Tag: It's not magic

Identify the Problem, Part 5: Rely on Technology for Short-term Gain Instead of Long-Term Skill, Newspapers and Music

I listened recently to the episode “The Future of Reporting with Mandy Matney,” from the The Emily Show. That is a podcast by Emily D. Baker. For this episode, she interviewed Mandy Matney of the True Sunlight podcast, formerly known as the Murdaugh Murders podcast.

After that long prelude, the parts I’m going to write about are fairly short:

  • Matney said she used to work as a reporter for a newspaper that was owned by a larger newspaper conglomerate. She said the big newspapers focus more on “trending” topics than complex and important issues which will take a lot of resources to follow and research. Among other things, at one point she was assigned to write three to five articles a day about issues trending on Twitter or Reddit. News stories don’t get national attention unless they start trending, and then almost all of the national papers repeat the same information with different headlines.
  • Baker replied that she is seeing something similar while covering stories about the music industry. Instead of investing in a band for a few albums to see if the band can gain a following and take off, the music industry will now invest in a band or performer for one song. And if that one song doesn’t take off on TikTok, then they move on.

In doing this, both industries are killing the things that originally created them. Technology makes this easier. It might provide a more convincing rationale in the short term. But that is still what is happening.

How To Make Your Technology Work For You? Don’t Trust Home Automation, Don’t Trust Tech Companies.

Out of all this, I’d recommend Brandon Jackson’s YouTube video (15 minutes 30 seconds long) at “The Customer’s Perspective in the Amazon Account Lock out” and his Medium post at “A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon“. His video is dated June 14 2023 and his post is dated June 4 2023. (Both were last accessed on June 16 2023.)

Also, here’s an article by Thomas Claburn in The Register, dated June 15 2023: “Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim“.

In case none of those links work at some unknown point in the future, here’s a summary: Amazon customer (Jackson) notices his Amazon Echo device is not responding. He contacts Amazon and is told an Amazon delivery driver heard someone in his house make a racist remark at the driver who was delivering a package. Jackson checks the date and time of delivery on footage from multiple cameras on his property. He has footage of the driver delivering the package, footage includes audio. There is no racist remark on the audio. He sends the footage to Amazon, it takes Amazon a full week to reinstate his account. During that time, multiple home automation devices which could be accessed by Amazon’s Echo and Alexa now cannot be accessed because he’s frozen out of his account.

In his post and video, Jackson goes into a bit of detail about his home setup. He wasn’t completely locked out of his home automation. He was only locked out of being able to access them with Amazon’s services. But as he points out, the average user would likely not have the skills and knowledge to set up multiple access systems the way he did. So the average user would have been stuck.

I am a bit more skeptical of home automation than Jackson. There is a whole ecosystem of certifications, codes, standards, statutory law, case law, and other requirements for home appliances. The same is true of the electrical distribution system to the home and inside the home. Those ecosystems arelargely unknown to the public because they generally works.

The software controlling those home appliances is still new enough it does not have that same regulatory and legal ecosystem. So it currently relies on consumers deciding where they will spend their money.

But as Jackson points out, most of these home automation systems are concentrated in two or three large companies. And those companies cover so many fields that a customer may have an expectation based on their experience in one area, which can be unrelated to what they’ll experience with the same company in another area.

So, while I am still skeptical of home automation in general, I agree with Jackson that if home automation is used, try to have it running locally.

And in general, don’t rely on big tech companies.

Identify the Problem Part 2

Here are the two articles I mentioned previously:

A quote from the second article, originally published in 2017:

In surveys of 106 C-suite executives who represented 91 private and public-sector companies in 17 countries, I found that a full 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% strongly agreed or agreed that this flaw carried significant costs.

“Are You Solving the Right Problems” by Wedell-Wedellsborg, Thomas, in Harvard Business Review, from the January-February 2017 issue (site last visited June 15 2023)

I’m slowly sidling up to expressing my own views on this topic, I know. My initial reactions are very vocal and filled with disbelief and profanity.

I’ll try to calm down a bit and be more methodical in my critiques. What are managers, whether low level, mid level, or C-suite, paid for in these companies? What are the discussions when they are promoted?

This would be like a national non-profit, closing down multiple chapters per year, with an acknowledged problem in getting members to sign up for leadership positions in chapters which are still active. And the national officers of that non-profit being most concerned with getting enough personal information from members that they can better qualify for government grants.

The bigger the problem is, the more chance there’s something about it people don’t want to acknowledge. The longer the problem exists, the more chance it spawns its own side-effect problems which will have to be dealt with, before the underlying problem can be addressed.

Bureaucrats of all types are very adept at finding what will get them promoted, what will keep their job safe, and what will threaten their job. Not what should get them promoted, keep them safe, or threaten their job. What will.

If an organization promotes people on how eagerly they follow orders, and not whether they understand the orders they give and are given, the intent, the immediate effects, and the long term effects of those orders, then the more likely this will be the result. Organizations which are much better at solving problems than identifying problems.

Life changes. These organizations will not be able to handle the change, and will die.

Cattle or Pets? Hardware Maybe, Social Media Probably.

I sometimes see references to the question of “Cattle or Pets” when it comes to computer hardware. I first saw this in discussions about how server farms were administrated.

Hardware

“Pets” was the older practice: each server had its own purpose, some were unique, administrators often gave the servers names. They were cared for like pets, meaning they were treated with care and allowed to die of old age. So, there might be several different types and vintages of servers in the same location.

“Cattle” was the new hot idea. Cows don’t get named, their own personal quirks aren’t catered to. Cows don’t get babied, especially when a cow has clearly gone lame or outlived its purpose. It gets sold or put down and a new cow is brought in.* There’s a schedule and it’s better to clean out everything old and replace with new, on a schedule.

The Cattle mentality depends on a lot of assumptions. One of those assumptions is that whatever is brought in on the schedule will be at least as capable and reliable as the thing it replaces. Another assumption is computer hardware will be relatively cheap compared to the labor to administer that hardware. If labor is cheap than hardware, then it makes sense to keep whatever is still working and train people on how to work with different systems of different types.

I am not certain the “Cattle” viewpoint is as effiicient as it was portrayed. At least, it’s not as efficient when it comes to hardware and software that a business or household might depend on. “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” is a rule most large software companies no longer follow, and some hardware manufacturers ignore it too.

Social Media

I think social media is in a mirror position. The social media companies want their users to see them as “Pets”: very individual, irreplaceable, dearly loved Pets.

Yet, the arc of most social media platforms seems to be the same. There’s an initial growth phase where the social media company is trying to find something which differentiates it. Growing users is more important than how the users are grown. There’s an intermediate phase, where the social media company starts trying to make some money off of their platform. If they don’t charge users a subscription fee, then it becomes trickier. Usually ads and the information harvesting for targeted ads are somewhere in the mix.

It’s also during this intermediate phase, if the social media company gets there, that “regular” users start showing up. After that there’s a long slow managed decline. Enough “regular” users are showing up that some of the quirkier things get a lot more scrutiny. Maybe the quirkier things get some legal and regulatory scrutiny too. Meanwhile, advertisers are paying more, but also expecting more responsiveness to their complaints. And the social media company will start copying rivals’ ideas.

At which point, a new social media company or two will show up with their own quirky thing which differentiates them. The die hard fans of the old social media company aren’t as loyal. Why be loyal when the old platform is no longer what it once was? The newer members of the old social media company are there because it’s useful. They will leave when it’s not; the large established social media companies all have similar features.

Conclusion: It’s All Backwards

So, social media companies are the “Cattle,” even though they are trying desperately not to be. And the hardware and programs which work and work well are the “Pets,” even though hardware and software companies desperately want them to be seen as Cattle which get replaced regularly and provide a revenue stream regularly.

The world runs on irony.

*Never mind that in the age-old tradition of the world running on irony, most of the people applying “Cattle” to various server management practices had never been on commercial ranches themselves. There are ways in which cattle are all treated the same, but there are also ways in which cattle have their own definite personalities. I’ve yet to meet a person who works with cows professionally who doesn’t acknowledge this, but I don’t think the computer programmers thought to ask.

Time For Me To Get To Work

I write in this blog about different aspects of technology and different ways of looking at how to use technology. I post links to other sites, about technology, which interest me.

Honestly, I could have done that in a diary and skipped the whole process of setting up a website. Using pencil and paper to record thoughts is pretty old technology. It’s definitely stood the test of time.

I started a blog, which has multiple steps, to learn more about how to set up websites in the current year. I’ve decided it’s time to remember that and get back to work.

There’s lots of sources, I think it’s more important to pick one and get started. So I’m going to try Khan Academy. I took a look at their basic courses on websites the other day. It’s under the heading “Computer Programming,” which I didn’t expect. They advocate learning JS before learning HTML and CSS. I didn’t expect that. I’ll start there, and see how it goes.

Technology Won’t Get Someone To A Goal They Haven’t Defined

I created this blog to be about how a person can make their technology work for them. Personally, I like technology, gadgets, and tools.

However, I often talk to friends who want help with some piece of technology. “I just want it to work” is a common statement. In my opinion, they are working for their technology more than it is working for them.

Some of the biggest difficulties I’ve seen people have with technology is they haven’t decided what they’re aiming for. They don’t know how their steps today will get them to a place they want to be in the future.

A Simple Example

As a very simple example, one restaurant I frequent has a loyalty program. The loyalty program requires installing an app on a smartphone. I sympathize with why the restaurant wants their customers to install an app. There’s customer profiles, direct to customer messages, tracking trend with regular customers, detailed data on what dishes are doing well. But why would I, the customer, want to download the app?

There are some rewards for the loyalty program, discounts on dishes or next visit or something-or-other. I read through the apps list of what information it tracks, and honestly it was more than I wanted to share with a restaurant app.

Data harvesting aside, each app on my smartphone and each program on my computer is a place for trouble to start. It’s a place for a conflict with other programs or with the operating system to arise. It’s something to potentially eat up my computer’s or smartphone’s processor cycles or memory space.

Is there anything so important about a restaurant loyalty app that it’s worth all that hassle? No, not for me.

The Existence of Something Does Not Obligate Me To Buy It.

Too often when my friends ask me about helping them with some piece of technology, they never stopped to wonder why they got it in the first place. Yes, there might have been an end goal of more money, less worry, more time, a task being easier to accomplish. This piece of technology was presented to them, and there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of thought about “Will this thing in front of me get me to the goals I want to achieve?”

Many times, there wasn’t a goal set at all. Someone told them it was a good idea or a recommended idea for something-or-other, and now there’s this piece of technology that they are working for.

Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast

Computers and Software

I’ve had computers where I could hit six key combinations in quick succession. And then I could watch it all be executed smoothly — and correctly! — over the next twenty seconds.

I’ve also had computers where I had to watch the monitor after every single key press. I wouldn’t like the results if I got too far ahead of what the computer was doing,

Hardware devices with lots of buttons tend to fall into the second category: get too far ahead and it will take me longer than if I’d gone the device’s speed to start with. Most remotely hosted services seems to fall into this second category too. And most smart phones are in this second category.

Business Practices

Then there are other mental processes where rushing makes things slower in the end. The classic phrase “I’m writing you a long letter because I didn’t have time to write a short one” is an example of this. There are legions of corporate memos sent in haste, legal documents filed in haste, emails addressed and sent in haste, where time-consuming mistakes were made which probably could have been avoided if there had been less haste.

Hand Crafts

My last set of examples today is hands-on processes like sewing, welding, woodworking, and dozens of other hand crafts. “Measure twice, cut once” is a common statement in almost all of them for the same reasons I wrote about above. Measuring twice takes much less time than buying more fabric or wood or metal or whatever else I was using.

Why Am I Writing This?

Mostly, I write this blog for myself, but I write about the problems I see people have with technology. I write about the recurring themes I hear in what people say and in what they ask me for help with. I write this blog for everyone who says “I just want it to work.” Part of making it work, and this goes for all types of its, is knowing the speed of the technology and respecting that. Fixing something broken is almost always slower than slowing down enough to not mess up in the first place.

Error 79 on HP Laserjet M251nw. I changed the document scaling.

Spoiler to the story is in the title.

I’m not going to tell a three-page story full of angst, drama, and existential musings, when my solution was “I changed the document scaling and it printed.”

I am going to rant a bit about what happened before I found that solution.

The beginning of the story

More formally, the full name on the printer is “HP LaserJet Pro 200 color M251nw”. I bought this one used several years ago. The previous owner did not like how much the toner cost.

I was printing out a multipage document. I saw error code 79, firmware error. This sounded bad. The printer said to turn it off, turn it back on, try to reprint the document. I did. I still got error 79.

Multiple websites later, most of them recommended power cycling and trying to print again. I had already tried that.

The red herring: A surge suppressor???

At least one website said to disconnect it from any surge suppressor and plug it directly into the wall outlet. I was dubious, thinking that 1) I cannot see any way there would be enough line drop, current limitations, change to voltage waveform, change to line characteristics, or anything else I could think of which a surge suppressor would create which would prevent a previously functioning laser printer from continuing to function, and 2) if for some reason the circuitry is so tender and so balanced on knife’s edge that a surge suppressor does prevent it from functioning, and it got through HP’s design, design review, and QA teams like that and was still released, I would doubt all HP products forever after.

No, the surge suppressor had nothing to do with it. I have no reason to doubt HP’s products. I have no idea why that website said a surge suppressor could the cause of the firmware error.

What no one suggested (no one I saw, anyway)

After more troubleshooting, none of which I saw recommended on any of the sites I looked at, I narrowed the problems down to one page. It was one page, out of dozens, which caused the error 79 to show up when I tried to print it.

It was a PDF page, original scale 8.5″ x 11″. The page was a scan of an older document printed before laser printers existed. I had set my PDF reader to automatically scale to page margins or printer margins or something like that. It came up with a scale percentage around 99%. I changed to a custom scale, and reduced it to 97%. Then it printed fine. No errors, no problems.

I fixed the error, in that document, on my printer, by changing the document scaling. I have no idea if that will work for anyone else.

Slowing Down to Speed Up, Writing Edition

I listen to some small business and entrepreneur podcasts. One of the phrases I frequently hear is “slow down to speed up.”

I’ll be honest, I typically hear that right before the host explains why they fought that idea when they first heard it, before having to learn it the hard way. And by “hard way,” I mean by repeated painful experience. Anyway, I’ll get back on topic.

Slowing down to speed up also applies to writing. I used to wonder why there were so many different types of notebooks and stationery. For that matter, why were there so many different types of accounting ledger books?

In both cases, writing something down and then rewriting it somewhere else in a different way helps focus the mind.

For writing, I’ve seen guidelines which say there is a creative mode which runs fast and often a bit too free, then there is the editing mode. These are different parts of the brain, and trying to switch in and out of editing mode while ostensibly being in creating mode doesn’t work that well.

I’ve tried that with writing and it does work. I’m still not fully in the habit. But each time I get a little bit better are remembering to let it flow first and then go back and correct later.

I’m also finding it helps to do that with money. I don’t write down every cent of every transaction, but I’m starting to create a list of regular expenses, pulling the information from multiple other places it’s recorded. And it is helping me focus on what I want to keep and what I’m fine letting go.

Why am I writing this on a blog about making technology work for you?

Technology has created so many time-saving services, it’s erased the friction which used to exist. So we all, myself included, want to let the apps and programs and whatever do it all for us. When we do that, we convince ourselves we’re going faster and faster. But we’re planning and considering less and less.

A re-read and rewriting of a good idea is better than writing it hurriedly fifteen times. And it will be fifteen times because we’re moving so fast we forgot what we already wrote.

An inventory and accounting of what classes and guides and books have already been purchased is better than purchasing more variations of the same thing. But it’s faster and feels faster to just buy more of what has already been purchases.

Slowing down to go faster is a real thing.

The Easy Way Is Usually Mined

Last week I wrote about human-machine interfaces and how difficult it is to make an interface which is intuitive to use.

One of the promises of modern software, smart devices, and development, and software frameworks is how much easier it will make things.

But does it really?

One examples I run into a few times a year is a scoring program for a kids’ competition. The competition is archery, there are multiple age brackets, types of bow, and clubs. Each round generates anywhere from 20 to 40 scores per competitor who competed that round. There are two software programs I’ve heard of which are written to keep track of all this for competitors (and more importantly, competitors’ parents and coaches).

One program is an Excel spreadsheet with a bit of macros and VBA programming. The other is a tablet-based app.

Hot and New

The tablet-based program is “simpler” and “easier” and its fans describe it as simpler and easier. I have not looked at it closely, but questioning people who have used it or been present at matches where it has been used, I’ve found out a bit about how it works. The tablet-based app won’t work without an internet connection. So some major part of it’s functioning does not take place on the tablets.

An internet connection with multiple devices requires a router. All routers have a finite amount of connections they can handle at one time. How the router handles more devices talking to it than it has channels to talk depends on the router and the devices.

In addition, because the tablet-based app is “simpler” and “easier,” and unspoken is the always present belief that technology is magic and always makes things better, paper scorecards are not used. Score are entered on the tablets. I don’t know the exact interface for the competitor to confirm yes, that is their score. But I have heard from multiple parents and coaches that scores can be lost if a judge or competitor presses the wrong button on the screen. I’ve even heard that multiple competitors’ scores can be lost if a wrong button is pressed on the screen.

Assuming all goes well, the score will be sent to wherever it is processed. Entered scores can be accessed via the internet with anyone with an internet connection. So people present at the match can look up scores on their smart phone.

Old and Busted

Now I will discuss the old, difficult, outdated Excel spreadsheet method. Scores are written down by judges on paper scoresheets. The competitors get to see their scores and agree to them before the scores are sent to the scorekeeper.

The scorekeeper must have a Windows PC with Microsoft Excel running on it. The scores are entered by hand. The Excel spreadsheet does have an option to compute what has been entered. When it does so, it creates a page in the spreadsheet which is formatted to be printed on 8-1/2″ x 11″ inch paper. The paper gets posted when a new copy with new scores is printed.

If Microsoft Excel is running locally on the Windows PC, then no internet connection is required. It is not possible to lose all scores for a competitors’ round by hitting the wrong button on a screen; the paper scorecard still exists, regardless of how many buttons are pressed on which screens.

“We started telling our kids to keep track of their own scores”

A parent in this sport told me their club started telling competitors to keep their own copies of their scores. They said this at matches where the newer, simpler tablet-based app was being used. They said this because there were so many problems with the tablet-based app losing scores. And once a score was lost, it was unrecoverable because there was no paper copy.

Technology is not magic. “There’s an app for that” is not the answer to everything. The easy way is usually mined.