What's the scale? I'm proposing:
1 - able to turn on the device (not necessarily turn it off)
9 - can train and run own LLM (from scratch, not from an existing model)
10 - knows how to reliably set up a printer
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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10 - knows how to reliably set up a printer
What is this, D&D levels? Let’s keep this fantasy nonsense out of the rating scale!
- Inert object, no ability to move, perceive, or interact with any tech
- Root vegetable, largely unaware of technology
- Nematode or worm, unlikely to use tools much
- Lizard, capable of accidentally pressing buttons
- Blue Jay, might learn to deliberately press a button
- Orangutan, could make and use simple tools
- Human baby, likes to grab things, can use iphone
- American high school student, can use electric toothbrush
- Chess club member, probably knows javascript
- Go club member, probably knows C++
- Kernel hacker
As someone who wrote not only one, but two kernels, can I claim an 11?
kernel
kernel
kernel
11s hate this one simple trick !
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how the fuck do you "bug" the internal speakers while attempting to pirate a game? that's like saying you broke the sink while trying to change a light bulb.
Idk, its actually a common problem according to SteamDeck users on reddit, so like its not just me. Must've accidentally messed with a setting.
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Welcome to linux!
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9.9/10
If I'm not interested then you can get 5/10 advice for free just to be polite.
Skill is not knowledge, it's the ability and hardheadedness to acquire knowledge kicking and screaming to make the world bend to your will so that the printer will actually print.
obligatory-xkcd-tech-support
https://xkcd.com/627/
Yup, getting skills is just worthwhile pain. It's been hard trying to convince some of the younger tech interested people I know to put in the effort instead of going down the AI route, but I know exactly where that'll lead them. You don't get good at this stuff by succeeding, it's the endless failure.
Whatever score you give to youself, will be a demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I think the opposite—seems like many of you on Lemmy don’t realize how bad the general population is with technology and are selling yourselves short. Even knowing what linux is puts you at a 6/10 imo, especially when compared to most folks (half of whom don’t know how gmail works).
Like the fact that we’re on Lemmy—a site that most americans probably couldn’t access if they tried—shows we’re all at least a 5/10 on the technology scale.
So what you are saying is my estimate of 8/10 is too low, right? Right.....?
Can confirm: I rate myself a 7/10. I know a lot about a few things and a moderate amount about many more, but there’s always more to learn…
The tech field is so vast, most people can't even list the industries within tech, let alone being competent in just a small part of it.
There is not one single technology to be good or bad at. You can be an Android development ace, a Windows gamer and a Linux user all at the same time, and naturally you will struggle if you switch to Windows dev and Linux gamer.
Being tech savy really just means that you know and recognize tons of patterns that pop up everywhere (e.g. drag-n-drop, config files in certain places with overrides in other places etc.)
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Are we rating ourselves against the general population? I'm an easy 9 if not 10/10.
Against people working in IT, or skilled enthusiasts? I've really slipped, maybe a 4 or 5 at best.
8/10 maybe more, maybe less. Software developer, don't really have issues with tech, but put me in front of a quantum computer and I sure as shit would be lost, but fine with consumer products.
Same just about.
Like I know some truely brilliant people. I'm just happy riding the coattails.
Between 0.4 and 0.6 but the best humans score between 1.2 and 1.8; we are all pretty shit at technology.
If you don’t believe me, ask technical lithography questions to software programmers and economic questions to plumbers.
We are swimming in a sea of technologies and don’t even know how deep the water around us is.
Fuck the technological complexity in a single screw is massive.
Please give references for the scale
Also Richard Stallman -- the man who wrote the original Emacs and GCC -- has never installed a GNU+Linux distro, and he has no idea/interest in it.
9.5; I worked on machine learning starting in 2016 and lead teams working on new cryptography. That being said, I've met tons of people wayyyy more skilled/"good" than I am. But if we are comparing to the general public, at least a 9.5
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Depends on if I care of not.
Phone: 3/10. I don't really care other than googling "how to turn off annoying feature".
Writing Software: 7/10. It's not beautiful, but it does one thing reasonably well and I finished it in an afternoon. Just don't ask me to write a GUI.
Writing Software for industrial machinery: I've done it for a living for more than a decade. Still rather skip the GUI part.
Decimal or binary? I'd say a two.
A solid 4, I think. Sure, I can build a PC and install an OS but both of those have been pretty much plug and play for decades at this point.
Don't ask me about your smartphone, your smart home devices or your Windows 10/11 problems, I don't have a clue about any of that. If you visited my home you'd be forgiven for thinking it was abandoned 20 years ago.
I can usually figure out basic tech I've never used before, but I'd prefer to have the manual, help or hindrance though that may be.
I mean im in IT and it really depends. Everythings a learning curve so things you have figured out usually goes well but since every tech has pretty much unlimited use cases you still can hit roadblocks. For things you have never done it takes time to learn how to do the common uses and then you can expand out to things that require more finesse (ideally, if the boss wants Z you make it do Z even if you never got it to do X)
Hmm... Well... Let's see about all the things I can do:
- I can pirate on Linux, Windows, and Macintosh. I don't consider it difficult.
- I can install an operating on various mediums, and used to carry a Linux OS (forgot which distro) on a thumb drive with all my stuff on it to use on library computers (used to be poor and homeless. This is how I practiced Blender3D).
- I have built my own PC, and built PCs for a lot of my friends and family.
- I know how to bypass admin security on Windows XP.
- I have and still do mod games, even ones without easy modding support. I do this on Linux.
- I troubleshoot and fix my own problems, should I run into any. This included opening up hardware.
- I'm currently in the process of learning coding for the creation of games in Godot.
All of this and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of technology. So in consideration of the skill that exists with tech, the the 10-scale being used, I'd say my skill in tech is:
2 out of 10.
I think it is hard to give an objective rating on this since even extremely skilled individuals (probably half of Lemmy by societal standards) tend to skew their ratings toward the middle. Basically what Dunning-Krueger actually found from their research
That said... I'd rate myself as a 6/10. Maybe I actually know more than that
Compared to people who work on cryptography and AI magic? Like 2/10. Compared to Boomers? 9/10.
The number of computer scientists I've known that couldn't set up a VPN, or alter a firewall rule, or change the layout on a web page slightly, or set their out of office replies...
Basically the experience I've had is that those people you imagine are gods of tech are frequently terrible at tech beyond their very narrow niche.
But boomers, yeah. Even my mom who was a programmer and mostly stayed current on tech. But when Facebook stopped using a chronological news feed, she couldn't handle it.
I have an English Master's and my wife has a PhD in Comp Sci. Guess who sets up all the techie stuff. That'll be meeeee.
PS fuck Facebook's feed. I found out about a friend's death 2 weeks after she died (her parents couldn't get at her address book so they posted with her account on Facebook instead). I had to tell her other friends because NOBODY had seen the post.
I am an IT technician, I would say that I am about a 7.
Most of my job deals with psychology.
If you blindly run commands without thinking, you're gonna have a bad time in Linux.
SteamOS is also not hard to use, especially if you use it as intended, but if you start going outside the box on things, you can definitely break stuff. Nintendo switch would have the same problems if they let you touch the knobs that valve does with SteamOS
SteamOS is also not hard to use, especially if you use it as intended
(Isn't causally violating copyright regulations "as intended"? 👀)
3/10 too.
Linux IS hard to use, especially when you try to do something you never can on Windows.
I spent this morning trying to fix the WiFi driver on my laptop and ended up using USB-LAN adapter.
Also, I tried to run Ente Photos on Coolify on said laptop and I couldn't. Luckily there was a preset for immich so I used it instead.
Linux is hard. Computer is hard and it should be.
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11 - I avoid it as much as I can ;)
More seriously, I will often be the one people around ask for help but it doesn't change that I also learned to absolutely distrust tech.
All tech, be it corporate-owned as well as free/Libre... I'm using Linux and have no issue (I like it) but I'm also terrified by the many 'social code of conducts' that have been popping out in many communities. Not necessarily because I disagree with their core values, that would not even matter much, but because it's stating a precedent to allow a group to remove any user they don't like/disagree with the right to use a tech... and that power will be used even when not 'the good guys' will be in charge.
Hence me slowly falling back to analog as much as possible...
Edit: typos, clarifications
It all depends on the day lol.
Probably around 4-6. I know the basics and can do a few other things after using resources from Google/YouTube, but there's times where I stare at a problem and feel like I became my parents who can't figure out how to make a window take up the whole screen.
Operating stuff with GUI? Maybe 5/10, just ok.
Operating stuff using command? 0/10 i suck.
Scale is always a problem with questions like this. If these are percentiles of the general population, then I'm easily 10 and even trying to dig deep enough into Linux to break a Steam Deck puts you near the upper end of the scale.
If on the other hand, 0 is an otherwise intelligent adult who refuses to have anything to do with anything having a screen and 10 is Lovelace, Turing, von Neumann, etc... then I might be a 7 or 8.
I used to be really good. In the last 15 years or so the industry has insisted on making the interface would be worse and worse. NowI’m damn near helpless. I google more stuff than you can imagine. It’s fucking stupid. I don’t even enjoy most technology anymore.
8/10.
Software engineer. Respected across a small public tech company. Most folks who do 30 seconds of GitHub snooping are impressed. There's a decent chance you've used code I wrote. Hopefully it keeps working.
No idea how to use Windows. Or mac. Lots of missing network and security stuff. Struggle every time I have to do python package management. Terrified of C++.
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Somewhere between 7 and 8, if 8 is knowing how to program in programming languages. I don't, but I can script pretty well and I am very techy.
My technology skill makes me satisfied that your scale starts at zero, but annoyed it didn't end with nine.
I "hacked" my wii to get free games one time does that count? other than that I can operate most devices but I have no idea how to code and don't have time to learn. I'd put myself at a 6/10.
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