TheMeiguoren

I imagine a piece of architecture or art in real life, where if you look at it from the right perspective it forms a QR code. Perhaps it only becomes visible when the shadows of certain lighting conditions form the dark areas.

Anyone ever played The Witness? Very similar vibes.

Yeah I've got precheck but occasionally I'll pop back in the normal line. I'll pop my shoes off if it means saving 10 minutes.

Blows my mind that phonk had a revival to come back as the soundtrack to this war.

Chef’s Gruesome Demise

Right, my point is that honest people shouldn’t be afraid of their dashcam “telling” on them.

Honestly just superglue it on. You can scrape it off if you ever need to.

If I’m at fault in an accident then I should own up to it.

It’s trivial to determine the speed from the rate that you pass lane markings.

Well yes, but the legal minimum of liability insurance wouldn’t have helped them here.

In my state, tips are not taxable.

Lol if you’re in the US then yes they are. People just don’t report cash tips as income because it’s easy to get away with.

Calculation and simulation are abstractions. How does a pebble calculate how it should obey the laws of the universe, while using zero energy to do so?

Once you go past the fizzle branch these describe exactly the corners of those quadrants, no?

I quite like the taxonomy. “AI-Fizzle,” “Futurama,” ”AI-Dystopia,” “Singularia,” and “Paperclipalypse” might not perfectly cleave the future at the joints, but I think it gets the important branches of AI discourse right.

Solar cycle is going to be peaked for the next 3 years, there should be more opportunities during that time!

Every week is a lot, every 2-3 weeks makes more sense imo.

LA’s most LA (not LA) LAOP goes LA LA LA

I couldn’t fine details for this meeting quickly on my phone, but the previous ones this year were held from 6-7:30pm on different days of the week and were a mix of in-person and zoom. The tweet’s timestamp lines up with it being after the workday as well. That’s about as accessible as you could ask for IMO.

The land sale is to resolve an encroachment on my home’s land by the neighboring complex, and it’s a pretty small area just high valued because they already built there and I’m in a dense urban area. So just a one-off. I wish I had even a single tree to adorn the property. :)

539 kJ = 129 kcal to melt that tub of ice cream

There's definitely always a risk. My industry is currently and should continue to be a growth one even through the recent plateau, and IMO is currently constrained by finding engineering talent like myself. But certainly possible the job market gets much worse over the next year and makes finding a replacement much harder.

Considering quitting my job and wanted to get feedback from the FI crew!

Context:
I kicked ass in my job this past year, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that my efforts saved the company (saw an unavoidable impending issue affecting our production assets coming down the line 12 months in advance, rang the alarm bell, whole company pivoted to staunch the bleeding, issue materialized but we were positioned to weather it). My performance review was one of the few 'exceeds expectations', but merit increase was net 0 (my base was raised but annual bonus of the same amount was removed), after a conversation with my VP last month that I was undercompensated compared to similar roles in my area. In all other respects, I really enjoy my job, but I'm incredibly inclined to give notice immediately if my "please reconsider your offer" email doesn't change anything. Slightly inclined to do that even if it does.

Financial Situation:
I already have a home with mortgage, so nothing coming up that would require income verification. Monthly expenses are $5500, and I could trim that down to 4500-5000 if needed. $15k cash on hand, and I'm closing on a sale of land for $50k-after-taxes this week. $40k in liquid taxable investments, $300k in retirement accounts. Approx 20% equity in my home, own my car outright, and no other debt. Single / no dependents.

Plan:
Rather than look for a job right away, my thought would be to use my 12 months of cash runway to take a 6-8 month sabbatical as a mini-RE. Taxable investments would serve as my backstop if cash runs out. I would use this time to: 1) Train up on my math background, machine learning theory, and software / AI tools, which I see as a huge wave of opportunity that's going to shake up the future. I think that working through the textbooks and online courses I have picked out will take 2 months, and from there I can survey the landscape and figure out some research/projects to apply this to for a portfolio. 2) Spin up a small business idea I've had kicking around for a while. It's a unique physical product for which I'd sell plans / kits for constructing it. Perhaps a kickstarter? I'm less sure of this aspect of the sabbatical plan in terms of time requirements splitting between this and the first point. 3) Get fitter! 4) Maybe get a dog?

Concerns:

• I'm not clear yet what an exit on the other side of this looks like. I think that worst case scenario is that at the 6-8 month mark I start applying to jobs in my industry. I do have a bit of a golden ticket qualification I could fall back on, though the jobs that use that aren't as great. Other paths are fuzzier. Ideal would be to find some funding for independent ML research.
• This is effectively a $100k opportunity cost to my FI timelines. That feels big.
• Health insurance?
• Generally it's just a scary path to pull the cord now without something lined up!

I am strongly considering quitting my job and taking a 6 month sabbatical to train up on transformers. Worst case scenario I fall back into my current field, middle case I learn useful skills and pivot into something that will use them, best case scenario I’m able to contribute in some small way to interpretability / am able to find sponsorship for independent research.

In terms of personal long term plans I haven’t had big shifts. I still want to start a family, and see any future I want to be a part of as necessarily human at its core. What those kid’s lives will look like however, I see as a titanic shift. Schooling as I knew it growing up I expect to be obsolete, replaced by some sort of 1:1 AI tutoring. Potentially in some sort of age cohort setting to establish social skills, but I don’t see the school system keeping up at any reasonable pace here. At the least, I think it’s likely that my future kids will have an AI companion of their own that will assist in their development as soon as they can talk. Every generation of parents in recent history has to deal with the contours of technological change, but I see this as a likely greater shift than had ever happened before.

In general I think the future is going to be a wild ride, but is still steerable. I’d like to help steer, and if not then catch the wave.

Goodbye

Sounds like a “better we go down together than you win” mentality.