throwaway1183

And there is chances of being automated out. Since I will just be the bottom fodder. Everything I use, read and learn has been already made by someone. I have never once truly made anything "original". The feeling after making things sucks a lot. The process of making it is a joy. But it doesn't give me any money simply by stealing information for others. I am getting nowhere. No jobs. Feels really bad to know that I came so far, just to realize this small fact. I have already invested a lot in the field to even change it now. The worst, I don't have confidence to ask others to pay me even if I do the job. However I need the money to live. It's such a weird situation.

For clarification:

The rat-race is tiring. I have given up on it even before starting. The hardest thing in life is giving up. It took a long self talk to reach an agreement where I am truly an average in what I do.

There are so many people out there, who can do marvelous things. Meanwhile I am just an average dude trying to make a comfortable life.

I want to minimize my effort and maximize the reward. This is the motivation of asking this question. Not everyone can be good at things, there are so many factors.

I sometimes think I should have studied medicine because an average doctor has it better than an average engineer. It was foolish of me to follow a dream that was never supposed to be made for me.

> a file with malicious prompt on your hard drive

How will you know if a file is free from malicious prompt or not? The applications seems to be able to download any file and analyze it. So from my perspective, I think it is easier this way than to execute other attack? Because these files may seem benign but can still run instructions from the prompts. Just think that the next pdf you are downloading from the web has has no malware but only malicious prompt. What will you do?

What do you mean by "it is running on LLM?". I still don't get it. Can you clarify it even more?

I saw a post[0] in HN that says AI models are susceptible to new kind of malware. How is this app safe?

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34945349

Are the authors implying that we can use these llms to allow any security vulnerability to applications that is not sandboxed? What I understood is that if you have an application that is connected to external APIs, this malware seems to exploit the LLMs to attack the applications?

Well, the attack surface also increases with AI tool. So if people start using it, we can always start attacking it too. Feed adversarial prompts and let these system go loose. It is only useful as long as it is sandboxed. Anything beyond that is a cat and mouse game between adversary and the AI corp. Therefore, as developers, we are always gonna be safe.

The entire 3D indie game development is going to be revolutionized. This is feels like we are just starting with something that was never seen before. The quality is just good enough at current stage. It will most likely improve over future iterations.

This happens even in university situation. Before moving for study abroad, I thought I had made connections at former university, until I realized I didn’t. Recently I had few episodes of really wanting to talk to people, but none of them were available. However, they hit up everytime, they need something. Might be my personal nature too. But I realized this recently. So I stopped talking to them either. I thought it was because of the distance, but I had few friends from university who moved to same place as me. Then after going on one trip with them, I realized everyone was phony and I didn’t have friends at all. Now I have accepted I will be alone. So I will never put trust in any form of social relationships. I can control the algorithms but not people. Human are selfish, so I would rather be selfish and happy than social and depressed. It doesn’t mean I am antisocial. Simply put, I put numbers before emotions. Performance over humanity. Machine over heart. I might hangout with people but there won’t be any deep connections. I will crack jokes, but won’t bother helping them in need. Learnt my lesson the hard way. Most of the time, it’s best to say “No”.

This gives some hope! I want to learn that skill that is equivalent to "managing these exchange servers" that might actually last throughout the career. This "latest and greatest" hype chasing has seriously burnt me out.

I have been gathering experience in computer vision, graphics, and natural language processing to break into the tech industry as a junior research engineer rather than a research scientist. However, with recent advancements in technology, I feel like I have no place in the field anymore. I have lost all of my curiosity and inner drive. It feels like I was just about to start my career, but now I am not sure what to do. I want to switch fields, but I am worried about all the time and effort I invested in learning these models and their implementation. If I had invested that same energy in a different field, I would have more reliable experience and skills. All I have now is pre-historic knowledge. And if I were to catch up now just because I am interested, by the time I do, the goal line will have moved further away. It's a difficult and frustrating situation to be in.

I enjoy doing things, but I don't become good at them because I don't invest the time to push myself further. Life has other priorities, but now I'll have to put in extra effort and an extra hour on top of what I was already doing. This has increased my stress level and decreased my productivity.

I was extremely passionate about text-to-image, but now that it is solved, I am experiencing a crisis. I have lost what I have been pursuing for a long time and I am now unsure of my skills. I fear that I will not be able to find a job because I only have internship experience and no real job experience. I was hopeful before pursuing this Master's degree, but now I am not so sure.

From a perspective of an individual, what defines quality now? Any attempt to stand out from the crowd requires significant energy. Given the nature of the industry, I fear that the experience I gain cannot be transferred for actual value. I feel like the bar is very high for me and I want to switch to other fields, but there is no way because I do not have relevant experience in other fields.

You need a PhD from a top university for that. I am feeling hopeless before even getting a PhD. I don't even have the energy or resources for that. It takes an additional five years of hard work which could be invested in learning actual skills that scale. I feel like computer science doesn't scale like engineering. Therefore, I really need a good perspective on this.

I do not know much about your background, your experience and your interest. But for me one thing I realized is Computer Science isn't as good as I thought it to be. Since I was from engineering background, I found CS to be more math focused and abstract. Think of CS as what pure maths is for physicists. Both physicists and mathematicians can solve problems, but mode of thinking is different.

If you want build a solid foundation on CS, I would suggest taking a course in Applied mathematics with some CS related subject because that would allow you to understand the deep fundamentals within CS. These mathematics (discrete, probability, linear algebra, proof techniques) are generally covered in Bachelor's level of CS. Having sufficient skills with these topics will allow you to dive and understand any topic later in life. As engineering major, it was mostly focused on calculus and analysis. Therefore, whole idea of theoretical proofs and reasoning was quite difficult for me. CS is filled with these kinds of proofs. No one tells it.

However, if you are interested in building things, it would be wise to pursue something in software engineering (or applying for challenging job etc). Like everyone has said here, CS is to go into some deep niche like compilers, OS, networks, algos & DS, which is extremely narrow, intellectually fulfilling but extremely hardcore. Good luck with your decision.

I am familiar with the tooling but what I lack is in the ability to quickly navigate a code base. Given a period of 2-3 weeks, I can disect a project into the relevant parts, but I feel like it is still slow.

Now the issue I have is contributing to these projects. I am fairly capable of starting on my own, however, if it comes to updating the existing base, that is where I fall short. Any tips on that? I tried open source and basically ended up with same result. Same thing happens when I try to answer to questions on stack overflow. I do not get the confidence to do so.

I actually want to be technically senior without politics and bureaucracy. Technically capable like GeoHotz, Dean, Caramack, RMS, etc. The management part of the role can come later!

As a citizen of another shithole-country passport holder (living in country other than US) I can't agree more. I don't get why people make it as if USA is the only beacon of hope. It's just another country.

Now that the world is diversified, globalized and everything is connected with the internet, I don't understand why people have to cling so much to the American idea of success. Are people living outside really that unsuccessful? I don't see any problem with what USA is doing. It's their country, let them do their thing. As long as US is open to trade and exchange, everyone is winning! They made so many great things and everyone can reap benefit out of it.

I hypothesize that it's the generational problem that got passed to other people because of globalized world. Everyone has equal access of information. Just 20 years ago, when people had less information, they were probably more content with the local things. But the result of globalization is people tend to be blinded. They starting ignoring opportunities. I realized that even few people from rich country think that it's only in the US where they can be successful.

I feel it's like how people moved from farms to cities then to another countries. Now the time has changed and the new city is US. I think every place has their own flaws and gains, but life will just keep on going. I believe we should learn to be more gratuitous and be thankful for what we have.

On the sidenote, congrats to author getting the card!

The following is a site where I want to write random technical things:

https://entangledlogs.com/archives/

It's related to motion synthesis and animation!

> Do you enjoy continually learning new things and getting satisfaction from exploring new ideas? Do you enjoy the act of building something new from scratch?

These are something I do just for fun. But I never go deep enough to be good at it. That habit has cost a quite of opportunities!

Thank you for your perspective! I have myself come to realize the importance of commitment, objectives and habit tracking.

> why are you trying to uplift yourself?

It comes from my personal experience. For example, if I am doing something for the first time, I do it enough to make it work. Maybe after a certain time, I forget those things. When I go back to the same old stuff, I realize that I could have done better when I started. I could have kept better notes, better links, better work. Doing so would have saved my own personal time!

The sloppy habit leaks into other aspects. Therefore, it feels quite inadequate. I am sorry if this made sense or not!

I have one field that I am really interested and currently investing in. But it is so difficult to get relevant job, because there are barely few companies that do it. Most of it are gaming companies!

Thank you for your detailed response! There is really nice perspective your wrote here!

> I'd probably start to objectively define those opposite things you are setting up against, ASAP

If I have a list of these things, does it act like a checklist for me, whether something would be worth pursuing in future or not?

There are people for whom PhD is worth. If you are those people don't read this. It's easily knowable if you are or not.

Now for people like me:

Give me at least a million USD to invest in next PhD in CS. The most BS form of PhD is PhD in CS. It chirps your life away, with no clear benefits. It doesn't scale well enough in a field where innovation is rapidly progressing. Also when you are being underpaid while working for someone else's vision. You can't do what you want, because "supervisor" may not like it.

And once you come out of your PhD, who is going to hire you? Industry or academia? Well even in academia, there are tons of PhD already, so goodluck competing that.

And in industry goodluck finding that sweet industry that requires research.

I was always sold by the dream that PhD gives time and opportunity to involve in high leverage problems. Turns out it is a just another churn. What value does this paper bring? Nothing.

When most of valuable work is being done in industry and groups collaborating across nations. And to be in such group, you have to have background. (People whom I mentioned earlier)

Instead of wasting 5 yrs on CS Phd, invest on one single company. That will bring value x10 than stupid PhD.