You must log in or register to comment.
Dude I was born in 2000 and I get so mad when I realize how true this is. Apps/“smart” phones might be regarded as the biggest double edged sword in the history of technology.
It literally feels like we are at a moment in history where we are evolving backwards by force. This will only worsen as the ipad babies grow older.
You will own nothing and be happy. You will also know nothing and be happy.
People thought the same thing about written language, that it would ruin everyone’s memory cause they could just write things down and wouldn’t have to go through the honorable effort of rembering everything
Although, to be fair, they didn’t have capitalism then so our similar worries might be more well founded lol
We are actively being held back by companies catering exclusively to the lowest common denominator.
You will also know nothing and be happy.
Ignorance is bliss after all
Might be a bit dramatic. All sectors of industry are using more and more tech, we have more people in the workforce now that are tech literate than we did decades ago.
These are random numbers to explain my point. Look at it this way, in the 90s maybe 20 percent of people knew how to use computers but 12 percent of those were truly tech savvy and knew the ins and out of using a pc.
Now a days 90 percent of people know how to use a pc (regardless of the form it presents itself, be it pc, phone, tablet, etc) but only like 30 percent of them might be truly tech savvy.
It’s still a step up from back then, and because of the nature of tech in industry there’s always gonna be plenty of people who know how to use pcs well and if there aren’t then that’s just more money for us who do know.
I heard that some employers are having to teach new ‘gen z’ employees how to download email attachments…
Gen Z struggles with file systems in general, because the vast majority of their technical experience is on mobile OS’s. However, Gen Z compsci students are somehow far beyond the skill set that millennials had at their age. Or at least that has been my experience with interns over the past 12 years.
I guess because the Gen Z comp sci students are the people who are truly fluent in computers. We were immersed in the internet and digital technology from a young age, but also had the curiosity to go beneath the surface of them, and get a real understanding of how things work. Most people just use the technology superficially, even if they have grown up with the internet and computers.
100%, as a Gen Z CompSci student lol
I was born in 2001. I didn’t use a smartphone until I was like 16. We grew up with regular computers too. I also grew up with Windows XP and 7, as well as playing Doom using DosBox. Then again I am a computer science graduate, so maybe not the best example.
Just like me, I also grew up with Windows XP and still playing Master of Orion on Linux today.
So is that like, what gets the kids street cred? Windows XP usage?
Pretty cool I guess?
Point being I’ve used tech from the era before smartphones.
Removed by mod
Why are you so negative?
Why do you want to be God’s specialist little guy? You didn’t contribute anything other than “oh I used Windows XP, unlike other Gen z.” it’s so insignificant and boring. Nothing personal but I’m just calling a spade a spade.
No need for that tone old bean.
Keep fluffing each other
Gen Z here. Totally agree, though I personally am a bad example for this one. There was someone in my CS class once who I was put into a group with for a project. I needed some code that they had, so I asked them to put it on my flash drive. It was taking a while and eventually I asked why. They didn’t know where their IDE saved their code, and were using Windows search to try and find it. They were pretty good at actual programming, logic, etc. though.
Tbh, that’s something I can totally understand. Some programs use very obscure savefile locations, usually hidden behind 10 subfolders somewhere under your documents.
I think the teacher specified that we use eclipse, and most who didn’t were using vscode. If I recall correctly, they did use eclipse. I don’t remember how it handles saves, but I don’t think it does that.
Everybody always says this, but I’ve yet to talk to anyone who even has an anecdote of talking to a Gen Z person for whom that’s true.
I remember when the go-to search term was “warez.”
I still don’t know if that was supposed to be pronounced like “wares” or “war-ehz.” 🤔
My dad pronounced it war-easy. Some time later I played Morrowind and, well… “Khajit has warez if you have coin”
I don’t think either answer is wrong.
I always thought it was warez as in “wears”. My understanding is it was short for “softwares” or something. Take the end, add a dash of 1337sp34k and you get warez.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Software and hardware are both wares aka goods or services that are for sale. Merchants deal in wares. Pirates deal in warez.
Except that softwares and hardwares probably came out of the word “wares”.
My native language isn’t English, so for me as a teen back then it was definitely the second option.
Reading this as someone who torrents debian ISOs instead of directly downloading then in the hopes of reducing server load, while at the same time, not torrenting any pirated stuff.
But well, I was born a wee bit before 2000
Please post your address to send the medal
127.0.0.1
Based alert
I know how to torrent but choose to use one click hosters instead since they are safer to use here and I dont want to pay for a vpn. People who get fines here are people who torrent because they want to bust seeders since they are redistributing
Yeah, living in Germany a OCH is just the way to go. Also it’s impossible to find decent content with German audio without having spent years seeding English stuff to get into a private tracker
I was born after 2000 I have to teach my parent how to torrent its not a generational thing lol
needing a paid vpn to torrent without getting spooky ISP notices is a pretty big barrier for me tbh :|
Use a p2p block list in your torrent client. Once I started using that the emails stopped.
I use: https://github.com/Naunter/BT_BlockLists/
But there are probably others
A decade ago we figured out blacklists were ineffective. What’s changed?
Better blocklists? They’re working fine for me.
Blocklists are ineffective by design. Each and every member of the swarm can collect all the data necessary to flag you to your ISP. Obviously any professional collecting this kind of data can avoid a blocklist. There is no such thing as a better blocklist.
Get into a Private tracker. Or You could rent a vps in a country that doesn’t care, torrent to that server and stream or sync it locally. You would never be torrenting on your local connection.
I don’t understand how private trackers are supposed to be secure. They cannot guarantee that they keep out all bad actors and that means they’re basically the same as public trackers, just more exclusive and with a slightly lower risk because of the barrier of entry. I used MyAnonamouse in the past and back then they weren’t big fans of VPNs. But I will never use any tracker without a VPN.
My guess would be that companies will probably go after the 99.9% of people that torrent on public trackers, while ignoring private ones since it’s not worth it to go to all that trouble just to track the last 0.1%
Never had any issues with the private tracker I’m in or got any letter from my ISP. I definitely don’t pay for a vpn. I could always use my rented vps(seedbox) as a vpn if i absolutely needed or wanted to.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
But they must only be like 8 years old. What are they doing down loading warez
Someone born in 2008 is now 16 years old.
I must say it felt weird when I had the first of my staff with a 2000 birthdate, that young falla is now an assistant regional branch manager
Pretty sure I was fooling around with LimeWire at that age
What’s the 411 on steamunlocked ? Just malware ? Can we just get the cracks like in the old days ?
Anonymous torrents on I2P FTW 🏴☠️ Best way to safely find stuff unavailable on streaming sites.
I do torrent but only legal stuff: Like every Linux Distro ISO or Some other legal document and stuff. If I have to torrent some ~mhm content I use remote torrenting using Telegram.
Usenet.
For me it’s usually easier to “watch free online” rather than searching and downloading torrent, like, I have client installed just in case, but I barely use it. Last time I used it actually was official 9front iso, not pirating.
QBitTorrent has a search built in. You have to add scripts for each torrent host, but once you add a bunch it makes it very easy to just search through that and find what you want. Finding a free stream you have to go through a bunch of shady sites trying to find one that works and is half decent quality.
+1 for qbittorrent. i’m very arrr unsavvy but been using qbit for years and almost always find what i want using its built-in search
Weirdly enough I have never used that feature. Only found out about it after I started using Usenet and the *arr stack. Now if I want to search for something manually I use Prowlarr that allows me to search both Usenet and Bittorrent at the same time.
The rest of the time Radarr or Sonarr finds it for me.
Look into the servarr suite. I just add what I want and it finds and downloads it for me.
Computer literacy is weird because it feels like millennials were born into it and had to learn how to use the tools available… Then said tools were made a lot simpler with a lot less control over them, and Gen Z was born into apps and saas and did not have the chance to properly learn
We generally only taught a single generation to master our tech, I think it’s scary, but also I trust the Zoomers to figure it out, they’re creative
Then said tools were made a lot simpler with a lot less control over them
Which needs to be reversed if we’re to remain free in Western democracies. Access to and control of computing - general purpose computing in particular - is practically a civil liberty now. I look at legislators in my own country, and I’d wager 50% of them don’t understand this, 40% kind of grasp the problems but are apathetic, and 10% are on the enemies’ payrolls.
The weird thing is I know a lot of millennials that could use a dos computer just fine but struggle with anything modern
So maybe we shouldn’t worry after all? Future generations will make fun of us because we can use Windows XP fine but we don’t understand how TikTok works?
You make some good points there. I remember LAN parties in high school where we would spend hours troubleshooting network problems and calling older brothers for advice. I learned a lot from those experiences, because I was forced to. I think a big part of the changes we are seeing in computer literacy is what I would call the Apple philosophy: if a toddler can’t use it, we need to simplify. Basically, as you said, things are getting simpler with less granular control. Of course, Apple is far from the only company doing this stuff, but they seem to be industry leaders in the sense of ‘dumbing down’ tech.
I recently had a friend say that privacy is a luxury these days. My first thought was that there is nothing luxurious about it. It takes hard work, inconvenience and savvy. And I’m not even close to Stallman levels of privacy paranoia. I know just enough to acknowledge that I know nothing. I feel similarly about tech in general. I have been using Linux for ten years, I use VPNs, I have played around with DNS settings, et cetera. But I realize that I have barely scratched the surface of what is possible and available to those willing to spend the time and get it done.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Thanks for replying thoughtfully, and thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
I think so too. My kids are around the age I was when I first started tinkering with PCs, but they don’t have any awareness of what’s going on under the hood, (to be frank, nor do they seem to need it, as everything is so polished these days).
I’m thinking of asking their teachers if I can take them out of school for a day each and bring them to work with me for educational purposes so they get some perspective in the form of networks and servers.
Sure, they’re mostly interested in gaming, but I want them to see what kind of infrastructure is needed for a multiplayer game, specifically the hardware that they never get to see.
I’m building a new server stack in a couple of months, and most of it will be used for testing, so I’d like for them to help build and connect it.
(to be frank, nor do they seem to need it, as everything is so polished these days)
The problem is if you don’t know basic concepts of computers you cannot transfer your knowledge from one program to the next. Folder structures are a bizarre thing for many people and if they see one in program A, then they won’t understand that in program B it works the same way.
I have never had any issues learning any new software from scratch, but I see people my age not figuring out where to click next or where something they are looking for might be hidden in the options. Then an update comes that changes things and they are back to square 1 and helpless.
Folder structures are a bizarre thing for many people
When learning about this I learned that in the analog days folks would actually put physical folders inside of physical folders and it both makes tons of sense and is mind blowing at the same time. -Late Millennial born to IT parents
I just had a chat with my oldest (almost 13 years y.o.) asking him some theoretical questions in the hope to spark some curiosity: “When you connect to a Roblox game, what do you think you’re connecting to?”. It took him a few leaps of imagination to realize that he’s connecting to a physical machine somewhere, and now he’s curious as to how such a machine looks. So that server stack I’ll be setting up, he’s interested in tagging along.
He already knows full well that there are more to PCs than just the windows UI, as I’m a linux guy, but I don’t think they’re aware of just how much can be done with a computer once you go outside of the usual GUI app that connects to some cloud service.
So, provided that his teacher agrees (after all, I have to take him out of school for what effectively will be “alternative education” for a few days so we can fly down to the head office), he’ll end up with bragging rights of having dealt network hardware that costs more than the average computer, and computers that cost more than the average house.
This could be a very formative memory even if he get disinterested from computers, getting this kind of perspective on things can go a long way !
I have memories of some random afternoons at the consulting firm my mom worked at, where everyone’s just poking at spreadsheets. I can’t imagine how cool the memory of going into the server farm and doing some hardware work there would be
Good on you. You can teach your son some valuable perspective, while getting in some quality time as well. Please let us know how it goes, if you don’t mind. I feel invested now.
Remind me in two months, and I’ll tell you what’s happening.
!remind 2 months
do we have something like this on lemmy?
Best I can do is “[voice assistant] remind me about that post in two months”
Drat, gotta open the reminder and paste in the comment URL too. Do wonder if that bot mentioned is whitelisted or not. More social, beyond just being native. And hopefully it has “send me a PM to reduce spam”
No idea. I’ll look into creating one.
@RemindMe@programming.dev exists, but im not sure if it is whitelisted
2 months
I just had a baby and I’m already planning how to get her to help me run my home lab as a way to get her to figure all this stuff out, maybe run some game servers or do a little local blog. Then I think about how I can teach her to solder a hand wired keyboard or maybe build a little fpv drone with me and then I start to remember that kids sometimes just don’t like what you do so you never know what you could get them interested in or not or if you will each have the time when they’re older
3 and 5 years old here. They can get interested as long it’s short and they can do meaningful work. I’ve teared down a second hand game boy color that had his fair share of Pepsi in it. The old one helped me clean with a toothbrush for 10 minutes, then he had to show me what parts were going where (with guidance). Then boot up and verify it works. We try to include them in everything we do and they love to help. We try to avoid the “it’s adult business” and they just sit around and never be interested on whats going out around them. The 3 year old can cut mushrooms with a wood knife and the 5 stir them when cooking.
It’s definitely more work, stuff will be broken but I think it’s worth it.
In my country, this generational divide doesn’t make much sense. But comparing those born in the 90s and early 2000s with those born from the late 2000s onwards, there is a fundamental difference: there was, even in the public education system, a variety of computer courses available to many people. With the arrival and hegemony of the app model, which is designed with the idea that it is intuitive and does not require anyone to be taught how to use it, computer courses have been disappearing. As a result, millions of young people use computers daily and have no knowledge of simple concepts such as shortcuts Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, let alone advanced features of Office suites, not to mention that they have no idea what LATEX and Markdown are.
To be fair, the overwhelming majority of people regardless of age don’t know what LaTeX or markdown are. Not the best examples. I’m a millennial with a 4 year STEM degree and I maybe used LaTeX once because it was required, and before Discord became a thing, I’d never heard of markdown. Most people who use Discord probably don’t even know it supports markdown.
I agree that is a extreme example. That’s precisely why I started with keyboard shortcuts. I don’t think anyone is required to know LaTeX and Markdown, but it seems to me that fewer and fewer younger people know them. If there are fewer people who know the basics, there are proportionally fewer people who know the advanced ones.
That’s super interesting, I do remember being taught as a kid how to use Google Image search (circa 2005), Gimp for photo manipulation around the age of 12 in 2008, we had technology classes with electronics, technical drawing, even some plastic bending machine, and light programming (made a robot figurine execute recorded moves in sequence)
I do wonder if it’s still the case in my own country
It’s really not a generational thing. Every generation has their nerds and they always are just a tiny minority.
The late Gen X/early millennials may have been an outlier because they were forced to learn to get anything working but also from those years most don’t care about tech.
Yep. I dabble in recruiting related stuff at conferences and expos for our company occasionally and I usually meet one or two young people that get the “get in contact!” remark on the protocol sheet. They’re out there, they’re just rare.
This is quite a few years old now, but I think the main points are still valid. As you said, everything is so polished, kids don’t need to figure out how it works.
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
Im surprised that a lot of people that are my age, even if they are using computers a lot, dont know how to search the solution for a problem or follow some instructions on how to do something
I’m Gen Z and I still know all this stuff because that’s just what I’m interested in. I don’t think it’s a huge issue that those things were made simpler for the average person and that they don’t know how it works. It’s not like you can or need to know everything.
