7 ms·

Can it be that we are just getting old? The new generation will have their brains wired to ignore ads, will be ok with devices spying on them (it will be called

Can it be that we are just getting old? The new generation will have their brains wired to ignore ads, will be ok with devices spying on them (it will be called something else). And we will be something like that grandpa that can't unblock the mobile phone. (for example, use that new blockchain smart contract to open the fridge and order some food NFTs)

bombcar 4y ago
We are getting old - but part of getting old is remembering things that could be repaired instead of thrown away.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  The door on our $1200 2 year old refrigerator started cracking at the hinge. I had a credit card warranty on it, so I foolishly tried to hire an appliance repair company to fix it. They charged $150 to look at it for 10 minutes and say all they could do is replace the whole door, and quoted $900. I spent 45 minutes fixing it myself with some extruded aluminum and some rivets. The warranty coverage allowed for self-repair, so I ended up "earning" roughly my equivalent hourly rate as a software engineer.
fifticon 4y ago
I've justed installed 5 years' worth of Revit on my new laptop today, and with each year the UI on their installers are getting worse. On Revit 2022, some of the splash screen prompts are not resizable and not MOVABLE, ie they don't respond to alt+space for windows menu. This is not OK. On one of them, I had to answer input prompts that they rendered OFF SCREEN. I solved that by changing display resolution.. Another showed a clipped path of a missing install file, which thus couldnt be identified.. I solved that by moving the install files to c:/2/ (to get a shorter path it could display). No, things are getting worse, today's ui is made with crayons :-/
- j-bos 4y ago
  Revit installs are the worst. Iused to freelance for an engineer and once I moved on from that it was amazing how much cruft from Autodesk was left on my machine. I'm guessing most of it was based on anti piracy measures. I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech. I've never heard it put this succinctly. Are the same companies doing all of these things because the expertise transfers? Do they have journals and conferences together?
  - vagrantJin 4y ago
    Reminds me of Adobe. The sheer number of dubious services and "stuff" and god awful updates is insane. All this just for Acrobat. Using Firefox to read PDFs now and its a pleasure. Its blazingly fast and does exactly what I need. Adobe can jump off a cliff.
netr0ute 4y ago
> Can it be that we are just getting old? That's rich, considering that I'm 18 and I have the same views.
- LoveGracePeace 4y ago
  It's encouraging to read that young people are starting to get a good foothold on the ground. Tech is cool and helpful but only as far as we can throw it when it breaks.
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    Agree! please keep up the fight. Use the benefits (like ad blocking making YT watchable) to encourage other young people to fight too!
    - LoveGracePeace 4y ago
      Hold on there. Ads popping up on YT are annoying but it's up to the user to decide if they are worth the content they're watching, same as TV or print or the radio. Using an Ad blocker in my view is no different than stealing.
      - detaro 4y ago
        > same as TV is switching channels or otherwise ignoring the TV while ads are on also stealing?
      - feanaro 4y ago
        Nope. Website sends information to my computer, my computer displays it the way I want it to be displayed. The website sending the information doesn't own my computer.
      - progman32 4y ago
        Toss in SponsorBlock to auto skip time wasters and Unhook to hide the manipulative recommendation feed and other noise, too! Life is too short to waste it on advertisements. Not using a piece of a service (the ads) is not stealing, nor likely is it violating any service contact.
gonzo41 4y ago
If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds. --for example, use that new blockchain smart contract to open the fridge and order some food NFTs. So in this instance grandpa would be using the smart contract to buy ledger space for a NFT about food? Because NFT's arn't food.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds. The very same people will claim that you can ignore ads and they aren't a problem, and that free market is efficient and doesn't waste resources
- tunap 4y ago
  >If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore ads(sic). If you had toddlers in the early 00's(the only time I witnessed it), or were a toddler then, you were likely exposed to plenty of Disney Channel and the frequent barrage of 10 second commercials. Bad programming, IMO.
  - MandieD 4y ago
    This is why my near two year old is unaware that there is an uncountable number of hours of video made specifically to appeal to his age group. I know he'll find out sooner or later, and that it can even be called up on demand if your mommy is nice enough, but I want to keep those little brain cells engaged primarily with the quiet, physical world as long as possible.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Typically parents at that time had to pay for it. Now? Youtube is nuts.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  > If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds. There's some reason to think that this has already happened to some extent. In particular, many of the changed purchasing habits of millennials vs genX and boomers are usually attributed to ad-blindness. You'd expect this to go even further in the next generation.
lbotos 4y ago
Maybe? My microwave has something like 20 buttons, I really wish it had two knobs: - Time - Power Hell, print a guide on the inside of the door on how to adjust power for defrosting or whatever. I rarely ever press more than :30 button, and changing power is more annoying than it should be. https://ellis.fyi/tag/knobs/ https://ellis.fyi/tag/knobs/
- nicbou 4y ago
  My bomann microwave is exactly that, and it's great
- tzs 4y ago
  Some of the fancy microwave features can actually be useful though. The "sensor cook" on mine does a really great job with potatoes for example. They come out about as good with that as they do when I bake them in the toaster oven or regular oven using a thermometer to determine the cooking time, but the microwave is a lot faster and less effort.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  The other day I accidentally grilled my instant meal because I selected the wavy grill icon instead of the wavy microwave icon on my combi-oven. Molten plastic everywhere :-/ It does have a knob for selecting the time though. I get that icons are easier because you don't need to translate things for every country, but surely it can't be that much effort or expensive? My washing machine has text in Dutch and French, and it was one of the cheaper options.
- robocat 4y ago
  You can buy whiteware with a usable UI, but you need to go to a display room and try the models with the intent of checking usability, and then paying the premium that usually occurs. Also if possible talk to the service guys and work out what is reliable and maintainable. I regularly hear people complain about their devices, because usability wasn’t considered due to different root causes. Some people don’t know anything about usability (not a “Senior Support Engineering Manager”), some people buy cheap, some people don’t get to choose (rent), many people don’t think to check usability, some people let their partner buy something unsuitable. If you use a kitchen, then pay attention to what other practical friends use. Your appliances are tools you work with: spend effort to buy good tools. I bought a Breville Quick Start microwave, chosen for combination of brand trust, price, and usability. It has a rotating power knob, a rotating timer knob, a 30 second quick start button, and a bunch of feature buttons which I don’t use hidden in the door jam. Rotate the knobs to change power or time while the microwave is running: https://www.breville.com/au/en/products/microwaves/bmo735.html https://www.breville.com/au/en/products/microwaves/bmo735.ht...
Frost1x 4y ago
Societies and culture go in wrong directions frequently. The older you grow, the more experience and knowledge you have to recognize bad trends, anticonsumer practices, and outright abusive behaviors. While some of getting old for many is turning into a creature of habit fighting off any and all change, for many it's rejecting what is identified as bad/harmful change or change that exists for no apparent reason. Not all old people are luddites or simply too inept to deal with change, sometimes they make conscious decisions to reject a given change yet are forced by the rest of society on occasion to deal with it. New technologies need to clarify the tradeoffs that exist and what the real value add is beyond marketing propoganda. Many are obsessed with social media and smart devices all over their home (regardless of age). Meanwhile, people who frequent this site are largely technologists who are very tech savvy, sometimes the people creating these very systems, and many of them actively reject such technology and systems because they know exactly how harmful things can be. It's not because they're old, it's because they're informed. More and more business practices are losing their alignment with society and pulling more value than they create and people simply don't want to deal with it. I applaud markets actually functioning healthily and rejecting abusive practices. This DRM may exist for a lot of good reasons, refillability simply may be impractical after skimming over the writeup for some. Meanwhile you have systems like DRM on KCups coffee makers that are completely ludicrous.
- noduerme 4y ago
  I remember my grandfather in Vegas lamenting that allowing people to wear trashy street clothes or anything less than formal wear / suit and tie into the casinos, or on airplanes, would lead to more and more bad behavior. This seemed incredibly uncool and old-fashioned at the time, but it turns out he was right. Decades of increasingly lax social codes around how people present themselves in public have led to generations of people who don't know how to behave politely in public. This struck me with full force when I was invited to the Magic Castle in LA, one of the last venues to require formal wear at all times. One of the most magical things about that place is how it transforms a whole range of everyday visitors who might be people you wouldn't want to hang out with at their local bar into highly civilized men and women on their tip-top behavior. Vegas and air travel both used to operate on this principle. Now we might call it "LARPing" but when it was a social norm it was called "going out". I don't think it's my getting older that caused me to think more like my grandfather. I think time proved him right.
dreamcompiler 4y ago
No. It's that the UI, privacy leakage, software, and electronic engineering of these things is simply horrible. I'd be happy with IoT appliances iff: --They weren't designed to fail because of poor power conditioning and thermal management. --They weren't vectors for botnets due to poor security. --They ran on my personal cloud or LAN rather than some godawful Chinese server. --I had veto power over all SW updates, and I could roll them back. --They didn't constantly beep at me as if I were their servant, rather than the other way around. --Their MTBF was longer than "dumb" appliances rather than shorter. I can design systems like this, but apparently the big white goods manufacturers cannot, or don't want to.
- tomrod 4y ago
  They don't think there is a market for it OR they don't put it into their core principles. There is a market for it.
skeeter2020 4y ago
I think part of this is inevitable, but I am still very concerned because we cannot rewire our brains in less than single generation, and despite what many think you are paying attention to those ads. My parents might struggle with technology but I'd argue it's because they are trying to do something basic (like access the internet) or of value (like watch their favourite streaming series). I'm not convinced these new "value extraction" pain points that cause us hardship are the same.
jotm 4y ago
No, I can ignore ads very well. I just buy what I need after a lot of research (and sadly good/real reviews are harder to come by). All new advancements in "tech" have actually been in money making. Like appliances that require special cartridges for no good reason other than it being more profitable for the manufacturer. They finally adapter the printer-ink model, heh. Did you know most contracts forbid recycling companies from taking out parts and selling them? Because it would cut into profits on overpriced spare parts, of course (official reason is "we can't trust that they'll perform well"). And so they go to landfills or at best, are melted down into something usable at huge energy costs. Yes, people will put up with it. I hope not for long. I know people making 50k/year (good salary for EU) and literally spending it all on the "best" shit, who wish to buy a house and saying it's impossible. Then there's the people making 20k/year who save for many long years and buy a 300k+ house, or at least an apartment. Willing to bet who will be better off in a decade or so? Or whose kids? Ha ha, I might actually lose that bet if a war or catastrophic natural events happen.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
the_third_wave 4y ago
> The new generation will have their brains wired to ignore ads ...upon which the brain wiring experts get bought and rewire those brains to only see "approved" ads which gives the wheel another push. Around and around it goes, like a circle game.
7952 4y ago
I think it depends on the specific technology. I know older people who were excited to get a smart TV where younger people use a phone, dongles or even a laptops. Sometimes they need the smarts more and are less able to escape it. And there are still older tech fans who love finding the future.
VBprogrammer 4y ago
Having seen the confusion on my daughter's face when pressing skip ad on the TV didn't work I'm inclined to agree somewhat.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Sounds like she hates ads as much as the rest of us.
entropyie 4y ago
I advise you to go visit a Stasi museum in Germany sometime, look at what they were able to do with paper documents and film/tape. Now imagine what they could do with today's telemetry obsessed economy. When I was in my 20s I thought democracy was a given... "getting old" might just mean you've been alive long enough to realise that democracy is fragile and the shit sometimes hits the fan... We are one misguided vote away from handing over the ultimate panopticon to a malevolent government, and we will never be able to organise a resistance to win power back, because it will be snuffed out in its infancy .

bombcar 4y ago

We are getting old - but part of getting old is remembering things that could be repaired instead of thrown away.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
The door on our $1200 2 year old refrigerator started cracking at the hinge. I had a credit card warranty on it, so I foolishly tried to hire an appliance repair company to fix it. They charged $150 to look at it for 10 minutes and say all they could do is replace the whole door, and quoted $900. I spent 45 minutes fixing it myself with some extruded aluminum and some rivets. The warranty coverage allowed for self-repair, so I ended up "earning" roughly my equivalent hourly rate as a software engineer.

fifticon 4y ago

I've justed installed 5 years' worth of Revit on my new laptop today, and with each year the UI on their installers are getting worse. On Revit 2022, some of the splash screen prompts are not resizable and not MOVABLE, ie they don't respond to alt+space for windows menu. This is not OK. On one of them, I had to answer input prompts that they rendered OFF SCREEN. I solved that by changing display resolution.. Another showed a clipped path of a missing install file, which thus couldnt be identified.. I solved that by moving the install files to c:/2/ (to get a shorter path it could display). No, things are getting worse, today's ui is made with crayons :-/

j-bos 4y ago
Revit installs are the worst. Iused to freelance for an engineer and once I moved on from that it was amazing how much cruft from Autodesk was left on my machine. I'm guessing most of it was based on anti piracy measures. I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > I often wonder how much overlap there is between anti piracy, ani cheat, and "productivity" measuring tech. I've never heard it put this succinctly. Are the same companies doing all of these things because the expertise transfers? Do they have journals and conferences together?
- vagrantJin 4y ago
  Reminds me of Adobe. The sheer number of dubious services and "stuff" and god awful updates is insane. All this just for Acrobat. Using Firefox to read PDFs now and its a pleasure. Its blazingly fast and does exactly what I need. Adobe can jump off a cliff.

netr0ute 4y ago

> Can it be that we are just getting old? That's rich, considering that I'm 18 and I have the same views.

LoveGracePeace 4y ago
It's encouraging to read that young people are starting to get a good foothold on the ground. Tech is cool and helpful but only as far as we can throw it when it breaks.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  Agree! please keep up the fight. Use the benefits (like ad blocking making YT watchable) to encourage other young people to fight too!
  - LoveGracePeace 4y ago
    Hold on there. Ads popping up on YT are annoying but it's up to the user to decide if they are worth the content they're watching, same as TV or print or the radio. Using an Ad blocker in my view is no different than stealing.
    - detaro 4y ago
      > same as TV is switching channels or otherwise ignoring the TV while ads are on also stealing?
    - feanaro 4y ago
      Nope. Website sends information to my computer, my computer displays it the way I want it to be displayed. The website sending the information doesn't own my computer.
    - progman32 4y ago
      Toss in SponsorBlock to auto skip time wasters and Unhook to hide the manipulative recommendation feed and other noise, too! Life is too short to waste it on advertisements. Not using a piece of a service (the ads) is not stealing, nor likely is it violating any service contact.

gonzo41 4y ago

If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds. --for example, use that new blockchain smart contract to open the fridge and order some food NFTs. So in this instance grandpa would be using the smart contract to buy ledger space for a NFT about food? Because NFT's arn't food.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds. The very same people will claim that you can ignore ads and they aren't a problem, and that free market is efficient and doesn't waste resources
tunap 4y ago
>If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore ads(sic). If you had toddlers in the early 00's(the only time I witnessed it), or were a toddler then, you were likely exposed to plenty of Disney Channel and the frequent barrage of 10 second commercials. Bad programming, IMO.
- MandieD 4y ago
  This is why my near two year old is unaware that there is an uncountable number of hours of video made specifically to appeal to his age group. I know he'll find out sooner or later, and that it can even be called up on demand if your mommy is nice enough, but I want to keep those little brain cells engaged primarily with the quiet, physical world as long as possible.
- tomrod 4y ago
  Typically parents at that time had to pay for it. Now? Youtube is nuts.
rsynnott 4y ago
> If depression rates in children and young adults are anything to go by, younger people absolutely cannot ignore adds. There's some reason to think that this has already happened to some extent. In particular, many of the changed purchasing habits of millennials vs genX and boomers are usually attributed to ad-blindness. You'd expect this to go even further in the next generation.

lbotos 4y ago

Maybe? My microwave has something like 20 buttons, I really wish it had two knobs: - Time - Power Hell, print a guide on the inside of the door on how to adjust power for defrosting or whatever. I rarely ever press more than :30 button, and changing power is more annoying than it should be. https://ellis.fyi/tag/knobs/ https://ellis.fyi/tag/knobs/

nicbou 4y ago
My bomann microwave is exactly that, and it's great
tzs 4y ago
Some of the fancy microwave features can actually be useful though. The "sensor cook" on mine does a really great job with potatoes for example. They come out about as good with that as they do when I bake them in the toaster oven or regular oven using a thermometer to determine the cooking time, but the microwave is a lot faster and less effort.
Beltalowda 4y ago
The other day I accidentally grilled my instant meal because I selected the wavy grill icon instead of the wavy microwave icon on my combi-oven. Molten plastic everywhere :-/ It does have a knob for selecting the time though. I get that icons are easier because you don't need to translate things for every country, but surely it can't be that much effort or expensive? My washing machine has text in Dutch and French, and it was one of the cheaper options.
robocat 4y ago
You can buy whiteware with a usable UI, but you need to go to a display room and try the models with the intent of checking usability, and then paying the premium that usually occurs. Also if possible talk to the service guys and work out what is reliable and maintainable. I regularly hear people complain about their devices, because usability wasn’t considered due to different root causes. Some people don’t know anything about usability (not a “Senior Support Engineering Manager”), some people buy cheap, some people don’t get to choose (rent), many people don’t think to check usability, some people let their partner buy something unsuitable. If you use a kitchen, then pay attention to what other practical friends use. Your appliances are tools you work with: spend effort to buy good tools. I bought a Breville Quick Start microwave, chosen for combination of brand trust, price, and usability. It has a rotating power knob, a rotating timer knob, a 30 second quick start button, and a bunch of feature buttons which I don’t use hidden in the door jam. Rotate the knobs to change power or time while the microwave is running: https://www.breville.com/au/en/products/microwaves/bmo735.html https://www.breville.com/au/en/products/microwaves/bmo735.ht...

Frost1x 4y ago

Societies and culture go in wrong directions frequently. The older you grow, the more experience and knowledge you have to recognize bad trends, anticonsumer practices, and outright abusive behaviors. While some of getting old for many is turning into a creature of habit fighting off any and all change, for many it's rejecting what is identified as bad/harmful change or change that exists for no apparent reason. Not all old people are luddites or simply too inept to deal with change, sometimes they make conscious decisions to reject a given change yet are forced by the rest of society on occasion to deal with it. New technologies need to clarify the tradeoffs that exist and what the real value add is beyond marketing propoganda. Many are obsessed with social media and smart devices all over their home (regardless of age). Meanwhile, people who frequent this site are largely technologists who are very tech savvy, sometimes the people creating these very systems, and many of them actively reject such technology and systems because they know exactly how harmful things can be. It's not because they're old, it's because they're informed. More and more business practices are losing their alignment with society and pulling more value than they create and people simply don't want to deal with it. I applaud markets actually functioning healthily and rejecting abusive practices. This DRM may exist for a lot of good reasons, refillability simply may be impractical after skimming over the writeup for some. Meanwhile you have systems like DRM on KCups coffee makers that are completely ludicrous.

noduerme 4y ago
I remember my grandfather in Vegas lamenting that allowing people to wear trashy street clothes or anything less than formal wear / suit and tie into the casinos, or on airplanes, would lead to more and more bad behavior. This seemed incredibly uncool and old-fashioned at the time, but it turns out he was right. Decades of increasingly lax social codes around how people present themselves in public have led to generations of people who don't know how to behave politely in public. This struck me with full force when I was invited to the Magic Castle in LA, one of the last venues to require formal wear at all times. One of the most magical things about that place is how it transforms a whole range of everyday visitors who might be people you wouldn't want to hang out with at their local bar into highly civilized men and women on their tip-top behavior. Vegas and air travel both used to operate on this principle. Now we might call it "LARPing" but when it was a social norm it was called "going out". I don't think it's my getting older that caused me to think more like my grandfather. I think time proved him right.

dreamcompiler 4y ago

No. It's that the UI, privacy leakage, software, and electronic engineering of these things is simply horrible. I'd be happy with IoT appliances iff: --They weren't designed to fail because of poor power conditioning and thermal management. --They weren't vectors for botnets due to poor security. --They ran on my personal cloud or LAN rather than some godawful Chinese server. --I had veto power over all SW updates, and I could roll them back. --They didn't constantly beep at me as if I were their servant, rather than the other way around. --Their MTBF was longer than "dumb" appliances rather than shorter. I can design systems like this, but apparently the big white goods manufacturers cannot, or don't want to.

tomrod 4y ago
They don't think there is a market for it OR they don't put it into their core principles. There is a market for it.

skeeter2020 4y ago

I think part of this is inevitable, but I am still very concerned because we cannot rewire our brains in less than single generation, and despite what many think you are paying attention to those ads. My parents might struggle with technology but I'd argue it's because they are trying to do something basic (like access the internet) or of value (like watch their favourite streaming series). I'm not convinced these new "value extraction" pain points that cause us hardship are the same.

jotm 4y ago

No, I can ignore ads very well. I just buy what I need after a lot of research (and sadly good/real reviews are harder to come by). All new advancements in "tech" have actually been in money making. Like appliances that require special cartridges for no good reason other than it being more profitable for the manufacturer. They finally adapter the printer-ink model, heh. Did you know most contracts forbid recycling companies from taking out parts and selling them? Because it would cut into profits on overpriced spare parts, of course (official reason is "we can't trust that they'll perform well"). And so they go to landfills or at best, are melted down into something usable at huge energy costs. Yes, people will put up with it. I hope not for long. I know people making 50k/year (good salary for EU) and literally spending it all on the "best" shit, who wish to buy a house and saying it's impossible. Then there's the people making 20k/year who save for many long years and buy a 300k+ house, or at least an apartment. Willing to bet who will be better off in a decade or so? Or whose kids? Ha ha, I might actually lose that bet if a war or catastrophic natural events happen.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

the_third_wave 4y ago

> The new generation will have their brains wired to ignore ads ...upon which the brain wiring experts get bought and rewire those brains to only see "approved" ads which gives the wheel another push. Around and around it goes, like a circle game.

7952 4y ago

I think it depends on the specific technology. I know older people who were excited to get a smart TV where younger people use a phone, dongles or even a laptops. Sometimes they need the smarts more and are less able to escape it. And there are still older tech fans who love finding the future.

VBprogrammer 4y ago

Having seen the confusion on my daughter's face when pressing skip ad on the TV didn't work I'm inclined to agree somewhat.

pessimizer 4y ago
Sounds like she hates ads as much as the rest of us.

entropyie 4y ago

I advise you to go visit a Stasi museum in Germany sometime, look at what they were able to do with paper documents and film/tape. Now imagine what they could do with today's telemetry obsessed economy. When I was in my 20s I thought democracy was a given... "getting old" might just mean you've been alive long enough to realise that democracy is fragile and the shit sometimes hits the fan... We are one misguided vote away from handing over the ultimate panopticon to a malevolent government, and we will never be able to organise a resistance to win power back, because it will be snuffed out in its infancy .