- The problem is that media and video games are worth less. Not "worthless", of course, but just valued less than they used to be.
Essentially, prices for video games and media are stagnant (or even go down) compared to inflation, and the prices for people go up every year. Changes (something like moving to lower cost countries or utilizing AI) is inevitable in a capitalist system.
- A few things every man in a relationship has (or should) learn.
1. Focus first on building intimacy, trust, and connection with your partner. 2. Invest your partners their happiness as well as your own. 3. Take care of yourself and communicate your needs. 4. Find out what works for your relationship and keep doing that consistently.
You get laid far more often.
- From A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (and https://akkartik.name/post/deepness)
Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked!
Programmer Archeologists was his idea.
- It isn't Toys R' Us -- it is Toys R' Me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU-2C8Ec6co
- Sorry to hear about this, it stinks and you don't deserve it.
One thing that we don't talk about is how adversity changes us and pushes us forward. Not that it is easy or fun, but it does help us focus on the future.
Let me give my personal example --
I started back in the job market in 1994 after a stint in the US Marines and things were very, very, very bleak (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1990s_recession ). I was planning on getting a college degree and was living at home with my parents and planning on working part time, likely for minimum wage (then $3.25/hour) in a two-bit town in Arizona.
In my job search at the local unemployment office I found a post for a job that paid a whopping $7.25 an hour, doing telephone technical support for a little startup by the name of America Online. I was discouraged from applying as I didn't have the skills and should focus on something like security or food service. To be honest, I had no degree but did have PC skills, although no telephony experience. So, I went out and bought one and started learning as much as I could in a short period of time. I got the interview and the job, and about a year later the company exploded and I got to ride the wave into a degree in math and career in tech.
Now, I am not a boomer saying that "you need to try harder." I am also not saying that you just need to find the next hot startup and everything will be fine. Neither of these are true and it sucks that you are in this crisis. I was insanely lucky multiple times.
However, what I will say is that when the current economic model isn't working you have the rare opportunity to take a risk and move towards the future. Desperation doesn't feel good, that is why it is such a good motivator. Take advantage of it.
All the advice around here about networking are spot on. What you need is a job or a degree program that will keep you pointed in the right direction. I don't know if you are an international student or not, but if you are then the only thing that matters is getting a work or study visa. If you are lucky enough to be authorized to work in the US then any job that will keep you fed and in a single room in someone else's apartment in Boston is great. Or, find ANY graduate program ANYWHERE in the country that is vaguely palatable to you. Don't go back to a place where you don't want to be.
Again, this sucks, and I am so sorry that you are caught up in this. Your feelings are justified and valid. But you are caught up in this need to accept where you are and move forward. You will have an Engineering Degree from MIT, and that means you are smart and motivated. This is the definition of "grit", and it will be the next step into your future. You don't have anything to lose.
- There is a fundamental business challenge at work -- games these days are "worth less".
Not having no value, but being of less worth to investors and companies to invest in. This is simple fundamental economics, since game prices are not growing as fast as their input costs. For example, I spent $30 for Atari video games in the 1980s and it was a lot less expensive to produce. That game would cost $90 today with inflation.
For a comprehensive breakdown, see https://www.gamesindustry.biz/are-video-games-really-more-ex...
If your costs are increasing and you can't raise your price then your industry is being commoditized, or at least in a real quandary about how to move forward. AI could be a way to slow the huge, up-front costs that go into AAA games and help limit the risk to making new ones.
If this subject interests you, there is a great long-form interview with Matthew Ball on Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-matthew-ball-...
Anyway, Carmack is right on the money on this one.
- Stratechery does an OUTSTANDING job covering Intel, TSMC, and chips.
https://stratechery.com/?s=intel
They were talking about this in 2013
- I think the thing is that in a huge amount of hiring, we don't know what attribute K is, nor if it is good to be considered favorably during hiring. It is amazing how often we look back and see what we used to evaluate people by 50 years ago was so wrong, but believe that we have it right THIS time.
So, as a people we default back to hiring people who look like us, think like us, and act like us, even if that isn't representative of the larger population, and even if it restricts the population of people who are likely to be perfectly qualified, given the chance. Keep the playing field tilted towards "us", whoever that may be in the given situation.
And it just so happens that with our enlightenment we exclude the people who have always been excluded. A funny coincidence how we keep coming up with that same solution, rather than challenging our own assumptions as lazy mammals.
- Please don't listen to all of these folks who are trying to bring conflict into your life. You did something interesting, and learned a lesson about how big institutions actually work. It is a great story, and one that you can tell your friends.
The easiest path forward is to do what it takes to graduate, it sounds like you are one quarter away. Smile, play nice, help out where you can. Get everything in writing.
Definitely TALK to a lawyer and have that in your back pocket. It is likely there is some sort of legal aid through the law school and you can. However, only use this as a last resort. It would be no problem for a university to drag something like this out for months or years and you will be left without a degree.
- But as a comparison of scale, both the airports in Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth are larger than Manhattan (27 mi2 or 70 km2).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Fort_Worth_Internationa....
While that is a ton of activity (and empty space, if you have ever seen those airports), the Big Apple might not be the best reference for scale.
- Great point!
(Disclaimer: I work for Elastic)
Elasticsearch has recently added a data type called semantic_text, which automatically chunks text, calculates embeddings, and stores the chunks with sensible defaults.
Queries are similarly simplified, where vectors are calculated and compared internally, which makes a lot less I/O and a lot simpler client code.
https://www.elastic.co/search-labs/blog/semantic-search-simp...
And in no way do I want to take away from her insight and skill in popularizing and communicating these concepts. Clearly she is good at what she does.