I once made a "therapeutic bartender" machine in a rapid prototyping class. It showed different drinks on the screen and used computer vision to estimate your happiness with each option (how big did you smile?). It then pumped and stirred a drink from a cooler full of ingredients.
One of my best friends worked there for several years. Ignore the condescending and unrooted drivel in most of the comments. He loved it. But make no bones about it, you work your butt off like there isn't a tomorrow because the ethos is that there may not be if you don't.
If you're down for hard grueling work but doing so with a bunch of brilliant people and care deeply about the mission it can be an incredible opportunity and open many doors. If you're wanting to be chill and have "balance" it isn't a place for that. They have some of the best tech on earth and are among the most innovative companies in history. They work for it though. My buddy rolled out after getting married and having a kid. He has no regrets.
Honestly, I got a job last year in a hybrid office and i love it. We are treated like adults. We can step out if we need to. We can remote in an extra day or come in an extra day if we feel like it. I also love my team and hanging out at our desks was something I didn't realize I missed until I had it again.
Remote is cool. Full time strict office is blah. Hybrid flex is lovely
ai sure can't program for us yet (at least not in any appreciable level; speaking as a senior engineer). But it is quite nifty for sketching things or quickly getting some syntax or boiler palate down. It hasn't helped me solve any non-trivial problem but it has saved me a fair bit of trivial work every few days
Not how QE works (or is known to work). You can instantly tell the state of the other entangled particle but you cannot use it to transmit information. Fun idea though.
I have a small screen for raspberry pi on a teleprompter with a Sony A6000 behind it for video conferencing. Kicks the crap out of every webcam. The teleprompter lets me look right at you while in a meeting
I studied CS engineering at a fancy uni with a pretty strict curriculum.
One year I fancied going on an around the world trip on this program called "Semester ar Sea" (SAS) for a study abroad. This was explicitly out of scope for the curriculum and the dean vehemently roadblocked my request.
My school happened to have one of those design your own major options so I went in and wrote my own major that was something like "cse and international business" and designed the curriculum so that SAS was a perfect fit.
A few weeks later I pitched the dean and her staff on this "engineering with an international context" major and they LOVED it. She signed on the dotted line smiling and that's when I informed the room that I'd be doing Semester at Sea because it was a perfect fit.
Best of all, having a dean stamp of approval, my scholarship transferred over.
So I spent the next 9 months earning college credit living on a cruise ship with 500 other kids traveling literally around the planet. It was one of the best experiences of my life and I could fill a book with stories by the time I finally came home.
To this day I'm not sure if the dean was pissed or proud or both of me
tl;dr: Find a used T480s for like $500. Upgrade its RAM and replace its battery if you need. Install PopOS and Regolith PPA. You'll be a happy camper.
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Librems looked pretty cool. I might get one next.
But I've been running my T480s since 2018 and it is still going strong, I don't imagine I'll replace it unless I drop it on hard ground... wait I've done that. or spill coffee on it... wait I did that too. Did I mention they were durable as heck?
For software:
I run PopOS for ubuntu-easy software and compatbility with a Regolith PPA because i3 window managers are amazing. Since its a thinkpad, you can swap out and replace most parts easily including the battery when it eventually wears out (literally takes <10 minutes).
Knowing that initial structurelessness is good and eventually becomes bad can help us preempt failures