The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)
191 comments
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I teach math to undergrads, and damn it's sad. They don't know how to send a PDF file from their phone to laptop, and upload it to Canvas. One guy ended up emailing it to me. They don't even know what a folder/directory is.
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Well, in his defense, I could save a file from 8 different applications and they end up in 8 different locations on my phone file system. You would think they would all go to Documents or Downloads...nope. apps dont let you pick locations, and if they do, you don't get to pick anywhere you want
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This sounds highly like an Apple FS issue.
Don't experience it nearly as much on my Android (Pixel 7).Still salty about the google file explorer.
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Apple has a default share option of “Save to Files” where you can navigate where you want it saved. The default location is definitely application specific though.
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Managing digital information today is a horrible mess of silos and big business driven incompatibilities. It often drives people to use PDFs, as there is nothing appropriate. Blame the software/businesses, not the victims/users.
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I mostly agree with you. But it only works because users give in. They deserve some of the blame.
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They don't know how to send a PDF file from their phone to laptop
With USB cable? Because outside of that it gets complicated and/or vendor-specific quickly.
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That's what KDEconnect is for. Oddly enough I think it even works in windows nowadays.
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I wish I could downvote you more.
"Regular people having trouble with file management? Why don't they just use this obscure, unintuitive program that they clearly won't know how to use!"
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"Share to
<name of linked machine>
"Oh no, so unintuitive!
There's a moment at which people have to accept that they just cannot use some things. Either they're willing to learn how to use them, or they do without. It's quite simple.
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That should be a simple core os thing
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After a while, there are no such "simple things" unless you expect a Star Trek type of interaction "computer, transfer this information" which completely abstracts everything.
Maybe that will happen some day, maybe not, but for now people still have to learn how to drive cars and what the fuck a directory is.
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Desktop like file io is not a star trek ask.
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Sigh.
Ok. Share a file.
How? Through what medium? Wire? Radio? IR? Any of those?
There has to be an a way to identify and authentify both ends.
There has to be an agreed upon transmission protocol.
You have to specify where your data ends up because your user is probably an idiot.
This has to works for a variety of operating systems that have nothing in common.
And you have to convince everybody to use it.
It's trivial. Get to it. And then you can do all those other things that your users can't deal with. I'm sure it's just as simple.
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I'm not saying it's "trivial" I'm saying you shouldn't need a 3rd party service to accomplish it.
Bluetooth isn't "trivial" but the core OS does it just fine. File ops should be the same.
Edit The params discussed were listed above. Send a pdf from phone to laptop.
The medium of connection and communication should be transparently selected. The source and destination should be transparently revealed.
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With usb cable most of people doesn’t even know where to start. They have no idea of where the document is saved. Plugging the phone to the computer doesn’t show a “recent files” list but the whole directory hierarchy. Maybe they even used some proprietary note taking app that doesn’t create a file and they don’t realize that
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Bluetooth file sharing has worked for me on every device I own. Not sure if it works on Apple devices, but it probably does.
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Sure, but they own their devices. They should know it. It's a pretty regular thing to do, since most classes in my university use Canvas.
Also, many of them had both devices from Apple. I may dislike Apple, but Airdrop should work pretty well for this.
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You'd be correct on that Airdrop assumption. I get most of Lemmy reflexively hates Apple, but Airdrop between two Apple devices you own is about as braindead simple as it's possible to be.
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If you have the luck that Android prompts you if you want to enable file transfer or just charge your device.
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If i remember right, it's long-press on the notification, no? Currently on toilet, can't check.
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Afaik last time I connected my phone via USB I needed to pull down zhe notifications and there was a silent option offered to switch the type of USB connections.
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Honestly I use discord or email for that >.>
Windows/iPhone doesn’t seem to have a great solution as far as I’ve checked.
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There's KDE Connect if they're on the same network. You could also use Dropbox or something, but honestly Discord works fine
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The only problem I see with KDE Connect is that you need to pair the devices. Works great if both are yours, but probably its not something you want leave with the default settings if its shared with someone else.
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Miniserve is a program for computers. Though you can run it in termux. It just opens a tiny server instance for file sharing, you can download/upload files to a directory directory. Will also show QR for the link.
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The recent integration Apple did in their newest update is peak usability.
Sadly it's locked in the ecosystem.-
Dude, I love Apple hardware for phones but their locked in ecosystem and to an extent the OS is so fucking annoying.
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My dream is the (earlier pre 2020s) openness of Android combined with the cohesion and design of Apple.
Android truly is a magnificent clusterfuck like Windows but I still prefer that over someone like Apple defining where I can go and where not.
For Android what is my main draw is that I can fuck around in the filesystem with apps like mixplorer and sideload apps at my own risk. The first part (this is all from the very limited time I had to fiddle with phones from clients) is impossible and the second has too many string attached as far as I am aware.
Oh and I obviously spend money on some apps I would need to find replacements for and most likely pay again. The other points would need to be a strong contender to make me move entirely.But it's very tempting.
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Best of both worlds is a jailbroken iPhone, but it’s becoming nigh impossible these days. Sure, if you have an older phone it’s still possible with some caveats, but long gone are the days of a new model being jailbroken in a year, never mind a week.
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Same with rooting.
Sure it's doable but outaide of special distros like lineageOS (community dev project to extend the longevity of phones and as an alternative to the OEMs flavor) and GrapheneOS (heavy privacy focus but pixel exclusive) I havent noticed or missed any major downsides I'd get from rooting my phone as I did in the past.Now all Google needa to do is glue the whope mess into a cohesive product without doing an Apple from A to Z.
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Why would they need to know what a folder/directory is? It’s a remnant from meat space and was replaced by tagging and is being replaced by LLM search/AI.
Why wouldn’t they be able to upload it directly to canvas?
I really empathize with people that didn’t have to figure out how to rip a CD at 2x speed or take a class on card catalog systems. They skipped a lot of critical problem solving learning opportunities.
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The directory remark is unrelated to the Canvas one. I guess they didn't have the app set up on their phone in that case.
Anyway, have directories been replaced? I'm having a hard time remembering any filesystem without directories. And we don't need to put AI in every fucking thing.
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Gmail was the first to get mainstream support for a directory-less method of organizing.
Music, photo, video apps have no need for directories. Many phone apps have no need in general.
Even your documents folders. It’s easier for me to use search than to drill down through folders.
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I actually use tags as directories in GMail. I can't find shit otherwise. (Tangent: just how shitty is the search in Outlook? I can never find anything unless labeled in advance.)
I agree for the apps. But then they shouldn't deal with files anyway. They should just access certain directories as permitted by the system, and those should also be exposed to the user.
Hard disagree on the documents (or anything else, really). One ends up emulating folders using tags anyway, and there's no real way of doing it in a platform-independent way. Also, searching can be very annoying in many cases. For my research, I end up working with the same files for a few weeks straight. It's much better if they're in a folder, rather than searching them every time.
You do you, though.
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Google docs doesn’t really use folders, and neither does o365. Especially when in a mobile device. Sure you can use folders but it’s limiting compared to tags.
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Directory hierarchies are absolutely not a remnant from meatspace. The world "folder" is, but IRL folders are a totally different beast because they're not nestable. Tags and searching serve useful purposes but they don't replace directory trees.
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Folders are absolutely nestable.
The problem with virtual folders is you can’t have one document in multiple folders without causing chaos because of how limiting that hierarchy is. This is why tagging is better.
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Tell me you've never used a filing cabinet...
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For about a year I worked in a filing room. I saw a decent amount of filing methods.
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How does tagging deal with file locations and permissions?
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Location is irrelevant and a legacy method of thought. Why would a digital file need to be held down to a single location? Sure, you could symlink it but that’s a crutch.
Tags can have permissions.
It’s all metadata.
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Yeah I grok it I just have no idea how you are going to solve all the issues this involves. Like memory mapped I/O or air gapped networks where the file is in a physical location etc. it feels like you will just have to reinvent directory structure inside tags.
Dunno know, maybe make your own *nix that works this way and try to get attention to it.
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The internet already runs on it.
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191 comments