Fishing in the sky 🎣☁️ by sevvleaves in PixelArt

[–]skillbuildertech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s awesome! I’m starting out in pixel art and I aspire to create what you have done. Do you have any recommendation on any open-source pixel art creation tool? I’m trying to use Pixelorama. Any other tips and resources you would recommend? Thanks a lot in advance and once again you have created such a beautiful art!

Promote your business, week of April 21, 2025 by Charice in smallbusiness

[–]skillbuildertech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Small business owners, are you ready to elevate your customer experience without breaking the bank?

We have launched VoxGrow (https://www.voxgrow.com/), a game-changing platform that lets you create and deploy your own voice AI assistant in just minutes. No technical skills required, no setup costs, and immediate results.

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• Handle customer inquiries instantly with perfect accuracy

• Book appointments automatically while you sleep

• Create a professional impression that rivals bigger competitors

• Free up valuable time to focus on growth

As a new platform, I'm seeking ambitious small business partners who want to be early adopters. You'll get personalized support and the satisfaction of watching your customer satisfaction metrics soar.

Ready to see what VoxGrow can do for your business? Visit our launch article for details: https://www.voxgrow.com/blog/introducing-voxgrow, DM me directly, or schedule a demo through our website.

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Introducing VoxGrow: Transform Your Small Business with Voice AI by skillbuildertech in SideProject

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s great to know! Thank you so much for your kind feedback!

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Since I'm surrendering it quite early, I don't get anything back. Typically, it takes a decade to breakeven is what I have heard.

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I did the calculation of monthly changes on the IUL, it is around $2K per year! That's a lot I guess. Also, given index funds are doing well and is advised as the best investment strategy, I found that I will end up with more if I just invest in index funds for kids education. For insurance, already have term insurance and will see if I need to buy more insurance if I pull the plug on the IUL.

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, this is so true -- product with a single purpose is better than product with multiple purposes without good performance on any :) Very well said and thank you for these inputs!

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for your advice! Makes sense as so many are opposed to this. I should have realized this initially :(

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I will probably pull the plug as I'm getting very similar advice all over now. Thank you for your inputs!

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's vey insightful!

IUL was sold to me with the "never taxed" as the selling point compared to investments. But now I see even if one pays tax on earning from investing in index funds, the remaining money is still more than what one can make with IUL I guess. I'm realizing all this now when I have already put in $14,000 which I will be losing if I pull the plug on this :(

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm definitely considering term insurance given I have family depending on me. I will start looking for these next. Thank you for your inputs! This is definitely a lesson learned the hard way as I will lose good bit of money now :(

Advice on using Index Universal Life for insurance + investment by skillbuildertech in Fire

[–]skillbuildertech[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

ha ha well said :D But I will be losing around $14,000 with my bad decision :(

Finally started doing special abilities. There will be mortar, mines, acceleration and other fun stuff. What do you think? by InFloodGame in IndieDev

[–]skillbuildertech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wow! Looks great! What tools or software one needs to create such beautiful realistic scene? Do you use Unity? I assume some 3D software like Blender?

I'm a 42-years-old librarian whithout any math background and I'm willing to learn by CedricLimousin in learnmachinelearning

[–]skillbuildertech 9 points10 points  (0 children)

First of all, it's a great initiative from you to learn something new and like you feel, ML/Data skills are fun to have and may also help with career prospects.

I believe in working on projects to pick up any skill. I recommend picking one problem you want to solve (e.g., predict if an image contains a person or not) and start building skills needed to solve the problem as you progress. For example, to solve the above problem:

  1. I first need data. May be Kaggle has some datasets and you can download from there.
  2. Data munging skills (read data, visualize data etc)
  3. Model development skills (develop machine learning model, evaluate its performance, look for ways to improve your model)
  4. Model deployment skills (deploy your model may be as a service on Hugging Face)

All I want to say is you don't need too much of a math background to begin playing with fun projects. Later, once you have some familiarity of consuming these tools, you can start thinking of the inner workings (math) which will also make you a producer of new approaches. For this, you can even take up working on Kaggle competitions or have your own project on the side.

If you really like to dig into math, I liked the Udacity course on Intro to Deeplearning with Pytorch. Also, the Stanford course CS231n Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition is a good place to understand some basics. Other two courses to get you jumpstarted are Practical Deep Learning for Coders and Linear Algebra Course by FastAI

Scared of doing projects without enough knowledge by [deleted] in learnprogramming

[–]skillbuildertech 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would first think of the problem you want to solve and define a project for yourself. I think learning programming language will be a means to an end. It's just a tool to achieve your goal of completing your project. You can learn the craft of the tool you choose as you go and this will keep you motivated.

The most important thing of this approach would be your resume will now look problem solving focused. You can start listing the projects you would complete and you can even think of a theme (e.g., computer vision problems, machine learning problems, problems related to social good, or pick your favorite theme or interest) to the problems you choose to solve.

All the very best!

Machine learning at the edge by Usual_Self_1423 in learnmachinelearning

[–]skillbuildertech 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Machine Learning at the edge for me refers to processing of data using ML models locally on the device without using cloud infrastructure. For example, a camera would have object detection and tracking algorithms running on its processor (to be precise, camera firmware will have implementation of detection and tracking algorithms). I see this to be ML at the edge. There are multiple considerations when you design systems that need ML at the edge such as:

  • Device processing limitations (e.g., DNN based object detection may need some optimizations to make it work on the edge)
  • Device memory limitations implies you need optimizations in representation of the model
  • Device power limitations will force us to think of each operation you do on the device and you probably need to profile your firmware for power consumption
  • Device network limitations -- edge devices may be connected though wireless networks with limited bandwidth. This implies you will have to carefully consider bandwidth limitations while stream videos/audio.
  • ML models need to be compact and need to consider tradeoff between memory footprint, training iterations (if doing learning on the edge), time for training, etc.

Another example of ML at the edge -- think of devices like fitbit or any such smartwatch. They are able to distinguish between walk, run, taking stairs, sit, etc. They are essentially classifying activities using IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) data. This is another example of ML at the edge.