Hi everyone! I’m excited to say that this is my first post on Lemmy! This reminds me of “the old days” when I was first learning the internet (in a good way!) I’m a Computer Science grad student focusing on AI, and have an interest in a ton of different areas. Anyway, it’s great to be here!

  • Flying Squid
    4•1 year ago

    Welcome. I understand the whole old days thing myself (and I’m old). I am a Reddit refugee myself and what draws me to Lemmy is the same as what drew me to Reddit- that it’s as close as you can get to the Usenet and BBS experiences of my youth.

  • SalamanderMA
    4•1 year ago

    Hello! Welcome!

    This reminds me of “the old days” when I was first learning the internet (in a good way!)

    Me too! Discovering niche online forums about reptiles and science was very important to me during my teenage years. Finding close-knitted communities with a specific interest made it a lot of fun to explore those interest as well, because to me it felt very personal. Maybe others do see reddit the way I used to see online forums back then, and I was simply too old by the time reddit became big, but I spent 11 years on reddit and I honestly can’t tell you 5 usernames I would recognize.

    I feel like the concept of Lemmy might be able to replicate the niche community feeling at an instance level, but at the same time it can provide the more generalized content in the way that reddit does through federation.

    • @astronaut_slothOPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Oh I can’t say that I do research just yet. I’m still doing coursework (cue the imposter syndrome lol). I’ve been getting into Reinforcement Learning, recently, especially Deep Reinforcement Learning.

      • @TonyTonyChopperEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Coursework is important! I just became course-complete this spring haha. Not my field but that seems like the fundamentals of ML. From what you’ve studied so far, what would you like to accomplish in the next few years?

        • @astronaut_slothOPEnglish
          2•1 year ago

          Reinforcement Learning is one of the three fundamental types of ML. I’m into algorithm work, though, so it’s kind of hard to make concise without sounding weird. Plus, as it stands now, there is so much other work that has been accomplished around the field that it’s almost like playing with Legos; you can just try slapping two ideas together to see what sticks. To be honest, it’s a equally exciting and frustrating. I don’t have really have lofty goals for now. I’m studying while working full time, which is a challenge (mostly in time and sleeping), so I really just want to publish something that is deemed at least mildly useful. As hokey overly-sentimental as it may sound, Computer Science was a field that was good to me, so I feel like I should give something back.