I have to say that you're right about the level of effort people expect to need for getting work, or even for managing their own success or failure. The most important first skill is properly learning to read and comprehend the content that is read. My older sister taught me to read very early, a few years before starting school anyway. She held 'classes' for myself and my brother and I credit her help with all aspects of my learning. If you read and can't summarize what you've just read, it takes more effort.

I had trouble with printing (paper and pencil) some of my letters backwards and she brought out an ancient box of Anagrams letters to help me understand that I can't just draw a likeness of a letter, it has to be done so that others can recognize what you've written. Elementary, but it made a leap in my understanding. You can study just about any subject, but if you aren't able to digest what you've read, it doesn't stick with you.

I don't read nearly as much today as I have generally over my life, (too busy) but I still prefer to read an article than to watch a video about the topic. I know, backward, but I will always have more time than bandwidth.

Your thread about Most people don't read anymore --> [webmasterworld.com...] is so true, and it makes life a lot harder than it should be.

I had trouble with printing (paper and pencil) some of my letters backwards

<topic drift after confirming this is foo>
I sometimes think what a cognitive adjustment this must have been for humans in centuries past. If you can't tell that that's the same tree no matter what angle you're seeing it from, or recognize a Smilodon * whether in left or right profile, there's something fundamentally amiss with your brain, possibly affecting your chances of survival. But in writing it's the opposite: left, right, up, down are all significant.
</td>

* I finally thought to look it up. A smilê is a knife. Figures.

I still prefer to read an article than to watch a video

When reading an article, you are the director in control. Most video today is overcast with horrible soundtrack and difficult to understand dialogue. Narrating is an art - see David Attenborough.

Also, when reading a script, the actors aren't continually nodding and shaking their head every time they speak, or gazing into each others eyes forever and a day while industrial noise numbs the senses.

not2easy: The most important first skill is properly learning to read and comprehend the content that is read

YES. Like you, I also learned how to write and read quite early, my dad took care of that, and I reached school reading fluidly.

What you mention here is really important and very evident nowadays (as a problem). Recently I signed up for a design contest, besides the design aspect, it's quite easy, basically: fill the form with your personal data, no kids (only adults) for the prize legal purposes, and... that's it.

However, there are lots of comments complaining by the complexity of filling the form!, some even say it's designed to scare people away... ok, like... HOW? lots also say the instructions are not clear, or that the whole thing discriminates against children. And the vast majority of comments repeat the same: info, info, send me information, how to participate?, and some sent designs directly to the comment section (designs that have absolutely nothing to do with the contest). They really seem to be mentally... can I say retarded? subnormal?

This reminded me some DEV conversations about how dumb people can be, because in several experiences, we noticed how on the simple login page with already given user name and password (corporate), they typed their email user and password. Seems made up, it's not.

lucy24: I sometimes think what a cognitive adjustment this must have been for humans in centuries past. If you can't tell that that's the same tree no matter what angle you're seeing it from, or recognize a Smilodon * whether in left or right profile, there's something fundamentally amiss with your brain, possibly affecting your chances of survival

I knew very little about this, until started doing editing work (writing) for academic papers and books, etc., and it's amazing how people confuse not only letters, but also entire words leading to absolutely insane interpretations.

These days, this usually leads to online fights about things you or someone else never said. In nature? in the past? they could have been... b***aded... you know, executed, or kicked out from their tribes / communities. Not only that... I often feel concerned about the mistakes people can make when reading - interpreting - giving advice about a medication, why? because they can't read, and then they can't understand.

not2easy: I still prefer to read an article than to watch a video about the topic. I know, backward

Not at all. Reading is really better, superior... even if sometimes watching a video feels better.

I have noticed during conversations how people basically say "I watched some video about some guy saying something about oranges... like, how it's good to drink the juice but it's better like... to eat like..." <--- they really can't provide information. Reading? people may remember more, or less, but whatever they remember is more concise or precise.

Besides, people save bookmarks about articles and it's easier to locate the info. Video? not so much, most people can't locate the info on the vids because it requires remembering the position and context.

Kendo: When reading an article, you are the director in control. Most video today is overcast with horrible soundtrack and difficult to understand dialogue. Narrating is an art - see David Attenborough.

nailed it!

All of my solutions come with a user-guide that provides step by step instructions with screenshots. Yet I still get requests for an "explainer video".

Replying to them would only be a waste of my time.

I still prefer to read an article than to watch a video about the topic.

And then there are assembly instructions. Clear black-and-white line drawings are immeasurably more useful to me than photographs--let alone video--of the real thing, with all its attendant, uh, visual white noise.
<tangent>
Eons ago I read an article that said people are _more_ likely to recognize a stranger from a caricature than from a photograph. Kinda the same principle.
</tangent>

This reminded me some DEV conversations about how dumb people can be, because in several experiences, we noticed how on the simple login page with already given user name and password (corporate), they typed their email user and password. Seems made up, it's not.

If the username and password was already provided internally why the need for login page? I think you need to be careful about assuming people are going to understand something that alters a normal process they are familiar with. Were they thinking perhaps it was added by browser?

Not sure of the source but back in the late 2000's the question was posed "Why is Samsung with their 30K engineers losing to Apple?" Answer, "Because they have 30K engineers." I probably read that here.

Because they have 30K engineers.

My old partner in crime used to tell stories about his previous job - he was part of an 80 strong development team, all on high salaries, and they had one task - develop amortising software for insurance. Apparently he busied himself for a year, wandering from office to office while drinking coffee. Most others did the same and he didn't see much else different to that.

Later he recommended hiring a guy from that team, who was supposed to be a mathematical genius. We had a custom order for AOL to make some adjustments to one of our existing software solutions - it was good paying but with a deadline - 30 days. The mathematical genius stuffed around for three weeks, leaving ii to the last minute. But with only a week to perform a simple customization, the pressure got the best of him and he became useless and needed to be hospitalized.

thecoalman: If the username and password was already provided internally why the need for login page? I think you need to be careful about assuming people are going to understand something that alters a normal process they are familiar with. Were they thinking perhaps it was added by browser?

You are kidding, right?

Enter your pharmaceutical login name and password provided by the company for the your first time here... OR... enter your username and password (after a personal reset: you entered your own password)...

&#8593; And people enter their gmail account and password, or outlook, etc.

In case you are serious (I highly doubted), I must tell you... one of my most painful learned lessons developing software, has been the failure of users to follow instructions (or just to read). If they have to use a tracking time app, their user name and password IS ONLY for that app

- this is explained on the documentation
- it's on the manual
- it's described on detail during the training sessions
- it's repeated during the personalization "now enter your own password"
- etc.

And still, they use the wrong information, or they say they forgot. This also applies to the simple instructions of #1 enter your password, and then #2 CONFIRM YOUR PASSWORD, and tours out they get frustrated because their passwords during the same 3 seconds window don't match, why? because they are entering TWO different passwords, as if the system just asked them for 2 different ones.

The usual result is being told that the login page should go from this:

Username: ______
Password: _______

To a HUGE window explaining what you should do, and what you SHOULDN'T DO, like, this is not your email password, if you changed your password, then ENTER THE NEW ONE, not the old one. Then, the systems mutate from being apps, to being apps + user manuals on screen, with insane basic instructions every step of the way. It's really unnerving. I usually tell people it's crazy having to explain people... the explanation.

I've seen people explaining they just deleted their accounts (on systems that allow this), insisting it just happened and they don't know how, when the process involves like 5 steps including a double confirmation, and the logs confirm they clicked on every step to delete their account, still "ohhh how? this shouldn't happen!", well, for X reasons the system has the feature and you just initiated the process when you clicked on "If you want to DELETE your account, click here", and completed the 4-5 steps including the double confirmation... what did you expect? clicking "delete my account" and receive a mousepad?

I described on another thread I did some work with university students (graduates), and it's insane how they fail on simple instructions on their own language.

kendo: All of my solutions come with a user-guide that provides step by step instructions with screenshots. Yet I still get requests for an "explainer video".

Replying to them would only be a waste of my time.

exactly! this!

The mathematical genius stuffed around for three weeks, leaving ii to the last minute. But with only a week to perform a simple customization, the pressure got the best of him

Well, darn. It worked so well for Rossini.

Management: We need this score in six weeks.
Giacomo, weeks 1-5: Spends his time eating, drinking and generally being merry.
Giacomo, beginning of week 6: Guess I'd better get to work.
Giacomo, end of week 6: Eccola, here's your score, complete with wholly independent overture.

But I digress.

You are kidding, right?

I've misunderstood the comment, I read it as the fields already being populated .

Spends his time eating, drinking and generally being merry.

Too many times I have seen this. Give them a job and they go celebrate. One guy in the Philippines celebrated so hard that he came off his motorbike - was banged up for weeks.

Even on the workshop floor I saw this - they go for a long lunch before actually starting the job.

The question of giving someone a new job becomes - do I want to stop production?

If the end product is La Gazza Ladra, I see no cause for complaint.

thecoalman: I've misunderstood the comment, I read it as the fields already being populated.

Some final users can be amazingly... what's the term? challenging. I've seen usability issues even with fields that have the html hint, and people still ask "do I have to enter my email here?", I know it can be difficult to believe.

On a big company they forced security policies on Windows making you enter a new password every 3 months or so, it was a disaster... lots of people blocked after many failed attempts. Sometimes I feel very sad and frustrated (true, and a bit in comedy style) when during meetings people talk about the challenges of their professions, and I'm there feeling unable to tell some because I've tried and people look at me as if I was making everything up. A few times my attempts backfired, like telling a story and people saying it's insane that apps don't have info panels to guide the users all along the way.

This reminds me of people making backups and storing them on the same disk (some apps allow this), so, when the system crashes... there is nothing left.

kendo: The question of giving someone a new job becomes - do I want to stop production?

at the same big company I described above, they decided to replaced old timers with fresh graduated professionals who... supposedly (according to their CV's), had won prizes for achievements.

They were overpaid, most of them got fired in about 3 months due to knowing nothing, and the rest resigned, none of them were left. This happened several times, and the only result was more work for us, and delayed production.

making you enter a new password every 3 months or so, it was a disaster.

Remember when we were all advised to (a) have a different password for each site and (b) change the password every two weeks? Someone must eventually have realized that this is impossible unless you keep them all written down, or store them by some means, which kinda defeats the point.

By no coincidence at all, today's Not Always Right included the following representative specimen:
[notalwaysright.com...]

notalwaysright.com When People See Words And Give Up A kid brings me his laptop, saying he's trying to launch a program, but a pop-up keeps blocking it. I take a look. The pop up says: Pop Up: "This program cannot launch while is running. Close and try again." Me: "What happened when you tried that?" Kid: *Gets embarrassed.* "Oh...I didn't..."

or store them by some means, which kinda defeats the point.

I certainly don't change them every two weeks but do store them. How else are you supposed to manage so many passwords?

I used Keepass for Windows, I'm on Linux now so I use a Linux port. Local file is encrypted, workspace closes after X seconds. it will generate secure passwords, it can interact with browser, you can attach files to the entry, etc. The one downside is syncing it across multiple devices, it's possible using cloud account.

As for the different passwords on different sites I've already seen numerous hacked accounts on my own site and phpbb.com. They were either using poor passwords or duplicate ones. phpBB tracks failed logins and will block access for X minutes after X failed logins. The column for that in the DB was pegged at 99 for 75% of my users, it stops counting after 99. Seems like an awful lot of effort to post some spam.

Changing passwords every 3 months? What a pain.

Keeping track is a chore and guessing what the last password was can be made easier by rotating a number. For one service that I use, that number is currently 78! A lot of services are now sending a validation key via SMS. Most banks are using it.

I've already seen numerous hacked accounts on my own site

I may be lucky, but I have never experienced this. Although one site was compromised about 20 years ago because we were using an Access database and weren't encrypting passwords.

So I wonder how so many accounts do get hacked? Are they using brute force and random guessing? If so, why isn't there a limit on the number of attempts?

Numerous may be an exaggeration. It's dozens among many thousands of users on my site, more on phpbb.com but they have much larger member count. For a few months last year it was happening frequently but I haven't seen one in about 6 months.They are either on a list with associated username and cracked password or poor password and it was brute forced using dictionary attack. They were all inactive accounts going back many years. phpBB does block brute forcing.

phpBB tracks failed logins and will block access for X minutes after X failed logins. The column for that in the DB was pegged at 99 for 75% of my users, it stops counting after 99.

In the ACP there is setting for this. It will block by username or IP. If there is X failed attempts for either they are blocked for X amount of time. The column tracking failed attempts for the username is incremented 1. The IP block is temporary, The username block is permanent until successful login, they can only try once every X amount of time after they exceed failed login attempt limit. If the failed login attempts is at 99 then a bot spent considerable time over untold hours trying to brute force it.

One of the things I dd was set the password to 0 in the DB for accounts inactive 5+ years. It's still possible for them to use forgot password to reset it. This also cleared out a lot of passwords using older hashing techniques that were not that secure, if server gets compromised at least I won't be contributing to the problem. Stored hashed passwords only get updated with login and some of them went back 20 years.

thecoalman: How else are you supposed to manage so many passwords?

I may be criticized for this here, I don't know, but I rely on Firefox password manager and never had a problem.

About "many passwords", I guess average people can't imagine the amount of accounts a webmaster needs for work, and I don't mean double accounts, I mean: hosting, email, multiple emails for diff things, personal email, paypal, browser account, phone account, etc.

kendo: Keeping track is a chore and guessing what the last password was can be made easier by rotating a number.

True. The technology manager back then noticed this and forced complex passwords to avoid monkey1, monkey2, monkey3, then we had the same issues a local bank caused "you can't use previous whatever, or parts of your name, phone number, age, address, month, day, year, star name, planets, animals, shoe size, etc", this made things a nightmare (sure I inserted some sarcasm there).

I rely on Firefox password manager and never had a problem.

Same here. For a few sites that don't recognize Firefox (for some reason, Chewy has decided it doesn't like 64-bit FF as used on my Intel desktop) passwords also live in the Keychain, which is a little less convenient. This seems perfectly safe for a computer that never goes anywhere and is only used by one person. Tablet and laptop use fingerprints, which don't require me to remember anything. And so far, you can't brute-force a fingerprint.

But really, ninety-nine failed logins? There must be some happy medium between that and some sites' three.

The 99 is the total count of failed logins plus whatever came after 99. I just tested it and I was mistaken about the specifics I posted above. There is three settings.

Maximum number of login attempts per username: This is going to be set at low number, 3 for example.
Maximum number of login attempts per IP address: Same as above, low number like 3.
IP address login attempt expiration time: Set this high, even months.

The 99 is a column in the user table tracking "Maximum number of login attempts per username:", it stops incrementing at 99. The IP tracking is in it's own table.

What I was mistaken about is I thought there was cool down period when maximum login attempts was exceeded, there isn't. Instead you need to solve captcha with each new login attempt.

There probably should be cool down period as well. Outright locking the account out is not practical because you'll end up in situation where users are getting locked out because of brute forcing by bots.