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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

The difficulty of setting a VCR's clock was a meme in the 1990s, and I can attest, justifiably so.

But at least it was possible. The clock setting being impossible without a proprietary and easily lost or destroyed SD card is pretty good, but we can do better. It could be just impossible to fix a wrong clock. Truly that would be the apotheosis of user unfriendly design.

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My very technical and hands on father used to have us set the VCR clock, the controls were in a tiny compartment under a flap that required either small fingers, or very careful manipulation with the point of a protractor or something.

We went from difficult to manipulate buttons through to multi-function buttons where controls get hidden through some incomprehensible maze of menu options, to now where it sometimes feels lucky if you even get an option to manually set the time at all.

I'm reminded of an old commercial depicting kids taunting another kid by asking "What time is it at Billy's house? 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock!" Might have been a Blockbuster commercial? I can't remember.

The Internet Helpdesk sketch, by Three Dead Trolls In A Baggie, had the helpdesk guy describe the hapless user he's trying to help as a "12 o'clock flasher". "You know, every appliance in his house is always flashing 12:00".

P.S. Found the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7FYR72mr0E

Oh man, this reminds me of an episode of a show I watched when I was a kid in the 90s, where the running joke was all the characters, at different points, saying something like "I tried setting up the VCR to record it, but every time I press the button the number 12:00 starts flashing on the screen and I panic." I haven't been able to find it again. I think it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Goose_and_Grimm_(TV_ser...

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