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Comment by cookie_monsta | Hacker News Reader

I have a slightly ageing model (my co-developer is adamant there will be no upgrades, please do not suggest) and my problem is that it appears to have defaulted to ICT time (we are at GMT +11). I hear it performing operations well into the early morning, but booting from a cold start any earlier than 9am leads to all sorts of unexpected behaviour and system errors.

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It sounds as though many of the commenters here are still trying to deal with the first-generation Small Child. My sympathies to all of you. A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to acquire a next-generation model, rebranded as Small Grandchild, and the UX is much superior. All of the troubleshooting and command-line interactions are handled by the Grown Child, who herself now has a reasonably good interface. For me, the UX of Small Grandchild is purely hug and play.

> purely hug and play

That was fantastic...thank you. :)

Literally perfect.

You could say that Grown Child is now Turing complete.

ah finally moving away from monolith to microservices and handing over all those tasks off to someone

SmallChildAsAService 2.0

I'm disturbed by the complete lack of any sort of ChildFactory in the comments.

Or indeed the Build Process. That's usually the most engaging part for me.

Ah, so the troublesome interface is abstracted away by an further developed version of the roughly same thing. Interesting

Well played sir, well played.

Absolutely brilliantly put.

It’s probably running a process that’s connecting to internet services such as mine craft or league of legends out of working hours. I’ve found that disabling internet connectivity at the WiFi router from 12:00 midnight until the morning can be effective to prevent wasteful background processing over night.

Disconnecting Wi-Fi is not recommended, since it may prevent access to firmware updates that improve overall friendliness.

The real problem may be in your educational system, whose operating hours may be incompatible with the standard, pre-set clock phase that most models naturally acquire at that age.

I suggest contacting your local school board to continue troubleshooting.

^Hmmm ... it appears Grown Child without Small Child has entered the chat.

I must have an advanced self directed learning model. I cut off the local wifi and they just paired with the neighbors wifi.

Eh, disabling the wifi after midnight seems perfectly reasonable; even if everything else you are suggesting is true.

Now, disabling the wifi after 4pm or completely, that would be a different question.

Alternate take: some private third party school boards use a different scheduling algorithm and manage to bypass that issue. Plus you get an API key that gives you better support.

Turning off wi-fi isn't enough. Like many Samsung smart TVs, a Small Child will cycle through all access points in range if its configured network doesn't have internet connectivity.

My model keeps downloading things for offline and even electricity free use. It’s a serious problem, I’m not sure how to patch it.

Run down your model's battery during the day? Tire them out enough to make them want to sleep?

For all of its UX problems, I must say I am very impressed with Small Childs battery life. The low power shutdown does tend to be very noisy though.

Yeah the low battery warning is extremely obnoxious and not dismissable at all. I don't know who thought this was a good decision!

What's even more crazy is that often when I attempt to silence the low battery warning by placing the Small Child in the charger, it often refuses to begin charging until the battery has been entirely depleted, so along with not being dismissable, even attempting to charge the Small Child does not stop the low battery warning consistently! I believe this is likely a bug, but I haven't yet been able to consistently replicate it to file a bug report despite experimenting with various charging and usage schedules.

Mine evidently felt in need of a recharge last night and used its optional fuel intake valve to ingest some of my espresso, finding it not 100% compatible with its system it ejected the espresso and made an error sound, after which it walked around the room, came back and went for the espresso again. Prevented second time by manual intervention.

I've found that, while the smaller model's battery life seems boundless, what really drives the appearance is their remarkable ability to recharge quickly. I can wipe out the battery of both of of the smaller models I'm currently in charge of and within 2 hours they have resumed normal levels of activity.

Not sure the skynet junior will not take over if you try to unplug. Want some sleep my dear!!

You need to make a Use Case Diagram and further analyze the system. If you do this and properly understand the system, you will realize that you are the product and your UX is perfectly designed for the child who is the actual user in this system.

This also reminds me of the old joke:

> Q: How do your parents know exactly how to push your buttons?

> A: They installed them.

But the truth is evolution installed the buttons in parents as well as installed instincts in the children enabling them to push those buttons whenever they need.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

My parents tried that when I was the model in question. They discovered that at best, forcing a reboot triggers unpredictable output from the model's emotional processing unit. At worst, the sneak process starts running with full privileges over the system.

Ah yes, I can see the regression tests are failing so it's likely a developer error.

No, that was my sister. I was the proof of concept. Management didn't accept that my test results were typical so they kept resourcing development.

*MVP

Sometimes I think barely viable is a better descriptor for me...:)

The DRM on these things is insane! Just try to set a simple breakpoint and they set the law on you.

I don't know where you are, but the right to repair movement here is nowhere near that advanced.

Reinstall windows? duck

In the winter, the boot times are ridiculous.

The new models actually very often need a reboot right after their first booting completes!

Tell me about it. I'm also having stability issues with the digital interface pairing.

Honestly this sounds like a systemd/timedatectl issue, try hard reset (ctrl/shift/fn/cheddar goldfish)

My model doesn't come with a ctrl key

If you're still in warranty contact the manufacturer and see if you can RMA it.

She has repeatedly refused the RMA request.

I don’t mind the slightly aging models. Elizabeth Hurley is about 57 and seems to be functioning very well.

That particular model seems to be running with the be_fckin_rich cheat enabled, which allows for a team of clinician-type bots to treat her avatar. The rest of us don't quite* have that level of luxury.

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