What's your current headache?

I have a friend who worked for years in HP's printer department, he chose to use another printer.

HP's business model is to sell the printers cheap, then make up for the lost leader in ink-sales. Hence why even my friend who worked for HP refused to buy his employer's product.


As for AI... despite the surging growing backlash against it, the amount of advertising of services and products touting "... Harnessing the Power of AI for You!" seems to be exploding exponentially exponentially (👈 yes, double exponentially — possibly even treble exponenentially exponentially exponentially...). I'm not just sick of AI, I'm sick of the advertising for it.
 
Silver Blues said:
1) Instrument in my lab broke down for the third time in its one (1) year of life (from the same issue every time) and was fixed two weeks ago - is now misbehaving again in a different but possibly related way, just when interest in using it is starting to surge. Please stop it and just work properly, thank you. At least it's still under warranty.

2) For absolute fuck's sake, I have had it with fucking AI, when are we going to accept that it is a disgusting affront to the existence of human life that devours crucial, precious resources for absolutely no benefit to society and only outputs worthless garbage and corrupts our very perception of reality for the sadistic merriment of a handful of vapid evil losers. First it was you couldn't get a graphics card to save your life during COVID because delusional people trying to mine crypto were scalping them, now the price of RAM has exploded because of delusional people trying to ballistically expand AI datacenters or whatever, naturally during which time I am desperately attempting to build not one but several PCs for the workspaces I manage, and IT policy headaches and procurement delays mean that now I am out an extra $700 for no good reason. Christ, it's enough already, please can we get a break.
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Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.
edit: Hitchhikers Guide reference ^^^
 
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Apologies in advance for the following rant!

I work in tech and I feel like AI has been swallowing everything. Companies are deprioritizing improvements to their services and products to focus on AI. As a result, everything is getting shittier (enshittification to the next level - if you’ve never heard of that term look up some of the DEFCON talks) not only because they are shoving AI everywhere but also because they are not fixing bugs or launching new features with the same level of urgency. As someone who believes developing AI is not only a huge waste of time (the ROI is just not there, at least not that I have seen) but also harmful for society and the environment, it’s really hard to observe this very slow train wreck from the inside. I should mention that I know that people have been using AI for things they find useful (even folks on this forum - I don’t mean to accuse or attack you guys, we are all in this together and I do get the appeal) but it’s hard for me to imagine how this can be sustainable (at some point the cost will catch up to consumers and the prices will make us regret not hiring a graphic designer!). Big tech has been investing heavily in this stuff and unfortunately they have so much cash to burn that this is not gonna stop any time soon, I’m afraid. If you agree with this, there is only one thing we mere mortals can do: refuse to use AI as much as possible. That’s the only power consumers have: it may not work right away, but eventually if nobody wants this stuff, it will go away. Besides, if we don’t use it at least we save energy!

Rant over.
 
Where I live, the owner of the local NFL team is investing in two data centers meant for AI capacity. Just one of them will consume almost as much electricity as the entire metropolitan area. The two combined will be way above that. I can only hope for the bubble to pop before that.

I work in tech too- the AI indoctrination is exhausting.
 
We had a town hall yesterday with our new CEO. The focus was mostly on AI and “tech.” There was a press release three weeks ago, a press release that no one bothered to mention to us and that I actually found out about from a client. It announced our partnership with AWS and that the buying process will be automated over the next 3–5 years. Great. As a salesperson, not the most uplifting.

Also, there are upcoming changes to the comp plan. We’ll know the full details by the end of the year and starting 1/1/26. So 12/31 we find out we are screwed the next day? I don't think I have ever had a comp plan change that helped me, just the company.

The only “hint” the CEO gave is that it will “reward success” which is literally how commission based sales works. Us lowly sales people have to hit numbers and get paid vs the C Level that can fail and still make bank with their multi million dollar contract.

That said, it is all very short sided talk, ideas and manipulation to get the stock price to a certain point, the board will cash out and move on to the next citing everything failed once they left.
 
The university I work at is "all in on AI." Rumour has it the CIO laid off IT people in favour of LLM bots. I saw a grad program proposal for an AI masters. Why you'd want to paint yourself into a corner with a degree like that vs a comp sci masters (with relevant coursework) is beyond my comprehension. We're encouraged to use copilot in our work (it takes forever to get it to output something useful) but there's mass hysteria around students using chatgpt. All the publishers/vendors are scrambling to shoe-horn AI features that nobody wants into databases. Springer (the giant publisher) got caught padding out book packages with AI content. It's such a mess.
 
It's a very tenuous time. Thankfully our client has too much riding for the grunts to have access. It's highly restricted, but that means we don't take the blame for leaks. Stark contrast to my previous employer who just went hog wild on it.

Current headache is health related. Nothing even approaching critical or debilitating, just irritating.
 
giovanni said:
Current headache: end of year performance review sucks. I have been doing this for 11 years and it always sucks. Thankfully I’m not managing anymore so this is the last time I have to do it for a while (still doing the review for former reports).
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I finished my EOY review four days ago.. same BS for the last 9 years: no, I did not contribute to any dumpster fires, yes I met all my KPIs, yes, I’m a good corporate minion (well, kinda..) no, I don’t show up stoned off my ass (wanted to on a recent tools server and switch refresh.)


My current headache?? My back is killing me. 5 day hunting trip with my Dad (just turned 75, make every day count,) fixing random stuff that wears out over time on a 21 year old 5th wheel camper, this damn bar in the fold-out couch I’m laying down upon as I type this rant. It’s all good though. Still making memories, have some really good wildlife and scenery photographs.. took video of an armadillo sniffing and digging for bugs in our camp site, coffee this morning with a beautiful sunrise while BS-ing with my Dad, and got to watch a rather large tom turkey strut his stuff to the ladies.

Tomorrow I’ll be tracking down some wiring faults in the ATV, and we are meeting with some old family friends at a hole in the wall cafe out here in rural central Texas on our way back to town.
 
To all who mentioned AI.. I feel the pain. I work for a rather large data center provider, and thankfully much more on the facilities operations side of the house.. more specialized in the “remote hands and eyes” tasking, but given my employment background, also work extensively with the PropDev team on interior projects.. really more of an SME when it comes to low voltage and fiber infrastructure, and know how to talk with the MEP contractors

Thank fuck I am NOT on any of the business analyst teams.. it’s automate this/that, and damn the torpedoes. UX/UAT?? Never heard of her 😂😂😂.
Every other corp communication is AI this and that, meanwhile, I’m the guy who keeps no tech at home aside from my tablet and phones.
 
JasonWickersham said:
To all who mentioned AI.. I feel the pain. I work for a rather large data center provider, and thankfully much more on the facilities operations side of the house.. more specialized in the “remote hands and eyes” tasking, but given my employment background, also work extensively with the PropDev team on interior projects.. really more of an SME when it comes to low voltage and fiber infrastructure, and know how to talk with the MEP contractors

Thank fuck I am NOT on any of the business analyst teams.. it’s automate this/that, and damn the torpedoes. UX/UAT?? Never heard of her 😂😂😂.
Every other corp communication is AI this and that, meanwhile, I’m the guy who keeps no tech at home aside from my tablet and phones.
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Oh yeah I feel like UX is suffering a lot in favor of chat bots being shoved everywhere. I hate that so much!
 
Another headache, although on the lighter side. I have twin girls. They recently turned 9. So last night we had a sleepover party for their birthday with 5 other 9 year old girls and boy oh boy the drama! We woke up this morning to one of my daughters crying because one of the other girls was reading her diary out loud and her sister didn’t even try to stop her… sigh. I guess it could be much worse.
 
giovanni said:
Apologies in advance for the following rant!

I work in tech and I feel like AI has been swallowing everything. Companies are deprioritizing improvements to their services and products to focus on AI. As a result, everything is getting shittier (enshittification to the next level - if you’ve never heard of that term look up some of the DEFCON talks) not only because they are shoving AI everywhere but also because they are not fixing bugs or launching new features with the same level of urgency. As someone who believes developing AI is not only a huge waste of time (the ROI is just not there, at least not that I have seen) but also harmful for society and the environment, it’s really hard to observe this very slow train wreck from the inside. I should mention that I know that people have been using AI for things they find useful (even folks on this forum - I don’t mean to accuse or attack you guys, we are all in this together and I do get the appeal) but it’s hard for me to imagine how this can be sustainable (at some point the cost will catch up to consumers and the prices will make us regret not hiring a graphic designer!). Big tech has been investing heavily in this stuff and unfortunately they have so much cash to burn that this is not gonna stop any time soon, I’m afraid. If you agree with this, there is only one thing we mere mortals can do: refuse to use AI as much as possible. That’s the only power consumers have: it may not work right away, but eventually if nobody wants this stuff, it will go away. Besides, if we don’t use it at least we save energy!

Rant over.
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Rant warranted! Enshittification is not the same as things going to shit; just think of social media and sites like amazon or ebay to give you a hand on what counts as enshittification... A business model that lures and fucks everyone involved, and runs of with the money as it inevitably collapses into utter worthlessness.

There's good news on the AI front. The way it works, it's not going to get better with it's outright mistakes. It's how it's build (statistics). Businesses are seeing adoption isn't the bright future that was promised because of all the double checking that needs to be done. Also, the more people using it, the more they realize it's a broken tool that is helpful in some ways... It's those who don't really understand it / barely use it, that are still sold on it. It's just a fucking ratrace of the ultra rich companies.

Many happy stories going around about the collapse. About the bubble that will burst.
www.wired.com

AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

I talked to the scholars who literally wrote the book on tech bubbles—and applied their test.
www.wired.com www.wired.com

About the slow down of AI adption in companies...
fortune.com

'Human skills' are at a premium again now that big companies are backpedaling on error-prone AI | Fortune

AI adoption rate among large companies has dipped from a peak of 14% earlier this year to 12% as of late summer.
fortune.com fortune.com

If anything, like with all the shit of the past decades; you'll need to hold your breath a few years and it will pass. It sucks for sure, The bad news is that the world still hasn't recovered from the 2008 economic crash, and this one is going to be one hell of a sucker punch to stand up from.
 
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I feel you all on the AI shit.

Last year, all the stuff I worked on got cancelled or moved to India so that our team could focus on building AI Infra. As the AI teams are shifting their online models from CPU to GPU, my team has the unsexy job of scheduling those GPU tasks on a kubernetes cluster. It's a huge waste of talent to make our team, which joined the company to do deep distributed and algorithmic-based work, now doing this operations work, and the attrition is high (all the good engineers left, and I stepped down as manager to help with dev busywork). The kicker is that these new GPU-based models perform worse at 30 times the cost. So why are the AI teams doing it? FOMO. Basically they fear getting left behind. We've had a senior director, 2 directors, and VP all either leave or get ousted since this reorg is such a clusterf*$! but they keep doubling down on the strategy.
 
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I put some pedals on sale, and of course tested them before putting them up. Now someone asked me about one of them (a PCBGM Electric Lover), and I plugged it quickly just to give another test, and now it has developed clock noise? How annoying.
 
Nostradoomus said:
There’s your problem right there 😂
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Well yes, it could be, but then simply searching for "electric mistress clock noise" does seem to point at it being an issue with original units too. It worked fine before - I did need to add a jumper to it when fixing it originally, not sure if there was a trace missing or somehow cut or what.

One prospective buyer wanted it for the effects loop because it advertises "effects loop to enable through-zero flanging", but then the build docs say to just jumper the FX loop so the pedal works right, and literally link to a blog post by @Fingolfen about it. Apparently he did get it work with the FX loop though, and it wouldn't be impossible to add to my current pedal, but I'm just not confident it's a good idea to go mess around with it at this point.
 
Fama said:
Well yes, it could be, but then simply searching for "electric mistress clock noise" does seem to point at it being an issue with original units too. It worked fine before - I did need to add a jumper to it when fixing it originally, not sure if there was a trace missing or somehow cut or what.

One prospective buyer wanted it for the effects loop because it advertises "effects loop to enable through-zero flanging", but then the build docs say to just jumper the FX loop so the pedal works right, and literally link to a blog post by @Fingolfen about it. Apparently he did get it work with the FX loop though, and it wouldn't be impossible to add to my current pedal, but I'm just not confident it's a good idea to go mess around with it at this point.
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Is it the only thing in your chain when you test it? It could be so many things 😭
 
I’ve had clock noise coming through when usied single wall wart supply daisy chained to multiple pedals. The cure was a proper supply unit with truly isolated outputs. So maybe you @Fama should ask how your customer powers his pedal/pedals?
 
It seems like the clock noise happens when it gets the input from the Quad Cortex FX loop, not when the guitar is directly plugged in. So that's probably not a big issue, or maybe not something I could/need to fix in the pedal itself. The bigger issue seems to be that the DPDT switch is faulty, if you wiggle it a bit it works fine, but seems like one of the poles doesn't make contact correctly part of the time. Doesn't seem to be a soldering issue, more like the switch itself, so I'll need to replace it.

The one person who was interested in buying it was also curious about the FX loop, so maybe I'll test how that affects things. I could fit in switched jacks near the bottom and make it so that the FX loop is bridged (like it currently is) if no cables are inserted, but we'll see. In any case this is the wrong thread for it, it is somewhat of a headache, but troubleshooting should be in another thread if necessary.
 
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