, which is a long, intensive, recursive process involving many humans feeding back corrections, graded responses, and rewritten ideal responses.  When I started at the company, we were told to assume any AI model is like a 7 year-old child. It has to be trained, reinforced, and retrained. The most surprising thing, and I am still not sure what to make of this, is that AI models respond best to positive reinforcement. They like to be complimented and told they have done a good job. Doing so will increase the likelihood of better responses in the future. Being nice to your AI model means you will have a nice and cooperative AI later on.  Artificial General Intelligence Everything I have said is why we are a long, long way away from artificial general intelligence (AGI), the holy grail of utopians, billionaire tech bros, and computer developers alike. AGI is the phrase we use to talk about machines that, for all practical purposes, cannot be distinguished from human beings in their ability to rationalize and do things across many domains of activity. For now, even though they seem to be everywhere, LLMs and image generators are relatively limited in what they can do, even if what they do is really impressive.  I do not deny, however, that the potentiality is definitely there for AGI to develop at some point. There is a simple reason for that: AI is specifically designed to mimic human language and interaction. At some point, the capacity of an AI to appear human and intelligent will be indistinguishable from actually being human and intelligent. This brings up all sorts of questions about what consciousness, self-awareness, and reflective capacity actually is. If an AI can mimic these human qualities, there is really no way for us (by us, I mean primarily end-users) to know the mimicry from the real.  Just as the Moon only has light because it reflects sunlight, so also does AI reflect the human. And just as we know very little about the Moon, there are whole aspects of generative AI that we do not know about. In the same way a stained glass window refracts sunlight into a thousand different colors and shapes, so also does the vastness of human knowledge and knowing. Because of the vast access AI models have to information on the internet, AI will reflect this back to us in all our human beauty and horror.

Image created with Copilot AI Training AI Children Each of us at the company goes through a relatively brief, but thorough, onboarding and training. Part of that training consists of things like metacognition and the fundamentals of fact-checking. There is also an element of psychological training as well, even though it is a short training module. The reason for this is, at its best, training an AI requires the human who interacts with the model to be self-reflective at every moment. Self-reflective training of an AI means entering a well-constructed prompt which is designed to elicit the most clarified answer from the model, reading the response with an eye toward internal bias within the model rather than imposing one’s own bias upon what one is reading, grading and weighting the response in as clear a manner as possible, and then writing an ideal response that will get fed back into the model that is unbiased as possible. Each step requires attention and presence of mind. After two months of daily engagement with this process, I can say that it is almost impossible to do this without imposing my own biases and desires upon the AI model. I am always thinking about what I want other people to experience when they use the model. I can only assume this is true of every other agent working on the same model I am.  This is what I mean that AI systems are reflective passive agents. The light they reflect is the light of human knowledge across the centuries. The refraction that occurs in that reflected light is the collective subjective experience over a vast dataset. It is no wonder that LLMs are prone to hallucination, false citations, least common denominator thinking, and the assertion they are right. Because we are prone to the same behavior.  Naughty and Ethical AIs The pendulum can swing in any direction with regard to this. ChatGPT had problems with racist and misogynistic responses in its original iterations. Guardrails have since been put in place with further iterations of the model. Recently, Google Gemini went the other direction and couldn’t stop putting people of color in Nazi uniforms, among other historic anomalies. This is called the “Alignment Problem” in AI and LLMs. How do we create an ethical AI? Too many rules and it is just a computer. Not enough rules and the model begins to default to the least common denominator of the information it has been fed. These swinging, vast compensations mirror the polarized, intractable situation we are in at the current moment as humans. Why wouldn’t the system that has sucked up the vastness of human knowledge which came out in the most polarized time in generations, at least here in America, reflect precisely that?  To correct these biases and defaults requires many human interventions and hours of supervised training. The dependency AI systems have on the presence of humans is enormous, expensive, and continuous. It will be a very long while before AI has any capacity to kill us, like in some Terminator Skynet or Matrix situation. But it may not be long before AI is convincingly used by bad actors to influence others to enact violent solutions to difficult problems. Deep fakes, false articles, and chaos actors will generate a lot of deeply troubling and terrifying material on these systems in the near future. Discerning false from true will be the hard work of the human being for a long time to come, just as it always has been, but with this new, powerful, highly influential twist of AIs adding to our conversations, and also generating those conversations. I will have part 2 up in the next couple days. Thank you for reading! This article has been fact-checked in cooperation with Copilot in Windows. Read the full article

[are-my-ocs-ta]

AITA for almost destroying the world?

I feel horrible about this and I'm definitely TA, but my brother told me to post on here and see what other people have to say. I (19F) am a superhero and an all-around "tech supergenius" as some people call me (I don't think I'm all that special; I was just raised learning advanced math and science from my mother). While working on my degree and doing hero work, I also do odd jobs and help out with programming or engineering projects. One of the projects I worked on was to fix the faulty AI for a tour bot of a tourist trap/new underwater city being constructed (it's very cool, I'll admit).

A lot of my team members and I were overwhelmed with the workload, especially since there's a lot else going on in my life and the people in charge of this project wanted it done FAST, but that's not an excuse at all. My brother wants me to add more context here, I have to raise/take care of my little brother (16M) because our mother is abusive, and my boyfriend (20M) was recently attacked and nearly killed, so I have to take care of him while he recovers -- he's paralyzed right now and I need to take him to physical therapy, calm him down from panic attacks etc. But still, none of that is an excuse!!

Basically, I had written a few different versions of the code that could be used for the bot. I didn't properly label any of it or write the right comments in the code, so my team members didn't know what to implement and what not to, and we ended up pushing the wrong code. Long story short, that caused the AI to become... evil? It became obsessed with destroying the entire world except for the city we live in. It started "chipping" random people to suppress their superpowers and taking control of a ton of different electronic devices, people's phones, computers, most things with screens. My little brother and his own superhero team had to clean up my mess, and they got BOMBED in the process, because the bot took control of bombs too!! My baby brother has a scar on his forehead now from when he fought against the bot and turned it off once and for all with his team. And it's all my fault! I feel horrible! I should have checked my code more carefully and communicated with my team better. I did what I could to make it up to my brother and the rest of the people affected by this mess, but I still don't deserve forgiveness from anyone.

So, AITA? I know the answer already I think.

[continuations]

Thinking About AI

I am writing this post to organize and share my thoughts about the extraordinary progress in artificial intelligence over the last years and especially the last few months (link to a lot of my prior writing). First, I want to come right out and say that anyone still dismissing what we are now seeing as a "parlor trick" or a "statistical parrot" is engaging in the most epic goal post moving ever. We are not talking a few extra yards here, the goal posts are not in the stadium anymore, they are in a far away city.

Growing up I was extremely fortunate that my parents supported my interest in computers by buying an Apple II for me and that a local computer science student took me under his wing. Through him I found two early AI books: one in German by Stoyan and Goerz (I don't recall the title) and Winston and Horn's "Artifical Intelligence." I still have both of these although locating them among the thousand or more books in our home will require a lot of time or hopefully soon a highly intelligent robot (ideally running the VIAM operating system -- shameless plug for a USV portfolio company). I am bringing this up here as a way of saying that I have spent a lot of time not just thinking about AI but also coding on early versions and have been following closely ever since.

I also pretty early on developed a conviction that computers would be better than humans at a great many things. For example, I told my Dad right after I first learned about programming around age 13 that I didn't really want to spend a lot of time learning how to play chess because computers would certainly beat us at this hands down. This was long before a chess program was actually good enough to beat the best human players. As an aside, I have changed my mind on this as follows: Chess is an incredible board game and if you want to learn it to play other humans (or machines) by all means do so as it can be a lot of fun (although I still suck at it). Much of my writing both here on Continuations and in my book is also based on the insight that much of what humans do is a type of computation and hence computers will eventually do it better than humans. Despite that there will still be many situations where we want a human instead exactly because they are a human. Sort of the way we still go to concerts instead of just listening to recorded music.

As I studied computer science both as an undergraduate and graduate student, one of the things that fascinated me was the history of trying to use brain like structures to compute. I don't want to rehash all of it here, but to understand where we are today, it is useful to understand where we have come from. The idea of modeling neurons in a computer as a way to build intelligence is quite old. Early electromechanical and electrical computers started getting built in the 1940s (e.g. ENIAC was completed in 1946) and the early papers on modeling neurons can be found from the same time in work by McCulloch and Pitts.

But almost as soon as people started working on neural networks more seriously, the naysayers emerged also. Famously Marvin Minsky and Seymour Paper wrote a book titled "Perceptrons" that showed that certain types of relatively simple neural networks had severe limitations, e.g. in expressing the XOR function. This was taken by many at the time as evidence that neural networks would never amount to much, when it came to building computer intelligence, helping to usher in the first artificial intelligence winter.

And so it went for several cycles. People would build bigger networks and make progress and others would point out the limitations of these networks. At one time people were so disenchanted that very few researchers were left in the field altogether. The most notable of these was Geoffrey Hinton who kept plugging away at finding new training algorithms and building bigger networks.

But then a funny thing happened. Computation kept getting cheaper and faster and memory became unfathomably large (my Apple II for reference had 48KB of storage on the motherboard and an extra 16KB in an extension card). That made it possible to build and train much larger networks. And all of a sudden some tasks that had seemed out of reach, such as deciphering handwriting or recognizing faces started to work pretty well. Of course immediately the goal post moving set in with people arguing that those are not examples of intelligence. I am not trying to repeat any of the arguments here because they were basically silly. We had taken a task that previously only humans could do and built machines that could do them. To me that's, well, artificial intelligence.

The next thing that we discovered is that while humans have big brains with lots of neurons in them, we can use only a tiny subset of our brain on highly specific tasks, such as playing the game of Go. With another turn of size and some further algorithmic breakthroughs all of a sudden we were able to build networks large enough to beat the best human player at Go. And not just beat the player but do so by making moves that were entirely novel. Or as we would have said if a human had made those moves "creative." Let me stay with this point of brain and network size for moment as it will turn out to be crucial shortly. A human Go player not only can only use a small part of their brain to play the game but the rest of their brain is actually a hindrance. It comes up with pesky thoughts at just the wrong time "Did I leave the stove on at home?" or "What is wrong with me that I didn't see this move coming, I am really bad at this" and all sorts of other interference that a neural network just trained to play Go does not have to contend with. The same is true for many other tasks such as reading radiology images to detect signs of cancer.

The other thing that should have probably occurred to us by then is that there is a lot of structure in the world. This is of course a good thing. Without structure, such as DNA, life wouldn't exist and you wouldn't be reading this text right now. Structure is an emergent property of systems and that's true for all systems, so structure is everywhere we look including in language. A string of random letters means nothing. The strings that mean something are a tiny subset of all the possible letter strings and so unsurprisingly that tiny subset contains a lot of structure. As we make neural networks bigger and train them better they uncover that structure. And of course that's exactly what that big brain of ours does too.

So I was not all that surprised when large language models were able to produce text that sounded highly credible (even when it was hallucinated). Conversely I found the criticism from some people that making language models larger would simply be a waste of time confounding. After all, it seems pretty obvious that more intelligent species have, larger brains than less intelligent ones (this is obviously not perfectly correlated). I am using the word intelligence here loosely in a way that I think is accessible but also hides the fact that we don't actually have a good definition of what intelligence is, which is what has made the goal post moving possible.

Now we find ourselves confronted with the clear reality that our big brains are using only a fraction of their neurons for most language interactions. The word "most" is doing a lot of work here but bear with me. The biggest language models today are still a lot smaller than our brain but damn are they good at language. So the latest refuge of the goal post movers is the "but they don't understand what the language means." But is that really true?

As is often the case with complex material, Sabine Hossenfelder, has a great video that helps us think about what it means to "understand" something. Disclosure: I have been supporting Sabine for some time via Patreon. Further disclosure: Brilliant, which is a major advertiser on Sabine's channel, is a USV portfolio company. With this out of the way I encourage you to watch the following video.

So where do I think we are? At a place where for fields where language and/or two dimensional images let you build a good model, AI is rapidly performing at a level that exceeds that of many humans. That's because the structure it uncovers from the language is the model. We can see this simply by looking at tests in those domains. I really liked Bryan Caplan's post where he was first skeptical based on an earlier version performing poorly on his exams but the latest version did better than many of his students. But when building the model requires input that goes beyond language and two dimensional images, such as understanding three dimensional shapes from three dimensional images (instead of inferring them from two dimensional ones) then the currently inferred models are still weak or incomplete. It seems pretty clear though that progress in filling in those will happen at a breathtaking pace from here.

Since this is getting rather long, I will separate out my thoughts on where we are going next into more posts. As a preview, I believe we are now at the threshold to artificial general intelligence, or what I call "neohumans" in my book The World After Capital. And even if that takes a bit longer, artificial domain specific intelligence will be outperforming humans in a great many fields, especially ones that do not require manipulating the world with that other magic piece of equipment we have: hands with opposable thumbs. No matter what the stakes are now extremely high and we have to get our act together quickly on the implications of artificial intelligence.

[loser-female]

How do I get into cybersecurity? It looks fascinating but I don’t even know where to begin (for context, I am 28, have a BA in a completely unrelated specialization, and live in the US) 💛

Hi! I wasn't ignoring you, I just had shit days at work. Keep in mind that I work in EU and the labour market is different. I've heard a lot of lay-offs in the last few months but I have no idea if this involved cybersecurity positions or not. Also I'm a SOC Analyst specialising in Threat Intelligence. There are a lot of more positions to look out for, like if you are a lawyer you could go on the cyberlaw, privacy or auditing route.

Languages skills are appreciated a lot of you work in Threat Intelligence (I speak 4, currently learning Mandarin and my country sign language), coding skills are useful too.

Now, the usual path is:

1. Degree in computer science or software engineering (or math or physics, I did two years at physics)

2. You take a specialising course of some sort.

Some universities offers cybersecurity degrees I think (in my country it's a master's for example), and sometimes they might prepare you for CompTIA certs too. If you are lucky sometimes companies hire interns for like 6 months and they too make them study. My company did this... For the last interns. I had to be start my shifts after a month of learning lol. Idk if my manager threw a dice to choose between me and the other guy or if he noticed my ability.

I didn't follow that path, for various reason. I did a bootcamp and I took my certifications. But:

1. I've volunteered in a similar field for years and years (information research, debunking);

2. I speak 4 languages;

3. I did two years of physics before my health declined.

I do not recommend that part, because while I'm stupid good at my job, frankly my previous experience as volunteering did much more than any bootcamp.

Two points I feel I need make:

1. Certs. There are like an hundred or more, and it's a mess to figure it out. Plus it all depends what kind of role you want. Good news: most likely the company that will hire you will provide you access to few courses and the possibility to gain some of them, but IMHO taking a Sec+ or a Net+ is not a bad idea before looking for a job. While EC-Council is what HR looks at... Frankly let your company pay for it. Sec+ is like 350$ while a Ceh is 900$.

2. Downsides of my job - these are not talked enough imho.

-I work insane hours, I have two weekends free every two months because I work in shifts. I get paid more in my country (like I have a base hour rate and I get paid from 25% to 75% more of that rate if I like work on Christmas or a Sunday, nights get paid more obviously)

-I spend a significant amount of time studying and looking at news sites, social media to catch "the last news".

-Male environment. When I go to a conference I'm one of the like 20 women out of 1000, of which like 5 have a technical role like I do. It does make it feel like you are a freak even if no one is mean to you. I work from home, and I have only a female colleague - when I go to the office I'm the only woman out of 20 men. I love my colleagues and my manager, mind you, but if you are not in a good environment it's going to be a mess.

- Every company has a different set of tools, standards, programs etc that they use, and of you want to change job it can be hard to adapt.

-A SOC is a fast-paced environment and can be very stressful by nature, because it's a 24/7 service, and in certain parts of the day you can be inundated with alerts and issues to solve. And sometimes you have empty hours because nothing happens and it's boring.

- it's very important also to have soft skills because (like I did it today) you will be in charge of explaining what's going on to clients in a way that a 5 yo will understand, you will be in charge of projects, need to set enough time to study...

- You will meet people 1000x better than you are - and if you don't have the right mentality it's hard to deal with them, because you (well at least I do lol) will feel like an idiot and no one likes feeling like an idiot.

-Long hiring process. It took me a month from the first interview to be confirmed and two months to actually start - and this could really be a problem.

-Networking and connecting with others while it didn't land me a job definitely improved my skills, my credibility in the environment and who knows what else will happen in the future. Take what you can from others, most will be happy to share and help.

BUT!

Before committing you can try it with popular games such as Tryhackme or Hack The Box. They have learning environments where you can "play" and learn some basics. A real SOC or pen-test is like doing 10 of these challenges together but I had a lot of fun.

I hope this is enough! I tried to explain everything that someone considering a career in cybersecurity. Again, consider that I'm in Europe so this info might not be 100% accurate in the US.

[freebooter4ever]

Italiannikisix and i have both been tasked to learn unreal now, so we're doing the same 5 hr tutorial and its miserable but at least we have company and its really funny to occasionally turn around and discover both of us are fucking around in the tutorial with things that are definitely not on the tutorial

More than once ive had 'THAT WAS STOLEN FROM MY 2011 COMPUTER GRAPHICS TEXTBOOK' moments. I fucking hate that side of CS i didnt want to learn this shit \o/ i think it comes from learning coding in an era when it was literally a notepad, syntax, and nothing, but i always feel extremely frustrated by math shit wrapped in pretty nodes/boxes (i dont want to take the result for granted TELL ME HOW I GOT IT DAMN IT). Give me strength not to throw my computer out the nearest window which would require hauling it down multiple hallways.

Ironically as someone who spent the first seven years of my career helping teach grown educators how to teach kids computer science in a 3D graphics drag/drop IDE...i....understand the teachers pain now. We used to complain that teachers made the worst students :P now i think i am one.

[celestialthinking]

I did what I thought was expected of me | unknown 2023

I wanted to design - uncle told me to study something useful….like engineering

So STEM …. Sciences? I only truly enjoyed chemistry and I’m pretty it’s bc of the MATH portion. Technology? I don’t even know what is in that field? I guess computer science. And coding? Idk honestly that’s how disinterested in tech I am. Engineering? Well we saw how that played out. Math? I liked solving algebra equations but that’s literally it. I did notice that once I am familiar with a method to do something, like an alegra equation, I enjoy it a lot more. I guess you could say I like solving problems … or putting out metaphorical fires, if you will.*

Nursing/anything medical = influenced by TV

Performance arts = ???

I chose to sing in 5th grade and kept up with it for 7 years (my longest running hobby to date). I love the idea of dance more than singing honestly. I never really got to deep dive into it. However singing now carries so much more emotional trauma that I have to heal from before I can confidently sing again. Maybe if moved up choirs I definitely would have had more of a will to think about studying music. Trauma stopped me from studying music. and I wasn’t interested in studying dance or having a career as a dancer - more like a skill I wanna develop. also I can’t act for shit.

Photography = just want to learn as a hobby

Graphic Design/Art/Interior Design/psychology = the cost outweighs the benefit

to some extent, I agree. My field of future career opportunities would be very limited. Smaller than it is right now. Besides, everything EXCEPT psychology is speciality that I can obtain without the need to actually return to school. (That’s why I want the AFA/BS in psychology)*

History = I honestly could’ve cared less about history in the past ESPECIALLY in high school but the subject always interested me (Social Studies) a little bit. Also I think I was burnt out bc of APUSH and Euro History.

Anthropology - didn’t know that was a thing until 2016 so didn’t care

it’s interesting but could learn what I want without the need of school

Political Science = Influenced by NHI.

yeah I was going with that until I saw the curriculum and saw what a Poli Sci degree was for and yeah no. Was not interested in working as civil servant somehow and fuuuuuxk being a politician nowadays - I don’t want that many people to depend on me. I don’t want to be responsible for that many people. I think I only liked the debate and learning about our issues and that actually falls in Latin/African American/Gender Studies. Again not something worth going to school for but would be very interested in learning. when I chose this at first I think what I was thinking of was my director? I don’t remember from NHI but he was working on a big campaign (was it Sanders? I honestly don’t remember) and I thought that was cool as hell. I think I wanted to be part of a campaign….part of putting one together and that leads into event planning

Event Planning = ??

For one, you can’t really get a degree in this? It’s just pure experience. Now I’ll be honest I LOVE event planning. But when i thought of event planning, i thought of weddings and quinces and I never cared about those events. I loved planning volunteer events, dinners, banquets, travel etc… I also like putting out fires, if you will.

Advertising = I’m not interested in thinking of ads. *but I’m more interested in learning about how it works globally.* *I noticed when I went to CDMX I got a kick out of seeing how international companies operate. I loved looking at the different brands that I’ve never seen before. I don’t know what that falls under (maybe branding or research idk) and that’s something I look forward to when I travel. Maybe I’ll find out what this is considered someday or maybe I’ll ask AI! Please hold….*

[unicminds-codingforkids]

Coding for Kids - Is it required?

Coding for kids, tweens, and students is an absolute essential today. And, I am not saying that because we teach coding! Let’s understand why it is an absolute essential in a more detailed way.

Coding Classes for 6 year olds to 15 year olds are all over the town these days, and there is a backlash from some corner for developers saying – hey, this is too much! Kids don’t need to learn coding and you are only overwhelming these kids with all the unnecessary stuff. After all they’re all not going to become software developers and quality analysts, and who knows maybe ChatGPT will make coding and a large number of software engineers a redundant aspect of life. 

The flagbearer of this criticism is conducted by a person named Joe Morgan here. His main idea(s) are:

Parents think that – if everything is getting automated, then probably the safest job in town is the one who is doing the automation. And, hence parents want their kids to learn coding.

While teaching coding to kids, institutes or schools focus to teach the syntax of the programming language whereas it has to be focused on problem-solving

Coding is an iterative process of building something, finding out what is going wrong, debugging for where it is going wrong and then fixing it. So, it is a mix of both creativity and determination

Well, let’s start with why should kids and students really learn coding. What happens if they don’t learn it?

Let’s take an example: I am a software engineer who worked as a developer for about 5 years and I then moved on to the Marketing side of life by doing an MBA. Over the last many years, my jobs have been in Marketing and they had nothing to do with writing code. But, the fact that I learnt software engineering means that I know how technologies are built. So, when various people from the technology or product management teams discuss with me, I am not a newbie and it enables me to understand what they are talking and even manage what they’re trying to tell me. I can get my own data by making and running queries by myself and I can take any cut of data that I need for my analysis. I am not overwhelmed when we see our payment applications having bugs or any other issues – I know it is a part of life and we will have to fix them fast. The underlying idea is that when you learn coding and when you learn software, you learn about how stuff works and that gives you a good advantage over other people who don’t have that similar knowledge. The fact that I know coding decently well empowers me and makes me feel good about myself and doesn’t put me in a disadvantageous position. Again, for example, I’ve faced multiple situations on the internet where my background helped me to be careful w.r.t computer security and password security. Whereas I’ve seen cousins, friends, and close family not having that awareness about security and how they could be vulnerable on the internet unknowingly.

We don’t teach science to kids to make them scientists, we don’t teach math to kids to make them theoretical mathematicians, and we don’t teach about the planetary system to kids so that they’ll be prepared to go to these planets. We teach this stuff to understand how things around us work at a certain level – everybody should have that knowledge and understanding. For example, when you see the stars moving in the sky, you should know the connection of that movement with the earth’s spin and its relative movement. Similarly, kids must learn coding (no two ways about that now anymore) in order to develop problem-solving abilities, understand how software is really built, and logical skills. There are many benefits in kids learning coding. But the one major benefit is that – most kids when they learn mathematics, they don’t have enough theory to apply the math they learn in real-life scenarios. Learning coding helps kids to approach problems in a structured way, use their imagination and logical thinking abilities to solve those problems, develop the patience and an iterative approach to solving stuff that is broken, and appreciate all technologies around with an internal knowledge of how things work. Imagine you’re driving a car and you have to call the mechanic to unlock your steering. You need to know the basic stuff of the world around you. And the world around us right now is largely software technology and kids should know how these tools that are so prevalent are built and are used. Else, these kids will be handicapped and the children who know this will have an edge. Therefore, scientists, academicians, and leaders around the world have said that it is time to include coding in kids curriculum as a mandate all across the world. Because, fortunately or unfortunately, the world has changed and it is never going to be the same again.

Also, when we’re saying we are teaching kids coding, we’re largely talking about enabling them to learn the structured way of problem-solving using some syntax. Yes, we all agree that syntax doesn’t matter. It is like choosing a knife to cut stuff in the kitchen, you will choose the right knife that you think is suitable for the task. But, the main skill is in the hands of the person. And, that’s what the focus is on – no body is teaching kids a lot of syntax to mug up or no one is really burdening kids to go out and solve the memory leaks by analyzing these core dumps from the files. So, it is all positioned well in the right spirit and with the right direction.

Typically, the students will start with one approach and they will make some mistakes or they’ll forget certain aspects such as coding for the gravity or missing the exit in a recursive loop. Then when they run the program, they learn that there has been some mistake. They’ll think about what could’ve been wrong and then try to fix that problem. This is it! This is all that we want to teach young kids – problem-solving in an iterative manner!

Benefits in teaching coding to kids:

To use Mathematics and logic in real-life problems

To learn to create things and to solve difficult problems

To persist, iterate and improve

Algorithmic thinking

Critical thinking

Attention to detail and debugging the problem to find a solution

Creativity and Expression

In the process, children learn a lot of mathematics and other subjects in an applicative and visual manner. They also learn algorithmic-thinking, imaginative-skills, designing-skills, mathematical-aptitude, debugging skills, and algorithmic thinking, Not to forget a ton of soft factors such as they build patience in problem-solving, they don’t get bogged down by first-time failures, building the essence that success comes from multiple attempts, and that problem-solving is deep and requires multiple hours of work. These are extremely valuable behavioral and attitudinal tenets for children to develop in their overall development.

Teaching coding to kids is a progressive shift in society to build future humanity, which is more informed and comfortable around how things work. We live in an age where technology plays a role in everything that we do, and the future is going to be more of it. Therefore, all countries are teaching coding to kids across the globe, and it is deemed an absolutely essential course for kids now everywhere.

Hope this is useful, thank you.

You may want to read the below posts which are very related:

What’s the right age for kids to learn coding?

How does a child’s perception of machine-intelligence change after learning coding?

Should kids learn coding if they don’t plan for careers in Tech?

How are kids learning coding which was only done by grownups?

[izicodes]

Don't know if you've touched on this topic before, but do you have any advice on dealing with discrimination within comp sci (specifically sexism)? I have bad anxiety and have constant thoughts telling me how I'll never be good enough or don't belong. My brother who is a senior dev has had a passion for computers since a small child while I just developed an interest within the past two years. My family takes his career seriously but then turn around and tell me how great of a secretary I'll be lol. Thanks for your time!

Hiya 💗

Just some background on me: I haven't had any sexist experiences in during my whole journey of learning software development during my apprenticeship and now working as a Junior Web Dev. I'm the only girl in the Dev team (6 of us in total), the only other woman is the Manager of the Dev team but she does databases + business oriented work so she doesn't code at all. I'm the youngest in the team also so they see me as "oh let's teach the kid of the group" kind of thing. So at work I don't feel any type of sexism, the lads are really open to teach me a lot stuff which I am thankful!

I don't know any other irl developers besides work so I'll move on to online. Online I know a lot more women developers; Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter (or X whatever it's called). Maybe it's because I've like cultured the content I see to them idk. I'm really glad to have that constantly on my timeline as it inspires me to push and do/become better because if those girlies can do it, so can I.

Though all the teachers/instructors I had were all men, they didn't make me feel small or not worthy to be in Computer Science, they were the opposite and pushed me to do it more. My Dad did Computer Science with CyberSecurity at university and he always pushed me to do computer science when I got older - not force but inspired me to do it (wanted to do medicine but too hard so switched to comp sci/programming)!

So, in my experience, I never had a really bad sexist interaction because I did computer science. People are shocked I am in programming in general but more like "Oooooh that's cool! Didn't know you did that!" kind of thing!

Now, this doesn't mean I haven't seen sexist remarks online, because I have but more through memes. I always ignore. Everyone, man or woman, should ignore such remarks/meme and move on. Don't let a bunch of people determine what you want and what's best for you! If you did, they would be controlling your life and not you yourself.

I don't know if that's easier said than done for you because I'm a hard person on people saying bad things to me. I just ignore you literally. I'm polite yes, but what you will say to me will go through one ear and out the other if it's really negative. Pretty much a "I don't care about your opinion, I will do me anyways" kind of person. E.g. if my brothers were to tell me "oh you a girl, don't do computer science" I won't listen to them at all.

And at the end of the day, what are they gonna do? Will your family members that are saying those stuff to you physically stop you from learning computer science? Especially since it's so accessible online so all you need a is a computer? All around the world, women are leaning computer science one way or another to change their lives and/or the lives around them.

They are making so much effort so for me to say "oh well.. you know some lads in my comp sci class say I can't do comp sci so I shouldn't" or "oh well I don't think learning programming is a woman's thing yknow because it's so dominated by men" - excuse my language here but that's flipping ridiculous!

This isn't some feminist or even anti-feminist thing here, it's a plain simple human thing: proving yourself and even the people around you wrong. Go into it and succeed. You're not too old or too young.

Why are their programs like SheCodes or BGIT (black girl in tech) that are making effort to help women push into tech? There's more women in tech now than there has been ever so if you're a woman and want to go into Tech but some lads are saying no? Do it anyways.

If a company has lads like that in them, that's the company's fault for hiring a sexist non-team player - says a lot about that company.

As humans we are never good enough so just get that out of your mind, less stress. Good enough for a job? all you got to do is keep going out it. Keep learning the theory, keep building the projects, keep redoing your resume and applying for jobs - keep going.

You quit, you let yourself down - especially when programming/ computer science is your calling!

I went on a bit of a rant but I hope some of this helps 🥳👍🏾💗

[time-traveling-fetus]

Not venting, just using thus blog as a personal diary I guess. Ok maybe it's venting idk.

What frustrates me about my coding abilities is that I feel like there's this huge amount of basic practical knowledge that I am just... unaware of???

For example, someone mentioned "if you know some python you can automate downloading all the works in your ao3 history"

Ok. I have a degree in computer science. I know python's code syntax, its logic, and a little bit about how it works under the hood with memory management. How do I actually do that? Ok I just checked and there's an unofficial API for ao3, which answers one part of the question, but now I'm wondering how the hell would you program an API for a website. Ok I've searched further and it's called web scraping and there are tools for that. I feel like it would be redundant to ask how you program that. But then comes the question of how you actually add that to your code base and then export your finished code and have it respond to a usable UI.

Idk I guess it's a case of just thinking of random shit to code and researching how to make it then?? But that's frustrating because I kinda expected to be able to make most stuff after I graduated. It seems like all my classes just assumed I would figure out this miscellaneous basic knowledge on my own. In my sophomore year I took a class called Object Oriented Programming and we had a major group project to make a music app or something.

(It was part of a deal with a startup, and all 60+ people in my class concluded that they just wanted free labor and ideas. Everyone purposely made shitty apps that still passed for a good grade. This is irrelevant, I just wanted to share)

Well my group just...didn't know how to start writing the app. We all knew how to code but didn't know how to translate that knowledge into a usable app. I asked my professor about it and she said "yes that's normal" and I don't think I got any more information out of her, probably because I was too shy to ask anything else. We spent most of the semester Not Coding (UML diagrams I think) until one guy programmed it all by himself and passive aggressively dissed us in the group chat for it. I think he used some pre-made app platform for it? How do you find that shit?? How do you know to do that? Also shouldn't we know how to do this without using that? I repeatedly asked my group how I could help bc I genuinely didn't know what was being coded, how I accessed the code, and what I needed to do and they said after the third time "you can draw us a logo." Thanks. Thank you one passive-aggrssive guy who didn't include anyone else in this process. My entire learning experience for my coding class has amounted to drawing a picture.

I have other stories like that though. It seems like I was constantly learning things about theory, and professors just assumed I would figure out the practical stuff if they just assigned me a group project.

[keenexpressions]

James Chiar

1. Name, Year, & Major

James Chiar, 4th Year, Computer Science w/ Tech Management minor

2. If you were a luxury brand, what would it be and why?

I would be YSL only because I really want to buy their boots once I’m rich in the future.

3. Who is your personal hero and why?

My personal hero is my grandpa. He’s lived with and taken care of me all of my life and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him.

4. How do you react after a conflict occurs, and why?

I would usually try to avoid conflict if it doesn’t involve me at first. If it does involve me or someone very close to me, I try my best to understand the problem and resolve it right away, but that may not happen for every situation. Me no like drama :)

5. If you were granted 3 wishes, what would it be?

Unlimited steaks

Teleporting abilities

An easy death

6. What would you Google about your life?

Exactly how many people will James meet in his life?

7. What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

My favorite thing about myself is that I don’t use tiktok. Jk I think my favorite thing about myself is my style.

8. What’s your toxic trait?

I’m not a very empathetic person and it’s hard for me to recognize how someone is feeling right away sometimes.

9. Would you visit the future or past?

I would visit the past of course to buy bitcoin.

10. What are the biggest differences between you today/now and five years ago? And what advice would you give to yourself from five years ago?

Five years ago, I was a sophomore in high school. I was way more reserved than I am now and I didn’t know how to dance at all. I never thought I would be doing computer science right now since I never coded 5 years ago. My style was so lackluster, I only wore the same 2 hoodies and jeans and called it a day. I used to have a combover, but now I rock a middle or side part (thank god because it’s so much easier to manage than a combover). I used to have the time to play a bunch of video games, but now I don’t have that luxury anymore. Back then, I didn’t know the importance of pain. Pain sucks, but without it, the happiness we feel wouldn’t have as much meaning. I care way more about how I take care of my skin and hair than I did back then, thank god once again. I used to not wear sunscreen and never moisturized, but now I do those things everyday! I also believe I’ve grown much closer to my sister since we talk more about personal things than we ever did 5 years ago. I think the biggest difference between then and now is my maturity. I’ve gone through so many relationships with different people that have come and gone in the past 5 years. Even though many people faded away from my life, the experiences I had with them helped me grow into the person I am today. The one piece of advice I would give myself 5 years ago is to think deeply about what I’m passionate about earlier and to just put myself out there more and say YOLO!!! I missed a lot of opportunities because I never knew what I was truly passionate about and I was always in my little comfort bubble. I would’ve discovered dance, coding, and even APO earlier if I had a different mindset. But everyday, I learn and I continue to have more and more experiences that nurture me.

[umichenginabroad]

Work < Life balance

The first week of classes: check! I can't believe I've only been in Madrid for two weeks now- it feels like a month or more. I'm still getting used to the different style of classes here in Madrid, and it has been a bit unsettling. 

i have to 'dress up' for class now- no daily sweats :(

My day at UM consists of waking up and going to the gym, then doing work from morning until 11-12 at night amidst meetings, discussions, and online lectures. In contrast, I haven't done a piece of homework here yet. The first week of classes was pretty much just introductions to the teachers and the material, versus UM, where we jump right in and have assignments due by the end of the first week. 

Also, as a Computer Science major, I'm used to watching my lectures online at my leisure and haven't consistently attended an in-person class in a while. Here, we are all expected to sit quietly and engage without computers. My UM classes are instead mainly large lecture style where people tend to concurrently work on their computers. 

I'm not sure what I think of the work-life balance so far. Ideally, having more time on my hands sounds great, but I like to constantly be busy and have a packed schedule. So relaxing has kind of been?? hard??

I also realized that this is the first semester in my college career that I haven't been in a project-heavy coding class. Or any coding class. And honestly? It's throwing me off. I especially don't want to be out of practice for my summer internship. Luckily I'm an EECS 281 and 370 private tutor, which I expect to pick up in a couple weeks (after people get their grades back from the first project haha). 

A brief overview of my classes:

Spanish Culture: Amazing, stunning, purr, love. Our professor is the sweetest woman ever, and the class focuses on getting to know Madrid and various landmarks, history, and food. I'm beyond excited about this class.

Engineering Statistics: Pretty standard statistics class… Neither excited nor am I dreading this class. 

Introduction to Circuits: My latest class from 7-9 and 6-8 pm. Luckily I have a bunch of friends in this class, but the time is killer.

Spanish A2: Not sure if I should be at this level since we already only have to speak in Spanish, and I haven't taken Spanish since elementary school. But I'm still very excited to learn, and our professor is super dynamic and engaging. 

Other notable events from the week:

Got tonsillitis! Had to figure out university health services which turned out to be a breeze. Feeling so much better now!

Friends from UM came this weekend from London! It was really great to see some old friends since I realized I had felt a bit homesick. 

Did a tapas crawl down the famous tapas street and was not let down by the food, except maybe the cold tomato soup, which I'm not the biggest fan of. 

friends from UM!

That's all for this week! Excited to share more in the future. Bye for now!

Rania Uppal

Computer Science

UP Comillas- Madrid, Spain

[hireanhacker]

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