screenshot, probably from Ex-Twitter but I saw it on NOSTR, showing a guy saying that training a zoomer to use a PC at work is as difficult as training a boomer, with a reply indicating that there is only one generation that can rotate a PDF and that knowledge dies with us

  • DoubleSpace@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    Xennials are fascinating to watch navigate through tech hurdles. They have a custom built toolbox built purely through trial and error.

    • RedSnt 👓♂️🖥️@feddit.dk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      As an autodidact xennial, I’ll take that as a compliment.

      DOS, Windows, all the format C:'s in my time, it’s all been trial and error as you say, because there weren’t really anything on the line in the 90s and early 00s.

      • DoubleSpace@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        4 months ago

        Absolutely a compliment. It took me many months of research to figure out what PC parts to buy in the late '90s. Now you can easily piece something together in a day.

    • qprimed@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      anyone who has never experienced the joy of destroying hardware with a misplaced address access is, at best, translucent. magic blue smoke or bust.

  • Magister@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • SoulWager@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      Oh, you mean characters that are actually on the keyboard. I thought you meant stuff like ‘Δ’ or ‘°’

      • toynbee@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        4 months ago

        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!

    • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      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

    • Novaling@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      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…

    • veroxii@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      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.

  • I’ve stopped talking to Zoomers about tech completely. If I try to help, I end up confusing them more, and I don’t like to simply solve shit for them since they start bugging me for every single thing. (I’m also technically a Zoomer, but barely.)

  • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    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.

      • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        4 months ago

        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.

    • Boy of Soy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Blemgo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        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.

      • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        4 months ago

        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.

  • Brutticus@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    Last night I offered to help my Zoomer classmate torrent Kamen Rider and he told me he was afraid of going to jail.

  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    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 and bring it into the shop when the scary lights on the dashboard appear.

    • ch00f@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      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.

  • pastel_de_airfryer@lemmy.eco.br
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    Back when computers were a novelty, we had schools dedicated to teaching people how to use them in my country.

    The classes ranged from the most basic stuff, such as how to use a mouse, to more advanced topics, such as how to use the Windows registry.

    We might need to bring these schools back in the near future.

    • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      If we can get them to teach Linux instead of Windows and tell people - this will run on whatever computer you bring to class

    • rice@lemmy.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      4 months ago

      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

        • rice@lemmy.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          4 months ago

          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

  • nargis@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    4 months ago

    Messing around with your old WinXP/95 computer and then fixing that mess before your parents come home and scold you does wonders to one’s troubleshooting skills. People of this generation never got to hear that scary XP error sound, and it shows.

    • Bohurt@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      Fun fact: Windows XP had cool day 0 loophole that saved my my ass. Once I decided to explore new options and I stumbled upon new and cool feature: setting a password. The only issue with it was that I’ve forgotten it half an hour later. I already knew ‘admin’ word so I used it in hackerman style and I logged in and I was able to reverse old password. This loophole was patched with first service pack but I still giggle when I remind myself of that.

    • CarrotsHaveEars@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      4 months ago

      Windows XP’s error sound wasn’t scary. Windows 95 and 98’s were. That natural alarming chime, combined with the angry faces when our parents find out the non-functioning operating system…