I tried hitting the "identify" button but got the error "LanguageModel is not supported." This is on latest Safari, iPadOS.
Same on Vivaldi, macOS.
For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
21–30 of 178 posts
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#22Inside the heart of every customer support department there are two wolves. One is "do whatever we can to prevent them from phoning us: use every resource, every trick and every stalling measure to try to make sure they don't call". The other is "meh, just direct them to the call centre".
> The other is "meh, just direct them to the call centre".
I worked at a large insurance company and this was definitely the approach. There was a website, but you had to call to realistically get almost anything done.
One product manager's big innovation was to completely remove passwords. Every time you wanted to log in, you had reset the password and be sent a link via email. Of course the didn't announce this, so you would be probably spend 20 minutes frantically looking for your password that didn't exist.
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#23Not criticising the article or the decision to buy a new washing machine (20 years is a long time), but just noting that the old machine was likely fixable. If spare parts are even still available, that is. Whether it's deemed worth fixing is another matter. This must be the case for so many discarded appliances these days, especially underengineered ones with common issues. Also, not using the QR code protocols prop…
As someone who just replaced the bearings on a washing machine motor (carbon-commutator), I uhh… agree? The old machines are absolute workhorse beasts and they can work indefinitely as brand new with some maintenance here and there. However my expectation of people doing this are basically zero. So this is an anomalous post. By the time you write a blog post complaining about how a machine has a required IoT thing, y…
Conterpoint: We had a new samsung washer dryer pair with a 90 day warranty; they advertise something like 10 years, but it is a lie. The electrolux in the article is probably similar.
Anyway, it said it lost communication between two boards. I opened it up, checked the wiring harness, and found zero visible problems. I replaced both boards. Same error code. There are 3-4 other computers in that model, so I guess the next step was to replace all of them.
The first two were already a substantial fraction of the price of a new washer, so the entire setup went to the dump (or, hopefully a parts reuse company, but I doubt it). Most technicians refuse to touch Samsung appliances because they are impossible to debug.
Anyway, we replaced the pair with a brand that’s supposedly repairable. Fingers crossed.
I wonder if they ever made front loaders that were affordable, energy efficient and reliable/repairable. There’s no reason these things shouldn’t last more than 20-30 years on average. Maybe there’s a market for such hypothetical old machines.
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#24Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?
As long as, and some suppliers seem to find this onerous, the sticker can be peeled off cleanly.
(I once bought a grass rake with 2 or 3 dozen metal tines, and it arrived with a huge sticker across all the tines. Which when I attempted to peel off, left a scattered layers of paper hard glued to all the tines. Not happy.
Same with a rolling hot dog cooker. Glued “temporary” sales sticker covering half the transparent hinged top. Not happy.)
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#25I wonder if I could register the display washers sitting in Home Depot
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#26The point isn't to make it easy to register warranty for a product.
The point isn't to make it easy to talk with customer service.
The point isn't to make it easy to communicate with the company.
The point isn't to make it easy to obtain service or replacement parts.
The point is to "technically", and therefore legally, offer those things and minimize the cost of offering those things.
All of these things are working precisely as intended. The company is not optimizing for customer experience or product quality, they're optimizing for profit.
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#27I fail to see a useful usage for AI in this case. Couldn't you just print the product number as a barcode/qrcode and let a "dumb code scanner" read it, instead of having to download a multifunctional LLM?
I was thinking just have it included in the QR code, so the URL the QR points to is prod-reg.example.com/pid/91234567 or whatever.
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#28I tried hitting the "identify" button but got the error "LanguageModel is not supported." This is on latest Safari, iPadOS.
Same on Fennec
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#29Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?
The sticker will get lost, peel off, get scratched until it's unreadable and then the user has no way to get that information. Maybe if they are really on top of things they will take a picture of the sticker when they first get the machine and save it somewhere that they will remember 5 years later when they need it, but most people will not do that. And if you aren't the first owner of the machine, well then, you're just sol.
Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?
#30Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?
The sticker will get lost, peel off, get scratched until it's unreadable and then the user has no way to get that information. Maybe if they are really on top of things they will take a picture of the sticker when they first get the machine and save it somewhere that they will remember 5 years later when they need it, but most people will not do that. And if you aren't the first owner of the machine, well then, you'r…
Rubbish. The sticker is still on my 14 year old washing machine.
Hell I've got a 55 year old piece of electronic equipment here with the serial number sticker still on it.