Zoomer in computer science here: I’ve noticed that there are two types of people in my age range, you have the people who are really passionate about technology for the sake of being technology and want to know how things work under the hood (like me) and people who see technology only as a means to accomlish a goal like writing a document, maintaining a social media presence, playing a game, etc, and can’t care less about how it actually works.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the latter, but there can be conflict between the two groups because their priorities are completely different.
This is not unique to technology and you see this in other fields too. For example, you have the car enthusiasts who do their own oil changes and are constantly tuning up their cars, installing aftermarket mods, etc, and then you have everyone else who see cars as just a way of getting to where they need to go, have never even opened the engine compartment, and bring it into the shop when the scary lights on the dashboard appear.
You forgot the third group, [email protected]
To use your car metaphor, there was a time when you basically needed to know how a car worked in order to own/operate one. I’m talking like the 1910s-1920s. They were unreliable, simply made, manual transmission, hand crank start, and needed a lot of maintenance.
Millennials grew up at a time when you needed to have some understanding of how a computer worked in order to do basically anything.
I suppose the issue is that the car metaphor breaks down because a vehicle really only does one thing. Push pedal and go. Maybe worry about snow conditions if that affects you.
Meanwhile, computers can still be used to do thousands of different tasks and the only thread tying all of those tasks together is that they’re done by the same machine. So knowing fundamentals about the machine gives you access to a lot of capability vs. just memorizing how to do a few tasks.
the problem is that there’s people out there who in the analogy don’t know how to drive a car, defend it by saying ‘I’m just not a car person’, and constantly ask to be driven around when a major part of their job is driving a car. somehow when it comes to computers employers tolerate this
Oh god I feel seen
anyone who has never experienced the joy of destroying hardware with a misplaced address access is, at best, translucent. magic blue smoke or bust.
I’m a zoomer and ngl I cannot relate to this
True, and Alpha are even worst, most of them never touched a real keyboard, only use 2 thumbs on a phone. Don’t tell them about windows (or/mac/linux) or what is a UI or how to use a mouse and navigate in a OS, they don’t get double click or right click, resize a window, minimize a window (OMG THE WINDOW IS GONE!!!) it’s impressive.
I have seen a lot of late Z/early Alpha who cannot make some special characters on a keyboard like " or $ or even worst using AltCar. Using Word to write a letter, using keyboard shortcuts, etc. they are completely clueless with computers.
Look I don’t doubt you’ve met these people but it’s not everywhere. Here in Australia the kids still learn this at school.
My daughter is in primary school and they’ve learned to use a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software etc.
So they can all use a keyboard and mouse and she’s done some school projects as PowerPoint slideshows.
Oh, you mean characters that are actually on the keyboard. I thought you meant stuff like ‘Δ’ or ‘°’
I still remember looking up alt codes on the character map.
I haven’t had to represent degrees in decades, but for some reason I remembered the code being 0961. According to this page it was 0176. What a classic blunder!
A good way to get a feel for how these Alpha kids probably feel is to use something un-Windowsy like RiscOS. I felt similarly helpless
Me and a classmate were absolutely stunned when we saw this girl typing in her password, and using Caps Lock to do uppercase letters instead of shift. We looked at her like, “WTF are you doing?” And she seriously did not know what the shift button was for.
I just don’t know how nobody showed or told her this before, and we’re in college…
I work on a help desk. We hired multiple Zoomers and they literally don’t understand how computers work. They don’t know what the registry is. Or what POST means. Or how to properly back up a user’s data without using automated software.
They’re fucking dumb. Nice. But dumb.
I got used to looking for registry tweaks, but I don’t even know what to call it exactly.
The closest I’ve got is: A place for accessing hidden settings in Windows. I’ve made a couple typos in there and nuked an install or two of XP, but I never really changed much personally. Just kinda looked up various ways people would use it to accomplish x, y, or z, out of curiosity.
I don’t have to deal with it anymore at least.
Why would someone on a help desk be expected to know what POST is? A software engineer, sure, but helpdesk? If it’s needed knowledge…that’s what training is for. Businesses’ expectation that people will come into the job already knowing exactly how you do things and never require on-the-job training is absurd.
Yes, helpdesk should know the basic steps that happen when you power on a computer.
Do you think that’s what he meant by POST? Could have meant data delivery through http? Do you think they should know that one too?
That’s not one helpdesk needs to know, unless you’re in a specific niche where it’s relevant to how your normal users interact with your product. (For example, some backend service, where your users are web devs)
maybe in 2005. Today it is “did it turn on? No? Ok we will give you a new one”
Guessing they’re talking about Power-On Self Test rather than the HTTP verb. I’m assuming you were thinking of the latter given you mentioned a software engineer.
help desk definitely doesn’t need to know that either. “does the shit turn on… no, well send it in then we will give you a new one”
Half of software engineers don’t know what a POST is either
Software engineer here, can confirm I’ve never received anything by post in my life, it’s always couriers. My assumption is that post stamps are boomer NFTs.
Ah, but postage stamps are completely fungible.
As opposed to images on the internet… XD
If anything it would actually take more effort to replicate a physical stamp now that I think about it.
I was thinking of the HTTP verb, you’re right.
To be fair, I’m a millenial who’s fairly tech savvy and I barely know what POST means. Then again, I don’t work in IT.
To be fair, POST could mean a number of things. Are we talking in a webserver context? BIOS context? The POST Office?
I would guess 90% of “IT” people don’t know what POST (in web context, maybe bios since they might have taken an A+ cert class lmao) means nor do they know how basic http or web servers work. Most of IT are help desk and do not know technology well but are comfortable enough to tell people to reboot, uninstall/reinstall stuff, reformat, google an issue they can’t figure out… Which is better than 99% of the world.
And which generation are you from @agraybee the forgotten generation huh?
Nihilism destroyer
Yep, that’s Gen X for sure.
Did these kids grow up not using computers at school? When I was in school (1999-2013) we had both Mac and Windows desktops that we used during library visits, computer lab, and art periods. Did schools just replace that hardware with iPads? Writing/editing an essay, manipulating a photo, drafting shop drawings, or learning to code on a tablet sounds like a fucking nightmare.
From what I’ve seen, they each get a Chromebook at school so they eventually learn to type but are generally getting the tablet app experience
Yeah, we got Chromebooks, with predownloaded stuff on them (hell, our School policy probably PREVENTED us from downloading anything…) or you just used Chrome browser for everything. We definitely weren’t allowed to use terminal either. The extensions store was blocked/didn’t allow downloads.
Chromebooks aren’t built for storage and performance, they’re made for the cloud. So anything that you wouldn’t encounter on Chrome/Google Drive means they have zero knowledge of it.
I think the last time I remember using tablets was like 2nd grade to do math games. But that could’ve changed.
You were also punished/heavily discouraged from using personal laptops instead of school issued Chromebooks, cause they wanted to ensure you had no issues completing work and that you weren’t cheating on assignments and tests. So students were literally forced to use them.
Tablets… in use at 2nd grade…
Damn. I know whether to call you a baby or call myself a geezer anymore.
The Internet itself didn’t even become widely available until I was in 4th grade or so. Windows 95 was only a year old when I got my very first access to any computing device beyond a very simple calculator.
Being “online” wasn’t a permanent status, it only applies for as long as you were allowed to tie up a phone line.
I could say more, but you’ve heard a bunch of back in my days already probably.
As far as I have been led to believe they replaced a lot of interfacing with apps and walled gardens. My work, for example, buys a whole office suite from microsoft. I imagine schools buy preloaded machines from Pearson or whatever.
The paradigm has changed. The rift between PC and smart phone. Is it really a surprise? My 18yr step kid can at least type on a keyboard with proficiency. Beyond that and installing games in steam, he’s lost outside of that. Both I and his mom work in IT. We try to shore up the gaps, but it seems the ‘kid’ actively refuses to learn.
My favorite:
“Where did you save the file?”
“I saved it in Excel”
Is there a ghostscript way to rotate pdf?
Yes. (not sure if you wanted it actually posted the GS way is kinda long) there are a good 10+ different tools to do it on command line though. Even imagemagick’s “convert” command that does virtually every image format can also rotate a pdf. qpdf, pdftk are very popular too.
I actually found a thread that lists all the tools I did and even the “gs” command lol https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/394065/command-line-how-do-you-rotate-a-pdf-file-90-degrees
Can confirm, imagemagick is bad with PDF quality.
You have to set the quality to 100 and density to something high (150 or 300) because it’ll set it to 72ppi and it also has to become before the input file name. It’s like GS and wants virtually every parameter set by you and the defaults are like bare minimum it doesn’t take them from the actual file.
That being said just use qpdf or pdftk lmao
Farts unhappily
My younger brother will not flinch when talking about playing a first person game, (he says it for every game though) he will say a controller is superior.
Now I understand that there is a lot of wiggle room to debate the “best” input method, but I will die on the hill about a mouse being the best (and maybe best possible) input for look/aiming in a first person sense.
The left hand could use an analog input for sure, but digital movement is so rarely an issue it didn’t matter a whole lot.
I will go as far as to throw him a bone and say that controllers are probably the best for something like a platformer (his genre of choice), or a racing game, or in some cases, 3rd person action. I will typically use Rocket League as an example of that, because that game is one of the few that analog movement is much, muuuch more important than analog camera control.
But keyboard and mouse is so widely usable for (and so often a clear front runner) that I have to dunk on him every time he shits on kb+m.
But then I think about my coming up learning and using computers, and our built in familiarity with kb+m, whereas these days, these scrubs are using touchscreens almost exclusively, and a keyboard just looks ancient right off the bat. And of course anything that “old people” use is definitely just totally obsolete and gross as soon as something else comes out.
So I give him consideration in that regard, but it saddens me that he won’t think critically enough to understand the differences, and is not thinking about it. His brain is very literally saying “old way bad, new way good”.
He’s still too young, but damn the communication barrier is frustrating.
People are going to start asking AI to rotate PDFs for them, just like people started asking ChatGPT to do math; it’s a terrible idea but will probably work 80% of the time, and that’ll be good enough for most people.
I’m not a kid (see my other replies in this thread lol), but I’ve never had to use PDFs for much at all. The closest I’ve ever been to editing one is clicking a box to draw a signature or check a checkbox.
So I’ve gotta ask. Why would one need to rotate a PDF? They would be made on a computer, and naturally default to the correct orientation, no? I can’t imagine why one would ever be sideways.
You can scan a document to PDF, sometimes the default orientation isn’t correct.
I learned that from the other reply
I see. I didn’t think I ever heard about that. I’m only familiar with them as in a digital version of paperwork, not a digital copy of a document.
I understand exactly how that happens then.
Pdfs are not always made on computers. In most office environments you are going to run into scanned documents. Scanners like to do funny things and people dont always put all the pages in the correct orientation.
I see. I didn’t think I ever heard about that. I’m only familiar with them as in a digital version of paperwork, not a digital copy of a document.
I understand exactly how that happens then.
Scanners like to do funny things
I know it’s not very relevant, but that reminds me of a talk held during a CCC (Chaos Computer Club) convention.
It’s in German, but I’ll try to summarize it: Someone noticed the numbers on a scanned page didn’t match the original, so they hired an expert to find out what happened. Turns out that the printer they were using had a feature that would detect symbols that looked the same and basically copypasted ome cutout of the symbol onto the other to save space on the final PDF. Due to the print/copy quality, this substitution sometimes malfunctioned, substituting similar looking symbols, such as 8 and 0.
Well speaking for this week: doing my taxes, reviewing documentation at work.
Last night I offered to help my Zoomer classmate torrent Kamen Rider and he told me he was afraid of going to jail.
