Post AzIVteo8YSCtibYMoC by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
 (DIR) More posts by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
 (DIR) Post #AzIVteo8YSCtibYMoC by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
       2025-10-16T04:36:05Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       I know we Xennials have been furnishing an overabundance of "the new generation will never understand this" takes recently, but I feel the need to bear witness that there was a time period between the enshittification of every conceivable tech product and the necessity to understand coding to even use a computer in the first place when our technology just *worked*
       
 (DIR) Post #AzIVtldl9R46uRkg6a by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
       2025-10-16T04:42:10Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Hot take: the reason elderly boomers can't keep up with technology isn't just because they're cognitively declining. They can't keep up because technology today is objectively bad. It's overcomplicated, it does things without you asking it and doesn't do what you want when you want because somebody other than you is the one in ultimate control of it, and people are deliberately making even simple programs and websites require ever higher specs because it drives sales of new hardware. We could have made much different choices about how our society uses technology, and the ones we made were made because that's the best way for wealthy ghouls to pry more profit out of us
       
 (DIR) Post #AzIVtvCTbjBQYj41y4 by XauriEL@mastodon.nz
       2025-10-16T06:08:14Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       (And though I love the idea of FLOSS and much as I hate to disappoint my fellow Mastadionians, you need to clear the usability bar before you will get any kind of mainstream uptake whatsoever. These companies have legions of people working hard every day to make the user experience as seamless as possible. Most people will choose a shitty but easy-to-onboard product over a good but weird and crunky one every time, and will also resist changing from what they are already using to something new if there is the slightest friction. Try to sell them primarily with ethical arguments and they will throw up their hands and say "it is what it is". Your thing needs to just work out of the box and have a low learning curve. I know that sucks, but short of sending the whole population to a reeducation camp it won't be changing anytime soon.)
       
 (DIR) Post #AzIXdZuBDLiRmwqAfg by m0xEE@nosh0b10.m0xee.net
       2025-10-17T11:02:24Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @XauriEL@mastodon.nzProblem is… it's not seamless at all! I'm quite a boomer myself when dealing with modern tech — most of the time it doesn't work as I expect it to and I just give up, but sometimes I don't have a choice. When I set up gadgets for my mom I'm going through hell that I'm not willing to go through myself: "Let us set you up with a Google account, and now Samsung account… Oh, you have Facebook? Let's set that up too!"— and we haven't even got to the stuff she actually intends to use. Sometimes after an overnight update you have to jump through some hoops again: "Let us improve your security!"— and it's usually the time when you don't have the brain capacity for that. Or time! You are about to leave and you want this thing to work, instead it insists on you making decisions that are sometimes impossible to reverse.I agree, free software does need improvement, but commercial software being seamless is a myth — people just get used to this shit at some point, but when you encounter it for the first time, it's very counter-intuitive, even I get lost.And "security" aspect is the most annoying — nowadays even the store you sometimes buy sweets from requires you to set up 2FA. What for?! Even if someone logs in and sees my order history — no one cares! But the most important thing — this is not to protect you, we only need such tight security measures because now we have these centralised data silos and centralisation is insecure by design. When everyone had 20 different accounts with different login names, it was impossible to guess, even if one of the accounts got compromised — who cares?Nowadays you either have to log in with Apple/Google/MS explicitly or login name is your phone number or email address (also from one of the big providers), it's the same on every website and now you can't reuse passwords and need a password manager and whatnot, and if your "big" account gets compromised — you're royally fscked!I think people put up with all this because they basically have no other choice — not because it's well-designed from user's perspective.