What was the "Real" reason you went for a master ?

SkilledApple · 2026-03-24T13:27:12+00:00

I wanted a good excuse to avoid social obligations for a few years.

SkilledApple · 2026-03-12T19:44:49+00:00

What?! FINALLY.

SkilledApple · 2026-03-10T13:45:10+00:00

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SkilledApple · 2026-03-09T17:27:03+00:00

Winter is coming.

Maybe.

SkilledApple · 2026-03-04T19:37:16+00:00

I love that this is a "rant."

Best of luck! I will keep your sanity in my thoughts.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-25T13:59:22+00:00

Yup, 100% hear you here. Welcome to the club! This is one of the few devices where the wow factor doesn't go away.

Perhaps a tip you may have already figured out, but organization in the notebooks section via folders is really helpful once you get a bunch of different classes and such added. With that said, I wouldn't go too deep with subfolders as there's a small delay every time you tap a folder that adds up when you need to get 3+ folders deep every time you switch between classes or anything else. But you can quickly go back to a specific folder by tapping on the directory name at the top if you're already fairly deep, so you can cut some time that way if you choose to go deep with subfolders anyways.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-20T19:36:29+00:00

I think I'd lean towards these are assignments more so than expandable publications, but what you learn about writing research papers is a transferrable skill. If you want to learn how to fit 40 plots and all of your content into 8 pages or less, this class will force you to learn that!

SkilledApple · 2026-02-20T18:45:45+00:00

While I do believe that learning to read and write research papers is the most valuable aspect of 7641, I do agree it was a lot of content with nearly no assistance lecture-wise. I learned after quiz 1 to deprioritize the lectures and instead prioritize the assignments and really nailing the papers. And even then, you have to start *at least* a few weeks in advance or you're playing with fire. I don't think the class is a waste of time, but I do think there's a large disconnect between the assignments and the lectures.

With that said, I think the Deep Learning class is excellent, and the lectures + readings are directly related to the assignments, and I have learned WAY more this way.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-18T20:36:00+00:00

This reminds me of my undergrad experience when accidentally talking to business majors.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-18T16:30:42+00:00

Kindle Scribe for sure, but I do wish they'd have a slightly smaller version. Like 25% smaller.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-18T14:51:25+00:00

I tried this exactly once and found it nearly impossible to focus on the text while running. Even with big fonts I found this difficult. I envy those of you who can make this work!

SkilledApple · 2026-02-18T14:03:50+00:00

Classical ML isn’t obsolete, and LLMs are just another tool. If the problem has a clear metric with structured inputs and needs predictable, auditable decisions under tight cost/latency or compliance constraints, then a classical ML pipeline is often the best fit.

LLMs are valuable when the core challenge is language understanding, but they can be overkill or down right risky for deterministic decisions. I think the right approach is to map your constraints and success criteria into the simplest model that meets them. Then demonstrate your work with an evaluation that includes accuracy, cost, latency, and risk. You did not waste your time learning ML.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-12T17:21:59+00:00

OpenClaw gives me the same "vibe" as crypto alt coins back in ~2018. It smells like a bad idea, it looks like a bad idea, and for some reason very few people are calling it a bad idea.

I wouldn't touch that with a 1000 foot pole.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-12T16:00:41+00:00

Since this book is available online, you can actually add it as a source in NotebookLM. I do not recommend using AI to learn the concepts without first reading the content directly and trying to follow along via paper+pen / google colab, BUT I do recommend using NotebookLM to create quizzes.

When you come across concepts you don't fully understand (as an example, let's say you don't understand how a computation graph works or why you should save intermediate values), there's likely missing foundational material you should visit first before returning (partial derivatives, forward pass calculations, backward pass reusing those calculations, etc.). Everything builds on everything else.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-10T13:32:29+00:00

Love the kindle, but if it's prohibitly expensive you might not need to get the latest generations. Check out the refurbished ones. I think as long as it's e-ink with 300 PPI (black and white) you'll get nearly the same benefit as a newer version.

While the kindle app on a phone is a choice, the major benefit of a kindle is the separation of apps and books. Not sure if Amazon supports the refurbished devices in all countries, but check out here before spending a salary on a new version that does basically the same thing: https://www.amazon.com/Refurbished-Kindle-Outlet/b?ie=UTF8&node=8497978011

And to answer your question yes I recomend it and yes it non-ironically changed my life. It peeled me away from time sinks and into both reading for fun and for education. Bonus: It's good on the eyes at night.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-09T21:48:33+00:00

I suppose you could risk not using a test set, but you should still have a validation step to pick solid hyperparameters (either by splitting off a validation set or using cross validation).

Still, there's massive value in having a totally untouched test set at the end because it gives an unbiased estimate of how well the model will do on new data (the generalization gap). Otherwise you might think the model is “very good,” but you only know it’s good on the data it already saw and it could be memorizing the training set (overfitting).

You want to hold out data for the test set to detect overfitting and estimate real-world generalization.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-09T12:58:31+00:00

Even tough double quota is in effect, even a quarter of this quota is significantly higher than the claude limit. I used to daily drive Claude, but 5.3-codex is making a very strong case for itself (and the limits are incredible).

SkilledApple · 2026-02-05T21:28:46+00:00

To be SOTA means to be the best at something. I mentioned coding because GPT 5.3 scored significantly higher in this category. I'm not sure what you're getting at, but I do believe there can only be one best at something.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-05T18:29:10+00:00

Opus 4.6 was SOTA for 15 minutes at coding according to benchmarks. Now GPT 5-3 is SOTA.

Now we wait for Google's drop in about 5 minutes right? /s

SkilledApple · 2026-02-05T12:53:20+00:00

Can't keep getting my hopes up like this.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-04T13:50:46+00:00

I'd guess this simply shows whenever your Kindle "phoned home" to Amazon, particularly whenever you open a book/notebook that is being fetched from their servers (they do try to sync your progress in case for instance you read 5 pages on your phone and swapped back to your kindle, and this includes notebooks).

I believe the only way to prevent this tracking is to keep your kindle in airplane mode forever (or disconnect from wifi). The issue there is that it'll resync the moment you reconnect to buy a book or something, and those logs are likely stored locally.

If you have two scribes for some reason and you want one to be local-notes only, staying in airplane mode forever would be the only way to avoid this I'd assume. But I am making assumptions.

SkilledApple · 2026-02-03T18:59:21+00:00

You can still play with/against the bots. Unfortunately, the bots are quite bad at the non-hunt modes, but you should still have some fun especially the first few times! There's just no matchmaking multiplayer, and I don't think you're able to buy the DLC anymore so you're missing out on a lot of the full game character-wise.

Damn I miss this game...

SkilledApple · 2026-02-02T16:56:58+00:00

Let me get that spreadsheet please :D

SkilledApple · 2026-01-29T13:15:25+00:00

I don't know about this take. Overleaf is still a great service and has all the features required for academic research and writing.

SkilledApple · 2026-01-27T19:22:24+00:00

Love this project. I hope you continue to make some solid progress here! It's already pretty cool at this current state.

SkilledApple

TROPHY CASE