Has the addition of “AI” engagements improved the customer experience? Is the Raspberry Pi cooked?
The “AI” Mercury Switch at ii-net
How’s your broadband going? If you are with ii-net in Australia you’ve probably found that if it isn’t going too well then when you call them up, instead of the simple pressing of a few buttons to get you to some one who has a good idea what’s going on (usually the case it has to be said) there is a new intervention: an emulation of a hapless adolescent posing the question “how can I help?”
In a sentence.
Problem? Even if you could construct a reasonable and publishable sentence to describe your current state of NBN despair, you cannot make yourself understood as the mobile phone no longer carries a signal of sufficient clarity to convey a message of any substance so the meaning is lost.
And time wasted. Why?
An agent at ii-net and I were having a laugh about my wasted time and he suggested that the “AI” intervention was needed to meet the requirements of the young. After all, the young are blessed with much time, though as Mose Allison implied perhaps little else.
The Irritating Avatar
Hold on, what’s going on? Crafting is going on and a strong recommendation is the “30 Days as Lost in Space” kit from Crafting Table. As stated on the tin, perfect for beginners.
What however is this that stands before me? An intervention by a curious being seemingly half way between everywhere; red dwarfed by Youtube. Is this “thing” necessary or a distraction from the tasks engaged?
Try out the kit and you be the judge.
Raspberry Pi or Pickle
The squeezed middle is a painful place to be.
Total cost of purchase of a working pi?
keyboard, mouse, sd card and monitor is getting for four hundred Australian bucks. A fully configured low-spec laptop with windows and office price in fact for which one can grab a full-fat python for free.
The unboxing wasn’t great; screwholes but no screws and the cooling fan connector with the power on the board was a bit fiddly. And then it broke or least the connection didn’t conduct; No fan.
The OS download was OK but then the monitor went into sleep mode and wouldn’t wake up either with ubunto or raspberry os. What to do? Lots of online guidance that assumed prior knowledge lead to a few changes to the config.txt with notepad and a re-boot. No luck. Another monitor, I don’t think so as the one in use displayed switch-on diagnostics just fine and worked with the laptop. It’s not worth the money.
To program? Back to the laptop,
The Heath Robinson hack appeal of the pi still attracts but maybe, like many artefacts and initiatives in the technology world, commodification has come for its lunch.
Further Reading
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