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.
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.
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.
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.
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 know specifically what I need information about, so I need to be in control of the experience.
EXACTLY this.
But I get the 30-min-movie thing too. I’ll catch something as I munch the lunch, or hit play on the backgrounded window if I win a problem fast. It could be a little dopamine back-pat there. I’m pleased that I can go back to it, too, most of the time. I’m enjoying the new Noah Wyle doctor show, for instance.
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.
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.
(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.)
For me on Android it’s built into the app switching interface, similar to Alt-Tab on computer. Instead of selecting the app to bring it into focus, I can instead click something that lets me select text, and it opens it’s own interface to do so.
I’m not sure. I suspect that TextSniper predates the feature on Mac.
On Mac (and iOS, too) recognized text is just treated as text. So on Mac, you just get a text selection/entry cursor (the “I-beam”), and you can select text for whatever action (copy, lookup, etc). On iOS it’s same, except no cursor on account of it being a touch interface. It’s sort of annoying on iOS with images that have a lot of text - double clicking an image to zoom has to be done with care, otherwise it selects text instead of zooming in.
I was using it by 2020 for sure, so it predates the macOS and iOS feature. This was most handy in ERP software we were using that had most info display in unselectable windows. Really annoying when you wanted to copy something like a part number or invoice and put it in an email. This got us around that, and when macOS added the feature it still didn’t help us since these weren’t images.
No, this predates having it on either iOS or macOS by a year or two. I still found it more useful because this doesn’t require using images; the vast majority of my usage was when working for a company that had stupid ERP software where much of the data was displayed onscreen but couldn’t be copied.
A dev named funinkina has made an application working alongside the KDE screenshot application spectacle. It’s surprisingly code which utilizes tesseract and works fantastically. Just compile, ln -s the app to your bin directory and give it a global shortcut like “CTRL+Shift+Print”.
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.
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.
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.
Note that “kids these days” is the flipside to “old people are out of touch”.
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.
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.
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?
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)
EXACTLY this.
But I get the 30-min-movie thing too. I’ll catch something as I munch the lunch, or hit play on the backgrounded window if I win a problem fast. It could be a little dopamine back-pat there. I’m pleased that I can go back to it, too, most of the time. I’m enjoying the new Noah Wyle doctor show, for instance.
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.
Microsoft powertoys has this feature for free
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/text-extractor
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.
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.)
I wonder how this is different from TextSniper?
For me on Android it’s built into the app switching interface, similar to Alt-Tab on computer. Instead of selecting the app to bring it into focus, I can instead click something that lets me select text, and it opens it’s own interface to do so.
I’m not sure. I suspect that TextSniper predates the feature on Mac.
On Mac (and iOS, too) recognized text is just treated as text. So on Mac, you just get a text selection/entry cursor (the “I-beam”), and you can select text for whatever action (copy, lookup, etc). On iOS it’s same, except no cursor on account of it being a touch interface. It’s sort of annoying on iOS with images that have a lot of text - double clicking an image to zoom has to be done with care, otherwise it selects text instead of zooming in.
I was using it by 2020 for sure, so it predates the macOS and iOS feature. This was most handy in ERP software we were using that had most info display in unselectable windows. Really annoying when you wanted to copy something like a part number or invoice and put it in an email. This got us around that, and when macOS added the feature it still didn’t help us since these weren’t images.
Apple has had it built into iOS for a while now; This person likely got scammed out of $10 to “buy” a feature that was already baked into their OS.
No, this predates having it on either iOS or macOS by a year or two. I still found it more useful because this doesn’t require using images; the vast majority of my usage was when working for a company that had stupid ERP software where much of the data was displayed onscreen but couldn’t be copied.
A dev named funinkina has made an application working alongside the KDE screenshot application spectacle. It’s surprisingly code which utilizes tesseract and works fantastically. Just compile, ln -s the app to your bin directory and give it a global shortcut like “CTRL+Shift+Print”.
https://github.com/funinkina/spectacle-ocr-screenshot
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.
I don’t know about desktop/laptop stuff but I can do it on my Pixel phone (Android, I know).
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.