Screwball

It is now called Visual Studio. You can download it from Mircosoft at no cost. The interface looks similar to the old Visual Basic of years ago. The input boxes, buttons, and text I used seemed to work the same way. I built the interface and AI wrote the code. All I had to do was copy and paste the code. The interface looks like this;

Friday night, why not play with my old buddy from down under. Let's give AI a little test. Thought about the old days when Visual Basic was a thing. Is that still around? Yea, it kind of is so it turns out. Free as well. Simple download and install. How can AI help us with a basic interface and calculation? I used Microsoft's Co-pilot. All I wanted was a simple form with three inputs, and a button to calculate these inputs to the output we are looking for. In this case a simple math problem of cubic inches, like used in our family car. It took longer to download the software (the new VB) and get familiar with that, than it did me and my Aussie buddy to come up with this; Some things to clean up. Couple of hours total. Wild stuff. ON EDIT: Forgot, this is a stand alone .exe file.

Assuming you were interviewed by humans? I've been out of the workforce for a while and nothing in this world would surprise me. At some point my Aussie buddy will be hiring people, if he's not already. From the Investment thread (related). MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce - From CNBC (Bubblevision)

Someone above mentioned "prompt engineering" which caught my eye. So let's see what our Google AI buddy has to say; Of course! We are helping to train what is now a derivative of old school programmers. The code we started writing back when binary math hit the computer world it all changed. It's been an incredible ride. Below was from October 30 originally posted in the investment thread. This is from MSFT Co-pilot. It now simply says "Co-pilot may make mistakes." My Co-pilot buddy is an Aussie. Next time we do a project I'm going try to give him a name. Like mentioned above, it's amazing how personal they get. So might as well **** with them. 🙂

Be careful or beware might be in order... Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure — cache wipe turns into mass deletion event as agent apologizes: “I am absolutely devastated to hear this. I cannot express how sorry I am"

Since there is a thread about this now, I would be curious when talking about our own experience with AI, which AI app did you use? There seems to be quite a few. I did a Google search and got this; I've used Co-pilot (comes with Windows 11), Grok (Twitter's version) and Google's Gemini. Make one wonder how the results from the same query would vary across platforms.

AI Data Centers Are Making RAM Crushingly Expensive, Which Is Going to Skyrocket the Cost of Laptops, Tablets, and Gaming PCs On another note, earlier today, after giving back a little bit, the S&P 500 was within 25 points of all time highs. We probably need to lower interest rates. 🙂

I'm not sure anymore. I told my buddy a year ago I am now owned by Google and Amazon. I have no privacy, none, zero. They know more about us than we do. There are companies traded on the NY stock exchange who make money by data mining our ****. 1984 wasn't suppose to be an instruction manual. I worked in and with IT since we had IT and you could see where it was all going to go as it progressed via the technology. So did crazy Teddy. 🙂

I'm sure everyone has noticed this who has played with it. It seems to me, you get the best results when you give it as much information as you can up front. That said, it also seems, some things they/it will do very well with, other things, not so much. On the downside, I was reading an article today about how this changes our educational system. It's really easy to ask HAL what percentage change is X to Y. No need to understand the math. That's part of the reason I quit teaching last June.

More than the increase the SS COLA adjustment will give you like every other year since forever. Think that's a rip-off? Wait until the pukes start to really "fixing" social security.

MIT study finds AI can already replace 11.7% of U.S. workforce Maybe the 11.7% can start a youtube channel or a financial services company and get rich. 😉

Thanks. I had no idea this kind of stuff was going on. Selena Gomez - 2 million followers? I don't even know who she is. That might be a good thing. What a world.

OK, I'm going to admit stupid here, but I've never heard of this guy. I read the one article and tried to make sense out of it, this paragraph caught my eye; There is more but not much makes any sense to me. Does he sell cars too?

Absolutely. Change the oil, and filter, plugs (and wires if needed), points, condenser, clean the battery terminals (and battery), look at the belts, air filter, all the fluid containers (brakes, wipers, anti-freeze,etc) then put it up on a rack and check the suspension parts while they get greased, u-joints, rear end fluid level, tire wear level, and pull a front and back wheel to look at the brakes. This was a routine tune-up as they called it. It used to work that way. They were simple, and they lasted as long as you did that. Now they are too complicated. The first thing they do is hook up a computer.

Totally agree on the Fisher stuff. And how couldn't you love Cab Calloway?

Just a simple car (years ago), for the most part the make didn't matter, if you took it in for a tune up and inspection once a year they were dependable, and didn't cost a lot of money. I've dealt with some car issues recently, and it is a total mess, and not cheap. So much has changed over the years.

Classics, both. I wanted to watch the Blues Brothers movie a while back, and the only way I could was to pay for it. Spit. A buddy of mine featured the soundtrack at his wedding reception. It was a hit.

Why do they continue to try to do stupid things. This is baseball. It isn't difficult.

I had a Rambler of some kind, don't remember what year. 70s probably. It had air conditioning when that was a thing, but this was old when I got it. It didn't work. There were buttons on the dash for air, maybe 5 of them. One setting said "desert only." Too funny. Cars are a perfect example where a simple task like getting from point A to point B departs from the KISS rule (Keep It Simple Stupid) to product life cycle and making a **** load of money. You could design a car to last a lifetime and save a ton of money over the years, but they don't do that and never will. We also like all the bells and whistles. A good buddy is a retired Mercedes mechanic. They have car seats that make my recliner feel like a park bench. The electronics in cars today is off the charts as well. All stuff that can **** up - and cost money to fix. Lots of it, and usually not a fun experience. ON EDIT: appliances are no different.

The Gremlin was a POS too. A buddy had one. He loved it, even though it was broke all the time. That said, it was a different era. Back then you could work on cars, and preventative maintenance really helped. The cars were similar, but different. Chrysler and AMC were kind of the odd balls. In those days there were big thick manuals on how to fix them. So many times they would explain how to fix something in a detailed way, and then the disclaimer; except Chrysler. Their starters were a POS. So were the front suspension. There was nothing worse to align the front end than a Chrysler, and you always had to replace the ball joints first. They were always bad. At least someone with some tools could work on them. Not today.

The Pacer...I was an auto mechanic in 1975 and I can attest they were a POS.

Another interesting chart. Incoming chart porn. I'm not sure what's driving this. Silver is on a real tear, especially since the low back on September 4th of $41.065. Hit a high of $59.47 earlier tonight, but has given back a touch of that. A three month rip of about %45. Cha-ching! Compared with gold (purple line). They usually trade similar. I wonder if some of this money is coming from crypto?

The rest of the Enron story. Excerpt From "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron" Asshole <---link Great read by the way. On a conference call (see link for conversation) when pressed to show the books, Jeff Skilling of Enron called analysis Jack Grubman an asshole. The was the beginning of the end of Enron. Ticker ENE. Eventually the accounting firm Arthur Anderson fell along with them. Some were sent to jail (Skilling) (hey!, what a concept) and some died while waiting (Ken Lay) and another main player committed suicide (John Baxter). The whistleblower Sherron Watkins does speaking tours on business ethics. I went to one of her talks, it was excellent.

Speaking of Paul Volcker, I watched some old clips of him in front of congress years ago. It wasn't pretty, or fair. He made them look like fools. Dude was a smart guy. There isn't too many people who could carry his jock strap. Another was in 2010/2011 after the banksters blew up the world (in 2008/2009) and congress decided to bring them all in to explain. From Jamie Dimon of JPM, Lloyd Blankeinn of GS, on down the list of about 8 CEO's of Wall Street's largest banks. Hilarity ensued. The banksters exposed these idiots for the worthless frauds they were, and it wasn't even close. A Robinhood day trader could have asked better questions. And of course, if by chance, one of them did (and some (not many) ARE capable) they get shut down pronto - because we can't have that.

I would make Paul Volcker look like a piker. 🙂 There would also be an immediate market crash. I have not followed close, but odds of another cut next week? Looks so. The news tomorrow might be the Hassett guy for the next Fed chair starting in Feb?, a dove who wants to lower rates. He's only one vote, but they work for the bankers so it don't matter anyway. He's just the head of the bull**** machine. I don't know that the Fed deserves as much blame as they get, given congress has to spend the money to be monetized. At the same time, they are a bunch of bull**** artists presented as experts. I worked with a guy who's son worked for the Richmond Fed. He told me about some of the research projects he worked on. They really do good stuff when if comes to collecting data, but they have proven to be quite inept at their two mandates. If the economic numbers, which they have, were properly evaluated, they tell a much different story than the numbers the Fed uses to make their decisions. They should know that - and they do - and don't care.