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@haveyoutriedrebootingit
I think the thing I hate most about my job is when I know GODDAMN GOOD AND WELL that I'm talking to the right person, and the problem is that HR transposed a couple of numbers when they were entering her birthdate, but I'm not allowed to tell them what the system has.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I should be allowed to give out that kind of information. That would be a security nightmare. I'm saying it sucks.
"I'm going to need to confirm your ID. Do you know your employee ID number? It should start with an E... yes. Okay, now I need your birthday. Mmm-hmm. And the blood type of your maternal grandfather's second dog?"
On the one hand, I feel very bad that I was unable to help you. I understand that you are quite literally 91 goddamn years old, and believe me, I get it. And I do appreciate that, despite your frustration, you didn't take it out on me. MAN, do I appreciate that, although it just makes me feel worse about this.
On the other hand, even if there weren't a message when you call saying "Please have this information to verify your identity," even if it weren't federal law, you kinda should have seen that coming.
btw if someone claims you have to contact them for an unauthorized transaction to get a refund just know its a scam because if they knew it was unauthorized they wouldve blocked the charge
advice for old people as well as new adults
they will usually say its unauthorized to scare you into clicking a link, basically
like in real life sometimes your credit card company will block transactions you actually made because they thought it was an unusual purchase
When in doubt, call your Credit Card Company. They will be genuinely surprised that someone had the brains to check before clicking the link.
This, honestly, has implications far beyond the scope of this blog, but it also applies here:
There is a world of difference between "I wasn't informed" and "I wasn't listening," "the information was made available to me, but I didn't bother to engage with it," or "you told me but I decided to ignore you."
Here, specifically, "I did not check my email," "I didn't read the email," or even "I didn't read the instructions" are not the same as "nobody told me that."
The real problem, of course, is that when I take these calls, I inevitably have juuuuuuust enough sympathy for how much the caller has fucked themselves to not scream at them.
Friendly neighborhood tech support cryptid here with today's advice:
Do not use your school or work email to sign up for things, unless they are specifically school or work related.
This is not a "they are watching you" thing, although with your work email there's an element of that, it's a "you might not have access to this email later" thing.
Your best bet is to open two gmail (or any other long-standing free email) accounts. One, you use to sign up for stuff. The other you use to talk to people. You may occasionally use the first to talk to companies, but it's going to fill up with spam soooo goddamn fast-- even just from the people you signed up for.
But the point is that this email address will be available if you drop out/quit, get kicked out/fired, or graduate. Yes, I know a lot of colleges give free email for life to alumni. That can change, especially as most of those colleges haven't thought about the server/storage costs of such a promise in perpetuity. If you do have such an email, you'll want to sign into it regularly, if only too see if the school has sent you a notice explaining what you need to do to keep this email, and what date you need to do it by, and how apathetic they're going to be if you didn't read it and lost the email.
You can't reset the password for an email you can't access, so don't provide an email that can be taken away from you with little or no notice. (When I got laid off from my job at a fortune 500 company, I had twenty minutes before they shut off my email.)
I would say 5% of the calls I take are people who desperately need access to an email that no longer exists, because they signed up for something important with it, and now they can't reset their password.
(And don't use your phone number if someone else is paying for the phone. Maaaaybe if it's your parents, and you're really cool with them, and you know they're going to let you take the number if you get your own plan.)
#do not store important OC documents on your school account#don't use that email for shit like google drive
Yeah, this too.
I'm going to reblog this every time I take a call where I have to explain to someone that their email no longer exists, causing them to complain that they need it to access something vitally important.
Actually, I'm not, because then my blog would mostly be this post.
But while we're on the subject-- if you do have a school email that you still use after leaving or graduating, you need to check it regularly and read any goddamn emails from the school. I mean, you can skip "Alumni Weekend 2026" but "Important news regarding your hardknocks.edu email account" might actually contain important news about your email account. Like, the fact that if you don't take certain steps you will lose it.
Hoo BOY.
I'm Bulgarian, same as Prof. Popova here. My country was among the least affected by the fallout in the Eastern Bloc but still affected severely enough for us born after the disaster to have to be given mandatory iodine pills at school in the late 90s/early 00s to not "get goiter" (to expel any residual iodine 131, the radioactive isotope released in the disaster).
So my mother told me that not only did the communist top brass (those who didn't flee to western Europe, that is) get food imported FROM HALFWAY ACROSS THE SOVIET UNION, from fucking KAZAKHSTAN, but also that normal people were left completely in the dark to eat local irradiated produce, oh, and the annual May 1st rally? It took place while rain was falling. Radioactive fucking rain.
The communist authorities left the proles to get exposed to radiation while they took all measures to protect themselves. But the kicker? NO ONE KNEW A THING until much later. Rumors, maybe. But there was a complete media blackout. The communist governments kept mum about it.
My mother, who was a student in one of Kyiv's universities, was forced to attend that May 1 parade in Kyiv. It was mandatory attendance under the threat of being expelled.
However, all the foreign students except for the East German ones left the university (and the country) very quickly.
Oh, and in the following weeks, her university's dormitory had the rule where one of the people living in each room had to stay in the room "on duty" and wash the floor every couple of hours. So in practice, you'd wash the floor by hand with a wet rug, then hang that rug outside the window to dry in the air, and then use the same rug to wash the floor again. Which, should any particles by on it, would have only helped spread them. That's basically all the precautions there were.
And I'm not even going into detail on events like the people in Prypyat, actually going out to watch the sight of the plant burning, because the glow of it looked pretty, having no idea of any danger to them whatsoever... because people knowing about the real dangers would cause panic, and we can't lose face like that, we're a utopia. Not to mention the cleanup....
Not to mention the USSR only took the situation seriously when SWEDEN alerted the rest of Europe.
We had a ban on drinking milk in Norway for a couple of years after the disaster (because the cows would eat contaminated grass (in Norway, pretty damn far away from Chornobyl)).
I'm Polish- we were not part of the USSR, but we were a satellite state and behind the Iron Curtain.
My mother was in the UK when the accident in Chornobyl happened. She tried calling home as soon as the news broke in Europe, got through, tried to warn dad to keep me indoors.
"But it's been so lovely outside all week, we just got back from a walk in the park!"
The phone line got cut off as soon as she started giving more details. Something bad and dangerous happing in our great ally and friend the USSR? Absolutely not, only an enemy of communism would say that.
The government knew because scientists detected that an explosion had happened somewhere- they even initially tried to do something about it and gave schoolchildren Lugol's Iodine to help protect them from the radiation, but nothing else was done and information about the scale of the disaster was suppressed. The narrative was "Don't worry, it's not a big deal, everything is fine." Anyway, my doctor just upped my dose of thyroid medication. :)
Cold hard facts ain't propaganda, James.
Look, I understand. You aren't familiar with technology. You're old, and you've been able to avoid using two-factor authentication until now.
But here's the thing. When I tell you to "Go to the Google Play Store and download the Duo Mobile App", and you don't know what I mean, you need to tell me that. Because when you just say "I'm not finding Duo Mobile", I'm not going to know that you are looking at your phone's home screen.
@in-the-drowning-deep That might possibly have helped in this case, but I've had multiple cases where I do that, and they make noises like "uh-huh" and "got it", and then, when it's all done, it turns out that no, they didn't got it, they got confused at step two.
It's still better than when the caller thinks he knows what I'm telling him, gets ahead of me, and gets lost... and because he stopped listening he genuinely doesn't realize that he's on an entirely different screen, he doesn't give me that information.
I've been doing tech support since the mid-90s. I am very much appreciative of the fact that now, when I'm dealing with a caller who's too old, too obstinate, or just too dumb for this shit, I can actually remote into their computers. (Although this is sometimes a hassle, despite the fact that the instructions are on the screen in front of them.)
Sadly, this doesn't work on phones.
Look, I understand. You aren't familiar with technology. You're old, and you've been able to avoid using two-factor authentication until now.
But here's the thing. When I tell you to "Go to the Google Play Store and download the Duo Mobile App", and you don't know what I mean, you need to tell me that. Because when you just say "I'm not finding Duo Mobile", I'm not going to know that you are looking at your phone's home screen.
Okay, let's get this straight. You've called me because you're having problems logging in with your two-factor hardware token.
You:
do not have your credentials to verify your identity
do not have the token handy
have not powered on your computer
have not powered on your MODEM
Yes, I get it, you're very old. But damn.
i think we should bring this back (with some amendments ofc) if we ever needed an "internet etiquette" for the younger generations, now is the moment to remind them. purity culture kills fandom
as well as the three laws of fandom:
Don't Like, Don't Read (DL;DR), Your Kink is not My Kink And That's OK (YKINMKATO) and Ship and Let Ship
📣 Purity culture kills fandom! 📣
NO ONE LIVING hasn't been squicked out by something. There's over 7 billion of us, my delights and disgusts aren't universal. So I move on. Don't like the ship? Move on. Don't like____? Move on.
I am not an exception. Neither are you. I don't like it I move on and shut my gob about it because everyone everywhere is squicked out by something and they need to put the thing down and just…motor.
This but also:
Frames this entire post and hangs it over the fireplace.
This reminds me of several times when I saw what was obviously meant to be a "tee hee, so squicky!" pairing suggestion and I stared off into space for a bit and then went and wrote the damn thing.
When computers get down to business...
Maxell Floppy Disks, 1986
As someone who was using Floppy Disks in 1986, seeing them out of their sleeves and just lying on a table. Like... the kind of table that attracts dust like a magnet.
There's a joke about robots wanting an excuse to get their heads cleaned, but it's not that funny and a significant portion of tumblr won't know what I'm talking about.
that's the equivalent of about 10k$ today
The only part of that computer that has any survival into the modern age is the RS-232C port.
I had almost forgotten about the parallel port; I never understood why printers needed a special port.
Me when I contact IT and tell them yes I restarted and followed any instructions I could but computer still angry and IT says they are escalating this because it is an actual issue: I am getting a good grade in service desk ticket. Something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.
Link to post
Listen, the number of calls I have gotten that go like this:
Caller: I'm getting this error message that says [this] went wrong and I should [do that].
Kettle: Did you [do that]?
Caller: No... I wasn't sure what to do.
Kettle: [Do that].
Caller: It worked! You're a genius.
9 Legacy Technologies We Want to Kill Maximum PC - December 2009
16 years later and they're all gone (from most computers) except for scroll lock
The text based BIOS worked. That's the answer to "why."
And speaking from a tech support perspective, I would much rather have to tell someone "okay, press the down arrow three times until this option is highlighted" rather than "okay, find this and click it" because users are very much capable of not seeing what's in a gui.
BIOS doesn't need to be pretty. It SHOULD be stark and a little intimidating to folks who've never worked on a text terminal. The kind of user that needs a GUI to function is exactly the kind of user that needs to stay the fluffy fuck out of the BIOS.
(Not to mention that adding a GUI gives your code about a billion more Points of Failure.)
As for PS/2-- it's there so you still have an option in case something goes wrong with the USB Drivers. (Also, a lot of those PS/2 keyboards from the 90s are still around, because they still work as both a peripheral and a +2 melee weapon.)
Scroll Lock, Pause, and PrtScr, on the other hand, are relics from an age that was bygone when firewire was new. I have been using computers since the mid 1980s, and I have never had a need for the first two. Not once. And while PrtScr actually has functionality-- in windows it takes a screenshot and puts it in your clipboard (and Alt+PrtScr takes a screenshot of just the selected window)-- there are other tools available that do the job without requiring a dedicated key.
Love the implication that AI is profitable and becoming more so.
Unfortunately, by Capitalist Math, it is.
For example, Microsoft has inserted AI into Windows and Office. Those products are profitable. Therefore, AI is profitable. It doesn't matter that nobody wants it, nobody needs it, and it doesn't really work as advertised, because Microsoft can point to it and say "Look, investors, AI is already making money."
Office365 now costs more, because of AI tools. Again, nobody wants the tools, but they want OFFICE, so they will end up paying for it.
(Note: Existing subscribers can 'downgrade' to a non-AI package. If you subscribe to Office365 already, look into it. Or better yet, get LibreOffice, which is free.)
Of course, Microsoft is playing a very dangerous game. Their whole thing is that they have set themselves up as THE desktop operating system and THE Office suite. And they've held that position because they are too big to compete against-- switching to Linux has historically been a huge trade-off in terms of available software and the learning curve, and most people are completely unaware of LibreOffice.
Problem is, they fucked up with Windows 11. They told a huge chunk of Windows 10 users that if they want to continue using Windows, they have to buy new computers. (There actually is a way to extend support for 10, but they're not advertising it-- instead they're shouting "If you're running Windows 10, you are vulnerable to attacks".) And those people were perfectly happy with their computers. Hell, some of them can't afford to upgrade. Add in the fact that a lot of people don't want AI, and they're literally sending customers to their competition.
I'm going to be wildly amused if this ends up being the end of Microsoft.
Windows 11 made a Linux user out of me, installed it on a laptop and planning to put it on the desktop as soon as I can get certain files backed up. It's a lot easier than a lot of people think to setup, just a quick youtube tutorial will get you through setup and from there most things are optional customization. As for compatibility tools like Wine help hugely with that and- oh god... The Linux users... got me... Help... Did I mention all the freedom of customization and ability to avoid AI built into your OS?
And this is SUCH a bad time for Windows to be pulling this shit, because Linux--as a desktop platform-- is finally more or less ready for prime time.
Friendly neighborhood tech support cryptid here with today's advice:
Do not use your school or work email to sign up for things, unless they are specifically school or work related.
This is not a "they are watching you" thing, although with your work email there's an element of that, it's a "you might not have access to this email later" thing.
Your best bet is to open two gmail (or any other long-standing free email) accounts. One, you use to sign up for stuff. The other you use to talk to people. You may occasionally use the first to talk to companies, but it's going to fill up with spam soooo goddamn fast-- even just from the people you signed up for.
But the point is that this email address will be available if you drop out/quit, get kicked out/fired, or graduate. Yes, I know a lot of colleges give free email for life to alumni. That can change, especially as most of those colleges haven't thought about the server/storage costs of such a promise in perpetuity. If you do have such an email, you'll want to sign into it regularly, if only too see if the school has sent you a notice explaining what you need to do to keep this email, and what date you need to do it by, and how apathetic they're going to be if you didn't read it and lost the email.
You can't reset the password for an email you can't access, so don't provide an email that can be taken away from you with little or no notice. (When I got laid off from my job at a fortune 500 company, I had twenty minutes before they shut off my email.)
I would say 5% of the calls I take are people who desperately need access to an email that no longer exists, because they signed up for something important with it, and now they can't reset their password.
(And don't use your phone number if someone else is paying for the phone. Maaaaybe if it's your parents, and you're really cool with them, and you know they're going to let you take the number if you get your own plan.)
#do not store important OC documents on your school account#don't use that email for shit like google drive
Yeah, this too.
I'm going to reblog this every time I take a call where I have to explain to someone that their email no longer exists, causing them to complain that they need it to access something vitally important.
The alumni email address issue is not a far future thing — I finished an advanced degree and the .alumni.edu addresses were gone within 4 or 5 years.
Also, while I'm thinking about it... if you are allowed to keep your email address after you graduate, make sure that you check it regularly.
With my school, one of the requirements is that you not only check it at least once a year, you must do so through the web interface.
Personal comment: signing up for AO3!!!!! (do you really want your school or work to see this??? And: what happens when the email is gone, and you forgot your password? )
Don't trust your alumni "Lifetime" address will still be there. Ohio State University (one of my alma maters) decided providing their "Lifetime" email address was too hard and ditched the program.
Consider getting your own domain. If you're willing to spend ~$100 a year, you can have email service host your own address/
(Cost details: I found basic plans per month: Fastmail $6, Google $7, Microsoft $9.29. The mail providers usually provide a way to register a domain through them, usually $20 a year for your domain. Just a quick survey, double check prices and services. I've been using Fastmail for years -- they answer me when I ask for support.)
The one catch with having your own domain is that an inconveniently timed burst of poverty can cause you to lose it forever. That being said... I have my own domain, so.... it's not that big a risk.
As for the lifetime emails... I'm actually going to say a word in the defense of these universities. It's not hard, per se, it's expensive. And it really doesn't help when a lot of people just don't check their email, or don't keep their mailboxes clean, because now they're paying for a zillion terabytes of stored spam, phishing scams, and newsletters that are never going to be read. Also, for the backups of the same. Not to mention that cluttered inboxes actually reduce the performance of the server for everyone. And when you're adding thousands of alumni every year? The problem keeps getting larger.
And any change of policy about how that email is handled is going to create problems, because the only way they've got to notify them of the change in policy is by sending an email... to the mailboxes that they only check when they need to reset a password.
Now, if you ask me, they never should have claimed they were going to offer lifetime email to begin with-- this was the most predictable problem in the history of IT. (Particularly since the "we provide lifetime email" thing started waaaaaay after email became the garbage fire that it is.) It's a classic case of IT decisions being made by people who don't actually understand IT.
