maple "mavica" syrup [6502] @mavica_again@computerfairi.es

meet me at gate 327 in the next 15 minutes if you want an ass kicking

Somewhat related to this

https://digipres.club/@timixretroplays/112631203369841124

I occasionally teach tech-related stuff to people of every age. Today I was in a classroom with kids ages 9-11. They had almost pristine laptops with Windows 11.

What I wanted to do:
- have them create an avatar with Picrew
- have them write a slide about themselves, and paste the picrew avatar in it
- start playing around with Scratch

Also mandatory from the course's management: have everyone login to the Google Workspace of the course. (I also put the links to the Picrews in the Classroom)

Tech issues I encountered:
- the "smart" classroom touchscreen whiteboard has some HDMI ports, but those ports mysteriously refused to work with my linux laptop. They also refused to work with some of the Windows computers the school had. Kept displaying a message about "trying to connect" or whatever. I've never had an issue connecting via HDMI to a "dumb" monitor, so I don't know what it was trying to do there.
- The school teacher I was paired up with was familiar with some of the other whiteboards the school has, which require a proprietary program that only runs on Windows to connect via bluetooth. This one was different anyway.
- The whiteboard was an Android device and had its own browser. This object that, I'm sure, cost north of 2000€ was barely powerful enough to open Google slides or Picrew, with noticeable slowdowns, and absolutely collapsed under the "weight" of Scratch
- The laptops the kids use have a regular blue Windows popup "Antivirus protection expired" because the McAfee trial version expired. I had to explain to them that there was nothing wrong with their computer, and they didn't catch a virus or anything. We didn't have the administrator password ready so I couldn't uninstall McAfee and get rid of the popup even if I had the time to do it for 20+ computers while I'm trying to teach.
- Picrew is absolutely inundated with ads, including some fullscreen images that obscure the screen until dismissed. One of the ads was creepy AF and scared a kid, and he didn't want to look at the screen anymore. I had to install ublock origin on all the Edge browsers, one by one (I know, but it was the only browser installed, and again, no admin password and no time even if I did)
- Some people straight up got pop up ads, with videos that started playing at max volume, disturbing the lesson. Many of them didn't even know how to dismiss them. I had to explain to them that it wasn't their fault. (again, solved by installing ublock origin)
- The new tab of Microsoft edge isn't mostly empty, but it's just full of news and links and stuff. There's nothing straight up NSFW, but most of it is inappropriate and distracting to kids.
- Millions of popups throughout the whole process. Popups for cookies, Popups for so-called tutorials, and "I understand" and "I accept" to click through to do anything at all.

Honestly, it made me kinda hate tech. I don't know how I'm supposed to transmit my passion for tech when every little interaction is such a minefield to navigate.

Mastodon has features to limit discovery and visibility, but it really needs features that allow everyone to see your shit but only some people to reply.

And if you can't immediately understand a use-case for that, then you need to stop and think about why that is.

Oh, and here's Intel's white paper on the USB 3.0/2.4GHz interference thing: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/327216.pdf

It's from April 2012. The industry's known about this for 12 years, and it's been so well-communicated that you absolutely knew about it before reading my post on it today. More shit.

I think I'm becoming utterly disillusioned on tech stuff lately. I'm hugely aware of the "you like stuff you grew up with" and "you have less patience for stuff as you age" biases, but even so...

Streaming is shit.
Searching is shit.
Researching is shit.
Shopping is shit.
Troubleshooting is shit.
My phone is shit. Autocorrect, touchscreen keyboards, Bluetooth, AI, Android Auto, Spotify, all shit.

It's not even capitalism or consumerism, I'm just tired of arguing and fighting with things I own.

After 14yrs, the RickRoll is no more. It's finally been taken down.

Another internet meme bites the dust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ just shows an error msg now. 😞