I can second this podcast. It was really quite interesting, and I'd love to hear other biologists comment on it, especially those that were mentioned. I feel like I can't personally have a very accurate picture until then
If you just feel the urge to learn things and improve your skills then that doesn't always require the project to have some practical utility. The person who will learn the most is the one who simply does both useful projects and projects for their own sake. Obviously with only so much time it makes sense to prioritize the useful projects, but just speaking generally here.
It's also quite educational and interesting when he has good guests on. I don't know why people have to judge the entire podcast based on his worst guests when there is simply no other mainstream outlet, or at least one as big as Rogan's, that has nearly as many interesting scientists, philosophers, journalists, etc. on. Yes he also has idiots on. So what? The point is the entire world steps through that studio and people blanket generalize the podcast away whenever he has someone they disagree with on, which is a sad stance to take in my opinion.
Except he's actually had trans people like Eddie Izzard on and they got on just fine, so this is obviously wrong. He takes issue with trans females competing in female sports.
Ability to reason about and optimize algorithms and data structures (graphs, trees, etc) is key. C++ knowledge/experience strongly preferred. Other than that, it would be good to have some understanding of hardware / computer engineering concepts, but it's not required - that can be learned on the job. We're hiring at different experience levels, from fresh undergrads to experts - for my specific position I would prefer someone who has done at least a couple of years of similar work, but as I mentioned there are several groups hiring.
Assuming "their" refers to the war media, motives vary. Younger folks are just trying not to get fired. (Those who haven't even gotten hired yet have to cultivate a very careful Twitter persona even to be considered.) More experienced journalists can't get frozen out by official sources, whether that's the spooks, the brass, the lobbyist-owned politicians, or the surveillance-owned politicians. Editors/producers/executives have to worry about pissing off big advertisers. Lots of people on the talking-head shows are think-tankers, intellectually totally beholden to whatever shadowy reptiles have funded their sinecures and sabbaticals. Even if motives went the other way, at this point habit keeps them doing their masters' bidding, as witnessed by the schizophrenia regarding Julian Assange.
But, really, asking about motives is just another way to ignore this. Motives will always be squishy and deniable. Look at what actually happens. They lied us into Vietnam with the Tonkin Gulf Deception. They lied us into the First Gulf War with the incubator babies. They lied us into the Second Gulf War with WMDs. We went to war in Afghanistan and Osama turned out to be in Pakistan. They lied us into Libya with some random exiles living in Switzerland plus a French philosopher. They lied us into Syria (thankfully not all the way) with gas attacks staged by our ally Al-Qaeda. They're trying to lie us into Venezuela with a recession caused by our own sanctions plus staged attacks on soi-disant "aid convoys". Now they're trying to justify a war with Iran with a video of CIA operatives in a boat. If you prefer older history, "remember the Maine!" was also a lie.