Pity, really.

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
- 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.
- 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
  
  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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- Remember that story about Gen Z students not understanding file systems?

Gen-z here - I know how to torrent lol. It's insane how tech illiterate a lot of my friends are, even in my IT classes don't know what HTTPS is or what an ethernet cable is so... yeah
Feels weird being known as "the guy who's an expert at computers" despite being a noob
- bro you're on lemmy, you're already outside of the curve for most gen-z
  
  I'm probably the only person in my entire school who knows what lemmy is lol
- I feel like if you know how to look up the answer and can follow a guide to apply 5 steps, you are probably more capable than 80% of the people on this planet.
  
  That applies for most things tbh
- I’m an older Gen Z, but same here. I really don’t know that much but can torrent, so people see me as some sort of tech god lol.
  My younger sister on the other hand, also Gen z, is so tech illiterate that her downloads folder is a mess and thinks deleting installers will delete the installed program.
  
  It's absolutely amazing how we went from the majority of people not knowing how to use a computer in the beginning of computers to everyone knowing how to do at least the bare minimum on a computer in the 2000s to now circling back to the majority of people not knowing how to use a computer because pretty much everything they do can and probably is done on a phone. It's also real scary to think since I'd assume most of us Gen Z-ers aren't properly able to object to privacy eroding tech bills because we're too tech illiterate to understand the impacts.
  
  thinks deleting installers will delete the installed program
  Now I get why Windows XP had an alert that said you weren't going to uninstall the program when you tried deleting a link to a program
- 20yrs ago I had to help my comp sci housemate build a website for his module. I was not a CS student.
  Some things never change.
- yea we're fucked
  torrenting is a little bit more complicated than turning a light switch on
  
  I think the core of the problem is that back in the bad old days, things needed to be tuned up a bit before they would work right and there was a marked lack of standardization. Now, not only do our devices work right out of the box, bit they also have little quality of life stuff as well. I haven't bought a battery-powered device in years that wasn't partially charged when I got it, and most devices come preinstalled with all the basic utility apps.
- Gen-z too, finding can be somewhat hard but the mega threads help. Torrenting itself is easy of course. Just get transmission or any other FOSS client, put on a proper VPN and good to go.
  
  qbittorrent search makes it stupid easy too
- I feel this, especially since I'm more into networking, but my work is more generalist.
  I open my mouth about networking and people's eyes glaze over. Even very experienced senior people can't really understand what I'm talking about when it comes to some of the more intermediary networking concepts. Meanwhile I tune into a podcast that's networking focused and they're basically speaking Latin for me.
  There's so much that I don't know. I get the broad strokes of things but I'm hopelessly lost on so many of the more nuanced bits of networking.
  I really want to break away from generalist work and get into a network focused position, but after 10 years as a generalist in various MSP companies, most places won't take me seriously as a networker and won't even sit down for an interview.
  I'm good at other stuff, damn near expert level with some things, but my passion is networks and the workplaces I've been at just don't care to help me learn any of it. My current place barely has any networking more complex than a profile based L2L VPN.... Switches are basically ignored, and VLANs are rare.
  I facepalm every time I discover that the guest network is just bridged into the same subnet as the LAN. I've raised the issue a few times and never been given the green light to fix it, often because the network isn't able to be managed remotely.
  
  Get a certification?
- Fellow Zer here, my elective IT class had grading done depending on how well you could use the computer:
  'A' if you could do everything perfectly well, 'B' if you needed some help from the instructor, 'C' if you needed a lot of help, 'D' if you couldn't even get past the login screen on the windows machine.
  We had a lot of people who got a pity 'C-'
  
  With the amount of password resets I have to do at work, I can't say I'm shocked
- I'm in the same boat. I'm a comp sci student but the amount of tech illiterate comp sci students I meet every day is astounding and concerning

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.
- You will also know nothing and be happy.
  Ignorance is bliss after all
- We are actively being held back by companies catering exclusively to the lowest common denominator.
- 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.
- 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

This might be true, but it's rapidly changing due to a collaborative effort from big gaming companies, streaming services and hollywood. People are relearning the art of torrenting.
- Torrenting is getting worse and worse these days, I'm learning the ancient art of Usenet.
  
  Usenet is getting worse and worse these days, I'm learning the ancient art of Sneakernet.
  
  Unless this is a joke that went right trough my head, what part of torrenting is getting worse?

- Because its convenient for them. For people who only have a phone Netflix for $2 or so a month is great.
  
  Good luck finding Netflix for $2
- Where I live, I would still need to pay for a VPN to use torrents. I've been banned from an ISP before for torrenting (thankfully, I had multiple ISPs available for me).
  At the moment, I just "pay" legally because I get a few "free" streaming plans from my mobile provider and ISP. Occasionally, I just use a free streaming site if I really want to watch something that's not available to me. Every once in a while, I try anonymous p2p such as Tribler or torrenting over I2P, but it's still extremely slow, unfortunately. I've never used Usenet, but I think it's about the same price as a VPN or seedbox would be?
  
  Get into a private tracker, or rent a VPS in a country that doesn't bend to the whim of capitalism, torrent to that vps and stream or sync it locally. I find that to have more peace of mind than using a vpn w/Killswitch.
  
  Usenet seems to work really well, and can be surprisingly cheap. Try FrugalUsenet. If you want both VPN and Usenet then try something like Eweka. They do deals where you get both Usenet access and a cheap VPN. It's about €105 for 15 months or €6.99 per month.

"be bisexual" ???
- When you're a pirate, you can't be picky on which booty to plunder
  
  You know what they say, something is better than nothing
  
  😂
- I think they're using this style: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-does-eat-hot-chip-and-lie-mean-the-viral-copypasta-and-meme-explained
- I mean it's true here.

Ahh the halcyon days of downloading one song from a private FTP server with upload ratios, found by Lycos FTP search. Over a modem, natch, so it took about 50 minutes...and that's when your mom didn't kick you off the internet so she could make a call.
- This is the first time I see the word halcyon being used irl
  
  This isn't real life it's an online forum in a video game
  
  This isn't IRL, though.
  
  Glad I could be of service.

What's the original to template? It looks hilarious!
Found it! It's eat hot chip & lie. The text in the original reads:
any female born after 1993 can’t cook… all they know is mcdonald’s , charge they phone, twerk, be bisexual , eat hot chip & lie

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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- My native language isn't English, so for me as a teen back then it was definitely the second option.

I can torrent, I just suck at it.
Besides 1337 who is good?
- Besides 1337 who is good?
  Literally any private tracker is a million times better
  
  Are those the trackers which demand you have accounts with other private trackers before you join or the ones which demand everyone have a >1 ratio to download anything which is impossible by definition, so everyone either gets huge seedboxes, cheats the ratio or has to download niche but big files from other sites and switch out the tracker to artificially up the ratio?
  I'm sure there are actually good private trackers, but I've found there are open/effectively open (sign up only with no verification/requirements) trackers with better communities than any restricted one I've found
  
  I don't have any invites or info, I also like to avoid accounts
- Depends on what you're looking for, really. I'm unsure about the rules regarding sharing specific sites, but if you DM me, I can throw a few recommendations your way.
- 1337 is fine for most stuff, I think. Private trackers start to make sense when you want to automate downloading shows and movies but if you just wanna pirate some game, you'll probably find it on 1337 with a ton of seeders anyways.

Teach us then 😭
- Ha I was actually just thinking that we need to teach them as I was reading this. We had to go through a shit ton of trial and error. God forbid if he started with something like LimeWire. Viruses... Viruses everywhere
  
  Don't forget the bear...
- Teach us then 😭
  I think this hits on another big generational difference. Those who grew up in the early days of personal computing and the Internet didn't have teachers or a hallucinating language model to spoon feed them instant answers. They had to actually RTFM thoroughly before they could even think of asking in some arcane BBS, forum, or IRC for help from elders that had absolutely zero tolerance for incompetence or ignorance. MAN pages and help files came bundled, but the Internet (if you had it) was metered and inconvenient on a scale more like going to the library than ordering a pizza. They had to figure out how to ask the right questions. They had to figure out how to find their own answers. The Internet was so slow that all the really interesting bits were often just text. So much indexed and categorized one might need to learn a little more just to find the right details in that sea of text. There was a lot less instant gratification and no one expected to be able to solve their problems just by asking for help.
  I've seen way too many kids give up at the first pebble in their path because they are so accustomed to the instant gratification that has pervaded our culture since the dawn of smart phones.

bodies_hit_the_floor_teenage_wasteland.mp3 is my favourite song
- linking_park_numb.mp3.exe
  
  I prefer linkin_park_numb.mp3.com
  It just hit different

I was born after 2000 I have to teach my parent how to torrent its not a generational thing lol

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

There's just much less curiosity and "awareness of what you're not aware of" these days
It's not just a computer problem at all it's everything
- OpenBSD predicted this in 2009: https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#46 :)
  
  Damn dude, they got it to a T. This whole page is a discovery for me, gonna have to go through and listen to all of this.

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

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

- I've been a member of a private torrent forum since you were 2 or so lol
  
  Torrent forum? That's interesting. I've only used private torrent trackers like TL. Any recommendations?

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?
- 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.

All those online pirates have never captured a ship!

What's the 411 on steamunlocked ? Just malware ? Can we just get the cracks like in the old days ?

I only learned to torrent because my dad used to when I was a kid. But these days I use XDCC instead because it's just so much more convenient. Though to be fair most of my friends who are also GenZ probably don't know how to do that either.
- I struggled majorly with XDCC weirdly enough.

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.

How true is this or are we doing the same thing "generation killed industry/way of doing things" that the boomer media is so fond of?
- Not very true. Plenty of gen z still torrent. This seems more like a shitpost.

we gotta step our game the fuck up then.

i do both

Anonymous torrents on I2P FTW 🏴‍☠️ Best way to safely find stuff unavailable on streaming sites.
Anti Commercial-AI license

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.