this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (10 children)

Studied computer science. The answer is yes.

A computer is a funky thingy that's a jumbled city of stuff turning on and off with the one master on/off thingy which is the clock on the processor.

When it switches from negative to positive a lot of small switches everywhere switch, some stay the same, some flip. It's all just a bunch of rythm dancing of switches going off and on.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

"Since words can be represented in binary, thus as a sequence of ones and zeroes, [..], doesn't that mean that all questions can be answered by saying no, then yes again at some level?"

How has no one pointed out yet that this is conceptually wrong? Turning something off & on again is cycling the same switch. Solutions to IT problems are setting different bits, which is binary for "using different words".

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How dare you use logic on my computer logic-related shower thought.

But yeah, I get what you mean. I had that thought at some point after posting. This is why I should probably just keep it in this silly thread and not write any philosophy essays soon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I wasn't expecting to see a reference to one of my favorite anime of all time. Thank you for reminding me why it's peak.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (8 children)

That would also mean that all IT problems are caused by turning something off and on again at some level.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

You're... you're right.

It's like, all part of some yin-yang thing.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Ooof. That's deep.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I thought it was always DNS? 🫣

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Upvote for username :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Turning the right thing off and on again is the key. When you only have one router and a handful of other things like most have at home this isn't a big deal. When you have millions of things it can take weeks just to find the right thing in the mess.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Until quantum comes around for everybody because then it can be zero or one at the same time. And you don't know until you observe it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Quantum computing will never come around for everyone. It's entirely different technology, and what we have works quite well for what we need. A good analogy from this Cleo Abrams video is it would be like saying we no longer need cars because we invented boats

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

And nobody will ever need more than 128 kilobytes of RAM.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Not really.

Quantum computing is about literally solving it exponentially faster.

Think of it like brute forcing a password.

Binary it can change one character and it has to go thru all of them.

Actual quantum computing goes down multiple paths at once, so the bigger the password the more gain there is from quantum. It doesn't have to actually try every single possible combination.

It's not just going from 2 to 3 states, because that third state is quantum superposition and by no means just a 50% increase. That superposition is how it goes down multiple "paths" at once.

But the observer effect isn't coming into play.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Mostly, though there's also fire-fighting too.

img

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I don’t want to talk about it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's in short what digital means.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Digital means that it's discrete compared to analog which is continuous. Some of the first digital computers were decimal, but in general binary is simpler to use so that's why it's everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Indeed, I got corrected.

[–] [email protected] 167 points 2 days ago (4 children)

In theory. In reality it's not on or off it's always on and it's high vs low voltage.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

And yet I still have electronics to this day that require me to pull the plug to get going again 😂

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

That's actually why. You have to drain the power from the circuits.

[–] oleorun 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Our LG washing machine does this once every year and a half almost like clockwork. It will simply refuse to do anything until it is unplugged and then plugged back in.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I've an oven which when turned off in hot state while in convection mode will turn on the fans for few minutes next time I turn it on, regardless of mode and temperature. To overcome this bug I need to put mains power off for couple of minutes and let the caps keeping the ram alive drain. Not only it has hot state reset bug but also a ram initialization issue as well it seems. Thankfully that state is not stored in nvram.

The manufacturer was as expected: 'we're not software guy, we can send an 'expert' engineer (who knows only to replace parts, no debugging) and it'll cost $$'. I thought I'll reverse it and fixing someday, till then I'll live with it.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It may be clockwork. If its power hasn't been interrupted in the interim, i.e. you have very stable power at your house, that's got to be some kind of overflow bug in its software. A timer somewhere is running out of room to count clock ticks and it barfs.

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[–] [email protected] 109 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ah, so the answer is just to get high!

[–] [email protected] 73 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Orrrr get low

To the windowwwwwww...

I'm old

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] oleorun 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Till the sweat drip down my balls

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago
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