I use a desktop or laptop computer almost daily in my personal life. Mobile devices are terrible for actual productivity. And security. And usability.
And security
Disagree.
Sure, privacy wise, you can say that they are terrible (freedom wise, they are not great either). But Security? Phones are probably the most secure devices (as long as you keep them updated). Verified Boot, Sanboxing for every app, Strict Permission Control, Default Encryptions, Limiting Password attempts per X amount of time, to make brute force difficult, and can even attempt to wipe itself if too many incorrect password entry. Even if an app is malicious, all you need to do is uninstall it and most of the time they do not persist.
Most desktop installations require admin or sudo permissions, one malicious program/package and you gotta wipe clean and reinstall.
Cameras and microphones that have no physical disconnect. Virtual keyboards. NSA subsidies for cheap phones sold in poor areas. Zero visibility or access to OS components without special steps.
Windows let users install and run any junk binary to their appdata folder by default. That’s why cryptolocker got real popular around 2010. Granted this isn’t supporting my point, but admin is not required in a lot of instances.
I guess I’m saying I disagree with your disagreement. Non-mobile is far more secure. My desktop and laptops do all of the stuff you listed as mobile capabilities.
Again, the government surveillance aspect is more of a privacy issue. Yea, I hate how intrusive the government is, but, from a purely security perspective, if your threat model isn’t targeted surveillance by the government (which for most people, that’s not their threat model), if you think about how much technical knowlege the average person has, a smart phone does a better job protecting them from the every day security threats than a computer.
NSA subsidies for cheap phones sold in poor areas.
Cheap smartphones are subsidized by the “recommended apps” screen that phone manufacturers add, that app developers/publishers paid for so that their app is listed during the phone’s set up process, that’s why they are so cheap.
Drawing a distinction between privacy and security is kind of nonsense in this context. While they are technically different, they’re only different in the way that an apple and a fruit are different. Privacy is an aspect of security.
If your privacy was violated in any other context you would not feel secure.
This. There is no practical reason to separate privacy and security in this way.
If bad actors can access your data without your consent, it doesn’t matter if you call it a breach of privacy or security. It’s still a breach. At best, playing semantics like this allows a corp to claim a system filled with backdoors is “secure”. Utter marketing nonsense.
The blue collar people I know only use a phone for personal computing, I have a spare laptop I lend to co workers so they can complete CBT and badging if a phone won’t cut it.
More than once I’ve had both my personal laptop and the loaner at a jobsite so the crew can get badged quicker.
Damn, I haven’t heard about using a laptop for CBT but that shit probably hurts - that’s gonna be a wide surface area for impact.
My brain: Uncomfortable image of slamming the lid shut
Shit, I just thought of using it as a flat bludgeoning object… I think you have a future as a kinksmith. That’s the special kind of creative thinking.
In the BDSM community CBT stands for cock & ball torture.
In the mental health community CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
That’s the first explanation I was able to find, and I still don’t know what everyone here is talking about. Why do Americans love to use so many acronyms for anything and everything?
CBT = computer based training
Thanks. Mystery solved.
Some of the training matches
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I volunteer at the public library. Almost all the people who come in are phones only, and totally lost on a PC. They come in to fill out gov’t PDFs that won’t open on their phones and to print stuff out. My classmates, in the IT program (!) have a lot of trouble navigating on their laptops, and only a couple of us have desktops at all.
Who goes into IT without knowing how to use a computer?
I ask myself that on a regular basis.
Probably the old assumption “there’s money in computers” is still guiding some people into the wrong field.
I work with a number of developers who don’t know how to find and edit a file on their computer.
Literally.
I know someone who just started studying game development. No prior programming experience required. I guess that’s not a problem as long as you do your homework properly.
Desktop computer mainly, sometimes a laptop. Tablets are painful to use IMO
Phone is for work only. Tower PC for everything else.
I’m probably an outlier.
m8 literally everyone on the fediverse is an outlier 😅
My thoughts exactly. The number of Linux users and programmers here may distort the picture OP gets from these comments.
My experience has been that most people only use a computer at work and use their phone or a smart TV for everything else. Although, they usually also own a laptop for when a computer is required
People are responding personally in this thread, which does not answer the actual question being asked. Lemmizens are very far from most people.
I’d be shocked if most people had PCs any more - at best, an old laptop to lug out for “paperwork.”
i see more and more mobile-only households all the time. and people with landline internet at home that has never seen a pc. only televisions, phones and tablets. an increasing number of people don’t even have that, they live off their cell phone’s internet.
personally, i’m ‘desktop only’. my phone i use only as a phone. i have no tablet, no watch, no gaming console. my laptops never leave home, they’re just ‘small desktops’. when i need one, i grab some spare junk from the office to take to a site.
Mostly desktop, at least at home. I have 3 laptops and a desktop at work. Phone is for googling, doomscrolling, music, and light reading.
My phone is basically a mp3 player that can do 2FA. And of course for for communicating while traveling, though often enough the phone is only there to provide the hotspot.
But other than that, I’ll use the laptop whenever possible.
Seems like smartphones are generally used more often than PCs among younger cohorts compared to older. In Britain at least.
That’s a very different question. A smartphone can to some degree emulate the other devices listed so when people are asked to pick only one device most are naturally going to choose that even if it’s not currently their primary device, and since they could only choose one it’s not useful in determining how many people use other devices. It also appears to be a follow-up question asking about second most important devices so it’s definitely not useful out of context.
From that survey question alone you cannot reasonably claim which device is used most often.
I use Lemmy and Tumblr on my phone; but I use my computer for gaming quite a bit.
I use my computer for pretty much everything but I have a projector so that shit is up on my wall.
I think a big majority of the general population are phone-only on their own time, and a bunch of those use a PC just for work.
Personally I just use all the computers. I use my phone plenty, and I’m on my work machine all day. Then at home I just put together a nice setup with the desktop’s monitors on arms attached to a big table next to the couch. So I can just be chilling in the family room and swing a monitor over in front of me. It’s made me use the PC a lot more.
I think I use my phone mostly, by time spent, not counting work. Important things I usually do on my desktop. If I had my druthers I’d have more time to spend on the desktop instead of the phone, but I’ve got two young kids so I can only do so much
