this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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Such as counterintuitive fixes to a problem, or where a mistake unexpectedly results in an even better outcome than originally hoped for.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I grew up in Asia and had a chipped playstation 1 as a kid. It allowed it to read copies, was pretty standard stuff over there the copies could be found in legit stores and everything.

Anyway it started struggling to read the CDs. We figured out if we turned it upside down, it would be able to read them no problem. I suspect it was gravity making the lens come a bit closer to the CDs but don't know for sure.

It was certainly funny having it upside down, worked a charm.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 days ago (3 children)

When I wanted to stop smoking, the idea of never smoking again would make me stressed and make me want to smoke.

The solution was I put "have a cigarette" on my to-do list, at the bottom.

So I never quit smoking, I'm definitely going to have a cigarette at some point, when I get round to it - just after I've re-tiled the bathroom, wrote a novel, made a computer game, taught the cat to play piano, finished a series of 100 paintings, wrote an album of songs etc...

... so it's over ten years since I last had a cigarette, and there's only a thousand or so things to do on my to-do list.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Would you accept a cigarette from Scp-4999?

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

Having read that, yes :)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think it only works if your brain is wired in a particular way.

Tons of open browser tabs? Long, impossible-to-complete to-do list? Unread emails? Unplayed Steam Games?

Good chance of it working :)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have all of those... Except my to-do lists are not actually long because I never get around to adding stuff to them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Hahaha.

I used to have a home office room, and I bought and installed a whiteboard on the wall, for noting things down, planning, to-do list etc.

For five years, it had a single scrap of paper blue-tacked to it, which read "1) Buy a whiteboard pen".

I eventually solved it by moving house.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the reminder. I put up whiteboards for my kids a bunch of years back, and all the pens are dead.

Of course, both kids are in college and I have no use for those so maybe the boards should come down

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I found a bug by slacking off.

Without details, there was a product that we were supposed to test before it hit mass market. It had an annoying bug where it would forget certain configuration items, seemingly at random. Nobody could reproduce it.

Until me and my friends decided that this was the perfect opportunity to slack off, and took a >1h lunch break ("can't be online on teams, I'm testing..."). As it turns out, the product goes into deep standby after >30 minutes. Official break time was 30 minutes. So if you take the break on the dot, it will never go to deep standby, and never forget its configuration.

So, we figured out the bug by taking a long-ass lunch break.

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

Testing should have some specified time windows eh? If the maker knows that the software does a thing at 30 minutes, that should be an intentional part of the test.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Generally you should have a way to directly test that mode or to temporarily “speed up time”. Perhaps you’d directly manipulate wherever it stores the “last activity time”

[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 days ago (3 children)

My example: I fixed a wifi interference problem by adding more wifi interference.

I'm currently staying at a family member's house for a few months, and need to use their wifi to work from home. After moving all my belongings in, I soon realized that I wouldn't be able to work on this network, because of how intermittent the connection was. My phone, laptop, and PlayStation would all disconnect about once every 1-2 minutes. It was so severe that it took me over 2 hours to play a 40-minute video due to the consistent freezing.

And I guess everybody living here just must not use the internet that much, and have just kinda accepted this as a fact of life and nobody's tried to fix it. This would be something I'd normally be able to resolve by myself, but because this isn't a network I own and control, I'm not going to go changing their router settings. And since I'm a guest in this home, I'm not gonna go drilling holes to run ethernet to my room, either.

Using a wifi analyzer, I was able to spot the immediate issue: There were about 30 networks in the area mostly with pretty weak signal, but all on channels 6 and 11. There were only 2 networks using channel 1, and they were weak. The router I'm connecting to is also on channel 11, and I can tell right away that if I can get it to switch to channel 1, I'd be all set. But, since this isn't my network, I can't just tell the router to use channel 1, even though it should've automatically switched a long time ago. But it's just a crappy ISP-provided router, so I can't really expect much of it.

So I hatched up a plan, and took an old router of mine and piggybacked it to the router here at the house. My router uses a web app to control its settings, so all I needed was for the router to get an internet connection via ethernet and I could control it. Once my router was online, I was able to log into it and force it to use channel 11, the same channel as the home's router.

The sudden appearance of a very strong connection on the same channel (since it's placed just a few feet away) caused the home's router to finally switch itself over to channel 1, which was still largely free of any signals. Now the router is working flawlessly, and all my devices, and everybody else's at the house, are staying connected seamlessly.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I love how all of this was just to avoid asking a family member "hey can I change some settings on your router to fix the Wi-Fi?"

I mean, I get it. More often than not you'll either become the de facto tech support or they'll find a way to blame you the next time something doesn't work.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I love how all of this was just to avoid asking a family member "hey can I change some settings on your router to fix the Wi-Fi?"

The lengths I'll go to just to avoid human interaction. 🤣

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

That's a very clever trick. I didn't know routers could do that.

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

And you get to be the genius who fixed the Internet for everyone living there. Nice one!

[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Almost anything with managing kids’ behavior.

If you want them not to do something, tell them a bunch of things to do instead. (It may be appropriate to discuss the undesired behavior later).

Want them to talk to you? Listen to them.

Want them to learn a lot and be successful in school? Praise their effort, and not their intelligence or knowledge.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

This can also be good advice for dealing with adults.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hard to think of one on the spot, but I have an unintentional one/mistake.

When I was a kid, my mother had a digital camera that broke. It had a mechanical lens (or I suppose "lens housing" that would extend when powering on, then retract when powering off. I guess somehow the lens got stuck in between states, and so the camera would refuse to fully boot up. A bit after that happened, she got a new digital camera.

Me being the tinkerer I was, I asked if I could mess around with the old camera and was basically given it since it was useless (or so she thought). While messing with it, I accidentally dropped it - it somehow fell at just the perfect angle and "knocked" the lens back into place (without breaking anything). Camera worked perfectly fine after that!

Unfortunately while I was still allowed to keep it, that never really "kick started" a passion for photography in me. As far as I recall I got bored of it pretty quickly.

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

Sometimes you just need to do some good old fashioned percussive maintenance. :)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

To get rid of an emotion I feel it as much as I can, instead of escaping from it.

Similarly to get better reasults I don't focus on the result but on the process itself.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 days ago

Using my phone helps me sleep.

I play a simple grid-based game (crosswords, sudoku) for about 15 minutes and before I realize it I’m out cold.

Every bit of “sleep hygiene” that gets condescended at me only makes my insomnia worse, save for the generalized concept of a routine.

More time in my room helps too, as opposed to less - unfamiliarity and performance anxiety creep up on me.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The more I have disconnected from society the happier I have become. I just can't do open hand gestures all of this... Anymore. I'm not doing the Nazi era.

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

Consider relocating somewhere safe where people are still humane on average, if you can. Kinda sad and unfair on you to isolate yourself...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago

A lot easier said than done for most of us.

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

Funny enough I did just that. The COVID shutdown was just about the best my life had ever been. My wife and I bought a house in the mountains in a town with 1000 people. Behind my house is thousands of acres of forest. We live like a retired couple and I've never been happier. I have learned how to live within my personal stimulation threshold.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I cannot pick a lane at the grocery. My first pick will always be slowest. If I pick one out, then pick a 2nd, my 2nd pick will be last to move. Even an empty lane will suddenly have issues like drawer change, shift change or some other calamity.

I now pick a lane and then have my SO pick any other lane for us to use.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago

Monty lane problem.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

There is a solution to this problem. One line that just feeds all the lanes. Unfortunately, the geometry of grocery stores would make it difficult to implement. Also, most people like the illusion of choice.

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

I've actually seen this recently at some stores, usually just for the self-checkout section.

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

Yeah I think people are too stupid on average to understand. Like how kids think pouring water from a short wide glass into a tall glass means there's more water, people think one long line means longer wait times.

I feel like education could mitigate this but at least in the US our education isn't a priority

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

The one I go to does this. One line and they call out which lane is opening next for you to go to. The long line is arranged perpendicular to the registers and It really doesn't seem to take up that much more space compared to stores that don't do that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Lost my driver license. Searched for a while, then decided I'm going to get a replacement. I seldom drive, anyway. Never got around to it until 4 years later I got a letter that it was found. Saved 70€ doing nothing!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

The Opposite. The opposite of every instinct.

George Costanza wasn't wrong.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ton of things in ARMA 3's scripting system due mostly to undocumented or improperly documented commands. Like having a trigger zone that damages the player while in it doesn't work by having them inside the zone (I mean, it does but it will just insta kill instead of slowly dealing damage every tic), instead what works is making a zone for the safe area, and then inverting it for the damage so it only hurts them outside the trigger.

[–] Unsalted8120 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When I can't sleep, I take my finger and draw infinity symbols in a pillow or the sheet and it always makes me tired. There's some science behind it but give it a try

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

Sounds like a type of meditation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

shitpost instead of good posts = 😀

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Who doesn’t enjoy a good 💩

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

i don't use a.i. for searching (until i give up if i can't find it). i feel my vocab increased thinking of similar words to get to the page i want.

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

If I cannot think of a word in my mother language, I see if I can think about it in English, and then put it into an online dictionary to get the mother language synonyms. Works pretty often.

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

I see if I can think about it in English, and then put it into an online dictionary to get the mother language synonym

totally agree. there's just some words out there in the internet that are too used liked 'banned' or 'slams' that get too saturated in search.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (3 children)

"Drinking water backwards." And no, I'm not talking about an enema.

Say you have the hiccups.

Get half a glass of water. Bend over at your waist like you're about to pick something up off the floor. While bent over, rest the glass against your upper lip and drink the water.

Poof Hiccups gone instantly. I know it sounds insane but it works.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I’ve heard at least a dozen guaranteed methods for solving hiccups. At this point I’m convinced it’s all placebo, including the method that works for me reliably.

If you must know…You hold your breath with a mouth full of water, plugging your ears, swallowing very slowly. Hold your breath as long as you can and take a few deep breaths after.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago

I agree that most all of them are borderline placebo, but I'm pretty positive that some combination of breath and water lies the cure.

My go-to for curing hiccups is just taking little sips of something and pausing in between

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

I once had a really long running bout of hiccups, like more than a day and it was really draining on me and I was very tired. I looked myself in the mirror and said "you don't have hiccups any more" and they stopped immediately.

Tried it again several times since and it never worked again but for that brief moment I was invincible.

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