Comment by iteratethis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by iteratethis | Hacker News Reader

I donated my old gaming PC to my nephew (20 y/o). I told him that owning it also means maintaining it. I don't have time for that. Figure it out, "digital native".

Within 2 days he had it ruined. Kept running hot and crashing. I told him over the phone how to analyze the problem. Nothing what I said made any sense to him.

So I came over and saw that he had installed 50 or so new programs, some very dubious. Zero security awareness, just click on anything like a grandma. One program was rogue and took 100% CPU in a forever loop. He had never heard of task manager to inspect such a problem. Completely clueless on how to use a PC or operating system.

He also has a sister. I asked her to share a document. She opens the document on the laptop and proceeds to make photos of the doc with her phone and sends them to me.

These are middle-class young adults with decent education (in theory). It's shocking.

That is the most efficient way to share a document between users in 2025.

Requires no signup, no logins, no malware risk, no paid subscription, no special software, no special hardware.

What were you expecting her to do?

I’m not sure if you are trolling, but I’m pretty sure just attaching a file to an email is often more efficient. Not to speak of legibility or maybe the intended use for said documents. Sadly I don’t think you are trolling.

Also: a computer (where the documents were) has the required hardware and software to send the documents as is. Your phone is the special and external hardware in this case, not the computer (also probably more expensive than the computer). Your phone requires signups and logins as much or even more than computers. I don’t know what paid subscription you would need to share these documents. Plenty of free methods. I don’t know why you are talking about malware? Do you think the documents might mutate into malware while traveling the internet? I think the risk exists with pictures too, be careful out there!

Using email, passing the data through 2 third party services known for scanning attachments for advertising purposes is not more efficient and is a security concern. It’s just that we have forgotten that, and it didn’t used to be.

All major phone OS now have the ability to select and copy text out of images.

If you think about it she really did choose the best method to transfer a text document safely, securely, efficiently.

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