I feel like the people I interact with irl don’t even know how to boot from a USB. People here probably know how to do some form of coding or at least navigate a directory through the command line. Stg I would bet money on the average person not even being able to create a Lemmy account without assistance.
Don’t worry, my fair tech-literate maiden. I, a tech-dyslexic, am here to bring down the collective IQ and make the chamber echo less. You can thank me later, for adding some much needed intellectual diversity to the mix.
This is true but I ultimately don’t care.
Is there any social media site that isn’t an echo chamber? They’re designed that way on purpose in most cases.
There are enough forums catering to idiots. I appreciate the better moderation, tech savviness, and lack of tolerance for right wing BS on Lemmy.
I lived in a tech echo chamber until I was in my 30s. This is because my dad is a baby boomer computer engineer who was working with computers since the 70s and we always had a computer at home (no consoles, just computers). First was a c64, we even briefly had a c128 (that didn’t work) and then we got a 386 followed by pentium machines and we first hooked up to the internet in the 90s… and before the internet we went on dial up BBSes run by ultra nerds.
My dad still keeps up with tech and is probably better with computers than many recent CS graduates. It wasn’t until I worked in tech support that I realized… Holy shit! There are people who have no idea their computers have directories! As in, if the shortcut isn’t on their desktop, then their program might as well not exist.
Also one thing I learned that if you tell someone to go to a site and you spell the URL to them, then 99.9% of the time they will Google it, because they don’t know what an address bar is.
I used to think those ‘how to use a computer’ courses in college were a giant waste of time (and an easy A for people like us) but I realize that these people could absolutely benefit from something like that.
And that is when I was working with people who had laptops mostly. When I worked in mobile tech support… fuck me! Do you realize that for a sizable chunk of the population the only computer they have is their smart phone? Those people are far, far worse. When I worked in mobility we were not allowed to hang up on clients for any reason (it was grounds for immediate termination) but at least a few times a week I had to deal with a client who did not know how to hang up their phone! No joke. They were accustomed to the other person hanging up and they didn’t know how to do it!
This is doubly frustrating when those people are using flip phones rhat have a clear hang up button on them.
So yeah, acknowledging we are in a bubble is a good thing. But it isn’t a bad thing to hang out with fellow tech nerds either.
you are 100% correct, however, the longer im here, the more tech literate i become, the easier it becomes for me to explain it to others, and thus, the fediverse grows. word of mouth to those willing to take the plunge.
you cant force people to learn something, but being able to sell it convincingly helps, especially if you know what you are talking about, and arent abbrasive or judgemental.
linux community / privacy communities rock here.
also general conversation feels more honest and constructive. instead of the whole “WeLl AcTuAlLy!” type of shit you get on reddit. it happens, but nowhere nearly as much.
also, way less censorship. comparing feeds from lemmy to reddit, is like apples to oranges.
this feels like a much more human space to me.
The way I look at it is, the more echo chambers you are in and out of, the more complete of a picture you can get as a whole.
Yes, Lemmy is a certain kind of echo chamber. But you can’t really be part of an online community these days that doesn’t tend toward becoming one.
You just have to diversify to keep the thread. And Lemmy is a very important part of that diversification for me.
The average person can’t even download the right authenticator app when prompted. The average person can’t type their password the same way two times in a password change field. The average person does not know how to plug monitors and peripherals into a docking station.
Whatever you think the average skill level is? It’s lower than that. By a lot.
Definitely very echoey in here.
Hello?
Hello?
Better than the generally illiterate echo chambers in other parts of my daily life.
I am not a programmer, not a geek, but just the ability to recognize problems and then find and implement the solution gives me the aura of an omniscient wizard. Simple things like: We have an automatic drying machine for work clothes here, but we haven’t been able to use it for YEARS! A Google search, manual found. We now have the third coffee machine. They always break because of the chalky water. When we descale, the display still lights up: If I really go through the instructions in the manual step by step, it suddenly works. And that’s before we get to any multiple screens or Excel problems with the sum function.
If you can interpret your car’s manual, you’re a hero. If you can also get hold of the vehicle’s repair manual, then you’re a wizard. And if you understand the sum function in Excel, then you are a danger to your supervisor.
We use arch btw.
The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less. The era of growing up with a home computer that required fiddling and dial up, etc is over. People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.
And for that reason alone I built a Linux PC for my 11 year old and told him to go to town figuring things out. (I supervise everything of course). Dude has been doing fantastic so far.
If he doesn’t solve problems with chmod 777 then he’s already more competent than the ops teams at my fortune 500 company
Who’s going to win?
SELinux+Seccomp+Containers…
Or the sysadmin with sudo and chmod.Neither! It’s whichever script kiddie gets lucky first.
Oh, but you gotta drop a chmod nuke at least once to feel the terror having done something irreversible. As a bonus, you’ll also gain a brand new appreciation for snapshots.
sudo chmod 000 /for securityAnd it’s also so much faster than full disk encryption. Cool little trick the admins don’t want you to know.
You don’t even need to do it recursively:
sudo find / -path '/*/*' -prune -o -exec chmod 000 {} +This is extremely fast.
Cool. I’m old enough that in middle school I begged my Mom to take to the mall to buy Linux. I got a Red Hat Linux CD-ROM pack from a store called Babbage’s. I couldn’t download the ISO on our modem and I don’t remember if we even had a burner at that point.
I used to love going to Babbage’s in the mall. So many King’s Quest boxes….
King’s Quest
Damn, that’s a good hit of nostalgia!
oh man, Babbages. Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. A long time.
I grew up starting my computer use having to navigate DOS just before windows 3.11 was released. I work in tech today and I feel like just knowing about a lot of the automated things we take for granted today has given me a little bit of an edge.
I had to walk to school in the snow ten miles, both ways uphill!
at least you had shoes
You guys have feet?!
Lt Dan?
You mustn’t have been paying attention, Lt Dan ain’t got no legs, that doesn’t preclude him from having feet
The Rayman body type
No. So I had to pull myself up the hills in a wagon and roll my own datetime parser
you dont levitate, or teleport.
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I used to have to book computer time at the library and walk to said library so I could play Oregon trail on an apple iie
In DOS time I learned how to type quickle because I had to type in
cd gamescd keenkeenas quickly as possible to minimise non-gaming time.That’s why you install Automenu
I feel the same about things like irq. Useless but I feel knowing how they worked makes you closer to the hardware.
So a friend of mine went to a convention to show off his gaming project. The kids there were trying to touch the monitors to play the game. They didn’t grab the keyboard and mouse. They didn’t touch the controller. They touched the monitor. People’s framework of what a computer is and what it’s made of is completely different than what it use to be
Reminds me of my senior teaching days 15 years ago. Solitaire, same.exe and saddam.exe and whack.exe soon had those oldies clicking, double clicking and dragging.
Didn’t think then that the situation could reverse.
Same still exists on Android and is still a brain twister.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.kubilayerdogan.samegamel
Even when I was like 4, I would’ve gone for the controller. I knew how to use it from Lego Star Wars. I knew how to use a keyboard, but I didn’t play on pc, so I’d have had to have been told the controls.
Hate to say it, but that technical literacy from having to operate computers the difficult way was a small blip in history. So things are just kind of going back to “normal.”
Now, the only real natural entry into “computing” is gaming. Pretty much everything else has to come through formal education, which is largely myopic and boring.
Don’t think I’ve even worked with a gen Z engineer yet. I assume they exist.
I have worked with a few gen z interns/fresh grads, and some younger millennials (I am a 1990 kid) and its interesting… Some of them have been very successful at passing the tests but have no mechanical aptitude at all. Some have been technically literate on first glance, then proven to be just confidently incorrect. In general though, it seems they just didn’t grow up being interested in how things worked like I did. It could be isolated to my small sample size or it could be a general trend. They also don’t seem to make connections across disciplines as easily either but again, that could just be a time in service thing at this point and not a generational trait.
I have not been super impressed with the new ones we get when we get them, some of them have been quick learners though and have impressed me with their adaptability. I am a huge proponent of proper mentorships or rotational programs and that is something that seems to get overlooked with younger grads in my experience.
One thing that really annoys me though, is that when prompted with something they don’t know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don’t know. Saying I don’t know is a completly acceptable answer as long as it is followed up with “but I will find out” or “can you help/explain it”. Falling back to a first principle approach and talking through it is also valid but just making up some shit doesnt fly with me.
I work in a completely different field, but you last paragraph mostly sounds to me like a typical young person entering the job market. There is this false sense og confidence, pride and know it all when graduating. I’ve just seen it a few too many times and I remember how confident and skilled I thought I was when I got out. At the same time, there’s some anxiety and fear of doing a bad job and admitting fault may make you seem weak or unskilled and you want to impress the mentors and blah blah blah.
It is a bit funny to remember how I thought I was going to be helpful to colleagues who were way more experienced than me and then years later I’m being talked at by soon to be graduates who are trying to be helpful by sharing tips with me that I already do on the daily or don’t do because I learned years ago they don’t work. And when I try to give them advice or instructions it’s like they just space out and hear what they think I mean and then do something completely different from what I ask of them, haha. I can’t be mad at it, because it’s just a part of learning and growing into your career. I think it would be a mistake to think that a newly graduated person in any field will be able to hit the ground running without any hiccups.
Maybe I’m just a bit of a softie when it comes to young people, but I just remember how eager I was when I was in their shoes and how incorrect my assumptions were when it came to what my elders expected of me. It all came gradually as I learned how to be a professional and how to solve tasks and find my rhythm. I imagine new generations on the market can’t be much different from myself in that regard. 😊
is that when prompted with something they don’t know, they will spit out some randome bullshit rather than say they don’t know
This is just the majority of people, not specific to any generation. Our minds are predisposed to use inductive reasoning to explain the world around us. We see something new and our brain immediately begins to make inferences based on prior information we believe we know (I say it this way cause our memories are incredibly faulty) that we think is relevant or comparable.
It’s essentially the Dunning Kruger effect: we think we know more than we do and, because of this, believe we can simply assume correctly about other things we know nothing about.
It’s an incredibly bad habit that is supposed to be trained out of us through our education systems but we all know how incredibly faulty those systems are.
The education system as I lived through it in Texas was actively hostile to saying you didn’t know, it was treated as being worse than being wrong or guessing. You can tell by the results allllllll around us.
I’m a displaced Texan (living in Holland) and boy-howdy, what I would do for a #1 Whataburger meal right now…
Hadn’t realized what a gem “I don’t know” is until waaaaay too late. Saying “I don’t know” still often feels like a personal, albeit public, moral failure. Which is so dumb. But feels like it makes so much sense.
I think about the Lucky 10,000 XKCD comic all the time.
As a Louisiana resident. I feel ya neighbor.
I work with a lot of gen z engineers that are very competent
There’s still a second natural entry, it is being critical and annoyed by corporate greed in apps, streaming services, ads, accounts for everything etc. The privacy/piracy entry.
They exist. They are capable of being smart and curious, but they’re less inherently familiar with the “bleep bloops” as we are.
Back to what, exactly? At what point in the past was it easier to use a computer than it was in the late 90s? Unless you’re talking about before computers, which doesn’t really have any bearing on what’s being discussed.
I’m assuming they mean “Normal” as in “the general public being completely oblivious to the inner workings of the things they utilize in their daily lives”, not “people going back to having an easier time with tech”.
I’m not entirely sure that is “normal” though. We don’t have to go back very far to reach a point where people would be making their own tools for their craft. I think this modern day is pretty abnormal in the grand scheme about not knowing how the things used actually work or is put together.
do you know the proportion of people making those tools? Like how many people could make tools, and work a technically skilled trade, compared to those who didn’t. Also, if you have a very narrow set of things you need to make, it doesn’t really do a whole lot more inherently. To see this before computers computers, just look at cars. Once they became mainstream you started to see that most people had no clue how they worked, and no interest in knowing.
My grandmother’s generation of my family were largely farmers. Like mostly born between 1910 and 1923. They knew how to make, and fix, tools, fences, etc. However, once they got away from this specific knowledge, that they grew up with, they were completely disinterested, and were suspicious of people who had broader knowledge sets. They also thought learning from reading was pointless, as they never were interested in reading, so they developed their reading skills to be just enough to get by, and became intensely frustrated when they ran into an issue, on the farm, they hadn’t before, and needed to read the manual for whatever piece of equipment it was. They also did this thing, where they would be doing something, like repairing/installing/expanding their irrigation system, but they didn’t have a fundamental understanding of why it worked. Just that you did these things, in this way, and it would work. They also didn’t care why it worked, just that it did.
You are absolutely right, but let’s be clear here… it’s not so much the lack of keyboard and mouse that’s the problem… it’s that these touchscreen devices don’t let you actually DO anything. The devices you can use a keyboard and mouse on ALLOW you to play, customize, make mistakes, and learn. There’s no reason a touchscreen device couldn’t provide that too, but iOS and Android specifically forbid you from learning anything - that’s a recipe for security holes! And THAT’s the real skill they lack. Real competence means bending the endless possibilities to your will - not just being given 5 of the most common ones and being locked out of the rest.
Why there now exists “iPad Kid”.
That a friend I know of has a lot of his kids entirely on smartphones, while their family PC is hidden behind cobwebs and dust; if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.
if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.
In fairness, it can be expensive to stock the holy water necessary to fend off the demons that inhabit all printers.
Just get a Brother laser
Or a library card.
Last I checked, libraries still charged per page.
Also, libraries are not at home.
Mine let’s you print an amount for free every month.
if they want a document printed they just go out to some print shop.
Print shops are not at home either.
Yes, which is why I said to get a Brother laser printer.
I’m extremely young, I don’t know how shit works, like at all. Because stuff works pretty well nowadays. Cannot imagine not knowing how to use a mouse. It could not be simpler imo. Can’t remember a time that I didn’t know lol
Don’t underestimate yourself. Just by posting here you have proven that you’re more proficient than the average Joe.
It’s not hard to make an account lol
Lots of users fail on anything more complicated than a “Sign in with Google” prompt.
Fascinating. Guess I never knew lol
The average person is incredibly dumb.
Not that dumb. Helpdesk just gives survivorship bias.
The people smart enough to realize modems don’t work during outage don’t call as often.
Except for “can you hack my ex’s facebook” ones. Those are constant for some reason.
Read my comment history to get context on how you are wrong and then delete that comment you just made.
You should spend some time trying to teach CAD to students in High School. My first couple of days with a new class involved teaching them that, No you can’t use your finger, and then how to use a mouse.
I’m in high school rn. I had to use this program called TinkerCAD in middle school for some weird class on the basics of engineering. Wasn’t particularly good at it, but no one needed an explanation of keyboard and mouse. Chromebooks are used heavily, so that makes sense. I never really considered that keyboard and mouse wouldn’t be at least learned. I guess with smartphones and iPads it makes sense. Makes me a little sad, but whatever.
Exactly. Exposure to technology does not make you tech literate. Tech literate typically means engaged with new technologies.
For instance, people were using phones, fax machines, calculators, watches, etc when dial up came out. Those users were not considered tech literate.
The same happens today, an iPhone or Android user is not tech literate by default anymore.
Imagine studying at uni for years to become a programmer, only to be replaced by a vibe coder with an iPhone.
But remember, hard work always pays off!We all imagine that, is has yet to happen. Vibe coders can produce the spaghetti code of upwards of 10 unpaid interns! What value!
AI=ALWAYS indian in the end.
Wait, does that mean that we millennials are actually going to be remembered for something good ?^*
We better find a cool name… the golden generation of tech? The tech overlords?
^* obviously i think we are cool
And once again, Gen X is completely ignored
You have to break the realty market of you want to stop being ignored. Sorry, not sorry 💁♂️.
Gen Xs that got into tech are tech gods, the thing is, due to low tech availability, they aren’t very common in my country.
Well, at least you finally acknowledged that I’m a god.
i also notice they fall for the simplest scams too online,
Soon the era of hosting own VPN and tricking AI will start
Ehhh maybe true for the US where they had a solid early tech industry and then made some questionable decisions. I feel like in the rest of the world progress is steady but forwards. Generally young stem university students where I live have all done a programming unit and a technology unit and each year more is added to curriculums whereas older generations might not have been given quite such an extensive education.
Also tech literacy = using a mouse is peak uppity midlife techy person. Get the fuck outta here there are more trans women and femboys wearing thigh highs and running arch off of think pads then there ever were of y’all older tech elitists back in the day.
Thafuq?
Yea, young STEM university students are obviously going to be more technologically literate than their counter parts. That isn’t a new thing and was true for the older generations too.
What questionable decisions are you talking about that the US made that you’re insinuating set them back compared to the rest of the world? The US does have more tech classes now than when I was in school in the early 2000’s. The problem is a vast majority of these kids coming up don’t know how to use computers effectively. It’s not just “using a mouse” that makes someone tech literate. Knowing how to navigate a mobile device, which is designed for ease of use to accommodate even the dumbest people, does not make someone tech literate. Some are power users, but most have nothing more than a surface level knowledge of how to use it. There’s little to no troubleshooting skills.
All of those mobile devices are programmed by actual tech literate people that understand coding, the network stack, security, and the general inner workings of how computers work. This generation coming out now doesn’t know any of that because they never use computers.
And lastly, holy fuck what’s wrong with you? Jesus fucking Christ you just came out shooting in that second half. The person you replied to made a valid, factual point, and you apparently took that as a personal attack. What the fuck do trans people have to do with this? What a fucked up transition to make and shit to take. You need help, dude.
The person I replied to said the “average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate” and his source is “kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.” Yet in the same sentence acknowledges “People grow up with phones and iPads.”
Yeah wow, kids don’t know how to use a mouse because they’ve never used one before. Truly society is regressing. Kids get taught how to use scissors. It’s just juvenoia.
Young people are more interested in technology then ever before. There are more people with computers, more people using computers daily and longer collective hours spent digitally then ever before.
But yeah tech literacy is down guys trust. these kids can’t even troubleshoot a fax machine. Just read the multiple studies that prove my point that I haven’t linked but I’ve definitely read guys trust.
Not knowing how to use a mouse is hyperbole for not knowing how to use a computer, but also, if you can’t use a mouse, you can’t use a workstation computer. Knowing how to navigate a mobile device does not make someone tech literate. In general it stunts computer skills, because there’s minimal tech knowledge required to download an app from a curated store or watching tik tok.
You’re proving our point in the second paragraph. Yea, kids aren’t being taught computer skills. Not knowing the fundamentals of how to use a workstation is a problem and it is causing a regression in technological literacy in society.
Young people tend to be more interested in phone and tablets than ever before. Some for sure are into workstations, but that is not the norm. Id argue less kids percentage wise are spending time on computers daily than 15-20 years ago. Everything is done on iPads or phones in schools, until college. Even if you didn’t want to, back in the day you had to know how to navigate a complex operating system, save files to removable storage, download files and install them, and a plethora of other seemingly simple skills, and that’s not happening now.
If you work in IT or around youth entering the workforce, it’s extremely clear that tech literacy is worse now than it was a decade ago, or at least it is as a millennial that bridged that gap and can clearly see the difference. I can see if someone is younger than millennials why they wouldn’t be able to see that difference, because they are in that demographic.
It would take 5 seconds to do a Google search for millennials and technology and find a couple studies on the topic. It isn’t some secret that’s being hidden and it’s easily accessible. Perhaps your inability to find these studies is the proof that tech literacy has degraded.
Phones and tablets are computers. Being able to use one is a form of tech literacy just as how knowing how to use a mouse and keyboard is a form of tech literacy. Bro it’s your argument, if you’re adamant the sources exist to support it that’s on you to provide it otherwise the person reading your writing will be unable to find specifically what you are referring to. I mean you are referring to something you specifically have read right? You wouldn’t make something up based on vibes right? All this talk about being tech literate and you’re not doing the basic literary work of source citation.
That wasn’t my argument, that was someone else. I’m just shitting on your response to them instead of doing the bare amount of research.
My whole point is, kids are coming out with less computer knowledge as a whole. Maybe they know more on mobile devices than older generations, but I’d argue that’s not even true compared to millennials who were also in the prime of smart phones and tablets hitting the market. The difference is millennials also know how to use workstations, making them more tech literate. Having skills on just mobile devices is very sandboxed and remedial. It’s not noteworthy in the slightest. Being able to work with a desktop OS, understanding a file system, and troubleshooting are tech skills that you get generations don’t have, making them less tech literate.
“That wasn’t my argument, that was someone else”
“If you work in IT or around youth entering the workforce, it’s extremely clear that tech literacy is worse now than it was a decade ago”
Yeah but it ain’t my argument guys I only said it and made a case for it. Come on man, just show the sources. I mean it’s really clear right so all those studies will unambiguously show it. And they’re right there in Google so it wouldn’t even be difficult to find them wouldn’t it.
One time I said “Hey this TUI program works perfect on every single distribution and even BSDs, takes no performance issues ever, and just overall good program. I wanna check contributors on github.”
It was all either anime or trans flag pfps.
The average person is becoming MORE technologically illiterate, not less.
There’s simply no evidence of this
What’s more, the prevalence of cheap, accessible technologies is having a host of knock-on effects. Case in point:
People grow up with phones and iPads and kids come to school not knowing how to use a mouse.
Feels like I’m listening to the Boomer complaining about kids today not knowing how to use a manual transmission.
Relevant xkcd: Average familiarity
You severly overestimate the average persons tech literacy even when you try to correct for it. Booting from USB is already a really advanced topic.
Though creating a lemmy account is not that complex. Typically all you have to do is fill out a form on the websiten instructions included. The problem there is not the tech literacyn but the willingness of the people to even interact with systems they don’t know, like finding a home instance or understanding the concept of the fediverse. Most people could create a lemmy account, though also most people wouldn’t.
Though creating a lemmy account is not that complex. Typically all you have to do is fill out a form on the websiten instructions included. The problem there is not the tech literacyn but the willingness of the people to even interact with systems they don’t know, like finding a home instance or understanding the concept of the fediverse. Most people could create a lemmy account, though also most people wouldn’t.
Spot on, it feels complicated because they don’t understand what’s being asked. I’ve said this before previously, but most people have no concept of frontends and backends. For most people, Twitter is just something that’s on their phone, and it uses the internet to see what other people have in their Twitter apps on their phones.
Because internet usage and software generally is like 99.999% commercial, even the idea of closed and open source probably doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. “Check out Mastodon, it’s like Twitter but anyone can host it” would mean nothing to the average user. I’m on the absolute lower end of tech literacy in this community, so it’s constantly apparent how much my Lemmy friends overestimate the general population.
Edit: To be clear, I say that non-critically. The tech industry has made it so astonishingly easy to interact with incredibly complicated systems, but they exploit the resulting ignorance for profit and market share because it severely limits our agency to choose something less antagonistic.
Tbh, getting into lemmy is quite a bit more complex than e.g. into Instagram or other centralized social media platforms.
Compare this:
- Choose which social media platform to use and land on Instagram
- Download the instagram app from the default store of your phone’s OS
- Create an account
- Done
with:
- Choose which social media platform to use and land on Lemmy
- Choose which app to use. There’s like 20 of them, some great some not so, some active, some abandoned. There’s no guide or anything, so you’ll have to google and/or try 5 of them to find one you like.
- Choose which instance to use. There are literally hundreds of them and you don’t even know where to start. You have no information, but this choice is central to the kind of lemmy experience you will get.
- Google and find join-lemmy.org. Now you got a one-liner for each instance together with user count. So naively you sort by activity and land on lemmy.ml.
- Create an account
- Figure out what .ml stands for.
- Repeat step 3-5 because account transfers between instances don’t work.
- Repeat step 3-5 because you landed on the likes of lemmy.ee or feddit.de, and the instance closed down
- Done, until your instance closes down
Slight hyperbole here, but choosing an app and instance alone is complicated enough to scare away lots of people.
Hyperbole? Not really. You described my lemmy experience perfectly. However, not having big data sift through my digital feces to find the peanut, makes it worth the effort.
Tbh, not even that is guaranteed. Lemmy (or the fediverse in general) are really not that privacy-focussed at all.
While the people running your instance might not be sifting through your data, nothing would stop anyone from doing so. Everything you post on Lemmy is public, and even if all major instances would somehow block scraping (which they don’t), a scraper would only need to create their own instance and ActivityPub would just deliver all of the data in a nice and easy to process way.
The big advantage of Lemmy is that it is not controlled by one large corporation (and instead by a bunch of faceless, unknown randos on the internet), not that posting stuff publically visible on the internet is somehow more private.
There’s a comment above this who incredulously exclaims “boot from a USB drive‽” and I can tell you as someone who does tech support, that may be legitimately 1% of the US population.
You’re trying to boot from legacy boot media.
Ughhh. Goes back to format the drive…
5 & 1/4 goes brtrtrtrt
Does it count if I have to google which key to hold down to enter the boot menu or bios every time? There are 12 function keys and esc.
That still counts. I have 25 years in IT and I’m still surprised by every new machine. F2? Why?
Fucking real! F10&f12 ftw. it can’t be that hard to enforce a simple standard! HDMI is a good example of this.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I could do it, but I would need to look up the steps. Already knowing how to do tech stuff is one thing, but below that are people like me that are comfortable following guides. It seems a lot of people aren’t.
This is where i sit. I don’t know shit on my own, but i know how to look it up. I managed to do the transfer from Windows to Linux Mint and have been able to navigate the bumps in the process via Google and trying to get a halfway decent idea about some very basic concepts. Now i am moving on and am trying to get rid of all Tech Companies that bend their knee to fascism. And that works as well, without being a tech savvy person.
I would argue that being willing to learn qualifies you as a tech savvy person, even if not as much as people that are really accomplished at it.
Yes. You are part of the one percent.
People are lazier than ever now. Thats one reason I dont like the tech illiterate normies. Its SO EASY so learn how to use the tools you interact with 24/7. But they are lazy.
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Ok booting from USB can’t be that advanced is it? I mean you just plug the thing in then mash F2 on startup, select the USB from the boot menu which is no more complex than browsing a picture folder and hit save and start.
Hon’ some people don’t know you can align the USB by checking if the holes on the outside are filled or not and have to deal with the unraveling the USB superposition dance.
Getting a USB in on the first try is considered wizardry by average person. Booting from one? May as well be Zeus with command of electrons like that.
some people don’t know you can align the USB by checking if the holes on the outside are filled or not
This one statement has me questioning a large swath of my life to date. Booting from the (eventually) correctly aligned USB has always been the easy part.
I thought the USB superposition was just a meme… I need to go lay down, maybe get a rum n’ coke.
Probably true but the amount of tech posts fade into insignificance compared to the 60 - 70% Trump/Musk did/says this stupid thing posts.
I know, and it’s been going on for years.
Not everyone is american or wants to read about them 20 times per day.Me being like “what does it mean to boot from a USB 👁️👄👁️”
Fr though, the account thing is not too far off. When I made my first account (when the Reddit thing happened, it was on lemm.ee) I absolutely didn’t understand jack shit and what I was doing. I was very ready to throw in the towel. I didn’t understand how to add communities, how to search for communities, anything. I still have problems grasping the whole server thing. (Or what a server is.)
So a lot of times I feel excluded here, or at least like an unallowed invader, or a feral maniac just running around, throwing stuff at a wall and looking for what sticks. But that’s ok. I’m happy I’m still here and one day I might even know what a command line is.
Linux is second nature to us geeks, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably knows just Ubuntu or Fedora.
And Debian GNU/Linux, of course.
Wait is this already in reference to the xkcd about experts overestimating the average person’s knowledge about their subject or should I go look for it?
It absolutely sounds like a reference to the xkcd.
Webcomics are second nature to us geeks, so it’s easy to forget that the average person probably knows just ADHDinos and Loving Reaper.
And xkcd, of course.
Of course.
Unless it’s the worst slop on r/comics like PizzaCake, then it has like 50k upvotes from the lowest common denominator.
Hey, the average person doesn’t even know what Linux is, nor what thermal paste is.
Never heard anyone call sunscreen thermal paste before, must be a regional thing?
I am very technical-minded and have been using PC’s since the early 90’s on a pretty deep level, but have no experience or interest in anything linux related so about 30% of Lemmy frontpage posts might as well be Sanskrit.
Naturally
This should be a copypasta.
