TQ, I am convinced I was dropped on my head a couple of times as a baby :-D

This doesn't surprise me at all.
Unfortunately, I think the next few years are going to be particularly brutal for all of academia.

It's also a shame that in the current climate, the original poster has not shown the slightest sign of care that her examiner could have contracted a potentially fatal virus.

Some people.......sheesh.

Looks like phd by publication is still an option.
Still requires 5000 to 10,000 words but well below the volume needed for a PhD.

A good outcome is passing your Viva which you have done.
Congratulations.

Major revision just means you have a lot of changes to bring it up to the necessary standard to have it published. Nobody cares about this sort of thing but it can dent your confidence a bit to be told you have major corrections.
It probably won't take you 6 months and honestly I would just swallow your disappointment and get it finished so you can move onto the next stage of your life.

Your problem then isn't receiving feedback. It's that you have set an inappropriate level of expectation on the things you are receiving feedback on. You'll only allow yourself to accept making mistakes which are to be expected at your level. The problem with that is that it's absolutely arbitrary, has no foundation in anything scientific and is very damaging to your confidence. You'd be in a better place if you accept making errors (which you do) and that those errors can be as daft as spelling errors or addition errors (which you appear not to be doing). If you can accept making "daft" errors you'll be a lot happier. Maybe you worry too much about what your peers or supervisor thinks if they see those errors. Funnily enough, if you spoke to them and they were honest they'd show you countless episodes where they've made those same types of errors. Those who tell you they haven't are lying.

I would recommend finding ways of calming down over this. None of us are or were curing cancer during our PhDs. None of it is so important that mistakes of any kind are not allowed.

I always actively seek out constructive and honest feedback.
You need to ditch that "even soneone of your level....." thought process. A PhD is hard enough without knee-capping yourself over stuff that doesn't matter.

Are you kidding with this post?

Absolutely - right in the teeth of a global pandemic and you'll be seeing a large swell of applications going in from those in their final year who know the employment situation is about to be dire for a few years.

Your rejections may not really be anything to do with your ability - just unfortunate timing.

I imagine that PhD applications to all positions are going to be through the roof right now with next to nobody apparently hiring the latest crop of graduates (or anyone else at the moment).

I'm afraid you are going to have to keep trying in the current climate.

18 months seems rather long. Are you secure on the underlying mathematical principles of ML? In other words, calculus, differential equations, statistics/probability and most importantly linear algebra?

Maybe it's a good time to take a step back and fill in the gaps in your undergraduate background in your spare time?
You might only need a few months of going through online courses and videos from the likes of MIT.

What is it you feel you are missing?

This all seems to hinge on some vague description of whether or not you are "technically" still a full time student.

You really need to get some independent advice on this from perhaps Citizens Advice.

A simpler method might be to phone the UC hotline and tell them exactly what you've said here.

I would ignore the academic requirements of those jobs unless you have no degree at all.
Experience trumps qualifications in almost all cases when it comes to industrial engineering unless you want to go into industrial research. You'll probably find quite a few older employees in engineering still don't have degrees at all.

Good luck with this.

TQ, if changing research interests is genuinely the case then that probably is a better approach. The problem is that if you pretend the problem is one thing when it isn't, you risk having your bluff called. Whatever approach is taken, my advice would be that it is grounded in reality. If you are caught lying about the reason for wanting to move supervisor, he might see straight through it and that might cause more problems than it solves.

It's a difficult situation without a doubt.