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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">I tend to agree with Ron.<br><br>What the author of the OP is seeing is the same thing that has happened with other "technologies" over time. In the beginning the people that used them were few and had to know how to put them all together. As the number of end users increased it seemed that all of those technocrats disappeared, but all it meant was that they were hidden behind the large number of users who did not have to know down to the last transistor how things worked.<br><br>On the other hand I have run into more and more universities that do not teach assembler language, any assembler language, to their students. I happen to think that assembler, and its accompanying computer hardware architecture is important even if you never write an operating system or compiler.<br><br></span>
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<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12pt;">One thing that stood out was the comment about how universities that teach these types of topics are expensive. Cost of a university education for qualified students should never be a stopping point for those that want it, or need it. If we can teach them in public schools from Kindergarten to twelfth grade we should be able to take them through a two-year or four-year college.<br><br>md</span>
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On 05/11/2026 4:28 PM EDT Ron via Ale <ale@ale.org> wrote:
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<p>lollipopman691 via Ale wrote on 2026-05-11 10:40:</p> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap; display: block; width: 98vw;">> I am way more optimistic than this guy. </span>
<p>Me too. I started reading, didn't get far.</p>
<p>Too self-congratulatory, for one thing - acts as if poking at a system for 20 minutes and having a working mental model of it is a vanishing skill (that the author, of course, maintains), or that file system hierarchies have relevance for normal people. </p>
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<p>Too much conspiracy addled "decades of deliberate... effort by ... tech companies ... to turn users into consumers"</p>
<p>Yeah, somewhat, maybe. Or decades of effort to turn consumers into users? That sounds rather different phrased like that.</p>
<p>But also, 99% of drivers don't know how cars work. So what? More people have computers in their pockets than drivers licenses, they use them to get stuff done and for entertainment, not because technology needs to be understood at a deep level by the masses.</p>
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<br>I stopped reading at this nonsense:
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<br><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; display: block; width: 98vw;">> Ask a twenty-two-year-old to connect to a remote server via SSH. Ask > them to explain what DNS is at a conceptual level. Ask them to tell > you the difference between their router’s public IP and the local IP > of their laptop. </span>
<p>His "Kids today know nothing" whiny rant can be flipped to "geezer out of touch with what the youth are doing" pretty easily.</p>
<p>His conflation of TCP/IP networking & sysadmin tasks with relevance to average people is just ridiculous.</p>
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<p>My YouTube feed is full of kids in their ~20s doing incredible, unbelievable, sometimes "humanly impossible" stuff. They use all the tools available to pursue their interests and due to the internet have reached heights of mastery beyond what was possible for earlier generations.</p>
<p>The kids are alright (as much as they ever were, lots of our cohort were "sex & drugs & rock 'n' roll" types who went on to be home owners, etc.).</p>
<p>Although that home owning thing is pretty hopeless for kids today - not their fault. And we're handing them a ticking time bomb with climate change that they'll have to deal with. I don't envy them that impending disaster.</p>
<p> </p> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap; display: block; width: 98vw;">> From where I am sitting,we appear still very much alive. And the > 3D printing + MakerSpace folks are continuing the fight. Right to > Repair is still very much in the news and being litigated both in > courts and in legislatures. </span>
<p><span style="white-space: pre-wrap; display: block; width: 98vw;"><span style="white-space: normal;">Indeed, I agree, it's basic human nature to want to understand how stuff works and geezers like the author has fallen for the oldest fallacy in the books, "kids today aren't like *we* were".</span></span></p>
<p> </p> <span style="white-space: pre-wrap; display: block; width: 98vw;">> Doesn't mean we can relax though.</span>
<p>Human nature won't change. Ability to self-repair miniaturized electronics won't get easier (but full support for Right to Repair!), but people will find outlets for their curiosity.</p>
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<p>Can I introduce the list to HTX Studios for a great example of "kids today... that's amazing (engineering)!":</p>
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<img style="width: 600px;" src="https://yt3.googleusercontent.com/e9Tv2HS3X6lzdqoG0jAsudM0HkhpQyd24EKWjvf_MuWP_KVg68jZvVeIHYlxl7jyUtF_mlK3gg=s900-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj" alt="">
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<p><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.youtube.com">www.youtube.com</a></p>
<p><a style="font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none;" href="#">HTX Studio</a></p>
<p class="description">We are a DIY team from Hangzhou, China.Our goal is to create fun and engaging videos.We are NOT involved in any cryptocurrency trading—please verify accounts...</p>
<p><a class="url" style="display: inline-block; text-decoration: none; text-indent: -2ch; margin-inline: 2ch;" href="https://www.youtube.com/@HTXStudio">🔗 https://www.youtube.com/@HTXStudio</a></p>
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<p>Notable recommendations:</p>
<p>The assembly lines (plural), the one-handed keyboard, the visual musical instrument that took 3 years, the tests of charging phones at 120W vs 5W carried out over two years, the moving garbage cans that catch whatever is thrown their way and self-empty overnight,...</p>
<p>They have a "NO AI" on screen when showing some of their inventions because it looks like CGI or otherwise too incredible to be real.</p>
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