Young people can't operate a radio

[ochotona]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/antique ... 994713509/

[dualstow]

Is there a non Facebook version?

[Maddy]

. . . And old people can't operate Facebook.

[ochotona]

Try this

https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2017/09/29/yo ... hing-else/

About the same as that story about 40% of people not knowing that you can receive TV broadcasts over the air for free w/o paying a media company.

[dualstow]

I miss my HD tv rabbit ears. My wife begged for cable so we finally got it after renovation. But, she still watches one of the five channels we had from the antenna.

[Mr Vacuum]

I enjoy pulling out the rabbit ears a few times a year to watch a football game. Only our local NBC station uses the lower channel range requiring the telescoping ears these days since the others use the higher channels picked up by the central paddle for their digital signals. Alas, tennis and other contracts are mostly moved to cable now.

[ochotona]

The real PITA will be if AM and/or FM radio ever goes digital. Then every analog AM and/or FM radio ever built will be obsolete.

[dualstow]

The real PITA will be if AM and/or FM radio ever goes digital. Then every analog AM and/or FM radio ever built will be obsolete.

I think they did that in Norway or nearby.
Edit: yep. https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/19/8453 ... radio-2017

[ochotona]

The real PITA will be if AM and/or FM radio ever goes digital. Then every analog AM and/or FM radio ever built will be obsolete.

I think they did that in Norway or nearby.
Edit: yep. https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/19/8453 ... radio-2017

That'll be like Cash for Clunkers for Sony and Panasonic, except no cash. Who makes radios anymore? Probably all Chinese.

[dualstow]

Ours is a classic Taiwanese model. Not sure if it's manufactured on the mainland. (Sangean)

[sweetbthescrivener]

Along the same lines, probably more videos about kids reacting to old tech than you want to see.

Cute though:

Kids and typwriters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxRfkZdiAQ

Kids and VCRs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kesMOzzNBiQ

Kids and Walkmans:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk_vV-JRZ6E


Kids and Rotary phones:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk


Kids and old computers:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

[Maddy]

While avocado resellers like Whole Foods only have to worry about creating a catchy advertising campaign to attract millennials, Home Depot is in full-on panic mode after realizing that an entire generation of Americans have absolutely no clue how to use their products. As the Wall Street Journal points out, the company has been forced to spend millions to create video tutorials and host in-store classes on how to do everything from using a tape measure to mopping a floor and hammering a nail.

Home Depot's VP of marketing admits she was originally hesitant because she thought some of their videos might be a bit too "condescending" but she quickly learned they were very necessary for our pampered millennials.

Meanwhile, Scotts Miracle-Gro has been forced to start training classes to remind frustrated millennials, who can't seem to keep their flowers alive, that plants need sunlight to grow (apparently not a single millennial ever took biology in grade school). Commenting on the tutorials, a defeated VP of Corporate Affairs, Jim King, admitted "these are simple things we wouldn’t have really thought to do or needed to do 15 to 20 years ago"...sorry, Mr. King this is your life now.
* * *
The Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. has started offering gardening lessons for young homeowners that cover basic tips—really, really basic—like making sure sunlight can reach plants.

“These are simple things we wouldn’t have really thought to do or needed to do 15 to 20 years ago,” says Jim King, senior vice president of corporate affairs for Scotts. “But this is a group who may not have grown up putting their hands in the dirt growing their vegetable garden in mom and dad’s backyard.”

“They grew up playing soccer, having dance recitals and playing an Xbox,” says Scott’s Mr. King. “They probably didn’t spend as much time helping mom and dad out in the yard as their predecessors or their predecessors’ predecessors.”

Companies such as Scotts, Home Depot Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. , Williams-Sonoma Inc.’s West Elm and the Sherwin-Williams Co. are hosting classes and online tutorials to teach such basic skills as how to mow the lawn, use a tape measure, mop a floor, hammer a nail and pick a paint color.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-1 ... ures-hamme

[dualstow]

Sounds about right. When I was your age,I was hammering nails, not creating memes and typing with my thumbs!

[ochotona]

At 12 I was soldering and wiring breadboards.

[Kriegsspiel]

20 years ago I was playing football, Jim, not soccer. You fucking commie.

[WiseOne]

Sounds about right. When I was a teenager I was mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, helping clean out the garage and paint the floor, and babysitting for the neighbors. My nieces have never done any of these things.

But, if you're a suburban parent you don't do any of those things either. You hire a guy from El Salvador who doesn't speak English to do them. And of course, pay him in cash. He's the one who goes to Home Depot - not the suburban parent!

I still do all my own housecleaning, despite lots of urging from people to hire somebody. Not having a housecleaner is considered strange in my neighborhood. Or maybe it's just that I'm that bad at it!

[Maddy]

Sounds about right. When I was a teenager I was mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, helping clean out the garage and paint the floor, and babysitting for the neighbors. My nieces have never done any of these things.

But, if you're a suburban parent you don't do any of those things either. You hire a guy from El Salvador who doesn't speak English to do them. And of course, pay him in cash. He's the one who goes to Home Depot - not the suburban parent!

I still do all my own housecleaning, despite lots of urging from people to hire somebody. Not having a housecleaner is considered strange in my neighborhood. Or maybe it's just that I'm that bad at it!

I'm with you, WiseOne. I'm always amazed when cash-strapped relatives or friends refer to their housecleaner or gardener. Even when I worked long hours in the city, I cringed at the thought of hiring somebody to do something I could do myself.

YouTube has been such a great resource for getting things done. I doubt a week goes by that I'm not consulting a YouTube video for instructions on how to repair or maintain something. However, I often wish that the videos on mechanical things were more geared to the novice. Maybe there's an opportunity here!

God help the miliennials, whose only apparent skill is to point and click. At least I know that as long as my arthritic hands can turn a screw, I''ll be employable.

[WiseOne]

Go Maddy!! Perversely, I like being able to fix/clean things myself. It's very different work from what I do for pay, and I actually find it refreshing - even more so than usual methods of unwinding like watching TV. I go to Youtube videos all the time. Another great resource is ifixit.com.

I share your sentiment about hiring help, but I did break down to the extent of buying a Roomba. It's a lovely gift to yourself; maybe you can score one off Craigslist? I got the 860 which has the new easy-to-clean rollers and doesn't have wireless. You can't run the things unsupervised anyway (e.g. Roomba + cat vomit = disaster). Nevertheless, it converted vacuuming from onerous weekend chore to easy weeknight job, and it pushed me to keep the place tidier and reduce clutter. As did the clothes moth infestation, but that's another story :-).

[bedraggled]

Am I left on the side of the road? I feel like the parent with the virus protection problem mixed with files not stored on Word or spreadsheet not saved on Excel.

I want to transfer 5 DVD-Rs to both new DVD-Rs and another means (thumb drive?) to put the 1700 minutes of yoga stretching classes on the Apple hard drive.

Are the various media devices fragile these days? The disc copier (burner?) may not read my original/ master discs. (That's when I tried to load disc 1 onto the hard drive). The burner may have died.

Do DVD players get old? My disc 1 copy (not the original) stopped frequently but Casablanca and other store-bought DVDs are OK. So, it seems to be my home-brewed DVDs cause the problem- or am I wrong? The disc tray kept opening and closing for ten minutes after I extracted the offending disc, until I shut the player off. I don't want to risk the masters to my attempts as I don't trust my abilities here.

Now, there are copying services available, if I wish to mail the master DVD-Rs for reproduction. Is the age of a local shop providing copying services gone?

Finally, during my 3 years as a member of this forum, I find many tech savvy people reside here. I'd be happy to pay to get the 5 DVD-Rs transferred to new media. If you folks think you have insights into my dead end, thanks in advance. The content of the DVD-Rs is quite difficult or impossible to replace.

[ochotona]

Cloud storage is the way to go. Let the Cloud provider worry about continuity and survivability of physical media. And I would say MULTIPLE Cloud providers. All of my photos go to Flickr, Dropbox, Google, and Facebook (those I post). But I still I have them on a PC, and on a removable hard drive in my safe.

[dualstow]

pug's advice is good.
I still burn things to disc (blu-ray, using Apple's built-in software called Burn), but mainly because I have all these blanks collecting dust.
Everything gets old. Everything wears out. But things with moving parts often wear out faster. Put those 1's and 0's on a hard drive or two.

[Xan]

Recordable media like DVD-Rs will always (well, almost) have a shorter lifespan than store-bought.

DVDs (or CDs or whatever) which are mass-produced are pressed, that is, there's a physical hole for a 1 as opposed to a 0 (or it's the other way around, I forget). With recordable media, it's a dark spot that simulates a hole. Eventually the ink fades.

[Maddy]

Recordable media like DVD-Rs will always (well, almost) have a shorter lifespan than store-bought.

DVDs (or CDs or whatever) which are mass-produced are pressed, that is, there's a physical hole for a 1 as opposed to a 0 (or it's the other way around, I forget). With recordable media, it's a dark spot that simulates a hole. Eventually the ink fades.

As long as the old fogies are being indulged:
For backing up files, how reliable is a thumb drive? Is an external hard drive (someone mentioned a "Passport") any better?

[Xan]

In general, I'm pretty high on the reliability of USB flash drives, if it's enough capacity for you. I'm actually pretty low on using a traditional hard disk (as opposed to a solid-state disk), because they introduce an entire class of potential mechanical problems.

I would also strongly recommend off-site-ness as a key component of your backup strategy. Maybe have a couple of USB flash drives, encrypted, and cycle them through a safe deposit box. Encrypt your files and put them on the cloud every so often. (Make sure it's good encryption.)

[Libertarian666]

In general, I'm pretty high on the reliability of USB flash drives, if it's enough capacity for you. I'm actually pretty low on using a traditional hard disk (as opposed to a solid-state disk), because they introduce an entire class of potential mechanical problems.

I would also strongly recommend off-site-ness as a key component of your backup strategy. Maybe have a couple of USB flash drives, encrypted, and cycle them through a safe deposit box. Encrypt your files and put them on the cloud every so often. (Make sure it's good encryption.)

Copies kept at home should be in a fire safe rated for media preservation.