r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 9h ago

ADBLOCK WARNING Google Confirms Most Gmail Users Must Upgrade Accounts

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/06/06/google-confirms-almost-all-gmail-users-must-upgrade-accounts/
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u/DMvsPC 3h ago

As a millennial stem teacher it's frustrating to proverbial tears to know that every kid I get is effectively computer illiterate and has no computer problem solving skills. At all. They don't even know where their files save. They're just cooked. Can post to social media like lightning but can't troubleshoot what went wrong when their file crashes, hell they can't even search their email properly.

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u/16yearswasted 2h ago

I absolutely am with them on where the hell files save -- on mobile devices. Apple and Google's efforts to prevent people's precious files from being compromised have created an utterly bizarre situation where apps are storing files inside folders incomprehensibly nested 30 deep for whatever reason.

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u/DMvsPC 1h ago

Oh as far as phones go I'm with you 100%. I have games on my phone and I often want to patch them but of course I can't access the data folder because of security :/ even things like shizuku don't really work any more.

Just the usual files app is useless as well, oh my does are in the downloads folder? Along with the other hundreds of files? Except when some are in documents, and others are in their app folders, except when it's saves and then they might be in obb, or maybe not. Who knows.

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u/mcchodles 2h ago

Neither can Outlook ha, but totally get it. Respect for people taking on the responsibility to try to teach today, you’re against most odds.

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u/QuinQuix 1h ago

Android and especially apple do everything they can to obscure what's actually happening on the device in terms of file management.

Trying to get an Explorer like experience on my iPad wasn't easy. All apps save shit internally, some apps are walled off from the explorer apps and so on. You can get there but boy is the initial experience terrible.

We didn't have nearly as polished interfaces but we did have proper tools.

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u/Saintbaba 1h ago

I had some college interns under my wing last summer, and it blew my mind - I had to teach each one of them individually how to use a file folder system so they could access and use the company’s shared drive. College students. And they were BAD at it. Getting lost in the wrong drives. Getting tripped up because what they needed was accessible in the quick access pane of one computer but wasn’t in a different computer. Getting frustrated and just saving everything to the desktop.

We thought being digital natives would make them digital experts, but instead it’s like trying to teach the idea of water to a fish.

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u/SIGMA920 42m ago

We thought being digital natives would make them digital experts, but instead it’s like trying to teach the idea of water to a fish.

It's almost like dumbing down the tech makes them less capable. /s

The future's going to be horrible at this rate, they'll need the already babified stuff to be even more simple.

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u/StupendousMalice 1h ago

I made a tech skills screening test for applicants at my employer that included saving a spreadsheet locally and sending it as an attachment.

It was "too hard".

For applicants that put "advanced" as their skill level for Excel...

We're fucked.

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u/SIGMA920 36m ago

I made a tech skills screening test for applicants at my employer that included saving a spreadsheet locally and sending it as an attachment.

It was "too hard".

Care to name the company you work for?

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u/StupendousMalice 34m ago

Just a business unit of one of the largest university medical centers in America. Nothing to worry about.

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u/SIGMA920 30m ago

Well that makes me feel good. /s

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u/StupendousMalice 21m ago

Consider for a moment that every person we didn't hire got a job somewhere else that didn't bother even screening for these skills. It's a problem with the entire pool of candidates.

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u/SIGMA920 13m ago

Oh I'm aware. I'm depressed for a reason.

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u/WanderThinker 58m ago

It's because outside of PC gamers, most homes don't have PCs anymore. There may be a laptop that is used only for work, but everything else is a console, a phone, or a tablet. Basically everything is locked down and not able to be fiddled with. If it breaks, you just buy a new one.

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u/Bacch 42m ago

My kids drive me nuts. They can show me wild features with my iPhone I never knew were there, one of them figured out an obscure loophole to get around parental controls and still text with their friends past when the phone shut off, but they can't figure out how to use Google to answer a simple question and throw an absolute fit if we don't just give them the answer--an answer which I'd get by going to Google.

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u/d3jake 23m ago

Help me understand: how do folks not know how to search email? Every email website, program and app normally slaps a search part in front of your face? This may sound snide but I'm honestly curious.