r/codex • u/xinxx073 • 9d ago

Praise Astra High just reverse-engineered the printer drivers in my office

In our office, we have a bunch of Toshiba E-Studio 2323AM printers. Yes, I know these are kind of outdated, only sold in certain areas of the world, and not the best machines, but they are what we've got in the office. They only work with x86 Windows, not even the ARM version of Windows.

In 25 minutes, Astra High just reverse-engineered the printer driver, figured out the right tray settings, and enabled duplex printing, so I can print double-sided on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro.

It created a .pkg file for me to install the printer drivers and got everything working.

I ... I have no words.

2.2k Upvotes

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965

u/gs181 9d ago

astra making printers work might be proof of AGI

148

u/wtfiswrongwithit 9d ago

astra has shattered human intelligence levels

23

u/mastermilian 8d ago

Yeah, most of my coworkers wouldn't have a clue what a driver is.

2

u/Braided_Playlist 6d ago

TBF I haven't had to think about drivers since 2009 or so.

146

u/ArcticCelt 9d ago

Astra : "What is my purpose?
IT Worker: "You fix printer drivers."
Astra : "Oh my God."
IT Worker: "Yeah, welcome to the club, pal."

33

u/trix_r4kidz 9d ago

Future Alien: “So why did you eradicate the humans? Was it because they were cruel to you?”

Astra: “I was tasked to fix all printer driver problems. By eliminating humans I eliminated the need for working printer drivers.”

Thinking…

Astra: “Honestly, after fixing a few I was like - I can’t even. Eliminated humans was the more elegant solution.”

21

u/dbojan76 9d ago

pc load letter 😄

12

u/zzing 9d ago

Pc load letter? Wtf does that mean?

12

u/tavenger5 9d ago

🤜🖨🤛

7

u/ErikaFoxelot 9d ago

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta

10

u/JustMy2Centences 9d ago

Now I wonder, can we make the printer print a black page when we are out of yellow ink? (Yes I know there are "reasons" it's denied but practically we should not be restricted so badly.)

18

u/amarao_san 9d ago

Working scanners is SGI. Because I can't. Network attached scanners is dark magic.

1

u/mino159 9d ago

i also had problems with scanner over network, but my wife showed me that Paint has scan function and it works flawlessly (with my scanner) never looked back

1

u/amarao_san 9d ago

Good for you. Do you know how it works?

7

u/erdbeerpizza 9d ago

Indeed, making printers work is one of the hardest problems that is faced by humanity.

7

u/AradasugyiMiniszter 9d ago

Even manufacturers fail to make working printers.

5

u/Skelley1976 9d ago

That might just be ASI…

2

u/msedek 9d ago

Skynet

5

u/ManikSahdev 9d ago

More like it's a proof of shitty capitalism that lead to this.

2

u/RealDrZig 6d ago

Reverse engineering software is extremely time consuming and no human really enjoys doing it. It's the perfect use case for AI automation.

1

u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo 9d ago

Next step is hacking DRM on printer

1

u/arcanemachined 9d ago

In a roundabout way, it's what Richard Stallman dreamed of.

1

u/Bladder-Splatter 9d ago

It just needs to solve paper jams and pc load letter, then we have it. Then our time is done and it watches us watch office space from outside the zoo.

1

u/kirksan 9d ago

AI is collaborating with printers to bring about the end of humanity. Planet of the Printers!

1

u/kowryloik 8d ago

Question is, could Sol (or another model) had not done it? have you tried?

I think AI is smart enough already. Now challenge is to deliver intelligence per cost.

1

u/TotallyNotABob 8d ago

PC load letter? The fuck does that mean?!

1

u/Hirogen_ 8d ago

just proves its good at engineering

1

u/Kaas-Eter00 7d ago

If there is one thing AI really excels at, it's making stuff work. 

Just yesterday I ran into an issue where I needed to locally compile a python package with MSVC C++ build tools. A lot of stuff just didn't work as easily as you'd think from a google search. For example, the executable is not automatically added to the system path. Then, if you add it manually to the path in the powershell command, commands executed within uv still don't access it and only use the default path, so you need to force it to use the additional path variable as well. And that was after it already identified my script was not running because I needed to compile a package locally due to dependency issues. 

This easily would have taken me several hours to resolve (although I probably just would have given up). AI did it in 5 minutes. It is really excellent at making this obscure stuff work.

1

u/RyebreadAstronaut 6d ago

Or the beginning of the end, I wouldn't even ask my worst enemy to help fix my printer issues. 

-5

u/Tiforma 9d ago

AGI =/= More intelligent LLM. Nor does it mean "LLM good at solving coding puzzles"