For my job I have to create a recommender system that takes a bunch of users with their attributes (name, id, posts on a certain platform etc.) and find users similar to them. A recommender system is what I found might work best for me, maybe I'm wrong though. I have close to zero knowledge in ML so I'm kinda lost in this crap. Do you have any ideas on any existing systems I can use to do the job? Open source is fine with them since it's more of a POC than a finished product.

!rant

Haven't been here for so long, wonder who of the real old users is still here... Anyway.

Well, I started a new job almost a month ago and so far it's been great. A small startup, about 10 people and one hour drive from my home. It's in its infancy so there's a shitload of work and things always change, which is kinda interesting. Working 3 days a week, as a student, almost no time left for fun anymore but it's the last year of my degree so I'm pushing through the gutter. A lot of rants are coming probably.

Hope it goes well for me, this year is going to be harsh...

!rant

So after about 3 months after I broke up with my girlfriend, I get the feeling of moving my life forward. I started working out again, searching for a normal job and I even have a dream, for the first time in years. I really want to become a pentester. I understand some may be against the idea, but I think that's what I want to do in life. I found a job in tech support and it may be a gateway to moving in the right direction, especially since they give a CCNA course for free after a year. Anyway it beats washing dishes in a restaurant, like I do now.

Okay, it's a pretty general question but I was thinking lately about becoming a freelance programmer. What are the things I should know, generally speaking? Where should I start and where can I get money off of that?

Ok, so I watched Glass just now (yea) and as far as I can tell NO ONE uses Windows in the movie - only Linux and Mac. So:
1. Is it some kind of sick "glass but no windows" joke?
2. I couldn't find what distros they use but I think it's some Debian-based MacOS-skinned system for Joseph Dunn's computer and some Arch-looking system for the control room. The laptop for in the opening scene probably uses some Windows-looking atrocity but I can't say exactly what it is (might as well be a MacBook, judging from the keyboard). Can anyone with a sharp eye confirm this?

We broke up. I'm pretty numb.

Edit: felt it's a good idea to say that it's the same GF I wrote about a while ago.

Got another interview, this time it was a research assistant position, a java dev job, with one of our lecturers. It sounds really interesting, but it deals with NLP and it's not something I took courses in.

She asked if I can study a 3 months' worth of material in one month for this job and I said that I can do my best to cover at least most of the topics, but she'll likely end up taking someone who had already taken these courses.

Also the pay is kinda crap - it's a small grant and not really worth the 2 days per week (although it's work from home) - but it may be good for the resume.

The only sticker I have in my laptop. It looks amazingly clean with only this one.

!rant

So today I had an initial interview for a tier 1 analyst position (it's a student position). The interview went really good, and I pretty much landed it and my next one is going to be next week. It sounded pretty awesome, but a part of me thinks it's going to be a tech support position more than anything else. Nevertheless, I hope I'll get the job, it seems like a nice gateway to more awesomererer jobs.

So here's my question: can any of you guys tell me more about this type of job? How mundane or interesting is it? I'm probably not going to decline the position, I just want to be ready for what's coming.

age++;

/*
Relevant for yesterday but was too sick to write anything.
*/

Code-wise: a bash script called GitGud that makes a local and a remote (GitHub) repo and connects them via GitHub API, all in one command.

Not code-wise: a small LED lamp that runs off batteries and one that runs off USB, all from crap I found in a drawer. No soldering. Oh and my PC.

So after a month and a half without my PC, and thus only using Linux as my main platform, I turned the thing on.

Man, Windows is weird after not using it for so long. Got up to speed pretty quickly though. Also found out that my college license for Visual Studio expired so fuck you, college.

RANT*1000000

Fuck you, Microsoft.

It's in the smallest details, like Office, that you just CAN'T install properly on Linux. I tried Wine, Winetricks, PlayOnLinux, went through like 10 different tutorials when I got stuck...

Even when I got Office 2013 relatively working (and then couldn't uninstall it later), the formatting got fucked all over the place. And none of the open source replacements do the proper formatting. Even OnlyOffice, that doesn't even have RTL (still!), gets it wrong.

And I know, dear Microshit, that you transferred to OOXML and many other word editors support it as well, but it still doesn't work like it should and you STILL refuse to release an Office bundle for Linux. In a world where I'm surrounded by MS users, I can't even view a word document properly, let alone edit it in a normal way.

If there's a way Microsoft can keep their clutch on the PC users, it's these small things, and for that - FUCK YOU MICROSOFT.

Google play store is in a desperate need of a dark theme.

!rant

So I finally bought a laptop! Dell Inspiron 3580, specs:

15.6" screen
Intel i5 8265
8GB RAM expanded to 16 manually
256GB NVMe PCIe M.2 ssd as system drive (ofc)
Added Crucial 1TB SATA ssd for good measure

Fucked up the stock Ubuntu 18.04 with libinput-gestures I think, reinstalled Ubuntu 18.10, got Steam, bought Half Life bundle, installing it right now.

Also VSCode, CodeBlocks, IntelliJ and PyCharm are on this beast and I'm ready to rock.

So happy!

Absolutely love astronomy, astrophysics and astrophotography - the latter is pretty low-level but I make do with what I have.

Also really like things on the smallest level - string theory, quantum mechanics, particle physics etc.

I have many more, like mountain biking, gaming and various design things, but these are the geekiest by far and also my favorite.

Fuck. Got sick 2 exams before the semester ends.

Was searching google for whatever and found this

!dev

TL;DR: My GF flipped out and locked me out, and we may be splitting soon.

Background:
I have a GF for about 4.5 years, 2.5 of which we live together. She comes from a very harsh past of abuse from her parents and it reflects on her personality. About a year before we moved in my parents flipped out on her and since then she's not welcome in their home. We fight a lot and much of it revolves around this issue - she can't stand me going to visit them so I come there 2-3 times every semester (except when I need my brother's car) and don't stay there overnight. This has been the issue for about a year and a half now and it gets worse every time the thing comes up. As a result I missed 3 New Year's Eves, all my and my family's birthdays and every holiday I could spend with them.

Story:
On Friday I took the car and we went to go visit her grandma. We came back and I drove to my parents' place to return the car. As I get into the city (it's about 35-40 min drive from my city to theirs) my brother tells me he doesn't need the car and he works only tomorrow morning. It's 9:30pm and to get his car in the morning I would have to leave my home at 5am, so I decide to stay there overnight so that I wont drive after 5 hours of sleep. I tell this to my GF and she is disappointed, I go on to talk a bit with my mom and sit around so I see (and respond to) her messages after 1.5 hours. She's pissed and says she wants me back, then goes on to say "you can stay there for good for all I care". I reply pretty patiently but she won't let go of her anger and can't get to understanding me.

Next morning I get home and she won't open the door, I stay out for about 3 hours. She claimed I should now I feel what she felt the day before when I didn't come home and left her alone. I knocked, rang, sent messages and called her for like 30 minutes, and after that I became really angry and shouted at her through the door, at which point she claimed I'm being aggressive and violent and she doesn't feel safe opening the door. The other 2.5 hours were just sitting outside the house and waiting for some miracle.

At some point she went out and I SLIPPED in and since then we barely talk, she says she can't see any solution and she started packing her things. This is the second time she locks me out, the first time was about 3 months ago. I know that the only thing I've done wrong is leaving her hanging for over an hour but it doesn't excuse her behavior IMO. I know we have to break up but I still feel really depressed over this, 4.5 years of relationship do have a lot of good memories.

Just wanted to vent about this shit. Thanks for reading that far.

This is my first post from the web version of devRant. Never seen it before on a PC.

This is so weird O_O

I'm working as a tutor for two classes. Students are 11th graders, smart and curious as hell.

We get to the OS part of the course and they have to use WinAPI for now. The explanations in the lessons are vague and they are forced to use MSDN which also has either super-high-level or super-simplistic explanations. Don't know how to give them motivation for this crap.

Also, where is WinAPI really used? For writing drivers? Viruses? Relatively low-level software?

Ooooh they finally arrived! Thanks, guys :)

Had a course in software architecture. Our final project was to fully design a program with microservices. No explanation was given on technologies, tools or even the specific logic. We had a total of like 5 "lectures" and only one or two of them were about microservices. Also the guy didn't reply to emails and our questions remained largely unanswered.

We had 4 weeks for the job, and together with massive homework amounts and other projects we wrote a website in MVC which is, apparently, not designed in MSs. Also all the papers we had to provide with it (full design, UML diagrams and system analysis) were as clear as a fucking swamp. And the "lector" had a metric fuckton of issues with it when we presented it.

I fucking hate this course and this college.

So I bought CoD Black Ops 4 and Diablo 3. RIP my dear semester. So happy though!

Thanks buddy 😁

I feel lucky today 😃

!rant

We had to design a Turing machine that gets on one strip a number in binary form and writes on a different strip the rounded down square root for it.

I did. And then I kinda implemented it in 16bit Assembly.

Facebook. The only reason I still have a FB account is the groups - house rental, student buy\sell groups etc.

Microsoft for Windows 10 - some things are good but generally it really sucks capybara balls (too bad for me - I'm an avid gamer).

Also Asus and Razer for overpricing their shit. And Razer have the most dumbassest names for their products.

Oh and Apple of course - I love their products and I'd love to buy and use some of them, but I hate their scummy policies and customer treatment too much.

PnP on Windows stands for pee and poop. Because anything that comes pre-installed there is just that.

Everything will be about the same, but faster. Quantum computing will allow brick-shitting speeds of data processing, Nvidia will at some point develop a quantum GPU and call it Fuckall architecture or something that will allow to simulate all the atomic-level physics of a whole car (and stuff), 1Tb network speeds will be common, websites and databases work in a blink of an eye.
Also someone will find a spectre/meltdown-level vulnerability in quantum CPUs and everyone will get f-d in the a. Again. Almost.