sneak @sneak@sneak.berlin

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.

You open up a Commodore 64, and the box says "welcome to the world of friendly computing."

You turn on a modern PC, and it immediately threatens your data unless you agree to save your data to *their* cloud service.

That right there is why we talk about vintage computers. Folks need to be reminded of what's possible.

#Commodore64 #VintageComputing