Just realized I fixed a weird autopilot fault by checking the harness routing

Working on a Citation in Wichita, the autopilot kept dropping out during climb tests. I traced it for hours before noticing the main avionics harness was rubbing against a hydraulic line bracket, wearing through the shielding. Re-routed it with some extra chafe guard and the fault cleared right up. Anyone else had a gremlin turn out to be simple chafing?

Watched a demo of a new AI that writes its own training data and it blew my mind

I've been manually cleaning datasets for months, but seeing this thing generate 10,000 perfect synthetic examples in under a minute made me feel like a chump. It was a demo from a startup in Austin last Thursday. Anyone else seen this tech in action yet?

Vent: I tried using a potato to clean a really stubborn calcite sample

I was cleaning a big calcite cluster from a dig in Kentucky, and it had this awful, greasy clay stain stuck in all the cracks. Nothing was working, not even a soft brush and soapy water. I remembered my grandpa saying something about using a potato to clean old coins, so I figured, why not? I cut a raw potato in half, rubbed the wet side all over the calcite, and let it sit for about ten minutes. When I rinsed it off, most of that nasty stain just washed away. I think the oxalic acid in the potato juice did the trick. It felt pretty silly, standing there rubbing a rock with a potato, but it actually worked. Has anyone else ever used a weird kitchen item to clean a mineral find?

PSA: I stopped giving advice on the main feed and started using the search box first.

Used to jump into every thread with my two cents, but then I saw the same question about noisy neighbors for the third time this month. Now I check if it's been answered already, which saves everyone time. How do you handle seeing repeat topics?

I heard a barista in Portland say they only use water at 195 degrees for light roasts...

My uncle said to always quench a leaf spring in used motor oil, but my last blade cracked straight through.

I tried his method on a truck spring knife blank, heating it to what I thought was a good orange, then dipping it in a bucket of old 10W-40 from my shop, and now I'm out a day's work and a good piece of steel, so what's a better quenching medium for that kind of steel?

Rant: My animation cels keep scrambling themselves after I scan them

Lately, I've been scanning my hand-drawn animation cels for a short film (just a fun side project, you know). I always put them in order when I scan them and save the files with clear names. But when I open them later on my computer, some are in the wrong place. Like, cel number five will be where cel three should be. I've gone over my steps again and again and found no mistakes on my end. This has happened a few times now, and I can't find any software issue causing it. It feels like a glitch in the matrix, like my work is changing when I'm not looking. I even started keeping a paper log, but sometimes my notes don't match what I see on screen, which really bugs me.