technology

Basically I have a lot of friends who self describe as bad at tech. It seems like a lot of learned helplessness and refusing to even listen to instructions because they've already told themselves they can't do it. But they would like to get better and do trust me. So I was trying to come up with some "tasks" to give them to help them gain confidence and to gain some basic skills as well.

I have zero qualifications in tech/computer stuff, and no professional background either, so I know that all this stuff can be self-taught.

I was thinking gaming-related stuff might be a good entry point: setting up a Minecraft server, installing mods for games, hacking your 3DS. These things boil down to following instructions so maybe it would help people learn that if you follow the documentation/guide you will get things done. It doesn't require much thinking or problem-solving, just following instructions.

Would like to hear what other people think and what "tasks" they suggest tech illiterate or tech-averse people try in order to build their confidence and gain some basic competence.

It feels like 10 years ago, /r/cscareerquestions was full of people falling over each other to worship FAANG and their super high salaries. The tech field in general has always felt very full of chuds to me, or at the very best libertarians.

Maybe things are changing. This question was if the Big Beautiful bill would be good for software engineers.

Will Trumps big beautiful bill benefit software engineers?

Was reading up on the bill and came across this:

The bill would suspend the current amortization requirement for domestic R&D expenses and allow companies to fully deduct domestic research costs in the year incurred for tax years beginning January 1, 2025 and ending December 31, 2029.

That sounds fantastic for U.S based software engineers, am I reading that right?

Almost all of the answers are negative, with some even using a class analysis. One or two bad answers or course but still, if tech could gain some sort of class consciousness, and identify themselves with the working class instead of the petite bourgeois or labor aristocracy, there may be hope for them yet.

All the top answers I've seen so far:
mpaes98 says:

It will benefit software engineers ^at ^Palantir

Then all of the replies to this are insulting Palantir lol.

jarena009 says:

Well...US Corporate profits are currently up to $4T, and white collar/business professional jobs, especially in tech, are still down since 2023.

Meanwhile many of the major tech players are doing layoffs.

Do you think increased corporate profits, say to $4.4T or $4.6T, are going to result in more tech jobs?

Do you still believe in trickle down economics?

SenorSplashdamage says:

. And even if our wages went up as engineers, most of us still have family that will end up being impoverished by all the other effects, especially health care. The overall losses will exceed any gains in personal salaries.

randomuser194 says:

In theory will be beneficial in that way, you just have to ignore all of the negative factors to the overall economy because of the bill

Wallstreet says:

Wild to see the difference in this sub from just ~5 years ago to now.

Back then: People’s complaints about this sub was that a lot of people would post the 5 massive offers they received then they would just say: don’t compare yourself to these posts, you don’t have to grind leetcode for hours, 80k offer for a no name company is good enough

Vs now: this sub is just a bunch of posts about people struggling to find a job and now grinding leetcode is the norm, and if you’re not doing it, you’re the problem

mau5tron says:

No. Every major tech CEO sweet talked trump and threw a bunch of money at Trump's campaign with the promise to keep AI deregulated. Those tech companies are then going to keep dumping money into an unprofitable technology and call it an "R&D" expense, then lay off a bunch of engineers and still get their tax cut. And like clockwork, they'll buyback a bunch of stock to keep stock price at a steady level while the economy goes to shit. Trickle down economics has never worked bro. People are just hoarding at the top.

LeadVitamin13 says:

When companies and the rich save money they don't pass it on they hoard it. Its like thinking tax cuts will increase hiring when they don't. Maybe for a struggling company that need extra help but couldn't afford it not tech giants. If they can do a job with X amount of people why would you hire anymore just cause you got more money.

LeftcellInfiltrator says:

Yeah, it'll free up trillions for the booj to invest with. But you'll be programming robot jailers with the soul of Peter Tiel to whip Amazon indentured servants into being more productive instead of solving any real problems. This is already happening in research.

https://archive.ph/50Q2X

Instead of just generating the next response, it simulates entire conversation trees to find paths that achieve long-term goals.

How it works:

• Generates multiple response candidates at each conversation state
• Simulates how conversations might unfold down each branch (using the LLM to predict user responses)
• Scores each trajectory on metrics like empathy, goal achievement, coherence
• Uses MCTS with UCB1 to efficiently explore the most promising paths
• Selects the response that leads to the best expected outcome

Limitations:

• Scoring is done by the same LLM that generates responses
• Branch pruning is naive - just threshold-based instead of something smarter like progressive widening
• Memory usage grows with tree size, there currently no node recycling

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/8397701

https://archive.ph/sq1Ed

https://archive.ph/oCCx9

https://yiyan.baidu.com/blog/posts/ernie4.5/