Premise: A poorly hung clothes dryer spectacularly ripped from the wall whilst on and tumbling, smashing into the washing machine beneath and trying to exit out the laundry door in a manner reminiscent of Stephen King's haunted laundromat story The Mangler.

After all the shards of glass, wall plaster etc were cleared up, the six month old washing machine wasn't working - yes, unsurprisingly but the problem was electronic, not mechanical. The display defaulted to blanks flashing - no error code etc. Having tried all the obvious fixes, I put the dilemma to four A.I.s: Chat GPT, Perplexity, Claude (Pro) and Google Search with A.I. Mode.

All suggested more or less the same checkpoints and then a technician but diverged into unique personae + ideas.

Chat GPT: Empathetic, sycophanticaly validating "you've taken a laundry mishap and turned it into a quantum learning exercise...Here is a well-worded, no nonsense description of the problem to show to your technican or Westinghouse...You should be proud though..."

Perplexity: Scolding like the worst school teacher - essentially, "the machine is damaged because of a situation of your making. Even if it is within warranty blah blah" Have you consulted the washing machine manual? I can help you find it. (Yes I'd consulted the manual and no I had not asked Perplexity about trying to get it repaired within warranty)

Google A.I. Mode: Moved briskly onto 'new washing machine' turf. eg "What did you like most about your Westinghouse? Would you like another front loader or given your traumatic experience with the clothes dryer, would you prefer an all in one washing machine and dryer? Affiliate links galore.

Claude: It is definitely a problem with the electronics - eg: a connector ribbon failure, cracked solder joint etc etc - if you're comfortable and have the serial number, I can provide teardown instructions etc etc

I was actually into this idea and liked that Claude would have gone with me on it but as I was also on deadline, with piles of stinky laundry lurking, I ended up using H.I. - Human Intution.

Intuitively - and wasn't in the washing machine manual - I pressed the on/off button for a long hold and the machine revived - No teardown, no new machine, no eloquently composed briefs for Westinghouse nor shady attempt to get help from them either.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098762

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Is it just so they can tell advertisers X amount of people "viewed" your ad?

But speaking as someone who deleted a high following FB page that I probably shouldn't have because the back end of it was so infuriating, I don't understand this offering. It seems like a lot of bling and clutter. Most people who need to use Meta for biz reasons want the same thing - live support that is not a bot or a human that may as well be a bot.

And not to get too granular but if you've used IG lately, for example, you notice that trying to do anything on the back end (eg: set up up some boosted posts or schedule things) takes the user through a maze and sometimes you end up in the old legacy Facebook pages, which has links that don't relate to any of the contemporary features. It sounds minor but it essentially barely functions and each click to confirm something sends you to another section to confirm something else. You also need a FB page to do anything on an IG page and a tonne of other petty thwartings. The fact that their brand new subscriptions/Meta platform seems just as confusing is alarming. I don't know how a company with this much money can not design an un-hellish back end or offer reasonable customer support.

Their A.I. monitoring is also completely off the chain, closing accounts and locking profiles for opaque reasons that cannot be questioned.

"The accepted ideal case for Google is a highly consolidated, walled-garden internet where a small array of corporate media partners provide the trusted facts, while independent websites are forced to shift into closed, subscription-only communities...

Tech analysts and digital economists refer to this transition as the "Siloed Web." Google's ultimate goal is no longer to help users explore the open internet; it is to keep users inside Google’s AI interface by using licensed corporate data as its foundation.

By pivoting to AI Overviews and corporate licensing deals, Google is effectively dismantling its own legacy. They are turning back into the 1995 version of Yahoo—a closed ecosystem that only serves "approved" corporate data, except this time the curation is done by an AI model trained on paid datasets rather than human editors."

I might be interested in trying Tahoe if they'd undone whatever the awful policy is that puts a tonne of unwanted apps and desktop pics etc into your desktop that cannot be removed. I don't want Apple News, the clock in the menu bar and even Airplay - I purchased the computer, why can't I have what I want on it without compulsory apps from Apple?

The main issue at the time seemed to be that it couldn't really work as a medium of exchange. Eg; $100 paid on the Monday might be $80 or $150 by the time it actually cleared. Maybe I was really inept but I got sick of the complexity and bailed, even though I liked the idea of having these options.

I wouldn't try Paypal's offering as they don't have any kind of quality support for merchants.

Now in 2025 my biggest app-pain is being in the already useless live support chat for a phone co or utility company and they keep insisting that I'll get actual support if I download their stupid app. Again, they can't cite a reason - it's just "better." For data-brokering, sure - for the user, barely ever.

As is well documented, the overviews can 'hallucinate' and less well-documented, they're bland. I'd rather have my search query met with an array of links, offering a variety of takes that I can then sift through.

This is especially vital for research which is why I now use Kagi and also Perplexity, as in the latter provides quality links. I may be wrong but I believe it was started by former Google execs and uses some of the natural language processing mechanisms that made legacy Google so good.

Ie: sorry about acquiring your content and then no longer linking to you but in case anyone does ever find your pathetic indie site, we're now offering an array of solutions so that you can ditch your long-standing but now no longer needed e-commerce solutions. You have made...$177 in micro payments this week minus the transaction fees of $17.77 but cannot claim it yet as you have not met our your ad revenue threshold. Need help? Go around in circles with our chat bots until you die - we'll keep your money regardless.

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/06/1196975759/ukraine-cyber-war-...