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It was always cool. Until you find the only jobs on the market were ones that involve making machines that kill people. That’s what happened to me. YMMV.
by thimp 3y ago
It was always cool. Until you find the only jobs on the market were ones that involve making machines that kill people. That’s what happened to me. YMMV.
- amelius 3y agoYou could instead work on a robot performing surgery ... Just one example.
- GianFabien 3y agoThe word "engineer" origin (from Oxford Dictionary): Middle English (denoting a designer and constructor of fortifications and weapons; formerly also as ingineer ): in early use from Old French engigneor, from medieval Latin ingeniator, from ingeniare ‘contrive, devise’, from Latin ingenium (see engine); in later use from French ingénieur or Italian ingegnere, also based on Latin ingenium Would be great if we had a less war-like derived word for our profession.
- elchangri 3y agoBy your own share, it only held a "war-like" definition in Middle English. Its original latin etymology and current definition describes the skill of devising/designing/inventing/producing solutions. "Genius" shares the same root.
- aitchnyu 3y agoHeard the platitude that in today's French engineer is "ingenious man"
- rangestransform 3y agoYou could work in autonomous driving!
- jwr 3y agoOne sometimes gets to a second take on that: you don't want to make machines that kill people, until invaders from another country ride into your country (or a country of your friends/neighbors) and start killing, raping and torturing. And suddenly, as you feel frustrated and powerless, you realize that even though you don't want to make machines that kill people, you pretty much have to, otherwise those people will come for you, your family and your friends. I thought humanity would grow out of senseless aggression in 2024, but here we are. And yes, I am basing this on a specific real-world example of a country invading another country right next to mine, and my specific thoughts and beliefs.
- thimp 3y agoI don't disagree with you for ref. I don't mind working on defensive capability for sure and that's what I was involved in but the discussions moving to first strike capability were not where I wanted to be.
- noman-land 3y agoI know this is easy for me to say but I really want to encourage you and other hardware people to innovate on extremely cheap consumer facing commodity p2p/mesh communication devices. I've been teaching myself electronics and RF to try to be able to meaningfully contribute. It's dumb that we have these super computers in our pockets with long range antennas and in order to talk to each other they have to go through central intermediaries and paid access. I want ad-hoc geographically local connectivity without service providers.
- Consultant32452 3y agoThe closest I've heard of to something like this is some autist creates a low cost mesh internet connection for his neighborhood, then you could use VOIP on top of that.
- api_or_ipa 3y agoI don’t think it’s fair to conflate autism (a specific medical condition) with passionate (a personality trait) Where would we be without these kinds of people?
- noman-land 3y agoAutist is not a cool term to use. Keep that sort of stuff on Reddit please.
- jameshart 3y agoDoes the supercomputer in your pocket not have wi-fi? Who is centrally intermediating or making you pay to use wi-fi to connect to nearby peers?
- durumu 3y agoI'm not sure what you mean -- I would think the ISP is analogous here, so Comcast, AT&T, Verizon et al?
- 3y ago
- CamperBob2 3y ago[flagged]
- paganel 3y agoUnfortunately most of today's software is also going down that route, if not necessarily killing people then most likely making their lives a lot more nightmare-ish. AI is a very good example of that.
- thimp 3y agoThat is exactly why I am heading out of the industry. I have little faith in the direction and want nothing to do with it any longer.
- Consultant32452 3y agoI was amused by the fact that in the same week that AI generated fake nudes of Taylor Swift was hitting news headlines another AI tool which puts clothes on e-girls pics also popped up on my radar. The internet is amazing and stupid.