I have heard from friend that teach in higher end that students are struggling more and more with getting information from text. It seems those students have now found there way into the work force.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied.
(go.theregister.com)
bruh i know people in their 40s making 6 figures that couldn’t read an error message if it would save ten generations of their family.
Yeah, one of my most often stated phrases at work is “you can’t make people read.”
Error pops up, explaining exactly what the issue is and how to fix it? Oh god, let me call IT to see what I need to do. Yeah, you can’t make people read.
Some piece of equipment or machinery has changed in some meaningful way? Management is quick to go “just hang a sign on it, letting people know the new process.” Nope, you can’t make people read. People will physically move the sign to the side, try to use the machine like they previously did, and get surprised when it doesn’t work as expected.
Some area is unsafe due to work happening overhead? “Oh just hang signs on the doors, telling people not to come in.” No, you can’t make people read; I have seen people push their way past physical barriers with big “do not enter” signs, just to ask if we’re open. How about we lock the doors, and disable the keyways on all the doors (except one, where we have physical barriers to entry) until the work is completed?
The floor is freshly painted? People will walk past six different “do not enter - wet paint” signs and physically push past stanchions or barriers, and then act surprised when their shoes stick to the floor.
Was going to say, very much seems like the opposite of a generational problem. Seems more like everything we'd vaguely define as 'the tech industry' has become big enough that it's workforce now includes the individuals who wouldn't have been considered competent 10 years ago.
>>> students are struggling more and more with getting information from text
>>> found there way
>> people [...] that
> it's workforce
The question is whether this running gag is intentional.
One of my old coworkers from a place I no longer work would come to me for every exception his code threw. Being generous, I understand his intentions, he was curious if they were known problems or things to avoid. That said, every time I asked him what line of code it happened on or if he'd searched online about it the answer was no. I was probably ~25 at the time and had a bachelor's degree. He was definitely at least 50 and had a PhD.
Savage
But video is so damn annoying. If you wanna copy-paste something from the video, you're fucked unless you pause and type each character by hand. I don't get it.
But then again I'm not a zoomer.
But video is so damn annoying.
The number of times I've all but rage-quit a 'tutorial' which is simply an open mic with 'room' noises and breathing over a video of someone typing things into a screen which is then captured on iPhone, is far too high.
It could be a series of documented steps with reasoning, interspersed with screenshots (themselves in a 'spoiler'-style show/hide setup), and it would then take up 1/1000th the space, require 1/100th the time, and demonstrate the technique in a way I could go over a few times. The typing is interminably slow, watching for someone who says nothing but mouse-overs (and selects) text as a way of communication is frustrating, and the entire thing is a barrier to comprehension. Is it ADHD that makes it far, far preferable to just get a page I can review and pore over and repeat a few times, or is it just a learning style that isn't passive?
Is it ADHD that makes it far, far preferable to just get a page I can review and pore over and repeat a few times, or is it just a learning style that isn’t passive?
Probably the learning style. I don't have ADHD, but I can't tolerate someone slowly explaining something over a 10 mins video. I know specifically what I need information about, so I need to be in control of the experience. A text tutorial I can skim until I get to the relevant part, but videos usually feel like they're wasting my time. The only time I prefer videos over text is for DIY instructions where the physical actions are better conveyed in motion.
(Feels related to that I very rarely watch TV or films, and even when I do, I get antsy after half hour of just sitting around staring out of my face. So I tend to watch movies in half-hour sessions, which I often can't be bothered to pick up again lol, and leave them unfinished for years 🙈 In a nutshell I much prefer video games as a hobby :D)
I have a handy little app on macOS called TextSniper that takes a screenshot of a selected area, then runs OCR on that screenshot and puts the text on the clipboard. It’s perhaps the most useful $10 I’ve ever spent and I’m frankly surprised this doesn’t exist on other systems. A year or two after this was released Apple started letting people copy text directly out of images, so they might do the usual Apple thing of killing it by directly adding it to the OS. There might be something like this on Linux by now but I haven’t heard of it on Windows.
It’s perhaps the most useful $10 I’ve ever spent and I’m frankly surprised this doesn’t exist on other systems
Microsoft powertoys has this feature for free
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor
I can also do it on my android phone
I can also do that on my MacBook.
(This comment is not as facetious as it seems. I knew you could copy text from images, but I just tried to test some limitations, and it’s a weirdly comprehensive feature - I can copy text from photos and/or videos in the screenshots app, the Preview app, the Photos app, QuickTime, and even from YouTube videos in Safari (but not Firefox, interestingly enough) - assuming that means it’s an OS-level thing. Quick search says this rolled out in 2021.)
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The Power Toys link says it’s based on Joe Finney’s Text Grab, and at the bottom of its GitHub page it links to the TextSniper app as the Mac version, with an affiliate link. I’m guessing that means the Mac app was inspired by the Windows program.
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This has been built in to MacOS for a little while now though?
I think on macOS and iOS it only works in actual image files, but this tool predates that by a year or two. This does the same thing but doesn’t require an image file; you just press the shortcut on your keyboard, draw a box over whatever’s on your screen that you want, and the text in the box goes on your clipboard. I think it’s effectively taking a screenshot but not saving it to disk, so you don’t have to clean those up later.
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got to submit those bugreports as tiktok dances
Problem starts earlier in life. I know someone who is a teacher in lower school. Ask the kids to make a presentation and literally in 90 seconds you will have a PowerPoint with 15 slides full of pictures and embedded video. Ask them to write one slide of text and they'll struggle to put three sentences together.
Reason is pretty simple, a lot of the parents never read to their kids. They grew up on iPads. Video is the medium they are accustomed to. And so they struggle with written information.
The video is 15 minutes long and at the four-second mark flashes a screenshot from Zoolander, in which the protagonist unveils the "Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good."
It also features a punchy techno backing track while wasting the reviewer's time with approximately 14 minutes of inactivity.
Should have had a single tone growing in volume and intensity
The best would be to have recorded audio that slowly goes down in volume, with the tone at full blast at the end
Should have been an AI generated voice narrating the issue showing the words on the screen with Minecraft gameplay as background.
Idiocracy is now
Honestly, I would encourage any researcher who gets a brush-off response like this as a response to a real and meaningful security report to lean even harder into malicious compliance. Simply post it to TikTok or Instagram or whatever - and I am intentionally picking the pervasive platforms that I despise and find problematic, simply because they have the largest user bases. If it’s “not a problem”, they shouldn’t mind if how-to videos explaining how to elicit the “not problematic” behavior start going viral.
That wouldn't get you paid though.
They’re not going to pay you if they classify it as “not a problem”. And you get what you pay for.
A definite opportunity for a Loops video
Using stupid programs, doing stupid bugreporting.
Leave Microsoft alone. Let it rot with Tesla, Nintendo, 3dfx, NSDAP and other shitty organizations.
3dfx, haven't heard of them for a long time, good old voodoo card
If you have a Voodoo card laying around, it might be worth some money. They were used in some coin-op arcade games.
Is there a video version of this article?
The most likely explanation for requesting a video is to weed out low quality AI-generated "vulnerability" submissions that hallucinate code that doesn't compile or APIs that don't exist. In that context a 1 minute video showing that the report is viable is not much to ask for.
I can understand if the reporter is new, or unknown, maybe submitting a lot of videos at once. The guy from the article is a vulnerability expert that's been working in that role at Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute's CERT Coordination Center since 2004. I think he gets a pass on the "submitting fake reports for internet clout" front.
The bullshit managers that automate all systems are to blame
Maybe in some cases. But I've been requested by Google support to provide a video for a very simple and clear issue we were having. We have a contract with them and we personally brought up the issue to a Google employee during a call. There was no concern of AI generated bullshit, but they still wouldn't respond without a video. So maybe there's more to this trend than what you're theorizing.
Have you considered that you may be a hallucinating AI yourself?... Quick, try drawing a full glass of wine!
I cant beleive google would be so shitty to its paying customers! Can you provide video of this interaction?
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Probably so they can have an AI Agent watch the video and do the thing or some bullshit
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