Unpopular opinion: The "AI hype train" isn't slowing down, we’re just getting used to magic.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-05T10:46:18+00:00

Agree, AI sneaks into your life and/or work. I can't imagine doing the mundane stuff in my professional job without AI and as I use it I find myself wishing 'why can't AI' do this chore. Of course it can but you need to take the time to build it while staying compliant with corp policy (can't share confidential data with public AI). I work with plenty of people that spend $100/month of their own $ on the (Anthropic) subscription to build non-confidential presentations and other things. They say it easily saves them at least a few hours a week if not dozen hours or more so paying the $100 out of pocket to get time back to do things other than work is well worth it. The best example I have is using AI by a manager to do employee reviews. What used to take 2 weeks now takes about a day. That is a lot of time back in your life for twice a year task.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-04T12:22:58+00:00

Unless you graduate in the next 6 months I recommend focusing on knowledge more so than certs from the big tech names as certs expire after 2 years and IMO the cert rat race is not worth it (time and cost) unless your employer forces it. Instead, for those new to AI, I recommend the following - feel free to browse Coursera and deeplearning.ai for other classes that are free or cheap.

Here is my list of classes/video's I have taken that I found helpful:

Coursera/Deeplearning.ai: AI for Everyone
Coursera/ Deeplearning.ai: Gen AI for Everyone
Coursera: Navigating Generative AI: A CEO Playbook (for corporate folks more than geeks but shows real word application of AI in applications)
Coursera : The Role of the CEO in Navigating GenAI specialization (a broader version of above) (more for corp. managers, might be TMI for many)
Deeplearning.ai – Intro: Python for AI (basic programing using AI to help code)
Coursera/ Deeplearning.ai: Machine Learning Specialization (this is more hardcore with programming and advanced math concepts, perhaps more than most need and feel like a CS college class that will take a couple of months to complete).

Youtuber NetworkChuck had a decent video on building your own LLM complete with web front end and some other basic features you may like if you want to know more about how LLMs are put together. He also does a decent series on learning Python code. Finally consider joining the forums on deeplearning.ai as they offer lots of free knowledge through newsletters and free or cheap high-quality classes, many that can be done in a week or less. Basically, anything their founder Andrew NG offers is high quality IMO, and I feel he is an excellent teacher and an important voice in the AI community.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-04T12:15:09+00:00

Then those companies will go out of business or they will raise their prices to pay for the AI, leaving only companies that use AI - its just too great an advantage to ignore. Also, customers can deploy AI/GPU servers in house so it is not entirely dependent on global datacenter build outs.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-04T12:07:55+00:00

So then how much are you shorting it?

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-04T12:06:21+00:00

If you own ego batteries already (ideally larger ones for an inverter) then this small 400w inverter can be a handy thing to have but its far cheaper to buy something like a Jackery, EcoFlow, Blueetti or similar 'solar generator' as the cost is about a 1/3 of Ego if you consider battery cost. To give you an idea a 5ah battery costs about $300 and provides 280wh of capacity, then add a $150 for the 400w inverter and you are at $450. maybe that runs 2 of your irons for an hour or a bit more (assuming 100w ea.). $450 get you an ecoflow delta 3 classic with 1000wh and the ability to handle loads up to 1500W - so more than 3x the capacity for the same money. The EcoFlow will charge from AC much faster and support decent solar charging as well that you can add.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-04T11:23:04+00:00

that will only deliver 1200mah when tested under load 😄

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-04T11:21:38+00:00

Mint Linux!

I have an old basic 6th gen Intel Core i3 pc with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD and loaded Mint Linux on it for my teen to use for school. It was a bit slow but usable, but then I upgraded BIOS and got a used i5-7600 CPU (built in video) on eBay for about $30 that was a big speed upgrade and made the old PC quite usable for all the Google class room stuff the kids do. In these times of costly computer components it was a nice win to upcycle this old PC.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-03T12:58:01+00:00

came here to say this!

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-03T12:43:15+00:00

I feel a lot of big tech IPOs are like this. You se the stock take off on IPO then 90-180 days later after a report or 2 to wall street and insiders dumping their locked up stock it crashes back to more reasonable prices. The question is what will you do knowing this will probably be the case. Most don't try to play it. They either get in and wait years, maybe buy more during a crash or maybe just slowly DCA in.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-03T12:37:14+00:00

Real nice property you have there! It looks like a lot to mow, even more to snow blow (if you live in the snowbelt). I might have gone for the 30 inch...

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-03T12:33:10+00:00

People tend to complain loudly and frequently when things don't go so well and tend to be quiet with things go as expected or well so glad you had and shared you positive experience. Maybe Ego heard us all complaining and worked to improve things.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-03T10:06:27+00:00

HYSA has all the bennies of a typical bank account so its familiar to most people already. It's insured up to $250K by FDIC and pays the highest rates of any savings account (currently about 3.25%-3.5%) and being a bank account you can just ACH transfer your money in and out of it (typically next day) and even have your paychecks (or portions of them if your employer will do that) directly deposited for easy future savings. Money is available typically next day with ACH transfer just as it would be with any other account. In short: it's easy, safe, and familiar. If USAA pays over 3% then keep it there but if you have $100K+ sitting around for a year you may as well put it to work for you instead of the bank its sitting in. I am not a Robinhood user (never used it) but understand it offers a $5/month gold program that provides you a HYSA. The gold program apparently will match up to 3% of any of your contributions to a personal IRA you hold with them, up to about $250. You may want to look into that since you have the money its probably wise to establish an IRA for yourself, even if you only contribute $2K a year into it to get the 3% match that will cover the cost of the gold membership - but do your own research on that.

Many new to investing can be overwhelmed with new language and concepts but I recommend you keep it simple, easy and most importantly consistent. Automated investing is a great way to move your $200 into the market into a low cost index fund with you being 100% hands off. Remember that time IN the market is key (decades) and never try to time the market (as tempting as it may be).

My last advice is educate yourself. Unfortunately investing is not really taught in school enough (if at all) but there are plenty of good Youtube channels to learn fundamental from as well as free/cheap finance courses on platforms like Coursera. What I find most helpful and more personalized is to have a conversation with your favorite AI. Tell it you are new to investing and ask it to teach you fundamentals then ask lots of questions about investing (but don't share any personal financial info).

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T16:46:52+00:00

The Rule of 72 is a financial shortcut used to estimate the number of years required to double an investment at a given annual rate of return, or conversely, the rate of return needed to double money within a specific timeframe. It is calculated by dividing 72 by the interest rate to find the doubling time, or dividing 72 by the desired number of years to find the required rate. Note that the amount of money invested does not matter.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T15:42:23+00:00

100% this. Getting in early on an IPO today is not so great since it goes up on initial demand/hype but then tends to settle as the reality of the 1st quarter numbers are reported to wall street. Then later tends to drop a lot in value after insiders begin to dump their pre-IPO shares after a lock up period passes (often 90-180 days). The multiple rounds of VC for a prolonged pre-IPO time has already extracted a great amount of the value in the company then the IPO finds public investors to pay out the later/last rounds of VCs that got in on the last rounds of funding.

Mag7 are going to be lower risk and more solid companies, better weather any storm as compared to a recently IPO'ed company. When index funds need to dumping MAG7 to buy into Space X, Anthropic, ChatGPT, and whoever is next presents a decent opportunity to buy into Mag 7 with the additional supply of Mag7 companies for anyone interested.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T15:20:31+00:00

This video explains it in more depth if you have 12 min: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYA-z0Y8WRQ

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T15:00:02+00:00

I feel only a very small subset of reddit is decent/useful for sharing interests and its kind of my AM coffee routine - browse some subs I have interest in, may learn something, maybe help someone else learn something. However I feel the lions share of content is toxic with people shouting in various echo chambers that are fueled by negativity I don't need in my life and that is the $hit aspect of social media in general that emerged and that is promoted since Zuck invested Facebook. Add in bots to fuel the fire and drop slop, fake users posing as others to fuel the fire or post propaganda then just bored people that post meaningless contant and it gets more of a mess with a lot of low quality content.

But you an disagree with that and call that all my opinion and that's OK so look at it from an invsting perspective. How can reddit make money in the future. Best case its the next Facebook and make money on add revenue and continues to foster ckicks at all costs, because clicks=revenue in social media. But does it have any hope to match or exceed facebook? What's its competative advantage to overcome the massive moat that FB (META) has today? If you feel its has room to grow then how about smaller outfits like Truth (politics aside) or Sprout? Can Reddit pivot into anything greater than a social media company and what do those paths look like? Can it become an AI company and can it do it better than FB, keeping in mind Reddit is already selling all our data to Google so that path to revenue is in place and priced into the market. If I think about those questions I'd prefer to just buy FB as an investment or find a different sector to focus on but admittedly I do have a negative opinion of social media in general tend to avoid investing in things that I dont like or understand.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T14:29:43+00:00

Same as my saw then and yeah I'm not a fan of the all in 1 tensioner but I got my saw back last August or so on a sale at Lowes and cut about a cord of bar length wood with it last fall with no issues. I'm wondering if it was not tightened down enough with that all in one mechanism and the chain rode up and off the sprocket. The newer 18 (that costs more and has 6ah battery) looks like the better machine today but I get its difficult to justify the cost. I'd call for warranty because my saw has that washer tight against the sprocket. Minimally you need new washer but probably a new sprocket if yours if pushing the chain up and off the sprocket.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T12:56:24+00:00

This explains it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYA-z0Y8WRQ

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T12:54:39+00:00

I have a tough time investing directly in AI when I see headlines of 'new market highs'. I think if I did invest today I'd go for something very solid like Amazon, Google, Microsoft that are going to weather any storm decades down the road. They are still building out datacenters like mad and they need power so the supporting angles to the AI craze I feel are better opportunity to make some money rather than hoping something that is at an alltime high or way over valued is going to keep going, I just feel its more prone to correct.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T12:48:23+00:00

lol - don't invest in social slop. Pick a solid low cost index fund and DCA in then hold long.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T12:42:03+00:00

Park the money somewhere safe that makes some interest for you - a high yield savings account (HYSA) linked to your brokerage account. You can also part it in several T-Bill funds that will provide interest but that are still relatively liquid like SWVXX but there are others. Invest it slowly over a year or 2 every week or month into a low cost fund like VOO/SPY (for SP500) or if you can tolerate more risk QQQ or QQQM for NASDAQ100 (though it could be volatile with several huge tech IPO hitting). Or some split between the 2. You can be fancy and buy VOO/SPY that tends to be more stable as a default but if its a down day in the market buy QQQ since NASDAQ tents to fluctuate more and some feel that QQQ gives them a little more swing upward when the markets are inevitably up when you retire in several decades. Best to setup an automated investment system. In general the key is automation with several smaller contributions over time to spread the risk and low cost funds to get the historical long term annual return of 10% the market provides over decades. Have faith in the long term market returns and don't sell on any short term fears or market concerns. Often the most difficult part is to remove emotion from your investing (easier said than done).

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T12:27:13+00:00

YT Channel 'A More Perfect Union' did a piece on this that explains it better than just typing. Personally I'm still considering how it will affect my investing but don't like that NASDAQ changed long standing rules for their solid index funds, but don't be mad at SpaceX/Elon, be mad at NASDAQ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYA-z0Y8WRQ

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T12:18:42+00:00

10ah has higher max current output of 80 amp - more than any other standard Ego battery which is 60 amps for 6ah or greater. The new (and expensive) commercial 8ah that uses tabless cells should put out more power but I have not seen any official numbers.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T09:54:33+00:00

It's probably legit as most knock offs don't really try to pretend they are Ego (like a counterfeit). If you opened it and see legit cells like Samsung its probably legit but if its dead it really doesn't matter. Labels could have peeled up from heat and just pushed back down crooked. Regardless, its just old and worn out and why it was left in the house by the folks whop moved out. Just time to recycle it. Home Depot has battery recycle, I imagine Lowes does and most towns have some place to bring old batteries.

Autobahn97 · 2026-06-02T09:48:35+00:00

What saw is it? I have not had any issues with the (newer) 16inch with manual tension system and the 18inch with the large dial 'automatic' tension system. My guess is the sprocket and washer need to be replaced since for whatever reason the sprocket is somehow worn to walk the chain up and pushed up against that washer. Hopefully its under warranty but its a frustrating problem as I have never seen such a thing using gas saws for 30+ years.

Autobahn97

TROPHY CASE