Just google the error message. Copy, paste. Read the top 5 results.
No, click on the results and read the page.
Did you read it? Explain to me why it doesn’t work.
Still broken? Call the vendor.
Hello Google! Hey I was trying this function in Android and it’s not working. Plus when I search the first link is to your bug tracker and it’s marked as non fix.
What do you mean this is a Wendy’s? What do you mean that’s a free product and there’s no support?
I do not literally build buildings. I design them, I document them for construction, I collaborate with other people who do actually build the buildings to make sure everything’s on the level.
Just because I’m an IT guy, it doesn’t mean I know why your laptop is slow.
Or how to fix your printer.
Nobody knows how to fix a printer
I had a guy recently ask why his printer wasn’t working after he got a new router, and it turns out it is because the printer only went up to 802.11g. I’m pretty amazed that printer outlived the wireless standard it was using.
I mean… 802.11g is still able to be used. Even b is supported under the radios I’m familiar with.
The router he got did have support for 802.11g, but for some reason I don’t remember we couldn’t turn it on. It was some integrated 5G router. The solution was just to use the printer’s built in AP to print. He has to disconnect from the internet to print things, but it still works.
I can’t even get my own printer to work.
Did you know they still sell dot matrix printers? Wild.
Everything since then has been a mistake.
Best printer setup experience I’ve had.
I mean, 90% chance it’s because: still using a hard drive, old ass CPU/heat issues+throttling, OS and software bloat.
Bloat
And they need to download more RAM
“Can you hack my ex-girlfriends Instagram?”
Or, “I have an amazing idea for an app…”
Clearly, if my years on the internet taught me anything, the killer app ID is an app that hack’s ex’s socials with bonus functionality for changing their school grades
My app idea was location based reminders instead of time based.
The next time you’re at the store you’ll get a notification with your notes.
I think it’s a neat idea but i never have location on so 🤷♂️
I think you can use existing software to do that. If your store has wifi (even if you can’t access it, I think), you can geofence an area and have some action (such as popping up a reminder app) trigger. I’ve not used software like this myself, but I remember people describing behavior like this at least on Android. If it might be useful to you, you should give it a search.
I have an app that’s meant to schedule things, but I just use it as a checklist and preface each action with the location. So long as I check it (second home screen on my phone, so not a huge barrier), I’m usually good.
Example
- costco: chicken
- costco: paper towels
- Cainz: sunscreen
- grocery: milk
- grocery: eggs
yeah quite a few apps are existing software wrapped into a convenient bundle
Apple Reminders does that.
Was gonna say Google keep has had this feature for years too
very cool
“My app idea is that you can see where your girlfriend is at all times.”
“So you’re telling me you want me to build an illegal stalking system? Have you really thought this through?”
(Based on an actual conversation.)
I can’t hack insta. But I can probably hack your ex. Spearfishing is largely just a matter of time.
Also, that software engineer and IT are not interchangeable terms
^ This. So much this. I’m a software engineer, and people will ask me IT questions about software I have no clue how to use.
“I’m a software engineer, not a printer whisperer”
Eh, you probably do, you just don’t want to spend three hours wading through mountains of malware for free.
I don’t want to do it for money either.
I mean if their hardride isn’t full, and their task manager isn’t showing a bunch of bloat, then it’s 95% of the time a hardware issue.
The scientific method
Factors of safety are defined to deal with the probability of things going wrong in a manner that is acceptable to society based on a body of knowledge and experimentation. You can’t just define your own.
Also, just because something is designed for a specific load doesn’t mean it will fail at that load.
Software doesn’t age, it doesn’t make sense for your computer to become slower as it becomes older. (some) Software just becomes more shitty and bloated with every release, which is what you’re experiencing.
I think there’s room for an exception here: operating systems or other software that handles a large number of files could bog down with use as the number and size of files grow with time.
deleted by creator
Try Linux! Fast and reliable IF you know your business
Doesn’t help with the bloated web and local webapps, though. Also, you’ll need to choose from a set of desktop environments that were made with lower resource usage in mind. Also don’t forget that while linux is often faster, a slow drive is still a slow drive and it can help only so much if you keep your OS and heavyweight software on a HDD.
I am the company IT guy. Not your IT guy.
That current “AI” is not turning into Skynet any time soon.
It might turn into dumb skynet though. Like a version of skynet that does malicious things, but not because it’s trying to hurt people, just because it’s really stupid and we put it in charge of things.
Yeah, the McKittrick effect (remember Wargames?)
We can’t even get them to not be racist when pointedly asked. Billions of dollars have probably been spent on that problem to no avail.
LLMs like ChatGPT have kind of just turned the problem of getting knowledge into a computer, into the problem of getting it back out in a controlled way. It’s still hard and failure-prone but now nobody knows how it works inside.
Oh like politicians and CEOs? Can we try replacing them with AI?
Boards are certainly looking at this. They certainty won’t align with the workers, consumers, or publics interest.
I’ve begun to think of LLMs as compression algorithms for patterns. It can take an existing pattern and apply it on unusual subjects. Like take the pattern of a limerick and apply it to the patterns of Danny Devito, that’s the upper limit of their creativity. So rather than storing information, it stores these patterns making it seem more dynamic.
The way I see it, human creativity is the combination of patterns but in a chaotic non-analytic way. We make leaps of logic that without precise knowledge of our brains can’t be exactly replicated. Meanwhile LLM’s just do the basic combination of patterns that result in the most generic realization of any idea.
However the well dries up as soon as we stop training them. They’ll store the basics of any field but fail to replicate new developments or conclusions until trained.
However the well dries up as soon as we stop training them. They’ll store the basics of any field but fail to replicate new developments or conclusions until trained.
Exactly this is the reason we should prevent any further data collection by these bastards…
Don’t feed the beast!
Solvent green is… puppies
Space is hard. You’re strapping something inside a big tube with basically directed explosives at the bottom, hoping it survives the trip, then subjecting it to constant radiation, huge temperature swings, and other brutal environmental factors like micrometeoroids. Just because we’ve been sending satellites and people up to space for nearly 70 years doesn’t mean it’s gotten easier; we’re just better at knowing what to expect so we can test for it. Failures in rockets or satellites or even manned spacecraft are going to happen as much as we work to prevent them.
Your job must be pretty cool.
You beat me to this comment
I feel like most people know that rocket science is hard.
Well, It’s not exactly brain surgery.
The pharmacy is not where the people that stock the front of the store work. They are very busy trying to fill hundreds of prescriptions and deal with doctors, patients and insurance companies.
Don’t ask them where to find the cosmetics that are on sale. We don’t even know. We are not a service desk.
Read the error message. The whole thing.
This comes up even with coworkers who are allegedly senior software developers.
“It’s just a white page it’s not working”
“Ok well what does the console say? Network requests?”
“403?”
“Ok now what’s in the response body?”
“The what?”
"Click on it. Then response "
"It says I don’t have permission to view this page "
“Do you have permission to view this page?”
“…no.”
I’ve had this and similar conversations far too many times, I keep professional but holy shit, and then when they do get a call going with a screen share they zoom past the error every. Single. Time.
“What does the error message say?”
“I already closed it. Those things are always gibberish”
Yep, so many clients: I have this problem and an error pops up, I need immediate help.
Me: Ok send me the data and the error log, and a description of what it is telling you on screen.
Client: I forget what it said, i didn’t save the log, And i needed to keep working so I deleted the file and started again.
OR
Client: My set of files is doing this, and giving me this specific error.
Me: Ah OK, that is a known issue, close all the fikes and open the top level only, open each sub fike one by one till the error pops up, that will be the culprit so run this clean up tool on that file only.
Crickets
Week later, Client : Im having that same error again, can you help?
Me: That cleanup tool should have fixed it.
Client: I didn’t have time to do those steps so I just kept working as is.
me: hopefully a gangster shoots me in a drive by crossfire on the way home.
“That’s fine, when you have the time, run the tool I sent you, it takes 30 seconds and should solve your issue!”
I wish that worked. Rather than spend an hour diagnosing which file is causing the error, they would rather struggle with it crashing for a week.
Yep, but that is their problem, I have it logged that I gave them the tool with instructions on how to use it, with them dismissing it, even when I followed up on it.
I won’t work myself up over a user who is not interested in solving their issue.
Now obviously in real life I would remote in and run the tool for them, but there have been time when they have been unwilling to do that due to some pointless reason, that’s fine, I have logs showing that I tried.
“Sorry, I cannot help you without the message.”
Close ticket.
I literally once got an email from another engineer using our internal tool at the big tech company I used to work for which said something like, “the page isn’t working. Please help. Attached screenshot of error.” The attached screenshot showed the error message, “Your authentication token has expired. Please refresh the page.”
I emailed him back, “oh yeah, that happens when your authentication token expires. Try refreshing the page.”
He emailed me back, “that worked, thanks!”
(For anyone wondering, no, we can’t refresh the page for the user, because they might have unsaved data on it.)
The more users you have, the more expensive it is to run.
Like, compute, storage, bandwidth, none of that is free. If you’re providing a free service, like Wikipedia, and you have many millions of users, like Wikipedia, your expenses will be enormous. You can either accept donations, like Wikipedia, require payment, or sell your users.
If there’s something you like that’s free online, support them. If they don’t accept donations, well, I hate to tell you, you’re the product.
If they don’t accept donations, well, I hate to tell you, you’re the product.
A statement has never been truer than this
Also when “you’re the product” that doesn’t just mean that your data is the product. A user is a person whom you can influence. “You’re the product” means this company can direct you, influence you, change your behavior. They can offer your behavioral changes, as a service to their other stakeholders.
Marketing can be such an immoral, insidious process.
And it takes thousands of people pushing this shit mindlessly, because hey… “It’s just a job, right? Nine to five”.Shit. People think they collect all that data just for fun, don’t they? Time to change how I talk about this…
This ☝️✅
Driving a car badly is much more risky than driving fast.
But when you have an accident, speed is what kills.
I can’t “blow up” an image you screenshotted from a video your sister posted on facebook and make it look any better then a pile of angry pixel garbage. I can, however, remove the pause icon from your garbage picture.
Well with generative AI, now we can, but that’s just cause the computer is making shit up.
To be fair, that’s also what our brains do most of the time.
