- Have to help your cousin who is the same age as you but somehow never learnt how to use a printer
I mean honestly this seems more like a curse of anybody that’s slightly technical or does it work. Doesn’t matter the age.
I figure out how to not use a printer because they are nonsense expensive pieces of crap. The small amount of printing I have to do I do at work. Told the kids to use the ones at school, that 5cents a page is never going to reach the cost of owning a printer at the rate we print.
Oh no, they didn’t believe me and got a printer. Or, more correctly, got their aunt to buy them one because I was denying them, almost abuse they whined. As soon as it ran out of ink, back to printing at school. They figured out what an expensive pain in the ass piece of equipment it is for themselves.
My mom had a black and white one that used toner, when it had to be changed you better be wearing black clothes and rubber gloves.
I have a toolbox dedicated to repairing all electrical devices and the hammer is for HP Printers.
Canon Printers are at least somewhat useable by comparison, brother inkjets seem to be the most recommended, but HP? Nope, worthless scrap.
Most HP products are worthless scrap now.
The truest meaning was achieved by posting this on shitjustworks.
parents understand how to use Facebook now. Never heard of Lemmy
kids understand how to use TikTok. Never heard of Lemmy
Pretty sure most of any generation have never heard of Lemmy
The kids aren’t alright.
Seriously.
On the one hand I know exactly what you mean and I agree to an extent. On the other I see hope in the youth. They value different things in a good way. For instance, in talking to my niece and nephews I’ve learned that being smart is considered cool now, which was most definitely the opposite when I was young.
Richard Stallman literally started the Free Software Foundation over his frustrations with a printer
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt
Xerox gave the Artificial Intelligence Lab, where I worked, a laser printer, and this was a really handsome gift, because it was the first time anybody outside Xerox had a laser printer. And, you know, copiers jam, but there’s somebody there to fix them.
Well, we had an idea for how to deal with this problem. Change it so that whenever the printer gets a jam, the machine that runs the printer can […] tell the users who are waiting for printouts go fix the printer.
But at that point, we were completely stymied, because the software that ran that printer was not free software. It had come with the printer, and it was just a binary.
And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, “Hi, I’m from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?” And he said “No, I promised not to give you a copy.” He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Now, this was my first, direct encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and it taught me an important lesson – […] non-disclosure agreements have victims. They’re not innocent. […]
(he goes on for a bit, but ultimately describes never accepting any software that requires signing an NDA ever, and then goes on to write his own unix)
And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, “Hi, I’m from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?” And he said “No, I promised not to give you a copy.” He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
"this is it kids, this is the moment, right here, where all the madness starts… " time traveller viewing the birth of free & open source software
And now you can print from Linux without installing a driver from a cd
When I was around 8, we had a printer that never seemed to work. One day, I somehow cast a spell that allowed it to print out a couple of colouring book sheets, but I had no idea how.
I couldn’t get it to work again, but my one-time success led my mum to believe that I understood the magicks that power printers, and she became frustrated at me for this. Fun fun fun
Like when you 'fix ’ a family members computer and Everytime it malfunctions after that it is your fault.
When I was a kid, one day our service provider had connectivity problems… Guess who my parents accused to be the culprit first. Well, I guess being the only one making use of that modern it seemed to be a logical conclusion for them somehow, not knowing anything about the internet. At least from then on they knew a bit more about what can go wrong.
And I can’t even tell if it’s because printers have gotten worse or millennials are just the IT department forever.
It’s 100 % because you no longer need to understand how information technology works in order to use it.
So our parents didn’t know because the tech didn’t exist (or came late in their life), and our kids because they never needed to learn.
I work in an industry where we use computers all day and this is painfully clear. I grew up with a mouse in my hand, shortcuts are hardwired into my brain. Watching someone right click them slowly move the cursor to copy, then right click and slowly move to paste, then slowly navigate to formulas then click refresh is brutal. It literally takes them 3-4x as long as it takes me to do the same task.
On the bright side, I only work about 20 hours a week and still outperform them, so thanks I guess?
I was hella unemployed for a while, and the job centre asked me if I was good with computers. I replied “not really. I cab do a little HTML, and can sort of read JS and C++/C# but can’t really write anything with them” so they sent me on a course so I could brush up on my computer skills to improve my prospects of getting a job.
I spent my first lesson teaching everyone else what the difference between left click and right click was, and how the little arrow moves when you wiggle the mouse.
Gen X here and I memorized only 3 shortcuts: cut, copy, and paste
I’ve gotta have my Ctrl+T and Ctrl+N and of course my Ctrl+W. And you KNOW I’ve got my Ctrl+Shift versions of everything, naturally. Oh man, and my Windows+Tab, how could I forget you?
Windows+V
I can’t count the times Ctrl+Shift+T has saved my browsers sessions. Or when I close a tab and 5 seconds later think, wait I needed that one.
Also je youtube player controls. J, K, L, etc. Got so annoyed by the video player not responding to spacebar because the video wasn’t focused that I just stopped using the spacebar.
Youtube’s controls are stupid. Left and right skip 5 seconds forward and backward respectively, and up and down adjust the volume.
However, if you’ve recently adjusted the volume slider with the mouse, then left and right ALSO adjust volume, and can’t be used to skip forward/backward anymore until you unfocus the volume bar.
Yeah, those annoying people who need accessibility and navigate web pages via keyboard focus, they ruined YouTube controls for the rest of us.
There’s a button on the side of my mouse dedicated to each of those shortcuts you just mentioned. 🤣
Also win+space to switch from English to Japanese and back! And inside that, shift+caps to switch between kana and kanji, and romaji!
(I’m on Mint, but I changed the shortcuts to be Windows default because that’s what I’m used to. Still works great, sometimes I hamfist the wrong kanji in the sentence because I’m just not looking too closely, but I’ve seen native English speakers abuse the shit out of “your” and “there”.)
I definitely have a lot more I use, I just had an I Think You Should Leave sketch in my head and tried to do a shitty riff on it. 🤣
Oh, I guess there is a fourth one I’ve memorized. Win + L to lock the computer at work.
I have no idea what ctrl+ T, N, or W do.
New tab, new window and close tab/window in that order for Firefox.
Good ol’
C-w,M-w, andC-yYou sound like someone who frequently accidentally brings up the emoji keyboard when you’re trying to go to the end of the line here on Lemmy.
Alt-E, select copy, Alt-E, select paste.
It’s partially that. It’s also because printers do suck more now. Had an HP 5p in the 90s that was a workhorse, reliable as hell, and would simply print whatever you sent. period.
I feel like there was definitely a golden age for printers, because when I was a kid we had an Epson Stylus Color 800 that was literally Satan crammed into a shitty beige box, but my HP LaserJet from like 2012 is still going strong.
Fair enough, printers suck! Laser printers seem to be less of a racket than inkjets, but still…
I tried older HP PSC 1315 on Windows 11.
Windows 11: Cannot find drivers, use manufacturer’s website.
HP: Windows will automatically download drivers, no downloads are provided.Uuuh… thanks?
Soooooo… archive.org.
As a Gen X person who also does occasional family tech support, printers have always been shit as far as I can tell.
Also I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a device made by HP that wasn’t trash in some way or another.
I have a great rule to promote self reliance. I’ll gladly help you, but if the answer is in the first 20 results on Google, it costs you 50 euro.
I only had one relative get angry, asking how he was supposed to know if it was. I told him to check, and he angrily said “well then I might as well do it myself”.
Exactly.
Those first 20 results in 2025:
- 1-4: AI slop
- 5: Reddit thread (no comments)
- 6: Reddit thread (comment including the solution has been deleted)
- 7-9: AI slop
- 10: Microsoft support forum (two pages of generic advice from support workers located in India who get paid a starvation wage)
- 11-12: stack exchange (both with poorly written questions followed by angry comments)
- 13: quora (nonsense mixed with stuff that somehow actually makes things worse???)
- 14: Wikipedia
- 15-17: AI slop
- 18: Reddit thread (only one comment “nvm figured it out”)
- 19: Arch Linux forum (links to Arch Wiki)
- 20: the actual solut… no wait, it’s also AI slop
18: Reddit thread (only one comment “nvm figured it out”)
“Who were you, DenverCoder9? What did you see?!”
You vastly overestimate the level of these questions. Think “how do I send photos on Whatsapp”.
Most of the stuff is accurately answered by the shitty AI most of the time.
20??? I’m pretty sure if you scroll down past 5 results you’re already in the top 1% of users doing so.
It’s because the kids don’t care enough to learn. Seriously.
This is a generalization, it does not include everyone.
I thought this was about Gen X, rooky Gen X mistake, sorry, forgot we forgotten.
They don’t forget us when they are struggling with their computer…
Same
Today I had to teach two people from different generations, the difference between right and left click.
Did you mention the center wheel click? No? Probably for the best.
💀
Not just millennials… I’ve been family IT support since the late 80s. And not just printers. TVs, cable, VCRs, DVD players, BlueRay, stereos, home theater, networking, WiFi, smart appliances, laptops, tablets, phones, etc.
Not just millennials… I’ve been family IT support since the late 80s.
I mean, as a millennial I only missed that by a couple of years. I was already the most computer-literate person in the house when I was 7, in the early '90s.
Were you the only one who knew how to press the input button on the remote to switch devices?
Trick question: back then, we changed to channel 3 and turned on the device hooked up to the RF adapter.
Also, my parents struggle with changing inputs on the remote now. I’m not sure if they regressed in their old age or never knew to begin with, but either is plausible.
I feel like being competent in electronics can be so aggravating depending on how people treat you. I don’t even want to think about those giant tv/dvd/multi-disc changer set-ups with sound systems people had. Rip.
I have set up so many home theater systems over the years. And before things like HDMI-ARC or even toslink so it was always a pain to get everything plugged in and working. 14 remotes and a multifaceted spell you had to cast to get sound working. Man what a pain…
Oh yeah…I forgot about the basket of remotes.
I’ve used computers recreationally for 35 years, professionally for 30.
I’ve never owned a printer.
I refuse to support equipment I don’t use.
I don’t understand how my 3D printer, which literally arrived as an unmarked box full of bits that I assembled myself while drunk and with no prior knowledge on Boxing Day (and it looks like it), works more reliably than my 2D printer that came fully assembled by professionals and supposedly is based on decades of established technology.
Just think, once we all die off, no more printers.
We may just start charging for this ultra-specialized skill
The 3d printers are so cool though.
Sorry, no printers.
But I was so close to perfecting my 4d printer.
Thermodynamics says no.
It was just a Kickstarter grift that spritzed you with water and played the Back To The Future theme as it printed, anyway.
The responsibility of knowing how to use a printer skips a generation, much like male pattern baldness.
skips a generation, much like male pattern baldness.
TIL my grandpa made me color blind and balding, that dead sonofaremoved
So, I’m reading two false claims, and I’ve got a long line of highly proficient bald family members to prove it
That’s actually two separate lines of male pattern baldness and two separate lines of printer proficiency alternating between each other.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Hopefully finally only one.single.protocol to simply move pdf to printer?
That’s been invented in the eighties, it’s called PostScript, which is a precursor to PDF. You sent a PostScript file to the printer, and the printer evaluated PostScript and printed the result. Except, with the spread of home printers, processing was moved into the drivers to eliminate costly electronics from printers.
But postscript is the document description, not the transport. And pdf now, because base pdf is simpler & more secure than postscript.
There are about a dotzen transport protocols in a printers settings.
Blame tablet culture. Everything is now optimally desgined for user friendliness. Kids can just download an app from the appstore and point at what they want it to do. People don’t even know anymore how the filesystem on their computer works. If the dow load pup-up in chrome disappears, they think the download has dissapeared and they need to download it again.
TBF, Android and iOS do not make it clear where files are going when you save them like desktop OSes do. It’s almost as if they are intentionally trying to hide their file structure, especially Apple, which is beyond frustrating.
They are intentionally trying to hide it.
The default file browsers don’t access the entire file structure, what exists and what you can see and edit, without root.
You can, or at least could, sideload a FOSS filebrowser, much more straightforward UI, doesnt shit itself if you arent logged into it.
What they instead do is make it really, really easy to upload all your personal files to their cloud, which is either going to cost you time, money, or your privacy.
Its why Microsoft genuinely doesnt understand why everyone hates OneDrive, why they genuinely don’t see a problem with Windows becoming an AI prompt/API with ads.
Because its basically the same as the mobile UI paradigm.
Its why Microsoft genuinely doesnt
understandcareFTFY. Microsoft doesn’t deserve the Hanlon’s Razor benefit of doubt.
I mean, I feel you, but I also used to work for Microsoft.
Their management is largely literally delusional.
The groupthink / corpo culture is so strong that its basically like talking to an ET alien, on many topics.
So yes, clearly they do not care, but also, they’re very much deluded into thinking that everything they do is just obviously the way you would do something.
Its very culty, to be frank, its one part of why I don’t work there any more, the other main one being their blatent reproduction of India’s caste system within MSFT itself.
Multiple times I saw H1B visa junior employees getting viciously verbally absued by more senior employees from India, from a higher caste or social status, shit that I would have gotten instantly fired if I did.
I went to HR and they told me that actually I was being culturally insensitive because that’s just normal in their culture.
Absolute fucking horseshit.
And this was all a decade-ish ago. I am certain it is much worse now, just look at everyone who got fired for objecting to Microsoft aiding and abetting and facilitating Israel’s genocide.
… I’m gonna need a fucking cigarette, god damnit.
I know where mine usually go, but sometimes they go somewhere else. Why did it do that? Where did it go? Sometimes I run a search and still can’t find it. Wtf? So, I have re-downloaded when I was in a pinch.
It’s been known since probably the seventies that normies have trouble with hierarchical file systems. UI researchers kept testing the assumptions about file systems, and the results in the majority of populace have always been abysmal. Which is why people have the desktop piled with every file they ever created or downloaded, and why UI designers are trying to move away from shoving file systems into users’ faces.
Everything is now optimally desgined for user friendliness.
Feels like the opposite to me. Modern mobile style interfaces feel extremely hostile, designed to minimise the amount of information the user can extract from the application (and maximise the amount that can be extracted from the user and sold to the highest bidder) and our control over it.
Classic desktop interfaces (and no, the stupid office ribbons are not included in that), even when poorly designed, are many orders of magnitude easier to use and navigate, and provide a lot more tools and information.
I agree, but we have two have different meanings of user friendly here.
You: The thing makes it easy to do what I want, to understand what it can do.
Them: The thing makes it easy to do what the designer wants, makes it easy to understand what the designer wants me to do with it.
I thought the younger folk would be faster on computers than me but I had to show a junior new hire IT tech what a zip file was and how to open it. Something that I assumed would be second nature to them, they hadn’t seen. Growing up with analog and moving to digital as society progressed, I assumed the next generation would smoke me in tech but it’s been surprising that because tech has “Just worked” for many of them they haven’t had to learn how it works. A blessing and a curse I suppose.
Honestly sometimes having learned the analog counterpart is really useful. It’s a different field but the first time I mixed live audio was on an old analog mixer. It wasn’t really all that difficult to use once explained. Shortly after we replaced it with a digital mixer (behringer x32), and I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to use the old analog one because so many concepts would appear, at least to me, difficult to grasp if you’re starting out on the digital one.
The next gen grew up on tablets and iphones and walled gardens that make everything a mystery to them. Corporate infantilisation
File compression is for poor people.
I have bad news for you if you happen to play maybe Skyrim or Cyberpunk 2077 or any Source game… or damn near any game, ever, or ever download literally any game from Steam…
they all use compressed file archive formats with their own decompression / streaming methods to fit more shit in less space on your hard drive / game disc. when you download a game, Steam auto encapsulates it in a compressed format, sends you those files, and then decompresses on your machine it once its all downloaded.
Yeah, I wasn’t being serious. You don’t have to convince me file compression is ubiquitous, but I appreciate your dedication to educating people. :)
Well, ok, but then… how is ‘compression is for poor people’ a joke?
It’s absurdist. Like I said, file compression is ubiquitous and the reason for that is because of its undeniable utility. Thinking you can avoid file compression by being rich (by buying more storage space or network throughput) has likely NEVER occurred to anyone. I posted this joke on a comment about someone not understanding file compression at a basic level i.e. not even knowing how to use basic tools to get uncompressed files from compressed ones. The joke is taking this one step further from the perspective of someone so out of touch with the tech, that they’d rather not learn and choose the absolute worst attitude possible.
Also I’ve noticed a total lack of curiosity or willingness to learn how to use these products. It takes a little brain power sometimes.
Brain power, you say?
Here’s a test of Zoomer brain power:
Ask them to name their favorite Zoomer band.
Not artist.
Band.
Band comprised of Zoomers.
And a lot of Lemmy could be accused of having the same attitude towards sports, fashion or pop culture. People aren’t obligated to be interested in tech, for most people it’s a tool, not a hobby.
The things you’ve mentioned are hobbies, not tools you need to use
Because I used stereotypical non-nerdy things. Most people also couldn’t repair their car, fix their pipes or install a stove.
Well like, I would argue that you should know how to fix your car if you use one, yes. And I also would say that, if you own a home, you should know a thing or two about plumbing or appliances
…and know who to call for electrical because that can kill you
I’m not arguing that it’s not helpful, but I don’t think it’s a “should” or even a reasonable expectation. Nobody has the time to learn how to do everything that’s going to be potentially helpful at some point in their lives. We all set different priorities, and that’s fine.
Your original comment was about people attitudes towards stuff like sports, implying a hypocrisy. I was just pointing out how it’s a different category in my opinion. Whether it’s a reasonable expectation or not is a different discussion (though I would still argue that, yes, it is reasonable. Knowing how things in the world works is immensely helpful and helps build stronger societies. For example in appreciating other’s work more and being a more rounded out person, among other things)
Honestly I don’t blame them, I fall into the not giving a shit about sports or fashion camp too. My inner boomer comes out when I’m forced to use microsoft products so I’m definitely a hypocrite but at least I’ll put a little effort into trying to get a surface level of understanding.
Yeah maybe, but try popping out of an app for five seconds to copy something and then come back to paste it, and tell me how user friendly and optimised that is.
People never knew how filesystems work. It’s been tested time and again, people aside from nerds have trouble with hierarchical filesystems. They had trouble in the eighties, they had trouble in the nineties, had trouble in the two-thousandths and obviously still have trouble today. Saving every single file on the desktop didn’t start with tablets.
Nerds just have no idea how the majority of the population fare with computers, and don’t know that UI designers in fact test their UIs and continually check their assumptions. But nerds are removedsure in blaming UI designers and ‘tablet culture’, which culture made computing accessible to everyone from toddlers to decrepit geriatrics.
Literacy and numeracy scores in the US in general peaked in 2012.
If you graduated high school / college around then, statistically, everyone +/-5 or greater your age is generally less literate, less mathematically literate, less knowledgeable than you, ceteris paribus.
Do you have any data on that? Maybe it’s my personal bias but it seems to me, having graduated high school in 2002, that people ten years younger than me tend to be less literate. That’s charitable language. They certainly struggle much more with tech.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38
https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp
They unfortunately rework the metrics by which they measure this stuff, and have many different ways of trying to measure roughly the same thing… but hey, thats true of NBER and the BLS and FRED over this same time period too, way before Elon/Trump basically fired everyone.
So yeah, its hard to pinpoint exactly, without… doing my own meta analysis of all their data, but basically around ~2012 were the peak of totally averaged literacy and numeracy scores.
Before that, it was climbing, then peaked, and has since been falling, quite rapidly the closer you get to present day.
Your anecdotal observed deviation is indeed biased, you probably do not spend your time around a purely statistically average set of people, how/why exactly that is the case would require me to get some PID from you to attempt to explain though, lol.
Most likely explanation would probably be regional / location variance.
US education systems vary wildly in quality by Zipcode, the average net worth of families in the zipcode you grew up in is still the most statistically significant way to accurately predict overall life outcomes.
Very interesting. Especially the first link showing how different life circumstances appear to influence performance. I’m fairly certain this is also tied to income inequality.
The practice of funding schools based on local property taxes is incredibly harmful.
Yes, thats like, the whole main problem with American society.
It is statistically true that working hard, staying out of jail, and getting an education is absolutely not a guarantee that you will achieve what the Boomers call ‘middle class lifestyle’, or better.
It might help you at least tread water, in terms of generational advancement, maybe?
But if you don’t have a stable home, family situation, food situation… shouldn’t be surprising that you tend not to do well in school.
A huge part of that problem is indeed tying together local property taxes and school systems.
People have been saying this and proving it with numbers since at least the 90s.
But, we never changed it in a way that would fix anything, instead, the Republicans have spent my entire lifespan on this planet deliberately destroying public education, because they want to give taxpayer money to privately run religious schools (Christian, of course), and then make everyone pay for basic, K-12 education, via some kind of voucher/marketplace of schools system.
They know dumb people are easier to lie to, and most of our own Founders knew that a functional democracy is impossible without a foundation of an educated and well informed populace.
So, of course, blow all that up, revert to Theocracy, thats the plan, its basically mostly Reagan’s fault for setting all this in motion.
Agreed on almost everything. My only difference is I’d say it started with the Nixon administration and was made far worse by the Reagan admin.
Well, I am just a silly youngin’, what would I know =P
Less snarkily, could you tell me what Nixon did in relation to the US education system?
I’m fairly decent with my US History, but I could be forgetting something, or have not heard of it before.
Back in my day we had to walk up hill both ways.
PC LOAD LETTER.
The paper cartridge (PC) needs to be loaded with letter sized paper.
It’s a command to get the paper cartridge and load letter sized paper in it.
C’mon people.
Oh, I get the reference.
Literally helped my parents with this last night.
Also, fuck windows for defaulting a setting I’d never seen before: “let windows manage my default printer”
That’s why it wasn’t printing. What a fucking stupid idea.
As a general rule, if I ever encounter an option that involves letting Microsoft handle it, I always say no. Like when software crashes and it asks if you want to send it to Microsoft. I’ve literally never said yes because I assume it’ll think about it for like 10 minutes, then the software that sends the crash report will crash, and then it will try to get me to agree to OneDrive.
Absolutely same. This was just on and I’d never seen it before.
Ah, I see mom’s PC updated and it’s trying to print with the fucking “OneNote XPS” virtual printer again.
Also I see the “OneNote XPS” printer I manually remove every month is back again.
Gearing up for this tomorrow, every time I turn off automatic updates and uninstall a bunch of bullshit…every time it’s right back there.
I manually remove every month
People don’t learn about cron and scripting anymore, smh my damn head.
Are they running win 11? 'Cos the queue in that doesn’t work.
Literally, it’s gonna print the first job then just error everything queued behind it.
Not a terrible idea if there’s one printer plugged in. The idea isn’t bad, it’s Windows that’s bad.
Before things like the XPS printer showed up, if there was only one printer anyway, it was the default. Pointless.
Too much time this year has been lost fixing random cups issues for people. Too much damn time!
I don’t have any kids. I’m free!!
Sweet spot. Never have to print anything.
I’m like you, though, I can’t afford them either so… Win-win?
Can’t afford the kids or the printers?
Both.
