Honestly. so many things are complicated and hard to explain online and you don’t encounter it in real life. those things I don’t even try.
early internet “culture” to a younger person. They didn’t get it.
In today’s online world you openly post your photo online, where you’re from, what you do, etc and anyone can see it. I had to explain to them that back then (late 90s/early 00s) posting your photo or real name online was a no-no. it was actively discouraged. But then in turn because of the way you primarily communicated with people online either via IRC, forums, ICQ, AOL IM, etc you kinda had a closer relationship with these people even if you didn’t know what they looked like or what their names were.
Also the fact that in most cases a lot of people simply couldn’t put their photos online either because they didn’t have access to a scanner or a digital camera. I told them that one of my best friends online that I would talk to daily I still to this day have no idea what they looked like.
There’s an old lady I know who couldn’t use her phone for 3 days because "the screen had gone black”. It had gone flat and gotten stuck in ultra power saving mode which just displays the time. There is a small glyph in the top left which is a box with an arrow pointing out of it, which I knew was tappable and which means exit but she didn’t. To make things worse even if she had tapped it the confirmation dialog that appeared was just some red text that didn’t look like a button at all.
She had no chance. Was about to buy a new phone, thinking the battery was busted.
I showed her the phone settings area but she understood none of it. Why there is an ultra power saving mode, why it would automatically engage, why it’s a black screen, why that is an exit icon, etc.
After I fixed it she was very glad - the phone home screen background is a photo of her dog that died recently and she was very happy to be able to see it again. She doesn’t know how to access the gallery app so that’s the only way she can see the dog that she misses so much.
I think the only thing she can do with her phone is answer it when it rings and unlock it to look at the home screen.
Here’s a little something I learned about talking tech with older folks, boomers in particular…
With a lot of us, you can just be told what to tap/click/type in order to get the device to do what you want, or stop doing what you don’t want. And that’s good enough. For a lot of older folks, they also want to know why - what exactly did I do by tapping/clicking/typing that, and how does that fix the problem, and why is it designed that way to begin with? Knowing that helps them see beyond what’s on the screen to what the device is actually doing. And if they don’t get that info, then the problem with the device remains mysterious.
Whenever I find myself helping an older person with their phone or computer, I try to share as much as I know about whatever we’re doing. And if I can’t I just say, “I don’t know why it’s designed like that but this will fix your problem.” Goes a long way.
Trying it but my grandma is stubborn.
Essentially the kind of “I don’t habe time for this shit” and “I am too old for this shit”Oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Okay yeah I don’t have an approach for that lol.
the phone home screen background is a photo of her dog that died recently and she was very happy to be able to see it again. She doesn’t know how to access the gallery app so that’s the only way she can see the dog that she misses so much
I hope you backed that picture up to at leat 3 different places and printed one for her
I wanna print her dog pictures off her phone and give them to her on paper
Good idea, I’ll see what can be done.
That’s my mom, currently doing some code-fu on ollama mixed with a lot of scripting to try and make a voice assistant for her that isn’t connected to satan.
Weather
Play a song - then it searches youtube for her answer
Play __ is a struggle. Jellyfin, Youtube. Where is __? Will she specify? Won’t she? I can automate remote inputs, could I have an Ai replace the search string with her answer?
There’s also input lag, whether or not something freezes or doesn’t, it’s fun.
Yes with all the brain damage from Covid I’m pretty sure assistive tech for dementia will be huge huge huge in a few years. Definitely a deep well to draw from, that one.
I have the wireframes of an app sketched out but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.
My mother thinks US workers still get pensions if they stay at a company long enough. She also thinks that staying at one employer for decades is the key to higher pay, better benefits, and promotions. This is a constant, exhaustingly repetitive conversation with her every time I get recruited and poached by a company.
She also thinks that staying at one employer for decades is the key to higher pay, better benefits, and promotions.
I have read terrifyingly depressing stories of people being underpaid - even for highly challenging work like civil engineering - when they do this. I mean it’s more of an employer issue, but part of the benefit of ‘job hopping’ is that anp non-asshole boss will try and match your new offer in order to keep you.
My boss thinks that the specific job title we hold is the reason we are “at will” employees and makes a big deal of telling new hires that they can be let go for any reason with no notice because if this. This is the case for every job in every US state except Montana, unless a contract says otherwise and I tell her every time.
makes a big deal of telling new hires that they can be let go for any reason with no notice because if this
Purely out of curiosity, does he still expect people to give 2 weeks notice (or any notice) when they quit?
Yes.
Trying to explain to my boomer relatives that no matter how hard we work, we can’t buy a house like they could.
Yep this is the big one. Fortunately my own parents aren’t like this, but they’re technically (only just) gen x - it’s genuinely like there’s a magical barrier where the arbitrary generational lines are drawn
A magical barrier in the brain, as dense as lead. Maybe from all the leaded gasoline.
Can’t be the leaded gasoline, gen-x grew up on this stuff.
That Retirement, as a concept, is going the same way as the single income family. That minimum retirement age will likely exceed the average lifespan of my family by the time i am anywhere near 65 years old.
I’m not sure. They’ll find out soon enough people in their seventies make dangerous mistakes.
They know, but still allow it in congress.
It wasn’t necessarily a struggle but my younger interlocutor was shocked by the fact that back in the late 90s/early 00s when I was a kid/young teen, not everyone had a cellphone and that, if you wanted to talk to that cutie who wasn’t online on MSN Messenger, sometimes you had to call her landline and her dad or mom or sibling would answer and you’d have to talk to them for a bit before they passed her the phone. If men feel socially awkward nowadays flirting with girls in private, imagine having to charm her parents before being able to do the same with her! 😅
Honestly in my experience charming parents is easy lol, but i guess that means people had to strike more of a balance between being a “respectable young man” (to charm the parents) and “not a total dork” (to charm the lady in question) - The lack of this social balance is why society is collapsing !
I think this comes down to a quirk of personality.
I have always charmed parents even though I’m somewhat rough around the edges (probably partially because my mom died when I was young and older women still see me as a little lost lamb who needs mothering in my thirties), but my best friend near universally turns parents off, even though we’re pretty similar.
When we were younger, everyone thought she was a bad influence on me, though it was probably the other way around.
Haha if you were not a complete menace (or at least didn’t sound like one), I guess to a certain extent they found it cute? Good times! 🥲
What’s MSN messenger, precious? Love, eighties teenager.
The OG way to chat with qts online!
The OG way is IRC, though.
Had to explain that ladybugs were supposed to live outside or they’d miss their ladybug families. My niece caught one in a jar and wanted to keep it inside as a new pet. She’s a sweet kid.
The shortcut on the desktop isn’t the same thing as the program (but it can be if someone did something inadvisable). Gah.
One of our departments at work keeps all of its documentation in Google Drive. We audited them a while back where they were pleased to report that yes, they do back up a copy of it frequently.
Except all they were backing up was the links to the documents. If the drive ever disappeared so would the data.
That was a learning experience, that’s for sure.
I am genuinely terrified by some people their tech illiteracy
In fairness, when you carry out that backup Google seem to word it such that you do believe that you’re downloading the actual files.
I guess that makes it better on the users part and just makes it a classic Google “fuck you”
What’s the backups purpose even, than? To get the links to multiple files at once or something? I don’t really get why you would want that
That fog lights on cars used to be able to be turned on with headlights off, so you could actually see better in fog. Nowadays the foglights won’t turn on on most vehicles if headlights aren’t on, which really doesn’t help driving, since you still get headlight glare back.
I’ve noticed everyone has their fog lights on all the time except when it’s actually foggy.
Telling people what it was like to write with mechanical (non electric) typewriters. Nobody under 45 ever used them. They cannot imagine the difference of pressing down on a keyboard with some force.
The first time I tried out an electronic typewriter it was strange and changed how I wrote.
Only older people will understand, I think
I’m 37 and have used one as a kid.
My mom kept hers for sentimental reasons and I played with it as a kid. I cannot imagine the RSIs people would get from those bad boys.
I’ve never used one but they look and SOUND so fascinating
I also appreciate how people use them as musical instruments sometimes.
I remember adjusting the wobbly ink tape. It was a different way of typing, way more careful to not make any mistakes. It’s nice we kept the same keyboard layout on all typing hardware that came after.
How Subway used to cut their subs.
Also known as the “u-gouge”. For a while after they made the change most employees still knew how to do it so you could request your sandwich cut that way. I doubt anyone who works at Subway these days knows it. Not that Subway has been worth eating at for several years.
I don’t go to subway frequently, maybe once a year or so, but if you ask nicely and show them a video they can usually pull it off.
It’s the only way to cut for sauce-heavy sandwiches that would otherwise squish out the side.
I’ve been eating the same sub for over 30 years now. I tried the side cut on it once, and managed to get hot tomato sauce all over myself.
Woah… i just googled it and I feel furious about having something I’ve never experienced stolen from me. I mean i don’t even eat at subway.
Is this about the wedge cut out of the top, or was there something before that that I should feel upset about?
It’s the Wedge
Seeing a jar of Grey Poupon and saying “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” and I had to ask if anyone had seen the film when no reaction and they said, no.
Unless they’re thinking “Film?”
Yesterday. My mother in law is refusing to learn how to use Internet banking. She’s told me to do it.
My mom made me file her taxes for the past decade, I started doing that ever since I was a teen 🤦♂️
I mean I did it so often I can remember all the social security numbers of everyone in my household
