Old People and Technology

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Doesn't excuse the Americanisms.

I live with an American. I don't even know the difference anymore, dude.

[Cardinal Richelieu]

1 hour ago, Sergeant Wilson said:

It's a good job we could work tanks and machine guns or you'd all be speaking German.

Kuntz

FTFY

[BFTD]

Mixu, you really need to pose as a scammer yourself and get the life savings off your old man before @Dindeleux does.

Edited April 14, 2019 by BigFatTabbyDave
Mixi? Mixu.

[welshbairn]

46 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

My dad is starting to worry me as he is turning into one of those folk you see in the news that get their life savings stolen by some huck on the phone. I've said previously he let some scammer get remote control of his PC necessitating me doing formats and OS reinstallation, of course he was a bit sheepish about this and kept trying to put me off coming to fix it despite me explaining that whoever he gave access to probably has mine and everyone else's email addresses from his address book and will be brute forcing them all now. Then after me sorting that and explaining he can't use his pet's name with a 1 on the end as a password (much harrumphing), he shows me some email from a relative asking for photos of amazon gift cards with the pin visible, which is obviously just this same scammer spoofing recognisable contacts and he's still thinking he should buy the gift cards?!?!

It's getting really hard to keep telling him to put the phone down on these guys (it's rude to), get a password manager (will forget these long passwords, needs to use names) and to phone up any friends or relatives making weird requests in emails to double check it's real (doesn't want to bother them).

I've trained my Mother to say to any caller she doesn't know to send a letter, she doesn't do stuff over the phone. Works quite well. Thankfully she can't be arsed with emails. Maybe he should change his email address.  For non money related passwords I just use a random word or two inbetween the first and last letter of the website, keeping to the same random word or two so it's easy to remember. I'm more careful with banking or financial stuff though. Never had a problem. Assume you have him on the TPS thing, cuts down the number of cold calls but doesn't eliminate them. I've considered full call blocking from unknown numbers but decided that I or someone else in the family might need to phone from a borrowed phone in an emergency so it's not worth it. An annoying thing is that scammers are now able to fake that they're calling from an Inverness number, which limits another blocking filter.

Edited April 14, 2019 by welshbairn

[tamthebam]

4 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

A lot of very unfair posts here painting all old people with the same brush. It's ageist and patronising.

Many older people are very familiar with the latest tech 

I'll teach thae basturts doon the bools club no to elect me as Match Secretary...

[senorsoupe]

4 hours ago, G_Man1985 said:

My dad is 66 and he gets my mum to text me as he dosnt know how to.
Is getting better with the tv and internet on computer he still struggles with.
He will never change :-(

My dad is 70, he does not text despite having acquired a Smartphone.  My mum has an old style flip phone and texts, rarely and poorly.  

Probably the most difficult older person to deal with technology wise is my Italian father in law.  He's pushing 70 and somehow keeps acquiring technology like a google home mini.  His solution of just shouting at it until it works doesn't help despite us having set it up for him multiple times.  I also had to clean up his computer a million times, he seems to click accept any time a website asks to be allowed notifications in google chrome so I constantly have to un-do that

[welshbairn]

15 minutes ago, senorsoupe said:

My dad is 70, he does not text despite having acquired a Smartphone.  My mum has an old style flip phone and texts, rarely and poorly.  

Probably the most difficult older person to deal with technology wise is my Italian father in law.  He's pushing 70 and somehow keeps acquiring technology like a google home mini.  His solution of just shouting at it until it works doesn't help despite us having set it up for him multiple times.  I also had to clean up his computer a million times, he seems to click accept any time a website asks to be allowed notifications in google chrome so I constantly have to un-do that

Tbf to your Dad that's a very annoying new thing, asking permission for cookies and then notifications in separate pop ups. for every fucking website. I just do automatic yes for the first and no for the latter, you'd think there would be an option to automate that on Chrome with a short series of questions.

[The_Kincardine]

7 hours ago, Cardinal Richelieu said:

When looking at her tablet, she's got the hang of swiping to unlock it or to scroll through pictures. Quite why she needs to it with such gusto that she looks like she's conducting the London Philharmonic is beyond me however. 

I get similar laughs from my teenagers when I hold my phone at about a foot away from my eyes to make it readable through my varifocals and stab at each (virtual) key as I (slowly) send a text.  'Technology' has certainly regressed since the Blackberry days when phones had a proper keyboard

However, I think it's reprehensible the way you're tradusing your aunt.  You're posting on a board wherein a significant minority of posters have a very poor grasp of the most fundamental of human technologies -  language and sums - and in which you're certainly culpable.

I hope Canadian auntie squanders your inheritance on ching and gigolos...

[Kuro]

7 hours ago, Hedgecutter said:

One generally becomes competent in touchpad typing before using it to comment on old people in the Old People and Technology thread.

One generally blows me.

[Hedgecutter]

1 hour ago, senorsoupe said:

I also had to clean up his computer a million times

Sounds like setting up a porn filter would save you a bit of work there. 

[Cardinal Richelieu]

6 hours ago, The_Kincardine said:

I get similar laughs from my teenagers when I hold my phone at about a foot away from my eyes to make it readable through my varifocals and stab at each (virtual) key as I (slowly) send a text.  'Technology' has certainly regressed since the Blackberry days when phones had a proper keyboard

However, I think it's reprehensible the way you're tradusing your aunt.  You're posting on a board wherein a significant minority of posters have a very poor grasp of the most fundamental of human technologies -  language and sums - and in which you're certainly culpable.

I hope Canadian auntie squanders your inheritance on ching and gigolos...

Hmmm. If you're going to use clever words old timer, you might want to consider spelling them correctly

My auntie won $1m on the Canadian national lottery nearly 40 years ago. Sadly, it's all gone. She had to tap me the other day to get her daily ching / gigolo fix. 

Edited April 15, 2019 by Cardinal Richelieu

[Cardinal Richelieu]

That's my aunt just texted to ask me not to text her between the hours of 10pm and 8am (Canadian time) cos she can't figure out how to put her phone on silent. I could of course tell her how to do it, but that would mean texting her out of hours. 

Edited April 22, 2019 by Cardinal Richelieu

[Busta Nut]

The week my maw gets a new phone is honestly the worst week of the last 24 month period. fucking torture trying to get her to do simple things she has done for years cos the icon has moved page.

[Bobby Skidmarks]

I used to pay for my landline for the sole purpose that my Gran couldn't work her mobile. No one else ever called me on it apart from her on Sundays to tell me how much of a cow her neighbour was. 

She pegged it about four years ago and I still have the landline phone in the back of the cupboard. Always makes me laugh when I come across it. 

Ten pound a month for years to listen to how Jean used to let herself into her house for a chat when she was trying to watch TV. 

[Dindeleux]

On 4/14/2019 at 11:06, Cardinal Richelieu said:

My dear dotty Canadian aunt has many skills, but using a computer isn't one of them. To be fair, she manages okay for a woman in her mid 70s and she can do a great many things in life that I wouldn't have a clue about. But this thread is about older people who struggle with the modern world. I could probably write a book about my aunt's tribulations with computers and the Internet but off the top of my head:

• She is forever forgetting her Skype login details, so she just signs up for a new account each time. Despite having a fairly unique name and living in a small town, a cursory search for her in Skype reveals 8 people with her name and town  - all accounts she's created in the last decade or so.
• More infuriating than anything, but any time she's browsing the net and wants to go to a different site, she closes Chrome and reopens it. There's no point in even explaining how to use browser tabs. 
• On visiting me in Scotland, she asked if she could check her email. No probs ... so she takes my  laptop, opens Gmail, then wonders why she's looking at a bunch of emails not addressed to her. I explain that she needs to log in her with her own email address and password. "Well how can I be expected to know that?" came the reply.
• I bought her a Chromecast a few years ago and set it up for her, so she didn't have to watch Netflix on her shitty tablet. She was delighted with it, and I made sure that before I left, she was able to watch Youtube / Netflix on her TV without any involvement from me. Went back the next year and she's back to using the tablet. "Why aren't you watching it on your big telly?" "Well how on earth would you do that?" Sigh. 
• She has a smart-phone, and is quite adept at using Whatsapp. However, she only uses it when she's connected to the Wifi. Indeed, she managed to buy a mobile phone contract with ZERO data, so the first time she ever used data (when I was showing her she could use Google maps to find her way about) she got an additional charge (not a fortune, maybe $10). She was outraged and phoned the mobile phone company and demanded this doesn't happen again. So now she pays $2.50 per month to NOT be able to use mobile data. She is literally choosing to pay to not use a service she'd find useful. 

Why do you know so much about your aunt? 

[Dindeleux]

On 4/14/2019 at 11:33, Cardinal Richelieu said:

she quips about spending my inheritance.

 

Worked it out.

[DA Baracus]

53 minutes ago, Dindeleux said:

Why do you know so much about your aunt? 

Snow/Targaryen situation IMO

[Tony Ferrino]

Which country invented the stairlift?  Guess she/he is foreign or I’d have seen it  on a stamp before.

 

[lichtgilphead]

23 minutes ago, Tony Ferrino said:

Which country invented the stairlift?  Guess she/he is foreign or I’d have seen it  on a stamp before.

 

England.

King Henry VIII was so fat he couldn't climb stairs.

Yet another reason to revere a family of inbred idiots.

Quote

King Henry VIII and the Stairlift
Dr David Starkey, the famous historian, discovered amongst a list of the King’s possessions that King Henry VIII had installed a stairlift in the form of “a chair…that goeth up and down” to transport the King up the 20ft staircase at Whitehall Palace. Henry VIII was known to be obese but he also had difficulty getting about because of a jousting accident he had aged 45.

Dr Starkey believes that this first stairlift would have used a block and tackle system with servants using ropes to lift the monarch and his royal stairlift up and down the magnificent staircase.

Magnificent. What a man. Born to reign over us.

[tamthebam]

NASA studied Henry VIII's armour when designing Space suits:

https://www.historyextra.com/period/did-nasa-really-pick-the-brains-of-the-tower-of-london-armoury-when-designing-the-first-space-suits/

unfortunately Neil Armstrong didn't land on the moon with a massive codpiece ~"that's one small step for man, but a bloody great staunner for mankind.."