- cross-posted to:
- iiiiiiitttttttttttt
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- iiiiiiitttttttttttt
- [email protected]
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Right here you can see capitalism collapsing in on itself. This is the result of a society that glorifies consumption and makes work undesirable to do.
I’m an 80’s kid. We had to learn everything: MS-DOS, Windows, how to install OS’s and software, serial ports, etc. Nothing was easy or convenient. You had to LEARN how and why things worked if you wanted to run games and things.
My dad never used any of our actual PC’s. He wouldn’t know which way to hold the mouse, much less anything else. We tried to teach him, but he just couldn’t grasp any of the fundamentals.
But with an iPad? That’s easy. It just works. He can e-mail, do Facebook, watch YouTube or other streaming…
Point is: we made shit way too accessible and convenient. Kids never have to learn anything anymore. So they don’t. We literally had to teach interns the basics of working with a desktop; all they’ve ever used was an iPad and phone.
It also lead to the destruction of the old web. Back in the early to late ‘90’s, you had to be a nerd to use it. To WANT to use it even. But now that it’s so easy and convenient even my completely tech illiterate dad can get online, things have turned to shit. We never should’ve made it this convenient.
Don’t know no C, only /dev/sda1.
I’ve worked in IT for most of my career. I’ve seen some shit. I’m on the older side of “millennial”. Not old enough to be on the cusp, but almost immediate after. I have had computers as a part of my life since I was young enough to remember, starting with a 286/386 that my dad used at home.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most companies shit doesn’t stink. What I mean by that is that all of them, to some extent, hide, cover up, or otherwise deny that their product has any issues whatsoever. I did a lot of VMware training back in the day, there were good reasons for that, but I won’t get into it … anyways, all of their training was about how it’s supposed to work. There’s zero material about what to do when it doesn’t work like it is supposed to… Even “troubleshooting” courses are designed to help you fix the configuration of the system using only methods sanctioned by the company, because any fault or flaw in their product must be because you aren’t using it right, or you simply don’t know how.
I’ve known so many millennials, especially in the tech space, that had to fix their own problems because the product, and the company that made it, believes that their shit doesn’t stink. There’s nothing wrong with their product, you either don’t know how to use it, or you aren’t using it correctly,
Meanwhile, here in reality, all their shit sucks to all fuck, and their product is little more than hour garbage.
Yay?
Calm down they’re like 16yrs old
I know a bunch of people who got into webdesign cuz of MySpace.
I run a Makerspace and teach technology to kids. I don’t think they are getting worse, but the difference between the lowest and highest skilled is bigger than ever before.
Those who are interested, learn so fucking fast and so thoroughly, because they have things like YouTube tutorials and Discord chat groups with like-minded nerds to teach themselves. BUT at the same time, it’s easier to just remain a consumer, and never gain any deeper knowledge.
I think curiosity and attention are quickly becoming the most important skills by far.
I’d say that technologically millennials really have it best over everyone else.
Us millennials had to figure out the technology as it evolved into what it is today we know how bad it really was before it got really good.
I remember back in high school around 2002 we got cable internet for the first time we had all of three megabytes download. That was tremendously fast.
Movies were in divx format and could be dled from peer to peer networks. Morpheus, zazaa, Ares.
Dang those were the days.
They get handed locked down chromebooks or iPads at schools. They’re only really exposed to a walled garden, and they also aren’t explicitly taught a lot of concepts that need to be taught (almost all MS/HS I’ve met have passwords which are just sliding their finger across the keyboard - it’s bewildering. I teach “correct horse battery staple.”)
You can’t learn much if you can’t install your own software. Learning is breaking things though, and most schools seem allergic to hiring competent tech teams/setting up sandboxed computer labs. Security concerns are huge - eg, if your kids school uses PowerSchool they probably got hacked this year - but when your teaching physics and can’t install MathLab or whatever…
There are still the little geeks that figure out how to get video game emulators going - Pokémon Emerald is probably more popular among middle schoolers today than it was in 2005.
I used to teach math in the local school. The kids had a great interest in 3D printing because I had a few fun items in my classroom that I had 3D printed. I decided to spend a couple of weeks teaching a bit of CAD through having the kids spend it designing a personalized key chain to print.
It took me 3 days of class time to teach them how to use a mouse…They couldn’t grasp the idea that a touch screen and CAD don’t go together, you need that mouse to make it work. It quickly became apparent that things quickly became difficult for them if it doesn’t have a touch screen.
And while some classes are always a bit better than others, there was always a noticeable number of them that struggled with using a mouse.
To be fair: I switched to Linux 6 years ago. I’m using a tiling windowmanager, a lot of custom scripts, a different keyboardlayout with six instead of two layers (great for writing greek math, and other symbols) and an enthusiastic emacs user. I know the my System in and out. As a CS end math student, I know a fair bit about a Computer. But when A sit in front of an ordinary windows PC, I am a little bit upset. I stumble a lot of times over the thought: “You don’t have a keyboard shortcut for this! You have to use the Mouse, to switch Windows or you have to click yourself trough a menu to change this setting. There are no man pages you can search with regex” I hate it!
It’s because Windows has to save its keyboard combinations for the important things, like opening a new LinkedIn tab.
“an enthusiastic emacs user” Well, there’s your problem! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the poke)
To be serious, Windows and that mouse are just tools-- same as any Linux distro is. A means to an end. Nothing more. There is nothing to be miffed about when you need to use that tool. Be proficient with all your tools. And when you need to use a tool, don’t be concerned about comparing it to the other tools. It diminishes you skills with that tool and and offers no gain to the solution.
But being stuck using windows when its not the right tool for the job is like having to use a pickaxe when you could be using q jackhammer, only the idiots in procurement don’t like power tools.
Perhaps. But despite using Windows, you got the job done, right? Life is all about using the tools do have, rather than the ones you wished you had.
I use Arch (btw) because it’s easy, simple, and beginner friendly
Absolutely lost in Windows, nothing ever works, and the documentation isn’t laid out well. Support is just sfc /scannow
This is why windows is here for a few games and Linux is for everything else.
I think that’s being a bit unfair to Windows. Some of its keyboard shortcuts are stupid, but it does have them. When it doesn’t, the problem is the application.
Some of the legacy keyboard shortcuts still survive to this day.
I live by Windows+R for the run dialogue.
If you populate %userprofile% with shortcuts named after keywords to your commonly used apps (eg fire.lnk for Firefox) then you can just slap Windows+R, type fire, Enter.
Generally, you’re totally on point, but I just wanted to drill into that mention about hotkeys for switching windows. You mean something other than alt+tab, ctrl+tab, and in some applications shift+brackets?
I haven’t run into the problem of people not being able to use a mouse - but I’ve found that very few young people are able to tell if something is saved on their own computer or being accessed over the internet. Saving or downloading files is not something they are familiar with. (Which I suppose is because a lot of modern software makes cloud stuff so silky smooth that people don’t notice it.)
Late GenX (really, between X and Millennial): we expected everyone after us to understand tech. Nope.
Computer natives are millennials. In due time, millennials will be what cobol programmers are in the coding world.
“On you want your recycle bin emptied? Yeah, thats gonna cost you.”GenX. We started with nothing and went from there.
I still know my way around autoexec.bat and config.sys
I had my hard earned ZX81 thankyouverymuch.
Well, now that I think about it you’re right, before that there was absolutely utterly nothing at all.
Finally some gen X representation!
On you want your recycle bin emptied? Yeah, thats gonna cost you.
aka what we’ve already been doing to relatives
92 here. My boys 10 and 8 have their own machines, they are told to Google it first before I come help.
“I’m not raising end users…get your shit together kid.”
Love,
SysEngineer Dad.
You’re 92 and your kids are 10 and 8? Damn, and I thought I started late.
Old dusty balls still knockin around by my knees but you better be god damn sure I’m fuckin.
I spent so much time troubleshooting together with my dad. I found it way more educational than just googling it and owe my current level of knowledge to it. When I was living with my parents part of me was sad when I got to the point where I was able to solve any issues I had faster alone than with my dad’s help. No judgement just thought you might want to know. I totally get not wanting to cross over your work life and your family life though.
I learned electronics through my Dad that way too. And my kids learn through me with this stuff. But if they ask me over and over again to do something, it’s their burden to go research what they need to learn to stop asking me. And it’s usually done with my guidance. I’m not actually flippant with them with their questions lol
fellow tech dad here. how did you strike the balance between “look up shit online” and “hiding the terrors and lies of the internet from my kids”?
Mine’s still little, but knowing sooner is better.
I have the Microsoft safety shit on, and I made every site they can go to a web app. My router blocks nsfw/nonkid traffic. My phone gets notifications when they do anything at all.
And I have extensions blocking all nsfw sites just in case. And I’ve nuked the entry for any web browser on their start menu and task bars. Can’t even scroll to find it. If you open it, it requires my admin PW, which is 14char #$@-123-ABC so good luck turds.
Steam is locked down in kid mode - also they just play Roblox or cool math games anyways lol. Steam has browser disabled.
Only things they have access to is Bing.com with their signed in kid account. And coolmathgames.com.
It took about a week on and off to setup and I just did the two laptops in tandem. Windows 11.
The family thing can be a pain, Microsoft has a lot of half baked ideas https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/how-to-set-up-parental-controls-on-a-windows-11-pc
My parents and school administrators’ attempts at blocking unsanctioned activities is what taught me computer literacy
There was nothing quite as satisfying as getting caught opening addictinggames on a web browser through a proxy when the teacher was convinced they had blocked it completely.
I remember when proxies were easy to find and you could get to the most ridiculous stuff. We had college intern system admins for IT at our HS so it was easier to get by alot of things most of the time.
My son’s group in middle school hosted their own proxy overseas. They then pirated a whole bunch of educational videos that the teachers liked to use and made nice clean interface. The games pages had no direct links on the educational videos screens. They had to type in the the page directly in the URL.
So the teachers all loved the site and gave the official “approved for all students” bypass on the districts Chromebooks. The kids had uninterrupted access to all their games.
The kids were smart enough to keep the location of the games to students with a B or higher GPA. Most of the teachers turned a blind eye to them playing games when they did get caught. The games pages also had a home button that sent the students screens to a random educational video. I was truly impressed with their clever approach.
The IT department either never caught on or enjoyed the games themselves because its still up and they are all in highschool now.
A friend and I became unofficial TAs for a high school computers class when we defeated the remote-viewing software and any web blockers, we knew more than the poor teacher and it was easier to let us do what we wanted if we promised to help other kids do the actual lessons.
That network had terrible security. So many important files stored as unprotected text in the intranet.
Yeah, I found Microsoft family to be a pretty half-assed experience. The thing that seems to work best is the screen time management. I had planned to try and set up YouTube access via allow listing channels in a home Linux server, but it turns out that YouTube doesn’t identify their videos by channel in the URL and I’d have to allowlist every single video for a given channel.
I’m planning on building a server that rips channels videos and they can have the app for that.
We are a no YouTube without our explicit permission on the video kinda household. Too much actual brainrot. And as much as I don’t like Television, at least my kids are mentally protected from bullshit with the Children’s Television Protection Act.
You could theoretically host a Piped API instance, and use it to get channel info. I guess you are already using your own SSL certificates, judging by what you are trying to accomplish.
This is the Piped org btw: https://github.com/TeamPiped
It is a YouTube frontend/proxy.
Edit: I made a post on Piped’s community, so we can discuss it there: https://discuss.online/post/16448014
I’m not a sysadmin, I’m a backend dev with enough network knowledge to be dangerous. I’ve set up exactly one super basic website, so I know some of this stuff, I just have to (and can and will) stumblefuck my way through it. This seems like a really great idea, I had no idea Piped could potentially handle that. I’m going to keep an eye on this, thanks!
That’s awesome. I would’ve hated dealing with this as a kid. Will definitely steal this when I have kids.
I would’ve hated dealing with this as a kid.
same, except i would love to bypass this as an adult
Yea, my job at work now is to do this but all day lol. I build my network/firewall/and shit and then go around trying to break as much shit as I can so I can fix it.
My kid spends a lot of time helping their friends do basic computer stuff and we have the same rants about users.
I’m so proud.
Raising them right. I have a 28 year old college grad sys admin that I work with…I had to show him where windows updates were.
He uses windows search to open settings…bachelors degree in IT.
I wouldn’t be in the mood to start raising a child st 84
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought of a 92 YO on Lemmy.
Most parents done feel like raising theirs either. They just stuff them on a tablet and do their thing.
“I’m not raising end users…get your shit together kid.”
Quite an important thing. That’s also important if you help your parents/grandparents with something. Guide the through it so you hopefully dont have to help them next time.
Not really. It takes a lot of experience to sort the legit from the not legit.
“Having problem X? Download the system32.dll fix here!”
That’s true. What I meant was like basic stuff like navigating through the settings of your phone or so.
Even then. My mother followed a YouTube video on this including the part where the helpful Indian guy had her download an app and set up a very sketchy VPN.
Yea…
What?
I’m starting to get to a point in my career where I have to turn down helping my family.
I strongly encourage the elderly to “just get an iPad” if they have an iPhone and just drop x86 devices all together. It’s way less headache.
Luckily my mom’s still young and proficient enough with computers and phones.
you should encourage them to use something that’s not google. Startpage, SearxNG, DuckDuckGo are good alternatives.
Ive heard about qwant and ecosia too
They are good options too.
I agree but bing.com is really what they are using because it has the parental controls that coincide with their signed in account.
When they get older and are more “free” on the Internet I’ll migrate them to Linux, I’ll let them choose the DE and then they can do what ever they want.
You turn your 8 year old loose on google, explicitly and intentionally unsupervised, and hold it up as an example of good parenting.
You assumed absolutely wayyy to much based on a single sentence and virtue signal your superiority based on your own fantasy of what’s going on with inconclusive data. Move along.
My ssd is sda (with a sda1 boot partition and an encrypted root partition). I may be in Gen Z but I also have Autism, granted I didnt grow up with a lot of technology but I always squeezed every ounce out of them. When I was 13 I installed Linux, by 16 I already knew how to use a terminal (and manage the entire system with it), today I would say im relatively good at basic IT and basic network management (although im struggling greatly at installing coreboot).
Conclusion: Gen Z/Alpha probrally wont be great at computers but there will probrally be many individuals who will be significantly more advanced at computers. I was watching YouTube and a found a video of a 15 year old installing Arch manually in less than 10 minutes on a Chromebook. So tbh I wouldn’t be worried tbh (at least about this specifically).
I had a meeting with a young person who had to have the concept of a directory structure explained to them for a half hour…and they’re in charge of designing a file browser. 🤦♂️
I don’t think the exercise was even successful.
how do people with no skills even get hired? I cant even get interview for job I fit perfectly for every thing they are asking for.
I’m pretty sure the people who do interviews are not the ones who have to train them. Also, if you use chat gpt for writing your cover letter, structuring your CV, running interview prep etc etc. You don’t even really need to be literate to come across as pretty put together.
Interviewers look for excess confidence, not skill
i guess i’m not getting hired for any work ever then… i just want to work and do my work well, not play their sick mindgames or pretend to be someone i’m not. I dont have any motivation to force myself to do work on fields outside my education either anymore.
Yeah, smartphones don’t teach kids file structure at all.
