u/Concern-Excellent

I was thinking of it but couldn't answer it. Current estimation for Orcas are around 50k globally, long finned pilot whale 780k, short fin pilot whale 360k. Orcas eat a lot of things from marine mammals like seals to fish to even other cetaceans. Pilot whale contrast to eating only Squid. Both are closely related and a part of blackfish.

If Orcas are highly intelligent, apex predator with a successful diet then shouldn't they have expanded far more? One possible hypothesis I could come up with is that Orcas are bigger and so need more food. Also reproduction rate of both orcas and pilot whale is similar and both care for their children and both have social structure. Another hypothesis I have is that something hunted Orcas more recently and since they eat everything, they had beef with everyone else including sperm whale. Although everyone shy away from orcas except for pilot whale which would make sense given their numbers.

Orcas are recorded hunting and even eating pilot whale, while pilot whale haven't been recorded doing the same to Orcas but they chase Orcas away. This feels like homo sapien and neanderthal all over again to me. Neanderthal were bigger than us in both brain and size, more muscular but had small social circle while homo sapiens had large social circle with 1000 individuals each, who cared for each other and we were far more than them. This feels very analogous to that situation.

I am trying to collect other people's experience and thought process reflecting far back in time. One thing I did was to see older posts to see the relevant things and experiences then. Personally for myself, I learnt a loooot. From how to design system prompts, personality to making lorebooks and exploring many many ai models.

I started using local models then R1 which I found humorous but bossy. V3 0324 awed me initially and was a game changer but now I personally can't even use it, it seems so bad after I have tested everything. Then I tried gemini 2.5 pro, mistral, R1 0528, R1T chimera yadda yadda yadda. By now the models are smart enough to follow rules, remember context, follow logic and simulate natural language. I remember having a story with a character which has a double personality and they are a spy. The earlier models kept making them two different people. Then the middle ones were improvement. Now I could finally run it and it ran well.

I would go a lot more in detail but I am more curious about others. What's your journey like? Are there anything you are still fond about or remember well? Looking back in the past how has your experience evolved? Did everything got better than you expect or some of the things got frustrating in between etc.

I gave GATE CSE exam on February 2025 in my third year and then forgot it mostly. Right now I am just about to graduate from a tier 3 university btech. I have no jobs or mtech offer in hand as of now. My parents have been insisting that I should use my GATE score and join some NIT or anything else I can get.

My main concern has been that I gave GATE exam just as a formality. I didn't prepare for even one day or before the examination and I missed the registration deadline during my fourth year but I was not focused on it at all. It doesn't sit right with me to join some university based on that score for which I just woke up, gave an exam and forgot about it.

I am thinking of taking a drop to prepare and see what I can get with that and to prepare to get a job along the sidelines based on making some projects. So it would be training and preparation for GATE and to solidify other concepts. My parents and others don't want me to take a drop though but I am thinking one year is worth the wait if I can get into top IIT or IISC, right? My friend said that if I use 5-6 months just to make a serious and good project, I can get employed and won't need higher education at all as well.

I am also thinking to switch branch from CSE due to job market saturation and take something like ECE or going deeper into AI/ML with research my interest. Any advices on what I should do and who is right (me or my parents). Besides I don't think joining anything is a good thing just to not take a gap and 525 won't give me anything worthwhile as a general candidate either.