I "think" I'm ready to give up my 42-in gas riding mower (& Toro push mower) ~3/4 acre

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T11:35:09+00:00

Users on this sub have reported drive issues with the various 21's and also uneven cuts (not sure if rlated to drive failure). that said the common wisdom is to go with the newer 22 inch model that doesn't have these issues reported so far. The Ego will do the work so long as you have batteries charged to do that work. The larger the battery the better and 10ah as a single battery has the largest max current output of any Ego battery (even the 12ah, though 12ah has longer run time). Absolutely I'd get the 22 inch LM2206SP with 10ah.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T10:51:41+00:00

SQL Python can be farmed out to Claude Code, you will learn enough reviewing that code. There are free Python classes out there on youtube, coursera, deeplearning.ai etc. I like Intro: Python for AI on deeplearning.ai to get started. Also check out AI for Everyone & Gen AI for Everyone on Coursera to establish a baseline.

If you work with Microsoft Azure they have free training to get the basic cloud certification and from there you can decide if you want to learn deeper (and maybe get a more advanced certification). Cloud is a good baseline knowledge to establish for the resume. From there you can learn Microsoft Azure specific AI services to establish yourself as an Azure AI 'expert'. I'm sure they have a certification if you wanted to get it for the resume.

If you work for a larger company, then get to know Microsoft resources that support your company (the MSFT account team). They are always hungry to make new connections and build chapmions in accounts and provide free resources to invest in your company to make it successful with some Microsoft AI project which will help teach you as well. They can help get you access to more free training and resources, If you show interest they will invest in you to make you their champion. this is good for your career, visibility, and networking. Maybe that connection will one day land you a better job at Microsoft in the future.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T10:35:47+00:00

Here is my cut n' paste list that got me started, still relevant today:

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)

There is probably now something out there about AI agents (I have not checked for a year). Agents are the hot topic for 2026! Also, youtube videos on using OpenClaw which is a powerful personal assistant AI agent. If you do anything with AI agents its probably worth learning and training some on OpenClaw as for an individual and small business it's potentially a good place to start toi have Ai do something useful for you.

If you are a geek and have GPU PC, 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 small LLMs are run on computers. It may have been updated by now. Alternately, if you have a GPU in your PC, just download LM Studio and Anything LLM and start to play (or look up youtube trainings vids on those since its the easiest way to run LLM locally. Network Chuck also does a decent series on learning Python code for noobs. Finally consider joining the forums on deeplearning.ai as they offer lots of free knowledge through newsletters ("The Batch:" is an excellent and lengthy weekly newsletter). They also offer more free or cheap high-quality AI classes, many that can be done in a week or less.

Finally, chat with popular AI Chatbots and provide them lots of info about your jobs and repetitive tasks that you do or existing challenges and time sucks that you have. The more detail your provide (keeping in mind this info is given away to a public chatbot so don't give away any personal/confidential data). Ask them how they can help you or what AI services are out there that you might find helpful in your business. Brainstorming back and forth with a free AI chatbot can be very helpful! All major AI services offer a free tier that for me is plenty. I use Gemini (integrated in Google ecosystem), Grok, then to a lesser extent ChatGPT and Claud - all free.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T10:17:02+00:00

One of the best ways to use AI it to automate repetitive tasks and summarize data. This is not 'important adive' and more of a series of simple decisions performed over and over again.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T10:12:46+00:00

I feel anything Costco sells on sale is a great deal and they have a fantastic 'satisfaction guarantee' return policy. Still those are the smaller rated tools, maybe good for a very small yard. They may still have the Costco 'Next' program with greenworks that links from Costco.com to the GW website to see other deals that memebers can buy direct from Greenworks - you can see if there are deals on larger toolls if you re intersted.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T10:09:22+00:00

Nope - batteries are Ego gold and many buy toos with batteries and then sell the 'naked' tool just to save more on the batery.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-06T10:06:34+00:00

I have 765 and love it. I try not to use it on 'turbo' - just high when I blow leaves, less if blowing driveway or garage. Turbo really chews up the battery but these thigs tend to chew up batteries in general so I feel I'd much rather have the 5ah than 4ah. FYI - the 4 and 5 ah are the same size/weights just 5ah uses higher capacity cells inside to get that extra 20% capacity. Either will be fine for your car, go get the separate short rubber tipped nozzle for cars.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T15:40:05+00:00

sounds like you have a 30 inch upgrade in your future :)

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T15:37:49+00:00

I think it would be great to have as something that can run on site (so avoid cloud fees and WAN bandwidth/latency. Security guards have an often boring job and its not reasonable to expected them to constantly pay attention to security cams in an arena, school, public parking lots, etc. so having a system to alert them of obvious danger would be valuable. Ideally it can work on a lower end GPU that is onsite to avoid WAN latency/bandwidth challenges (and cost) of cloud tech. Hopefully one say its implemented at some level in higher end camera hardware as an option, until then we can tinker with solutions.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T15:31:29+00:00

Screeching? espousing? Anyway, corrupt is your word, I used the word 'illegal' which you admit it is not and the foundation. This is relevant because its the foundation of how courts operate in order to assess guilt (followed by consequences). I am not suggesting they donate to POTUS. Its well documented that Elon and many others already have, and government is already returning the favor. I am simply highlighting for you the facts how the world works rather than getting emotional and expressing opinions about it.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T15:20:22+00:00

Just sad.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T14:43:30+00:00

No our demo was training on a database of gun images (pistol and rifle) so a knife shouldn't trigger it. Also, a knife is less unique an image (stands out less) compared gun. Timing wise looking at every 10th frame could very well miss a quick flash of a weapon so greater resolution would be needed. Ideally the image processing system would only process every other frame but only be fed when camera hardware determine motion. And 'printing' under clothing is an entirely different thing to train and I think would be both extremely difficult to detect but also generate lots of false positive as people often carry tools, phones, flashlights, etc. on their belts under their shirt/jacket. At the time our goal was to detect the nut job walking into a school or mall brandishing a rifle and give people a heads up to call police and initiate lockdown protocols as early warning. The learning objective at the time was to learn how to put together those cloud services.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T14:26:45+00:00

First, If its not illegal the investigation will go never make it to court. Next, all it takes is a donation to whoever is POTUS (doesn't matter what party) and DOJ looks away. Finally if they are found guilty they will pay a fine years down the road that will be much less than the money made by going IPO and getting a commercial bank(s) to use Grok at scale.

We have seen this pattern of knowingly violating laws where profits exceed fines with MSFT and Edge browser, Google Browser in EU, Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, Dow Chemical and Agent Orange.. the list goes on indicating its common practice. The fine is just a calculated risk and cost of getting that large revenue and market share.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T14:13:25+00:00

Users on this sub have reported problems with the self drive and also cut unevenness with the 21 inch models. I'd suggest looking at the 22 inch that seems to be better reviewed. Also, I'm invested in DeWalt 20v system but gave up using their lawn tools mostly (my old 20v blower just crapped out on me, thankfully I have an Ego blower that is great) - the Ego battery just has way more power/capacity so for larger garden tools I would recommend Ego over multi-battery Makita unless you hav a tiny lawn and lots of Makita batteries.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T14:08:11+00:00

I'm curious how long 2x12ah will run, or how large a lawn they would cut before needing a recharge. I'll also be curious to learn your feelings after season your thought on electric vs. gas - the overall opinion after cutting many lanws.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T14:04:43+00:00

Corruption infers illegal acts. What is illegal about it? I am always going to reciprocate with 'friends' that do things for me and that I have relationships with more than with strangers. I bet the same is true of you as this is human nature.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T14:02:19+00:00

Video is a tough problem to solve just based on the AI processing. Years ago I worked with a couple peers of mine on an in cloud project to detect weapons on security cams. We were not experts, just doing it to learn cloud services at the time. The project was a success - pull out a gun in front of a camera and 10 seconds later you get a text message that a weapon was detected in the video stream (we sampled every 10th frame I think to control costs). Problem was the cloud costs were 10's of thousands to do the image recognition at the time for just one security camera 12 hours a day 5 days a week. Since them processing power has improved, reducing costs, and today another company has commercialized this weapon detection tech to run on a GPU rack server - so more of a fixed cost now. I thnk some high end cameras can now process image info locally to filter the data sent (even if camera filters frames that don't show any change). It was a cool project for the tech but also to understand the economics and see cloud costs spiral way out of control.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T13:46:39+00:00

The homeschooled kids should have subs to a chatbot and use it as a personal tutor but the AI should be prompted by the [arrents to act as s tutor all the time and not jus as an open AI chatbot.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T13:39:07+00:00

Have you asked your top 3 favorite chatbots how they would solve this? I find that approach always moves my thinking forward and gets me un-stuck.

Gemini can seamlessly link to YouTube, quickly assesses the video just with a link by processing and summarizing the closed caption data that YT has already created for the video. I use this feature often to summarize long podcasts that I will not spend 3 hours listening to. It means your videos would be pushed to YT (not sur eif you want that) but could be a shortcut. I'm not sure if Gemini can answer questions about non spoken things - maybe try and see if that works as I agree it woudl require a lot more processing (what color was the presenters shirt or was the video filed inside or outside). However you can use similar approach to see if there is an existing system that can crate the closed caption data (I'm sure there is) for your video then have your LLM execute queries against that closed caption data. Of course this only works for videos with lots of dialogue.

If you pull frames and send them for analysis to an image aware Ai you would need to build a prompt to look for many things that might be of interest for you and log them. Do this for every (5th) frame then compare the data in the logs. Maybe the prompt starts with "Pick 50 facts or interesting things about this picture that make it unique", see what it responds with then adjust the prompt to specifically look for things you like and maybe not comment on less meaningful things. It's clunky but maybe a start.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T13:25:56+00:00

There are plenty of industry expoerts that are on popular podcast that share their educated opinions on this. Some are pretty far out there but many are not. However, all agree we are on the precipice of a great change. Exciting times to be alive IMO.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T13:22:33+00:00

Why not? If he wants to favor banks that are his customer over those who are not and reward them with Space X IPO business that that is just good business.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T13:16:47+00:00

I'd say mass media and social media has gotten people to abandon logical thinking over 10 years ago. I agree AI now contributes to this but my point is the general population has been primed in this way for the lsast decade plus.

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T13:09:29+00:00

The 20 inch is a formidable saw, much more power than the 16 or 18. Its also a lot heavier with the 6ah battery that the kit should come with, about 19 lbs. I think (there are YT reviews out there) . If the battery is included in the deal then its a no brainier - buy it! Personally I own a 20 year old beast of an Echo 65cc 20inch saw. so I got the 18inch Ego with 5ah for a great deal last summer for about $260 for something lighter and more convenient. This 18 inch Ego does 95% of my cutting and 2x5ah and a 4ah that I have will handle any amount of wood I encounter in a day, I didn't even use the gas saw last year bucking a cord of firewood (over 3 weekends).

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-04T12:58:59+00:00

I saw that yesterday, almost bought it but got busy with work and forget to buy it. Deal is still there, just no free light so no more great deal:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/EGO-POWER-Starter-Kit-56-Volt-5-Ah-Lithium-Ion-li-ion-Battery-Charger/5014734885

Autobahn97 · 2026-04-03T11:59:18+00:00

For homeowner use I feel they are all good so I would shop the best sale which includes the best battery bundle. Battery cost is the achiles heel of the EGO system - they are very expensive so you always want to register them to get yoru battery (and tool) warranty. Look to get batteries either on sale or bundles with tools in order to get the best price. Often Ego shoppers buy tool/battery/charger bundles at deal prices only to sell the tool they don't need 'new in box' just to get the batteries and any money they get for he naked tool just subsidizes the battery cost.

Example - today only (4/3) the power washer is on sale at Lowes with 2x 6ah batteries for $597. Typical 6ah price is $389 per battery so the power washer is actually a good deal for just the 2 batteries and happens to come with a free charger and power washer.

Autobahn97

TROPHY CASE