#problem-solving — Public Fediverse posts

Ah, the timeless quest to locate a friend armed with nothing but the raw power of math, outdated tags, and a PhD in rocket science. 😅 Because who doesn't love solving a differential equation when all you really need is a tap on the shoulder? 📡🤓 Spoiler: just use your eyes next time. 🙄
https://www.jackhogan.me/blog/marco-polo #MathQuest #FriendFinder #RocketScience #ProblemSolving #Humor #HackerNews #ngated

#Design #Mindsets
Revive your design superpowers · “You are more powerful than you realize.” https://ilo.im/16cvko

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#Job #Profession #Skills #Communication #ProblemSolving #ProductDesign #UxDesign #UiDesign #WebDesign

Are you a specialist or a generalist? Here are some advantages I've experienced of being a generalist in a world full of specialists.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/consulting-2/2015/12/the-rise-of-the-generalist

#consulting #secrets #generalist #advantage #specialist #ProblemSolving #PeopleProblems

The ideal technical solution is one in which the required function is achieved by itself, without introducing new mechanisms or additional energy costs into the system.

Paraphrased from G. S. Altshuller, founder of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ

#quote #TRIZ #Altshuller #engineering #problemsolving

The way we see the problem IS the problem.
-- Stephen R. Covey

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #StephenRCovey #ProblemSolving

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Pictographs #RockArt #DefianceHouse #LakePowell #Utah

The most common garden dilemmas, and how to solve them https://www.allforgardening.com/1731967/the-most-common-garden-dilemmas-and-how-to-solve-them/ #Allotments #garden #gardening #gardens #Lifestyle #plants #ProblemSolving #Standard #USContent

🧩🤪 A "powerful" QR code solves math's trickiest knots? 🤔 Sure, because scanning barcodes is the future of advanced mathematics! 😂 Who knew the secret to untangling complex problems was just a smartphone camera away?📱🙄
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-powerful-new-qr-code-untangles-maths-knottiest-knots-20260422/ #QRcode #Math #TrickyKnots #AdvancedMathematics #SmartphoneInnovation #ProblemSolving #HackerNews #ngated

What makes attending conferences worthwhile? Some of the most useful conferences are those designed to solve participants' problems.

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2021/01/solve-participants-problems

#meetings #EventDesign #cynefin #ProblemSolving #eventprofs

If you have problems at work, it's always preferable to have a solution for it when you present the problem to leadership. It helps to be part of the solution rather than compound it. #problemsolving #solution #business #work #help

The AI and the puzzle

“I’m trying to get the developers an AI license because that’s the future. We’ll probably write the next project using it. Barry* was showing me how he recreated the Bureau of Meteorology website using AI and it didn’t cost him $96 million!”

Okay, now ask Barry to change some things on the website. Does he have to ask the AI how to do it? Does he need to regenerate the whole site? What if he just wants to change the wording of a page? Does it have an admin interface? What happens if a security exploit has been found, or there’s a bug? Does he know where to look?

See, most of our time isn’t spent writing new code for our website. It’s making tweaks to functionality or appearance, fixing bugs, providing user support, doing system administration. It’s understanding what users really want and need and coming up with solutions for them that don’t break what we already have. And to do that we need to understand what we have done before.

We have an incomplete 1,500 piece puzzle on a lounge room table. It’s therapeutic to search through the pieces to find the one that fits. And the more you do it, the faster you get. A large part of that is because you start to understand the puzzle, to get that picture into your head, to feel what colours are likely to go where.

At the end we’ll break it up so that we can do it again. But tonight I thought about another puzzle we completed a decade or so ago. I can still picture it in my head. Next time I make it I’ll be faster. I don’t need to relearn all those elements in the same way.

It’s the same thing with coding a system. Telling an AI to do it for you means you never see the picture or the colours. Sure, you may remember the prompts, but here’s the thing about these large language models: They are not deterministic. The output will almost certainly be different each time.

As a tool to provide suggestions to a specific problem, an AI tool may be handy. That’s akin to searching the web or a library for an example of how somebody else solved something similar and adapting their solution to your needs. Like the portion of the picture on the individual puzzle piece, you still need to understand how it fits.

Constructing a front-end for a website is a relatively easy task. The challenge, and it is a tough one, is interpreting a client’s needs and then getting them to agree on the output, especially when it involves a large and diverse group of people. An AI can’t do this.

Building the content management system that allows authors to control and publish content to the site is a much larger task than designing a front-end. You need to design logic hooking the output to the input, again interacting with users. Then there are components like authentication and databases and all the infrastructure associated with a website. And afterwards you need to maintain it.

I’ve known Barry for many years. He once held a similar position to me in another part of the organisation. Barry liked to use commercial solutions. He boasted to me of how he’d bought an ActiveX add-on to allow users to author their web pages with a rich text editor interface on their website.

I replied that I’d incorporated a free and open source solution that was even more powerful in the content management system that I had written myself for our part of the business.

Later he was all in on Microsoft SharePoint as the greatest website tool, when even Microsoft had dumped it as a solution for public sites and we had discarded it as eminently unsuitable for our intranet. Then it was something else, then the Cloud and now it’s AI.

You see, as far as I know, Barry never really wrote anything himself. He relied on other people’s solutions, on graphical interfaces that hid the complexity of what was going on behind the scenes. So AI is a great fit for him. You give it instructions, it returns with something that looks like it does the job. That’s why managers love it. And people who just need to generate something without maintaining it in future.

For those of us who actually need to understand and maintain, it’s just more work. A lot more work.

* Not his actual name.

The problem, when solved, is simple.
-- Freshman Chemistry Lab

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #FreshmanChemistryLab #ProblemSolving

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sunset #Kayaks #Everglades #Florida

You don’t have to rewild to have a wildlife-friendly garden https://www.allforgardening.com/1720336/you-dont-have-to-rewild-to-have-a-wildlife-friendly-garden/ #cardiff #garden #gardener #gardening #gardens #Lifestyle #NationalTrust #ProblemSolving #Standard #USContent

Beings ought not to be multiplied except out of necessity. (Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.)
-- William of Occam (14th Century CE)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #WilliamofOccam #Necessity #Parsimony #ProblemSolving

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #TheMaze #Canyonlands #Utah

A quotation from Molly Ivins

The way one solves problems obviously influences not only the outcome, but the kinds of problems one faces after the immediate problem is settled.

Molly Ivins (1944-2007) American writer, political columnist [Mary Tyler Ivins]
Essay (2002-11-19), “Blast from the Past,” Creators Syndicate column

More about this quote: wist.info/ivins-molly/83403/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #mollyivins #consequence #endsandmeans #knockoneffect #meansandends #problem #problemsolving

University of Southern California: AI may be making us think and write more alike. “Artificial intelligence chatbots are standardizing how people speak, write and think. If this homogenization continues unchecked, it risks reducing humanity’s collective wisdom and ability to adapt, argue USC computer scientists and psychologists in an opinion paper published March 11 in the Cell Press journal […]

🖨️

My new printer stopped working under #LinuxMint the other day. Re-adding it resulted in a general error message.

Finally found the solution:

In the printer's "location" field, I had specified "Mein Büro" ("My office" in German). And Cups does not like umlauts in that field. 😶

After removing the "ü", the printer worked.

Maybe this information will be helpful to someone, at some point. 🙂

#printer #linux #cups #problemSolving #debugging #umlaut

You can never be sure you have a correct problem definition, but don't ever stop trying to get one.
-- Donald Gause & Gerald Weinberg (Are Your Lights On?)

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #DonaldGauseGeraldWeinberg #ProblemSolving #Technology

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Sunrise #LakeSantaFe #Florida

The Problem That Built an Industry

https://ajitem.com/blog/iron-core-part-1-the-problem-that-built-an-industry/

#HackerNews #ProblemSolving #IndustryGrowth #Innovation #Technology #Insights