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.
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.
Don’t know no C, only /dev/sda1.
*hda1 please
/dev/nvme1?
Let’s not make the inevitable mistake of assuming what was an essential skill for one generation is going to matter fuck all for most of the next generation.
Old people still think it’s outageous if you can’t write a check, read an analog clock, read/write cursive… All things that most millennials might “need” to do less than once a year.
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.
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.
Late GenX (really, between X and Millennial): we expected everyone after us to understand tech. Nope.
Bingo. We straddled the digital divide, figured it out and deployed it to the world. Until a radical new technology comes along, there won’t be another generation like us.
AI is that radical new tech
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).
My ssd is sda (with a sda1 boot partition and an encrypted root partition).
That’s because is a SATA SSD.
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.
Yeah, I’m Gen Z as well and watching people use Google without knowing what to put in the search box drives me nuts, but that’s why they pay for me so…
I remember telling my dad “Computers aren’t that hard. You just need to read what is the thing saying” and most people won’t even read, let alone comprehend.
Thats because is a SATA SSD
Correct :3
I remember telling my dad “Computers aren’t that hard. You just need to read what is the thing saying”
The problem is more and more systems these days won’t let you read what they’re saying, systems like ChromeOS, Android (AOSP is better but only if you’re a dev), IOS, IpadOS, MacOS, and Windows are going out of their way to hide “power user” features. At this point the only real choice of operating systems for people who want full control over their computer are Linux distributions.
At this point the only real choice of operating systems for people who want full control over their computer are Linux distributions.
I couldn’t agree more with you, and the same can be said about most consumer devices. If you want a full control over any device, you are gonna get the best experience flashing a custom firmware. But manufacturers don’t like it, they lose the telemetry data and revenue so they do their best to impede that.
AOSP is better but only if you’re a dev
AOSP is the way android phones should be sold, and to have the option to escalate privileges in a terminal, so you can actually do some work without relying on Google Play Services + a 200MB app to send a file to your laptop. The custom vendor images should be something people can opt in to get a vendor locked dumbed down experience.
If you want a full control over any device, you are gonna get the best experience flashing a custom firmware. But manufacturers don’t like it, they lose the telemetry data and revenue so they do their best to impede that.
Thats why I use a Thinkpad T440p with Libreboot, sadly some proprietary blobs are still present. Hopefully my next laptop will be completely open source and running on Risc-V.
AOSP is the way android phones should be sold I disagree, security is absolutely horrific. I use a pixel 7 with graphics and tbh for a phone the privacy downsides are well worth it for security. Sadly thats a compromise that must be made (at least until a phone brand can offer both security and privacy).
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!
“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 mean i guess you must be pretty competent with an abacus then in case you ever get stuck somewhere where they wont let you ise a calculator? Your argument that people should spend time becoming proficient with inferior tools just because they are tools doesn’t really hold up. If something gets the job done better and more efficiently it makes the other tools obsolete. Thats the nature of technology.
I haven’t used an abacus in a very long time, but I haven’t forgotten how to use one. I still have a slide rule that I can still use if I have to, (I come from a time before pocket calculators). I used to race the the younger kids in my classroom to see who could do simple math problems faster-- me and the slide rule or them and a calculator. And my rule in class was that there were no calculators. Well, using fingers was acceptable. Because I wanted you to get your hands dirty playing with the numbers. If you wanted a calculator for a test, I would offer you a slide rule.
As a working adult, you must be proficient will the tools your occupation has. And not just the tools you wish you have. If you are running servers in a Windows based environment, it doesn’t do you any good to wish for Linux based servers. And you better be good with both Windows and Linux if the environment is mixed. And a professional doesn’t complain about their tools, they just use the ones they have to accomplish the job at hand. Of course, if you have the money and power to do the choosing and purchasing of the tools you prefer and want, then by all means buy them. But I doubt that’s the case for you.
This has been a worrying trend in education. Parents assumed kids just knew how tech worked so they stopped teaching things like typing, office, or how to use the basics. Now we have people graduating who know how to use iPads and Xboxes, but have no idea how to manage a file structure (many honestly just use “recent”), or make a PowerPoint, and a lot don’t know typing.
Gen Z/A are good at using tech, but they don’t really know anything about how it works. I work in IT support and it can honestly be a tossup sometimes if the person who doesnt know how to clear their cache is a boomer or not.
Oh no, does this mean Gen X are going to be the wisened graybeards that holds arcane knowledge and seemly executes feats of magic when related to technology?
X and the millennials both had to deal with computers that were computers, it’s the people that grew up in the smart phone/tablet era that have no idea what to do in front of an actual computer…
My litmus test is: “Have you tried Linux?”
Even if they just used a live cd for curiosity, it means they know enough about computers to grasp the concepts that make them versatile, and were exploring around the net enough to read about it.
So I’ve been in the DOS/Windows world for at least 30 years. I have never used Linux, but I can configure a Cisco server or switch and stack a rack. Yet I fail your test?
You were working with computers since before smartphones existed, that’s a pass of course.
if a 3 year old can use a smart phone it’s not because that child is a genius it’s because the phones designer was.
You in NYC area? I’m hiring.
NYC = new york city
This is a translation provided for free by me because this user has defualted to american defaultism
To the person I’m replying to, THIS IS THE INTERNET, NOT america
If he’s from NYC, he knows what NYC means. If he’s not from there, it doesn’t matter anyway
I completely blame schools adopting ChromeOS for this generational failure.
At least give them a functional OS god damn. People out here not knowing you can do more than access like 5 websites and apps with literally anything that has a microprocessor in it.
My school actually had Linux mint set up for everything. It even resetted every time you boot it, so you couldn’t do any real damage. The only reason we had this was, because one of our CS teachers was very good and actually cared. He is also the one who managed the entire IT infrastructure.
Thats awesome. Was Mrchromebox your teacher?
I dont know who that is, so i guess no.
Mrchromebox made a replacement firmware for chromebooks so you can install other operating systems on them.
Nice! Hadn’t heard of this project. The old chromebooks are easy to find in e-waste lots, mostly from schools. Hardware’s not ancient. Presumably optimized for web services. Just a lot of broken screens and keyboards.
But if you stack ‘em like server blades in a beowulf cluster you might have a decently power-efficient and scalable host for microservices, web apps, lemmy instances, whatever. With UPS for each node lol. Basically free.
I dunno, could be a fun class project for the kids to learn on with a minimal budget?
https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/getting-started.html
I like your ideas, even though I don’t understand it all. :)
Tell the kids I am counting on them!!!
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.
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
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.
I’m guessing my kids are younger than yours, but I’ve taken the approach of simply keeping a loose eye and ear on what they’re watching to make sure they’re not on too bad of content and of course limiting how much time they can spend on brainrot content. They spend most of their TV time watching PBS kids or some ripped DVDs on my Jellyfin
my parents did none of this. I had free rein on the internet as a wee kiddo. Granted, that was in the wild west days of the internet, but still, they did nothing. I regret it immensely.
Why was it called C and not A or 1 or something
Because the A: drive is your floppy drive
B: drive was the.other floppy drive!
Is a floppy drive different form the floppy disk? Cause i remember floppy disks, vaguely.
The drive runs the disk in my mind but I don’t know the classroom right answer. My thought process on the matter is you insert the floppy disk into the floppy disk drive then your computer mounts it. Your hard drive runs your hard disk. Drives run disks. shrug
Yer that’s what i had thought, same kinda thing as a cd drive, not that it’s means much to anyone who isn’t 100
