In 2022 I was toying around with OpenAI's RL Gym, right when the first non-instruct GPT3 model came out. I was thinking about getting into ML a lot more, but hesitated. Before that it was 3D printers, mechanical keyboards, drones, etc. All of these have exploded, and while they are still very interesting, I do love my Browns and manage Prusas for my local hackerspace, they have just, for the lack of a better term, industrialized. I'm also now in a position where I have time and money for it, not like when I was 15 and rating Ender motherboard upgrades I knew I'd never buy.
Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem. There's also biohacking, and while designing chips to go into my body is really interesting, I only have one, and don't want to push it too far. One promising idea is a kind of 'Personal Computer 2', where people try to innovate HCI, and while I really like that and do have some research ideas, I'd like to explore a bit more before delving deep into it.
You have to accept that 5-15% of the people who would show up to something like this are genuine weirdos you probably don't want to be around. And another 10% at any given meetup are autistic or neuro-divergent but well-meaning, kind and full of interesting insights and hobbies, although perhaps difficult to socialize with, at least until they get to know you're well-meaning too.
These challenges come with the territory. You end up talking to people you'd otherwise never meet in the normal course of your life, and it's neutral at worst and wonderful at best.
I play chess but not chessboxing but hey, you asked for some interesting niche hobbies!
It seems that what you do is mostly related to computers within the niche hobbies but what if you can do something else too?
> Right now I'm making a chess engine, but that's already a solved problem
Not everything should be done for the end-result, sometimes its the process which matters, there was a great hackernews post about it (https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/)
If you want something niche, perhaps make some portal-2 mods or make more efficient versions of using GlaDOS TTS within browser etc. (this is just something that I want to be honest, but I feel like it can be a niche hobby in its regards seeing your interests)
Let me know if you want more ideas and have fun and have a nice day man!
Do you have any interest in digital humanities? Knowledge work where verification is still important but not as black-and-white as does the math check out, does the code run.
Do you have any interest in family history or genealogy?
https://vibegenealogy.ai/p/the-genealogical-research-assista...
Recommendation -- don't stall the glider at heights between 10 and 25 feet from the ground. Also, avoid barbed wire fences.