I guess now we finally know why Babbage never finished building the Analytical Engine.
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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iiiiiiitttttttttttt
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you know the computer thing is it plugged in?
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That's a good point, but a few decades of talking to clients has led to a number of conversations like this where they want it to "just work", even if they've input the wrong information.
Clients? Shit happens in my house.
"My monitor keeps turning off."
"Ok next time it happens ill look at it and see if i can figure out what is going on."
"Cant you just fix it?"
"Fix what? I dont know whats wrong yet."
"Just fix the monitor."
Legitimately, about 1/3 of the time my mere presence seems to magically fix the issue.
There was a thread on Reddit where people likewise noted that having another person try problematic software solved the issue. So one commenter regaled how a dude sidestepped the whole rigmarole by saying to his colleague “look, this thing's broken again”, and then before the other guy could step in, he clicked the thing himself, and it worked.
i really should have gone into IT because electronics spontaneously break around me
Same, I keep track of magic on a white board in my office
Sometimes I wonder if people really do affect their environment with their thoughts and attitudes and maybe people who believe in ghosts but don't believe in technology can see ghosts and have their tech fail in unexplainable ways, but the presence of someone who understands and believes in it changes the way it works and doesn't see paranormal shit because they don't believe in it.
Like my ex believed in paranormal stuff and apparently experienced some herself and also had her tech stuff fail spectacularly in ways I couldn't replicate if I tried but would otherwise work fine for me.
Though I do have a feeling that if their activity on the PC was recorded, it would actually turn out to be just them lying about (or not even knowing) what they did and the behavior of the tech being as logical as usual, given their actions. Or they just ran into a rare race condition and the correct actions fail like 0.3% of the time.
But it would be more interesting if it was the other thing.
I've started defaulting to just saying "yes" with my family and pretending to fix it. I'm actually thankful for the laptop revolution, cause I can just say "it's fucked, buy a new one."
Once you've got the new one, I'll take your old one and dispose of it appropriately...
I have like a dozen old laptops with various flavors of Linux on them because of this. Can't give them away cause apparently Linux is a scary word in this part of the country.
Ah, you must be an expert
One time my boss asked me to basically solve the Travelling salesman problem.
My first pass at ot was a simple grab closest neighbor solution, but that left a slightly unoptimal path and my boss asked me to "fix" it. I explained to him why, no, I can't make it both fast amd accurate, pick one, while also showing him that wikipedia page. I was so mad when he said just make it more accurate ignoring now it takes hours to run sometimes only to save 10 seconds of a machine moving.
This is how I expect AI to work. I will silently think of a thing, and the AI must make it perfectly in one go. If it doesn't, I have just lacked in describing in detail what it should do. And that takes thousands of lines of code.
magic
(Sprinkles of fairy dust)