xyanb

Agreed! I had a recent experience with no internet and was running around my house yanking coax cables, checking my electrical cupboard and whacking the router.

Turns out, there was a line issue outside my house :P

> Maybe the magic, the newness, the expensiveness was part of the appeal for me, maybe the kids are just swamped in compute power and touchscreens from birth, it's too normal.

I think so too. In my case, it was all new stuff and everybody was trying to figure it out, myself included. Technology is way more common now than it was then!

> I remember a blog being posted here on HN where a fellow hacker did all of the tech for his family, and he created a bunch of digital illiterates as a results. I'm trying to not fall for that trap at the very least.

About 12 years too late on that one for me!

This is true! I also have a good story about how certain network cameras were left unprotected on the school network and some individuals took advantage of that by guessing the default password.

Windows was far more common in our household than Mac and Linux. I think I saw a Mac laptop once when I was a kid. I had no clue what that thing was! Bit of a learning curve coming from Windows.

nLite! That brings back memories. Customizing a Windows Installation to remove bloatware, add additional software and make it run unattended. It was a tinkerer’s dream :)