sheepdog

Correct. Reduced smoking, alcohol, and other behaviors have been documented. There's a complex relationship between the gut and certain behaviors. These drugs slow down gut processing, and delay the reward mechanism. With slightly less reward from the body, the scales may tip slightly in favor of self control.

Source: currently using GLP and seeing reduced positive feedback from alcohol (incidentally)...

I didn't get any LLM vibes from the comment at all. I'd heard of "off label use" and other incidental use-cases. So the comment makes a lot of sense...

Agreed. A laptop also comes with battery backup, screen, and input devices out of the gate. Granted, it consumes more power than RPi. But a laptop is definitely a solid choice, based on my experience with RPi resets and corrupted SD cards, etc.

Internet connectivity is the main thing that's prevented me from going down this path. Zoom meetings and file transfers really suck up a lot of bandwidth. But a lot of hotels have more casual internet. And many places that would be amazing to visit are quite rural. Perhaps something like Starlink will become a good solution for this?

We did something similar with a move to Columbus, GA. Cost of living was super-low, but 200k people means you get theater, airport, etc.

One thing to keep in mind as you get older: smaller places may not have all the medical facilities you need. For example, if you get an unusual cancer or need a transplant, your family will be regularly shuttling you 2-3 hours to the nearest large city.

I think that being ~50-60 minutes south of Atlanta would be nice. It's small enough, but you can hop right up to one of the world's busiest airports and get a flight to about anywhere.

I can't log on to the console for us-east-1. But our api gateway seems to be working, so I guess production is still up...for now...

Interesting that he mentioned the $300,000 model...

Hypothetical question for US-based folks: I wonder if there is a non-traditional path for people who can afford to research without the need for a stipend?

Technologists tend to be in the upper income brackets. For a lucky few, it's possible to achieve financial independence in their 40's. At that point conducting research may seem like an attractive intellectual pastime.

These hypothetical PhD students can sustain themselves for 4-6 years without a salary. I suppose there would still be some grant-seeking, depending on the scale of the research. Technically they could actually pay the university, becoming a funding source instead of a burden...

If someone had $2-$3 million in their retirement accounts, it seems strange to scratch and claw for $300k of research stipend funding.

Has anyone heard of such an arrangement? Is this a thing?

For larger user counts (and budgets), Salesforce.com is a workhorse. Builds tabs, data views, filters, dashboards, great auditing, security, etc. I've used the force.com platform to track everything from dog daycares to coffee shipments to hospital patients. It's an acquired taste, but it's a huge toolbox that gets the job done.

I'm a young guy, but this presents an interesting question: what's the best path to modernize your skill set?

Imagine being a Cobol or dBase III developer. You recognize that some new technology (say AWS Aurora) is in demand.

So you study a whole bunch during your off time. You do tons of courses, hobby projects, and even take the applicable certifications.

Here's my question: then what? You have textbook knowledge of this new skill, but no actual production experience. What's the best way for these re-skilling workers to make the jump from learning to earning?

Interesting. I didn't realize these were shipping yet. Seems like a good option for exploration!

I'm super interested in using this for my masters thesis. But their github docs are terse at best. I have no confidence that I'd be talented enough to figure out their api, and the mention of the broken website form further deters me. Too bad; I love the concept of quadrupeds for navigating stairs and other urban obstacles.

I'm disappointed about the reluctance on Lidar. It seems like a great safety net, allowing the car to say "I don't know what this large white blob on the camera is, but it's solid and coming up fast, so I'm going to do an emergency stop..."

I suspect this is cost-cutting more than anything else.

In your case, a great partner might be a handful of VC firms?

I'm not sure I'm in the "heathy pipeline" stage. But I have a small number of repeat clients, and have landed a good number of $49k to $60k projects over the last five years. I currently do most of the work and use 2-3 subcontractors as needed. And during year one I did a lot of sub-contracts for 5-10 person shops. So I've been able to see what works.

I guess the TLDR version is that you need partnerships.

For example, if you are working primarily with AWS or Oracle or whatever, you need to have really good relationships with their account executives.

You'll also need partnerships with other agencies. For example, if your projects are often referrals from marketing or web design shops, you'll need to cultivate relationships with several of those. And that usually means referring web-design projects to them as well. (I'm not great at sales, so many of my projects came from this source.)

But if your projects run <$50k each, you'll never build a $1M sales pipeline without a sales team. Hire somebody with existing relationships in your industry, so they can open up their address book and land 1-3 clients right out of the gate.

My partner account execs are constantly telling me to focus on a niche. I work with a specific SAAS product that's a bit higher-priced. So that naturally brings me clients with some semblance of a budget. But they recommend even more specialization, such as "growth clients in the fintech space with A round funding". That's tough for me, since I'm a generalist and like to work everywhere.

Lastly, remember that it's ok to be small. If you don't have a huge team, you can pick and choose projects to ensure maximum success and minimal stress. People always ask me "what's your growth plan", and are surprised when I tell them that I don't plan to grow this year.

Good luck!

Agreed. I can confirm; hunted pigs get educated and super skittish. It's like tracking the Viet Cong or something.

I'd recommend moonlighting to get a feel for it. It's a good way to test drive without the "sink or swim" pressure. You can get gigs from your network, partner agencies, or Upwork.com. (The pay sucks on Upwork, but it's good experience and you'll build your confidence.)

Another (more risky) approach would be to deliberately work at a 5 or 10 person company. This will give you a feel for how to "hunt for your own food" but still have a team backing you up. (I subcontracted at a few small agencies during year one, just to keep some cash flow going.)

I'm in the US, so healthcare insurance is a big concern. But corporations aren't the only ones who can buy health insurance. Depending on a lot of factors, it costs roughly $500-$1000 a month to ensure a family. Some chambers of commerce have a group plan that you can buy into.

On the surface, that sounds like a lot of money. But in reality, it's only $12k a year. If you are a primo engineer making $100k+ per year, save up over several years and you have 2-3 years of runway to pay for your insurance. The moonlighting will help with this as well.

Good luck!

My apologies. You have to be yourself, and there are some social benefits to going to the office. Assuming your freelance work counts as past experience, and that you are trying to stay in the same space, I'd offer these tips:

1. Tell prospective employers that you were very successfully self-employed, not unemployed. No one want to hire someone who is perceived as inexperienced, so you've got to make it clear that your freelance work was every bit as much "real work" as corporate projects.

2. Build a portfolio of freelance projects that are impressive. When talking about them, mention how you had to do "full stack" or "end to end" work. Make it clear that you deliver awesome stuff and work independently.

3. Sometimes getting a job is a "who you know" situation. Gently ask your freelance clients if they are hiring, even if it's temp to perm.

4. If you lack experience, try to get a "foot in the door" by taking a lower position. For example, if you can't get on the dev team, can you get hired as tier 2 support? It's not ideal, but you might be able to move to the dev team in 6-12 months if you are a good worker. Or you can use that as a stepladder to pivot to a competitor.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

I'm 40-ish and have been self-employed for about 5 years now. I have no plans to go back to full-time employment. You should consider that route.

There are very few benefits to being a full-time employee that you can't obtain yourself. Plus, having a wide portfolio of freelance clients helps insulate you against business downturns and future age discrimination.

Granted, it's a lot of work to curate a good client list and network yourself. But it's actually the same amount of work as jockeying for promotions and good projects at a corporate job.

And there is some risk involved in working for yourself. But at a corporate job there is similar risk; you are always one bad quarter away from being laid off.

Working for yourself IS a career. Consider fortifying your position and staying the course.

I do find that RPI life comes with a lot of add-on costs. Battery pack, input devices, display, SSD, etc. It does start to add up if you aren't using the RPI in headless mode anchored to a power cable.

However, if price is the #1 concern, it's tough to beat the RPI. I checked Amazon and the cheapest 8GB RAM laptop was $239. Or maybe a used one on eBay for ~$175.

But overall this announcement is very impressive. I foresee the SBC "arms race" heating up. I bought a Jetson Nano thinking it was overkill, but it seems the bar keeps going up...

I tend to agree, but I'm not sure that the buyers are suckers. Technically the people who sell pickaxes to gold miners are in way better shape than the gold mine owners. But we can't have 100% pickaxe salesman, someone actually has to mine the gold.

Perhaps this is just my inner poverty showing, but how does something like this even happen, from a monetary perspective?

I'm assuming the owners had investors or loans or some other financial reasons that would prevent them from spending a lot of money and then simply parking it forever.

And wouldn't property taxes or city nuisance abatement fines nibble away at the property over the years? It can't be completely free of carrying costs, right?

Even if there is no ongoing cost for the ship, wouldn't the owners rather have sold the furnishings rather than leave them to rot?

I did some research and found that there was a huge court case that didn't go in the owner's favor. So perhaps the owner is too emotionally invested to cut their losses?

Or perhaps they are tremendously wealthy and using the loss to write off other business gains? Or maybe it changed hands through inheritance, so the owner doesn't care about recouping the initial investment? Or maybe I'm overestimating the remaining value, and the thing is already a total loss?

This is all speculation. But it would be very interesting to learn how such a large venture was left to rot...