cbarrick

So, I'd argue that "frontend" and "backend" are the default modes of software engineering these days, and that embedded is a more niche field.

That said, if you're doing encryption code, you're doing far more advanced math than backend monitoring and alerting.

You often need to be pretty good at math. But not because you're "doing math" to write the code.

In real world software systems, you need to handle monitoring and alerting. To properly do this, you need to understand stats, rolling averages, percentiles, probability distributions, and significance testing. At least at a basic level. Enough to know how to recognize these problems and where to look when you run into them.

For being a better coder, you need to understand mathematical logic, proofs, algebra/symbolic logic, etc in order to reason your way through tricky edge cases.

To do AI/ML, you need to know a shitton of calculus and diff eqs, plus numerical algorithms concepts like numerical stability. This is kinda a niche (but rapidly growing) engineering field.

The same thing about AI also applies to any other domain where the thing being computed is fundamentally a math or logic solution. This is somewhat common in backend engineering.

I'm not "doing math" with pen and paper at work, but I do use all of these mathematical skills all. the. time.

I am an SRE on a ML serving platform.

As someone living in Pittsburgh, I hate this.

Traffic is going to be a mess on Monday.

Both Kamala and Trump have rallies on the same day...

BUT good poll results aren't just "we polled 1,000 people and here's who they're voting for."

Good pollsters take demographic data when they poll. They model the biases of different demos, and they correct for those biases in their models.

Yes, reducing underrepresentation at poll time would be ideal. But pollsters are smart and are doing their best to put out good models. Pollsters know Gen Z is underrepresented and are accounting for that already.

In other words, don't let Gen Z underrepresentation in the polls lull you into a false sense of security. The polls are accurate. The race is neck and neck.

Big +1 for Sync.

I was paying for Sync back when it was a Reddit client, and I moved to Lemmy mostly because that is where Sync moved.

It's an awesome app. Best app purchase I've ever made. (There is a free version too.)

What could Twitter possibly offer to make me switch banks?

What could Twitter possibly offer to make me switch brokers?

What could Twitter possibly offer to make me switch from Venmo and PayPal?

Which Americans are not in a similar position?

X Payments is doomed to fail. He missed the boat. The market is already saturated, and they've lost all brand loyalty.

And were they any good?

My car runs Android Automotive^1 on an Intel Atom and performance is trash. I would hate to have a phone on the same platform.

^1 As in, the car runs Android directly, not Android Auto running from a phone.

So they tried to open a research center to steal Chinese talent (that has since been closed) and they released the Google Translate app on the Xiaomi store...

That's not the same as supporting the CCP and the Uyghur genocide.

What are you talking about?

Google doesn't operate in China, much less do work for the CCP.

"Getting fired felt like a possibility but never a reality,"

They took over an executive's office and a cafeteria. Not knowing that you'd be fired as a result is a severe lack of judgement.

Protests are important. But you have to understand that there will be consequences for your actions. Embrace that going in.

Saying that you didn't think they'd actually fire you comes off as childish.

That's exactly what I'm hinting at.

My hypothesis is that this is, in fact, the case.

Maybe the reps aren't thinking this deliberately, but I suppose some in R strategy has realized this. They can tell the reps something simple like "FEMA response is likely to be bad for us in the election," and the reps can be willfully ignorant, refusing to consider the consequences of their inaction.