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Old tech is haunted

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Re: Old tech is haunted

#61

Post by yrgulation »

themadturk wrote: post #14

Many years ago, in my first tech job, we converted our typewriter-driven office to networked DOS PCs, running on Netware. One day, one of the legal secretaries, of self-described Roma ancestry, started complaining about her PC acting oddly...software not starting, spontaneous reboots ,etc. We replaced her machine to troubleshoot it, but the same thing happened with the replacement machine. We couldn't detect anything…

Roma “treatments” are fascinating, in a very positive way (sadly in europe you need to mention this, as roma are very discriminated against). I knew of one where they do a trick with lit matches at door corners that “treats” mild colds and “curses”. Wondering if this wizardry originates from india, given their history [0][1], or they picked it up on the way to europe but i really wish there was a book on these practices and their origins. I am almost certain these involve psychology, somehow, but cant prove it.

[0] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/roma-gypsi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Romani_people

Re: Old tech is haunted

#63

Post by hiidrew »

My sister is very into crystals, actually works at a shop financed by some billionaire's daughter.

Every now and then she likes to remind me of that most of our screens are made out of quartz, and highlights the associated qualities of the crystal.

I can't recall them but I always find it interesting, something about assigning beliefs and extra qualities onto your everyday objects. Some people believe in a white god with long hair in the clouds while others believe in the magical qualities of rocks. I find the diversity of beliefs beautiful.

Re: Old tech is haunted

#64

Post by Ma8ee »

rob74 wrote: post #3

I have a haunted TV: my 4 year old Sony Bravia (Android TV) reboots seemingly intentionally during the most interesting parts of TV broadcasts. And since a few weeks ago, it also regularly loses the Wi-Fi connection. Thanks Google and Sony!

Our Google Chromecast tend to become very hot and then restart when the kids watch Disney+.

Re: Old tech is haunted

#65

Post by hinkley »

themadturk wrote: post #14

Many years ago, in my first tech job, we converted our typewriter-driven office to networked DOS PCs, running on Netware. One day, one of the legal secretaries, of self-described Roma ancestry, started complaining about her PC acting oddly...software not starting, spontaneous reboots ,etc. We replaced her machine to troubleshoot it, but the same thing happened with the replacement machine. We couldn't detect anything…

The peculiar thing about having an aluminum cased laptop is that when the ground wires in the power adapter get frayed, or if the electrical circuit is hot garbage, you tend to get a little tingle when you touch the computer. Time to either throw away that adapter or get your wiring checked.

But when you feed bad power into a computer, you get glitches, and quite often this 'haunted' equipment is just running in a bad way. For all we know this woman jiggled a wire and everything is fine.

I've been on the other side of this: IT head says we're gonna swap a server out. It has nothing to do with the workload I/we have today so we say sure. Problem is that it's in the same rack as something with a deadline, and jiggling the wires causes a network connection to go down. I've had this happen three times and we've swapped the cables in each case. Because jiggling an ethernet cable should never be sufficient stress to lose connection.

First time the manager threw the cable away on his own. Second one I had to make him give me the cable because 'it could still be good'. Third one started the same argument, then pulled out wire cutters, cut off the ends, handed them to me to shut me up. Bad equipment goes in the garbage, not into a drawer that means 'ticking time bombs'. Since the connectors are usually why a cable is 'bad', I was mollified.

Re: Old tech is haunted

#66

Post by rescbr »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #54
themadturk wrote: post #14

Many years ago, in my first tech job, we converted our typewriter-driven office to networked DOS PCs, running on Netware. One day, one of the legal secretaries, of self-described Roma ancestry, started complaining about her PC acting oddly...software not starting, spontaneous reboots ,etc. We replaced her machine to troubleshoot it, but the same thing happened with the replacement machine. We couldn't detect anything…

One time I had a horrible roommate I hated immensely. She did shit like make a friend of mine cry on her birthday. Her boyfriend broke up with her cause she was obviously a terrible person, so her response to this was visiting a witch doctor (This is an incident that happened in the third world so bear with me for a moment). His recommendation was to cut an X into limes and put them in the corner of each room in the…

> and DOUBLED THE LIMES she put in the corners of the house

Now there's her problem. By doing that the spell changed from "kill ex-boyfriend" to "self eviction".

Re: Old tech is haunted

#67

Post by rescbr »

newZWhoDis wrote: post #8
rob74 wrote: post #3

I have a haunted TV: my 4 year old Sony Bravia (Android TV) reboots seemingly intentionally during the most interesting parts of TV broadcasts. And since a few weeks ago, it also regularly loses the Wi-Fi connection. Thanks Google and Sony!

Usually the culprit is aged electrolytic capacitors.

Mine had cold solder joints on the bridge rectifier.

Re: Old tech is haunted

#68

Post by jamal-kumar »

rescbr wrote: post #66
jamal-kumar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One time I had a horrible roommate I hated immensely. She did shit like make a friend of mine cry on her birthday. Her boyfriend broke up with her cause she was obviously a terrible person, so her response to this was visiting a witch doctor (This is an incident that happened in the third world so bear with me for a moment). His recommendation was to cut an X into limes and put them in the corner of each room in the…

> and DOUBLED THE LIMES she put in the corners of the house Now there's her problem. By doing that the spell changed from "kill ex-boyfriend" to "self eviction".

Magic is the manipulation of belief space. If you're too ignorant to understand that, you're liable to its effects.

Re: Old tech is haunted

#69

Post by hinkley »

falcolas wrote: post #32

I'm reminded of the "I can't send email to anyone over 100 miles away" story. There is, of course, a perfectly rational explanation... but that doesn't change the spooky arbitrariness of it.. EDIT: Not sure why I forgot to link this, out of one of my all-time favorite presentations. I give you: The Mechanical Transmogrification of Diodes into Capacitors! https://c3.ndc.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/Observed...

I've mentioned before how loud an argument we got into with a guy who aspired to being a hacker, and yet didn't understand that the magnetic domains on a HDD were essentially analog. Even after we asked him why, if hard drives were truly binary, that secure disk erase tools were so complex and slow he still insisted that everything was binary, soup to nuts.

Even the simplest things are a fiction. Or maybe I should say especially the simplest things are a fiction.

Re: Old tech is haunted

#70

Post by themadturk »

hinkley wrote: post #65
themadturk wrote: post #14

Many years ago, in my first tech job, we converted our typewriter-driven office to networked DOS PCs, running on Netware. One day, one of the legal secretaries, of self-described Roma ancestry, started complaining about her PC acting oddly...software not starting, spontaneous reboots ,etc. We replaced her machine to troubleshoot it, but the same thing happened with the replacement machine. We couldn't detect anything…

The peculiar thing about having an aluminum cased laptop is that when the ground wires in the power adapter get frayed, or if the electrical circuit is hot garbage, you tend to get a little tingle when you touch the computer. Time to either throw away that adapter or get your wiring checked. But when you feed bad power into a computer, you get glitches, and quite often this 'haunted' equipment is just running in a ba…

We completely replaced the machine, so the chances of the power or ethernet cable being plugged in wrong in exactly the same way on two different machines seems vanishingly small. This being well over 30 years ago, I have no idea anymore whether or not we tried swapping either cable. At any rate, it was a least a day between the most recent machine replacement, which didn't seem to solve her problem, and the garlic placement. I'm sure there's a rational explanation in there somewhere...but problem solved, however it happened!
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