Hi!
hello
What's up?
what led you to choose your username? I'm curious
It's an inside joke with myself.
Ah I see
How about you? What led you to pick Dark Matter?
I don't know, its just a name I use when I need a screen name.
That makes sense. So, what are your interests? Do you watch any cool television shows?
I haven't watched any shows recently But I watched a lot of star trek at one point and the expanse what about you?
I as well have not watched any shows recently, and most of the TV I watched in the past was just whatever my family was watching or what my younger brother would watch, which varied wildy.
thats cool. any particular shows?
None immediately jump to mind as being ones that I watched regularly.
ah okay. did you watch the olympics?
I watched some of it when I could.
me too
Any particular events for you?
I like figure skating, skiing and snowboarding especially
I'm more into curling myself, but those are cool too.
Yeah, I liked how the US won the mens curling that was exciting
That *was* sweet. I was real hyped.
how did you get into curling ?
I watched a documentary on curling in High School, and after that I just thought it looked super cool. It's almost more like chess on ice than a lot of other sports.
hmm thats interesting. I first learned the rules during this olympics. its seems like a cools sport Its funny that it has become so mainstream recently
Yeah. Before I got into it, I always though it was sort of a joke, but when I finally learned about it, it became one of my favorite sports to watch.
have you ever personally curled?
I myself have never played. It seems difficult to get into as a player.
Yeah I agree like bobsledding. how does anyone get into that?
I imagine through rich parents or a passion from a young age.
yeah, I think you're right
Besides casually ice skating, I've never done any of the things they do in the Winter Olympics.
I've been skiing and snowboarding, they are fun
My friends all tell me they are. They seem like they have a decent barrier to entry, however.
You mean like cost and equipment? I agree, its a pretty big hassle to actually get up there
Yeah, pretty much that.
Do you do any other sports?
The only sports I've done competitively are swimming and cross country running.
That's cool. Have you ever run a marathon?
I have not. They seem really long.
I agree, I haven't either. I just think that they sound pretty crazy
The most I've ever done at once was to run around a track for an hour straight, which still felt super long.
that is really long, I've never run that much at once
Yeah. I wouldn't have made it if I didn't have good friends doing it with me.
That's nice. Was there a purpose to this particular hour-long run?
It was for fundraising for the team.
Oh nice
Yeah. People could pledge to donate a certain amount per lap completed, or they could pledge a flat amount. I never received any per lap pledges.
That makes sense. I've done something like that before, but it was how many rows you could knit instead of running laps
What were you fundraising for?
I'm actually not sure. For something at my school. I was in 3rd grade or something
Oh. That makes sense then.
yeah, knitting is pretty fun, haha.
I believe it.
What else do you like to do?
I spend a lot of time playing trading card games, and by that I mean, reading strategy articles and watching gameplay of trading card games, with very little actual play.
what kind of trading games? Is that dugeons and dragons, or is that something else? I have never done anything like that, so I have no idea
I mostly "play" Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone.
Ah, I know people who play hearthstone. it looks confusing
It's not really. Bots have made it to the highest ranks before.
Bots are getting good at everything nowadays
Yeah, it seems like that. Opening doors, controlling homes, spying on people...
Driving cars, having life-like conversations.... (like the chat bot we are currently creating data for)
That too.
In my machine learning class we talked about how robots are going to put pretty much everyone out of work soon. Its crazy to think about.
I don't think it's as much robots putting people out of work, because lots of tasks are still difficult for robots to do. It's just that a lot of jobs we pay people a lot of money for (like mid-tier management) can be done somewhat easily by bots, so people will have to find jobs building bots or fixing bots or creating things bots can't. Which require a very different skill set than the jobs bots do easily.
I agree, but for instance, driving is the most common job in America, and self-driving cars will put a huge amount of people out of work. It seems like there wouldn't be enough jobs building robots to give everyone a job. Especially since robots could also take over a lot of other industries as well.
I feel like we just have to devote more people to jobs requiring social skills, which I'm pretty sure bots still struggle with,
yeah i agree I feel like some jobs like teachers will never be fully replaced with robots
Definitely.
what do you want to go into?
I'm actually sort of interested in virtual reality more than anything else. A lot of entertainment today is about trying to create an experience, and virtual reality seems like a promising way to allow people to experience things they could never experience in real life.
Hmm that's interesting. VR is definitely really crazy and exciting
Yeah. I'm pretty excited for where it could go in the future.
I assume you want to do the computer science behind it given your username
Yeah, pretty much.
cool
Is there something in particular you want to go into?
yeah, I'm going into software engineering
Cool, cool.
yeah, i like it
What got you into software engineering?
I took CS 142 as a freshman and enjoyed it. I had never coded previously
Cool.
are you studying CS?
I'm studying computer engineering, which is slightly different.
Ah nice. do you do a lot with hardware in that major?
Yeah. It sits about halfway in between CS and electrical engineering, containing portions of both.
That makes sense
It's what my dad does, so he's really what got me into it.
That makes sense. Did you feel pressure to go into that field because of that?
Not really pressure, but just more exposure to it. He had me try coding stuff from a young age and I've really enjoyed it.
That's cool. Whats the coolest coding problem you've done?
The coolest coding problems I've done have been list comprehension stuff in Python. I've not done a lot of higher level coding yet, so list comprehension is still really cool to me.
I love list comprehensions! They are so slick! Python is my favorite language right now
Yeah. I've really liked working with Python as well. K. Well, it's been lovely chatting with you, but I must go eat dinner. Thank you for the conversation!
nice to chat with you too! have  a lovely dinner!