Can I , Should I..board the FIRE train

AlphaKappa

HCIMbtw said:

Get out the game, take a year or two, and work out what you want with your time.. no need to have a job, maybe you want one, maybe you don't. Congrats on having such fantastic savings, very envious.

Thanks.
The markets have been kind and lucky to have generous contributions by employer. George Osborne also made pensions attractive with the freedoms. Praise be !
Also learnt many tricks from the good people on here (particularly lumpy salary sacrifice to ~ min wage to save on 12% NI) 

HCIMbtw

AlphaKappa said:

HCIMbtw said:

Get out the game, take a year or two, and work out what you want with your time.. no need to have a job, maybe you want one, maybe you don't. Congrats on having such fantastic savings, very envious.

Thanks.
The markets have been kind and lucky to have generous contributions by employer. George Osborne also made pensions attractive with the freedoms. Praise be !
Also learnt many tricks from the good people on here (particularly lumpy salary sacrifice to ~ min wage to save on 12% NI) 

Banking industry? 

Terron

sheslookinhot said:

I believe under  55-57 is too young to retire. There will be exceptions of course. Unless you have no money worries and a clear plan to spend your vocational freedom, you could be drawn back to a few years more employment.

I was made redundant at 54 with no plan. I found I had enough money to live on at a moderate level until my pensions kicked in. So I had the time to make a plan. I decide to try BTL and it worked for me, but I used agents for full management so it was very much part time. I moved to a larger but cheaper home.
I still struggle to find the time to do all I want to do. 

Terron

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

Bravepants

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

My PhD, 30 years ago, was in Neural Network applications, and I laugh quietly to myself when I hear youngsters these days talking about implementing multi-layer perceptrons.

cfw1994

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

LV_426

cfw1994 said:

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

The thing that I find amusing is that software applications tend to bloat and fit the resources available. So in the past programmers were obsessed with using every byte of memory carefully. Now with GBytes of RAM available and multi core CPUs at our disposal, we've become sloppy. Net result is that slowness is still there, but in different places. Whereas in the past developers were waiting for their code to compile and start up. These days we're often waiting for applications to deploy into web servers and virtual containers, or web browsers stuck waiting for page loads due to a slow server.

k6chris

LV_426 said:

cfw1994 said:

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

The thing that I find amusing is that software applications tend to bloat and fit the resources available. So in the past programmers were obsessed with using every byte of memory carefully. Now with GBytes of RAM available and multi core CPUs at our disposal, we've become sloppy. Net result is that slowness is still there, but in different places. Whereas in the past developers were waiting for their code to compile and start up. These days we're often waiting for applications to deploy into web servers and virtual containers, or web browsers stuck waiting for page loads due to a slow server.

1k space invaders on the ZX80, where the 1k included the screen memory.  Happy days!

LV_426

k6chris said:

1k space invaders on the ZX80, where the 1k included the screen memory.  Happy days!

Indeed, happy memories! I spent many hours and 10p's in the arcade as a kid. Got to love 8 bit graphics. Truly amazing how far we've come. But how much computing resource does it take for us to run the Unreal Engine 5 in modern games? 

Bravepants

k6chris said:

LV_426 said:

cfw1994 said:

Terron said:

cfw1994 said:

Well, we are fresh back from a cracking Masters Graduation for my son, who completed a distinction in Speech & Language Processing in October....
Overall, I would say he is now a lot more technical than me (although I sometimes give him pointers on some broader topics!), is now with a tiny startup as their Data Scientist: hurrah!   
Google is a useful tool for solving problems, but I know the small community he works with also help each other on topics/code.   It isn't all bad!
I think the broad brushstroke being painted of 'youth in technology' is somewhat overstated.   Sure, the vast majority are mere users of tech, not coders and developers....but that is to be expected: how many 'apprenticeships' do we offer out early on to them!?
I say this often....the world is a different place, and the technology is far broader than when I learned BASIC for fun then COBOL for work 30-35 years ago!

I recently bought a book on AI and found there has been no real progress since I graduated 40 years ago, just the same ideas applied faster on more data.

40 years ago?
No real progress?
We will have to politely disagree!
Okay....mmm....more power in a mobile phone now than those old mainframes - no wonder Pokemon hunting became a thing, eh 🤣

When you say "faster on more data"....I would say MASSIVELY faster, and on HUGELY bigger datasets.
    
Things have definitely moved on: Moore's Law helped with that! 
Deep Blue only beat Kasparov less than 25 years ago, & Google's Alpha Go only defeated the Chinese Go champ a few years back....things are definitely progressing.

The thing that I find amusing is that software applications tend to bloat and fit the resources available. So in the past programmers were obsessed with using every byte of memory carefully. Now with GBytes of RAM available and multi core CPUs at our disposal, we've become sloppy. Net result is that slowness is still there, but in different places. Whereas in the past developers were waiting for their code to compile and start up. These days we're often waiting for applications to deploy into web servers and virtual containers, or web browsers stuck waiting for page loads due to a slow server.

1k space invaders on the ZX80, where the 1k included the screen memory.  Happy days!

And, towards the end of its life, the programmers really got to grips with the Commodore 64. Some excellent games that I still play in emulation.