Ask Lemmy

My work computer runs better because I listen to music and browse the Internet not just work work work. I keep it entertained, and in return it runs better than those of my fellow employees, I have far fewer problems.

I have seen machines develop ghosts and I believe all electronic devices could develop said ghosts but only if built with quality components that have large tolerance between normal operation values (voltage, current, etc) and fail values. If not then they fully fail to function before they start operating outside of normal parameters.

With the rise of bio computing currently by using rat neurons which I think will collide with LLMs with their hallucinations to produce full on machine spirits within the next 20 years.

I say this has no foundation as the only "evidence" I have is my own anecdotes and the rest is merely a hypothesis.

Zelda BOTW knows when you're climbing a big cliff and it's more likely to rain.

I need more ram

Some people have an aura around them that computers disrespect, its why we have repeat idiots that log faults and we send a tech down and get them to do it again and it works. In the presence of IT support they tend to behave

The internet was better when it was just the nerds on it

That I've got a special click when I specifically need something to work. It involves a lot of deliberation on the mouse, a small pause before starting to click, and a ~0.5s longer click time. That's my "okay carefully now..." Click.

Reserved for tasks like a bank transfer, an important form filling out, etc

Modern computers struggle to do tasks they did even faster 45 years ago because modern people don't know how to do anything except use 3 trillion lines of code that were written by other people.

Desktops are for gaming. Laptops are for browsing the Internet.

Does my laptop have a decent GPU? Sure does. Great for browsing the Internet.

Bonus:

Some tasks are phone tasks while bigger things are computer tasks. Think buying a movie ticket versus buying plane tickets.

Videogames taste better after midnight.

Printers must be treated with intimidation for them to behave, because they smell fear and only respect violent hierarchy.

I keep a hammer on hand when I need to print something for this reason.

More game related, but I swear a game called Oaken Tower knows exactly when I get on and decides to have me face off against players whose builds can counter mine a good 85% of the time. Then like 99% of the time I will need a specific item to make a build work during a time where I cannot change builds. So, what does the game do? Give me every other single item I do not need! Same applies when I need copies of every item I am gonna use or are using, except it only appears after I have maxed it out or cannot afford it in the shop.

I believe it so much that I made an angry Mastodon post I really shouldn't have about how much I wanted the solo developer to suffer a slow and painful death.

Either way, fun game. Would recommend.

I work with fixing specialised software and hardware.

I belive that there is truth to the Tom Knight and the Lisp machine koan. Several times per year I bill customers for doing this.

If you've not heard it before: A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

I have a little foundation for this:

I've seen a lineup of hundreds of identical PCs all get the exact same OS image, and inevitably you'll get one or two that are significantly slower than the rest.

Its my belief that sometimes there's some sort of deeply embedded hardware flaw that makes some computers suck and there's no amount of tweaks or reinstalling an OS that will fix it.

It’s not without foundation, but I feel like I have a magical power to make computers work. Someone will be having a problem and when I walk over it starts working. And then when I walk away it happens again.

And I think this power is hereditary because one of my kids appears to have it.

Waiting 8 seconds after turning off a device, before turning it back on. Any electronics, really.

Turning the TV on off? Wait 8 seconds.
Blender not working? Unplug, 8 seconds, replug.
Replacing batteries? 8 seconds.

10 seconds is too long, 5 seconds isn't enough sometimes. 8 seconds is perfect.

Some people - even technologically literate ones - just want computers and operating systems to work straight out of the box with no building or tinkering and there's nothing wrong with that.