Good damn it they forgot about us again. This is exactly why they call us Generation X!
Shhh - let the Millennials do it, they need the validation, and most of us need a nap.
Shh, we get to be anonymous, tech literate and be able to buy our own houses.
Nah, my brother is a mega-nerd that rivals my tech abilities.
Ok but what about Gen X?
Napping. Wake me up when September ends.
We could fix it too, but we don’t wanna.
We’re burned out. It’s time to pass the soldering iron.
They’re too tired for that too. They’re more of a “blow in the hole and jiggle it” people.
I tried to get into the whole Arduino thing as a Gen Xer. I couldn’t believe the complexity and back story you need to know before getting started. Totally baffled by the whole thing. Just give me a processor, some memory and a serial port. Why do I need an IDE, drivers, a bootloader, fifteen different kinds of whatevers I don’t understand, yes, I am burned out, where are the Doritos?
You can just install and invoke the compiler directly, and you only need a driver if you’re on windows and using the bootloader to program it, and you don’t need a bootloader if you have an ISP (programmer) so you can flash it directly, and you don’t need anything else though one of the main reason people use Arduino is for the libraries
I just wanted to generate a simple pulse from a switch press. Needless to say since I needed a breadboard anyway, I just popped in a 74LS123 with a resistor and a capacitor. I couldn’t even begin to understand what I needed to get that pulse from an Arduino. And I used to program PICs bare metal. It’s like the complexity traded places. On the PIC, the tools and process are dead simple. But writing the code for the little monsters required understanding every opcode and peripheral and how they interact. It looks like on the Arduino, I can just type sleep(5000) but to set up the whole thing to get there is where the complexity lies.
Lost gen got all that kung-fu.
Let’s settle this once and for all.
I’m Gen Z. Quiz me on how computers work.
I have a Proxmox server with a random assortment of hard drives and SSDs of various capacities {8TB, 2TB, 2TB, 240GB, 240GB}. I want to create a CephFS filesystem spanning them, using erasure-coded pools in order to maximize capacity (kind of like RAID 5 except without requiring same-sized drives). How do I configure my CRUSH Map in order to accomplish this?
Lol, you lost me there. I’ve read up on the various RAID configurations. I’ve heard about CephFS. I don’t know much about it, but I get the sense it’s the new kid on the block.
I actually have a RAID question for you. I want to setup a little RAID array starting with 2 mirrored drives and add more drives later. But it seems there is no easy way to migrate RAID versions? Let’s say I want to start with 2, then 3, than 4 drives as stuff fills up. I always want some level of redundancy. And I don’t want to use any additional drives aside from the 2, 3, then 4 in the array. Is this possible? Either with RAID or with CephFS?
Funny you should mention that, because it’s what got me thinking about Ceph in the first place. My other Proxmox node has a 2-drive mirrored ZFS pool, and I went to add a third drive to it and realized that I’d have to move all the data off and rebuild it from scratch, so I started looking for other solutions.
So yeah, I think Ceph can add to an array after-the-fact like that (in addition to the not-waste-capacity-of-random-assorted-disks thing), but I haven’t figured it out enough yet to be sure.
How does computers work?
Spicy rocks
- The lowest level is transistors, which are electronic switches that have an on and off state. In other words, they are binary and can represent 0 and 1
- Those get combined into gates of two inputs. An “and” gate outputs 1 if both its inputs are 1. An “or” gate outputs 1 if either of its inputs are 1. And Xor gate outputs 1 if and only if one of its inputs is 1.
- A bunch of other complicated shit happens
- Boom assembly. Don’t try and read or write it, because it will make you wanna quit computers
- C comes into play. Designed to unfuck, assembly so you can actually write readable code. Just don’t forget to release your memory
- More complicated shit. Something about kernels and GNU. Userland vs kernel land? Idk
- ARM might be different since it can run process outside of userland and kernel I think? Something about secure compute/marketing BS
- Inside of user land, we have the web browser. This is there the cool shit happens.
- The browser runs JavaScript, CSS and HTML. JavaScript is a single threaded, but nonblocking language with an even loop and microtask queue.
- Inside of the browser we run React. React is a framework where UI is a function of state and the data flows in one direction. It can also be used to slam your CPU.
- Now that we’re into high level languages, it would only be fun if it looped back around to the beginning. So we invoke some C code that has been compiled to web assembly. Mmmm how efficient
Edit: I tried to do this all off the top of my head. After writing this, I think I meant user space vs kernel space. Idk if user land is a word
Transistors are only on and off switches when run in saturation. This is relevant to CPUs in the sense that the rising/falling edge and jitter affect the setup and hold times and thus the maximum clock rate. End pedantry.
This is the content I’m here for! Please continue I want to learn more
Did a solid effort.
I guess between C and assembly there’s abstract syntax trees and maybe LLVM, which is probably also written in C. Idk I skipped compilers in college.
I also know the networking stack has a bunch of layers, but that felt like its own separate thing to “computers”. I think UDP makes more errors than TCP but UDP also go brrrrr
Hehe, llvm is a compiler framework, basically provides all the utilities for processing an AST.
ASTs have various flavors but they’re all the same thing an intermediate representation for a program that optimizers and linkers use to create binaries.
The network stacks meh, 6 or 7 layers depending on what protocol you use but in brief: physical, transport, application. More and more functionality has moved into the transport in the name of efficiency, see quic. But in general not worth worrying about most of the abstraction was nonsense anyways.
And you missed out compilers was one of the most useful classes in cs circulums since it teaches you how languages work.
Nice 👍🏽!
Machin code comes to mind, and “more” high level languages like C++, template metaprogramming and other horror stories 💀
And CD players!
Cheers 😋
My impression of C++ is that’s it’s actually C++++++++ as in, how many more decades of features can we cram into this language before it explodes
What’s a CD player /s
Fun fact about a random CD player. The USB-A external CD player Apple sold after removing the internal CD player kinda abused the USB standard. I believe it needed more current than was allowed by USB, so Apple found some way to make this specific device draw more power than the USB standard supported at the time. Today, I believe USB-C includes a handshake that negotiates power requirements, but at the time, USB-A didn’t support this.
Tbh, I don’t really know where assembly ends and machine code starts. But do know that assembly is tied to your specific architecture
You’re not wrong about C++ 😋
Machine code is just the numbers, assembler is mnemonics and stuff and needs an “interpreter” to turn it into useful machine code (a C++ compiler also spits out machine code BTW).
Spot on about USB standards, no idea if apple did what you saulid though, wouldn’t doubt it!
Oh you know computers? Name every group policy.
Fuck you Windows
Damn, you’re good. Enjoy your lifetime of trimming Satan’s pubic hair!
Also, the bridge was designed as a suspension bridge, but nobody actually knew how to build a suspension bridge, so they got halfway through it and then just added extra support columns to keep the thing standing, but they left the suspension cables because they’re still sort of holding up parts of the bridge.
Idk if I’ve laughed this hard in a while 😂
Line once a week my coworker is like, this code has been working for years so we don’t touch it
Most people don’t even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn’t make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.
Same.
Hahahahahaha, omg that’s a brilliant read. Thank you, I will be sharing it with my technical friends (any kind of technical will get it, one friend is in hydraulics and boy, the stories are so like mine in IT).
Chmod
Yeah GenX is STILL doing this. Though be of good cheer my millennial brethren…When Skynet takes over, we’ll be secure as long as we slave for the overlords. The rest…?
We’ll pray for you.
Even Skynet will forget Gen X, trust me.
If you all didn’t want to be the New Zealand of generations you would’ve had your mom give birth earlier or later duh.
Just like New Zealand should push itself closer to a continent if it wants to be on maps.
Also as a dum millennial I am always amused when my brethren ask me about social media etc and say I don’t know about tech cause I don’t got an ig account or watever. Bitch please, I have worked in kernel dev I know all the lies we present as a file. I get angy when people that can’t read x86 assembly tell me I’m not technical.
Hahahahaha, take my GenX upvote
“Humanity eliminated!”
Meanwhile Gen X and New Zealand:
TIL I’m a millenial?
Here’s your regulation issue avocado toast and collapsed economy. Oh, I see you’ve already got one of those. Welcome aboard!
If they want to take over from my gen-X ass from doing everyone’s fixing shit, I’m all for it.
I literally just fixed a zoomers laptop last night. Lol
I’m GenX, I bought my first PC in 1988, and made a living in part, setting up LANs, back when knowing anything at all about computers could get you a job. GenX early adopters taught millennials computers.
Gen X here. If I cared what any of those age groups thought I would feel slighted.
Bingo.
What I see is the same for most every generation. You arrive at adulthood and look around judging all the older folks as being clueless. You fail to solve all the worlds problems while you still know it all. Then you get a job and wise up. The ones who never realize they don’t know shit are the ones who cause all the trouble.
Sage words. Couldn’t be more apt if I tired. Yeah. As I e gotten older I have less patience/tolerance tolerance to suffer ignorance, arrogance, and incompetence.
Though i’m the very tail end of genX and a “computer expert”, I pretty much think that the millennial generation being the only generation was all part of a solid de-education plan. At the rate we’re going Its only a matter of time where the tech we have today is forced to be only approved OS, controlled, monitored and IT capable people who know how to bypass will be arrested for violating the law.
The water is starting to get warm…
It wont even be that hard. Take their gibbity away now and a lot of people (young and old) will be helpless. Or, what will actually happen, minorly change gibbity outputs to fulfill your political agenda to become the first trillionaire, all the while the population doesn’t know theyre being fed trash.
Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, etc. are marketing bullshit that need to stop being used in the common lexicon.
Agree… Cringe.
Sauce? I just make stuff and opine freely. I think none of that is bullshit, but I’ll debate it on a case-by-case.
Oh, but not “Boomer” so you can still say “Ok, Boomer?”
They should just be numbered. From best to worst, so Millenials would be 1 and Boomers would be like… 6? 7? How many generations have we had 🤔
I, a millennial, built computers as a hobby. My daughter, a Gen Alpha, has no concept of computers and no interest outside of school work and tablets.
Use the forbidden fruit or caved reward method to teach.
Start with something like (assuming they have have a low tier phone) giving them a Google Pixel, but with the stock ROM erased, as a random day gift (not birthday or such).
When they ask why it won’t turn on right, tell them it’s because it needs a ROM to be installed to be used. When they ask what that is, open up Wikipedia for them, asking with the GrapheneOS instructions.
You can do it with other stuff too, like “no wifi at home past 7pm”, but give them a router that needs something installed to run and say “but if you setup this and plug it in to the internet, it’ll be your own wifi you can use at all times” and so on.
That’s an incredibly cool idea.
i figured gen z would start fixing my computer once i hit my current age (41); turns out i dont know any gen z’s that understand how computers work.
im really tired of being everyone’s tech support :(
I am gen z and just writing my bachelor’s thesis for computer science/Cybersecurity. Many of my peers are in CS too.
I am Gen Z, I can copy paste commands from online forums into the terminal, then proceed to fuck shit up. 🫠
(Don’t ask me to type commands from memory, I’d rather use windows spyware than deal with command line torture)
This is how I am for the part (including most people who aren’t computer enthusiasts or CS degree holders). I know my limits on what I am willing to do with command lines because I don’t have time to memorize all that shit.
You just have to practice more! Though while I’m pretty good with computers Linux does still scare me a little too, I have a habit of poking around where I’m not supposed to and Linux is more than happy to let you break things
I know of one, and it’s my kid. And they’re just as frustrated as I am about how little their peers know about computers
Depending on definitions, I’m either a millennial or gen-z. Some of my team mates are awesome and know everything there is to know about computers. Others have knowledge gaps that make me question whether they went to uni. They’re also the same people who commonly don’t know how to find answers to things. They’re also the people proclaiming the loudest about the greatness of Gippers
Gippers?
Kind of a fond/humanised name for chat gpt me and some colleagues use. We’ve dubbed it our idiot friend, ‘Gippers’. Its commonly wrong and there’s a group of colleagues who trusts it and a group who doesn’t. I think we anthropomorphised the machine a little, and also its maybe a little cringey.
i did the world a favor and decided to not have kids. sadly, this also means i am unable to hand down a generation’s worth of computer knowledge, heh.
41 myself and the future scares me for too many reasons, this definitely being one of them.
It’s funny how bubbles can change so much. In my personal experience, most Gen Z people know their way around computers and how to fix stuff. I regularly help my millennial sister with stuff like that.
No generally Gen z is not afraid of tech but doesn’t know how it works.
