I really need to sit down and practice what I preach, but let’s be the change we want.

One day soon I’m going to go through my giant list of reddit subs, and recreate them here if they don’t exist.

Even if they are mostly empty, at least show there is an interest, and give people a place to post.

As a late 40s skateboard, r/oldskaters was a joy for me, and I’d love to see that and many other communities here.

Linux is wizard magic, which is why you need your wizard hat.

If you have a spare machine gathering dust, I highly recommend installing one of the modern desktop versions and giving it a try. It is still not a replacement for the every day office machine in most environments, but for personal daily computer use it can be fantastic.

Was explaining it to my girlfriend last night, and I’m sure I’m repeating myself on here, but hey, content.

Lemmy feels so much like the early IRC or Fark days. In '93, if you were in a chat system, there was a damned good chance you were nerdy college student.

The channel I frequented most at the time was ‘teensex’ on IRC, and it was populated by nothing but college aged kids who thought the channel name was edgy and funny.

Anyone creeping to actually chat up teens for or about sex was immediately banned and laughed about. Even posting A/S/L got you auto banned.

One time we had a meet up, and 20 or so channel members met at a local college campus for a party.

It was a very eye opening experience for me. Not only was it a wholesome group of people, it was fascinating to me to compare the online personality with the in person ones.

The guy who was mister internet tough guy was a 5’4 scrawny kid, and the kind soft spoken guy shy guy was a 6’4 football player.

It forever taught me that what you are reading in no way represents who is sitting behind the keyboard, and that you could make real friends in the virtual world.

I try to imagine attempting a gathering of the users from any internet space named teensex now, and just don’t think you’d draw the same demographic.

Maybe that is the bias that makes me enjoy Lemmy so much, being a 30-50 year old programmer who loves linux fits me perfectly.

No ads, no spam bots, no lame repeated meme responses to posts, just a small community of seemingly smart people talking about common interests.

I have no idea how long it will last, or what it will evolve in to, but the longer we can keep out the unwashed internet masses, and avoid the pitfalls of ad driven algorithm based content, the better.

I used to think the next generation was going to out code, design, and trouble shoot me in five years, and that the one after that would make me feel like a dinosaur in my 30s.

Now I’m almost 50, and the army of tech savvy teens coming for my job simple hasn’t materialized. With the ease of use of so many devices, a world where “plug and play” actually exists, the effort and skill requirement for most things has gone way down. On top of that, the battle for attention is so great that there is always something easier to go play with, and if it requires a bit of noodling to make it work, screw it.

For a bit I thought “Great, job security!”, but now I’m at the point where I need to think about finding interns and replacements, and unless they come from one of the historic tech pipelines like PC gaming or the makers community, not a lot of kids have that kind of background.

There are great programs now in the schools for making app, 3D printing, graphics, music, etc, that draw kids into technology. However, like everything else it’s all slick and user friendly. You don’t have to spend hour after hour figuring out how to make the thing work.

I watched my two year old nephew trying to swipe on the pictures in a magazine and was confused why they didn’t move. He was basically born with an ipad in his hands.

I agree completely that a basic computer class covering those things and more should be standard in schools. Now we have niche tech courses akin to the woodshop and autos class of my high school, but they are electives, and don’t cover the fundamentals.

Because stating a wrong fact is the fastest way to get the right answer?

So, if I have an account on one instance, and I want to login / reply to another, how do i do that. I’m using the liftoff app.

I take it I shouldn’t have more than one instance login? Don’t worry, at this point I’ve only got two, it really didn’t seem right when I was making the second one.

“Hannah Montana is considered fast, stable, and powerful by most users”.

Ok, Lemmy has officially gotten my first “ok now people are looking at me” laugh.

I know I’m an old school techie, but was there really a high entry bar for lemmy compared to say twitter or Instagram? I honestly don’t know, other than r3dd!t the last social media I signed up for was what? Facebook well over a decade ago?

If the few steps it took to make a user name, pick an instance, and then get my head around the fact that I had to also join any instance I wanted to respond to, is enough to keep the unwashed internet masses out, well, they are just even dumber than I already thought.