There is an old technique - the guaranteed winner by random chance:

You get 32 stock brokers. On Monday the boss picks 2 stocks. 16 say that stock is going up, 16 say down, and they each call 100 people and give their prediction. That evening the 16 that were 'right' call their 100 back and brag. Tuesday they repeat only with 8 on each side. Repeat on Wednesday with 4 winners. Thursday they have 2 winners. Friday they have 1 winner that brags to his 100 prospects:

"Look, I happened to predict the winner every day this week. I can not guarantee that will happen every day, but if you want to hear my predictions next Monday, I need you to move your account to my firm."

And the gullible fool does it, not knowing that mathematically the predictions were guaranteed to work on 1 of the 32 brokers. Just math, not competence.

Betting on AI was not some super genius move - especially using margin. All it involved was taking the popular opinion and going all in. While it worked you look like a genius. When it fails, you lose everything.

He just played the odds and won for a while. But the math was never going to have him win forever.

10% drop is large but not horrific. This is basically normal variation, not something real.

Apple is one of the "FANG" stocks - Facebook, Apple Netflix, Google. They are huge companies that have had major gains as compared to most other stocks. Over time some people just bought those stocks.

This drove the prices of their stock up a lot from greedy people The current drop is just undoing some excess greed, not really that big a deal.

On 7/31/2026, it hit a low of 300. Before 7/31/2026,. the last time Apple was at 300 was 7/2/2026

In other words, it gave up less than a month of gains.

This is not that big a deal - yet. I would be shocked if it dropped to 272. Why? Because that is just below the previous 'low point' on 6/25/26. Going below that number not only indicates a significant drop, but it established a trend of new lows being less than the last lows.

Yes. That's exactly what I meant. I definitely did not misspell 43 as 53 because I was touch typing.

Electrical vs ICE does not affect New vs used. It's not higher gas prices.

The main reason used EVs are not losing value as much as they did in the past is that the fear of used electrical batteries no longer being as strong.

Previously people were extremely worried that EV batteries were going to quickly lose their charge. There were concerns that older batteries could not be trusted. They thought a used battery was a liability. Worse, everyone kept talking about how the NEXT generation of battery would be so much better. For this reason a lot of people would rather get the newest technology which meant new EVs rather than used ones.

Over time we have found that batteries from used EVs stand up pretty well. Moreover, most people now think that 'new' battery technology is likely to be used for things besides cars (i.e. home back up) so the new cars use the same old batteries.

Combined with the fact that EVs generally have less maintaince issues, people have begun to realize that used EVs are a pretty good deal.

Seven out of 50 is remarkably small. I am shocked they did not get more.

Now, I guarantee you, those affected will realize that the cybersecurity are not joking around. They will improve security.

And about a year later their new security protocalls will spread to the other 53 states. By the time the next group tries this crap, it will be much harder to do.

There is a story about how dealer plates have small numbers on them that Flock cameras do not see. The system then accuses people of car theft.

They are proven as not reliable. If I were a judge I would rule that the police must treat Flock camera information as an unreliable, anonymous source. No drawing guns on people tracked or accused because of Flock information and their info cannot be used to obtain a warrant.

When we entered the Atomic age, there was a movement to use it for everything. Use reactors in cars and homes, use bombs to dig holes, etc. etc. Eventually we learned that no, we do not to put a nuclear reactor in vehicles that routinely crash, get stolen by children, and carry children.

The same thing is going on with AI - people keep using it for things that are incredibly stupid.

AI's are more like friendly dogs that can speak English, than adult human beings. I suspect they will never be as trustworthy as a 17 year old orphan. If you would not give authority or control to a 17 year old orphan you just met, then do not give it to an AI.

This includes:

control over more money than you would give a 17 year old.

the ability to delete computer files

the ability to set prices

guns

any military weapon more deadly than a hand gun.

You are biting off your nose to spite your face.
Capitalism works and this is NOT capitalism.

It is totally true that China steals IP. But most of that is done by the companies in China that American hire to manufacture their products. The solution is to laugh in the face of American companies that decide to manufacture things in China, collect their tears and drink deeply. They want to save money this year to lose in next year. Do not yell at the car thieves, yell at the people that willingly gave them their car keys.

Make it in Ireland, Spain or South Korea if you can't find someone to make it in the US.

It is very cheap to find low priority low severity bugs. That is, if you want to find a way to change someone's smart thermostat to display Farenheit when all the numbers are actually Celsius, yeah you can do that for cheap.

If you want to find a critical severity, critical priority bug that lets you empty people's bank accounts and then over-writes the movie "The Fast and the Furious" on the bank's current database forcing them to revert to the last backup not connected to the system, well that is another story.

The AI bug finder is not particularly helpful to most criminals. It is a relatively expensive way to find lots of small bugs.

But if a nation state decides to invest a few 100 million dollars, it can find enough of these things to plan a cyber assault around them.

That is the real fear from AI bug finding.

You know the ones they advertised in old paper comics?
They sold for $1.00 (1970's money) and were drawn with red circles on the 'lenses'.

(Note they were really just pin hole cardboard with a feather over the hole, creating the illusion of lines on whatever you looked at.)