ShinRamyun's recent activity

  1. Comment on What will "emergent" tech make our lives look like in a few years? in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Thanks for sharing your thoughts. How have you been tailoring your Google queries and general approach to information finding? Honestly, I switched to Kagi and I found it has been a lot better,...

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    How have you been tailoring your Google queries and general approach to information finding? Honestly, I switched to Kagi and I found it has been a lot better, though there Assistant offering is fairly mediocore.

    1 vote
  2. What will "emergent" tech make our lives look like in a few years?

    I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I am honestly just curious as to what Tildes thinks. With advances in generative AI, which will likely only get better, along with the push for...

    I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I am honestly just curious as to what Tildes thinks.

    With advances in generative AI, which will likely only get better, along with the push for agents, what would the internet look like? Something that I grew up with basically my entire life, and I attribute to a lot of great socialization and exposing me to new ideas, might die or become completely unrecognizable. It was already becoming bad before generative AI launched to the public, with bots and shill accounts everywhere. Now, many times, I have no idea how I will know if I will be speaking to an actual person. Is this something we can even solve, at least without massively breaching people's privacy?

    @boxer_dogs_dance posted this article about human certification for books. Are we going to need something for necessitating and verifying human engagement over the internet?

    I consider myself a critical optimist about the future overall. I think Deep Learning and Neural Network developments may assist with massive healthcare breakthroughs, helping us find medicines and cures that may have taken an incredibly long time. However, I also feel that it's going to be an incredibly rocky road on the way there.

    Other things as well. Robotics and VR/AR/XR. How are these going to change our lives? I think change will be slow, but will how we engage with technology completely change? While current AR offerings are limited, they will likely continue to improve. Imagine a truly useful AR device as something that would feel as natural as a pair of everyday sunglasses, capable of seamlessly overlaying information without the bulk or battery limitations of today’s prototypes. It could give you information about the world around you in real time, hell just imagine it translating things around you.

    Will I have an Uber driver in a decade, or will it be fully automated? Will we continue to become more isolated in terms of physical contact, but then retreat into digital worlds?

    What should the next generation even learn at this point? Education is always slow and last to change. If you had a child now, how would you prepare them for a future? How should schools be changing? Will they even be able to keep up with sweeping waves? There are financial realities at play here, what jobs may even be left for someone to thrive in, not just scrape by?

    Consider this post just general musings, and really just wanting to hear what other people think about this.

    15 votes
  3. Comment on How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ??? in ~life

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Do you speak on the perspective of staying in Mathematics teaching? I can actually get a Masters in Mathematics Education in less time, and have been accepted for it while I figure my stuff out....

    Do you speak on the perspective of staying in Mathematics teaching?

    I can actually get a Masters in Mathematics Education in less time, and have been accepted for it while I figure my stuff out. Though my concern is that while I hit the credential being solved, with the flooded market I still lose out to people with specific curriculum experience (IB, AP, etc).

    Not a door I have completely shut just yet while I am thinking of my other options.

    1 vote
  4. Comment on How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ??? in ~life

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Thank you for your perspective, and I appreciate the suggestion being very tailored to trying to reach my goals. Unfortunately I seem to fail to meet their admission requirements, and missed their...

    Thank you for your perspective, and I appreciate the suggestion being very tailored to trying to reach my goals.

    Unfortunately I seem to fail to meet their admission requirements, and missed their most recent admission dates. Being originally humanities trained (Social Studies and English) really kills me there on admissions. I don't hit that quantitative or technical discipline requirement. Which sucks, as aspects of it here and there are what I have taught. A younger me, with more time and perhaps armed with the knowledge I have now, likely would have loved this and been able to fully pursue it.

    Was really interesting to see those program requirements though, and I know a dude doing quant stuff in Hong Kong. Dudes really bright, and also really chill.

    5 votes
  5. Comment on How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ??? in ~life

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Thanks man, I am going to shoot you a DM.

    Thanks man, I am going to shoot you a DM.

    3 votes
  6. Comment on How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ??? in ~life

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    I think what you say is fair overall, and is probably why I am struggling and making my post looking for other perspectives. While I say my home is in HK, I am actually living juuuuuust beside it....

    I think what you say is fair overall, and is probably why I am struggling and making my post looking for other perspectives.

    While I say my home is in HK, I am actually living juuuuuust beside it. Close enough that I can get to Central in basically an hour. My goal was to get myself more credentialed (I figured out the gaps I needed to fill last year when observing the market) and then slowly try to move my way to Hong Kong. Obviously, my timeline has changed. However, it is my understanding that there are no long-term immigration options open to me until I can get employed in Hong Kong.

    Which is why I am trying to look at other options in case I need it as, from my current view, it's looking like the most probable outcome.

    4 votes
  7. Comment on How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ??? in ~life

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Thank you for the ideas. For the tutoring business, the difficulty is that my ability to live and work in this region is tied to be sponsored on a visa. Therefore, I am unable to really...

    Thank you for the ideas.

    For the tutoring business, the difficulty is that my ability to live and work in this region is tied to be sponsored on a visa. Therefore, I am unable to really "freelance." I think the other barriers is then how viable is this long term (relating back to how hiring in my industry works now) and I am not really in a financial situation where I think that would be viable on any time frames in front of me. (Things were getting better here, but I really got screwed over at parts of my career, as well as some mistakes when I was younger) that put me behind).

    I will see if there is any possibility for the college idea in Hong Kong, though language is likely a barrier. I also believe the market may also be flooded. I have a friend with a PhD back home in Canada and she even struggles to stay at the Universities and she is much more credentialed than I. Though I am unsure if we have some...analogous institution community colleges in Canada in the meantime. This will be something for me to look into.

    5 votes
  8. Comment on How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ??? in ~life

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Bingo. It was actually on my professional development plan for this year. I wanted to learn Cantonese (would be fun to watch old HK action movies without subs) and while obviously being overtaken...

    Bingo. It was actually on my professional development plan for this year. I wanted to learn Cantonese (would be fun to watch old HK action movies without subs) and while obviously being overtaken by Mandarin, I did really decide this was the region I wanted to call home, so why not learn?

    Though I've obviously put that on hold for now as I have more...pressing matters.

    5 votes
  9. How to best navigate a career change, from a Canadian who was teaching mathematics internationally to ???

    tl;dr it seems that my career in international teaching (mainly mathematics) is ending after nearly a decade, and I am struggling to understand how to find jobs/what to change careers to I’ll...

    tl;dr it seems that my career in international teaching (mainly mathematics) is ending after nearly a decade, and I am struggling to understand how to find jobs/what to change careers to

    I’ll apologize up front if the below is hard to follow. I get fairly emotional in private while talking about this situation as a whole, but I have tried to edit it as well as I can for clarity while not being too verbose (though would be happy to clarify questions in the comments).

    I have been teaching internationally at Canadian international schools in Shanghai, South Korea, and the Hong Kong region for nearly a decade. This past September, I was brought into a meeting being told that I was being non-renewed (my teaching contract would not be renewed for the 2025/2026 academic school year). The reasons were…not at all related to performance. The main factor was that I took an interview in February 2024, after I signalled intent that I would like to stay at my current position, but before I had a signed contract from the school. I told someone I felt I could trust in leadership because the interview went well, and the way references work for safeguarding in this field I was under the impression they may get a call, and I did want to give the school a heads-up so that if I were to get an offer and leave they would have a good amount of time to get a replacement (visas and stuff can take a while, but they would have had plenty of time). The person in leadership said that me leaving would be a large loss for the school, but promised me they would keep the conversation confidential.

    Which was a lie, I guess. They then told their superiors the next day. It almost got me fired on the spot, but since I had a mountain of evidence of being their top performing teacher over piles of data from 2016, at the time I was able to avoid that, and I was told that this would be put behind us and we could move forward.

    Which was…also a lie. I knew that this may be an outcome but then the school was signalling to me that there was going to be room for me to move up the ladder. Naive of me to believe it probably, and has honestly taught me a lot about trusting leadership at any organizations (which may sound bitter, but I literally debated telling anyone in case this was going to be the outcome only to be proven right when I went against my gut).

    The second main reason was the amount of sick days I used…when I got pneumonia and almost got hospitalized last academic year. Honestly, I work at a place with incredibly toxic leadership. Last year, a friend of mine was non-renewed when she was struggling at work because her mom passed away. Instead of supporting her, they took her grief and showed her the door. I could go on for a while, but this post is already getting lengthy. Many of us stayed in our positions simply due to economic imperative.

    I had multiple colleagues try to save my job over the past few months (buddies at best, but mostly not even people I hang out with) to no avail. For those unfamiliar with the teaching field, to have teachers speak out instead of being agreeable with whatever is going on is incredibly rare. If there has been one silver lining it has been the outpour of support from basically my entire collegiate base that is showing evidence that I am a good teacher, or at least likable. I am also at least leaving with a stack of glowing references from everyone else over a decade-long career.

    But the international teaching job market has changed significantly. I have always been hired on a new contract before Christmas, and this year I have been hearing next to nothing. I did hear from some “Tier 1 / Elite” level schools, with one interview process still ongoing, so I am confident that the problem was not necessarily my resume getting noticed. However, every time I have been passed over it was the same reasons of not having experience with a certain curriculum (country, IB, AP, whatever) or that I lost to some with a Bachelor’s or Masters that was specific to the subject area. I was originally humanities trained, with a Bachelor of Education, but got to teach Math in my first job and loved it so much I kept doing it. I was also able to teach Computer Science and Physical Education over my career, but I was really recently just leaning in to being a good Math teacher. Sometimes being passed over is due to visa requirements in certain countries (though this is rare), but schools also just seem to be unwilling to train in their curriculum/framework now. Now that the market is seemingly flooded, many pathways have been lost to me. As we enter February, job postings will likely dry up based on what I observed from the market last year. The decline in postings has already been occurring comparing January to the few months before.

    While I am not fully giving up, it has left me seriously thinking about how worth it is to stay in this field? If good performance never really seems rewarded, and your fate can be left up to a person that can be vindictive, perhaps moving to a different field and learning the politics and ways to succeed may be the better move. After a decade of experience in teaching, I can’t seemingly maintain my current compensation package without getting specific experience, so it seems it may be foolish to remain on this path. To do so, would mean going to a smaller school, in an undesirable location, away from the relationships and life I have built. If it means heading back to entry level, is it worth investing more into this career? I could get a Masters in Mathematics Education, but then does it matter? I take a year off, try to apply again (in which there may not even be openings), but perhaps now I still lose to someone with specific curricular experience. It seems like a treadmill and race I would not be able to keep up with. Due to the way international teaching works there is very limited movement, and it’s not like other careers where hiring and resignations are more fluid throughout the year (and that you can look and take interviews privately without fear of reprisal, unlike this career apparently).

    The problem with a career change, as I see it, is I am a single, mid-30’s dude, with all the social expectations of providing for myself and others that come with that. If this career is ending, I need to make a switch with some combination of being able to learn fast and leveraging my past experience and skill set and try to make $100,000 USD per year after a few years of just grinding or whatever. Before I entered teaching I took a year or two off after high school and worked with the Canadian Department of National Defence as a civilian, and then a shipping company while I was in University (and at the shipping company I overhauled the branch’s financial reporting and tracking system which then got rolled out nationwide - I am pretty proud of doing that at 21 with literally no experience). Not against working hard or doing whatever I need to do. I currently make $95,000 net which is kind of how I come up with this number. It’s the number I have come up with considering retirement, probably having to take care of my parents, and not just surviving. I would really like to work remote or from home, though understand I may have to work towards earning that privilege.

    Over the past two years, I finished the two courses from Google/Coursera on Project Management and Data Analytics out of sheer curiosity. Honestly, I think I lean more towards the former rather than the latter, and have experience over my career that I could repurpose into work artifacts (I have been in charge of learning management system rollouts, training, curriculum overhauls, etc. that I could probably move into a Project Management context). I could also get my CAPM, though Pearson/PMI won’t let me write the exam online from my current location.

    One hard part is that my life is in Hong Kong. My friends, relationships, all of that. I am trying to figure out a way to stay here as well, so that I am not socially isolated. Alternatively, placing myself in a position/career/company that could allow me to get back in short order. There is really nothing left for me back in Canada. I think that has been the most difficult thing about this, that I have cried about in the times I can get to myself.

    The other hard part is that I have not looked for a job outside of international teaching in nearly a decade, and I have absolutely no idea how it works for other careers and fields. I know LinkedIn exists, and have tried to update mine. But I really do just need…guidance on what could be a best potential route if there is anyone that could provide something. I found when searching stuff online that most advice was just…vague.

    If you made it through reading this far, thank you for taking the time. I hope my writing is coming across reasonably well. Writing this all at five in the morning after I was unable to sleep again. I understand that I will likely have to work hard to get to the level I am currently at again, and do feel confident in my ability to learn (my entire career has been taking something I don’t know, learning it, teaching it to others/training, and getting results).

    19 votes
  10. Comment on Podcast app recs in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Oh, had no idea that thread existed. I'll check it out.

    Oh, had no idea that thread existed. I'll check it out.

    2 votes
  11. Podcast app recs

    Title is pretty straightforward I think. Trying to get my Podcast listening off of Spotify because I just hate their player and UX lately. Also, no ability to add feeds by RSS link. My daily...

    Title is pretty straightforward I think.

    Trying to get my Podcast listening off of Spotify because I just hate their player and UX lately. Also, no ability to add feeds by RSS link.

    My daily drivers I spend most of my time on are my iPhone and Macbook Pro. After that, maybe I would listen on my iPad, or my PC that is running both Linux and Windows.

    6 votes
  12. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link
    Anyone interested in posting their lenses? Always interested in what people are cooking up. Bonus points for pirates.

    Anyone interested in posting their lenses? Always interested in what people are cooking up.

    Bonus points for pirates.

    2 votes
  13. Comment on You should have a website in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Never heard of Bear Blog, but really needed something for a professional website right now. I plan to build a static website of my own (and I am going to use 11ty for it) but this can be a good...

    Never heard of Bear Blog, but really needed something for a professional website right now. I plan to build a static website of my own (and I am going to use 11ty for it) but this can be a good intermediary while I am a bit swamped with life and work right now.

    Thanks for this link.

    2 votes
  14. Comment on Touch typing learning software in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    This but Brood War. You are going to learn to talk shit, and you are going to learn to do it quickly.

    This but Brood War.

    You are going to learn to talk shit, and you are going to learn to do it quickly.

    4 votes
  15. Comment on Finding real images in ~creative

    ShinRamyun
    Link
    Kagi allows you to filter out AI images in search results. It also downranks them by default.

    Kagi allows you to filter out AI images in search results. It also downranks them by default.

    5 votes
  16. Comment on Someone made a dataset of one million Bluesky posts for 'machine learning research' in ~tech

  17. Comment on Someone made a dataset of one million Bluesky posts for 'machine learning research' in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Guess then this depends on how we define giving something back. I have received a ton of value from services such as ChatGPT already, which I feel would qualify. Would I prefer all of these tools...

    Guess then this depends on how we define giving something back. I have received a ton of value from services such as ChatGPT already, which I feel would qualify.

    Would I prefer all of these tools to be open source? Probably. Those do still exist though and I fear that people acting out against tools held by corporate interests are still going to hurt smaller and open source models as well.

    3 votes
  18. Comment on Someone made a dataset of one million Bluesky posts for 'machine learning research' in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link Parent
    Is there any sort of repo for these lists? Feel like just getting the US Politics out of my face will be great but there are some other communities that have made home there that I would just...

    Is there any sort of repo for these lists? Feel like just getting the US Politics out of my face will be great but there are some other communities that have made home there that I would just rather not see.

    2 votes
  19. Comment on Stellar Blade: The fake outrage in ~games

    ShinRamyun
    Link
    I like the game, it's fun.

    I like the game, it's fun.

    1 vote
  20. Comment on Someone made a dataset of one million Bluesky posts for 'machine learning research' in ~tech

    ShinRamyun
    Link
    I've continuously been confused or at a loss reading arguments against allowing AI to train on publicly available data. Recently on BlueSky, I've noticed people protesting once again simply...

    I've continuously been confused or at a loss reading arguments against allowing AI to train on publicly available data. Recently on BlueSky, I've noticed people protesting once again simply because they dislike the concept. While I empathize with those concerned about AI-related job displacement (which I believe is inevitable), I think that publicly available information should be fair game for AI training. Hell, I barely give a shit about the copyright infringement that could be happening if I am completely honest.

    My perspective is admittedly influenced by growing up with the 'Hacker Ethic' of the early internet, but it's been fascinating to witness AI's capabilities from all the data it has been trained on. Despite the protesting I think that these AI tools have been a positive force overall.

    I can't tell what people want. Do they want laws restricting access? Do they want everything to be a walled garden? I think that would just destroy the internet, and also restricting access to training data could have serious unintended consequences. It would likely consolidate AI development among well-funded corporations, effectively shutting out smaller developers and open-source initiatives. What do people actually want?

    13 votes