this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023

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Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Judge in US v. Google trial didn’t know if Firefox is a browser or search engine::Google accused DOJ of aiming to force people to use “inferior” search products.

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[–] hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So we have two options:

A 52 year old federal judge is somehow tech illiterate in a way that would imply they have absolutely no idea about the fundamentals of modern technology.
A federal judge is asking a large number of extremely basic questions to get their answers on official records so that the cases parameters are clearly defined. He is taking extra care because there's not a lot of direct precedent on these issues.

I'm heavily leaning towards number 2 here. The internet likes to pretend everyone over the age of 40 has no idea how a computer works. The year is 2023. A middle-aged person today was fairly young when computers started to be incorporated into all aspects of society and is well versed in computer literacy. In some ways they are actually much more tech literate than the younger generations. It's almost certain that he knows the difference between Firefox and Google.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly same. The passage of time is weird

People think 52 is like super old.. but really that's just Gen X

Hell you really wanna know how warped our perception of time is?

Most people think 20 years ago Mario was an 8bit platformer that revitalized interest in video games after Atari killed the medium with oversaturation and nonexistent quality control.

What was Mario 20 years ago? An aging mascot with a divisive summer themed pollution game that I loved but others seemed to hate, on a console that only did well with diehard fans... 20 years ago Nintendo wasn't the big man on campus, that was Sony with the PS2 despite it being weaker than GCN and Xbox.

[–] Deftdrummer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kinda lost me with Mario

[–] flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, none of that comparison made sense. It relies too much on prior knowledge/association.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemme break it down then..

Most people, if asked what a Mario game, one of the most iconic and best selling franchises in gaming history... beaten out only by Pokemon (owned by the same company) was like 20 years ago, they'd describe this - https://youtu.be/7qirrV8w5SQ

When in reality, Mario 20 years ago, was this - https://youtu.be/WIHFSgPv3Ak

This is due to how bad of a perception of time we as humans seem to have... It works for other things

20 years ago "Ah yeah that's when we were using floppy disks right?"

Heck my brother's a pretty sharp guy, but at one point he seemed to think my dad's generation grew up with black and white silent films, and not... Friday the 13th or Ghostbusters

[–] Crass_Spektakel@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, in the 1970/1980 there actually were still a lot of black and white movies on TV. "The Streets of San Francisco" "Kojak" "Dragnet" not to mention the endless reruns of Stan and Laurel.

[–] richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For reruns in Argentina, nothing beats Disney's Zorro. It's a full-on revered classic here.

[–] Crass_Spektakel@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

For reruns in Argentina, nothing beats Disney’s Zorro. It’s a full-on revered classic here.

Wow, I remember that one too from my child hood. The German TV played it once, the Austrian TV played it like over and over again. Don't ask me why but the Austrian TV was always miles better than the German TV. Living close to the border allowed us to watch both, sometimes even the Swiss TV which was usually attrocious.

[–] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The judge in question is 51 years old. He’s not old enough to be this clueless about basics like the difference between a search engine and a web browser and popular examples of each.

[–] clif@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I teach a programming class to young adults (18-25, usually) and was flabbergasted last semester when I realized that a couple of them didn't know what a directory hierarchy/file system was.

My suspicion is that the ease of use angle of "just tell me what you want and I'll find it" led to this. Not saying ease of use is bad, but I expected more from people wanting to learn programming.

And I'm over here meticulously organizing my music library into folders by band, album, year, etc...o the humanity.

[–] sping@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kids often don't know the difference between "wifi" and the Internet. It's not an age thing these days.

[–] schmidtster@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Kids often aren’t explained the difference and if they have been they just don’t understand, wifi IS the internet to them.

A 51 year old Judge has a vastly different brain and should be able to retain the difference when explained.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You'd think they'd notice they can use the internet from their phones when there's no wifi.

[–] clgoh@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 year ago

Pretty sure they call cellular data “wifi”.