You're not wrong but also what is the point of a 'presentation'? Images, words or more usually a wall of text the presenter reads to the audience.

Impress is fine, the real issue is that the 'state of the art' for presentations is bullshit.

..and get a slightly different delusional answer in only 7 hours!!

So you've never had to deal with an excel file containing dates or times or values which could possibly appear to be part of a date type??!

if your employer is taking all that effort to analyse emails, scroll times, docs access, then there's honestly a different, bigger problem.

yeah I don't know why people put up with this shit

I started a new job recently - requested a laptop with a geforce GPU so I could finally play BG3, I leave it in the background and have a fight every now and then. Conversely I spent most of the weekend trying to diagnose Kubernetes errors.

I could definitely get paid more elsewhere but a culture of trust and respect is priceless to me. YMMV.

it's not even that - all things being equal, I'd still go to the US despite not agreeing with the political climate there. It's a big country with lots of amazing stuff to see.

What I hear people really worrying about is the draconian powers that TSA/immigration seem to have acquired, and truly mindbending stories like this or this.

A bunch of my colleagues are raving about windsurf, one even starting a company to 'vibe code' an AI app. I was curious to try it.

Fired up a really basic web app I'm testing - pointed it at a file with about 100 lines of html/js and asked it to describe the function on line 78 or whatever. It came back with a very reasonable-sounding answer, but it wasn't the function on line 78. It completely hallucinated something from somewhere else. When I said "no that's wrong" it replied "oh yes! sorry about that..." and carried on.

Maybe my prompt-fu needs work, but this was enough to tell me that these tools are not ready to rely on for anything beyond playing around.

Great point. I did a PhD mid-career a few years ago. I never had any intention of going into academia, I can hardly think of anything worse.

I've since found that, because I already had proven practical skills, it has opened a lot of doors for people wanting consulting/contracting work in my field and let me span out into other research-adjacent jobs for really interesting organisations that would have been closed to me before.

I got a full scholarship so overall a no-brainer for me.

wow that's a big system! and a big saving on the power bill

I'll look into batteries a bit more, because I can't see it being particularly worthwhile without storage. I see Harrisons have the Powerwall 3 or Givenergy (3 models) - did you do much of a comparison between batteries, or just went for the powerwall?

what fraction? A large NZ solar retailer claims around US$7k install cost for a 5kW system; a presumably neutral news site (rnz.co.nz) says it's about NZ$2k per kW currently so that roughly checks out.

I'm quite surprised genuinely if these numbers are real. Having central AC, switching to a hot water heat pump last year, and probably buying an EV in next couple of years - with the retail price increasing - I've been thinking about this more and more...

https://archive.is/7pwlY

Exactly, I don't know why they can't just slap a warning on it like "this app can access all your files if you let it, is that ok?"

My question is how google apps do functionally the same thing, but presumably without using this particular API??

Same here - diagnosed autistic last year. I also feel like I need office time- sure I get much less work done, but its actually important to build networks, hang out with someone new for lunch and develop your allies, or people who can confirm to others you're a 'good guy' and not just a silent face hovering on a zoom call who also happens to be extremely productive. Its all totally exhausting but it is important.

what I've learnt is that neurotypicals value whether they like you way higher than anything to do with your work.

what does rsilvergun have to do with any of this???

are you that guy with all the rsilvergunisgay accounts?

Sometimes people have different opinions than you, and that's ok. Why are you so triggered by someone having different opinions to you? It's quite childish.

I don't know anything about your specific subject area but, yes, it's the cool thing about a Phd (or almost any research degree) - you are free to research any new area of knowledge you like.

You obviously have to research it objectively, follow sound principles around research approach, but otherwise free to test your hypothesis. If what you say is indeed true, then your literature review would uncover a tendency to marginalise an issue faced by males, and that is a good starting point into what you can prove is an 'under-researched' area.

If I may say, a PhD is a very long and difficult road - you have to be passionate about your topic. Sometimes it can be difficult to separate a passion from some kind of grievance, or in some cases a need to prove yourself right. For a Phd it doesn't particularly matter - the research itself has to be neutral and grounded in an evidenced issue. The issue is more about your own wellbeing and those around you - what will give you the motivation and drive to keep going? Good luck!