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Comment on Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine

hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

So we have two options:

A 52 year old federal judge is somehow tech illiterate in a way that would imply they have absolutely no idea about the fundamentals of modern technology.
A federal judge is asking a large number of extremely basic questions to get their answers on official records so that the cases parameters are clearly defined. He is taking extra care because there’s not a lot of direct precedent on these issues.

I’m heavily leaning towards number 2 here. The internet likes to pretend everyone over the age of 40 has no idea how a computer works. The year is 2023. A middle-aged person today was fairly young when computers started to be incorporated into all aspects of society and is well versed in computer literacy. In some ways they are actually much more tech literate than the younger generations. It’s almost certain that he knows the difference between Firefox and Google.

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bufordt@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m a 53 year old IT person, and I’m leaning towards 1. The level of technology incompetence in the general public is astounding. My wife only knows “Have you tried turning it off and back on.” And that pretty much makes her a member of the help desk at her job.

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- ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  My mom uses a computer at her job but confuses the terms computer, internet, browser and email on a regular basis. I wonder what would happen if I restarted the internet as she tells me to sometimes. I could install Linux and she wouldn’t tell.
  
  Still better than her father, who had her operate a casette player for him when she was 2.
  
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  - Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I always cringe in horror as both my parents still double click links on the internet.
    
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    ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Mine are not that old but they absolutely need access to assistance every day. Mom cannot turn the computer off if anything other than “Shutdown” was previously chosen in that awful Windows dialog. Dad fell for a basic “unclaimed delivery” phishing email even though he found it in the Spam folder that has an explicit warning. Fortunately, his gut told him something was fishy and he told me right away, and we suspended his card before it was abused.
    
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    vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    What’s wrong with double click?
    
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    richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Boy, do I understand the cringe.
    
    I always described these users as “unable to distinguish between an icon an a button”. Modern Windows UIs don’t make it easier, though.
    
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  - uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    I could install Linux and she wouldn’t tell.
    
    Works with grandparents. They don’t even suspect they have Gentoo on their computer.
    
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- Dozzi92@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The law is nuanced out the ass. I sit through depositions every day, and terms of art are a plague, and you can say something, but it can be interpreted differently because in such and such a field it’s a term of art, etc. That’s my hope.
  
  I am fully on board with we need more judges, we need younger judges. But I don’t think that’s because they’re incapable of learning. In fact, I think there’s be value to someone going in blind, being given all the facts, and making their determination that way. It just sucks that something we value so highly can be determined based on the presentation of counsel.
  
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- tony@lemmy.hoyle.me.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s always amazed me of the learning gap… we learned how to get stuff working by hacking config.sys and our peers can it seems barely spell computer.
  
  It’s even worse as people get younger, even though it shouldn’t be. How computers work should be in peoples DNA by now, but they still think you’ve deleted IE if you hide the icon…
  
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- richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Agreed. If it has a positive effect as in 2, I’m all for it, but trusting that a non-technical user really know what’s going on with his computer is a serious gamble.
  
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- uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  My wife only knows “Have you tried turning it off and back on again?” And that pretty much makes her a member of the help desk at her job.
  
  Next step: “Is it even powered?”
  
  To be Dennis Ritchie was born in 40-ies. He would be 80 y.o. if he didn’t die in 2013. And he is most literate person on this planet.
  
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HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Honestly same. The passage of time is weird

People think 52 is like super old… but really that’s just Gen X

Hell you really wanna know how warped our perception of time is?

Most people think 20 years ago Mario was an 8bit platformer that revitalized interest in video games after Atari killed the medium with oversaturation and nonexistent quality control.

What was Mario 20 years ago? An aging mascot with a divisive summer themed pollution game that I loved but others seemed to hate, on a console that only did well with diehard fans… 20 years ago Nintendo wasn’t the big man on campus, that was Sony with the PS2 despite it being weaker than GCN and Xbox.

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- SeaJ@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Currently playing through Super Mario Sunshine. Looks pretty decent with HD textures.
  
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- Deftdrummer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Kinda lost me with Mario
  
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  - flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I agree, none of that comparison made sense. It relies too much on prior knowledge/association.
    
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    HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Lemme break it down then…
    
    Most people, if asked what a Mario game, one of the most iconic and best selling franchises in gaming history… beaten out only by Pokemon (owned by the same company) was like 20 years ago, they’d describe this - youtu.be/7qirrV8w5SQ
    
    When in reality, Mario 20 years ago, was this - youtu.be/WIHFSgPv3Ak
    
    This is due to how bad of a perception of time we as humans seem to have… It works for other things
    
    20 years ago “Ah yeah that’s when we were using floppy disks right?”
    
    Heck my brother’s a pretty sharp guy, but at one point he seemed to think my dad’s generation grew up with black and white silent films, and not… Friday the 13th or Ghostbusters
    
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- Classy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Dude SMS was such a great game, big part of my childhood. I loved Luigi’s Mansion, too.
  
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  - HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I was very disappointed with Luigi’s Mansion sequels. I like that the original Luigi’s Mansion was able to have a genuinely haunting atmosphere, that still managed to feel in place with the Mario universe. I was disappointed that portrait ghosts never really made a return, and that our ghosts were downgraded from actually scary premises like a baby that can warp dimensions to generic cartoon antics. Like this really was baby’s first horror game. A Fatal Frame for the kiddos, or is it more accurate to say that Fatal Frame is Luigi’s Mansion for the non kiddos? I think Fatal Frame came after Luigi’s Mansion
    
    Luigi’s Mansion 3 is especially bad with this because although I do like the main villain a lot, most of the ghosts you see are just the standard blue one again and again, you don’t have the rich variety that even Dark Moon pulled off. And oh boy did I love the ghosts of shy guys in the first game.
    
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patchwork@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In the 1990s if you wanted to play a PC game you had install it manually with a CD, typically configure ini files in a text editor and fix irq requests for your peripherals just to play. In the contemporary world a zoomer only needs to tap the install icon on the screen, Gen Z may have more experience usually technology than any previous generation, but the days of asking grandma to fix your computer seem a certainty on the horizon.

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- nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yep, the digital illiteracy of the z gen is terrifying. Apparently contemporary teens have no understanding of the folder structure
  
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  - uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Maybe they imagine tag-based filesystem or content-addressed? ~~Like porn sites.~~
    
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    nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    apparently they imagine a huge dump of stuffs which just exists
    
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  - richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    Apparently contemporary teens have no understanding of the folder structure. Like, at all.
    
    I met numerous 20- and 30- somethings in the 90s who had no idea either. When asked why they didn’t know where did they save the documents they “lost”, they usually answered that they hadn’t studied Computer Sciences and therefore they didn’t have any reason to know (!).
    
    Appelations to learn to use better their tools usually got nowhere.
    
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- Venat0r@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s a bit like how cars used to be really unreliable but easy to work on so a lot of people learned to fix some basic things, but now it’s more complicated and difficult to fix anything so even a lot of handy people don’t bother.
  
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  - patchwork@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It’s easier to build a PC in 2023 than it was in 1993. Modern motherboard’s typically don’t require separate cards for sound, network and video (unless you’re gaming). It’s mostly integrated now and you don’t need hours manually manipulating jumpers and trying to affix terribly designed IDE cables now replaced with SATA. I’d much rather work on repairing my modern PC vs trying to troubleshoot a Compaq 486 20+ years ago.
    
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    n00b001@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Ide? Sata? M.2 baybeeee
    
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  - uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    To be fair a lot of things are as easy or easier, but vendor will never let you use diagnostic software
    
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jaaval@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I have soon a PhD in tech related subject, program for living, and am a lot younger than the judge, and if you ask me if Mozilla makes a search engine I would say I have no idea, they’ve made a lot of stuff. And if you asked me how Google’s SEM tools work I would ask wtf is SEM.

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