I would add that if you’re using Windows then you don’t need a 3rd party anti virus as long as you keep Windows up to date. Many commercial anti virus programs behave more like malware than the things they’re meant to protect you from
Mostly pertaining to software related malfunctions, I’ve been on the helping end of so incredibly many “have you tried turning it on and off?” situations that I can’t remember all of them. Aside from that, not knowing how antivirus works, not knowing how to search for fixes and solutions to common problems, not reading error descriptions or even how the basic device settings can/do impact performance, etc.
Many people I know don’t know how to navigate their computer’s or phone’s OS and/or settings properly and don’t understand basic descriptions of what functions and settings do, and they’re around 25 yo. They can’t troubleshoot hardware issues either, are unable to identify faulty components or peripherals correctly, and e.g. commonly confound RAM and HDD storage, be they related to phones, computers or other kinds of electronics.
Something stops working and it’s immediately a) call the techy friend to get a free fix for zero effort, b) trade it in for another one/throw it away and buy a new one, or c) call an actual (or not so actual) expert. I mean often times it’s not really that hard to solve the problems. It’s always a faulty product, not the end user failing to identify proper use and how their electronics actually work.
“Healthy food” is a grift meant to sell you shit. And by that I mean most “Healthy Foods” you find on the supermarket or are advertised as superfoods or are at the core of the latest fad diet are in fact just as trashy as any other ultraprocessed prepackaged food. Even if they are truly healthy foodstuffs, they are often something that isn’t a staple of people’s everyday diets (usually shit that is part of the diet in a foreign culture, but not on the West) that you get massively overcharged for because “Muh superfood”.
The real way to eat healthy is to buy fresh ingredients, cook your own meals, and inform yourself on what your body actually needs so you can be smart about what you cook… But that requires time and work investment, which most people cannot afford to do, which is why obesity is more common in poor folk than on rich folk. Have I mentioned that knowing certain stuff will make you, if not politically radicalised, very angry regardless?
Computer related:
In windows 10 and 11 if you press Win+V instead of Ctrl+V you’ll get the option to activate clipboard history. After that, you can use Win+V to get a little menu that lists things that were in your clipboard and which you replaced by copying/cutting something else. You can then choose what to paste. Linux has plenty of programs that add this functionality and was in fact there first. No idea about MacOS.
Learning a bit of your operating system’s command line interface will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run – And you don’t need to become one of those turbo-weirdos that uses nothing BUT the CLI – But the reason the good ol’ console-host/terminal-emulator has stuck around after all these years is that there is a lot of shit that is just faster and more practical to do by typing a few words vs. going through 10 different menus and tabs.
Save yourself some money: If you’re not gonna be doing hardcore state-of-the-art gaming or heavy video editing or some other intense task, a middle-of-the-road computer from ten years ago with some light upgrades will carry you just fine. Get a used PC, get a decent quality SATA SSD and some extra sticks of RAM (8 minimum, ideally 16 or more) and you’ll be all set for everyday internet browsing and office tasks and shit. Heck, slap in a GPU later and you can get away with playing a lot of games, if not with DigitalFoundry tier performance.
On the topic of the command line interface: it doesn’t necessarily mean using the computer by manually typing long lines of code. The CLI, be it Bash, cmd or PowerShell is also a programming language, and you can save series of commands you frequently use into text files which can be run like executables. At least in Linux, you can weave these into the GUI; For example in the Cinnamon desktop it’s fairly trivial to create context menu items; I can convert a .docx or .odf file to a .pdf by right clicking on the file, no need to open it in an editor, and so on. A few lines of Bash and a little config file and that’s it.
You do not have to embody or enact your thoughts and feelings.
We have no real moment-to-moment control over what comes down that highway…it just comes, an endless firehose of bs, at times, and it is entirely possible to notice and observe this activity, instead of being swept along and/or making it all mean things.
Most of what society tells us will make us feel happy and fulfilled in life is bullshit. Living a good life is primarily about your personal relationships. Things like social status and personal wealth are far less important.
Ironically, most people I know doesn’t know how to use their phones or computers at all.
Not all of the people require more knowledge than Excel, but it’s very useful to recognize types of errors, backups, where are the settings you may need and how to find your device options.
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