this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 193 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (40 children)

I think it's more a generational gap in basic computer skills.

Millennials grew up alongside modern computing (meaning the two matured together). We dealt with everything from BASIC on a C64 to DOS and then through Windows 3 through current. We also grew up alongside Linux. We understand computers (mostly) and the (various) paradigms they use.

Gen Z is what I refer to as the iPad generation (give or take a few years). Everything's dumbed down and they never had to learn what a folder is or why you should organize documents into them instead of throwing them all in "Documents" library and just using search. (i.e. throw everything in a junk drawer and rummage through it as needed).

As with millennials who can't balance a checkbook or do basic household tasks, I don't blame Gen Z for not learning; I blame those who didn't teach them. In this case, tech companies who keep dumbing everything down.

Edit: "Balance a checkbook" doesn't have to mean a physical transaction log for old school checks. It just means keeping track of expenditures and deposits so that you know the money in your account is sufficient to cover your purchases. You'd be surprised how many people my age can't manage that.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 month ago (4 children)

you should organize documents into them instead of throwing them all in “Documents” library and just using search.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago (4 children)

nobody look at my downloads folder. It's fine. I promise.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Millennials grew up alongside modern computing (meaning the two matured together). We dealt with everything from BASIC on a C64 to DOS and then through Windows 3 through current. We also grew up alongside Linux

Only the oldest millenials did. When the youngest were born, the internet and Windows 95 were readily available and they were in middle school when the iPhone came out.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago

I appreciate this measured take. Whenever generational differences get brought up, they oftentimes seemed framed as if generations are biologically different creatures or willfully choosing to be stupid in some sector. In all, or at least must cases, it's what you suggest: people responding and developing based on what the environment has presented them.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Trouble is that there are enough millennials who also have absolutely no clue about computers. Between dude-bros who won't touch that nerd shit and girls who got told by their nerd boyfriend's that the computer will start to burn if they click anything besides their allowed icons a vast majority of people are glad if they know how to turn on the computer and print out their document.

Yes, there are probably a lot more computer literate millennials than in other generations. But even there it pretty much depends on family and friends. And in a pirate community on Lemmy most of the people will belong to the tech savvy bubble.

In our friend group even the most computer illiterate kid knew how to set up a LAN without a DHCP server. Their younger siblings had no idea a LAN was even a thing.

My wife's ex always told her that she couldn't understand how to work with a computer. Her older brother who works in IT wouldn't explain anything to her either. They were pretty astonished when they heard that she had installed a GPU by herself (which most people here know is trivial). Which gave her enough confidence to fix her VCR by herself.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago

They were pretty astonished when they heard that she had installed a GPU by herself (which most people here know is trivial). Which gave her enough confidence to fix her VCR by herself.

Anyone can learn any skill if they actually invest the time.

And regarding the older brother, you learn pretty quickly working help desk that users generally don't care what the problem is or why it happened. They just want to get back to work and not have it happen again. After a while you get conditioned to just be friendly and solve the issue without explaining what you're doing or why.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Exactly. Basically nobody in their 30s can, say, drive a manual car without a synchro, unless they specifically practiced it, because there is zero need to learn that skill. And basically nobody under 20 can set port forwarding on a router because there is basically zero need for that skill.

When I wanted sound on Arkanoid, I HAD to learn IRQ settings, so I did. But now that stuff just works.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is part of why I, who am part of Gen Z, am actually really thankful that I didn't get access to iPad until 9 (first gen, it might still be around here somewhere, kinda wonder if it'll ever become a relic) and phone until 13, but did have access to a super old windows computer. It taught me how to install mods in Minecraft. It was astronomically difficult for me at that time with my limited understanding and all the fake green "Download here!" buttons that kept duping me and installing tons of bloatware and even malware onto the PC (yet another reason why AdBlock is a privacy and security concern, honestly deadass don't let kids use a computer without it). But eventually I caught on and got good at identifying the scams from a young age and was able to teach other kids, and even eventually got into command stuff and writing my own mods. I memorized all of the block and item IDs before the flattening, but after that I was so disheartened that all my memorization was useless I kinda just stopped and never got really good at it. But still, just from that alone my computer knowledge was way ahead of other people's around that time, and you might even say it set the foundation for my now linux-using open-source-contributing fediverse-loving self hahaha

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 1 month ago (17 children)

I'm an older GenZ born in the late 90s and I've had to show a few younger peers how to torrent recently.

The idea of you needing a "special" program just for downloading a file seems to throw some of them off.

I do know a few young people are tech/programming wizards but "generally tech savy" people seem to be declining. It's either you're really into it or barely know anything outside popular apps.

One other thing I've noticed, People just seem to be more paranoid about downloading stuff not already installed on their devices. Which its good people give at least a bit of a shit about security but convincing people Firefox isn't a virus gets a bit annoying (Yes I've had that conversation).

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

People just seem to be more paranoid about downloading stuff not already installed on their devices.

I see this as a natural byproduct of Google, Apple, et al. "Walled Garden"

They want you to consume only from them and only what they approve of. Granted Apple is far more on the latter side than Google but even Google fought tooth and nail to keep Epic from having their own store.

I don't interact much with people who are younger than me but I feel like the age of tinkering might not be as strong with them as it was for me. PCs were the predominant form factor and you could literally take it apart and put it back together with just a screwdriver. You can't do that with laptops or phones at least not without a lot of other specialized tools. This isn't their fault either since device manufacturers have really tried to make it difficult to do anything that they don't control.

Hell chrome is the best example of this. Google, whose business is selling your personal data for ads, is preventing the use of ad blockers. Firefox is mostly developed by Mozilla with a small handful of volunteers. It's already showing signs of enshittification. We don't have a viable third option.

It will only be a matter of time before these tech companies start having brain drains due to their own greed.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (4 children)

i remember not using firefox for a rlly long time bc i heard it’s ram usage with multiple tabs open was a lot less efficient than other browsers. idk if that’s true but i use firefox w 4 windows with 20+ tabs each and have never had a problem

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

this may still be true, we just tend to have more RAM nowadays

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[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Generational wars doesn't do anyone any favors.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah and let's not pretend that everyone back in 2002 was eMuling or torrenting and cracking videos games. I knew so many people who failed at ripping a CD to MP3 or copying it with a CD burner.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Acknowledging differences is not "war".

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I think the gap stems from need. Most people only learn what they absolutely need to. My sister and I are just 3 years apart in age. Yet I am pretty familiar with tech, while she knows next to nothing. I was always there to fix whatever broke. Even now she knows that if she needs to watch something, she can just ask me to add it to my Jellyfin server. I often have to remote into her system to fix stuff.

The Gen Z we're talking about here mostly grew up using phones, and phone OSes do their best to hide any complexity away from the user. So they never learnt anything. I'm also technically Gen Z (very early), but growing up in rural India, I had to teach myself how to pirate since streaming wasn't a thing yet (our internet was too slow for that anyway), and the local theater didn't play anything except local mainstream cinema.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

Teaching college students, I agree that phones and 'need' are largely the culprit.

Loss of typing skill, trouble shooting skill, and file directory skill.

Better at cameras generally

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I also teach college students lol. People can't even figure out how to upload assignments from their phone. Had a student tell me that she broke her laptop, so can't submit an assignment even though it was already written. She was gonna scan it from her phone, airdrop to her laptop, and then upload the files to Canvas. I tried to explain that she can do it on the mobile app for Canvas instead. I eventually had to give up and asked her to drop it at my office. It literally felt like explaining stuff to my ma.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Jellyseerr is your friend. She can request whatever and you can get alerts to add it. Even if your stuff isn't automated

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 1 month ago (12 children)

as a high schooler with a special interest in computers, it's genuinely surprising how poor most of my peers computers skills are. most of my peers don't even know the very basics of folder structures.

also unrelated, let's all love lain

[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

special interest

poor skill of peers

(I'm totally with you though)

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I blame google for the demise of well-organized folders. Their approach to email was "chuck it all in one big folder named Archive, and you can search for it using keywords that you will definitely remember when you need to find it again!"

It's a useful tool, but paved the way for the current state of affairs where people get overwhelmed by their email because they have 150,000 unread emails in their inbox and as a result, don't read an email until you tell them the entire contents of their email via the inferior messaging platform known as texting.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Idk. I blame Apple, and Android hasn't done much to really bolster the need for file folders (not a bad thing, just lack of opportunity for learning).

But Apple actively prohibits its user base from engaging with folders, and has been for well over a decade - plenty long enough for my (millennial) generation to phase it out and for the generations after to never need them in the first place. Plus, emails aren't dependent on file paths, whereas systems file paths are completely necessary.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Twenty years ago when I was 13, I started doing web stuff. This was back when everything was super simple, so everything to get a webserver up was super manual. I'll mention port forwarding at my current job and there's this slice of people that are 28-40 years old that know what I'm talking about.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 month ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 month ago (9 children)

It’s like cars. Almost everyone has one and can drive it but don’t know how it works. Computers have become that. There are some who know or have an idea of how it works and others who can use it but have no idea.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I can't even tell you what us Gen Xers did because I am not sure if the statutes of limitations have run.

Vaguely, it involved ftp and file repositories hosted unwittingly by large companies plus restricted IRC channels to discuss the locations of such places.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago

I remember installing a keylogger on the school library computers, then "accidentally" disconnecting the dialup internet and asking the teacher to type the login credentials again. I bet the ISP was confused when they saw so many concurrent logins after hours, all playing Quake and downloading huge files.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I seen teens without being able to make a folder in windows because they only use phones, so.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I truly hate that phones don't readily have file browsers and folders, and when you do add them, they aren't effective. Mostly that would be useful when moving files between phone and computer. It's not simple even to get the computer to mount the phone's drive, probably because everyone is fine with having all their files "in the cloud."

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

No most millennials are also too lazy because they stopped giving a shit about computers when it stopped being a requirement to use the internet like 10-15 years ago because smartphones.

Most who did haven't in at least a decade, and wouldn't unless you put a gun to their head.

For some reason the vast majority of people seem to just want to ignore the machines that literally run our society, and its fucking maddening.

FFS the amount of people who I work with in IT and even then don't really give a shit about their daily computing is absolutely fucking baffling.

Its really just a smattering of people from all ages who actually know how to use a computer because they're actually interested in doing so.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Teach those that dont know and continue to seed. 🏴‍☠️🛶

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 month ago

Some people just stick to the ez pz apps and don't care about their privacy or to understand what they're working with. With modern phones and pc's that treat people like toddlers, a lot of people don't develop skills further than that

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Without seeds, torrents become almost useless, and many pirate sites offer rare and hard-to-find movies/animes whose torrent versions never download because their seeds are practically extinct forever. So I don't think this is a weak complaint. If torrents didn't have this weakness I would always choose to use them but...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (4 children)

The usenet has many treasures

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Regardless of whether or not this is true, memes from an older generation saying they're better than the younger generation are ALWAYS cringe

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (6 children)

It's not just a generational thing — most of the millennials who were torrenting 15 years ago (which was a lot of them!) have completely forgotten by now ime. Now I'm longing for the days when 'VLC is the best media player' was common knowledge and not arcana

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (5 children)

the only people who know how to torrent are the ones that want to learn. the learning curve is gentler than a walk-in shower. I've shown people of all ages and all tech backgrounds, though recommending VPN connections and getting that going does throw a few.

anyway, it's so easy, it's crazy compared to the old days of usenet, ZIP disks, ftp sites, .is files, and sequenced RAR files. this is the golden age of piracy and I love it.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm gen z born in the early 200xs and I torrent (legal Linux ISOs ofc)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How else are you going to get your hands on the latest build of Hannah Montana Linux?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago

Boy, I remember how desperate all of Germany was when kino.to went down. It took at least a week until everyone found an alternative!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Honestly as a German, torrenting seems to be way too risky. Internet providers will immediately cave when they are contacted about an IP adress they control and there are multiple law firms whose only business model seems to be sending out c&d letters.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Idk, being born in the early 2000s didn't make torrenting any harder. Dare I say, it was the opposite: in the 10s, when I got into all this this, there already was a bunch of well-established trackers with tons of content one could use without fear of downloading a piece of malware instead of a new shiny game, for example.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago (3 children)

If you had real shitty internet back in the day (read 56k modem) and you liked to play russian roulette you would dump satellite traffic with a skystar2 DVB-S card. You never knew what you'd get realistically, found some true gems underneath mountains of coal in the day of (still) unfiltered internet.

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