Zoomers & Boomers are the same
Zoomers & Boomers are the same
source: @n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca
563 comments
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Computers have been dumbed down and simplified for the masses. When I was a kid a computer did not cooperate until you raised your voice.
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I do industrial programming. Everything is so far behind that yelling at the "computers" does nothing. Physical violence is just about the only thing they respect.
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Yeah, newer generations have been raised on tech that “just worked” consistently. They never had to do any deep troubleshooting, because they never encountered any major issues. They grew up in a world where the hard problems were already figured out, so they were insulated from a lot of the issues that allowed millennials to learn.
They never got a BSOD from a faulty USB driver. They never had to reinstall an OS after using Limewire to download “Linkin_Park-Numb.mp3.exe” on the family computer. Or hell, even if they did get tricked by a malicious download, the computer’s anti-virus automatically killed it before they were even able to open it. They never had to manually install OS updates. They never had to figure out how to get their sound card working with a new game. They never had to manually configure their network settings.
All of these things were chances for millennials to learn. But since the younger generations never encountered any issues, they never had to figure their own shit out.
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Or reinstall the OS on the family computer because one of your dumbass siblings downloaded a sUpeR cOoL song from one of their friends on MSN Messenger.
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And that is why I'll only allow my kids to use Linux!
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It's not so much that the tech just worked. Often it doesn't work. The difference is that when it doesn't work it's not user-serviceable. Up until maybe 2010 or so, when things broke there was often something a user could do to fix them. But, especially with the introduction of locked-down mobile phone OSes, that's not true anymore. Now it's just "wait for an update".
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It was always a struggle to get the damn thing to do what you wanted it to. It turned out to be a good thing long term.
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Even as a teenager (didn't have a computer before that) I had infinite patience with computers, you can fix/change/make anything with enough time, nothing will be better if you get mad and ignore reading and making sure you understand what's happening. Seeing how young people handle tech now is fucking depressing, they just click past everything without reading, get mad and rage quit after 30 seconds of something not working and think anything that's more than two clicks/taps is too complicated.
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we really need frutiger aero back man
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And when that wasn't enough, the fists came out.
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I'm sure you meant "beat it into submission".
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I can:
- Accomplish damn near anything from a command line
- Write machine code
- Remember a fairly broad swath of special character altcodes without looking them up
- Disassemble damn near any computer or other machine, and stand a good chance of putting it back together
But also:
- Use modern programming languages, including object oriented paradigms
- Actually read what is on my screen and comprehend it, including error messages
- Understand and operate any arbitrary interface without having to have it explained to me by rote
Behold my mixture of skills, and tremble.
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Can you summarize this in a vertical video? I stopped reading after the third word, I'm here for memes, not to read a damned book!
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This is spot on!
EDIT: This was spot on. TL;DR below.
I stopped reading after the third word, I’m here for memes, not to read a damned book!
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... and have a dance video playing with music and flashing lights with the text over it ... but not too much text because I can't read that well
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"I can: Accomplish" kind of sums it up though
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"Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written"
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Okay but can you rotate a pdf?
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Depends, my browser has mostly taken over as my pdf viewer and I think it lacks the functionality but if I were to install a cracked copy of Acrobat Pro or PhantomPDF then that's like a 2 click operation.
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I can
- reinstall VLC
oh wait that was all the dependencies VLC needed, I deleted them??, oh no, oh crap. Why isn't my password working, help???
(real reason why my first Ubuntu distro got nuked)
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I once wanted to move all the files in the folder was I in to another folder and I did something like
mv /* ../. What is important here is that I did/*and not./*. Fortunately it was only a raspberry pi so it went fast to flash the SD card.Also, how did you go about reinstalling VLC if you deleted all dependencies?
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I'd argue at a certain depth in an OS its actually harder to do things with a GUI than a command line
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The day I started learning Regex was the day I felt like I was really learning computers. I went from 2 hour tasks to 15 minutes.
I doubt you’d even be able to reasonably explain what they are let alone how they work to the average person outside the Millennial generation.
I fear AI data processing will replace much of the Regex skill set. Why learn Regex when the computer just does it for you… 🙄
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Silly millennial, even Boomers were using regexen in the 70s, and they were commonplace by the time GenX nerds started playing with them in the 80s and 90s. Your elders also know that regexen are fun but extremely dangerous, and should only be used in cases where they won't make things much worse.
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I agree that regex is an important thing to learn. Not sure any old LLM would do a very good job, and I hope that no tool replaces people actually learning how to write regex.
I'm not sure what you mean about the average person outside the millennial generation not understanding them, though. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't think the 'average' person in any generation knows what regex is. Unless there is some reason the average millennial was actually exposed to them and forced to understand them?
As for being doubtful that anyone could understand them aside from a millennial, I assume you're being hyperbolic? Sort of sounds like "Kids these days can never learn what I learned!" (I'm teasing).
Anyway I'm in agreement with you. This thread did remind me of a pretty neat project that, while still requiring domain knowledge, could save some time and be a good learning tool without being as fallible of a crutch as an LLM.
Have not tried it, and am not an experienced developer, so I am curious to your thoughts/criticisms: https://github.com/pemistahl/grex
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Understand and operate any arbitrary interface without having to have it explained to me by rote
Omg, this all the way. I'm in a class for learning AWS stuff and its crazy the amount of people who suddenly can't do anything when one button is on a different screen than the instructions told them it was. Like come on, use some basic thinking skills.
Another infuriating situation was having to do a class on Microsoft Office. It was infuriating because it was incredibly basic stuff. I've never used Outlook before, but I completed each task they asked of me in like 5 seconds because I have a basic understanding of how software works.
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... modern ... Object oriented
wat?
Bro that shits like 30 years old and most langs released after lets say 2010 have put that stuff in the backseat for backwards compatibility. Anyway I get your point
operate any arbitrary interface
Dont believe it. Behold the shittyness of modern UI
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I bow down to thee. Please don't smite me o' holy one.
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Remember a fairly broad swath of special character altcodes
I use the compose key. When you message with me, you are sure to receive proper dashes and real ellipsis.
Well, unless I happen to be using my phone or another computer at the time.
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Bobby no one’s paying you for this shit, go show Billy how to sum numbers in Excel.
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Write machine code? For what kind of processor?
That is one ability that doesn't really belong. That's much more of a Boomer thing. Not all boomers, obviously, but the ones who were computer experts were the ones who had to learn machine code. By the time even Gen X came along, assembler and C were already much more common.
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Yeah but can you rotate a pdf?
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To any angle you want.
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Let me guess: they're talking about Millennials, and are entirely forgetting about Gen X once again.
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Hahaha its funny each time that happens.
My uncle is GenX and way smarter than my millennial ass. They paved the way for child free poppin off and being tech savvy with a normal tech free upbringing.
Anecdotal I know. But always funny how self centered us millenials can be thinking were the last normal generation.
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I figured they were talking about the Oregon Trail generation. It's made up of the folks who were old enough and young enough to play the game in schools and spans across parts of X and millennials.
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For once they didn't forget gen X-- I think OP is about xennials
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I heard millennials can't even grow a proper long beard
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Yea but our mustache game is unmatched by anyone pre-1920's.
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Punk kids can't even manage enough of an attention span to grow a Gentoo long beard!
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Please don't attack like this... Ma kokoro, ma sole.
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Who?
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Yup!
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Honestly? Why do we let people who have no clue what's actually going on decide the generations?
Oregon Trail generation sounds great.
I'm in the Minecraft generation.
Don't know what the next generation would want to be called, but they're the iPad kids for sure.
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Probably. But if I’m being generous, we’re really only talking about younger X and older millennials.
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This always surprises me as I'm younger millennial and my Gen X dad always feels more technologically behind than me.
But it's funny because I'm only so into computers because of him as he had things like Windows 3.1 and 95 and 98 in our home from a young age and he even went to school for C++ but he doesn't really remember it (it got him an accounting gig) and his pursual of technology these days is pretty limited to pre-built stuff from Samsung and Sony than any real grasp of how it works. I struggle to get him to show even passing interest in something like Linux (like, I get liking Windows; you grew up with it: you're more comfortable with it. But not even curiosity, even if you'll never use it?).
Expert on Excel and OneNote (because it's his daily bread-and-butter) but probably would ask for my help on rotating a PDF.
What OP describes sounds much more aligned to my millennial peers than the bulk of Gen. X I know.
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Gen X could write a program that'll make a floppy drive's loading noises play the Imperial March.
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Or those of us from Gen Z that where born just at the cutoff and got tech acces at a way to young age.
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*were *access *too
Yup, you're a Zoomer alright.
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GenX can't use computers either.
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The generation that used them to create the new generation of smart devices? Sure.
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The generation that made most of the websites and software associated with the internet?
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The generation that grew up with ZX Spectrum, C64, Amiga etc knows how to use computers.
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Some can't. Computers weren't commonplace until many GenXers were in their 20s, so some never learned. Those that did learn often learned the deep magic.
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in today’s edition of "why are the kids I raised so damn incompetent?"
i long for a day where people understand that it’s not the ipad kid’s fault they were given a tablet at age 2
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It isn't their fault, but it did happen.
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That's... part of it, but part of it is just ease of use. In growing up, I had to figure out issues with my computer,and getting games etc working took some work to do. I build a gaming PC for my nephew(under 10, but games a lot mobile and with consoles) and he played a few games on it, but then my sister (a gamer herself) said he couldn't really get used to keyboard over controller (at which point I reminded her she could just get him a PC controller or use one of the console ones that also work on PC).
He just seems to prefer to use things that are already intuitive, and since my childhood things have gotten much better in that regard for consoles and mobile stuff. You can definitely do it on PC as well, but it often means more accessories, sometimes figuring out issues . I got another sister of mine a controller for pc and it took a bit of effort getting it properly synced for the game she wanted to play. It would show up properly in the OS, but then the game he issues, so we had to switch through modes and such, and sometimes even though one mode may work an update or something may break it.
I like using controllers for some games, and WASD for others, but even though IT is my job and I'm good at fixing things, some games have weird issues with some controllers, especially if they have mode options. All that extra fixing and finding the right settings is just frustrating for some, and with easy to use alternatives they may not bother to learn. I had no choice, just SNES and pc while growing up.
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No one taught me how to use a computer, I figured it out as I went. I had to tell my 25 year old brother that theres more than one USB port on the back of his computer because he only saw the one in the front and asked me where he plugs in the keyboard and mouse.
Part of the issue for a lot of the older and younger crowd is "Well, it's not immediately obvious, so therefore its impossible and now I'm mad at you for it."
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The amount of my students that wrote the whole email in the subject line is crazy. At first I thought it was a mistake or something. But there are sooo many...
They also don't know what a file browser/explorer is. As soon as the download notification is gone, the file doesn't exist anymore.
Giving files proper names? Unheard of!
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I'm pretty computer literate (I'm using Fedora silver blue now and I'm a cyber college student), and I'm gen z.
I hated our digital literacy units in school, because it was always the most braindead shit every year. Stuff that you shouldn't have to explain to a person every year, like digital footprint (think before you post), make sure it's a https website, and misinformation vs disinformation. I wanna cry because my tech and society class I'm taking right now feels like the same shit, but I'm paying now.
I'm not sure how they should revamp, but maybe they need to show modern examples like the honey scam, the thousands of Tiktok influencers who admitted they lied about the stuff they sold when they thought the service was shutting down, and how Google search is forcing shitty AI results. But we do have the unit, it just feels braindead to anyone like me who gives a damn about the services they use online. But I'm a nerd who looks at privacy/cyber shit for fun for hours, not TikTok dual screen braindead...
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ability to discern facts from msinformation/disinformation
But... I love the uneducated...
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Giving files proper names? Unheard of!
What kinda monster manages to live like this??? I say hushedly deleting flsjfjsjfksj.pdf
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Asdf.txt, asdf2.txt, asdf.m3u, asdf.odf...
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I have a coworker who named a file template after the person they were sending the file to. I cannot follow the logic.
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As soon as the download notification is gone, the file doesn't exist anymore.
That seems to be how Android literally works though.
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Yeah; I hate Android's file navigation capabilities…
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I think Zoomers need a generational divide in their generation, tbh. In my experience, older Zoomers are intelligent, capable, motivated, and largely leftist. For some unknown reason though, younger Zoomers are ignorant, prudish, too easily contented, and weirdly conservative. I have yet to understand what happened to cause the divide, and I can't point to any stats or evidence to support this belief, but anecdotally I have noticed this trend within my own life and spheres of influence.
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For some unknown reason though, younger Zoomers are ignorant, prudish, too easily contented, and weirdly conservative. I have yet to understand what happened to cause the divide,
The online manosphere/tradtube spent the past 10-15 years raising these kids while their parents fucked off. That's what happened. These are the kids who made people like Andrew Tate famous, and made Joe Rogan way more relevant than he has any right to be. It's a great lesson in why people need to pay more attention to the media that their children consume.
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That, and it's unsurprisingly connect to the piewdiepie fascist pipeline thing, Helldivers popular as fuck, Warhammer 40K having a renessaince, I see plenty of shorts about how boys want to die a heroic death, that's a fucking staple of fascism
This is such a good video on this stuff, how young kids get sucked into fascism layer by layer https://youtu.be/pnmRYRRDbuw
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I agree with this, but what made this different then our generation or early zoomers? I was raised online as a house with an internet-connected home PC in the early-to-mid 90s with two parents who worked until night; there were grifters and proto-manosphere groups then and I'm sure moreso for the early zoomers, so I have to assume there was either some change in the methodology behind the delivery in these messages or, more likely, some change in the parental oversight, but I can't identify exactly when or what
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Even with millennials (1981 to 1996) there is a big difference when you where born.
If you are an early millennial you grew up with MS-DOS, so you had to learn the terminal to get anything done. You probably had your first smartphone after you where 25.
If you are a late millennial you grew up with Windows XP and probably had a smartphone as a teen.
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Circa 1990 didn't get smartphones as teens. The iPhone launched on only AT&T in the US in 2007. We were all locked into 2 year contracts back then with LG Envys and Motorola Razrs.
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Of course, it just seems to me like there's a more distinct mid-generation cultural shift rather than just technological in comparison to our generation, and I am curious about potential catalysts. But again, I can only speak from my experience and personal exposure, so there is the possibility of locality specificity as well as other variables, so everyone remember I am just a layman and weigh my experience anecdotally rather than definitively.
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Smartphones came a little later. Early adulthood for most.
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That sounds like gen alpha more than late zoomer. Perhaps they are simply too close in time to gen alpha.
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That has not been my experience, no. I am speaking younger adults, not teenagers; I don't really have many interactions with teenagers or children these days so I don't have enough experience with alphas to have really any sort of opinion on them. As I understand it, Gen A starts after 2010, so any adult today would still be a Zoomer. Granted of course that "generations" are a loosely-defined concept so the years they are defined as may vary, but it is my understanding that the typical understanding of Zoomer goes as far as 2010 at least.
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As an old zoomer I've observed a sharp difference between 2001 zoomers and 2004 zoomers far beyond a simple 3 year maturity difference. Its jarring.
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There are two generations that can do this task X and millennials.
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Forgot the forgotten again
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Are they the same generation whose parents said “they’re really good with computers …they go on the iPad all the time”?
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We got a new kid around 19 working at our office for processing data and I hate how true this is. The amount of times I've had to say "No, you have to double click to open folders" is entirely too many. Either that or "You have to actually right click on the icon you want to copy you can't just click anywhere on the screen."
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Fuck me I'm not ready for that. You expect it from the old people but I might have to leave the room if a young person asked me something like that.
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I teach undergrads, and every year basic computer skills get worse and worse. I guess it’s not entirely their fault, but things like just asking them to save a file to their computer is insanely difficult. Lots of universities are starting to get task forces to figure out how to teach (or where to teach rather) basic digital skills, it it’s all going to hit the workforce really soon en masse.
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In high school I had to teach a kid how a mouse worked.
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I mean, I know millennials who don't own a computer. Just phones. They got young kids. Not sure if those are alpha at this point or whatever, but how are they supposed to learn it if they got nowhere to practice?
Quite a few working class kids and teens grow up like this.
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You know, I can forgive tech illiteracy. I don't like it, but I can forgive it. What I can't forgive is a basic inability to retain new information.
You gotta teach someone to double click on something to open it? Fine. But you should only have to do that once.
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The amount of times I've had to say "No, you have to double click to open folders"
That's a real problem when you're used to Kde and have to use a windows machine.
(Why is this damn thing so slow ? Oooh, right, double click)
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You can absolutely configure Windows to open folders -- and all other shortcuts -- with a single click, and IIRC one of the knocks against Windows ME was that this was the default option. And it was godawful, along with the "click" noise it made on navigation. (I think it was WinME. I've probably suppressed the memory, and rightly so.)
But the long and short of it is if you want consistency between your UI's in that regard you can indeed have it.
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I use KDE Neon and have used Kubuntu before. Double click to open a folder is the default, same as Windows.
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Me: Behold!
*quickly presses Control+V
Classmate: Woah! How did you do that??!!!
True story but as a millennial teaching another millennial in college.
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Former boss: How do I make my computer run faster?
Me: you could install more RAM.
FB: Oh do I download that from the internet?
Me: ...no, it's hardware...you have to open the computer up and physically put it in there.
FB: I should have known that, I majored in Computer Science
...I was fired a week later because she "felt threatened". Lol.
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I had that happen after I told the IT manager who always showed up drunk that his flash drives weren't working because he couldn't expect to buy an 8 pack of 1TB flash drives of amazon for $30 and that he was at worst handing out viruses.
I also told the interns to demand full time positions for doing all the work and not be taken advantage of so that didn't help with the HR director.
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OK so I have a pet theory about this. I grew up in a period when computing involved friction and lack of ready resources to ease that friction. Solving problems involved actual research, in the research process more and more details of how computers operate were exposed to me. I had the time and focus to learn and the motivation to stick at it when it was difficult. I then did something horrible to almost everyone who asked me for help, I removed that friction.
With the noblest of intentions I prevented everyone around me from experiencing that friction, I made it easy. Consequently I caused those people around me to miss out on those basics I struggled with. I uncovered the arcane lore of endianess so everyone around me who wasn't already an adept would be spared. I plumbed the mysteries of the parallel port so that others could use a printer with only mild mystical invocations. I immersed myself in SCSI termination so that my friends and family might partake of IDE (retroactively named PATA) in peace.
I came from an era of computing where these things mattered (at least to some degree) and they moulded me and shaped how I use a computer to this day. My brothers will always be dependent on myself and my ilk to act as guides and so much of what I know is functionally useless today so a neophyte could not follow the twisted path I did.
I was blessed as well to come of age in a time when a computer was a comprehensible assemblage of parts, when I could identify at an IC level the components of it. I feel like that is what is missing in the modern incarnation of technology. I also worry this is where we stagnate, the field is too large for anyone to compass it entirely and we splinter in to specialisations.
However this is also a sign that technology has come of age. I am certain, absolutely positive, that if I was to pick an arbitary topic, say music, I would seem as illiterate and helpless as the Zoomers we are bemoaning as mere consumers of Tech. I can enjoy a piece of music, I can even take a rough stab at the rusiments of how it is made. Ask me to explain the nomenclature of a time signature on sheet music and I will look the dunce before I finish the first sentence.
So maybe we should give them a break and realise that for a lot of them, It... Just... Isn't... Important...
They will learn this stuff if and when they need to. Otherwise "magic box does things when I perform this ritual" is enough for them to function in their world, the same as "Car starts when I turn this key" is enough for me to function in mine.
Holy crap, I wrote this on my phone, what is wrong with me?
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My daughter (5) uses WASD proficiently, so I have hope.
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Absolutely. At 10yo I've tried my best to teach my kid video editing and basic computer use. A bit ago I made her network two computers using chatGPT as a guide. So freaking proud of her.
Thinking of forcing her to do something new. Does Roblox run on Linux?
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Can I recommend Minecraft over Roblox?
Minecraft isn't as popular, but I was able to get my 8 year old to make TNT arrows and he thought it was a blast. (Hehehehe)
And Minecraft Java definitely works on Linux
Edit: My son claims Roblox is more popular. But that could be because I banned it at home.
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roblax is extremely absolutely vile, manipulative, and not a safe place for anyone let alone children. it's genuinely worse than 4chan for some time now.
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These days roblox barely runs on windows. Now in order for it to update it needs local admin privileges. So no more roblox.
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Roblox? sober just began working again.
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I made her network two computers
How did she do it? Just plug a crossover cable into both of them?
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Boomer don't know how to do shit 'cause computers were so rare. Zoomers don't know how to do shit 'cause big companies profit from people who can't help themselves and have low standards.
There was only a small timeframe where computers were available, accessible yet not enshittificated for profit like today.
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I can't tell you which window was the best XP or 7 but for me it's somewhere between the two. Although I used vista for a long time perfectly fine and people hated that one.
I feel privileged that I got to use these great operating system for so long.
It's what made me good at computers to start with.
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Every other Windows distro is okay, since XP. XP ->7 ->10. I'm holding out for 12 because 11 blows, but...Linux looks more attractive every day.
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I still remember the XP error sound. It was the stuff of nightmares. And in those days, we weren't taught how to use a Modem because my mum didn't like us using the internet and instead brought an encyclopedia for school stuff, so I would have to fix all the shit I fucked up without google before anyone found out. Fun times. Really improved my troubleshooting skills, though.
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Vista was a'ight, so long as you didn't get that memory eating bug.
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crazy thing is that they were being enshittified even back then. we just couldn't identify it back then as easily as we do now
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There are TWO generations between Boomers and Zoomers.
It's funny how Bs and Zs kind of horseshoe into being ignorant about how computers work. Boomers never had them growing up, while Zoomers were born with phones in their hands using corporate apps and never learned how computers actually work. Those of us in between had to learn how they worked to use them.
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I mean, I know millennials who don't own a computer. Just phones. They got young kids. Not sure if those are alpha at this point or whatever, but how are they supposed to learn it if they got nowhere to practice?
Quite a few working class kids and teens grow up like this.
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It'll depend on their hobbies. PC gamers will know this stuff, or at least how to figure it out.
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Born in 89'. I've always hated PDF's. Hey, do you want to enlarge your file for sharing? NO!
But you can make it so only people with money can edit it? NO!
Well we'll let other people sign it for free, you just have to sit all of them down and teach them how to create a signature.
No, not that signature, that doesn't count legally. We need you to buy a security certificate and link it to it.
Can't I just create the cert on my computer?
Well yeah, but no one will accept it.
Fuck off me!
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PDFs are perfect for the one thing they were designed for, which is publishing high quality proofs for printing. They aren't supposed to be editable. People just use them where they shouldn't.
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How to sign a PDF.
- Print the PDF onto paper.
- Sign the paper version.
- Scan the paper to a PDF.
Yeah, I know it's stupid but I did it 4 times this week for vendors. I do save some paper by getting a double sided scanner.
Internally all of my business activities use electronic signatures not in pdf's.
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PDFs are great at one thing, which is creating a "digital printed copy", I.E something that will look the same on any device, and is pretty much universally supported.
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Yeah... we really need to quit making proprietary formats into industry standards.
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I always thought it made it look more legitimate and professional. Now I work with (somewhat) protected files, they're all just word documents haha.
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Nah, I've got a zoomer relative that has learned helplessness around computers. They have their own computer for gaming and need me to hold their hand through everything. I tell them to web search, they say they don't understand what anything means, so I have to hold their hand through web searching to fix their problem. If something doesn't work from steam when they double click it, they can't figure it out. They get an error message at any point and their only solution is to bug someone else about it. I refuse to solve their problem without telling them to web search it, that is how you are supposed to learn. It's super annoying so I started telling them "idk, google it." They still bug others instead now.
I also have a zoomer friend older than my relative that is also a PC gamer, they are slightly better but still need people to guide them through screen share.
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Fair enough, but if they can navigate a gui that's good enough for most workplaces.
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PC gamer no longer means tech savvy. My zoomer stepson is a hardcore gamer but can't figure out shit when something's wrong with his computer, and does not understand basic concepts regarding hardware, operating systems, networking, ... and he doesn't seem to care about any of it either.
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As a boomer, reading this thread/discussion has been so amusing in many ways while enjoying my cuppa tea this morning. A classic "the younger generations are stupid."
The older generations looking down the ones that follow. And the following generations looking down on those that precede them. And no one understanding ain't none of us are all that bright.
Ever has it been, and so ever shall it be.
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We grew up in an analog childhood, but digital adulthood.
We've been at the cusp of all the changes, we probably had to boot into Ms DOS and navigate to the A:// drive to play whatever was on the floppy disk with a whopping 1.44mb.
Now you download almost instantly to your phone/tablet. The internet as we knew it is mostly dead, everywhere is a walled garden of shit.
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Would love some older internet gen input here: is this a "gen [whatever] is so [negative trait here] because they are [generation group]" or "younger ppl be stupid"?
Context: Am a millennial. At my first "real job" (as in, in the industry I got my degree in) I worked with ONE (1) other person, who was an early Gen-Xer. After developing a report with each other and becoming friendly, he lamented to me about how it seems like "millennials (not you, of course)" seem so helpless - like they can't figure things out on their own. Always asking "where is-" or "how do i-" before even examining the problem at hand and/or the resources available.
This dude was a self-proclaimed "blue fish in a red sea," and we worked with a wide age-range of sales ppl. I mention this, bc in the two years I worked with this nerd (and he was a fucking nerd, taking into account modern day and late 80s-early 90s standards of the term), his complaints about millennials never sounded like media parrot-speech. He was literally befuddled about the operational differences between generations.
It 100% seemed like an ageist thing. This was the late 2010's, pre-covid.
I'm in my 30s now and am equally baffled when my teenaged niece (weird familial age gap - not relevant here) doesn't know how to make the tap water hot when there's only one knob instead of two. She asked outloud but I refused to acknowledge or answer her. Niece figured it out shortly on her own, as expected.
So-... maybe younger people are just, yknow, dumb? Or recognize that, when surrounded by more experienced others, it takes less effort to ask for guidance than to waste energy through trial and error-?
Not trying to prove a point here. Just legit curious if anyone older has had similar experiences and can offer insight into whether this is a "zoomers are-" or "younger people are-" observation.
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I think you're spot on with "young people dumb". Takes a while to figure out.. like, everything.
Generations will have different strong and\or weak areas because their environment changes, but our sum total of "competence" will stay the same IMHO.
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I've definitely noticed the younger ones are used to asking any question and having it simply answered. They grew up with the internet, it's obvious I suppose, and chatgpt is just going to make that worse. The juniors and entry-level people coming in are smart, but I feel like I'm seeing lower problem solving and critical thinking.
Things like "it doesn't work", okay well what you you tried? What things did you attempt before giving up. Idk, definitely a different mindset.
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My husband is an IT engeneer and every day is a different story about how zoomers don’t even know how to save a pdf file or print some shit
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Seems kind of like he's shaming people for asking questions at work, which is kind of a bad take. Does he know that they didn't examine the problem first?
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The word you wanted there was "rapport."
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I used to know everything there was on 95 to windows 7 but things keep changing so I just stopped caring.
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Yep. Why bother learning when it won't work tomorrow. I miss software that was bought and didn't change, says the old man to the cloud.
And I'm pro learning but for most things I'm not a pro user. So my flow is learn something, think wow this is great I can do so much. Set it aside for weeks/months. Come back to it, download a huge update and and spend the time I had to work on it waiting. Come back again later and find out I need something else or whatever. Eventually it works but now I the thing I wanted to do has changed. Pretty much gave up on pcs years ago. Am looking for one for the first time in years because I actually want to try linux again.
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Linux has some advantages in that a lot of the basic stuff, someone from 1985 would pick it up pretty fast, I think. Commandlines are very conservative. I have scripts I haven't changed in 15 years.
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I was going to say it sounds like linux mint would be your dream OS its stable and bullet proof. Download everything through package manager if you really need up to date program flatpaks or appimages have you covered. Never have the computer force an update on you or change things around again. Both my elderly parents use LM every day for years not one complaint after I set everything up for them with like web app shortcuts to banks and stuff. I think youll like it, modern linux is so much better than years ago its unreal. Look for a cheap used thinkpad if you a laptop user.
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My gen z son is like a computer wizard to me a fairly proficient millennial so I don’t think it’s a generational thing
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Both outliers. I teach high schoolers and watching them use a computer is a suicide claxon.
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Ever seen an adult open Google Chrome, type in google, click the first link to www.google.com, then click the search bar on the page and begin to search? I have.
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I remember watching an interview with the CEO of SUN microsystems in the 90's argue that you didn't need to know how to run a nuclear power plant to use a light switch, and you shouldn't have to know how a computer works to use one.
I guess his vision came true, and we're mad about it?
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Fella, the stuff Gen Z struggles with is the light switch.
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They know how to use the light switch, but they have no idea what to do when the bulb burns out.
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No?
It's not like you need to know how to write processor code to format an image or make an excel sheet. You may still be obliged to know more than run a touch screen though.
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You don't need to know how to run a nuclear power plant, but you do need to know what wires are
This analogy actually works kind of well. Like, you don't actually need to know anything about wiring to use a light switch, but if something goes wrong in your house and you need to fix it, having just a little bit of knowledge about how the device works can save you hundreds of dollars and days of downtime.
It can also help you avoid making the mistakes that cause those problems in the first place, whether the issue is that you don't know what setting you accidentally changed, or you don't know how many watts you can safely pull out of an outlet
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Only people working on them need to know the ins and outs of how a nuclear power plant works, though I feel like people should probably have still some education and be able to describe it in a very generalized way. But if you can't rotate a document, you're having trouble with the light switch.
Like, that's fine if you grew up without electricity in your house, but is that really the case with Zoomers?
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There was a period where it was still a skill to know how to use a computer. If you had a computer in your house it was a part of your identity, you were a computer owner. Using a computer was something you did. The computer is a powerful tool, and the user had an opportunity to overcome the challenge of learning how to use it.
Now a computer is an appliance. People know how to do what they do with it, but see no reason to explore farther. They aren't interested in delving into the device's potential. Owning a computer is like owning a car. They want it for the function they use it for. Learning more is like learning to change the oil in a car. In principle easy, but more of a chore than an opportunity.
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I mean, I'm a moron, but I know the basics are: nuclear reaction creates heat, boils water into steam, steam turns turbine, turbine spins magnet inside copper coil. Magic! I still don't understand some lightswitches though...especially the kind that require an app. I'm not downloading an app to turn on a light in my house.
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I guess his vision came true, and we’re mad about it?
Is this a question? Should we not be mad because of something some CEO said 30+ years ago?
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I was born in 83, and grew up in the time where being a computer need required real work and knowledge of computers.
The things got easier and easier, and then the smartphones came.
These new kids literally don't know how to search a file directory because they are used to the apps magicing stuff where it needs to be.
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All the tech executives from silicon valley that are our age all restrict cellphone use by their kids. If the people creating the tech that ruined a generation don't let them use their own devices that say a lot.
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I am genuinely having a hard time with my Gen Z employee. I have to go through everything step by step each time and it just seems like nothing sticks. I even create documentation for him and he just can't follow it fully.
I'm truly baffled and any advice is welcome.
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Have you tried video tutorials? I have noticed that a lot of younger people are more likely to look up tutorials on YouTube than written ones.
As a GenXer, I'm kind of horrified by how much of the "how-to" universe is shifting from written instructions to video.
(No, I don't want a video tutorial for how to knit a scarf. I want a normal pattern. Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.)
Seriously, though, the next time you go through something with this employee, use a screen recorder to capture the process and then share the recording with him. Maybe it will help.
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For me it depends on what I need instructions for. Some things, like maybe fixing something in my car, I'm going to go directly to YouTube... But for things I might have more familiarity with and don't need a constant visual, I'll take written every time.
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To me, that's just a difference in how people learn things in general. Some people will learn better from watching a tutorial, some people learn from reading instructions and some learn by fiddling around until they figure it out. The best way to figure out how to educate someone is to figure out how they learn things. Not everybody's brains work the same way and that's just true for everyone regardless of age.
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I also don't want a video because I can READ a helluva lot faster than it takes to watch a video.
I can also reference back to WRITTEN information much faster. Everything about shifting from written medium to video is about commodifying content, rather than a better exchange of information. And it sucks.
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Make a tiktok with "apple" by charli xcx in the background, subway surfers footage in the corner, and make the camera move further away from the screen (whats screen recording?) at random points.
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Also make sure at one point to have a really poorly masked video of yourself talking over the background video
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Maybe he's trying to perform above his IQ. Some people can't learn some things.
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I've been seeing a lot of posts about how nobody can get through the AI filters when applying for jobs.
These are the people who get through the filters.
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Fire him. Not able to follow procedure. So many people do not deserve jobs.
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May you live in exactly the kind of society you ask for.
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So many people do not deserve jobs.
That's kind of gross... Maybe they don't "deserve" the job that they have, but they deserve jobs.
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So much fucking this. So many people these days are straight up just useless at their jobs, but companies and managers tend to fall into some sort of toxic positivity bullshit and it's just so hard to give negative feedback to someone notoriously bad at their job somehow. An advice would be to just keep it honest and expect some sort of improvement, otherwise they may try their luck somewhere else.
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I'm old, Gandalf. I may not look it, but I feel this meme in my bones.
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Me trying to show a zoomed where a file is on the network. Me: "Open file explorer" Zoomer: "What?" Me: "Files..." Zoomer: "Huh?" Me: "Just click the folder." Zoomer: "Ohhhhhh"
Almost as bad as watching my boomer coworker open notepad and drag a file into it. Just double click or right click open with. Ahhhhh.
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A few years ago I saw an article that Gen Z struggled with file organization. In basic terms, search functions have gotten so good that the majority of Gen Z doesn't use file organization on computers or phones. When in a work setting they are confused when digital items need to be organized into a file structure. Part of the problem is that most of them have never had to use a real world filing system. Part of the problem is that they are only used to handling their own disorganized files. In a business setting it generally isn't acceptable to dump all your files into a local "Downloads" file and rely on the search function to locate mission critical files.
When the article I am referencing came out other people stated that they had experienced similar phenomena in the PC world. They remembered when soldering was an expected norm of PC building, but with the passage of time it was no longer necessary or expected.
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soldering was an expected norm of PC building
There has never been an IBM PC-compatible that expected soldering of its user in order to function. Maybe if you wanted to upgrade the RAM on your motherboard prior to inline memory modules, but that's hardly an end-user task, you'd take it to a technician to do that.
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I don't really know if search got good. I am gen z admittedly on the earlier side of the generation but I try keeping my files organised in a sensible way. Never use search because I uave not had good experiences with it. I hate organising files on my phone because apps just save stufd into 5 million diffeent folders for no reason.
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I teach CS at the freshman level. I don't use a Mac, but I had to spend ten minutes over zoom teaching the basic functions to a student who didn't know where the notepad equivalent was.
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Having to explain what a text editor is and what a text file is to grown-ass adults has become a recurring waking nightmare. Trying to explain the difference between a Word document and a text file? Fucking FORGET it.
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My family had a Gateway computer, so my parents weren't complete babes in the woods... but it still drives me nuts to this day to see my mom double click on URLs. They think because they had to double click icons on their Windows 95 desktop 30 years ago, that they have to double click literally everything.
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During a zoom, I was presenting my full screen and was opening a new tab instantly with the scroll wheel click and the zoomers on the call was mind blown.
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I've had similar experiences teaching zoomers basic shortcuts: ctrl-c, ctrl-v, alt-tab, ctrl-shift-esc. Makes me feel like a wizard. They might think I am a wizard.
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They might as well call you Harry.
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I just can't understand the lack of curiosity... You have a mouse with several buttons and you're not even going to test them out on things?
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How often do they use mice and keyboards? I get what people who don't use shortcuts look like to you all, but I know how many times I've had to help someone older who works with computers, including just straight up DOS-looking internal text prompt systems fine, remember how to highlight text on a phone to copy, or even be able to look up their apps without clicking on the homescreen ones.
Some people just really only get good with one tool at a time and don't have the energy for more, and for the younger average person that tool's gonna be the one they grew up with, the phone.
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IM TRYING MAN
My 8 year old knows how to keyboard a little. I haven't figured out if they're gonna teach him in school or not, so I'm erring on the side of caution
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I was taught how to type without looking at the keyboard in 2nd grade. Get the ole mavis beacon out.
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I'm in the exact same boat. I didn't learn in school until 4th grade but I'm thinking about asking my son's school about it before then.
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...And yet again, Gen X has been forgotten.
Cool cool.
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I kinda prefer it that way. Leave me the fuck out of this bullshit. I’m not stepping on necks the way Boomers did but I’m also old and tired enough that it’s not going to be me leading the charge for change. I’ll deal with my own PDFs.
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Y'all are the ones that know how to make the printer work, which is wizardry to millennials and boomers alike
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What? I’m a millennial Nd I know how to make a printer work
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I wouldn't expect gen x to be as largely known for computer illiteracy as those two generations
One of which who first found computers as this strange new technology nobody's heard of, and the other entering adulthood while desktop computers are slowly becoming irrelevant for some if not most
So in my perslective I would've thought Gen X was right there with Millenials in the sweet spot
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gen x and y are bullshit arbitrary classifications based on years…. (boomer is based on a real event that makes that generation distinct, so that makes sense)
the true computer masters are the Oregon Trail generation… if you remember the Oregon Trail video game in elementary school, you grew up with computers everywhere but just the terminal and no pictures, and got to interact with it evolving into weird pocket computers and shit….
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Yep. Seeing that a lot today for some reason.
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We always knew there weren't enough of us to matter. (At least, those of us on the younger end have always known. Maybe the older members of our generation didn't realize it for a while.)
I didn't expect that to play out with Boomers holding on to political power until GenXers were all old enough to retire, but it seems to be playing out that way.
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There is no place in the screenshot that specifies which generation is referred to that knows how to rotate PDFs. They could be Gen X and you just assumed otherwise...
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They are really more alike than any other two generations.
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I would postulate that in past centuries when life didn't change a lot, many many generations were much more alike.
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Yeah. Late gen x to late millennial seems to be the sweet spot for understanding how technology works.
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I don't think that's necessarily the right way to look at it. We understand computers very well, but desktop computers are not the end-all be-all of technology. What is happening here happened in Japan before because they did the leap straight to smart devices well before the west with computers outside of offices being a very expensive and nerdy niche hobby. Their proficiencies lie in other technologies in which we fall behind as our parents typically do for technologies that we know.
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There is the old saying that in the 80s Japan was in the 2000s but they are still stuck in the 2000s today.
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Mobile operating systems (Android, IOS) don't give the user enough freedom to understand how the system works, the best you can hope for is an understanding of how to use the technology. Knowing how technology works is very different from knowing how to use technology.
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Listen if you can teach yourself to set up Linux and keep it updated then you can run any kind of computer out there. You can’t get that level of abstraction from an android.
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I'm very early Gen X and take issue with being excluded from that - we were in our early 20s as computing really started to develop. Maybe I'm biased because I worked in IT.
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Also IT here. I also lead teams of university students it really comes down to experience and training. My CS and INFO students know how this stuff works.
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The smartphone and it's consequences to the human society...
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I actually thought I am part of this blessed generation that can use a computer. But rotating a PDF? That beats me.
Edit: In Okular it's actually easy to find this function. I was never looking for this for my whole life.
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The real skillset isn't necessarily knowing how to do these things off tbe top of your head, but knowing how to look them up.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle for the next generation is how thoroughly Google has enshittified.
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Just pick up your laptop and rotate it to whatever angle you want.
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Instructions unclear. I have a desktop PC and now my monitor arm is broken. My 38 inch screen fell on the floor. You'll hear from my lawyers.
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Ctrl+shift+plus sign
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Or ctrl + alt + down arrow also work
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Sounds like something imagemagick could do so that would be my first strategy to try
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PDF is a pointless file format that should not exist. Come at me.
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It's good for sending documents you don't want to be tampered with because most people don't know how to edit a PDF.
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10000 times better than the previously mainstream way which was people sending you office docs expecting you could open that shit.
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Pointless?? Really? We should have just stuck with postscript? I’m pretty happy with pdf for almost anything as there’s a good chance it’ll render how whoever sent it to me was seeing it. What would you suggest/do different?
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i disagree. Training boomers is easier because they know what computers are. Zoomers often see computers as "web browsing machines" or "gaming machines"
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Is there some magic to rotating a PDF? I just opened one and there's a button in Firefox saying "Rotate clockwise" and "Rotate anticlockwise". Are we talking something rotating and then saving the PDF so it stays rotated or just rotating it after it's already loaded? Or is this about rotating the PDF so it can be printed out?
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Please don't lump me in with the iPad kids.
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I remember a game wouldn't work until i adjusted the screen resolution in like 98
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So, the key takeaway is everyone has a different experience, and that is okay.
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I would be happy to never see a PDF again, can we not have something better?
I always think it's like complaining that nobody under a certain age can use the card catalog, microfiche or whatever. Technology changes. I have so many leftover now useless skills; please God may the ones related to Adobe rot on that same pile soon.
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All my homies hate excel
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Can't blame a generation that wasn't raised on computers as well as you can't blame a generation that was raised by algothrims. I'm a millennial too, one of the older ones, and I have felt my tech literacy decay over the past ten years as the cancer that is silicon valley has spread and dominated the internet. It is to the point that I feel so trapped when I try to do anything online that becoming passive feels like the only choice if you play their game.
I have the benefit of remembering what the internet used to be like and what it still has the potential to be in the future, but the youths of today never experienced that. To them the internet is a feeding machine that encourages nay grooms them into becoming passive consumers. I can't blame someone who literally never got the chance to learn because some tech bro scumbags in America decided that they should abuse their power to turn people into addicts.
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can't really blame a generation that wasn't raised on computers
No. I'm tired of giving them this excuse. Computers have been common place in the workplace for like 2 decades at this point. That's plenty of time to learn what a monitor is or what a power button looks like or the fact that computers need to be plugged in to work.
This is also not a defense of Gen Z but I'm a little more forgiving because they were too young to really have to deal with the annoying parts of computers.
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2 decades? My dude, 2 decades ago it was 2005. Computers have been commonplace close to 40 years now.
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I dunno man. Depending on the age and person, it can be pretty difficult to get into how computers work. It really isn't as much of a given as we think it is. I'm sure there are some older people who are just lazy, but I don't think it is the case for everybody. Some older people don't use computers unless they have to. They don't spend time on them in their spare time to get more acquainted with how they work. For many it wasn't a part of their lives for the first fifty years they spent on this planet. I'm in my mid 30s and I have areas of modern technology where I have just accepted that I can't and won't keep up because I simply don't have the time, motivation or patience for it. I will learn if it is a necessity, but I also have limits to how many new things I can take in at this point while also having to earn money and pay my bills and maybe live a little on the side. So it is with that in mind that I think it is very much appropriate to cut many older people some slack and maybe have a little bit of empathy for where they are coming from.
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Shit, I'm millennial software developer who self hosts software as a hobby and I feel tech literacy decay.
I don't understand how Microsoft office handles it's saves, so I don't want to save shit in the cloud. I don't want an app for my toaster. I don't understand how cool things like YouTube revanced and other "app mods" work, and I can barely grasp what "debrid" streams are. A zoomer manages the discord server we started years and years ago, because none of the millennials know how to work the bots. I self host one of the bots, but I don't know shit about using it lmao.
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I don't understand how Microsoft office handles it's saves
Poorly. But that's because of One Drive. You can disable and uninstall it though.
How YouTube revanced works
YT revanced isn't an "app mod", its a completely separate program which just shows YouTube content. Kinda like how Lemmy sometimes shows reddit or Twitter content.
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Yeah. I think this is a pretty good point you are making there! Zoomers may not understand the tech language we grew up with, but in turn, we don't understand the tech language they have grown up with either. It's kinda like slang. It evolves over time and makes communication between generations awkward haha.
I think, for me, I feel uncomfortable relying so much on the tech doing a lot of the work for me. There is a loss of control in a sense even though it may make life more convenient in some areas (and not in others). It's kinda like having to use a dishwasher for the first time and not really understanding how to operate it and then washing dishes by hand still, because that's what you're comfortable with.
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So what this suggests to me is that zoomers are so up their own cell phones that they never bothered to learn how to use pepper computers. That almost funny. Mocking laughter is warring with weary head shaking in me.
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I never learned how to use pepper computers either. But I do salt my hashes.
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