Ideas from Mark Stout

Another election is upon us.  With it comes a barrage of political posts on social media.  In a time many say is the most politically divided we have been since the Civil War, how do we evaluate the truthfulness of the political posts that flood our feeds? Everyone wants to believe that the posts confirming our beliefs are accurate, but are they? I recently tested AI to fact check social media political memes. The beauty of this, is you can do with a number of AI's to see if the evaluation changes. AI is software, it does not have have the inherent biases that humans often have. By checking across multiple AIs you can guard against one being tuned for a political view. For example this meme There is a formatting issue with this post.  See the same text here :

My understanding from a recent newsletter I read, corporate types are generating impressive appearing reports they distribute. Unfortunately they are written entirely by AI. And they are often not brief; people thinking generating a 20 page report shows initiative and hard work. Their attempt to impress falls apart when someone wants to discuss the report. It becomes apparent fast they did not write it, but only read it, and not even that sometimes. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using AI to research a point. The writing though should be yours. There is nothing wrong with using it to write a particular dense portion, but only a paragraph here and there, and you should use it only as a guide; you should re-write it in your own voice. The same with using AI to comment on your writing, suggesting grammar changes etc. Make those changes based on its comments, not let it rewrite. You have a voice, and your readers recognize it. Do not lose it to AI. So while I write here about ...

Inbox Zero. The concept of having an empty inbox is a goal many of us find elusive, but it is also something that AI can help with now. I subscribe to a lot of email newsletters—mostly tech and AI ones. Subscribing always seems like a good idea at the time, but as they pour into my inbox every day, it gets harder and harder to find the time to read them. The other night I thought about unsubscribing from a bunch of them, but occasionally each one has content I am actually interested in. I figured this was a perfect opportunity to experiment with Google’s new AI agent, Spark. An AI agent is a command that runs in AI automatically, the in the background all of the time. Although with this one, I told it to run only three times a day. Here is the workflow I set up to handle them: 1. Gmail Filter and Labeling: I went into my Gmail advanced settings and created a filter containing the sender addresses for all my newsletters. I set up a rule so that whenever a new one arrives, it bypasses t...

  I am releasing today a free File Manager program for Windows.   And to showcase it, and the rest of my digital life, a new website : markstouttech.com . It includes links to this blog, my newsletter, software, and digital creations. File Manager is a powerful Windows File management system for coders, vibe coders and other power users. Features Three primary areas to the app: Individual folder panes (1 to 4) Bookmarks of frequently accessed folders Favorite Apps - a list of frequently used applications Panes can be vertical or grid layout Views : Brief, Detailed and Image Unique field layouts for different views Drag and drop between panes for copy or move Drag and drop files to other applications Immediate access to PowerShell or Command Prompt in a pane's folder Markdown viewer and editor Text file editor Diverse right click file handling: Copy path to clipboard Copy filename to clipboard Copy text file contents to clipboard Add folder to bookmarks Add executable to ...

Read on my Substack  

 I posted this tonight to Reddit , and it is getting some positive traction. We have seen many perspectives about vibe coding in this community.  Professionals are concerned about security, and also seem fearful of encroachment on their profession. I may have a unique perspective. While I have never been a professional programmer, I have been a hobbyist programmer since 1979.  Yes, you read that right, for 47 years. I started on the TRS-80 Model I and then the IBM PC and its descendants. There have been three developments that have thrilled me over those decades: Getting a computer  Going online (CompuServe, Bulletin Boards, the Internet and then the web) And Artificial Intelligence I have programmed mostly in script languages like BASIC, Visual BASIC, PERL, PHP, and Python. And ones you probably never heard of,like Toolbook and Dbase III. And I’ve dabbled in Java, Cobol even, and C. I am not generating SaaS applications with the hopes of getting rich. I do not under...

 I was telling someone tonight about NotebookLM and suggested they check out my video on it. I just realized it is a bit buried it in an old post  about AI, so wanted to surface the video here.