On my old phone I had an issue with the proximity sensor and front facing camera. This led me to holding my phone backwards to take photos and being unable to hang up phone calls.
I think I put up with this for a year and a half.
I did end up figuring out the issue with the proximity sensor but opening up my phone to reconnect the camera module was too much effort for me.
I didn’t ignore it, but I did have to put up with it for months:
Discord would just never recognize that my PC was being left idle, so I would never get notifications on my phone, which constantly left me gaslighting myself into thinking my friends were ignoring me, or just didn’t have any reason to message me all day.
I contacted Discord support at least once over it, and they couldn’t do anything to help me figure it out, since I had all my settings set properly to have it switch over to mobile notifications after 1 minute of inactivity.
After a shit ton of googling, I found out that certain devices, namely third-party xbox controllers, could cause a PC to never actually go idle, and then I found a tool to help me check if my PC is idle, started unplugging things one-by-one, and found out that my 8bitdo Arcade controller was the thing keeping my PC from going idle.
The issue popped up with an etsy-bought Guitar Hero controller further down the line as well, but thankfully by then I knew how to troubleshoot the issue. Bonus points, my new fighting game controllers don’t have this problem.
When I set dark mode in an app, the top of the window would remain light, in XFCE. But in early January 2024, I realized it was because XFCE had a theme setting in both Appearance and Window Manager, and they were conflicting with each other. I ignored it for quite a while but now I’m happy with my full dark mode computer
I had a car with a leaky radiator. I would fill it up with water in the morning and drive to work. If I didn’t it would start overheating. I don’t remember filling it again on the way back. Put up with that for weeks. I think I only got it fixed because the weather warmed up and it was no longer sufficient to cool it. Or maybe it was the same problem as the heating not working and after a few weeks of wearing multiple layers and getting absolutely frozen I finally got it fixed. They may have been two separate issues/occasions, this was around 2003.
The on/off/wake button on my phone broke off. I installed an app that would wake the phone automatically if the gyro sensors sensed it was taken out of the pocket, which worked around 60% of the time. I was a broke student at the time, so I dealt with that for a year or so before buying a new phone.
You don’t need a windows license if you know what slm rearm is
Calculator battery housing had a missing screw. Would have to squeeze it there for it to work. Did that for about a year.
Eventually broke entirely. So I soldered in two CR2032 cell holders and glued them to the back. Am now the proud owner of a Casio fx-4000p with an external battery. I made it rechargeable for a while, but quiescent current draw was too high and it was impractical.
I made a living pretty much just doing math for a short while. It served me very well. I refuse to get a new calculator.
Another time my DVD drive had difficulty opening. I’d have to press the eject button a lot of times before it worked, just did that for like 3 months. Eventually it failed entirely, so I took it apart, removed the magnet that holds the drive shut, cooked it on the gas stove to weaken it, and put it back in. Worked for another 6 months. Was glad I paid attention that day in Physics class.
Automod. Need I say more?
Years ago I got a second hand Sega Saturn - it was fine for a while then stopped working because it couldn’t read the disks.
But then I discovered (not sure how) that if I turned it upside down it would work fine. So I did that for a couple of years.
…how did you work that out?!
I wish I could remember - it makes absolutely no sense at all, but it worked :-)
They probably got frustrated and kicked it across the room and it landed upside and started loading.
That’s my head canon anyways.
Yeah, let’s go with that, why not? :-)
Any time an android phone I own gets older than, say, a year, the volume controls get more and more sluggish. I feel like it’s a form of planned obsolescence, but I haven’t ever heard of anyone else talking about it.
Seems like you may not be hearing of anything if the volume is that bad
Yeah, the ear-blast videos take a full two or three seconds to register that I’m hitting the volume button. Tinnitus hit me like a train
My hard drive making dying noises.
I didn’t lose anything though. (except money on a new one)
I don’t know if ignoring is the word for it, but I don’t trust for shit the dashboard warnings in my car. I’m pretty sure they don’t report issues. I haven’t tried to have it checked, but the car is old and I try to pay attention in some other ways.
Especially in older cars, the warnings usually are fully legit - as in, there is no software stack in-between that could be buggy.
However, it’s important to note that quite often the probe fails before the car. Meaning that if the oil probe is signaling oil level too low, it might actually be the probe or its wiring that is damaged. This shows up as the same error because hey, it is rather important for the average user to have that warning should the oil level actually be too low, so they make “I cannot know” look as scary as “It’s broken” just to make sure you go to the repair shop with that.
I’m not sure what it is but I’ve gotten no warnings when oil levels were dangerous, I only noticed because I checked the oil stick. Anyway the temperature gauge seems to be working and I keep an eye on it as much or more than the fuel.
The majority of cars don’t have a warning for low oil levels, the sensor for that has historically been the owner checking the dipstick. Oil level sensors are becoming more common now as more models appear with them but are still not ubiquitous even in brand new cars.
The oil warning light in most cars is for low oil pressure, and if that one comes on it’s time to pull over immediately and hope you managed to turn the engine off in time to save the bearings.
When i boot up my (linux) PC sometimes the second monitor is all messed up. Reloading i3 with super+shift+r fixes it so i can’t be bothered to actually fix it.
Hah dude I’ve been using i3 for years, and same. Like maybe 30% of the time. And half the time the background image is wonky when I start it up. Super+shift+r fixes it every time though, so fuck it
A Fairphone 4. Got it at launch and it’s a terribly buggy mess.
Describing all the issues would make a huge wall of text.
The sad part is that the hardware is ok. But they don’t seem to have any software QA at all.
My goal was to carry it until 2027, when replacable batteries will become standard, but since I can’t even use the phone for calling, I am trying to at least carry it until the Galaxy S55 launches.
I run my FP4 with eOS and everything works just fine. Maybe this can help you too. The FP4 is an awesome phone!
Have you considered using something like LineageOS?
Not getting a UPS for my server. Even though I’m pretty sure one of my VMs got corrupted (it won’t boot in ESXi anymore) after the server shutdown during a brownout several months back. I’ve had a server at home for like 4yrs now. Have experienced multiple brownouts. Still don’t have a UPS, even though I always look for one.
Grab a Pyle power conditioner off of Amazon. It’ll run you 100 bucks, but you get the benefit of AVR which is more important imo than being able to run while the power is out.
So this is instead of the UPS, rather than in addition to?
I’m looking at one now and I’m assuming it’s like a big surge protector type thing. Do UPS have these built in?
So ups have AVR (automatic voltage regulation), that is a big part of the selling point. The power that they output is “clean”. One of these is basically AVR without the battery.
It’s not quite as good as a good ups+AVR, but it’s a fuckload cheaper and you don’t have to replace the batteries every 6 months.
I can’t imagine running a server without a UPS unless you only use it for experimental stuff…
It is a homelab, so it’s all basically experimental. I don’t really need any of this.
But yes, I should absolutely just buy a UPS =x
for 5 years my PC would only turn on at a 45degree angle. It would work fine while upright or sideways after turning it on, but to initially start it up it needed to be tilted. I tried reseating everything many many times, I had even replaced a pretty large number of components over that time. Then I moved and when I plopped down the PC a screw popped out of the PSU. problem solved, and I’m very glad it didn’t explode.
My previous PSU had one extremely noisy fan. I wasn’t about to open a power supply… so I stuck a plastic tab on the outer grille, so that fan simply could not spin.
I used that computer for about ten years.
