Wow!. Such an original piece of "non-AI slop" content in a long time. Kudos for making this as I myself tipping my toes to explore this concept after hearing about it from multiple sources(Naval Ravikant incl). Thanks for making this and looking forward to more podcast episodes. Cheers

Thanks ultrasounder!

Finished scarlet pimpernel on a rainy Christmas Day. Couldn’t put the book down. To think that it spawned a whole genre of super-hero movies where the protagonist hides behind a mask of “ foppiness” and it was written back in 1901 and set against the ever green theme of the French Revolution is mind boggling. Once I finished reading it yesterday, followed it up with the movie of the same title. Well made and acted. Wholly recommend the book first and then the movie.

Nice :-)

Thanks for the book recommendations. Will absolutely check them out. No productive life for me is to be of “some use to others”. That’s what I am contemplating about. Also true regarding jumping from one goal to another without seeing the previous one through. Need to work on that too.

interesting thought. I have this "side project" that I started working with some ex-colleagues that I could see sprouting some legs. My CA UI(unemployment insurance) benefits could potentially fund this for the time being when I do some soul searching and contemplating.

This is the right answer I think

I did this a few years ago after the layoff wave and it was transformative

I agree with Andrew, side projects are a great way to rediscover joy. From my own experience:

- Decompress and seek fun, instead of aiming to "get a project done". Follow whatever excites you. If nothing excites you, step away from the keyboard. Go for a walk, bring a notebook.

- The Artist's Way is great for processing burnout, and self-discovery. One does not need to consider themselves an artist to find the book useful. ( https://juliacameronlive.com/book/the-artists-way-a-spiritua... )

You mention hardware, have you made a silly hardware thing recently? I can recommend running Rust on an esp32, lots of fun.

Thanks for the book recommendation. Seems like an interesting book. Have seen it recommended a few times here in HN already

Be aware it is extremely god-based in an unnerving way if you're not into religion. There are many alternatives if you don't want to go through a faith-based reboot.

Care to share these non-religious alternatives?

Thanks!. Very thoughtfully framed around gratitude.

Thanks!. Yes. Definitely one of the TOP priorities right now is to "Take the time off" and assess my priorities. In fact, my sons's College Apps could use some help :-)

What worked for me (not saying this will work for you but just to give ideas) is I told myself I couldn't do any sort of development for a couple of weeks at the very least. Get off the computer as much as possible and do other things.

I did a lot of walking, listening to and reading books/audiobooks, hanging out in coffee shops, meeting up with friends.

After my self imposed ban from the computer I started to get the itch to develop again and started working on stuff I wanted to work on and not something I was told to develop.

Super helpful while I come upto speed with this field in general. Currently taking the XCS234(RL @ Stanford online) and this book is referenced for everything.

The Author used to be on the Unity Agents team and was my first every introduction to Whatever Learning. This looks cool and timing couldnt be better as I am working through XCS234(Stanford Deep RL course)

Hi I just found this resource. Is this a full-fledged Transformer implementation? If so, I would like to throw GRPO on it to see what happens. I mean what could possibly go wrong :-)