Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 184 posts

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#11

Post by spacebanana7 »

roflyear wrote: post #6
sharemywin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does speed up learning a new language(programming) or library. It's not perfect but it's a good companion to a tutorial. or next step past a basic tutorial. especially sample code. I created a script to connect to my email address and pull down my emails. connect to HN and pull done articles to put in sqlite. really quick features, not because it's complicated but because it's tedious.

Right but you have to be really careful with that use.

Yeah, it only takes a small hallucination to delete emails instead of copy them

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#12

Post by rwl4 »

I let GPT-4 walk me through troubleshooting steps with my extremely slow read times on my SSD-backed KVM virtual machine. It told me the things it needed, I pasted relevant logs and other output, and finally I solved my issue. I was highly impressed! It parsed atop, top, and various other content, explaining exactly what everything meant.

Another benefit was that it was able to present a much more readable version of some of what I pasted. I may have to start using it for cleaning up hard-to-read output (looking at you, atop!) in the future, it really excels at that!

Also, the issue ended up being that I that I was reading from what turned out to be an NFS mount. Doh!

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#13

Post by ravenstine »

roflyear wrote: post #3

I wish people would focus on these exceptional strengths of the model rather than blabbing about AGI or whatever. Similarly to you, I have been able to find issues with logs, formatting, asking it quick query questions in [whatever flavor of query language XYZ service likes to use], etc.. and it's really, really good. The alternative is to muscle through it, using a lot of energy, writing my own parser or something d…

Yes, especially given that nobody can adequately define what AGI even means.

But hey, if we did, then we couldn't have so many meandering, unproductive conversations about it on Fridman or Rogan.

Recently, I used GPT-4 to read my cousin's writings on his fictional world and generate a chart of the timeline and concepts using Mermaid syntax. I think one of the best things about LLMs at the moment is that it can convert things in an abstract way. Even if it doesn't get it totally right the first time, it can correct itself on instruction, and still saves time over coding something or downloading software.

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#14

Post by 13years »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #11
roflyear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but you have to be really careful with that use.

Yeah, it only takes a small hallucination to delete emails instead of copy them

lol, indeed.

As long as the hallucination problem remains, I think we are going to see a significant hype bubble crash within a year or so.

Yes, it is still useful under proper guidance, but building things on full automation that are reliable doesn't seem to be something that is actually within realms of reality at present. More innovations will be required for that.

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#15

Post by robbiemitchell »

swah wrote: post #2

Yesterday I dumped a broken markdown table and asked for the first "column" as CSV values. Works really well for this stuff too.

Same! I had a directory of info coded horribly by some CRM into HTML DIVs (not a table) and copy/pasting it into a text file resulted in a single column of names, contact info, kids, grades, etc.

I asked ChatGPT to reformat it into a CSV, noted the useful breaks, requested some transformations and filtering, and specified a delimiter. After 5 minutes of experimentation, it worked like a charm. Absolutely amazing.

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#16

Post by spacebanana7 »

13years wrote: post #14
spacebanana7 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it only takes a small hallucination to delete emails instead of copy them

lol, indeed. As long as the hallucination problem remains, I think we are going to see a significant hype bubble crash within a year or so. Yes, it is still useful under proper guidance, but building things on full automation that are reliable doesn't seem to be something that is actually within realms of reality at present. More innovations will be required for that.

Never underestimate a hype bubble ;) The crypto one lasted for many years with far fewer use cases than LLMs, even accounting for hallucinations.

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#17

Post by typon »

roflyear wrote: post #3

I wish people would focus on these exceptional strengths of the model rather than blabbing about AGI or whatever. Similarly to you, I have been able to find issues with logs, formatting, asking it quick query questions in [whatever flavor of query language XYZ service likes to use], etc.. and it's really, really good. The alternative is to muscle through it, using a lot of energy, writing my own parser or something d…

That's actually the hidden secret. Millions of people are using it to solve their problems quietly - something Google and other companies whose lunch they're eating should be worried about rather than being worried about grand ideas like "AI Safety". Pretty much all of my non-tech family is using it in ways that I never expected: making meal plans, writing school essays, making assignments for students, writing emails to CRA (Canadian Tax Agency), fixing broken english and translation, etc.

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#18

Post by mrbungie »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
swah wrote: post #2

Yesterday I dumped a broken markdown table and asked for the first "column" as CSV values. Works really well for this stuff too.

I love that it’s replacing sed, awk, and cut in the same way you’d bring artillery to a knife fight.

I've seen some really f**ed up text formatted files in the wild. In those cases I really see value in using something more "intelligent" (and declarative rather than imperative) rather than coding a non-trivial number of [python|bash] lines of code, especially when dealing with one-timers.

Re: Tell HN: ChatGPT is fantastic for finding and solving issues in logs

#20

Post by garbagecoder »

greenie_beans wrote: post #9

also for fixing bugs in a chunk of code. at least, that has worked for me a couple of times. it can be frustrating if it's struggling, feels like you're stuck in a loop and it's hard to break out

I've been telling people the #1 thing I like about ChatGPT is that it breaks my writer's block both in prose and code.
Post reply on HN