Hmm I’ve been a coffee geek and bicycle nerd (hobby mechanic) since my teenage years, and ran a half-marathon in my mid 20ies … guess I’ve been 40 for a long time now …

Wait, that’s not what you’re supposed to do?

I get that … It’s just my impression that the “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” mentality is pretty prevalent in general and people might read an article and use it to confirm that mentality, see a phrase like “critical learning period is closed” and say “see, why even try”. Not you personally, just to be clear.

So I didn’t want to leave that uncommented because I think despite that we should foster a culture of learning at any age.

It might be scientifically accurate but I think the notion of an age cap is misguided. Just because it’s harder doesn’t mean it’s impossible, and the idea of an “age cap” just makes it seem like you shouldn’t even try (might just be my interpretation).

Also it’s just super helpful to learn something even though you’re not perfect.

I’ve started learning English at 10, put in a lot of work over the years, and it got to near-native in my late 20ies (certified by my language-nerd native-english-speaker wife). At 20 I had trouble booking hostel rooms over the phone.

In my 40ies now and I feel like most of the skills that make “me” today, including playing instruments, programming languages, all kinds of crafts, I learned way past ten and many of them past 20. Started learning Spanish at around 35, nowhere near native but decently conversational. About to start the next course in Catalan soon.

So, this is the one thing where I think people just should ignore the science (which is usually not my stance at all) and get cracking, you can teach an old dog new tricks, and it’s always helpful and fun.

My first ever smartphone (in 2015) was a BQ Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Edition that came with Ubuntu Phone pre-installed … a lightweight, 4.5" smartphone … there wasn’t much of an app ecosystem at the time but I didn’t miss it because up to that date I used a dumb phone, and the smartphone allowed me to do eMail and use a browser, which was enough for me.

At some point I accidentially dropped it on a hard floor and it broke, and I was quite unhappy that the company didn’t continue that line :(

I guess it depends a lot on what you think of as “an alternative”. I’m really happy using FOSS because I generally try to find a different angle on things, and it allows me to do that.

Luckily I’m not dependent on using common office software, the few spreadsheet tasks that I need can be done with online tools, either open or proprietary. For documents I usually use markdown and pandoc. For music making, I use my own software or Ardour for mastering, etc. For modeling and 3D printing I started using OpenSCAD.

There’s also many things that proprietary software just can’t do. Like, my day-to-day workflow is based on a minimalist approach to computing, with the most common operations being very easy to perform (browser, editor, terminal) … MacOS is always hailed for their great UI but honestly, it seems slow and clunky to me even though I used it daily for a long time …

Second this, I’ve tried TinkerCAD before and the whole Idea of CSG started to make sense, and then I found that OpenSCAD does something very similar, just with code … I find it very satisfying … I guess if you’re making highly asymmetrical, organic shapes, you might have some puzzles to solve … but I’m mostly making loudspeakers, so basically boxed with holes, and it’s not a huge problem.

Hmm I think the issue is that Ardour is more focused on recording than electronic music production … There’s more intuitive DAWs out there but I suppose in terms of what it can do it doesn’t have to stand back … compared to ProTools I’d say it’s still quite intuitive (not a high bar for sure).

hmm I might be biased because I’m a programmer by trade, and even make music with code, so describing things as code is pretty natural to me … but I once I got the hang of it I found it easier than TinkerCAD in some sense, because there I would always get lost in the stack of objects … and FreeCAD … well, I couldn’t even get a basic box designed … 😅

Yes :)

Meh … I wish there was a middle ground. Non-corporate, yet effective. Unfortunately, the Fediverse is only the first.

Discovery algorithms can be great, if applied with care. And I really think ActivityPub is not very effective at showing interesting stuff, while from a user perspective it’s super intransparent. Personally I’d prefer a centralized user experience to the Fediverse fragmentation any day … I guess I’m really only here because I’m fed up with corporate bullshit.

OBS for streaming is amazing.

Ardour is a pretty amazing DAW that can compete with proprietary ones. There’re also loads of FOSS plugins out there that don’t have to hide behind the commercial ones. My favorites are the Calf Plugins and the Luftikus EQ for mastering. Helm and Yoshimi are great synths. Pure Data is lightweight and can compete with MaxMSP.

Krita has already been mentioned.

But, I think what strikes me most is that there’s a lot of FLOSS software out there that just doesn’t have direct proprietary counterpart. Small command-line tools like FFMPEG or ImageMagick. Linux as an customizable OS. Programming Languages to make music like SuperCollider. I never learned how to use proprietary CAD software but recently got into OpenSCAD to model some things and it’s really fun once you get the hang of it. I don’t do this professionally so there’s no need for me to learn Fusion360.

Some have a bit of a learning curve but are all the more satisfying to use once you get into them. People are just too stuck in their “industry standard” (which really just means “the most common product that has been around the longest”), but if you’re not bound to that, there’s just a huge number of programs out there that allow you to do amazing things. That to me is the beauty of FLOSS.

(sorry for the late reply)

https://see.ellipsenpark.de/ --> again, single-user, single-topic, more of an archive really

I’m running my own instance, and typically post my stuff on mastodon, so I guess I have made the first step?

It’s a bit of a Catch-22 I suppose … low numbers of viewers makes it less attractive for creators, and fewer interesting creators make it less attractive for viewers.

Taking into account the other aspects that make it less attractive for viewers (fragmentation and inconvenience … having to dig through “Find the right instance for you” tutorials, no matter how well curated, can be a bit of a turn-off compared to just going to a central point and find what you’re looking for), I don’t have that much hope that it’ll reach a critical mass of both viewers and creators to catapult Peertube into large-scale relevance … as sad as I am about saying that.

“If you can find it” … that’s the crucial point I suppose … but without a discovery algorithm, interesting creators, and a VAST content archive, it can hardly be called an “alternative” for YouTube.

When I was looking into it I found the best use case was to use it as a self-hosted video archive to replace/extend my Vimeo. At least at that point, all instances that were remotely interesting were not taking any users, and the generic ones seemed to be very far away from what I’m doing content-wise.

And I guess as long as that’s the case, and you have no ways to monetize content nor any significant reach due to the federated fragmentation, I don’t think it’s an interesting software/federated platform for creators …

Hope in what sense? Hope that it’s generally possible to connect online without corporate social media? Sure …

Hope that it’ll become a replacement social media at a large scale? Probably not … I think the way push-federation is implemented makes it inconvenient and hard to grasp, and generally people seem to prefer centralized platforms for the sheer convenience of use, which is hard to beat.

So I guess it’ll remain stable in it’s own little niche … which isn’t bad I suppose …

I guess whether it’s a flaw or not depends on your expectations … definitely feels like a big drawback to me …

Hmm in theory I get that, but in practice it’s not always easy to grasp.

When Fediverse stuff comes up as an “alternative” it’s often depicted as “leave Instagram, join Pixelfed” … not “join pixelfed.social” or “join pixelfed.de” … it’s often presented as if the instance you choose doesn’t matter that much. Which, is now pretty clear to me, is not true at all. It also seems a bit at odds with the idea of decentralization because if you want your content to be seen there’s a big incentive to join an already-large instance.

Apart from that, as a practical consequence, it’s hard to understand why, when and where you see something … like, a common point of criticism about corporate social media is that algorithms boost content in often hard-to-understand ways … but in the Fediverse, it just seems a different kind of intransparency, as long as you don’t just stick to your local instance.

Hmm ok … the servers are both pretty large so I assume they should be well-federated (if that’s the right term).

But that flaw kinda means that effectively, information trickles through unpredictably and what you see is quite dependent on which instance you’re on … is that understanding correct?