gronjo45

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Great source! Thank you very much for sharing, I’ll check it out more 😊

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As much as I’d love to know more about my car, I just don’t know how to ascertain the information to do so. Even if I did, the tribal knowledge that a mechanic has from working in a shop, personal investment in their own vehicle(s) assists greatly in literacy here.

Do you have a video of an engine tear down? How would you learn about cars? I don’t think this type of response is too conducive to keeping people curious. This could also help one communicate with their mechanic and increase literacy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (3 children)

As much as I would like to turn to professional developers for nearly every solution, I would like to learn how a professional developer operates.

My assumption is that Lemmy has many professionals who may be benevolent enough to lend some time and discussion regarding FOSS development. I would gladly assist, as it would improve my knowledge. My career is in hardware manufacturing, so maybe I can be useful for them as well.

A clear and transparent discussion of even the “developer tool chain” and open configurations + hotkey and macro suggestions would be great. Sometimes UX is enough to put people off from programming. This is a slight detour, but coding is as fundamental as literacy with all the semiconductor devices that surround us. I’m talking out of my ass when it comes to how a washing machine or computer console in a car is programmed, but I’m sure the concepts would be just as helpful as knowing how to wash dishes or mop ones floor.

Not everyone needs a DIY fab in their home, but as technology miniaturizes, we can achieve much more. Some of the tools when they were pioneered had their calculations performed on computers as large as an entire room. Nowadays it can fit on a table top.

I grew up under the poverty line and am sickened by how people are being screwed by software. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel are a couple to name of these monopolists that the general person is not really able to sever out of their lives. Don’t like that banking, travel, etc are all being relegated to an app.

Does this make some of my goals a bit clearer? I would like to do as much as we can as a community, as simple as possible. Arch and Gentoo are great as DIY examples, but software libraries and solutions created by others start to sound like fantasy when no actual English words are used to describe dependencies and abstract programs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I’m not too sure about this one. No brands stick out. I will do a quick bit of searching, but this is what I’ve found on the surface level.

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/the-worlds-first-risc-v-laptop-gets-a-big-update-deepcomputing-doubled-the-core-count-increased-clocks-to-2-ghz-and-added-ai-capabilities

 

Hello Everyone,

I have been cooking and will get back to many of you soon. Quesadillas, breakfast burritos, and some noodles have been a start of what my cooking repertoire has become. No longer is my food burnt or undercooked, as I’m being more conscious and feeling more nourished :)

The title of this post is meant to start a discussion with those of you who have freed yourself from all the proprietary software (or most, excluding devices assigned by your employer).

As corporations pervade nearly every aspect of our lives, I believe it would be a fun hobby to delve into FOSS with a group of you. We could discuss even ordering a RISC-V laptop/PC, driver creation, and how one designs a hobby board. The resulting computer will likely be leagues behind everything you can buy that is PnP, but it’s an obsession I would like to bring to fruition.

For those of you who yearn for a corporation free computing experience, how close have you gotten? What next step is stopping you from going deeper? I want to get back onto Matrix and start a channel for this if our sub admins would appreciate a reignition of this discussion. We could then open source this design to other auties and those interested in sharing knowledge. I believe we could build something beautiful for our community to use.

Thoughts? :)

 

A howdy hello to everyone,

Getting older has made me realize the deficits in my cooking skills. I was a very picky eater growing up, and started to widen my palate so that I wouldn’t be condemned to eating some form of bread with cheese for my entire life. I love fruits and vegetables, so there’s no problem here. Grains are a bit difficult because of their texture.

I am completely dogshit at cooking. Whenever I try a new recipe, I either burn or undercook the food, resulting in about an hour wasted of poor planning.

This may involve walking back and forth around the kitchen getting ingredients as needed, forgetting to do a step, or forgetting an ingredient that is sitting on the counter away from me.

My motor skills are sometimes clumsy with cutting, so oftentimes the vegetables and fruit are cut too thick, or not to the point where the recipe expects them. When I made aloo gobi, my cauliflower was too large, the potatoes were undercooked, and the other veggies were just a pile of slop. Sometimes other dishes will not be entirely cooked and other parts will be burnt.

Oftentimes I might hate the taste of what I’ve made, so ultimately I will act to not eat anything because I don’t want to waste money cooking then going out. I have been working out and live a much more active lifestyle compared to how sedentary I was in university. Walking around 10 hours a day has made me truly realize the feeling of hunger. An emotion I normally never felt due to stomach problems and perpetual nausea.

I am very good at cooking breakfast foods, but do not want to eat French toast or Pancakes every single day. I’d like to add a broader spectrum to my breakfasts as well, as it is a quite small subset. I tried learning the cookiebookie latex package to write a cookbook as I went, but I gave up on trying to get it working. Formatting documents is an entirely different post.

This is turning into a rant, but for those of you whose special interests are cooking and who have found a spectrum of foods that are nutritious and filling, what advice would you have for me? What cookware do you recommend? Is there a set of recipes you think would be good to introduce cooking techniques? My end goal would be to cook with mostly anything I have on hand to turn it into something delicious and nutritious. Protein rich meals, vitamins, minerals, calories, etc.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

I love your phrasing of “behind the back punishment”. Working in an office long enough and hearing the gossip about others makes me realize that myself personally is not exempt from being gossiped about.

I’d rather not say a “no-no” by accident when showing my candid self, which gets me grouped into being an odd ball. I have a mask personality that quite frankly I hate. He’s boring, plain, and can’t show any of his ultra specific interests or adeptness without coming off as a show off. It’s hard to talk about how I can play multiple instruments, speak many languages, and enjoy electronics and gardening without coming off as some bougie pretentious fuck. Hopefully I’m far from that, but a lot of the times my non chalantness with how I’ve taught myself all these skills make people think I’m over inflating my abilities or I’m just trying to brag.

Generally I’ve been a confidante to many people because they are willing to open up to me. But I think once I learn such deep information about someone so early in a friendship, this person regrets sharing the candid side of themselves and then distances themself from me.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

I like being avant- Garde and over the top when I want to get someone’s attention… This seems to break people out of their robotic work responses, and it gives others a chance to show their fun side.

Giving compliments is fun, but I feel sometimes people think I’m complimenting them for one in return!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Agreed with not wanting to exchange superficialities… It just feels like the other person is trying to mine for a particular type of interaction when the conversation is all hot air. This isn’t a prejudice I impose on all, but if the talk is about someone’s significant other, bragging about their child, or something about a celebrity or trend I don’t necessarily see eye to eye with, these are examples of off putting topics.

Lately I have wanted to improve my own fashion sense. After getting my first career, I was able to get my teeth straightened, so this has improved confidence with smiling and showing my teeth. Agree with the smiling wrong sentiment though. It’s evident I’m autistic from how wide my face will perk up. People who know me enjoy my bubbliness, but it triggers something in strangers usually.

When I’m being trained by other professionals, I can tell I’m one of the more engaging folks in the group. If there are 3 or 4 other engineers with me, predominantly I’ll be given eye contact (which drains my social battery) and this leads to me being the most inquisitive up until my social level collapses and I nearly become non verbal. I’ll stop comprehending what the other person is telling me, start sweating, and the words start sounding like muffled noise. This can immediately change a new persons opinion with me, as 1 out of the 10 people I met got to see this during a first impression, and has a permanent burn in of that side of myself as his perception of my general personality. Sucks, but you can’t change that!

Love to hear that living your truth and with your natural neurotype is helping you 😊 I feel the same learning about my autism more and understanding the lapses in consciousness and gaps in emotional awareness…

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Just posted a follow-up, but you bring up some good points.

Getting people to speak to me generally is an easy part. I don’t have trouble approaching others or initiating some sort of conversation. Usually this will be about a clearly visible article of clothing, cool earrings, pride apparel, hairstyle, the common small talk topics.

The back and forth will last generally for 2-6 sentences, where some type of awkwardness will insert itself into the situation. Maybe I don’t know how to respond after someone has shared something about an actor or singer they like. Maybe there’s an online trend I’ve missed, or they’re shocked that I’m in my early 20s and have no mainstream social media platforms. It’s not like my intention is to reveal that I’m a crazed Linux weirdo to everyone I know, but my interests are hyper specific. I could read up about what others like, but that would remove the authenticity from the conversation.

I know that depth like this doesn’t apply to smalltalk, and I don’t want to seem like an emotional weirdo to others, but I generally will also get happy and excited when others share my interests, which can be off putting in a different sense, maybe 10 minutes into a short chat.

My tendency to delve into historical facts, geography, electronics, scientific history, in order to connect something someone said about a building or a roof can also put people off. This is what I mean about being a chatterbox. I could never run out of things to say, so this oftentimes isn’t the problem. I’ve had wonderful and fulfilling conversation for hours over food and drinks with others who don’t mind this facet of me.

Once people get to know my character and who I am, this tends not to be an issue. But developing a working acquaintanceship is the difficult part so I don’t come off as a weirdo.

So let’s start off with small talk I.e 1-3 minute interactions, and branch into medium length office chats, then conclude with a lunch or dinner conversation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Usually when I try this strategy, I might fall flat on my face by not knowing anything at all what I just asked about. Should one thing of every small talk excursion as an onion?

What I mean by an onion is to be able to organize the depth of the conversation by extent of discussion. To transform the comment into a dialogue is most desirable. Small talk is the goal here, just not the robotic:

“I like your Kansas City Chiefs Jersey!”

“Oh thanks, did you see how Frank Footballer did that pass against the Steelers?”

“Not really, but my grandmother always had the TV on and loved the Super Bowl!”

“Cool, buddy!”

After this, it’s like a game over screen is flashed before my eyes. Not to be dramatic, but this situation happens in many domains of conversation for me.

Do you have any extended advice for this?

 

Hello again everyone,

I’m very happy with the comments from the last post I made. Many of you had positive and constructive feedback about socializing. Made me realize that I’m generally overthinking the whole thing.

I mentioned that I was a chatterbox with a tendency to delve too deep into things and talk about whatever spontaneously comes to mind. Usually I can hold a conversation for the first couple of meetings, but then I’ll be at a loss of words for relatability.

When I thought more about why I can’t relate to others, it’s not because of any distaste towards people or their personal likes/dislikes… In fact, I would prefer to be viewed well in someone else’s perception. Generally treating others with kindness, complimenting specific items of clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and inquiring about basic things like music, weather, architecture, outdoors etc.

But when I look into myself… I went through life having mostly no preferences

For example, when asked where I’d like to eat, I have been trying to expand my preferences. However, most of the time when I eat outside of my selective food items (mostly bread-based with some cheese), food can be difficult to chew and swallow. My music tastes are broad, but I don’t usually seek out new songs, and have difficulty discovering new songs.

Let’s continue this conversation about socialization, and extend it to preferences, likes, and dislikes. The problem with having an identity that doesn’t revolve around external activities outside of the usual hyper-specific autie hobbies, I’d like to become more relatable, learn to discover new likes and dislikes, and overall gain the ability to do this. I’d imagine it would make life quite a sum easier to change my perspective, but sometimes my mind is blank and unable to seek things out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

That sounds simple enough for me to remember! Focusing on being a better listener is what I should be working on.

But what if there are no immediate things to talk about? What if the conversation falls flat? Do you have a 3 strikes rule before you walk away from the interaction?

Maybe I’m getting too much in my head about things. Thanks for the reassurance 😊 This community always makes me feel more secure with some of my inner concerns about socializing and my perception in the eyes of others.

 

How do you get other people to speak with you? Usually I never know what to say in response.

Being a chatterbox hasn’t worked out too well throughout my life. Even in my second language, German, it’s evident im sort of a “parrot” when it comes to learned social phrases.

Socially exhausted right now and feeling like an alien.

 

Hello Everyone,

Apologies if I’ve not responded on Matrix, as I lost access to the Cinny client and disappointingly lost contact with everyone because of that.

I’m in quite a bit of a pickle and would greatly appreciate the autistic community’s input to my current scenario. As usual, this will read like a monograph, and I deeply appreciate your input or some sense to be talked into me.

Currently I am working as an engineer at a large company manufacturing semiconductors. I really am feeling my neurotype much more strongly here.

Definitely not in a good way. The way that people speak to each other always feels fake friendly. When I first started working here, I had a very positive opinion of my coworkers from when I started. Now it feels like I’m walking a tightrope as I’ve been overstimulated nearly every day and feel like an alien when trying to come up with responses to try and mask myself as normal. I don’t want to become the “autistic guy” at work, but I’m going to sincerely lose my mind if things stay this way.

We are not in production mode and things are slow. Our manager also has many faux masculine preconceptions of how he thinks men should act. More in the brutish sense, but it makes sense given his generation and background.

It seems like a kind of Good Old Boys School where the older men have strong opinions about what they believe masculinity is. They also believe in working yourself to death for a paycheck that isn’t even as much as the State that I live in pays its engineers.

As much as I’d love to get into how the conservative aura impacts me, I just try to ignore it since I’m generally used to that political archetype.

Let’s step back a bit and see how I got myself here… When I discovered this community, I barely got through my last two terms of college. Had some groups that I nearly couldn’t socialize with. I’d try to be cordial and polite, but was theown under the bus by each group. Called the suicide hotline nearly every week, because I suddenly went from being a near straifht A hard working student, to trying to extinguish fires that people set for me when they thought I wasnt part of their in crowd.

Got my shit together when I went to community college, but was miserable after transferring to Uni. I was very gun hoe and driven to get myself out of my circumstances.

I worked 1-3 jobs to afford to support my mother and myself, and had thought of everything to be. Eventually, I chose money over a career that I know I’d enjoy (Teaching, but I’d never make enough to live where I want).

My life I grew up very poor. In hindsight, it seems that I centered too much of my own identity on trying to be “good” at engineering so I could get a job to change my financial situation. Now that it has changed, despite the financial comfort it brings, I feel far less fulfilled than I was when I was broke. At least I had time to myself and a regular group of friends I could confide in. Now it seems like that’s all fading away.

The semiconductor industry is extremely demanding, especially the requirements imposed on us and the expectation to “own” multiple tools (10+ different types).

Executive dysfunction, physical in coordination, and not feeling like I belong is making me want to quit. I’m currently being trained for these tools and it seems like the company wants to keep us for 5+ years due to this. I don’t think I can do this and I believe I want to quit.

Quitting would likely demolish the career that I’ve started. No clue what would happen, but I’m certain the company would be able to replace me and find someone else. However, I don’t want to leave mid tool startup (unless some of you think that I could get out before the heat gets too hot).

This is where I open it up to you, my fellow auties… I need a support group. I hate feeling alone and like nobody understands me. This is a start, let’s lead a discussion and get this figured out.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/36499694

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday morning/evening.

I wanted to follow up from my previous post, as some of you have indicated interest.

About logistic considerations, I believe 8 weeks is a good time commitment for a hardware project. The goal is to learn more about silicon manufacturing, lower-level computer hardware details such as architecture, circuit design, fundamental condensed matter physics, and digital logic design. Other goals involve understanding firmware systems such as BIOS and the cascade of events that occur from power-on to user operation as well as conceptualizing the small timescales that these events occur on. My intention is not to dictate the philosophy of learning, but bring awareness to details that otherwise would have never been known or to draw a larger picture using the constellation of components that is a modern computing device. We then will delve into HDLs (Hardware description languages) and look specifically at the VHDL (Verilog HDL) for how to design a chip. This is where my understanding of what is out there becomes fuzzy.

We will need a repository to store documents. It is not my intention to use Google Drive. Is there a trusted platform that offers this functionality? I am also curious as to learning a VCS (Version Control System). Git seems to be the choice for this. Maintaining our codebase, resources/references, questions/comments, presentations, notes, and miscellaneous documents in some platform that does not infringe on user privacy. Any ideas in this domain?

Individual development environments are also crucial to a productive hobby/working session. I think it'd be fun to discuss IDEs, TUI environments, barebones software to accomplish simple tasks, CLI navigation, file system implementation, and drive partitioning. Some of you are adept TUI text editor users, which your expertise would be greatly appreciated.

Because this is Lemmy, I assume most of us are interested in FOSS software/hardware. Perhaps there are open source architectures for GPUs, RAM devices, and other fundamental computing units.

Is there a such thing as open source RAM architectures? Is that even the correct question to pose? I see that "OpenRAM" exists for ASIC design. Maybe we can have an ultra-specific computing task that we could optimize all the constituent hardware pieces to perform. Maybe a game engine for a programming project, but where we patchwork the pieces, or at least examine the guts of Godot together. I've found that discussing how one actually READS documentation, can be helpful in becoming more independent during information searching.

Apologies if some parts are still unclear. I'm just happy to see some of you are interested! As per the survey and what you'd like to get out of something like this, or if the idea needs other parts glued together, feel free to suggest them here. Looking forward to your feedback.

 

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday morning/evening.

I wanted to follow up from my previous post, as some of you have indicated interest.

About logistic considerations, I believe 8 weeks is a good time commitment for a hardware project. The goal is to learn more about silicon manufacturing, lower-level computer hardware details such as architecture, circuit design, fundamental condensed matter physics, and digital logic design. Other goals involve understanding firmware systems such as BIOS and the cascade of events that occur from power-on to user operation as well as conceptualizing the small timescales that these events occur on. My intention is not to dictate the philosophy of learning, but bring awareness to details that otherwise would have never been known or to draw a larger picture using the constellation of components that is a modern computing device. We then will delve into HDLs (Hardware description languages) and look specifically at the VHDL (Verilog HDL) for how to design a chip. This is where my understanding of what is out there becomes fuzzy.

We will need a repository to store documents. It is not my intention to use Google Drive. Is there a trusted platform that offers this functionality? I am also curious as to learning a VCS (Version Control System). Git seems to be the choice for this. Maintaining our codebase, resources/references, questions/comments, presentations, notes, and miscellaneous documents in some platform that does not infringe on user privacy. Any ideas in this domain?

Individual development environments are also crucial to a productive hobby/working session. I think it'd be fun to discuss IDEs, TUI environments, barebones software to accomplish simple tasks, CLI navigation, file system implementation, and drive partitioning. Some of you are adept TUI text editor users, which your expertise would be greatly appreciated.

Because this is Lemmy, I assume most of us are interested in FOSS software/hardware. Perhaps there are open source architectures for GPUs, RAM devices, and other fundamental computing units.

Is there a such thing as open source RAM architectures? Is that even the correct question to pose? I see that "OpenRAM" exists for ASIC design. Maybe we can have an ultra-specific computing task that we could optimize all the constituent hardware pieces to perform. Maybe a game engine for a programming project, but where we patchwork the pieces, or at least examine the guts of Godot together. I've found that discussing how one actually READS documentation, can be helpful in becoming more independent during information searching.

Apologies if some parts are still unclear. I'm just happy to see some of you are interested! As per the survey and what you'd like to get out of something like this, or if the idea needs other parts glued together, feel free to suggest them here. Looking forward to your feedback.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/36326370

Hey Everyone,

I'm very happy to see the engagement in my last post... Hoping to improve my communication skills and reduce my verbosity in the next couple of discussions.

I feel like it is due time to follow-up on what I posted on this board last year. That is, to follow through with "full-stack" hardware-software-application study groups.

If any of you still are interested, I'd like to open up this form for discussion of how that group should be run.

On the subject of HDLs (Hardware Description Languages), VHDL (Verilog HDL) could be fun for some of us to try together. Architecture is also a large concept frequently glossed-over, enciphered with too much jargon, or taught in a very "academic" fashion with very little discussion between students... The traditional classroom model, from what I experienced, is not too conducive to neurodivergent learning styles.

On that note, the RISC-V processor architecture could provide an amazing opportunity to gain a low-to-high understanding. Starting from the Silicon, where we delve into unit operations for chip manufacturing, fundamental solid state / condensed matter physics, and some mathematical models to describe the underlying phenomena. Then we will proceed to what can actually be configured in the ensemble of devices that constitute your "computer". What is a "piece of logic"? How do transistors actually operate? Why do certain design topologies make more sense than others...? And so forth.

We would conclude with some software projects like writing an I/O driver for a keyboard, or pool a fund together for some type of chip we design in EDA together. Overall, it sounds like a great idea for us all to increase our technology literacy, have a fun hobby group to hang out with, and to feel like you own every part of your computer.

On top of this, I feel that we should discuss FOSS tools with each other, as well as how they are best implemented to accomplish common tasks. I've punted the majority of my "Big Tech" stack to the curb the last 5-ish years.

TUI tools as well as CLI interaction is a paradigm of computer operation that I feel many of us have been sleeping on. It also has helped me understand how GUI applications can be better suited for the task at hand, versus when I should be using a terminal emulator to navigate the directory hierarchy instead. Many of you are more versed in programming than I am, so I would love to hear your thoughts.

We could even come up with a project for mobile, who knows? Not sure about the format, whether or not this would be synchronous, and the time commitment and sustainment of motivation throughout a probably 8 week period. However, I feel like a realistic solution for us all to get something meaningful out of an experience like this exists.

Any thoughts on how to get this up and going? What would we need to do on our first meeting together? What things would you want to learn in this course? It seems to me that many of us are already quite literate in sub-domains of what we are interested in. Maybe a teacher carousel routine could be adopted? Where we adopt a general "roadmap" curriculum, and, in an ad hoc fashion, assign people to be the instructor for the desired lesson? Then that person could go and create a slide deck in Beamer, or prepare a presentation with an overhead camera or digital drawing device to use as a teaching medium.

Those are just some ideas. Really looking forward to hearing what all of you think about this.

 

Hey Everyone,

I'm very happy to see the engagement in my last post... Hoping to improve my communication skills and reduce my verbosity in the next couple of discussions.

I feel like it is due time to follow-up on what I posted on this board last year. That is, to follow through with "full-stack" hardware-software-application study groups.

If any of you still are interested, I'd like to open up this form for discussion of how that group should be run.

On the subject of HDLs (Hardware Description Languages), VHDL (Verilog HDL) could be fun for some of us to try together. Architecture is also a large concept frequently glossed-over, enciphered with too much jargon, or taught in a very "academic" fashion with very little discussion between students... The traditional classroom model, from what I experienced, is not too conducive to neurodivergent learning styles.

On that note, the RISC-V processor architecture could provide an amazing opportunity to gain a low-to-high understanding. Starting from the Silicon, where we delve into unit operations for chip manufacturing, fundamental solid state / condensed matter physics, and some mathematical models to describe the underlying phenomena. Then we will proceed to what can actually be configured in the ensemble of devices that constitute your "computer". What is a "piece of logic"? How do transistors actually operate? Why do certain design topologies make more sense than others...? And so forth.

We would conclude with some software projects like writing an I/O driver for a keyboard, or pool a fund together for some type of chip we design in EDA together. Overall, it sounds like a great idea for us all to increase our technology literacy, have a fun hobby group to hang out with, and to feel like you own every part of your computer.

On top of this, I feel that we should discuss FOSS tools with each other, as well as how they are best implemented to accomplish common tasks. I've punted the majority of my "Big Tech" stack to the curb the last 5-ish years.

TUI tools as well as CLI interaction is a paradigm of computer operation that I feel many of us have been sleeping on. It also has helped me understand how GUI applications can be better suited for the task at hand, versus when I should be using a terminal emulator to navigate the directory hierarchy instead. Many of you are more versed in programming than I am, so I would love to hear your thoughts.

We could even come up with a project for mobile, who knows? Not sure about the format, whether or not this would be synchronous, and the time commitment and sustainment of motivation throughout a probably 8 week period. However, I feel like a realistic solution for us all to get something meaningful out of an experience like this exists.

Any thoughts on how to get this up and going? What would we need to do on our first meeting together? What things would you want to learn in this course? It seems to me that many of us are already quite literate in sub-domains of what we are interested in. Maybe a teacher carousel routine could be adopted? Where we adopt a general "roadmap" curriculum, and, in an ad hoc fashion, assign people to be the instructor for the desired lesson? Then that person could go and create a slide deck in Beamer, or prepare a presentation with an overhead camera or digital drawing device to use as a teaching medium.

Those are just some ideas. Really looking forward to hearing what all of you think about this.

 

Hey everyone!

Long time no post… The Cinny client for Matrix no longer functions even after updating, so I have lost access to the chat.

Anyways, I have been thinking a lot lately about the amount of awkward silences I’ve run into with others. It feels like some people are significantly easier to hold a conversation with, as they themselves are invested just as I am in our topics and dialogue. However, it almost feels like the other person is attempting a strange power dynamic with purposeful silences, staring, or otherwise conversations going downhill.

I’m not trying to be overly dramatic or to blame others, I just want to be as pleasant as possible for both the other person and myself. After all, good conversation can be wonderful!

Hoping to start a discussion with this nebulous afterthought and maybe get some ideas going for conversation skills and building social intuition!

 

Hi everyone, I've always had a special interest in linguistics and have informally studied a couple of different languages from all around the world. The different writing systems such as radicals in Chinese, Kurdish scripts and reading from right to left, to Inuit glyphs are all fascinating in themselves.

The IPA has been something fascinating, but I've yet to find a good resource that I could make sense of and hold my attention long enough to internalize the concepts.

I'm looking for books and authors that have a unique background. For example, seeing Chomsky's name in an automata formal language theory book was weird to think... But all the NLP stuff had foundation in older linguistic theory and ways people thought about the human brain, right?

Language and Information by Zellig Harris is an interesting read. John Sowa is another author I'd recommend for the whole way of ontology and computer systems. The particular book by him that I'm thinking is Conceptual Structures, I believe...? Would love to hear your thoughts, especially with all the AI hardware being released.

 

Lately, I was going through the blog of a math professor I took at a community college back when I was in high school. Having gone the path I did in life, I took a look at what his credentials were, and found that he completed a computer science degree back sometime in the 1970s. He had a curmudgeonly and standoffish personality, and his IT skills were nonexistent back when I took him.

It's fascinating to see the perspectives on computing and how many of the things I learned in my undergraduate were still being taught way back to the 1950s. It also seems like the computer science degree was more intertwined with its electrical engineering fraternal twin.

Although the title of this post is inherently provocative, I'm curious to hear from those of you who did computer science, electrical engineering, or similar technical degrees in decades past. Are there topics or subjects that have phased out over the years that you think leave younger programmers/engineers ill-equipped in the modern day? What common practices were you happy to see thrown in the dumpster and kicked away forever?

The community also seems like it was significantly smaller back then and more interconnected. Was nepotism as prevalent in the technology industry then as it is today?

This is just the start of a discussion, please feel free to share your thoughts!

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