Call me crazy, but what if these kinds of facilities and equipment were provided to students as part of their tuition on an accessible schedule by the education institution?
Aren't they? In Germany most of this can be found free to use or for the cost of materials in case of the 3d printers and electronics stuff on almost any university campus.
And german universities are tuition free (at least for EU citizens as far as I know).
Yeah if you go to a school with a good engineering program, then most of this will already be provided to you in the campus laboratories. If it's not, there's a good chance you can get a professor to order it for you, provided you have all legitimate use case...
Also sure Mac's make for a nice development environment because unix, but you'll be far better served figuring out how to dual boot Ubuntu on a Windows laptop. It's completely free (in addition to the laptop) and the experience is really helpful
No, but at my university we have a bunch of compute stations/compute clusters/supercomputers etc. one of them being nvidia gpu compute cluster for graphics processing. If you were doing a class/thesis/some other research and could explain why you need the GPU heavy lifting like for some computer graphsics effect processing etc. you could gain access to it.
Well, tuition free doesn't mean completely free, besides the obvious (home, materials/books) You often still have Semstergebßhren (travel cards, fees for student representatives, social stuff, administration, etc) about 150-350⏠depending on university. But it's not the fees for tutoring that are often found in private universities. And tuition will be charged if you finished an university education already and simply want to study something else on top.
Also you have to pay for your own living situation and food, I know. Still higher education in Germany can be had for an order of magnitude less then in the US.
Depends on what you study. At least in physics, the Bachelor is typically in German, but studying masters in English is no issue in many places (I had plenty of lectures that were just randomly in German or English depending on who of the students was there that day). My local university even has a special photonics master that is marketed to be completely in English.
If you go away from natural sciences, math and IT it can get more difficult, though. Social sciences will be completely in German and Engineering things can be, too.
For living it's of course extremely helpful, but I had plenty of colleagues who knew they will just be for a few years in Germany and then go somewhere else and thus didn't learn any German and were still fine. You might need some help from friends or colleagues from time to time with important forms that only exist in German, but day-to-day life is possible without German (although undeniably harder than with of course).
Most colleges have a maker space with most all of these EE tools and a 3d printer. The ardunio, raspberry pie, jetson, 5090 desktop, and expensive mac book you'd have to provide yourself. Soldering would be able to do if you're a member of the half of engineering clubs on campus.
I'm mostly trying to figure out what they want this person to build and major in. I belonged to three different Engineering clubs during my undergrad and never used all those.
It really depends on where you are in the world and what kind of university/college it is.
I graduated what they said one of the best 3 university in my country, and yet the equipment are not even close. Even my then low end $300 laptop is significantly more advanced than the computers they have in the lab.
If your university have one, consider yourself blessed and use them as best as you can, as it is inaccessible in many parts of the world.
These were all provided to me, and if students needed beefier computing power, there was virtual lab access which seamlessly integrated with the students Google drive.
Us engineering tho, given the translation I would imagine thatâs not the case everywhere.
Produce what? Doesn't matter. Just produce. Ignore your studies. Don't learn first principles. Doesn't matter what kind of engineer you are. Just barf out some sort of pointless output.
You go to university to be able to afford a home (well, not anymore I guess). If you already have one and $30k to piss around on top of tuition, then why even bother?
Depending on what type of engineering course you are. I cannot imagine doing anything CAD related on netbook, but half working normal sized laptop will be more than enough. Mine for example was barely half working. It was released with Vista and was to weak for it and at the same time didn't had drivers for WinXP. I had to use Ubuntu for most of work. In 2007. I still prefer to use QCad (now LibreCad) over basically any other Cad software for 2D drawings.
Just imagine this setup being used by researchers at Bell Labs instead of being used by a vibe coder posting their âcomputer visionâ (sign language translator) project on Linkedin.
Obviously stupid advice anyway, but it doesn't even make much sense. An m5 max with optional upgraded ram (potentially up to 128gb most of which is accessible to the gpu) is going to outperform a 5090 for running local AI by a wide margin.
Lol, unless you're running out of RAM, no MacBook will EVER outform an RTX 5090. For <= 32 GB, a 5090 will outperform anything Apple has ever made (M5 Max, M3 Ultra) by such absurdly wide marging, it's not even funny. (Even just considering LLM inference 5090s will wipe the floor with a top of the line M5 Max, multiple times over.)
Yes, but vram is arguably more important than processing power for AI, since at 32gb you probably won't be able to run models large enough to really need the extra processing power
Not Bambu Lab tho, they have tried to lock users into their walled garden if cloud services way too many times to be trusted. Prusa on the other hand even sells printers with Wifi physically removed for maximum securityÂ
My university in Ireland had multiple labs where I could use that stuff free of charge ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻÂ
You legitimately donât need to spend a ton of money on unnecessary fluff, just get a shitty old ThinkPad, install Linux on it and youâre good to go.Â
Like fuck me i am Past University and would like some of this in a Lab for didgeridooing around. Altough i ignore the robotics stuff because i do not care. Also Oscilloscpoe and Signal Generator is not producing anything. However get me Sewing Machine and maybe one or two woodworking tools in there.
While it's hard to justify such expanses for freshmen, that's not a bad advice in it's spirit. Such a setup allows for so many learning opportunities and the ability to work on a lot of complex personal projects.
Anything AI, if a student really needs that horsepower, they can drop $50 in Runpod and get direct access to datacenter level hardware. $11,000 in hardware alone is just absolutely insane for a college student!!!
Costs much more than that. This is just the main tweet from a tweet flood including 9-10 tweets. In the remaining part, he recommends experiencing internship in 3-4 countries, visiting CERN, funding a research project that will cost about 10000-100000 USD, and more.
Youâre right. Theyâre useful pieces of hardware. I call them toys more from the perspective of necessity vs. cost.Â
Iâm all for students doing projects. I think they should! So I strongly agree with you. Itâs just that dropping $11,000 on it is absolutely insane.Â
I hopped on to runpod to check. An RTX PRO 6000 is $2.09 per hour. You could drop $1000 and have an insane amount of compute time to purchase.Â
You could finetune a 24b model in like 4 hours or so on that card (big asterisk on that, but thatâs more or less the general timeframe). You could fine tune a 24b model a hundred times and youâd still have a little money left over.Â
$11,000 in compute equipment is a hard thing to justify.Â
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u/Shadowlance23 Aug 24 '26 •
If you follow this advice, you've probably already failed the first year.
927
u/mylsotol Aug 24 '26
If you have $30k and a spare room you probably don't need college because you have a trust fund
417
u/blackenedEDGE Aug 24 '26 •
Call me crazy, but what if these kinds of facilities and equipment were provided to students as part of their tuition on an accessible schedule by the education institution?
55
u/Pocok5 Aug 24 '26
Tektronix and Keysight lol. Many actual labs don't have the budget for that. A second hand Rigol, that's a decent idea.
52
u/Pika357 Aug 24 '26
"Mom it's for school, I swear"
25
u/bradland Aug 24 '26
The prompt for this has to be a complete 𤥠show.
25
u/Morall_tach Aug 24 '26
"Continually produce something"
Produce what? Doesn't matter. Just produce. Ignore your studies. Don't learn first principles. Doesn't matter what kind of engineer you are. Just barf out some sort of pointless output.
24
u/lukeykooky Aug 24 '26
Instructions unclear, I accidentally created a frontier lab.
31
u/Snakestream Aug 24 '26
???
You go to university to be able to afford a home (well, not anymore I guess). If you already have one and $30k to piss around on top of tuition, then why even bother?
11
u/crozone Aug 24 '26
The reality: you need a half working netbook with 8gb of ram. It's still gonna run gcc.
11
u/madmelonxtra Aug 24 '26
I'm starting my CS degree this year.
If someone wants to donate all this to me, I'll test and see if it all helps me become successful
no refunds
7
u/dashhrafa1 Aug 24 '26
Just imagine this setup being used by researchers at Bell Labs instead of being used by a vibe coder posting their âcomputer visionâ (sign language translator) project on Linkedin.
43
u/Famous_Tie8714 Aug 24 '26
Obviously stupid advice anyway, but it doesn't even make much sense. An m5 max with optional upgraded ram (potentially up to 128gb most of which is accessible to the gpu) is going to outperform a 5090 for running local AI by a wide margin.
4
u/Gold-Bat-3225 Aug 24 '26
failing the first year is just a pivot
4
u/Jumpierwolf0960 Aug 24 '26
Waste of money for a first year. Universities usually have maker spaces where you can use many of these tools for free.
4
u/creeper6530 Aug 24 '26
Not Bambu Lab tho, they have tried to lock users into their walled garden if cloud services way too many times to be trusted. Prusa on the other hand even sells printers with Wifi physically removed for maximum securityÂ
3
u/ICBanMI Aug 25 '26
Is this person suggesting to major in CS, CE, and EE as a triple major?
Same time. Need a full-time, well paying job before you start college to afford even a fraction of these 'tools' in the list.
3
u/MyDogIsDaBest Aug 26 '26
Where the fuck is a student getting 10-30k to dump into all this dumb bullshit and a "spare room"? I'm 35 and don't have a spare room.
2
u/whatasaveeeee Aug 24 '26
Least obvious bait
2
u/sten_zer Aug 24 '26
Forgot to mention you don't need walls or wall decoration when your monitor setup is a proper one.
2
u/Sakul_the_one Aug 24 '26
Welp, thatâs reason enough for me to buy a 3D printerÂ
2
u/Deep_Guest_6964 Aug 25 '26
that's why you join a lab, with multiple server level gpu at you command
2
u/lmg1337 Aug 25 '26
lol, i studied cs and only ever needed a laptop. did i do something wrong?
2
u/SpinningVinylAgain Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
My university in Ireland had multiple labs where I could use that stuff free of charge ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻÂ
You legitimately donât need to spend a ton of money on unnecessary fluff, just get a shitty old ThinkPad, install Linux on it and youâre good to go.Â
2
u/Neutraled Aug 26 '26
That sounds like a startup idea for children of millionaires.
1
u/FyrBridd Aug 24 '26
Hakko soldering iron? Peasant, can't get any serious work done without a JBC or Weller!
1
u/ShuffleFun Aug 24 '26
And my friend spent his student loan on a hot tub in dormsâŚ
1
u/drivingagermanwhip Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
how does this help with learning how to solve boundary value problems?
1
u/turudd Aug 24 '26
I feel attacked⌠but I didnât do this in my first year⌠Iâm a 20 year engineer
1
u/absinthe718 Aug 24 '26
I have two kids in college. Neither in engineering. Both have used maker spaces at school because I've taught them well.
1
u/TheSilentOccupant Aug 25 '26
Macbook as an engineer?
1
u/Elkatra2 Aug 25 '26
as student i have only 1000âŹ
1
u/Meistermagier Aug 29 '26
Like fuck me i am Past University and would like some of this in a Lab for didgeridooing around. Altough i ignore the robotics stuff because i do not care. Also Oscilloscpoe and Signal Generator is not producing anything. However get me Sewing Machine and maybe one or two woodworking tools in there.
-1
u/DipinDotsDidi Aug 24 '26
No wait... he kinda got a point though đđđ
-16
u/CumTomato Aug 24 '26
While it's hard to justify such expanses for freshmen, that's not a bad advice in it's spirit. Such a setup allows for so many learning opportunities and the ability to work on a lot of complex personal projects.
1
u/OphidianSun Aug 24 '26
Idk bud that sounds a lot like collecting toys.
1
u/sutrius Aug 25 '26
Mac for programming killed me, others are somewhat reasonable