Some days technology just fucks with you

[PonoBill]

This is the short list of today's challenges--most still haunting me:
--Echo music players in the main room and garage play a few seconds of requested music and then tell me "sorry, I'm having trouble playing music from your library". They were working fine yesterday. Of course I Googled for solutions, of course I turned them on and off (shades of "The IT Crowd"), of course I deregistered and registered, and of course Amazon is no help at all.

--Fusion 360 is doing so many random things that I think there's some malevolent twit somewhere making the software refuse to do things that worked ten minutes ago.

--I'm trying to prepare to upgrade the Enphase microinverters in our PV system to a newer version, so of course the Enphase installer's toolkit won't let me log in, though it did a few days ago when I called tech support with the same problem. And of course I can't get hold of tech support (does India observe MLK day?).

--The outlets in the kitchen went dead just as I was preparing to make Cacio e Pepe. Breaker is fine, which means it's a tripped GFI, and of course I don't know where it is. Probably behind the refrigerator (because that's the best place to install a GFI. <edit It was behind the monstrously heavy sideboard in our dining room. Of course it had to be there.>

--My 3D printer slicer (Bambu Labs) decided to change its behavior completely. Things that I've done a dozen times no longer work. Splitting an imported .STL design with multiple elements into separate objects is suddenly not an option.

At least the printer works... ...so I got up this morning and found it had quit. The printer detected a fault and stopped. Some of the breakaway support filament decided to string all over the place.

I'm going to go wingfoiling. Oh, wait, no wind.

I posted this on Facebook and my daughter replied:
(Dramatic consoling sarcastic pat on the back) It will be ok dad. Chin up. 🤟

And that's from my kinder daughter. My hardass daughter will just call me a pussy under her breath and not bother to reply.

[sflinux]

lol on your daughter's comments.
It feels like 2023 is the year of fixing stuff.

[supmmmm]

Hope it’s not the planned obsolescence that I’m going through with yet another still working Apple device.

[Dusk Patrol]

This is the short list of today's challenges--most still haunting me:

Your paddle still works ... 

[SlatchJim]

We went from Chromecast to Apple TV recently.  All the gremlins were slain in one fell swoop.  Only took me 7 years to pull the trigger...

[WaveWashed Hatteras]

Interesting thread, I work for a small privately held company that designs and manufactures scientific instrumentation, and our President (73 years old) is all in on AI, VR + AR thinking that it is the future.   I've worked with our service engineers on the VR + AR projects related to supporting our International Service centers and found this technology to be a huge benefit in diagnosing, troubleshooting and repair as long as one party involved is willing to sacrifice some sleep due to time differences between ASEA and Asia.   We usually alternate on who has to be up at 6am or midnight local time so that the other can be available at 6pm or noon.

What I don't like is AI as I find it totally useless for my field and a huge time waster.   Why does it waste my time?  Our president insists on asking all different versions of Chat based AI questions related to our industry in an attempt to create marketing content showing our companies superiority of design compared to our competitors.   What usually happens is that ChatGP give the opposite answer than what is expected, and I end up having to either prove ChatGP wrong, educate our president on the concepts that "words have meanings" and help him structure directed questions rather than vague questions.  This can entail me having to write a several page responses with 1. the correct answer, and 2. a forensic search on where the incorrect information originated, (usually from a college science student blog, or a competitors marketing,

Personally, I don't use any AI since all information relevant to my role ensuring that our instrumention and software reporting conform to all national and international conventions such as ISO, ASTM, DIN,BAM, SAE, CIE, USP, NF, CP, JP, ANSI, ISEA, AOCS and about 100 other standards organizations, including the major publishers such as Wiley Inter-Science.   All of these organizations tightly control their content behind firewalls, they have all added verbiage such as this; Artificial Intelligence Policy: ASTM International prohibits the entry of ASTM standards and related ASTM intellectual property (“ASTM IP”) into any form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT. Additionally, creating derivatives of ASTM IP using AI is also prohibited without express written permission from ASTM’s President. In the case of such use, ASTM will suspend a licensee’s access to ASTM IP, and further legal action will be considered." to their websites.

What happens whenever our president uses Chat he gets bot answers that are only based on data from the public domain and zero input from the scientific community resulting in about 30% of answers being so incorrect as to be laughable., 30% to being circular nonsense and 40% to being marketing based responses.   

Since I hope to 90% retire in the next year and earn a little money on the side writing technical papers for publication behind the firewall I hope to continue to earn some easy income factchecking AI answers for a few years longer.    For laughs I may start my own blog and purposely post slightly misleading content just to have fun and see if it turns up in Chat GTP responses.  Lol

[PonoBill]

I fed some convoluted Python and C++ code into Chat GTP to try to figure out what it did and how it worked. I wrote it a few years ago, found it recently, and as usual with my shitty code I had no idea WTF I did, and why I did it. Interestingly enough Chat GTP was kind of useful. Not great, it's not like I could just rebuild the circuitry I designed it for (automatic level and height control for a 1978 GMC motor home using a little compressor, a bunch of solenoid-controlled air valves, and some height sensors to inflate airbags), but it did tell me what it did, more or less how, and highlighted some likely bugs. The project is abandoned, so I can safely stuff the code in the archive of "shit I'll never touch again". I'd delete it, but then I'd need it. Now if I could just find the code I wrote for my foil towbot.